The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park

Posted on July 11, 2016 by admin

“Where are we going?”

“Lincoln’s birthplace,” I told Ann on the morning of June 24 as we left Elizabethtown, Ky. “It’s about 10 miles off the Interstate. Bet his parents were glad to have a place near the highway.”

Ha, ha, Dad, was the reaction.

The Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park is in fact about 10 miles east of I-65, a roadway built much later than the Lincolns’ cabin or even the monumental building erected on the site 100 years later, with its groundbreaking on February 12, 1909. TR was there that day to wield the ceremonial trowel, which is now on exhibit at the visitors center.

So is a statue of the Lincoln family. It includes the only depiction that I’ve seen of toddler Abraham Lincoln, with his parents and older sister Sarah. John Russell Pope, who also lived long enough to do the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC, and a good many other things, designed the birthplace memorial.
“Built on the knoll above the sinking spring where many believe the Lincoln cabin originally stood, the Memorial Building at Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park was constructed between 1909 and 1911 in an effort by the Lincoln Farm Association to commemorate the life and accomplishments of the sixteenth President of the United States and to protect his ‘birth cabin,’ ” notes the NPS.

“Pope’s design of the building included many symbolisms related to Abraham Lincoln, including fifty-six steps leading up to the building to represent the fifty-six years of Lincoln’s life. Sixteen windows in the building and sixteen rosettes on the interior ceiling are there to remind visitors that Lincoln was the sixteenth president.”

Inside is the fake Lincoln cabin.
Haven’t got an historic relic? Make one that looks right, especially during the late 19th century, when touring exhibits were a way to make money. (Read about promoter Alfred Dennett and the fake cabin here.) According to the NPS, the structure now characterized as a cabin that “honors” the original. Sure, why not – and besides, the faking of the cabin was so long ago (1890s) that it too is of historic interest.

Up the road (US 31E) from the monument a bit is Lincoln Boyhood Home, which is only a few structures, all re-creations, but none made of marble or granite. From there, of course, the Lincolns moved to Mississippi and Abraham grew up to be a leader of the Confederacy… no, that was Jefferson Davis, also a Kentucky boy born in the early 1800s. Geography is destiny? I’m not smart enough to know.

Hodgenville, Ky., which is between the birthplace and boyhood home, does what it can to make passersby stop for a little Lincoln at the local “museum,” which mostly seemed like a gift shop. Also, the town traffic circle has a statue of an adult Lincoln and a boy Lincoln.

One more thing I saw on US 31E, south of the birthplace: a ghost sign on the side of a barn that said SEE ROCK CITY. If I’d been able to pull off to the side of the road at that moment, I would have, to take a picture (and baffle Ann). It was not to be. But it was there.

GTT 2016

Posted on July 10, 2016 by admin

On June 23, Ann and I left the Chicago area and headed south, returning earlier today. I’m calling the trip GTT 2016, as in Gone to Texas, but also Gone to Tennessee, another destination. Our route took us south to through Indiana and Kentucky and then to Nasvhille; west through West Tennessee and Arkansas and on to Dallas; and south again to Austin and San Antonio. The return was via Dallas and through Oklahoma and Missouri. All together, from backing out of my driveway to coming back to it, I put exactly 3,005 miles on my car, mostly on Interstates and US routes, but also a fair amount on the streets of Nashville, Austin and San Antonio.

None of the routes or places were new to me, except maybe Texarkana, where I’d never stopped before, and it’s been a long time since I’d traveled US 281 north of Johnson City, Texas, or on US 67 on to Dallas. But no matter how familiar the place or the route, you can always find new things.

In central Kentucky, near Elizabethtown, we visited Abraham Lincoln Birthplace National Historical Park, which features a granite and marble monumental building with a not-really-Lincoln’s log cabin inside. Near Mammoth Cave NP, we walked through Diamond Caverns, an unrelated show cave.

By the time we got to Nashville, the heat was on — in the 90s at least every day, which made stomping around outside less pleasant, especially for Ann, but I did manage to take her to the Nashville Parthenon, which she didn’t remember seeing in 2008. The more important thing we did in Nashville was spend time with old friends Stephanie and Wendall, and pay a visit to Mike Johnson’s widow, Betra.

