Chautauqua

Chautauqua

When you travel northeast from my hometown here in northeastern Ohio and head for the small village of Smithville, seven miles away, you will quickly find yourself in farmland. The surface of the earth rolls a little bit but is mostly level and has been farmed for many, many years. My county is a very agricultural one, maybe even the premier agricultural county of Ohio. A lot of corn and soybeans are grown around here along with some wheat, alfalfa and some other forage crops. Apple orchards are common. Two of the big crops grown northeast of my home are pumpkins and potatoes. A large farmer in this part of the county has turned some of his potato acres into a pumpkin farm and he does major business in the fall selling them for jack-o-lantern carving and pumpkin pie making. He also charges admission to his farm for people to walk through the corn mazes he creates every fall. But his primary crop is potatoes and he grows hundreds of acres of them each year.

Near the edge of one of his potato fields, not too far from the village of Smithville, lies a wooded area containing some ravines, a smallish stream, many acres of second-growth timber, briars and brambles and assorted downed trees, grapevine and brush-choked areas. The ground is rough and uneven. There used to be a village street that ran through this area but it was abandoned early in the 1900's and now is almost undetectable. This area is also supposed to contain the hiding place of a very interesting area which dates back to the end of the 19th century.

A place I've been hunting for many years.

Some history of the area might be enlightening:

Between the years of 1899 and 1915 this plot of ground was the location of the Point Breeze Chatauqua. Chautauquas evolved from an institution in Chautauqua, New York, where, in 1873, John Hale Vincent and Lewis Miller proposed to a Methodist Episcopal camp meeting that secular as well as religious instruction might be included in the summer outdoors Sunday-school institute. This institute evolved into an eight-week summer program offering adult courses in the arts, sciences and humanities. Thousands of people attended each year.

Other communities were inspired to form their own local Chautauquas and from 200-300 ended up being formed across the country. These local groups brought authors, explorers, musicians and political leaders to lecture and to entertain.

Point Breeze was one of those local Chautauquas. It was formed in 1899 as a 10-day event which was so successful on its initial year that it moved to a 16-day format the following year. Those 16 days encompassed 3 weekends. This local chatauqua had many important people lecture and entertain during its 17-year run including William Jennings Bryan, who gave his famous “Prince of Peace” oration, John R. Clarke – silver-tongued Irish orator, Fredrick A. Cook of North Pole fame, Ohio's governor Myron T. Herrick, Cy Young and George Sisler – baseball players, the Illinois Glee Club and many other important people and groups of the day. Admission was 10 – 15 cents.

From its beginning, the religious feature was stressed. Sunday morning worship services were held on the campgrounds for those who had traveled to and camped for the 16-day event each year. On “big” Sundays it's said you could count a thousand buggies parked in nearby fields which had brought the visitors to enjoy the music and the lectures. At the same time, several hacks brought people from Madisonburg off the Cleveland and Southwestern Interurban trollies and from Weilersville from the Pennsylvania trains.

Point Breeze stressed lectures, music and the outdoor life. It flourished in the days before radio and television when it was enjoyable to be outdoors on a pleasant summer afternoon or evening. Many families camped out on the chautauqua grounds, enjoying the outdoor life, the companionship of like-minded other folks along with the education and entertainment of the scheduled events. Baseball games were also common during the run of the chautauqua.

One of the greatest reasons that Point Breeze folded after its 1916 meeting was probably the automobile. Mobility made it possible to travel greater distances for entertainment of the same sort in Canton, Cleveland and Akron. Also, in 1916 the United States was gearing up to enter World War I which it did the following year.

After the demise of the chautauqua the ground was more-or-less abandoned. The years took their toll and the area is now virtually impassible.

