I am writing today during work, so I will be juggling station duties, training and 911 calls.  Hopefully things will be quiet so I can get through today’s ramblings.

At the end of August in 2013 we traveled to Columbus then to Parma of course for shows that Mr. Trent had.  Now we were pretty exhausted at this time because we had just come back from the Sturgis trip but the show must go on so we hit the road.

 He opened both shows for a band called Ollie Vee.  These gentlemen are from Canada and are not only fantastic to listen to but fun to watch.  I would highly recommend looking them up and if you are lucky enough to be in an area they are touring check out their show at the very least check out their music you won’t be disappointed.

 The show in Columbus, Ohio was at a little club called the Shrunken Head.  We had been there before and I absolutely love this bar.  It is a very cool venue.  Instead of going home of course we rolled the old RV up toward Parma Heights, Ohio for the next day’s show at a great bowling alley known as Yorktown Lanes.  Yorktown Lanes is another great venue with some wonderful people.  Not only some fun bowling but a very nice bar with fantastic music, food and atmosphere. 

It was a relatively short drive –compared to some-between the two venues.  We were able to take our time on the trip up and we decided to stop in Mansfield, Ohio and explore a bit.  We didn’t stay too long but I was able to catch a few images along the way.  This is typically how our time goes with as much traveling on the weekends and at times even into the weeks.  I get to meet some really nice people along the way, hear some new stories and capture some fun images.

I grew up in a small town in Ohio.  I was raised by two wonderful parents who raised us a little later in life.  We grew up relatively sheltered, not that bad things didn’t happen here –they occasionally did- but considering all things we were pretty safe and secure.  Dad and Mom did a great job providing for us –and when I say us I am referring to my brother and myself.  We didn’t have many expensive things but we had a lot of love. 

North Canton has a population of 17,404 in 2012, when I was growing up here the population was around the 15,000 mark.  We were a factory town.  Many of the people here worked at the Hoover Company making vacuums for almost 100 years until it was moved away to a foreign land.  I grew up seeing neighbors with their packed lunch boxes walking to the factory.  The whole city centered on it –it helped us live and breathe.  The city seems to be bouncing back from that blow.   My father was a teacher so he would get in the car and travel to Kent to teach –he taught college level courses and taught at different times so we were very lucky to have a somewhat different schedule with our parents.  My Mother was a retired telephone operator from Ohio Bell-boy did she have some stories about the old days with the headsets and switchboards. 

At this time of year I think of pickles and applesauce.  Mom canned the best bread and butter pickles you could every imagine-unfortunately her recipe died with her, every year I think I am going to attempt to can those same pickles and every year flies by and before I know it, winter is here.  She also made transparent apple sauce.  Transparent apples were cooking apples and they were some of the first apples of the season.  We would go visit Mom and Dad’s good friend-he was a very shy confirmed bachelor with a horrible stuttering problem of course he also worked at the Hoover Company.  He always appeared a little rumpled, clothes not pressed and maybe slightly too big.  He was soft spoken with a huge heart.  He had a small orchard behind his house –it smelled delicious-sweet and green and light and when we went there I just knew that in the next few days the house would be  filled with the smell of those wonderful apples cooking into a delicious sauce containers stacked up everywhere to go into the freezer.  The applesauce was slightly tart, Mom would add some sugar when she cooked it but not too much- just enough.  This year I am going to make applesauce with my Grandson and he will get to delight in the smell of the cooking apples and the delicious taste-you can’t get transparent apples anymore –at least that I have found in ohio but I will make do.

It is funny how at different times of a person’s life it is viewed with such a different perspective.  I see the city much differently now than when I was young.  

For as long as I can remember there has always been the Jaycee Fair.  I remember being little and getting to go to the fair.  When we are children things can seem so big, there were so many lights and what appeared to be hundreds of rides and games.  We would go home with the fair fish in the bag.  The fairgrounds seemed so huge-   The dusty gravel crunching under our feet as we made our way in and out of the crowd, all the faces, the carnival workers it seemed as if it took the whole evening to navigate through the rides and food carts – the smell of hot sugar and grease filled the air-cotton candy, elephant ears, funnel cakes, fair fries, corn dogs.  These smells even to this day bring me back to the warm spring nights.  The lights of the carnival swirling around.   Every now and then the smell of chlorine would float over from the pool and intermingle with the other sweet scents.

Ah late Spring, first the Memorial Day Parade, second the bittersweet ending of the school year, next the Jaycee Fair, really the beginning of summer which always seemed so long.   It was about this time the lightning bugs would start appearing in the evening.   This meant evening games of tag and catching the lightning bugs sticking them in jars, covering the jars with plastic and punching holes in the top so they could breathe.  Every now and then curled up in bed looking at my jar of the little golden flashing lights beside me- I would think “they need to be free”, and so they would become free in my room.  The glow of the little lights and the soft evening breeze coming in the windows would create such wonderful dreams.