In Memphis, we saw the Peabody Hotel ducks and the National Civil Rights Museum. In Texarkana, we drove down State Line Road and stopped at the only post office in the nation in two states. In Little Rock, I visited Mt. Holly Cemetery in the morning just before the heat of the day and then the Clinton Library (in full, the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park) and, just before we left town, the Arkansas State Capitol.

Dallas was mostly given over to visiting my brother Jay and working. Jay joined us for our few days in Austin, including the Fourth of July, and for a few more days in San Antonio. In Austin on July 2, Ann went to RTX 2016 at the Austin Convention Center, a sizable event held by the media company called Rooster Teeth; I was her chaperon. We visited my old friend Tom Jones the next day, and on Independence Day, saw both the Baylor Street Art Wall and municipal fireworks over Lady Bird Lake. San Antonio was mostly about visiting my mother and brother Jim, and (for me) holing up in a cool place with Wifi and doing more work.

Naturally, the trip involved long stretches of driving. I want to do that while I still want to do that. Because of my obstinance in not getting Sirius or the like, terrestrial radio helps fill the yawning spaces between destinations. The trip was bookended by two news events whose coverage was limitless, even when there was no new information beyond speculation: Brexit near the beginning, and the murder of Dallas policemen toward the end. I also listened to more religious radio more than usual, mostly only minutes at a time, except for the erudite Alistair Begg, whom I will listen to until his show’s over or the signal fades.

The selection of music was mostly what you’d expect, drawn from the rigid genres created by the radio business, though there were a few oddities, such as the Mesquite Independent School District radio station (KEOM) in metro Dallas that played teacher and student shows, besides a selection of completely conventional ’70s music. On I-40 between Nashville and Memphis — the Music Highway, according to official signs along the way — I picked up an oldies station whose playlist was a little older and odder than usual. I heard it play “Waterloo” (Stonewall Jackson), “Ahab the Arab,” “and “Running Bear and Little White Dove,” the last two I haven’t heard in years.

We stayed in a nondescript chain motel in Elizabethtown; in Stephanie and Wendall’s fine guest rooms in Nashville; in another, less nondescript motel in Little Rock; with Jay in Dallas; in the Austin Motel on South Congress in Austin, an updated version of a tourist court that’s been there since 1938; and in an updated former company hotel (vintage 1914) in San Antonio, the Havana Hotel, since there were too many of us to be comfortable at my mother’s house.

During the return home, we stayed at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Mo., last night, because of course we did.

It’s the same as it was in 2009 and two years ago. Except (maybe) a couple of signs like this were added to the grounds.

Motel co-owner Ramona Lehman was selling Gasconade River Bridge postcards, sales of which help support the restoration of the bridge, a structure about 15 miles east of Munger Moss on the former US 66. I bought one. I didn’t stop to look at the bridge — this time — but it’s visible from I-44 if you know when to look, and I did.

St. Mary of the Angels

Posted on June 21, 2016 by admin

St. Mary of the Angels is a church in the Bucktown neighborhood of Chicago, not to be confused with Our Lady of the Angels, the former Catholic school in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and site of a disastrous fire in late 1958. (I can recommend To Sleep With the Angels (1996) by David Cowen and John Kuenster, an excellent book about that fire that I read when I worked at Fire Chief magazine.)

Completed in 1920, St. Mary of the Angels was originally one of the numerous churches in Chicago with mostly Polish parishioners. “The structure bears a remarkable resemblance to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome,” asserts the church’s web site. The AIA Guide is a little more circumspect: “The tile and terra-cotta dome recalls the silhouette of St. Peter’s in Rome.”

In any case, the dome’s impressive. You can see it at some distance from the 606 trail.
Up close, “angels tread on the parapets,” says AIA. ‘Deed they do.
The view from a little further away. The original architects were church specialists Worthmann & Steinbach, with Holabird & Root rehabilitating the structure in the 1990s.