I had heard the story of the Point Breeze Chautauqua back when I was getting into the hobby of metal detecting. I thought then that it might be a great place to hunt for early coins, so I took a number of trips out to that area. The part of the land that's still wooded is extremely rough with downed timber, many brushy patches massively overgrown with heavily-thorned briars and dense undergrowth. It's difficult to even get into the area now, let alone being able to swing a metal detector. I've visited this patch of woods a dozen times over the years and each trip was a difficult endeavor usually resulting in numerous bloody cuts and skin rips from the giant thornbushes. I found a few rusty horseshoes, many brass shotgun shell bases from the hunters in the woods over the years but not much else. I've poured over the maps of the area and read all I could about the chautauqua.

And I've dreamed about it. A lot.

I can just picture several thousand people wandering around in those woods, camping, playing baseball, sitting and listening to famous people and musicians.

And losing things. Coins, jewelry, all kinds of metallic items. Also remember that during that time period gold and silver were the coin of the realm. Read that once more. Gold and silver. If they dropped a single coin it would be valuable today, perhaps very valuable. Can you imagine several thousand people moving around in that area over 16 days and believe they didn't lose anything?

Nope. Me neither.

So somewhere in that couple hundred acres of woods and fields there has to be some good stuff in the ground. Perhaps a lot of good stuff!

Maybe I just haven't hit the correct thicket, the right slope, the patch of trees that grew over the honey holes where the coins lie? Maybe the woods have been logged and are now part of the massive potato fields that are adjacent to the woods and the coins have been keeping company with the spuds for a century or so. Maybe I need to go back there with my new detector and give 'er another try?

One gold coin would pay back decades of research and work. Just one.

I'll let you know if I do any good. I can almost see the gold piece laying in the soil now, waiting for me, calling me.

It's time to go get him!

Ohio Dirtfishin'

Ohio Dirtfishin'

You might recall from my last blog in which I talked about visiting an old abandoned amusement park not too far from the town where I live. And that it had closed in 1978 and had been enclosed by a fence and locked gate and deserted since that time. And that recently a development company had bought the old park, opened it up to the wrecking ball and bulldozer and was in the process of landscaping the grounds to hold new hotels, restaurants and other “improvements”.

The new owners of the property have been allowing visitors to walk the old grounds of the park on weekends and quite a number of folks have taken advantage of this opportunity to see what was left of the old Chippewa Lake Park. As I stated in the previous blog, there isn't much left there except a couple of the old rides (ferris wheel, roller coaster), some collapsed and/or burnt structures and a lot of bulldozed ground. The walk around the park was interesting and poignant, like visiting the grave of a distant loved one whom you remember from a long time ago.

While I was there I began to wonder about something. And that something was, “would I be able to use my metal detector in this park?” I found out soon enough that the answer to this query was “no”, but that I would be able to use it in in the old parking lot outside the park's gates.

Let me tell you a bit about my hobby of metal detecting or treasure hunting.

Or, as I heard it called on a video online, dirtfishin'.

I got into the treasure hunting hobby many years ago and have been the proud owner of a half-dozen metal detectors, give or take, over the years. I've found scads of items while detecting from class rings and old coins to junk by the pound. I'd like to have a penny for all the pull tabs and screw caps I've pulled out of the ground over the years. But for every couple dozen pieces of junk I'd dug there also came the occasional ring, coin, key, token and other interesting and/or valuable item.

It's been a fun hobby.

In recent years I'd let the pastime slide as other interests attracted my attention. My latest detector, probably a decade or more old, sadly hanging on it's hook in the basement, had seen many miles of work over the years and was an antique compared to the new ones available today. It was also suffering from some poor engineering in the battery compartment where a number of the spring clips that hold the batteries there were broken or missing. I'd jury-rigged some aluminum foil to take up some of the slack, but the detector was on his last legs.

So I had just toured the old amusement park and had eyeballed the now accessible dirt parking lot. And the old itch to start looking around for new treasures had started growing in me again.

So I pulled the old detector off its hook in the basement and tried getting it to work. I spent a few hours and realized that it was a losing battle. It was almost impossible to make the batteries “tight” enough to power the machine.

I was discouraged.