I am past this phase of my life-now the fair seems so tiny compared to the big eyes of my youth.  My girls are past this phase.  Now our Grandson is entering this phase-eyes big with excitement, his little head all sweaty from the hot evenings and all the great questions he has.  So the cycle starts all over again.

In May of 2013 we were returning from the Limberlost-you can read about that in my prior Ramblings- and we made many stops along the way.  One stop was to eat at a Frisch’s Big Boy in Dayton, Ohio, of course Steve and I are going to eat at any restaurant that has some kind of giant or quirky thing in front of it-especially if it is holding food!   Prior to this was a little detour to the Wegerzyn Gardens which are part of the Dayton metro park system.  It was a great place to stretch our legs and of course for me to snap some images.  The park had this web of vines that reminded me of an enormous beehive hairdo that you could walk through.  I loved it, made me feel like a kid again, I only wish I could grow something that cool in my backyard, but alas no green thumb here.  I would highly recommend stopping at these gardens they were quirky and also had a children’s garden –an interactive garden for the whole family.

Moving on down the road we headed into Marion, Ohio and what did we find?  A giant steam shovel, should we stop?  Why of course we should.  We parked the old motorhome and hopped on out and into the shovel.  The funny thing about this stop was the odd circle that only showed up in the forward images of the shovel and in no other images on this trip.  Both before and after cleaning the lens-weird?  Also no flash, and only in the shovel in front of Steve and behind me-  Dare I say orb.  Who knows?  That is the mystery of the shovel.  So after a few minutes of climbing in, out and on top of the shovel, we discovered another treat-trains!

Bonus for this stop it was the Marion Union Station, it was not open at the time but it is a great place to spot trains.  I did get some train images and talked together about how excited our Grandson would be to see the trains and the giant shovel!  He gets excited as us about the kind of things we visit, his attention span is just a bit shorter than ours. 

As we continued on through Marion we came upon the Warren G. Harding Memorial.  This is a very impressive structure, and of course another place to stretch our legs.  We did not tour the home on this trip, but really enjoyed the Tomb, I know how often do you say “Wow really enjoyed that tomb” but this stop was one of those.  As impressive as Warren G. Harding’s tomb is-if you are a tomb lover and find yourself in Canton, Ohio check out the McKinley Monument, also very impressive.

The first official RV trip of the year was to Fremont, Ohio.  Steve played guitar with The Living Deads Saturday evening at The Strand.  What a great venue-what used to be the Ball House Hotel and then The Jackson Hotel the theater was added and the hotel shut down.  It has been turned into a beautiful room with great sound.   The owner sells tickets ahead of time for guests, you can also purchase tickets the night of the show.  There are small tables with chairs and people bring coolers with food and beverages.  There is also a very nice stage.  This was a venue with an actual Green room for us to hang out in and there was a little meat and cheese platter –both treats – most venues don’t have these or offer these luxuries anymore except the ones that seem to be owned or run by musicians.

It was so good to see our friends Symphony and Randee and hear about all their cool new projects.  It was also good to see Andy and Amanda, they live closer but tour a lot also.  We are sort of the odd ones out with regular day jobs to maintain our hobbies.  So after hugs, some visiting and the show which of course was loads of fun we headed over to the local Walmart parking lot to sleep for the night.  It was unusually cold and the furnace in our little motorhome sure felt good.  We had some snacks and settled down in our tiny little bed. 

We woke up Sunday morning ready for adventure.  We decided  to go to some of the marshlands and state parks up north of Fremont by Lake Erie- but bad move for us there was some kind of big bird watchers event and we ended up just stretching our legs on the beach for a few minutes and hopping back in the rv.  One treat for me along our travels up there were several abandoned and decayed buildings that I quickly jumped out of the rv and explored with my camera! 

We thought we would head over to Oregon, Ohio for a festival –when we got there parking was terrible and we thought “to heck with this” and Steve had the big idea to go to Tony Packo’s Café-made famous by Jamie Farr bringing it up a lot with his MASH character Klinger.  Tony Packo’s original location–what can I say –fried pickles, spicy ketchup, homemade chilli, hot dogs, mashed potatoes, cabbage rolls and cucumber salad, great service-now I did not eat all this I had the cabbage roll which reminded me of my Mom’s cabbage rolls great food and a tasty surprise we were treated like royalty and received a free bottle of spicy ketchup yum!

Next stop Toledo Botanical gardens and visited the Blair Museum  of Lithophanes–porcelain made from molds that when back-lit displayed beautiful pictures-breathtaking artwork.  There weren’t too many blooms in the gardens yet but lots of greenery along many different paths with interesting sculptures-although we were surprised by some young woman changing her clothes for a photo shoot –I guess changing your clothes in a public garden is no big deal.  After that excitement we hit the road and turned toward home.  What a start to a summer full of travel, music and images.