McKinley Monument and Museum

William McKinley was born in Niles, Ohio but married and spent most of his life in Canton, Ohio. Despite being gunned down just into his second term of office in 1901, McKinley is a highly rated president and may have soared into greatness had he fulfilled his second term. Instead his death allows for a greater figure in American political history, Theodore Roosevelt, to come center stage.

But it is here in Ohio, in Canton, that you can visit his monument, museum and library (see above right, click to enlarge). I believe this was the first presidential library for a former president. The library has quite a collection of both McKinley and other primary source artifacts of his time.

The entire grounds is a multi-faceted tourist attraction. The memorial sits a top a hill, 108 steps from ground level, and can be seen on many days from I-77 as you drive north through Canton towards Akron and Cleveland. The cemetery visible from the highway, West Lawn Cemetery (photos, famous burials, Thomas Edison early film of McKinley funeral entering), is adjacent to the grounds. At least one historic book was written on this cemetery and walking the grounds takes you back to the world of many notable Canton figures from the 19th century.

Standing atop the memorial plaza you can gaze at downtown Canton, and wonder what it must have been like in its heyday. It's not exactly a kodak moment of the downtown skyline. But you do have a sweeping gaze of the area and will be surprised at the number of joggers running the grounds and the steps.


Inside the vault the architecture of the dome (see left, click to enlarge) rivals that of the Ohio statehouse, the U.S. Capitol rotunda and other Washington, DC greek and roman structures. The crypts of William and Ida sit side by side (see above, click to enlarge), something you don't often see with the final resting places of famous folk. The memorial itself is quite spectacular.


The museum bills itself as a science and history museum. It is a great place to visit, and if you live locally and have preschoolers in the family, it's worth the annual membership for short visits to the hands-on areas of the complex. During the winter time you can see evidence of sledding from the one side down into the municipal park that adjoins the eastern edge. It is not advisable, as you can cross into roads, creeks and ponds fairly quickly.



The basement section of the museum features a Science/Discovery area with dinosaurs, fossils, and an animatronic T-Rex (which roars, but also pops and hisses from the hydraulics!). There are some neat science/physics principles on display for kids to play with. It is very hands on and has a few live animals on displays. The second level features a very nice planetarium.

The third level is a walk through history. Entering a large room, artifacts from different eras have been gathered to show what a room would look like in colonial, Victorian and other eras in Stark County's history. The lead towards a huge wall photo-mural of McKinley on his front porch surrounding by family and friends after winning the presidency.

Behind the wall is a room full of McKinley artifacts (called the McKinley Gallery), complete with an animatronic William and Ida McKinley (see left, click to enlarge). The room welcomes you with the look and feel of a gathering room at the McKinley homestead. If you aren't paying attention closely, your presence will trip the sensors initiating William and Ida and they begin talking to you. It's a bit Pirates-of-the-Caribbean feeling from Disneyland because it is that same technology.

Most of the items in the room are the McKinleys. One of the neat items that is easy to pass by is a desk chair with engraved arms. Being a Republican, McKinley's chair is engraved with two large elephants heads with the trunks running down the arms to the chair itself (see right, click to enlarge). It is a rather unique piece of furniture and one I passed by without noticing on several visits.





The Street of Shops takes you back to the turn of the century at what Canton may have looked like (see right, click to enlarge). There is a large sitting area for school kids in what is a log cabin blown out wide to host school groups and another large room for presentations and gatherings complete with a school bell for kids (of all ages) to pull.

There are merchant shops, an inn (with a balcony area to walk), a saloon, stables, a doctor and dentist office and fire department.


As you can imagine, the fire department is a popular kid stop (see left, click to enlarge), as it is complete with an authentic pole kids can slide down! It is not for the faint-of-heart, as you have to have long legs or take a little leap to get to the pole and slide down. There is a bit of padding at the base of the pole.

Just off of the street of shops is a very large model train exhibit and many, many pictures of the history of rail in Canton.


The final room, which if I remember right will be undergoing a transformation, is an area where rotating exhibits are held. At one point gowns of the first ladies were shown here. An area to the side is a tribute to the industrialism of Stark County and ends up being a little more than a trade show set up. You can sit in a chair that a Hoover vacuum (no longer manufactured in the county) will lift off the ground, ring several fire and alarm bells made in the county and read static displays from the Timken Company.

