Every so often you run into a place you just enjoy… maybe
you can’t really put into words exactly why, you just do.
This past week found Diane and me driving through a good
part of east central Ohio. We left
Wooster after an incredibly enjoyable visit with Steve and Ginger, friends from
our snowbird haunt in Naples, Florida.
Heading south for speaking engagements in Mount Vernon and, a day later,
in Newark brought us through some of the most wonderfully colored hills and
valleys. We both thank the good people
of Ohio for decorating their land for our enjoyment. We’ve not seen fall colors like these since
our drive from New Hampshire back to Minnesota several years ago.
It was when we drove into Newark that we realized we’d
stumbled onto something special. Our
first stop was at the Earthworks Museum, the site of a prehistoric lunar
observatory that is awesome… the only thing “prehistoric” about it is that
Europeans were not around when it was built!
The perfectly laid out circles and geometric shapes are aligned with the
18.2 year cycle of the moon. Walking
around made me wonder just what else we “western thinkers” have bulldozed our
way over in a mad rush to colonize and “civilize” this continent. Enough of that…. this is about travel, not
ripping into our own past behavior.
The city of Newark is under renovation… literally. The main streets around the square are torn
up, several buildings are being worked on and a recently completed, beautiful
pavilion and farmer’s market area enhance the feeling of having stepped back a
century in time. A canal used to cut
through town, bringing commerce (in the form of whiskey and hard cider) that
earned the city the title “Sin City”… now it’s cleaned and shining and very,
very pretty. Murals cover multitudes of
walls and a form of sitting bench artwork appears on several corners. Pictures don’t do justice, though I’ve
included a few to try. A new Library is
there, along with work on a Louis Sullivan “Jewel Box” bank building that will
be completed in two years (did I mention these are part of our quest this
fall).
You have got to include Newark into any trip you make
here. It’s bound to get even better by
the time you arrive. Newark also marks
the point at which we turn to head west and north for our return to see our
little peanut, Phoebe, in a week. The
hardest part, right now, of travel is to try and imagine how much she’s grown
in our absence (though it’s not like she’s graduating from college next
Thursday).
Yesterday we visited the US Air Force Museum at
Wright-Patterson in Dayton. Naturally,
the sight of so many, unbelievably many, aircraft from our history has left me
dry eyed and drool-less. I must have
seemed like a little kid, hurrying from one to another… just to stare,
mesmerized by the stories that were flowing through my mind at each one. I’m probably the only person you know that
can get downright giddy at the aquamarine and yellow coloring of a P-36
“Peashooter”…. no, I didn’t include a picture of that one… Google it for
yourself!
One picture I did include is of a B-29 Superfortress
named “Bockscar”. It was the plane that
dropped the second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki.
My first thought was of the Minnesota Vikings, who have never won a
Super Bowl (our chant for them is “We’re number two… we’re number two). A couple of weeks ago I happened to visit the
gravesite of Frederick Bock in Greenville, Michigan while speaking at the
Flying Falcon Museum. Fred Bock was the
pilot, and namesake, of the plane… though on the Nagasaki mission he traded
places with another pilot, Major Sweeney.
Sweeney dropped the bomb and Bock observed while flying “The Great
Artiste”. It’s amazing how history
weaves a tapestry of time and events that connect in strange ways when you look
hard…
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