I figured I’d be able to see the interior. It was a Saturday, after all. In June. More than one wedding was probably planned for the church that day. I was right. When I entered, the place was set up for a wedding, and guests were trickling in, but the ceremony hadn’t started yet. No one paid any attention to me as I took in the lavish space that can accommodate 2,000 worshipers.

For example, behind the high altar is a depiction of St. Francis at “the little chapel of Santa Maria degli Angeli, where he saw Christ and the Virgin Mary enveloped in light and sitting on thrones and surrounded by numerous angels,” as the church puts it.

The church’s continued existence was a near thing. “With the construction of the Kennedy Expressway in 1960, a sizable number of families and students left the parish, and, by 1988, the church building was closed and slated for demolition due to deteriorating conditions,” the church explains. “At the request of Cardinal Bernardin, then Archbishop of Chicago, the priests of the Prelature of Opus Dei assumed responsibility for the parish in 1991.

“The church restoration started in 1991 with major repairs of the dome, the roofs and the stained-glass windows. Repairs continued in 1997 with the church interior. In 1999, the 100th anniversary of the parish, the church’s interior decoration was fully restored; the installation of new lighting, new doors and a new sound system was completed.”

Just another extraordinary place, nearly destroyed. And not even during the tear-down happy ’50s and ’60s, but in the 1980s. The church is unusual in that Opus Dei runs it. I’m no authority, but overseeing parish churches doesn’t seem to be in their usual line of work. Still, I’m glad they were able to save it.

The 606 in ’16

Posted on June 20, 2016 by admin

On Saturday we went to the city for a few hours. Yuriko went to a cake-making class offered by a woman she knows who lives near Humboldt Park. I was the driver, since it’s complicated to get there by train and bus, and driving in the city unnerves her.

As it should, with cars everywhere, parked and in motion, operated by sometimes careless or aggressive drivers and often closer than you think; delivery trucks blocking the way; road construction crews doing likewise — though the rough surfaces and potholes never seem to go away; buses acting as if they own the road; bicyclists passing between you and parked cars suddenly and with inches to spare; random pedestrians all over the place, a few with no sense; people opening their car doors in front of you without warning, emerging onto the street (some with children in tow); large intersections without the benefit of turning signals; and stretches of street being resurfaced, but not completed just yet, which on a dry June day raises clouds of dust through which you must pass.

Then there’s the matter of parallel parking. Yuriko doesn’t care for it. A lot of people would say the same. I never knew how to do it until I moved to Chicago in the late ’80s. Then I learned it well. It’s an essential skill for owning a car in the city. I also learned what to expect driving in a place like Chicago. Or New York or Boston or Washington DC or Atlanta or Miami or Dallas or Los Angeles or Seattle — all harrowing in their own sweet ways.

I’ll say one good thing about driving in Chicago, though: it’s easy to know roughly where you are all the time. The streets mostly form a grid, with major streets at regular intervals, and just about every street, even the most minor, marked with an easy-to-see, well-placed and legible street sign. Not every city has such luxuries, and I mean you, Boston.

With Yuriko at her cake class, I had a couple of hours to kick around in the late morning. The Puerto Rican Festival in Humboldt Park, Fiestas Puertorriqueñas, was slated to start at noon, as evidenced by people carrying the commonwealth’s well designed flag into the park and the flag being flown by a lot of passing cars. Here’s a vendor selling some.Since the event wasn’t actually under way, I went elsewhere. I visited St. Mary of the Angels church about 20 blocks to the east, taking a North Avenue bus, and then walking back, partly on the 606, the same linear park we visited on its opening day a little more than a year ago.

This time I saw a bit more of the trail’s eastern end, though not quite to the east terminus. At around 11 am in mid-June, the sun is high and the trail very warm. Temps were in the upper 80s F. That didn’t keep people away.
I was glad to see that the landscaping on the edges is now more lush than a year ago. Also, development of the land nearby continues apace.I also noticed that the trail is short on shade. Most of the year, that wouldn’t matter, but in summer it’s important. Even the trailside parks weren’t particularly shady. At Park 567, where the trail crosses over Milwaukee Ave., there were only three or four spots under trees offering any significant shade. I was lucky enough to be able to sit by myself in one sizable pool of shade, though I would have shared the space if anyone had asked.