But then I remembered I had set some “extra” money aside for “this and that” and I thought, “maybe I could get a new detector with part of it?” I talked it over with the wife and she was OK with the idea.

So two weeks ago I drove to my nearest metal detector dealer and spent a fascinating hour with him looking at his selection of metal detectors. He had specimens from White's, Fisher, Bounty Hunter, Garret's, MineLab and other manufacturers. He went over the features of each one and gave me a basis to make a decision. Finally I picked one out . It was a White's Prizm 6T. This was a brand-new detector put out by White's that wasn't even in the catalogs yet.

It looked perfect for what I was interested in.

Modern hobby metal detectors are very interesting machines. First off they are very light, unlike the old ones where weight was a definite drawback for long hunts. This one was about 3 pounds. The electronics part was in a small box with an LCD display that sat on top an “s” rod with the search coil at one end and the battery box on the other. You held a padded grip in the center of the “s” rod and a padded forearm rest sat naturally under your forearm. The battery pack counterbalanced the coil on the other end. It was comfortable to swing and felt much like an extension of your own arm. The display showed a lot of information as you swung the machine and went over a metal target. It showed probable target (iron, nickels, pull tabs, screw caps, zinc penny, copper penny, dime, quarter, half and silver plus the range for jewelry), a value from – 80 to + 90 and the probable depth of a coin-sized target. It also generated an audible tone to coincide with the coil passing over the target. The tone would be higher in pitch for the better targets. You also had a pinpoint (all metal) mode where you could narrow the area where the target was as you slowly swung the coil. You could also “notch out” certain targets so they wouldn't tone alert or show on the LCD – stuff like iron and aluminum junk. You could also increase the detector's sensitivity and, if necessary, set it for salt conditions if you were detecting on the beach or in a desert area.

It was a beautiful machine and I was the happy new owner of it.

Last Saturday I took this new tool up to the defunct Chippewa Lake Park parking lot and gave it a tryout.

Let me describe the current condition of the parking lot up there. It's now a field of approximately 9 acres. It's been logged and the trees removed, but the stumps are still there. Some of the area has been bulldozed to knock down the scrub and brush. It's a rough area to work – the ground's uneven and full of ruts, roots and thousands of stumps from 1 inch wide to maybe 10-12 inches. And many other treasure hunters have been working this field. Everywhere you walked you could see evidence of holes having been dug and “something” removed – trash or treasure could not be determined.

I started around noon. I worked for about 10 minutes and received a decent target signal. When I dug down I recovered a General Motors car key. I thought that was an OK target and kept on detecting. I was getting lots of bent-over pull tabs that were ringing in as coin targets. Lots of them. With the occasional flattened aluminum screw cap thrown in that rang in as a good target also. The discriminator in the machine wasn't perfect and some of these targets looked quite similar to nickels or rings, at least to its electronic senses. At the end of 3 hours I was without a single coin and getting discouraged. A car key and a large lead fishing sinker were my “good” finds. I took a short break and drank a cola in my car. Another hunter was getting ready to go out and I talked to her for a few minutes. She stated she had been there the previous week and had found a silver dime and a number of modern coins. I had also talked to a couple hunters the previous Friday and they'd stated that there'd been numbers of old silver coins recovered from that field over the past number of weeks. So I knew there had been good targets found which boded well for further recoveries. After finishing my drink and resting a bit I started out again. I kept telling myself that this was a 9 acre field and that amount of ground had over 56 million square inches, any of which could hide a coin.

Lots of places still left to search.

I soon found my first interesting find, which was a flattened penny with the Lord's Prayer engraved on it, probably from a souvenir machine in the park in the old days. Then I hit a few modern coins. Then a wheat penny dated 1914. Things were looking up a bit. I was getting weary and told myself just another half-hour and I'd have to quit. Soon I got a very interesting signal. I'd learned over the years what a good signal sounds like in my headphones and this one was definitely a goodie. High number, indication of quarter or better, a repeatable signal from different directions and a smooth, smooth sound. It's hard to describe, but when you've dug some nice finds you remember what they sound like in the headphones. This was one of them.