While McKinley is often a footnote to history, his legacy was huge and furthered not just by Teddy Roosevelt, but by Roosevelt's hand-picked replacement and fellow Ohioan, William Howard Taft.


Below are more pictures from the McKinley Museum.

- J.

The rooms of Stark County over time (from the History Gallery preceding the McKinley Gallery):

Frontier Stark County (left)

Victorian Stark County (right)

Colonial Stark County (left)

1920's Stark County (right)

More from the Street of Shops...

Barber Shop

SaloonGeneral Store

Lehmans and Smuckers in Amish Country

Two very unique and interesting places are just minutes apart about 15 miles east of Wooster, Ohio. Lehman's Hardware, in Kidron, Ohio and Simply Smuckers, the specialty store for Smuckers jelly and jams.

Kidron, Ohio is not on any major thoroughfare, but it is only about 5 miles south of U.S. 30 that runs from Canton through Wooster on its way to, and beyond, Mansfield. Not even a stoplight in town, Kidron is also a crossroads for the sizeable Amish population of north-central Ohio.

Lehman's is a unique hardware store (see picture above and right, click to enlarge), and you will be able to find many items you either never have imagined or long-since thought obsolete. A walk through the iron stove section yields both antiques and current stoves for your heating needs (see picture below-left, click to enlarge). Another room boasts what is an unimaginable number of bells, traditionally used for your cow but here for a range of uses (see picture below-right, click to enlarge).














The building has been built on to over time and it has changed quite a bit since I last visited about five or six years ago. A clearance section in a loft area looks over the unique toy selection. The loft gives a great vantage point for the toy train running among the rafters (see picture below-left, click to enlarge). Relatively new is a cafe in the middle of the store. A bit pricey, but capitalizing on the tourism, the cafe has wraps and grilled lunch fare that is worth the cost. Best is the ability for a family of four to dine in "prison" -- an iron jail cell that appears authentic, down to the slot for pushing food through (see picture below-right, click to enlarge).














One of the display areas has the largest (from size, if not quantity) collection of copper kettles (see picture below-left, click to enlarge). I cannot imagine the price tags and didn't even look. Every where you look there are all sorts of antique and unique items displayed on the walls (see picture below-right, click to enlarge).














But make no mistake that this is a working hardware store as much as it is a tourist stop. On a Saturday you bound to find a constant stream of Mennonite and Amish folk shopping in and around the store. It won't take long to see an Amish buggy (see pictures below, click to enlarge).















If you run back north to US 30, then head east for to the next stop light, turn right on Ohio Rt. 57 and about one-quarter mile on your right is Simply Smuckers. While heavily advertised on local radio as a tourist destination, it is probably best coupled with other tourist stops in the area.

The street view and first impressions are striking (see above, click to enlarge). A bright white and well decorated barn greets you (see right, click to enlarge). Inside you can see signage that indicates the "green" approach of the property and how it meshes with the local environment efficiently.

The interior looks like a large barn, complete with exposed rafters. When you step inside you see clearly the different branding associated now with Smuckers (Jif, Hungry Jack, Pillsbury, etc.) in banners hanging high off the walls (see below-left, click to enlarge).

The back wall of the store is a tremendous display of colored jelly jars complete with a "strawberry" made of jelly jars hanging from the ceiling as a type of fruity chandelier (see right, click to enlarge).

Architecturally, this is a cool place to look around. But for the specialty-ness of it as a store, it doesn't really score big. Most of what you find in the store you can find on your local grocery store shelves. The uniqueness of this tourist stop is in minor ways. You can sample different jellies at one station. The cafe has some wonderful bakery items and I was tempted to try a "grilled PB&J" sandwich. Never thought of that twist before.

Since this was after Thanksgiving and in the home stretch for Christmas, there were plenty of little stocking stuffers, such as sampler gift boxes complete with unique plates and 1 and 2 ounce jellies. A good idea for those lesser-tried jellies, such as Orange Marmalade. It would take me decades to work though a regular jar of it, but a 1-ounce jar might just fit the bill.

There is a make-shift museum, which entails walking behind the back "jelly wall" of the store to view a view multi-media blurbs of the legacy of Smuckers and a timeline wall tracing the history of the company and its recent acquisitions. As a history teacher, it was a bit odd to see a timeline go from right to left chronologically (see right, click to enlarge). Exiting the museum section, there are Smithsonian type displays of costumes and skates of the Smuckers sponsored Stars on Ice series with many well known figure skaters.

