Saturday, December 20, 2008
Ohio Drive In Theatres
In 2009, I will set out across Ohio to visit the remaining 33 Drive-In Theatres that still remain, and, starting with the New Years Eve Holiday Drive In Theatre in Hamilton, Ohio which promises a great kick-off to the New Year of extensive travel and enjoyment throughout the summer of 2009
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Roads Less Taken
Once ( and sometimes twice a month – weather and gas prices permitting) I look forward to one of my most enjoyable car event: The UFO Car Club Meeting which I ironically found out more about after a winter cruise attending the Earth Angels 2006 Cruise In at TJ’s and after my old car club in Mentor broke up in 2003 I found that I could finally combine two awesome things: A great cruise from Brunswick up here in Medina County to Columbus along with an awesome group of Ford Enthusiasts and cruising back up north cruising again in my ’99 Mercury “Bruns-tucky Hillbilly Deluxe (minus the Deluxe) Special” daily driver!
My Cruising days started after a long summer after high school when I got a summer job in Columbus with my uncle’s house reconstruction firm and drove back and forth on I-71 everyday 5 days a week in my then 1984 Ford Escort (after my 1977 Ford LTD 351W threw a rod and went to that Big Parking Lot In The Sky) and to keep awake during those long miles between Bellville and Delaware I added a switch and a Cobra 19 CB (still have it today -- five Fords vehicles later and now total 38 switches controlling all things electrical) a stereo system etc. but was still bored and dreaded driving all that way and not really enjoying the commute, until I started taking the original secondary state routes that were in place before the interstates were created and run parallel to them, and although it takes me roughly an hour and a half to make it to Columbus via I-71 (which I will take only if it there is bad weather, fog, or at night since I couldn’t find the road one time and crawled along at 2 mph going up Route 83 between Coshocton and Millersburg in heavy fog and almost got a new pair of antlers for the car twice after last November’s UFO meeting cruising up Route 95 outside of Fredericktown) and always look forward to taking the roads less traveled, which adds roughly another 2 hours to the trip, but time out on these roads rarely matters if one is having fun and enjoying the views nature has provided along the way; and if one is lucky, maybe even got a train to run alongside with before the tracks were taken away 15 years ago just outside of Mount Vernon on Route 13, but can still find one once in a blue moon on US 422 between Homerville and Lodi!
Taking the day off from my consulting work, I make my way South here in Brunswick down to the T/A Truck Stop at Lodi for lunch, and after checking out the big rigs in the parking lot start heading down south to the UFO meeting in Columbus, and which way I go ultimately depends on several factors: the time of day, season, bus stop schedule, farmer crop planting / harvesting [may run into farm machinery being moved into the fields in earlier and later months] and up north here also have Amish vehicles to consider [and although the back roads are better than the roller coaster at Cedar Point and Kings Island combined, I always hit the brakes just before the crest of each hill since one can never tell what is on the other side]. Cruising on the back county roads and designated State Routes I have always considered to be like my own personal test track, with a variety of soft and hard curves, long straightaways at highway speeds (one can “open up the throttle” a bit, add a little bluegrass “chase music” and watch out for the local “Mayberry / Barney Fife Speed Trap” etc.) and hills that one can go above and below lazy fog banks in rapid succession. The best part is that since the roads are so sparsely traveled that there is not much traffic to contend with – and if there is any, 95% of the traffic is just locals who will turn off eventually; and also the scenery, particularly along Route 3 is absolutely amazing no matter which direction or time of year it is traveled, and is my preferred way to go to Columbus!
Ever since ancient times when the Romans decided to improve roads by paving them have folks wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, and in this “Hurry Up / Interstate Society” most of the back country roads, County and State Routes have become afterthoughts of a time long past, and towns like Funk [in Wayne County where locals can direct you to Funk Bottoms – a bog flood plain area along Route 95 where tree tops are up at road level -- and Reflection Ridge where one can gaze for miles upon US 30 in the valley below], Bangs, Waldo and the four Rome Ohio’s just exist as specks on an ever shrinking High Speed Internet Driven World. Sometimes, one can drive on a road for many years and still not know the historical significant of a road that is less traveled.
