“Travel far enough, you meet yourself.”
David Mitchell
“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you. It leaves marks on your memory, on your consciousness, on your heart, and on your body. You take something with you. Hopefully, you leave something good behind.”
Anthony Bourdain
It has been a long time between missives. That is certainly not because there is a shortage of things to write about. So many people and friends, a visit of a grandson, medical issues aplenty, a trip to Alice Lloyd College for Our Appalachia Day, a speaking gig at Oneida Baptist Institute, close friends coping with floods, a presidential election campaign that churns everyone’s insides, marvelous new scientific discoveries in AI and elsewhere, Israel’s amazing air campaign in Iran and Lebanon, prolonged bloody warfare in the Ukraine, drone warfare, regular McFiles podcast appearances, so many unpainted artworks, the third book of the trilogy (so close), Westwin Elements marching on, new improvements to the house, plants to plant and leaves to rake.
Having said all that, this is a missive I’ve wanted to write for some time. It has nothing to do with earthshaking events, but rather warm memories from over five decades ago. Perhaps even a hidden commentary on life’s changes.
In a world seemingly gone crazy and disintegrating around me, and as summer melts into yet another autumn, I find comfort in thinking about the simple things of the past.
Let me set the stage. Several weeks ago, I drove to Miamisburg, Ohio, to have our old Toyota Echo repaired. On my way back, I passed the historic Miamisburg Mound. As a kid we used to walk up the 116 steps to the top of the mound. From there is an incredible panoramic view of the Miami River valley. I can remember thinking to myself as a youngster what it must have looked like to the Native Americans so many years ago.
As you can imagine, the physical Mound itself looks much smaller now than then. Sort of like when I visited the Cincinnati Gardens with my dad as a kid. I remembered it as a cavernous arena with stairs that stretched upward forever before we reached our seats. It was worth the climb to watch Oscar Robertson—the big “O”—play in person for the Cincinnati Bearcats. Many years later, during my law school years, I attended a Xavier University basketball game with a friend, and the same arena felt like a matchbox. Big deals, big venues, big experiences of our childhood years take on a much different dimension when viewed through time’s rear window.
“Sigh.”
At any rate, not many people visit the Mound site anymore. Kids are too busy with their personal devices; history—no matter how interesting—is far too easy to ignore.
The Mound itself is over 65 feet tall, 800 feet in circumference, and contains some 54,000 cubic yards of earth. It is the largest of some 70 native American mounds in Ohio and the second largest in the country. In 1920 the Mound was bought by Ohio-born inventor Charles Kettering and turned into a park. Now that Ima and I are officially enrolled in the Kettering medical system, the life and times of Kettering (1876-1958) has taken on added importance. Kettering was an incredible inventor, engineer, and businessman who held 186 U.S. patents. Among those: all-electric starting, ignition and lighting systems for automobiles; incubators for premature babies; engine-driven generators and batteries; the spark plug; the “aerial torpedo” (Kettering bug); leaded gasoline; Freon and refrigerated railroad cars; and the cash register. Many of these came during Kettering’s tenure as head of research for General Motors from 1920 to 1947; in addition, he founded Delco and other companies.
In 1929, the site was turned over to the Ohio Historical Society and today is managed locally by the nearby city of Miamisburg.
Those are the statistics and data bites.
But what I love most is the mystery of the Mound. No one knows for sure, but it is believed to have been built by the Adena Culture[1] sometime between 800 B.C. and 100 A.D. In 1869, an excavation of the Mound unearthed several skeletons surrounded by clay and charcoal and a collection of several ceremonial items, including pipes and animal effigies.
Who were the Adenas and where did they come from? We really don’t know. They are best known for a series of large, earthen burial mounds. They were almost certainly a prehistoric society of hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists that settled in various Ohio river valleys. We think their society revolved around 15-20 family clusters who lived in circular homes built of poles, willows and bark. It is further believed they were part of a broader trade network that extended from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. We also believe the Adena culture—and its system of ceremonial and burial mounds—was a precursor to later pre-Native American traditions and cultures such as the Hopewell.
But we have no idea of what language they spoke, or what—if any—religion they worshipped (it is assumed they held primitive animistic beliefs), what prompted them to move into the area, and exactly why they built such an extensive system of earthen mounds. We assume they were burial-ceremonial mounds because of the nature of the remains that have been discovered.
