To recover from our fairly hectic tour of New York and New England, we made reservations at a membership campground near Williamsfield, Ohio for a week of R&R. It was a good choice; Lake Pymatuning, which straddles the border between Ohio and Pennsylvania, is nearby so the campground was busy on weekends with families and fishing folk but during the week it was blissfully quiet. It was so peaceful, in fact, that we ended up extending our stay an extra week. We had been in the area only a few days when the office advised us that a big thunderstorm was heading our way and we’d best be prepared. We pulled in the big slide, turned on the NOAA radio and prepared for severe weather. Fortunately, the worst of the storm passed to the south of us and the Weather Channel stopped throwing the term “tornadic activity” into their reports well before bedtime. We didn’t even get the hail that was forecast.
There isn’t much of interest in the immediate vicinity of Williamsfield, so we had to drive 18 miles into Pennsylvania to find the nearest Walmart 
Supercenter and the nearest Costco was 50 miles due west in Mayfield. We made one trip to each. It was not an unreasonable drive to Warren, the closest “big” city so we trekked there one day to poke around. The downtown area is chock-full of interesting Victorian-era buildings, including this especially lovely City Hall. It’s right across the street from the library, where we learned they’d be having their big book sale that coming weekend and we quickly made plans for a return trip.
Warren was home to the Packard boys when they started the Ohio Automobile Company in 1899. In 1903, when the company began to expand, it was renamed The Packard Motor Car Co. and manufacturing was moved to Detroit to put them closer to their sub-contractors. The museum’s collection is not large and space is limited but the cars are nicely exhibited and not all crammed together willy-nilly. We were just about finished with our tour when the building went dark and we were led back to the lobby. It was quickly learned that half the city was without electrical power so we were given free passes for a return visit and sent on our way with the admonition to “be careful” because the traffic lights in much of the city weren’t operational.
On another day we made the slightly longer drive to Youngstown with not much in mind to do except visit The Butler Institute of American Art. The building, opened to the public in 1919, is very near the Youngstown University Campus and there is no admission fee. Joseph G. Butler, Jr. who commissioned the building and contributed a great many of the earlier works of art, 
was a local industrialist and one of the first to begin collecting American art. Familiar names appear in abundance – Winslow Homer, Norman Rockwell, Mary Cassatt. They even have a portrait by Gilbert Stuart, although not of George Washington. This guard was the only sign we saw of anyone monitoring the collection; he was so incredibly life-like that he seemed more an example of the embalmer’s skill than an artist’s technique. We were also much taken with a perpetual motion device which ceased to operate when a handful of marbles jumped the track and brought everything to a halt.
Our final stop during such tours is always the gift shop (it’s also the designated spot to find each other should we become separated). The Butler has an especially nice gift shop and the clerk there recommended that we also visit Fellows Riverside Gardens, which is part of the Mill Creek MetroPark. So off we went to locate it. The weather has been extremely hot and humid so most of the gardens were not at their best but we were still able to enjoy the few things that were in bloom and to wander around under some grand old trees.
Our final day on the eastern side of Ohio was spent making a mad dash back to Warren for the library’s book sale. We arrived fairly early (for us) and I was dismayed to see folks streaming out of the building carrying big cardboard boxes filled with books. I watched one man stuff four such boxes into the cargo space of his van. How could there be anything left for us? Well, not to worry. We were able to fill a big shopping bag with treasures without ever making it to the room that housed the works of fiction.
Somehow or another we’ve gotten a little off schedule and find ourselves traveling on Sundays instead of Mondays as we prefer. Sundays do offer the benefit of lighter traffic on the highways and we made the 250 mile jump to Wapakoneta, Ohio without incident, although we did encounter some fairly heavy rains on the eastern half of the state. We weren’t sure what to expect in Wapakoneta, it sounds like the punch-line of a bad joke about small towns. It fact, it is a delightful small city in a delightful area of other delightful small cities. Neil Armstrong is Wapakoneta’s major claim to fame and there is a space museum built there in his honor which we did not visit. Truth be told, we thought the admission fee was a touch on the high side; we’ve already visited much larger air and space museums and paid less. Besides, there was too much else to do!
The Auglaize County Courthouse is in the final throes of a major renovation and is closed to tours. However, we were able get get inside for a quick peek around. What a handsome building!! It boasts colorful stained glass ceilings, detailed moldings and tile, and this copper version of Justice which once stood atop the court house. Local school children collected pennies to pay for her renovation.
The architecture in Wapakoneta is eclectic to say the least. 
