Posted January 9, 200718 yr From A Personal Portrait of the 17th State by Dick Perry and Bruce Goldflies, 1969. I found this book by accident; what a hoot! There are some great images as well that I may post if popular opinion requires. My fingers wore out before doing all the cities I intended to, so we will operate on a "Do mine, do mine," process and I'll post those requested. CINCINNATI: -Cincinnati is a bunch of things: the aforementioned hills and valleys, old neighborhoods, fresh new suburbia, vast industrial districts, expressways, and glittering new business sections that are replacing more pooped commercial swaths. -Cincinnati has ants in its pants: it is practically tearing down its downtown section apart and starting fresh. Glitter is the key. New building rear high in the sky, changing the skyline forever; and old buildings, like dirty old men, have been bulldozed into eternity. Overhead walkways allow you to travel entire city blocks without once trafficking with street-level traffic. -Cincinnati is old, new, and just about everything else that is good, bad, and bewildering. -Cincinnati is unlike any city. It hasn’t the hurry of New York, the anger of Chicago, or the buttoned-down sophistication that San Francisco affects. We suggest that Cincinnati has its innocence. -Cincinnati’s innocence has a voice. Its voice is Kentucky drawls, Hoosier twangs, here and there German guttural, Negro laughter, and the newborn’s garbled cry. COLUMBUS: -Columbus as a city is reasonably flatland community filled to brimming with sophisticates, coeds, hayseeds, smart cookies, people with civil service minds, and politicians testing to see which way the wind is blowing. -Columbus is also wide and airy streets which, if they were not lined with middle-class buildings, would have the beauty of boulevards. -Around the center city, though, neighborhoods deteriorate—fast. Grim and lonely and tumble down. No one would call that stretch between the capitol building and the university a street of anything more than dreams. -Also [Columbus] locals get carried away with history and rhetoric like to say Columbus as a capital city is unique because it did not become Ohio’s capital, Ohio’s capital became Columbus. SANDUSKY: -To most people, Sandusky with its 120 industrial establishments and its preoccupation with miniature lighthouses in front of buildings is not a city at all. -Even if there were no Cedar Point-a sad thought, really--Sandusky, being more than cotton candy, would have meaning and importance. NORWALK: -When we stroll the streets of Norwalk--if we pick the right streets--in for a pleasant surprise. -Norwalk is a combonation of graciousness from the past and the aggressiveness of the world today. HAMILTON: -As a place to live, Hamilton is confusing. It has ticky tacky suburbia, shabby areas, and several streets that would take your breath away: they are charming. -Hamilton, insofar as culture goes, is a Thurber cartoon character described a wine: "It’s naïve domestic burgundy without any breeding, but I think you’ll be amused by its presumption.” -Culture in Hamilton is the Civic Theater, its productions on the play-it-safe side. Also, there is a thing called the Rotary Club Revels, produced annually, and Hamilton says it is equal to the professional of a Broadway musical or—if you have seen a Broadway musical—equal to a bunch of nice guys getting together and wearing lampshades. -Hamilton has a symphony orchestra, the Palette Club which plays around with painting and sculpting, and there’s the Hamilton Choral Society which sings a lot. Once a year, all these groups get together to put on a free-of-charge fine arts festival, well worth the price of admission. ELYRIA: -So today in Elyria are four municipal parking lots and many private one, adding up to 4000 parking spaces, or --if women are driving--2374 parking spaces. -If apartments excite you, Elria has them, too. Point [is] Elyria is no junk heap. -Downtown, though, is a rather sorry and gray shopwarm area that has beautiful shops but needs, as an area, beautification. MIDDLETOWN: -Since Hamilton is prettying itself up, Middletown is a horse of a different color, the color being gray. -Today [Middletown] covers nearly twenty square miles, usually with smoke, and most of its land is occupied with industry, many bland homes, and a few streets that contain beautiful ones. -When the orchestra plays, around a dozen members of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra sit in to help out. Which sums up Middletown. FAIRFIELD: -But to be realistic, compared with other Ohio cities, towns, or villages it did not start out from a central business district or settler’s cabin. It is an after-the-fact sort of community. After drawing whatever substenance it could from Hamilton and Cincinnati, it started a town of its own. -Fairfield is, insofar as Hamilton and Cincinnati go, a city that might be called Lucky Pierre. -Fairfield looks as if it is a Hamilton subdivision. OHIO: -There's an awful lot of it out there.
