On Saturday morning, August 2, 2008, Bob and I departed Denise and Aaron’s house in Westerville for the final leg (or rather legs) of our road trip journey around Ohio. This was a day trip I had long planned as part of my “website-driven re-visits of places I’ve already been but have to see again because I was too stupid to take photos of myself by the landmarks when I was there the first time” tour. I was mostly interested in the Presidential stops, but Bob added a couple of additional places to visit to round out the full day. Aaron recommended an interesting restaurant at which to dine for lunch…and off we went.
Our first stop of the day wasn’t far from the Ockerman household – just a half-dozen miles down the highway at Kingwood Memorial Park. We had made the necessary inquiries beforehand to locate the graves of Earl and Beverly Crane Trees. Beverly was one of the twins who used to speak the ‘talking titles’ in a handful of Hal Roach films, including Laurel and Hardy’s Another Fine Mess. I had visited the Trees and written an article about Beverly back in 1994. She attended one of our tent meetings that year. The last time I had visited with her was in 1998 when I took Bob to see her at her home. I had spoken to her last in 2004 when I tried to get her to make an appearance at the Columbus convention. This was the first time I had visited her final resting place after she passed away in 2006.
The grave of Beverly Crane Trees
With the Trees graves. Earl “Pat” Trees had passed away in 2004
We left Columbus at about 9am and headed due north toward Marion. On the way was the small town of Delaware, where we stopped to visit a BP gas station. Actually the real reason for our visit was to see the plaque indicating the birthplace of President Rutherford B. Hayes. You can check out that location here.
From there we continued north to Marion, where we made it to the home of President Warren G. Harding at around 11am. We toured the house and museum on the premesis and then headed over to the Harding Memorial also located in town. You can see more about all of these visits here.
It only took us about an hour to see these locations in Marion and then travel south back to the town of Waldo (which we had passed through once) to eat lunch at the place that Aaron had recommended: a tiny dive simply called G & R. This was the home of the famous bologna sandwich…which was naturally what both Bob and I ordered. I passed on the pickles but left the onions intact on the thick slab of friend bologna. Pretty good stuff, I must say – as you can see in the photo at the top of the posting.
I actually got pretty excited about the bologna…
…and as you can see, Bob did as well
True to form, just across from the restaurant I grabbed a photo of another Presidential Ohio Historical Marker signifying the road that was traveled by future-President William Henry Harrison’s troops en route to the British fort in Detroit, Michigan. I also found a cannon in front of the Waldo Town Hall in which to stick my face.
Who would have thought we would have found a Presidential site across the street from the balogna stand?
…as well as a cannon
We were doing pretty well on time and had to travel back through Marion again, so we decided to see what all was in the Marion County Historical Society museum found in the center of town. The building also doubled for the Wyandot Popcorn Museum. I was pleasantly surprised both with the popcorn displays, which entailed various poppers and popcorn-related materials through the ages (I even recognized the Cracker Jack toy display that was onced housed at COSI), and the mammoth Warren G. Harding displays. A lot of local historical material also adorned the museum. You can see more of the Harding displays here.
Visiting the Popcorn Museum portion of the Historical Society museum
Before leaving Marion, I got a photo taken of me at the Marion County Courthouse…again just in case I ever decide to visit the various courthouses across Ohio, I’d have this one out of the way. We headed toward the town of Mansfield, making two stops in smaller towns along the way. The first was Caledonia, where one of Harding’s boyhood homes was located, and the second was Blooming Grove, site of Harding’s birthplace. As you can tell, this really was a very Harding day. Again – and I won’t say this any more – you can see all of these Harding places here.
Posing with another courthouse…because it was there and so were we
It was about 3:30 when we reached Mansfield. Here was located the historic Ohio State Reformatory, which had opened its prison doors back in 1896. The six-tier East Cell block is the largest structure of its kind. The prison closed down in 1990 and has since become a location used in several motion pictures, among them Tango & Cash, Air Force One, and the Oscar-nominated The Shawshank Redemption. Unfortunately, the prison was closed to visitors on Saturdays, even though there was a huge contingent of motorcylcers in the area who had arranged a special private tour. Bob and I just couldn’t pass for Hell’s Angels so we had to settle on viewing the exterior only.
The sprawling and majestic jail
With the Historical Marker
Although I wasn’t overly thrilled about it, Bob wanted to see the grave of comedian Paul Lynde, which was located in the town of Amity, Ohio – in Amity Cemetery – on the corner of Gilchrist and Amity…or in other words, in the middle of nowhere. It took about an hour and a half to get there from Mansfield and then another couple of hours to get home. We stopped for dinner at Steak ‘n Shake along the way. If Maggie the GPS device had had her way, we would have driven all the way back north to Marion and then back down south to Dayton. I had to step in and be the voice of reason.
Oh deeear. Posing with Paul Lynde’s final ‘center square’
Near the end of the day, Bob gets the shakes
Jackie met us at my house that night and we headed out to my Mom’s place. Although she and Bob (along with Ashleigh and Derek) were now vacationing in Myrtle Beach, we would spend the night there as we prepared for our next and final day of Presidential adventures.
The trip will conclude in the next posting…
Glad you enjoyed the sandwich!
Aaron
October 18th, 2008