Sad, sad, sad

I wrote about this house earlier this year, in March. It was far too cold to prowl around, so I linked to a very good article about its history.

Today I received a comment to moderate that simply said this house burned to the ground today, and gave me a link.

A beautiful house, for you to look at one more time:

Firestone family home to be relocated

• Published: Sat, August 13, 2011 @ 12:00 a.m.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay

Crews are preparing to move an Italianate-style home owned by the Firestone family, known for its tire empire, just east on Lipply Road in view of Pine Lake. The house is currently next to the Firestone tire-testing facility.

Photo by Robert K. Yosay

Tom Ellison of New Springfield said he purchased the Firestone house partly as a way to create work for his company, Tom Ellison Excavating.

By Ashley Luthern

NORTH LIMA
A piece of local history will have a new location — albeit only 900 feet from where it has stood since 1880.
Crews are preparing to move an Italianate-style home owned by the Firestone family, known for its tire empire, just east on Lipply Road in view of Pine Lake. Tom Ellison of New Springfield purchased the home, and his company, Tom Ellison Excavating, and Stein House Movers of Cortland are transporting the house.
“Too often we munch and crunch these old buildings,” Ellison said.
Ellison purchased five acres on Lipply Road through David A. LoGiudice, a real-estate broker and appraiser with Boardman-based David Realty, and first expressed interest in the house in October.
Ben Strawinski, supervisor of the 400-acre Firestone tire-testing facility that is next to the house, called the situation a “win-win.”
“We would have recycled parts of the house, but that was a last resort,” he said.
The Firestone company has maintained the house since the last occupant, Beatrice Webber, a Fire-stone family friend, left about six years ago, Strawinski said.

The space where the house is will be turned into a parking lot for visitors to the testing center.
Strawinski said the home was used by Harvey S. Firestone’s sister.
Visitors to the testing site still can look across the street and view the area where Firestone went camping with Henry Ford and Thomas Edison and the remains of a horse track where Firestone first tested his rubber tires.
The Firestone Homestead where Harvey S. Firestone was born and grew up was moved to Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn, Mich., in 1983. The homestead, which included a barn, was built in 1828.
Ellison said he owns several older homes and rental properties and acquired this home partly as a way to create work for his company.
LoGiudice said by moving the house down the road — and avoiding crossing state Route 7 — the task of temporarily disrupting electric service was made easier. Ellison added the house likely will travel “at a creep” down Lipply Road in about two weeks.
Once there, Ellison will renovate the house and make a circular driveway. But the house isn’t for him — “I already have a home on the other side of the lake” — and Ellison said he will sell it.
“This house will be a thing of beauty,” he said.

...

Harvey Firestone introduced vulcanizing of rubber; he, Henry Ford and Charles Goodyear gave us cars with tires.

The bong under the steps

This is for Jocelyn.

Of all the stories I knew I’d never tell, this is the only one you’ll hear.

I came of age in the sixties, when, as Dylan mentioned, the times they were a changing.  Actually, the pieces always were there. My dad said when he was young and free in the 1930’s, marijuana grew wild along the railroad tracks and the hobos didn't want for a smoke. It took a bunch of decent kids and a bad war to make a trend a movement.

I learned how to drink in college, then how to smoke, and quickly how to do both in moderation. Hash left my repertoire when a friend’s bathroom toilet was a mile or more down the little black and white tile path, and I had to stand on my tippy toes to reach the water closet chain up on the wall.

Pot was not the same after that, either, and I generally passed. I had my alcohol epiphany when I was married. We came back from a party, paid the babysitter, who lived across the street. As I held the railing to go upstairs I realized if one of my children needed me in the night, it would be a struggle to get up, and, of course, their father wouldn't even hear them. I turned into the current day equivalent of the designated driver.

Our house was a great party house. Family room in the basement, kids asleep on the second floor. For friends and relatives, perhaps a half hour trip. The gang was down there maybe once a month.  And so it went on until 1973, and I divorced.