One of my favorite Road Less Traveled is along 30A in Ashland and Wayne Counties in Jeromesville Ohio: The Old Lincoln Highway where since 1845 my family originates here in Ohio as part of the First Families of Ashland County and my grandparents ran the Maple Leaf Inn for travelers heading East to New York City or West to the California coast on the first transcontinental automobile route in America. With Ashland (being a Ford Blue Oval County – and still is today) my grandfather married my grandmother from neighboring Wayne County (chevy bow-tie County -- and still is today) his eleven aunts and uncles with their families would gather for the yearly family reunion picnic at the local Jeromesville Lions Club ball field garage and would park their Ford Coupes and Sedans in a row on one side of the alley and wait for my grandmother’s nine brothers and sisters chevy contingent from Wayne County and they would park on the other side, and after a meal where dinner rolls were lobbed from one end of the tables to the other end to one another, they would go out and shut down what is now 30A between Jeromesville and Wooster (The 30 / 30 – US 30 and the 30 mile round trip) for a battle between the newest Ford and chevy driven to the gathering in a “friendly” competition of who had the fastest and then come back (the Fords usually winning since it is the “Lincoln” Highway after all) and all would gather around the two vehicles for a group portrait until next year.
Having known some of them only briefly in their later years yet knowing how ornery they were, every time I drive the 15 miles of curves, hills and open throttle straightaways I always get that nostalgia of what the “friendly competition” really entailed, but digging deeper into the history of this road less traveled has also led me to find some other fascinating discoveries, one of which being that the Lincoln Highway route I have known and cruised for so long was not the original route through Ashland County that parallels today’s US 30 and was actually the second reincarnation and is the 1928 route (the “Original” Lincoln Highway route went along what is now US 250 – past the Studebaker farm who are the family who later founded the car company of the same name – which for as many years as I have cruised through the downtown roads of Ashland and having driven past the “Historical Lincoln By-way” sign markers it never once dawned on me until I looked just last month on the Internet as to why there were two routes so parallel to each other and yet had the same Lincoln Highway designation did I realize not only the personal connection (among the many stickers on my car, one of the first ones I put on was the Lincoln Highway “L” with the blue and red stripe on each of the back quarter panels as a personal tribute) but the historical national importance on one of the roads less traveled I most enjoy out of the many hundreds of thousands of miles I have traveled (seven Fords vehicles, three engines, five transmissions and umpteen tires later – and yes, after the recent UFO Ford SuperSwap I did detour up US 30 to “initiate” the car’s 4 new tires, 4 brakes, ball joints and tie rods [completely annihilated on previous road less traveled cruises – no more fallow farm fields or creek bed driving for a while] on 30A there in Jeromesville just to make sure the mechanics fixed everything properly).
And should I not be at a meeting or club event, I am definitely out tearing up the dirt, gravel, or asphalt on some of the roads less traveled, and in the summers can find me at any of the local drive-in theatres catching a double feature and cranking up the music. Thanks for letting me be a part of the UFO Car Club!
unitedfordowners.com
My Cruising days started after a long summer after high school when I got a summer job in Columbus with my uncle’s house reconstruction firm and drove back and forth on I-71 everyday 5 days a week in my then 1984 Ford Escort (after my 1977 Ford LTD 351W threw a rod and went to that Big Parking Lot In The Sky) and to keep awake during those long miles between Bellville and Delaware I added a switch and a Cobra 19 CB (still have it today -- five Fords vehicles later and now total 38 switches controlling all things electrical) a stereo system etc. but was still bored and dreaded driving all that way and not really enjoying the commute, until I started taking the original secondary state routes that were in place before the interstates were created and run parallel to them, and although it takes me roughly an hour and a half to make it to Columbus via I-71 (which I will take only if it there is bad weather, fog, or at night since I couldn’t find the road one time and crawled along at 2 mph going up Route 83 between Coshocton and Millersburg in heavy fog and almost got a new pair of antlers for the car twice after last November’s UFO meeting cruising up Route 95 outside of Fredericktown) and always look forward to taking the roads less traveled, which adds roughly another 2 hours to the trip, but time out on these roads rarely matters if one is having fun and enjoying the views nature has provided along the way; and if one is lucky, maybe even got a train to run alongside with before the tracks were taken away 15 years ago just outside of Mount Vernon on Route 13, but can still find one once in a blue moon on US 422 between Homerville and Lodi!
