Lost Ohio

Randy McNutt

Description

A fascinating look at Ohio's forgotten historyTake a leisurely tour across the Buckeye State with author Randy McNutt to a massive swamp that swallowed pioneers' wagons, a haunted prison, a faded German utopia, a town where they still chase horse thieves, a marriage mecca, a village where Buster the dog voted Republican, and a myriad of abandoned "ghost towns" and small cities.In Lost Ohio McNutt, who has devoted his career to uncovering forgotten Ohio and its spirited inhabitants, continues his travels around the state in an attempt to discover vanishing traces of our lives-celebrations, motels, road art, drive-in theaters, traditions, inventions, folk tales, battlefields, and forts. His journeys rediscover missing pieces of our past that reflect a state of mind as well as a collection of landscapes. McNutt's vanishing Ohio is a place where rural America converges with small cities and fading history and disappearing culture, lost to burgeoning technology, global economy, technological immediacy, and time. He visits Fizzleville, Sodaville, and Footville; the hollow, metal globe that is the final resting place of Captain John C. Symmes, who theorized that the earth was hollow and access to the core was through the polar caps; the Mansfield Reformatory, Ohio's largest and toughest haunted house; Waynesville, home of the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival; and Harry Dearwester, the "carny" who guesses peoples' weight with 90 percent accuracy.This serious but offbeat journey around Ohio will appeal to those interested in heritage tourism, Americana, Ohio history and lore, and back roads and smalltown life.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Adventure

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 01 janvier 2006
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612777276
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 7 Mo

Extrait

lost Ohio

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Lost  Ohio More Travels into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives

Randy McNutt

The Kent State University Press ∙ Kent, Ohio

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© 2006 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 all rights reserved Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2006000385 isbn10: 0873388720 isbn13: 9780873388726 Manufactured in the United States of America

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library of congress cataloginginpublication data McNutt, Randy.  Lost Ohio : more travels into haunted landscapes, ghost towns, and forgotten lives / Randy McNutt.  p. cm.  Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn13: 9780873388726 (pbk. : alk. paper)∞ isbn10: 0873388720 (pbk. : alk. paper)∞ 1. Ohio—Guidebooks. 2. Ghost towns—Ohio. 3. Legends—Ohio. 4. Ohio—History, Local. I. Title. f489.3.m382006 917.710444—dc22 2006000385

British Library CataloginginPublication data are available.

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For my nephews, Zane and Ian Bauer

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People do not live in the present always, at one with it. They live at all kinds of and manners of distance from it, as dif ficult to measure as the course of planets. Fears and traumas make their journeys slanted, peripheral, uneven, evasive.  —Anaïs Nin

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Contents

Introduction: Forgotten Ohio xi

Part One: Big Dreams  1 The Life and Times of Fizzleville 3  2 Death of the Patriarch 10  3 Venice Times Two 20  4 Footville Is Where the Worlds Meet 33  5 Sodaville or Bust 40

Part Two: Lost Legends  6 Journey to the Center of Obscurity 53  7 Separate Spirits 66  8 The Song of Mount Nebo 79  9 A View from the Tower 90  10 Louisa’s Legacy 102  11 Travels in the Great Black Swamp 111  12 The Marrying Kind 128  13 The King of Ashville 137

Part Three: Vanishing Ohio  14 A Little Good News 147  15 The Riders of Bentonville 155  16 Satisfying an Agrarian Myth 167  17 Harry and the Midway 172  18 By Any Other Name:  Ghost Towns and Fabled Obscurities 179

Bibliography 202

Index 207

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