One of the most interesting homes is this Victorian mansion known as The Pink Lady. The yard décor changes frequently. Obviously the owners are used to tourists hanging out on the sidewalk and taking photos, the bolder ones may even venture into the yard or peep in the windows. When we drove by on the weekend, there was a wooden-sided pick-up truck parked on the street bearing the label “The Pink Lady’s Gent”. This place is whimsical with a capital “W”.
Lima, the nearest large city, is only 15 miles or so due north and we made the trip there to visit the Allen County Museum. A docent was showing off the miniature train room when we first arrived and so we prevailed upon her to fill us in on some of the details of the train set up. Not only is the display a panorama of Lima but a time-line as well. She also told us in some detail about the Shay locomotive, built by the Lima Locomotive Works, 
to haul rocks out of the nearby quarries up an incredibly steep section of track. Next door, and part of the Allen County Museum (but with an additional admission fee) is the MacDonell House, now undergoing extensive renovations on the exterior. The interior is in pretty good condition although perhaps not as historically correct as it might be. It was built in 1893 and lived in until 1960 so some “renovations” fall into the modernization category. This stained glass window was particularly striking – the guide told us it is quite magnificent early in the morning when the sun first strikes it, bringing the clouds to life.
On Tuesday we set off on a drive through the western Ohio countryside with its fields of corn and soybeans, tidy farms both large and small, and all-American towns. Our first stop was the town of St. Marys (our GPS insisted on calling it Street Marys) on the shores of Grand Lake St. Marys which is referred to as “Ohio’s other great lake”. Intended as a feeder lake for the Miami-Erie Canal, this reservoir was dug by 1000 men using picks and shovels. Dirt was hauled away in horse-drawn carts and wheelbarrows. The men got their room and board plus 30 cents and a shot of whiskey per day; the whiskey was for medicinal purposes, to ward off malaria. At the time of completion, the lake covered 15,000 acres and was 10 feet deep; the surface area has now shrunk to 13,500 acres. Using either figure, it is still a very impressive feat. It was once the world’s largest man-made lake and remains the largest hand-dug man-made lake, even subtracting 2000 acres.
We continued around the lake, stopping briefly in the town of Celina on the western end of the lake, ending up back on the eastern side in the town of New Bremen (pronounced New BREE man by the locals). 
The downtown area was exceptionally tidy; many of the buildings were unoccupied but in wonderful condition. We learned later that the largest local industry, a fork lift manufacturer, is largely responsible for keeping the town ship-shape. It is also responsible for bringing the National Bicycle Museum to New Bremen. In 1997 Jim Dicke II of Crown Equipment purchased the entire collection of bicycles from the Schwinn museum in Chicago and moved it to this wonderfully restored old building. Since then the collection has been added to; now it runs the gamut from a perfect replica of the first known wooden bicycle to the latest light-as-a-feather titanium model. We were fortunate to be the only visitors that afternoon and so were treated to an in-depth introduction to some of the more unique configurations of the bicycle over the years.
New Bremen is also home to Lock One North, just one of the 106 lift locks on the 250 mile long Miami-Erie Canal. Measuring 15 feet wide, 90 feet long and 10 feet deep, the lock was renovated in 2007. The lock gates are made of oak and weigh 7000 pounds each. A replica of the lockkeeper’s house, which was deliberately burned down 40 years ago, sits canal-side and is open for a quick look-see. When the canal was in operation, the lockkeeper was on duty 24/7 to keep the boat traffic moving from the agricultural southern part of the state to the port cities on Lake Erie.
While we were in St. Marys we noticed that they were preparing for their big annual festival and 
learned that the library would be having…you guessed it…a book sale. So naturally we made a mad dash back there on Friday. Once again, we noticed folks moving books out by the box-load and once again we found plenty left over to choose from. Another big bag of books crammed into the car and we were off and running to Greenville to tour the Kitchenaid factory. We should have called first!! It turns out they charge $5 per head for a factory tour which was about $4 more than we were willing to pay so we just looked around their museum, wandered around their outlet store and headed back to the the town we’ve come to know as “Wapak”.
Our final foray out into the western Ohio countryside was southeast to the city of Bellefontaine (which is pronounced Bell Fountain, just like you’d expect any middle American to pronounce it). Bellefontaine lacks the charm of some of the other small cities we visited in the area but it does boast the oldest concrete street in America. The street was poured around the courthouse in 1891 and it’s still there and still driven upon. You have to really stare at it hard. Otherwise it’s just as boring as any other concrete road.
It was with some sadness that we bade farewell to western Ohio with its cluster of All-American towns and headed west into Indiana where we will be attending a trio of rallies. It is unlikely there will be another report until mid September.