January 9, 200718 yr If you get a chance, could you do (if these towns are even in the book LOL): DEFINITELY Norwalk or Sandusky MAYBE Willard, Bellevue, Huron, or Vermilion??? *I have a feeling that only Sandusky will be in that book :-D
January 9, 200718 yr WILLARD: Willard, which calls itself the City of Blossoms, blossoms with car dealers on the west side of town. The main highway actually bypasses the place, but the bypass itself is a litter of places that will sell you anything from a tractor to a room for the night. Willard in sections is split-level bland. BELLEVUE: [bellevue] has forty-seven industrial establishments which turn out everything from paper balers to boat hoists and from steel safes to showcases--and that should give you an idea of the town itself. HURON: Huron, home of yesteryear's steamboat builders, and today a gathering of substancial houses that are genteel and beautiful. Also, here and there, trailer parks. VERMILLION: Vermillion calls itself the city of a million opportunities, a few of which it has missed.
January 9, 200718 yr Those are absolutely hilarious! I especiallly like the 3rd about Hamilton and the 2nd about Middletown
January 9, 200718 yr How specific for cities do they get? Would you find Wilmington in there? It probably didn't have that much of an identity back in 1969...
January 9, 200718 yr WILMINGTON: -Says the Wilmington Chamber of Commercein a way that charms you, "If you're looking for a city of skyscrapers and a sprawling industrial complex, its streets are teeming with shoulder-to-skoulder humanity and bumper-to-bumper traffic, Wilmington is not for you." Well said, fellows. -Wilmington seems to have more body shops than it has bodies in need of handling.
January 9, 200718 yr Around the center city, though, neighborhoods deteriorate—fast. Grim and lonely and tumble down. No one would call that stretch between the capitol building and the university a street of anything more than dreams. Dreams do come true... "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 9, 200718 yr Cleveland? Dayton? Akron? ATHENS?!?!? "You don't just walk into a bar and mix it up by calling a girl fat" - buildingcincinnati speaking about new forumers
January 10, 200718 yr STRYKER?!!!! sigh.... East liverpool? No Stryker, sorry. EAST LIVERPOOL: -Although the town seems mostly in the river valley itself, many frame houses--discolored gray--hang to the side steep hill where roads, like terraces, line the hill in layers. -East Liverpool goes to pot. (In case you don't get it, think of what E. Liverpool is known for, pottery)
January 10, 200718 yr Cleveland? I'd also be interested in what they have to say about the budding integration strategies taking place in Shaker Heights (though I shudder in advance).
January 10, 200718 yr No Stryker, sorry. EAST LIVERPOOL: -Although the town seems mostly in the river valley itself, many frame houses--discolored gray--hang to the side steep hill where roads, like terraces, line the hill in layers. -East Liverpool goes to pot. (In case you don't get it, think of what E. Liverpool is known for, pottery) and oddly enough their mascot is the East Liverpool Potters.
January 10, 200718 yr Glitter is the key. New building rear high in the sky, changing the skyline forever; and old buildings, like dirty old men, have been bulldozed into eternity. Almost poetic :drunk:...
January 11, 200718 yr Dick Perry lives or lived in Oxford, I think. He was a presence on the old Dayton Free-Net from the early 1990s (pre WWW)...he talked a bit about that book and the journeys that made it up while on that forum. Even tiny Gratis, Ohio (between Germantown and Camden) got a mention, as it was the town that left the Christmas lights out all year round. Sure enough, driving through Gratis one day, keeping my eyes open, I did see a house with Xmas lights strung up, and it was the spring. Dick also wrote a book about the Kentucky writer Jesse Stuart.
January 13, 200718 yr Glitter is the key. New building rear high in the sky, changing the skyline forever; and old buildings, like dirty old men, have been bulldozed into eternity. Almost poetic :drunk:... (hears sound, looks out window, sees bulldozer barrelling up the front walk) Uh oh.
January 13, 200718 yr Glitter is the key. New building rear high in the sky, changing the skyline forever; and old buildings, like dirty old men, have been bulldozed into eternity. Almost poetic :drunk:... I can honestly say I've never heard of a dirty old man getting bulldozed into eternity.