It was a different time back then. Divorce needed a cause. One party or the other must be aggrieved and blameless. I didn't know what would happen and I was terrified my husband would do something above and beyond putting me ass over teacup in debt. I stood in the family room and looked at the bong.

It was a work of art, actually. I cannot remember who of the group made it. It was clear plexiglass, and I recall a lot of colored bits. The medical student might have made it; he had access to that kind of plexiglass. My brother might have made it, but I don’t think he had the shop skills. I just don’t know.

How to get rid of it. What if Jim sent a social worker looking for it? I went outside to bury it. No, the neighbors will see me digging a hole. I put it in a trash bag. No, the trash pickup is still a week away, and he just left, knowing he would be divorced as soon as the proceedings went through the court.

Could I take it to work and put it in the dumpster? Too risky. Walking around the basement holding the evidence, I wound up in the laundry room. How about behind the water tank? Stupid. But look there; a panel, not a plasterboard wall where the steps go up. I wonder!

I pushed it in and found a lovely vacancy under the basement steps. The bong went in, I got the panel back in place and went on with my life. I wonder if the next owners of the house ever found it.

The helmet

This is not a nice story; it ends in two deaths. Stop here if you wish. 

I was surprised I found The Helmet on EBay. So surprised I said I knew what happened to my helmet. That was not necessary; it did not move the story along, but the helmet on the desk was something I remembered from that night.

When we bought the motorcycle that helmet was the only one of its kind. All the others were sparkly red or blue or black. That glitter was popular. Riding, I saw only one other, and that was somewhere in Missouri. We were going opposite directions through a large intersection. Each waved and pointed to our heads.

I said we were down to one car, and I used my motorcycle. I even picked Beth up from school, took her to day care and went back to work. Rain or shine. Come fall I knew I would not be riding the bike in winter. We sold it; Jim bought me a ten year old Chevy Corvair. The biggest mystery--how it became ten years old.

The helmet sat on a hall closet shelf. We divorced. The helmet sat on the shelf. My oldest and best friend, Carol, divorced not too long after I did. She had just come to work at my company as a temp; a few weeks in I told the president of the company he should hire her full time. He did. That was 1972; my divorce 1973. Hers, probably 1974.

Carol met a fellow somewhere. His name was Carl. They were together at least a year. Carl was a biker; I believe that's all the transportation he owned. He admired the helmet sitting on the shelf, I sold it to him. Carol and Carl eventually broke up. He had more women on his string than her. She was crushed.

In retrospect, I cannot remember Carol ever being a passenger on that bike. I may ask her, though the fact also doesn't advance the story. Or the Corvair, or the divorce, or Beth and day care. They're all just padding to avoid the end. Carol came rushing into the house one night, hysterical. There was an accident; Carl and his passenger were dead. A picture in the paper included that helmet, shattered in many pieces.

Teaching moments

Long, long ago I taught evening English classes. These were not youngsters there on daddy’s money. Evening students have already put in a full day on the job; they come back at night to get their money’s worth toward a degree to advance themselves in the working world. I had a smattering of eighteen year olds, but on the whole my classes were people of my age. I thought I related to them.

I carried away two profound experiences from one class. We were reading The Enormous Room. My thesis for the semester was Picasso, “Art is a lie that makes us see the truth.” It was the early seventies, the war in Vietnam was full blown, and I was a rather shallow twenty something.  I cannot remember what I said, but I know it was mildly anti-war. A few words in passing, on to the next…..

A young man toward the end of the first row erupted. He stood up. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I have killed men with piano wire, or they would kill me….” He threw the book at my head and started to the door. I was first, and stood in front. “I am so sorry. I am abjectly sorry!” and I was.  He shoved me aside, and was gone.

I apologized to the class. In retrospect, that was another textbook psychological moment. On the whole they assured me I’d done nothing wrong, he threw a book at you, he might have knocked you down, and so on. I called the dean that night and saw her the next day. Her take was, “These things happen, don’t be concerned.” He never came back to class. I gave him an A. I remain humiliated when the incident crosses my mind, and it doesn’t matter that we know about PTSD these days. My arrogance remains bitter.