Simply Smuckers is well worth the stop if you are in the area. Despite its top-notch radio marketing, it may leave you disappointed if this is your only intended destination of the day. Built about the same time as the Longaberger Homestead series of shops, you have to wonder if Smuckers was trying to capitalize on that market niche (thankfully no giant jelly jar akin to the giant basket at Longaberer).

Since they're dealing in jellies and not kitschy baskets, hopefully there will be some long-term success (the building has been open about 10 years now). With Amish country so near, and "a name like Smuckers," chances are the visitors will be "sticking" around.

- J.

Snowy Day on Wolf Creek

November in Northeast Ohio can bring all sorts of weather variations. This year we have gone from 70's early in the month to an early dose of winter, seeing a constant snow cover on the ground for two weeks preceding Thanksgiving.

An evening coating of snow with the temperature hovering around freezing produced a magnificent shimmering of white over the freshly barren trees of the region. Turning on my 500-watt halogen backyard light captured a wonderful moment that had me thinking of Robert Frost. (above right: a little Photoshop enhancement of my backyard, with a touch of "Frost" -- click to enlarge)

The next morning the frosting of the foliage had a particularly striking effect along Minor Road and Wolf Creek in Copley, Ohio (see left, click to enlarge). Once a small creek, today it is dammed for Barberton's drinking water supply and off-limits to boating and fishing. Atop one of the rolling hills overlooking the creek is the acclaimed Wolf Creek Winery, where an outdoor deck overlooks the vista of the creek valley.

Where Cleveland-Massillon Road and Minor Road cross it separately, and Summit Road parallels it, each fall Wolf Creek can be colorfully vibrant in the bright morning sun or haunting in the fog and mist of an October day.

Minor Road has few curves, but is hilly and at its crest just west of Wolf Creek, an east-bound photo this morning revealed a cavern of white clinging to trees, shrubs and bushes (see right, click to enlarge).

There are few places like Northeast Ohio. We enjoy four full seasons, with none overpowering the others. We may have years where winter lingers too long or summer sizzles too hot, spring being a wee bit short or barely a taste of fall. But stick around the state long enough and you will experience the splendor of what each season yields.

Ohio can dance with Vermont in the fall and Virginia in the spring; the Carolinas in the summer and Colorado in the winter.

-J.

Autumn at Hale Farm & Village

One of Northeast Ohio's historical treasures
is Hale Farm & Village in Bath, Ohio. A
living history museum set in the 19th
Century, there are several areas of the
property used a little differently. Nestled
in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (right,
click to enlarge), the setting can really
transport you back into time.

On a crisp autumn day a few years ago I
had a meeting at Hale Farm and after it
was over tried out a new camera on the
property. The fall foliage served as
a great backdrop.


The first part of Hale Farm that you
generally visit when leaving the Visitor
Center is the Mill and Carriage House.
The Mill (left, click to enlarge) is
operational and at times can be
heard steaming away for quite
a ways. It is certainly loud, but a
wonderful feel for how it was "back
then" in time.






A path from the Carriage House and Mill lead to a restored log cabin that was transported from Goodyear property by their blimp hangar in Suffield, Ohio (about 30 minutes east of the village).

Admittedly, the picture shown here (right, click to enlarge) was tweaked a bit using Photoshop to enhance the reds, but the picture of the leaves blanketing the ground as you see the cabin from the woods (below, click to enlarge) is as it was captured by the camera (hard to say "on film" anymore!).



The village part is a recreated village
from the mid 1800s, with many of the
structures being relocated from
Northeast Ohio and originally in
the same time-frame.

Prior to reaching the village is the
Jonathan Hale house, built on this
spot in the early 1800s. The property
stayed in the family for a long
period of time before being turned
into a living history village.

The village, fictionally called Wheatfield, used to be centered in 1848 with the inhabitants of the structures playing first-person roles. About 10 years ago or so on a family visit I tried to stump the occupant of a house looking to rent a room to a boarder whether he preferred a German, an Irishman or a free Black. His answer was right on the money for the time. Unknowingly I had tried to stump the person who went on to be the director of the village from the early 2000's through 2008.