January 14, 200718 yr WILLARD: Willard, which calls itself the City of Blossoms, blossoms with car dealers on the west side of town. The main highway actually bypasses the place, but the bypass itself is a litter of places that will sell you anything from a tractor to a room for the night. Willard in sections is split-level bland. BELLEVUE: [bellevue] has forty-seven industrial establishments which turn out everything from paper balers to boat hoists and from steel safes to showcases--and that should give you an idea of the town itself. HURON: Huron, home of yesteryear's steamboat builders, and today a gathering of substancial houses that are genteel and beautiful. Also, here and there, trailer parks. VERMILLION: Vermillion calls itself the city of a million opportunities, a few of which it has missed. Hilarious! Thanks!!!!
January 20, 200718 yr Warren, Niles, or Youngstown? WARREN: -Warren, with about 66,000 people and a clutch of skysrapers some of which are almost a dozen floors high (INK: Really?), has many sections of agreeable homes, especially around the country club. -But for the moment, downtown Warren itself will not get rave notices from the garden clubs. The business district is bustling and prosperous, but also an unalluring collection of building which have, for the most part, seen better days. YOUNGSTOWN: -Youngstown is much more than steel mills, noise, bustle, and a bottle of cold beer....So what kind of place is Youngstown--this assemblage of polo, drama, music and mills? Well, we must be realists. Because it is an industrial city, parts of it are not beauty marks. -Youngstown is also a place of suburbia, tea rooms, and tenements, Most of its churches are so modern, however, they have the appearance of building and loan establishments.
January 20, 200718 yr hmmmmmmm. interesting take on warren and youngstown. i would have loved to have seem warren in its hayday. And the homes and neighborhoods around the country club are amazing. Huge palacial (sp) estates! Beautiful Homes!!
January 20, 200718 yr Cleveland? Dayton? Akron? ATHENS?!?!? CLEVELAND: -This is where the wind blows cold and, upon occasion, the Cleveland Browns play hot. -Forgive us Dayton, Columbus, and especially Cincinnati, because we seem pleased with the idea of Cleveland, we only suggest that our pleasure is reasonable, that we have a native pride in Ohio things, and that if Ohio is to have value, then Cleveland must have value, which, viewed as a stranger or as a friend, it has. -Cleveland, technically, is a divided city. In the middle is the industrial and business district. On both sides exist vast acerage of old neighborhoods, tenements, and suburbia. -Cleveland is more than industrial muscle and a guy going broke on $10,000 a year. Cleveland is a research center. -Cleveland has some commuter trains. Not enough to write home about, though. The rapid transit system is fairly new for Cleveland, but still makes it the best--and only--rapid transit system Ohio has. Cincinnati got ambitious once and started to build a subway, but the subway never got off the ground (you know what we mean) so now the Cleveland Rapid Transit gets to the bows while the bus line in Cincinnati gets the bum's rush.
January 20, 200718 yr DAYTON: -Dayton is a city of awfully wide streets, some awfully old buildings, many glittering new structures-and a feeling that all around you are cash registers, because, insofar as making change goes, the National Cash Register Company put Dayton on the map. But the wonder is that present day Dayton--a most dramatic city--ever got off the ground. -Dayton chooses to call itseld the heart of the Mega-City 70-75, the nation's tenth largest service market. Mega-City 70-75 includes 21 counties in Ohio, four in Indiana, and two in Kentucky. The combined population of the chamber of commerce gerrymandering is 4,000,000 people. -Poetry and airplanes are Dayton's products. -Dayton, as every schoolboy knows, is called the birthplace of aviation (listen, everything must be born somewhere). -Does Dayton have a personality? You bet. Though many of its downtown streets are lined with buildings that look exhausted, the city of Dayton--and the people dashing about it--seem yound and full of energy. -Dayton lacks the touches of heritage that Cincinnati has. In this sense, Dayton--the kid sister of the cities--is of a new generation. AKRON: -Downtown Akron? Hilly, tightly packed, but rebuilding itself into something brand-spanking new. -Yet, even some of the locals of Akron look hangdog and sat, "Listen, Akron isn't really a cultural city, but we have some of the greatest resturants. People come here from Cleveland just to eat and..." We agree Akron has more fine resturants than any city should have, but we quarrel with the Akron attitude that seems to say, "Pardon us for being so commerical with tires and stuff like that."
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