Taking the day off from my consulting work, I make my way South here in Brunswick down to the T/A Truck Stop at Lodi for lunch, and after checking out the big rigs in the parking lot start heading down south to the UFO meeting in Columbus, and which way I go ultimately depends on several factors: the time of day, season, bus stop schedule, farmer crop planting / harvesting [may run into farm machinery being moved into the fields in earlier and later months] and up north here also have Amish vehicles to consider [and although the back roads are better than the roller coaster at Cedar Point and Kings Island combined, I always hit the brakes just before the crest of each hill since one can never tell what is on the other side]. Cruising on the back county roads and designated State Routes I have always considered to be like my own personal test track, with a variety of soft and hard curves, long straightaways at highway speeds (one can “open up the throttle” a bit, add a little bluegrass “chase music” and watch out for the local “Mayberry / Barney Fife Speed Trap” etc.) and hills that one can go above and below lazy fog banks in rapid succession. The best part is that since the roads are so sparsely traveled that there is not much traffic to contend with – and if there is any, 95% of the traffic is just locals who will turn off eventually; and also the scenery, particularly along Route 3 is absolutely amazing no matter which direction or time of year it is traveled, and is my preferred way to go to Columbus!
Ever since ancient times when the Romans decided to improve roads by paving them have folks wanted to get somewhere in a hurry, and in this “Hurry Up / Interstate Society” most of the back country roads, County and State Routes have become afterthoughts of a time long past, and towns like Funk [in Wayne County where locals can direct you to Funk Bottoms – a bog flood plain area along Route 95 where tree tops are up at road level -- and Reflection Ridge where one can gaze for miles upon US 30 in the valley below], Bangs, Waldo and the four Rome Ohio’s just exist as specks on an ever shrinking High Speed Internet Driven World. Sometimes, one can drive on a road for many years and still not know the historical significant of a road that is less traveled.
One of my favorite Road Less Traveled is along 30A in Ashland and Wayne Counties in Jeromesville Ohio: The Old Lincoln Highway where since 1845 my family originates here in Ohio as part of the First Families of Ashland County and my grandparents ran the Maple Leaf Inn for travelers heading East to New York City or West to the California coast on the first transcontinental automobile route in America. With Ashland (being a Ford Blue Oval County – and still is today) my grandfather married my grandmother from neighboring Wayne County (chevy bow-tie County -- and still is today) his eleven aunts and uncles with their families would gather for the yearly family reunion picnic at the local Jeromesville Lions Club ball field garage and would park their Ford Coupes and Sedans in a row on one side of the alley and wait for my grandmother’s nine brothers and sisters chevy contingent from Wayne County and they would park on the other side, and after a meal where dinner rolls were lobbed from one end of the tables to the other end to one another, they would go out and shut down what is now 30A between Jeromesville and Wooster (The 30 / 30 – US 30 and the 30 mile round trip) for a battle between the newest Ford and chevy driven to the gathering in a “friendly” competition of who had the fastest and then come back (the Fords usually winning since it is the “Lincoln” Highway after all) and all would gather around the two vehicles for a group portrait until next year.
Having known some of them only briefly in their later years yet knowing how ornery they were, every time I drive the 15 miles of curves, hills and open throttle straightaways I always get that nostalgia of what the “friendly competition” really entailed, but digging deeper into the history of this road less traveled has also led me to find some other fascinating discoveries, one of which being that the Lincoln Highway route I have known and cruised for so long was not the original route through Ashland County that parallels today’s US 30 and was actually the second reincarnation and is the 1928 route (the “Original” Lincoln Highway route went along what is now US 250 – past the Studebaker farm who are the family who later founded the car company of the same name – which for as many years as I have cruised through the downtown roads of Ashland and having driven past the “Historical Lincoln By-way” sign markers it never once dawned on me until I looked just last month on the Internet as to why there were two routes so parallel to each other and yet had the same Lincoln Highway designation did I realize not only the personal connection (among the many stickers on my car, one of the first ones I put on was the Lincoln Highway “L” with the blue and red stripe on each of the back quarter panels as a personal tribute) but the historical national importance on one of the roads less traveled I most enjoy out of the many hundreds of thousands of miles I have traveled (seven Fords vehicles, three engines, five transmissions and umpteen tires later – and yes, after the recent UFO Ford SuperSwap I did detour up US 30 to “initiate” the car’s 4 new tires, 4 brakes, ball joints and tie rods [completely annihilated on previous road less traveled cruises – no more fallow farm fields or creek bed driving for a while] on 30A there in Jeromesville just to make sure the mechanics fixed everything properly).
And should I not be at a meeting or club event, I am definitely out tearing up the dirt, gravel, or asphalt on some of the roads less traveled, and in the summers can find me at any of the local drive-in theatres catching a double feature and cranking up the music. Thanks for letting me be a part of the UFO Car Club!
unitedfordowners.com
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)