I used to discuss with my college students a futuristic scenario. Suppose our civilization completely disappears—much like the Adena Culture—in our case from a nuclear holocaust, disease, or impact with an asteroid (like the one some people warn will hit us in 2029). Long after that happens, future extraterrestrial visitors arrive. What would they think about us? What theories would their researchers derive from their findings? A culture that worships at altars in the living rooms or strange screens? Large buildings and primitive computers holding books and videos in disparate languages? Mysterious towers and deserted metallic orbital platforms everywhere? Would they see us as a race seemingly obsessed with destroying itself?
Perhaps I’m crazy, but I like to think about stuff like that.
I know, I know. But God! There is that wonderful promise to Abraham about his descendants lasting forever and becoming as numerous as the stars in the sky…
In another vein, always in search for a future book topic, I thought about a James Michener-type novel that would focus on the Mound as a theme over time. The book would begin with the Adena and Hopewell cultures, focusing on the building of the Mound itself. A second section would deal with the Miami Indians,[2] a Native American tribe that settled into the river valley that now bears their name (the Great Miami and Little Miami Rivers). My narrative would then move to the early settlers of Miamisburg and from there to the canal builders. As one technology ousts another, the next section of the book would cover the entry of the railroads into the Miami Valley. In my mind’s eye, the final section of the book would deal with the Cold War era, where the nearby Mound Labs Complex—which can be clearly seen from the Mound—played such a key role in the Manhattan Project and our nation’s subsequent nuclear and atomic weapons’ programs.
I floated this idea with close friends who visited our house a couple weekends ago. Bill T. retired following a career as a chemist at the Mound Labs. He and his wife Sheila appeared excited about the project.
I love the idea!
The Mound sits atop a bluff overlooking the Miami River valley and where the small city of Miamisburg spreads below. No book about the Mound would be complete without a discussion of the role of Miamisburg—now a suburb of Dayton, Ohio, populated by almost 20,000 inhabitants. In recent days, the buildings of the downtown area have been restored and visitors and residents flock to the old theater, new sports bars, and picturesque shops. One of our family favorites is Bullwinkles, a rustic old bar and eatery, where we can get a five-dollar hamburger special on Monday’s. Across the street is the famous Burger Wagon near the old courthouse.
Miamisburg—named after the Miami Native American tribe—began as a riverside stockade-community called “Hole’s Station” in the late 1790’s. The community became incorporated as a village in 1832, shortly after the Miami and Erie canal was constructed with the town as an important stopping point, leading to a boom time in the 1840s and 1850s. The railroads came through shortly thereafter, and by the 1920s Miamisburg achieved city status.
Miamisburg’s Main Street renaissance has completely changed its character, as well as its reputation. When I attended high school in nearby Springboro, Ohio, (about ten minutes away) we considered Miamisburg as a backwater of sorts inhabited by rough-and-tumble characters. Times change; both for individuals and towns.
Denny C., my longtime friend and former mayor of nearby Franklin, Ohio, told me recently at the Liar’s Table at Mom’s Restaurant (located in Franklin), that Miamisburg’s downtown renovation was due to a large federal grant—perhaps connected to the closure of the Mound Lab facility.
It is also worth noting that Miamisburg has had its own share of tragedies. If you sit in the open-air area in back of Bullwinkles—where you can watch a football game on the big screen while you eat—you can hear the passing trains. In early September 1978, a Conrail freight train derailed and crashed into a house just up the street killing three occupants. In mid-1986, a mere eight years later, 15 cars of a Baltimore and Ohio train derailed, causing explosions of tank cars containing toxic chemicals. A thick, white chemical cloud hugged the ground forcing the evacuation of up to 40,000 residents of Miamisburg and surrounding municipalities. At the time, it was the largest evacuation in U.S. history stemming from a train accident.