The Meeting House (right, click to enlarge) is the center of this New England-style village. It serves many purposes and I especially like some of the evening programs (such as the Fugitive's Path program portraying the Underground Railroad) where the acting and the atmosphere lend an air of reality to the history.

Other parts of Hale Farm show authentic 19th Century farming and crafts/artisans using traditional methods.

- J

Ohio and the Civil War

Ohio has a unique place in the Civil War. Only Pennsylvania and New York sent more men to fight, but Ohio provided the military firepower to win the war. Grant, Sheridan and Sherman were Ohio-born. Lincoln's brain trust, part of the original "team of rivals," included Ohioans Salmon Chase and Edwin Stanton. Today Ohio is still significant when it comes to the Civil War.

Ohio has many Civil War re-enactment units and re-enactment opportunities. As an educator I have brought to my middle school the 19th Ohio Light Artillery, based out of Clinton, Ohio. The picture to the right is of the 19th Ohio, with a sepia effect added (notice cars in the parking lot and the parking lot light).

The cannon itself is an 1860's antique, but the limber a reproduction. The unit will actually haul the cannon to Michigan and participate in live shoots on a firing range! ( to enlarge)

A nice 50% powder charge is used to demonstrate the effect of the noise and it appropriately rattles our building, sets off a few car alarms and gets the middle school kids buzzing with energy (see right, click to enlarge). We have even used Styrofoam soldier cutouts (about 8-feet tall in size) as props on the field and the shock waves obliterate the Styrofoam.


There are re-enactment events scattered all about the state, from Findlay's Heritage Days to the Ohio Regimental Ball at the McKinley Grand Hotel in Canton, Zoar's Battle of the Ohio-Erie Canal and Hale Farm and Village's "Drums of August" Civil War Day. It was at one of these Civil War Day's at Hale Farm that I took a bunch of pictures shown here. To the left is a rebel reenactment group marching from the field of battle by the saw mill at Hale Farm. (click to enlarge)

Hale Farm is the perfect spot where a little photo-editing filtering of sepia tones can give the impression that the photo is authentic to the time. I have done some Photoshop fun to blend the sepia filtering with full color of the reenacting. Below is the same Confederate unit assembling in formation. (click to enlarge)


To better access this period in history, Hale Farm & Village has changed their living history year in the historically fictional town of Wheatfield from 1848 to 1862. Each year they will move the calendar forward until 1865 and then reset to 1861 and repeat the cycle. The historical buildings, most relocated here from northeast Ohio, give an authentic flair to Civil War reenactment. The two photos below are again Photoshop fun with sepia and modern tones. One is of a Union regiment on the march to battle, the other of "colored troops" (the moniker of the time) in camp. (click left or right below to enlarge)















One of the units at the Civil War Day was the Camp Chase Fife and Drums. Based in central Ohio, this unit performs throughout the country. (click pictures below to enlarge)












I had some some more Photoshop fun with a water color special effect on the soldiers marching off to the reenactment battle below. (click below to enlarge)

And yes... I get into the act too. My school purchased a reenactment uniform and I have used it to do small scale living history to my students. My uniform was based partially off of my great-great uncle, Joseph Hinson, who as a teenager enlisted in the 1st Ohio Infantry, saw action at Bull Run, then re-enlisted in the 33rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry (see right, click to enlarge). He rose to rank of Captain but regimental records show he finished the war (minus one arm) as the commanding officer of the regiment. Today there is a 33rd OVI reenactment group based out of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.

- J.

Air Show Excitement

Air Shows draw all sorts of buzz and excitement. The summer of 2008 offered two distinctly different types of air shows. Cleveland hosted its annual Labor Day weekend air show, complete with the armed forces elite air team.

2008 saw the Blue Angels make their traditional and stunning performance (see right, click to enlarge).


The sight of cluster of Blue Angels racing over downtown Cleveland is a sight to see (left, click to enlarge). I remember going to an Indians game at Cleveland Municipal Stadium one Labor Day Weekend and getting a BOGO deal: watching the Indians play while the air show buzzed by overhead. Thanks to the acoustics of Municipal Stadium, thunderous jets are magnified when the sound is trapped under the lower deck... and the lack of fans of an Indians team long-since out of contention reduces sound absorption too.