Another student left that class, too. It was freshman English, and I was supposed to be reinforcing their grammar. I also rode my motorcycle. My husband was between jobs, we were down to one car, so I  rode my motorcycle. I rode it to my day job, too. I’d say I drew the short straw, except he also had a motorcycle. But, I digress.

I was teaching grammar, and I said that sentence structure is another kind of engineering; if they could diagram the sentence they understood grammar. It was toward the end of the class, the exam was right around the corner. It was the school’s exam, not mine, so the evening was a last review.

I rode the motorcycle, of course. My Captain America helmet was sitting on the desk, and so was I, the easier to return to the board and put another word or phrase into the diagram. We were stuck on gerunds and participles. “Listen,” I said, “there’s a trick to telling them apart.”

A fellow in the first row leaned back, legs extended way out. “The only trick in this room is the teacher,” he said. I didn’t skip a beat. “Those are failing words, son.” He never came back, either. And, I did fail him.

Cannot believe I found this on EBay, sold as a vintage sixties or seventies helmet. It's the one I had, although not mine, as I know what happened to mine.

All the roads have a first name

Our side trip through Frostville last weekend brought so many interested responses I will confess my other addiction—history. 

When I became clerk of my township I was the second occupant of the clerk’s office in the restored township hall.  There always has been a clerk, but until the township hall was restored clerks clerked out of their homes.  I can’t even imagine.  The last clerk before me, a stronger soul than I, packed every remaining piece of paper from the last hundred years of clerks into boxes, by years. They pretty much filled the office and left a few square feet for a desk.

After I completed all the documentation required to be permitted to dispose of the disposable, the town historian and I spent several months of Saturday mornings going through the boxes.  My grandmother used to say “Many hands make light work.”  So do many stories, and I was treated to hours of stories as we went through papers.  I got the back stories, too. 

As we went further and further back in time some of our disposables became hard to part with.  Especially as we passed first his birth date, then mine.  We were handling invoices we could shred, but that had long ago logos on them.  We came to a compromise when his stack of electric bills picturing Reddy Kilowatt was totally out of hand; we kept representative samples of the good stuff.

As we slipped back to the Great Depression the historian knew where all the buildings had been or still were, but the population then far exceeded the current 695.  He carried the thread of the major families:  they still own the quarry where kids swim in the summer; he owned the bank; that family had the Nash dealership.  

 I was struck by the humanity and community the papers spoke to.  There were township warrants to local stores for shoes for this family, coal for that, payment for an ambulance or a doctor.  It seemed half the township men worked some hours each month on the roads.  While that was common in townships I was struck by the two road superintendents foregoing pay and the workmen being paid when funds were lowest.  That was not documented; I figured it out from the trail of checks.

And the checks!  I fell in love with the checks.  Mouse nibbled corners.  Dried on rubber bands.  The handwriting!  I thought of my parents, who each wrote a lovely hand.  All payments were by warrants (checks), and the backs of the checks told a story, too.  There were multiple endorsements; the checks passed from hand to hand like currency.  I puzzled at the number of endorsements in pencil until I realized the pens were in the bank.  Men on the street of a farming community town at the turn of the 20^th century might have a pencil, but not a fountain pen.  I kept all the old handwritten checks.

In the end I cataloged all those checks and posted them on our web site, in history.  That’s when I realized our roads all have first names. Except for Oak Hill Road, every road is called after a family that once lived on it.  My own road is called after the dairy farmer who owned all these acres and ran a cheese factory on the other side of the road.  His grandson still lives on the corner.

We have put so much history under the history tab of our township website it might sink if it were a ship.  The tracking program tells us the website has thousands of page visits each year, the majority of them looking at history pages.  I like to think we’re leaving that to the future.

Two trustees added signatures to this check, Thomas Major and Isacc Stine.  And, we have a Major Road and a Stine Road.

I love the endorsements.  There are three, so this check went through several hands until it became cash money or increased a bank account.  The perforated cancellations are wonderful, too.