But back to the Mound and my car trip a few days ago. From Miamisburg I drove down the old Dixie Highway along the Miami River to Franklin, about five miles away. In the old days, there was a Dixie Drive-In Theater along the highway. As I drive, I wonder how today’s young couples practice their “night moves” without drive-in movies. I pass the river spillway where dad and Johnnie Arnold, his only African-American friend that I recall, used to fish. At the river’s big bend—on the other side—once stood a thriving Chautauqua resort, yet another casualty of modern times. Chautauqua is a shell of what it once was, a mere shadow of a powerful religious-civic-entertainment movement that swept the country in the 1870s and 1880s, spreading from its origins at Lake Chautauqua in New York.[3]
Before long I arrive in Franklin, Ohio, best known for two residents: John Brown, an evangelist and prominent abolitionist in the years before the Civil War who is best known for his raid and incitement of a slave rebellion at Harper’s Ferry in 1859; and Pete Rose’s bookie. (“Charlie Hustle” still should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame—now posthumously. In my view, the HOF is for accomplishments on the ballfield, not an exhibition of moral behavior).
On the south side of Franklin is Mom’s Restaurant, where I stopped for a home-cooked breakfast. I have mentioned Mom’s in previous missives. In recent days, Ima and I have attended the country western concerts at Richard Lynch’s “Keepin’ It Country” venue (a renovated barn turned music studio and stage). Mom’s is a sponsor of the shows (we always sit at her table in front). The show a couple weekends ago was the best live music I have heard since listening to Stevie Ray Vaughn play guitar at an Austin nightclub years ago.
(But that is another missive).
From Mom’s Restaurant I took the back roads toward Springboro. Talk about memories! I turned on Weidner Road. I recalled the cold winter night—after our Explorers’ (Scout) meeting—when several of us crowded into Al Stapleton dad’s old 1954 two-toned black-and-cream station wagon. There was this wonderful “bump” on the road where, if you were going fast enough, you could go airborne. That night, Al was traveling at mach speed, soared over the hump, and upon landing, the drive shaft broke in half and we went from warp speed to zero in a few yards, as part of the car dug into the asphalt. We spent the next couple hours walking home through the bitter cold, trying to invent credible stories for Al to tell his dad which would explain why his station wagon was broken in two.
None were particularly convincing.
Al recently passed away.
Every teenager should have a friend like Al.
“Sigh.”
Inside Al’s station wagon—before its memorable demise—was the site of one of my best pranks. Ever! Roger D., my high school classmate and fellow station wagon occupant on that fateful night, recently reminded me of my prank. At the time, we were riding in the station wagon with a paper bag full of cherry bomb fireworks. No mailbox we passed by that night was safe! At the time, I was sitting in the front passenger seat and grabbed one of the cherry bombs out of the bag. The wick had worked its way loose. “Watch this,” I said to Al. I lit the wick and tossed it over my shoulder into the back seat. As you can imagine, a desperate and chaotic scramble ensued.
Ah yes. Nothing better than a well-timed practical joke!
Of course, Al and I enjoyed it much more than they did in the back seat.
A modern bridge now crosses Clear Creek at one end of Weidner Road, close to the curve after the local graveyard. As testosterone-pounding teenage boys, we used to test our budding manhood by climbing the old metal bridge that used to stand there. The colder the night, the better. The higher you climbed the more your bragging rights.
I have a line in one of my novels that describes such things: Youth is so wasted on the young.
It is a miracle any of us survived to adulthood.
Just a simple drive that day from the Mound to the Bridge, but filled with so, so many memories …
[1] We have no idea what the Adena called themselves. The name “Adena” is derived from the name of Thomas Worthington’s estate near Chillicothe, Ohio, where a large mound still exists.
[2] The Miami (Myaamiaki) tribes were Native American tribes that left the Great Lakes region and by the 18th century settled in north-central Indiana and western Ohio. They were part of a larger Mississippian culture characterized by a maize-based agriculture, chiefdom-level social organization and extensive regional trade networks. In 1791, at the Battle of St. Claire’s Retreat, they inflicted the worst defeat on American troops by an Indian nation. By 1846, the government forced the tribe’s rank-and-file out of the area.
[3] The word “Chautauqua” is an Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) tribal term for “two moccasins tied together,” which described the shape of Chautauqua Lake in southwest New York where the movement started. It was a religious camping movement, started by Methodist Episcopal minister John Vincent and businessman John Miller, to train Sunday School teachers. The Miami Valley Chautauqua began as a revival in 1896 and moved to its present location in 1901. The movement began fading in the 1920’s and became more recreational in the 1930s (think an early riverside outdoor amusement park).