[35mm Ohio] A Barn, a Cheesebarn, a Beetle, a Bridge, and a Bomb
Views along the roadside documented on a few recent trips with a Pentax K1000 and Kodak Ultramax 400.
Parts of this collection began on February 14, fourteen years to the day of when I first explored Surf Cincinnati and was first learning to use a camera. A few years earlier, in 2003, Ohio celebrated its bicentennial. In the years leading up to the celebration, artist Scott Hagan painted a graphic to commemorate the occasion on a barn in each of the state’s 88 counties. According to the Ohio Memory Project, Hagan traveled an estimated 65,000 miles and utilized 650 gallons of paint. The final barn was painted in 2002 and all but one survived until the bicentennial (Ottowa County’s being destroyed by a tornado in 1998). The barn in the opening photograph represents Clinton County and can be easily seen while traveling North on Interstate 71.
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| - Truck stop in Bellville. |
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| - Volkswagen Beetle partially buried in the ground, Haysville. |
I’d long passed signs for “Grandpa’s Cheesebarn and Sweetie’s Jumbo Chocolates,” but had never made a stop. While looking for I-71 after photographing that half-sunken Volkswagen, I had to pass right by. It was convenient for both a couple photographs and an additional Valentine’s Day gift.
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| - Scene from the cheese and chocolate complex, Ashland. |
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| - Cheesebarn, Ashland. |
A few days later, I had switched to a new roll and was back on the eventual road towards Cincinnati.
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| - East Cleveland street. |
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| - Deer in East Cleveland residential neighborhood. |
I had gone to East Cleveland to photograph this place...
...
Keeping with the theme of photographing abandoned structures, I also made my way to the forgotten Hillandale Bridge.
Hidden in the woods near Euclid, the story goes that this bridge was built to connect with a housing development. After The Great Depression took its toll, the development was never completed and the bridge remained unused.
Other frames made in the ensuing weeks:
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| - View of I-76W from a rest stop in Rootstown. |
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| - “Kaboom!” by John Troxell and Christopher Diehl, Waterloo Arts District, Cleveland. |
According to a postal worked we passed on the street, the “Kaboom” is a reference to a mob related bombing that took place here in 1975. Irish-American mobster Danny Greene, the inspiration behind the loosely adapted 2011 film Kill the Irishman, had lived in a house on the now vacant lot. As Cleveland Magazine described in a February 2011 article: “...the 41-year old gangster and his 18-year-old girlfriend rode the collapsing bedroom down like an elevator” after “...a bomb crashed through his downstairs window.” The magazine goes on to detail Greene’s response to the attempted assassination: “He sat outside sunning himself—shirtless to show off his broad, bronzed chest and the Celtic cross dangling from his neck—and, with a TV camera rolling, dared all his bomb-throwing enemies to come get him."
They did, two years later in 1977, when he was killed by a car bomb after leaving the dentist.
Other views from the Waterloo Arts District:
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| - Building adorned with work by Camille Walala. |
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| - Mural and Sunoco. |