I got a look at the trail’s first art installation, the serpentine “Brick House,” by a sculptor named Chakaia Booker.I’ll consider the title whimsical, since no bricks are involved, or any obvious connection to the song celebrating feminine pulchritude. It’s made of stainless steel and recycled tire rubber. Put in last fall, the piece attracts children, who instantly want to climb it.I would have spent more time on the trail, but I’d forgotten a hat (though not water). The shade, provided by mature trees, is better on many of Chicago’s neighborhood streets, so after about a half mile, I walked the rest of the way on small streets, as well as along North Ave., whose buildings also provided shade at that time of the day, at least on the south side of the street. I’m not the devil-may-care teen I used to be, who sometimes walked miles in clear 90-plus degree weather in San Antonio or Austin.

Otaue Shinji, 1992

Posted on June 19, 2016 by admin

On June 14, 1992, I went to Sumiyoshi Taisha (Grand Shrine), not too far from where I lived in Osaka, to see the Otaue Shinji, a rice planting festival held at that time every year.

“Although events associated with this rice planting can be found all over our country, the festival at the Sumiyoshi Taisha Shrine is unique for its reproduction of the rituals in faithful observance of ancient procedures in such a grand ceremonial style,” the Japan National Tourist Organization notes.

I understand oxen till the rice field first, but I missed that part. I did see the ceremonial rice planting, done by women in white robes in the field.
If I remember right, those are priests and musicians on the platform next to the rice field, making the appropriate noises.

The event also involved a procession through the shrine complex. With drums.
Sometimes at such events, you find yourself behind rows of people, mostly with a view of the back of their heads.
Usually the headgear’s not as interesting as it was that day at the Otaue Shinji.

Spring Valley, June ’16

Posted on June 13, 2016 by admin

We went to Spring Valley on the afternoon of June 10 to look for the peonies, but we were a little late. Not sure why they’d bloom earlier this year than two years ago around June 10. This year’s been rainy too. Natural variation in timing, I guess. But some were still in flower.

Even so, Spring Valley’s usually a good walk, even in very warm temps. Just take some water and avail yourself of shade when you can.

There weren’t as many lily pads on the major pond as in previous years, either. Mostly pond scum. Which is probably an underappreciated and misunderstood part of the eco-system and health of the pond, etc, etc. But if you look closely at the surface of the water…
You’ll notice a frog, partly submerged, belly up.
Waiting for hapless insects to come to close, probably. Unfortunately, says Susan Paskewitz of the University of Wisconsin, “adult frogs eat a variety of things but there is no evidence that mosquitoes are an important part of the adult diet of any species.”

Also, according to Professor Paskewitz: bats are overrated as agents of mosquito control. Too bad.

Western Ohio &c

Posted on June 8, 2016 by admin

We arrived in downtown Dayton late on a Friday afternoon, May 27, and from the look of things, Dayton isn’t an 18-hour city just yet. Municipal planners probably aspire to that: there’s been some nice infrastructure work at Riverscape Metro Park and Five Rivers Metro Park downtown, including walkways, an elegant garden, a pavilion and other public spaces that look fairly new. As for the private sector, I also spotted a few new apartment projects downtown.

But as a tertiary market, Dayton’s downtown still seems to close up at 5 pm. That’s almost old fashioned now, as the way things were in most smaller downtowns in the last third of the 20th century. Only a handful of people were out and about in the late afternoon/early evening of a warm late spring/early summer day in downtown Dayton, some at the riverfront, others outside the Schuster Center, an event venue.

The main river along downtown is the Great Miami River, which eventually flows into the Ohio. A tributary that meets the Great Miami near downtown Dayton is the Mad River. I like that name. Later, I drove by Mad River Junior High. Now that’s a name for your school.

