Sixshooter travels to beautiful Akron, Ohio
 

I'll be flying into the beautiful Akron-Canton Airport on Monday the 15th and traveling by limousine to the sprawling metropolis of New Philadelphia, Ohio for business and staying until sometime Friday morning. If anyone is in the area or interested in paying me some attention, I'll be there.

Did you lose a bet?

I heard that everyone from Florida vacations in Ohio.

Amishland

Hate to say it, but you'll be very disappointed when you get to ohio. The best thing you'll find here is maybe some fall colored leaves on trees.

I hear that the rust is leaf-colored in Autumn.

Only to visit the homes of their youth.

Oh come on now, I'm not even a native and it's not THAT bad.

So you admit that it is bad, and now we are just debating over how bad.

There are very few "points of interest" to a traveler in Ohio. Those of us who live here enjoy the fact that we don't have to deal with tourists as a regular part of our lives. If you're in the Akron/Canton area, you may be interested in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is probably an hour's drive north on the lake. All of the Florida sunbirds are probably still here, it won't be cool enough in Florida for them to move back home for at least another month or two.

If you get a chance to see a Cleveland Browns football game, don't.

Between the ages of 2 and 6, I lived in the town of Barberton, OH, a suburb of Akron.

I remember it being a shithole.

Got that? Looking back at my childhood in the late 70s and early 80s through rose-colored glasses, I remember fondly with a hick-town it was, and how it seemed like nobody had a job.

When a child remembers how bad a place the town he grew up in was, that's bad.

And I can't even imagine how much worse New Philly is.

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...1&d=1410353800

Wow. Small world. I graduated from Norton High School in the depth of the depression when everybody lost their jobs. I went on to the Navy and never looked back. Been back once or twice. What strikes you is that there has been almost no further development in the area since the early 80s. That's in stark contrast to the rest of the country.

Good news is that the Cuyohoga River doesn't catch fire anymore. Good fishing in Lake Erie.

http://www.nationalmuseum.af.mil

If you like airplanes you will enjoy this place

The Air Force museum is awesome. Dayton is a bit of a drive though.

I'll second that. I've been to Wright Patt twice, and I still haven't seen it all. Seems like every time I visit, they build a whole new exhibit hall.

Fun fact: it's the only place in the world where you can sit on an atomic bomb and touch the actual B-29 that nuked Nagasaki.

The Cold War wing is also pretty awesome. They've got a piece of the Berlin Wall there. And not just a little chunk, an entire full-height section. Heavy stuff to see in person.

Small world indeed. Go panthers. :bigtu:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...A_-_550206.jpg

I hear...

http://38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m7...4cno1_1280.jpg

Go Back to Ohio is something SC is pushing hard.

I went to the Air Force museum many years ago. It really was an amazing place.

I've been to Cleveland. They were actively scrubbing the blackened exteriors of the brick buildings to reveal bright red brick beneath. How wonderful it would be to breathe the air in Cleveland for a lifetime!

I have also been to Cincinnati and had the opportunity to view the industrial riverfront area. And Columbus. It seems the babe in the cradle of American heavy industry has been nearly completely smothered with the pillow of union extortion in its old age. It would have likely died eventually from lung cancer anyway, but still, it's a tough way to go.

As someone sentenced to Dayton for the next few years I'll echo comments about OH in general, and the awesomeness of the AF museum. The experimental hanger on base is particularly cool. If you end up in Dayton during business hours let me know and I sponsor you on base.

I'm overdue for a visit. I seem to go every ten years. And they literally have had a new hall every time I've gone.

One of my favorites is the B-36 Peacemaker. Giant aircraft that was built to bomb Berlin from bases in New York (under the assumption that England would fall). To see that thing indoors is amazing.

The XB-70 is also incredible. They used to have it outside, and it had presence like no other. But it was corroding and, last time I went, they had moved it into the "X" hangar. It's hard to see there. It basically furnishes the ceiling for the place. To imagine that thing going Mach 3+.

This photo was taken the year I was born . . . in Cleveland. Low unemployment though.

I actually didn't live in Ohio long. My Dad worked for BFG (HQ in Akron . . . still . . . although they no longer make tires -- BFG tires are just a Michelin brand now). That gave us the opportunity to live all over the world, which we did starting from when I was 4. Brazil and Phillipines mostly. Made it back to Ohio in 9th grade and finished HS there. That was plenty.

Air in Cleveland now is wonderful. That soot was accumulated during the 100 years that NE Ohio made just about everything on Earth. That abrubtly ended in the late 70s/early 80s.

That's pretty much all that's left in OH. Dying pensioners and the medical complex that takes care of them. Labor costs, the Clean Air Act, the opening of China and the severe economic downturn in the late-70s was all the impetus needed for multi-nationals to close shop in Ohio and move overseas. Note that all the pollution associated with heavy manufacturing is still being pumped out. It's just in SE Asia now. Maybe there's an Asian hornetball being born right now next to a burning river. LOL.

Talk about a threadjack.

It's all on topic as far as I can see.

I'm going to the factory where they make these:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1410374993

and these:

https://www.miataturbo.net/attachmen...ine=1410374993

I sell both of those brands of machines.

Bad is a relative term. I live in Cincinnati now (not native Ohioan), and have had the opportunity to live in several other states and travel all over the world.

There are worse places for sure...

Actually, industrial development is alive and well in OH just not in the form you would recognize it 20 years ago. Seems the state still trails in economic incentives though to our Southern friends. Most of the union membership has been relegated to the trades or public sector. Not so much mfg. union membership anymore.

The walleye is excellent...

Yes to both. Relavant topic, if you ever happen to be in Detroit take a day to see the Henry Ford Museum. If you like machinery.

Some of my customers happen to supply machined parts to them. Enjoy the trip.

By development, I was talking about houses/shopping/population, etc. Since leaving, I've mostly lived in the South and West where building is constant. When I visited Norton after having been away for 15 or 20 years, there were no new subdivisions, no new schools, no new shops. It seemed frozen in time. It was striking and sad.

It warms my heart that there are things being built in Ohio. Living through seeing all the factories close and the hardships that created was one of my formative experiences.

Yes.

I came from the NE region where industry left 20+ years before the Midwest started to loose it's mfg base (think fabric looms, shoe production and machine tools). I think the recessions of the 80's just hastened things dramatically in the Midwest and today the mfg base in OH is about 50% what it was then as measured in jobs i.e. people working. The gross output I think isn't that far down (although I haven't taken the time to research it) because of productivity gains.

Because mfg then, at least in the mid-west, had a preponderance of union members it's easy to for some people to say 'unions' were the cause of the decline. I think that's an easy scapegoat and only a part of the story.

The real root cause, in my opinion, is we have no plan for manufacturing in the US and we've decided, as a national policy, we'd prefer to buy manufactured goods from lower cost countries because they are "dirty' industries and don't fit the image we see of ourselves.

I mean really, go into a Cracker Barrel and look at all the items on the racks of the retail side. Made in China....

Sorry, off tangent.

In case you don't find anything fun in Ohio, or even if you do: