Robert Pence

Googled this: Champion farm implements were highly regarded by their owners, and are prized today among collectors & agricultural museums. Pointless idle speculation, but the thirteen-year-old geek in me gets fascinated by such things; maybe they ran a pipe across the creek from the hydraulic race to feed a turbine, hence the big pipe connection. With a head between six and nine feet a turbine can produce an impressive amount of power on a surprisingly modest flow. As electricity entered the industrial environment around the turn of the century, many industries that had direct hydraulic via turbines or wheels installed turbine-driven generators, and replaced the line shafts and belts in their factories with individual motors on machines. There's an 1847 commercial flour mill at Orland, Indiana, that was converted early in the 20th century and still operates that way. They can actually produce more electricity than they need, and they sell the surplus output to the local utility company.

By the structural style, I'd say this almost certainly was a flour mill, and it looks like it was run from the hydraulic. That big pipe is big enough to have been the tailwater for a turbine. great thread!

Only the vase in the lobby, by the windows, is really big. It weighs about fifty pounds and has been appraised at $30K - $50K. The others are normal-sized objects that would fit on a fireplace mantel or bookshelf or on a pedestal in a hallway. Perhaps the impression of size comes from the fact that I photographed them up close to show the beautiful detail in the designs. They're displayed on bookshelves in the boardroom at the arts center. The description and price cards that appear in the photos are normal 5 x 8 cards. Prices on those pieces run from $175 - $850, and I'm sure Jerry would do commissions. He can do just about anything; the creation of the designs in the turned pieces requires a broad skill set and a well-equipped shop.

Archbold is home to Sauder Furniture. In summer, Sauder Village is open. It's a highly-regarded living history attraction, very good.

Bryan is pretty sweet. It's the home of the etch-a-sketch and Spangler Candy Company. I think one of the biggest aesthetic problems in these small towns is that the main streets around the square are 'way too wide. They could improve them by enlarging the courthouse lawn and adding benches and nostalgic amenities like the old-time cast iron public drinking fountains. In towns like Bryan, people would go there on balmy summer evenings to pass the time and socialize.

< :speech: >Sad, once-beautiful old courthouse. I'll have to look it up; it looks like a JC Johnson design, and the age of it is exactly right to be one of his. He designed all his courthouses pretty much from the same set of plans, rather German in masonry style with a mansard roof and centrally-placed second-empire tower. They were very vertical, elegant-looking buildings. The other two that I know of (Decatur, IN and Winchester, IN) were both plagued by upper-story structural weakness from the very beginning. Decatur's was the most fortunate; Adams County hired Brentwood Tolan, who designed the glorious Allen County Courthouse in Fort Wayne, to fix it. He rebuilt the roof structure and removed Johnson's tower and replaced it with an Italianate one rising above the front entrance. It came out looking great, and still looks good. The one in Winchester didn't fare so well. The Randolph County Commissioners resisited fixing it until 1955, when they hired a contractor who gave it a flattop and bisected the second floor laterally to create a third floor within it. It's on a nice square. The commissioners want to raze and replace it, and the voters are fighting them. </ :speech: > Defiance is more enjoyable in summer. OH 424 (Old US 24) parallels the Maumee, and along it there are historic sites, Independence Dam, a restored piece of canal, and a grist mill. There's usually something going on.

That's the Ohio version. The night after the "surrender," overheard at a huge party in Michigan: "Man, that worked like a charm! If we had tried to give them Toledo, they'd have told us to go f*ck ourselves. Now, they think they took it away from us! We're happy -- They're happy! Everybody won <...much uproarious laughter...>" You just hit Wauseon at the wrong time. In June, there's the National Threshers' Reunion, one of the oldest events of its type, at the fairgrounds. You could've bought a corn dog or a funnel cake and gotten straw down your neck watching them thresh wheat, or sawdust in your eyes watching the sawmill run, all with steam power even older than me. :wink:

A former high-school classmate of mine (Bluffton IN, Class of '57) has some of his wood-turnings on display at the Wells County Arts & Commerce Center through April 15. I stopped by at the open house on Sunday afternoon (Mar 12), chatted with Jerry a bit, and took some photos. I think he does pretty amazing stuff. The designs go all the way through, and appear on the inside of the vessels just like on the outside.

Looks like standard-issue drunken Irishman to me! :-D

Excellent tour! In those last few, I love how the color and angle of the sunlight work with the colors of the buildings. I first learned of Tremont when I saw The Deerhunter (Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken) in Fort Wayne with my then-bf from Lakewood, who had once lived on Professor. The next time we went back to Cleveland, he gave me a tour.

:clap: I think Harden writes not so much to inform or sway opinion as to revel in the glory of his own self-perceived skill at making cynicism and sarcasm roll down like water. He has admirable talent for crafting an exquisite diatribe, but his use of it is immature, self-indulgent and self-serving, and done without regard to the effect it has on other people and on the community.

Excellent tour! You captured the chilly, rainy winter ambience so well that I had to go to the kitchen and get a fresh cup of strong, black coffee, double sugar and a shot of brandy.

Maybe the driver was having fantasies. I wonder if the original was done from life, or if the sculptor's boyfriend modeled for it.

Nice photos. I stopped by there on a Sunday afternoon a few years ago and was impressed by how clean and orderly and well-kept it appeared. I wasn't sure if I could stand that much excitement, though. :wink:

very nice set of buildings that could use more activity. I like old Ohio small tows.

Fabulous! I'm glad you got the new camera, because you sure know what to do with it! :clap:

Are you sure you don't have to register that zoom with Homeland Security? :|

My perception from near the front lines is that a lot of local opposition is based on the misinformed belief that the toll road presently turns a profit for the state. Another source of displeasure in Angola and other small towns along US 20 is the fear (probably accurate) that increasing tolls will cause even more truckers to go through their downtowns to avoid the toll road. Some of the towns, Angola among them, are already being trampled nearly to death by the parade of 18-wheelers all day and all night. Public confidence is deteriorating in Daniels' ability to act in good faith or to carry out his plans without unintended consequences. Many people feel that his changes to time zones were bungled and only made things more ridiculously confusing than they were before, and the BMV Director's mostly unilateral decisions to close numerous small-town license branches has gone over badly with older rural voters who now have to brave bigger-city traffic, long waits and surly, impersonal service when they need to transact business with the BMV.

I don't know all the particulars, but it seems to me that in some jurisdictions if a property owner fails to assert his rights against an encroachment for ten years, he forfeits his right to do so. I became aware of this when I looked into an encroachment by a neighbor who had extended a fence for her horse paddock into a woodlot that was part of our family farm. Maybe if the trail existed for ten years without protest from the sisters, there's nothing they can do about it beyond requiring fences so that trail users can't venture from the trail onto their land.

Those churches are classic New England. Nice!

Nice!

Nice work!

Toll road privatization is one of the few Mitch Daniels ideas that I support, along with making the proposed I-69 extension a toll road. Unfortunately, I think he's going to screw it up just like he did the daylight saving time issue, and we'll end up with something more messed up than before he screwed with it. You'd think he'd been taking lessons from the President -- oh, wait ... :roll:

Neat tour! The angling streets make for some interesting views.

The ferry between Ohio 800 and Sistersville WV (between New Martinsville & Marietta), is one of my favorites. It's small and unpretentious but it provides a short, enjoyable ride with good scenery. It's well-utilized, and everyone seems to know everyone else.