Less amusing to learn about was the Great Dayton Flood of 1913 (part of the Great Flood of 1913), which is memorialized along the Great Miami. The Dayton flood spurred the creation of the Miami Conservancy District, established in Ohio by the Vonderheide Conservancy Act of 1914, which authorized levees and dams and such to prevent another monster flood. It was a great age of civil engineering, after all. So far, it seems to have worked.

Of course, no matter how obvious the public good, someone’s going to be against it.

Also downtown: Fifth Third Field, where the Dayton Dragons minor league team plays. In the plaza near field are large concrete baseballs. On these Ann proved herself to be more limber than the rest of us.

At the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, I happened across Lookout Point, the highest elevation in Dayton. This is the view from there.
In 2010, the cemetery completed a tower and columbarium on the hill, along with landscaping all around. It’s a lovely spot.

The cemetery also put in a time capsule at Lookout Point, to be opened in 2141, the year of the cemetery’s tricentennial. Guess 2041 wasn’t far enough in the future.

One famed burial I didn’t see at Woodland: copperhead Clement Vallandigham. In reading a bit about him, I found out about his death in 1871, when he was working as a defense attorney after unsuccessful attempts to return to office.

“Vallandigham’s political career ended with his untimely death on June 17, 1871,” notes Ohio History Central. “While preparing the defense of an accused murderer, Vallandigham enacted his view of what occurred at the crime scene. Thinking that a pistol that he was using as a prop was unloaded, Vallandigham pointed it at himself and pulled the trigger. The gun discharged, and Vallandigham was mortally wounded.”

At least his client was acquitted. That’s further even than Perry Mason would go to get a not guilty verdict.

On the way home, we stopped in Wapakoneta, Ohio, a town south of Lima and hometown of moonwalker Neil Armstrong. Just off I-75 is the Armstrong Air and Space Museum. I’ve read the design is supposed to evoke a future Moon base. Maybe the sort of Moon base Chesley Bonestell would put in the background of a lunar landscape.

The museum’s probably interesting enough, with Armstrong artifacts and other items related to space exploration. The Gemini VIII capsule is there, in which Armstrong and Scott almost bought the farm. But Ann wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about the place, and we wanted to press on to Ft. Wayne for lunch, so ultimately the admission fee we didn’t spend went toward that lunch. I did buy some postcards at the museum.

The Armstrong Air and Space Museum’s web site stresses: “The museum is owned by the State of Ohio, is part of the Ohio History Connection’s statewide system of historic sites and museums, and is operated by the local Armstrong Air and Space Museum Association. Neil Armstrong was never involved in the management of the museum nor benefited from it in any way.”

Before leaving Wapakoneta, I wanted to find Armstrong’s boyhood home. It wasn’t hard; the town is small. The house is privately owned by non-Armstrongs, so the thing not to do is venture too close. No doubt occasional oafs do just that, though probably fewer as time passes and fewer oafs remember his achievements.

Another good-looking small town in western Ohio is Troy. We stopped there to obtain doughnuts at the local Tim Hortons. That part of Ohio is within the Tim Hortons realm; our part of Illinois is not. Troy has a handsome main street and a fine courthouse.

Finally, with this trip, I’m glad to report that I’ve been to Neptune. Neptune, Ohio, that is, an insubstantial burg in Mercer County along US 33. Far from the ocean, and far from the planet of that name, though no further (roughly) than anywhere else on Earth.

Curiosity made me ~~waste~~ spend a little time at the USGC Geographic Names Information System, and I discovered that there are five populated U.S. places called “Neptune,” not counting variants like Neptune Beach, Fla. Besides Ohio, they are in Iowa, Tennessee, West Virginia and Wisconsin. Someday maybe I’ll look up the other planets.

The Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park

Posted on June 7, 2016 by admin

In 2003, close to the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Wrights’ first flight at Kitty Hawk, NC, Patrick Jonsson noted in the Christian Science Monitor that “the choice of location unwittingly sparked a quarrel over the genesis of manned flight: Was this barrier island near the town of Kitty Hawk merely a stepping-off point for an idea hatched in Ohio — or part of the very inspiration of flight?

