Athens Ohio Archives

July 20, 2014

Man Walks on Moon

Wife Lila and I, newlyweds, watched the moon landing from a bedroom in this apartment at 157-1/2 Morris Ave., in Athens, Ohio. The bedroom was so tiny that the BED barely fit it it. It was cooled by a beat-up old air conditioner that Dad had pulled out of one of his construction trailers.

To call it a dump would be an overstatement. I couldn’t afford a police monitor for the apartment, so I’d park my car where this blue one is, and alligator-clip a pair of wires to the monitor in the car, which was attached to a speaker in the living room.

The area above the garages was divided into two apartments, the two windows at the left were for the living room; the two higher windows to their right were the kitchen. The other two sets of windows belonged to another tenant.

When we moved out, the landlord, a local lawyer, said he was going to keep our damage deposit because of A, B and C. When I complained that those things existed when we moved in, he said, “Sorry, Kid, you should have made note of them.”

About a year later, the lawyer gave me a call. “You shot some photos of a car vs. train crash that could be very helpful to my client,” he said, like we were old pals.

Trust me, I got our deposit back on that deal.

Bob painted the apartment

Photo partner Bob Rogers moved into the place when we moved out. He shot the landlord a deal: you pay for the paint, and I’ll provide the labor. What the landlord didn’t know was that Bob planned to paint the whole interior in a flat black so he could use the walls as photo backgrounds.

I wonder if the person who is living there today ever managed to cover up that black paint?

July 10, 2014

Beer Comes to Ohio University

Curator Jessica called to ask if she could use one of my photos to promote the Athens Country Historical Society & Museum’s Historic Tavern Tours this week. It’s all part of the 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week Festival, not that university students need any excuse to quaff beer. [Miz Jessica explained to me later I was wrong. Brew Week was cooked up to help the bars out during the slow summer season when the student population drops off.]

Kenny Kerr pours the beers

It was a chilly February day in 1969 when Kenny Kerr (the guy with the shiny hairdo) of Kerr Distrubuting poured the first beers to be served in Ohio University’s Ohio Room in Baker Center.

You had your choice of Stroh’s, Stroh’s or Stroh’s. And, it was low-test 3.2 beer. Low-point beer, as it is more accurately called, is a beer that contains 3.2% alcohol by weight.

Since it could be sold to 18-year-olds, it eliminated having to determine if a drinker was 18 or 21. I don’t think I ever saw anyone carded at the Ohio Room, probably because most college students were at least 18.

Theory about binge drinking

When I was in Athens over Halloween, I debated going uptown to shoot the costumed pub crawl festivities, but opted out because (a) it was cold, (b) parking was a problem and (c) one of the OU Post’s former editors from my era said, “I got tired of having my shoes puked on.”

He went on to explain that we lived in a different era: we didn’t have any money in 1969. Students would pool their cash with a few friends, head over to the Ohio Room for a couple of pitchers of 3.2 beer, do some socializing, then go home. Now it’s all about large quantities of booze, he said, and the streets are filled with inebriated students engaged in inappropriate behavior, some of which finds its way onto the Internet.

Pouring beer like water

Here’s a gallery of photos of the day when Stroh’s beer poured like water – and according to some purists – tasted about the same. Stroh’s, by the way, had an interesting history. It started as a regional beer, then ended up as the third largest brewer in the country. It even marketed a Stroh’s ice cream. A whole bunch of market changes caused problems for the company, though, and in 1999, after being in business for 149 years, it sold its labels to Pabst Brewing Company and Miller Brewing Company.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

June 18, 2014

Beware Curators with Cookies

My Road Warriorettes have been coming through in a big way. A big box of cookies from Curator Jessica from the Athens County Historical Society and Museum arrived last week. This week it was a package of the best peanut brittle in the world that Anne Rodgers picked up on her way through Marianna, FL., on her move to Texas.

I got a text from Jessica this afternoon: “Awake?” She knows that I am a frequent napper, so she always checks before calling. When I gave her the OK, she made some small talk, then said, “OK, now for the bad news.”

I wondered if she was going to tell me that this sign was for her. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking in a new Curator Jessica. No, it wasn’t that.

No chance to take it easy

Then, I figured we had been turned down for a grant we had applied for. Nope, No news on that front.

“We’re taking down your Friends on Robinson Road exhibit on Monday, and we hoped you had something that we could replace it with.”

The first time I met Curator Jessica, I was about three hours out of Athens when she called to ask if I could pull off a major exhibit on Martin Luther King’s National Day of Mourning in three weeks. I liked her spirit, and we did it.

Three weeks is doable, but three days is stretching it, cookies or no cookies.

A tailor in 1968

We agreed that one that focused on Athens downtown landmarks, particularly where I could contrast photos from the late ’60s and early ’70s with contemporary pictures would be something quick to pull off. That’s why you get to see tailor Frank Richey looking our over Court street on December 21, 1968.

Frank’s building in 2013

Frank is long gone, but the building his shop was in survives.

So, instead of a normal post, you’re going to see a huge data dump of the photos we’re considering. We figure the 100-plus photos here will cut down to about 30 when all is said and done. Not shown are two panoramas I shot last fall. They are going to be almost four feet wide by about 10 inches tall.

Waiting for Anne to call

If I see Anne’s Caller ID show up on my phone, I’m going to be slow to pick up. No telling what she’s going to want me to do for my package of peanut brittle.

Athens, Ohio, photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then navigate through it using your arrow keys.

May 14, 2014

A Photographer’s Dream

It was finally time to put Athens in the rearview mirror. Friend Anne and I were waiting for Curator Jessica to come back from fighting the Civil War over in Marietta for a bunch of school kids (the Yanks won again), so we headed out to pick up some more road food and for me to get cash for the trip. It was seriously warm: the temperature was 85, with a heat index of 89.

As I turned down State Street, Anne asked, “Did you see the blow-up swimming pool in front of that house? It looked like it had a couple of college girls in it.”

I glanced back and acknowledged her vision acuity: “I’d have killed for something like that in 1969,” I muttered.

‘The girls? I thought you were married by 1969,” she noted.

Taking the pressure off

“No, not the girls, the chance to knock off a piece of feature art at the start of the shift. Having something in the bag for the next day takes the pressure off.”

With that, I did a U-turn and headed back for some easy blog content.

Kayla Wickersham, Dayton, and Mallory Widmar, from a suburb of Cleveland, had just moved into the house behind them a couple of days ago so they could start their senior year at Ohio University. Feeling like I was back at a freshman mixer, I asked the usual lame question, “What’s your major?” I didn’t write the answer down, and I retreated before asking for their signs.

The guys in the first photo had been talking to the gals when I walked up, but I must have spooked them. They leaned on a parking meter for a few minutes, but then meandered off.

This third guy wandered up just as I was starting to cross the street to climb into my car. Before I could even get my seatbelt fastened, he had jumped into the pool with the girls. The bait, clearly, was working.