Akron, Ohio hosted a vintage World War II air show in June, 2008. As a warbird buff from my childhood days, this was a great opportunity to see some memories revisited. While traditional favorites such as the P-51 and B-25 were present, I'd never had the chance to get up close to some other ones. It was a great joy to be able to peer into the cabin of a PBY Catalina (see right, click to enlarge) and then watch it fly around the field (see below, click to enlarge).

What makes an air show in Akron so appealing is that you don't have to fight the crowds like you do major city air shows and the price is very affordable. Yes, you can get sucked dry by the concessions and souvenir stands, but the tickets to get in are tiered nicely for families and getting in, out and parking is a breeze. Over the past several years different organizations have sponsored air shows at the airport.


The star of the Akron show was the F-4U Corsair, which was built just off the grounds of what today is the Akron Fulton Municipal Airport (click for link to historic Corsair/Goodyear photos). In the shadow of the legendary air dock where Goodyear built blimps. the F-4U rolled off the assembly line to fly in World War II.

The North American B-25 Mitchell to both fly and sit on the line for close-up viewing was the Panchito. An Akron native piloted the Panchito (see right, click to enlarge) in World War II. From a story in the Akron Beacon Journal (June 15, 2008):

Panchito's visit to Akron this weekend is a homecoming of sorts. Panchito is a B-25 Mitchell bomber first piloted during World War II by an Akron man, the late Don Seiler. The plane, with Seiler's name still painted on its cockpit, flew into his hometown to be one of the attractions at Wings Over Akron at Akron Fulton International Airport.

Right is a little Photoshop fun with Panchito. I was able to get a nice close side shot of the nose art, and it was easily "erased" in Photoshop leaving the nose art bare. I dropped that into a fly-by picture of the B-25. Shot against a flat blue sky, it was also easy to copy, paste and reduce two copies of Panchito and drop them into what looks like a squadron of B-25's. The intended effect was flying from the past into the future by having the black and white photo effect of the 1940's give way to the full color restoration of the plane(see right, click to enlarge).

While the Akron air show was a small affair, Cleveland's air show is packed with a day's-long worth of things to see and do. I had not been to one in at least a decade if not twice that. It is a major entertainment affair (read: bring lots of cash), but definitely worth the cost if you are willing to spend the time. I thought it was an amusing juxtaposition to watch a multi-million dollar jet piroutting in the sky while kids romped on inflatables (see below, click to enlarge).


Living along one of the landing approaches to the Akron-Canton airport, there are times when the solace of the day is broken by the sound of the rotors of the army's CH-47 Chinook on approach after a training flight. It was neat to walk inside one of these and to capture the skyline of Cleveland out the window (see left, click to enlarge). Chinook's currently see active duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan .


It's nice to get inside some aircraft to get a sense of what our soldiers deal with when transporting equipment or themselves. As I waited to climb up into the cabin of the C-117 Globemaster, a B-17 taxied back from a demonstration flight. It was an interesting point of view to take a picture of a B-17 from the cargo bay of the C-117 (see right, click to enlarge). From the cramped conditions of the World War II vintage bomber, to the cavernous interior of the Globemaster, complete with sleeping bay aft of the cockpit.

The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress had just returned from doing a re-enactment bomb run. Major air shows are definitely different from when I was a kid. Speakers and pyrotechnics have been set up so as the B-17 approached on its "bomb run" you heard the distinctive rattle of .50 caliber machine guns and then an explosion with flames from the airfield. I found it funny that in this reenactment the onlookers are casual, including one on a cell phone. The black smoke with a the plane in the background looks more like a crash has just happened (see right, click to enlarge).



Another new twist that I don't remember, is for two pilots to have a running dialog with each other in a mock Cold War-era dogfight between a Russian and American jet.

Both jets had striking paint jobs of a dragon and American flag. Billed as "Red Star vs. the Dragon", the BAC-167 Strikemaster (see left, click to enlarge) was the craftily detailed allied jet.


The Blue Angels are accompanied by the "Fat Albert" C-130 which ferries the support team and ground crew (see right, click to enlarge). Fat Albert pulls the first demonstration duty before the Blue Angels soar into the sky.

But what would an air show be without the ear-splitting road from the high performance fighter jets. The F-18 (see below, click to enlarge) certainly lives up to that standard as it darts across the sky and disappears into the haze over Lake Erie, only to vault by and burn through the downtown skyline.













- J.