“For its part, North Carolina boldly stated its claim a few years ago with license plates that boasted ‘First in Flight.’ It was followed by Ohio’s ‘Birthplace of Aviation’ claim a few years later. And in the late 1990s, North Carolina again moved first to put the flyer on its state quarter, taking a lot of oomph out of Ohio’s ‘Pioneers of Flight’ motto.

“But in the 100th year of flight both states have put rivalry aside, realizing the skies could not have been cleaved without the benefits of both locales.

” ‘In Dayton, they proved that powered flight was practical; at Kitty Hawk, they proved that it was possible,’ says Bob Petersen, a park ranger at the Dayton Aviation Heritage National Historical Park.”

The national historical park is scattered around greater Dayton, including a Wright Brothers-Paul Dunbar museum (pictured below) along with one of the brothers’ bicycle shops; the Huffman Prairie Flying Field; an aviation exhibit at a open air museum in Dayton; Paul Laurence Dunbar’s house; and Orville’s mansion after aviation made him wealthy. We only had time and energy for the Wright-Dunbar museum and the Wright bicycle shop, which are on Williams St. west of downtown Dayton.
The focus of the museum, at least when it comes to the Wrights, is less about them as aviators, and more about their pre-Flyer lives growing up in Dayton, including other members of their family that aren’t well known, such as sister Katharine and brother Lorin.

Paul Laurence Dunbar’s exhibits were interesting mainly because I didn’t know much about him. Seems like he had a fine ear for verse, and literary success in spite of the misery of being a black man in the 1890s. He’s also called an influence on Langston Hughes. I’m no expert, but after reading some of Dunbar’s poems, I can see the point.

This is the debt I pay
Just for one riotous day,
Years of regret and grief,
Sorrow without relief.

Pay it I will to the end
Until the grave, my friend,
Gives me a true release
Gives me the clasp of peace.

Slight was the thing I bought,
Small was the debt I thought,
Poor was the loan at best
God! but the interest!

— “The Debt,” by Paul Laurence Dunbar

The museum also features exhibits about the Wright printing business and then their bicycle shops. Lest we forget, the nation was in the grip of a bicycle craze in the 1890s, and for good reason: in a world of horse-drawn vehicles, it was a great new way to get around.

The re-created bicycle shop is next to the Wright-Dunbar museum, in the original building, which just barely escaped demolition.
It’s the only Wright bicycle shop location left in Dayton. Another one — they operated more than one over their career in bicycles — is now at Greenfield Village in Michigan, and the sites of one or two more have been demolished in the last 100-plus years.

Inside are artifacts such as bicycles and a lot of bicycle parts, photos, and more. Remarkable how familiar an early safety bicycle looks. Basic bike design hasn’t changed that much.

The Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum, Dayton

Posted on June 6, 2016 by admin

In the Spring/Summer 2014 edition of American Forests magazine, Tate Williams wrote, “In the early 19th century, as cities like Boston grew, inner-city burials were no longer cutting it. Land prices were rising and the small church burial grounds were overcrowding. Storms would flood the grounds with gruesome results. Outbreaks of diseases like cholera and typhoid fever had communities fearing urban burials.

“In response, the Massachusetts Horticultural Society presented a vision that would solve the city planning problem, while carving out a piece of land they would turn into a horticultural wonder to rival the gardens popular in Europe at the time. It was dubbed a ‘garden of graves’ or a serene ‘city of the dead.’ Mount Auburn Cemetery grew into a feat of landscape design, sculpture and meticulously manicured Victorian-style gardens.

“The rural cemetery movement spread as other cities established their own garden cemeteries, from Green-Wood in Brooklyn to Laurel Hill in Philadelphia. They were extremely popular among locals and visitors alike, becoming regular gathering places for strolling and picnicking. ‘In a country sorely lacking in public green spaces, these cemeteries provided these graceful, elegant places,’ says Keith Eggener, architectural historian and author of the book Cemeteries. ‘They were all around recreational and artistic centers for people. They became seen as major urban amenities.’ ”

So they still should be, but mine is a minority opinion. In 1841 — ten years after the founding of Mount Auburn — the growing manufacturing town of Dayton founded its own garden of graves, which in our time is called the Woodland Cemetery and Arboretum. Cemetery because about 107,000 souls repose there; arboretum because about 3,000 trees grow on its 200 acres.

It’s a hilly, gorgeous place. I spent about an hour and a half there on the morning of May 29.

Woodland Cemetery, Dayton

Some cemeteries make it a chore to find the noteworthy burials, such as way that St. Mary’s Cemetery in Appleton, Wis., doesn’t seem all that eager for you to find Joe McCarthy. Woodland helpfully provides signs to famed permanent residents, and it wasn’t five minutes before I spotted the one that pointed to the Wright family plot — including Wilbur and Orville, their sister Katharine, the two children who died as infants (Otis and Ida), and their parents (Milton and Susan).

I spared a penny each for the Wrights.

Woodland Cemetery, Dayton - Wirght Brothers grave Wonder who left the shells. Not far away is the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, who also happened to know the Wrights.

Near the entrance is a sign that says that Dayton native Erma Bombeck’s grave is nearby. So I went looking for it. My mother read some of her books, presumably because they amused her. I remember seeing them around the house. I never had much interest in her writing until I read an article of hers in the early 1990s, in Outside magazine (I think), of all places. It was remarkably good article about her and her husband’s visit to Papua New Guinea. One of her main points: if you’ve got the time and means, but don’t ever go anywhere interesting, you’re a dullard.

I couldn’t find anything with her name on it in that section. I did notice a large orange-ish boulder in the section, and it had a few withered flowers nearby, but no plaque or carving that I could see. Was that her monument?

Yes. I read later at Find-a-Grave: “A 29,000-pound rock has become a monument for her grave. It was brought by flat-bed truck from her home in Arizona. It reflects the empathy she had for the Southwest desert and to her years of residency.” That Erma. What a card, even in death.

In keeping with my idea that it’s important to note the obscure as well as the famed, here’s one near Erma Bombeck’s boulder. An interesting one, at least in a place like western Ohio.
It’s a bilingual stone: the other side is in English, informing me that Peter and Anastacia Piatnicia, along with (I assume) their daughter Ludmila de Ybarra, repose there.

The stone also says “Cossack” in Roman letters, as opposed to the more complicated designation in Cyrillic. Cossacks in Ohio. People get around.

Things That Go Boom (Or, Nookular Combat Toe-to-Toe With the Rooskies)

Posted on June 2, 2016 by admin

As previously mentioned, models of Little Boy and Fat Man were nestled under one of the wings of the B-29 Bockscar at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force near Dayton.

I guess Little Boy was there for the sake of comparison. I’ve known about the difference for the a long time. When I was young, maybe even in junior high, I picked up a paperback copy of The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936-1945 (1970), by John Toland, and read the chapter about Hiroshima and Nagasaki with considerable interest.

In the museum’s post-WWII galleries, I started noticing the nuclear weapons casings. Some of them were hard to miss, such as this Mark 41, with a helpful illustration behind it.

Designed to be carried by B-47s, B-52s, or B-70s, it was in the megaton range. Or about five times as powerful as Fat Man.

Most of the bomb casings were tucked away under the wings of some of the aircraft that carried them. Such as this sizable Mark 17.

A Mark 6 on the right (not sure what the other one is).

A Mark 7.

And some Mark 28s, also known as B28s.
A cul-de-sac off of the Cold War gallery, a silo-like structure 140 feet high, houses the museum’s missile collection. It’s a dandy collection, too, with Jupiter, Minuteman, Thor, Atlas, Titan and Peacekeeper missiles.
Also included are more warhead casings, such as the W53, a version of B53 that the Titan II ICBM could carry. At nine megatons, it was a monster among monsters, now gone.
Remember MIRV? All the rage in arms control discussions in the 1970s and ’80s.
Ten warheads, count ’em, designed to be loaded on Peacekeeper missiles, all with different targets.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Been There