I commenced to dig carefully in the root-filled ground. At about seven inches down the glint of the reeded edge of a silver coin rewarded my diligence and acknowledged that my guesses as to the quality of the target were correct. It was a 1951-D Washington Quarter. It came out of the ground in the same condition it went in probably 50 years earlier – shiny and clean-looking. Unless the ground is very acid, most silver coins come out of the ground looking untarnished.

I was happy with the find and content to call it a day. I'm out of condition to be swinging a detector and digging holes for hour after hour and my muscles were reminding me of that. I had also neglected my sunblock and hat leading to some quite noticeable sunburn. But...

I'd got my first silver for the year and for the new detector! I was satisfied.

Oh yes. I'm going back this coming weekend, too.

Gotta be some more in there. Sitting quietly in their snug little dirt beds, waiting for my coil to pass over them so they can sing their song of silver to my ears.

I can't wait!

The Ghost on Main

The Ghost on Main

Last Saturday was a gem of a day in this part of northeast Ohio. It was a bit chilly and the sky was vast and blue, with only the whisper of high, high cirrus clouds painting the upper reaches of the air. The still-strengthening spring sun lit the earth like a spotlight from the azure heights and every object in view boasted an aura of silvery-gold. It was a day in early April that almost made the gloom of the long preceding winter worth it.

The wife and I were on a bit of a trip on that marvelous Saturday afternoon to a small town north of where we live. We had been invited to share in the surprise 85^th birthday party in honor of the mother of a dear friend. While making plans to attend the party I thought it might be an ideal time to also visit a place I hadn't been to for over 45 years. It was only a few miles up the road from the birthday site, so I thought we'd stop there before returning home.

Why did I want to visit that place on that day? Well...

While at work recently I'd heard talk of a big construction project commencing in a village close to the city I worked in. A plot of land in that village was being cleared to make room for the construction of a four-story Hilton Hotel along with cabins and boathouses on the adjacent lake front. Then, in a following phase of construction, a conference center, restaurants and retail shops were slated to be constructed. Then, after that, possibly a Japanese-style spa, a wellness center and an accredited culinary institute would also be built.

It wasn't so much the development of the land that sat on the edge of Chippewa Lake that interested me as much as the previous use of the land now being cleared for that development.

That site, for exactly one hundred years, had been the home of the Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. And this park, which had been closed and abandoned since 1978, now had its gate open (to allow the dozer's access) and, on weekends, was allowing people to wander through the nearly-cleared park once again without the worry of a trespassing violation.

The Park was established in 1878 on 90 acres abutting Chippewa Lake in Medina County, Ohio. In the 1880's the Miss Chippewa Steamboat operated from a dock at the Park and the first roller coaster in the area was built there. It was a primitive contraption compared to the modern ones you see nowadays, by being a single car on a narrow gauge track with one steep drop. After each ride the workers had to manually push the car back to the top to pick up the next load of Victorian merry-makers. The park's upkeep was minimal in those early days and the liquor flowed freely. The park soon deteriorated with trash strewn everywhere and drunks all over. In 1898 a new owner made many improvements to the park. He first outlawed liquor, then brought in a carousel, which was a major craze in those days, along with many other improvements. Later, this owner's son inherited the park and saw it into the Roaring Twenties, when Chippewa's bandstand hosted live music seven nights a week and frequently sold out every show. It was the place to go in those days.

Here's some facts about Chippewa Lake Park you might find interesting:

It is one of the few natural lakes in Ohio and was not created by damming. The 385-acre lake was created by the glaciers that carved the basin the lake sits in around 12,000 years ago.

The first radio broadcast of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra was at Chippewa Lake in the summer of 1933.

Jungle Larry, animal trainer, expedition leader, conservationist and local legend, was at the park every weekend until 1964 when he moved to another well-known Ohio amusement park, Cedar Point.

In the “Swinging Sixties” there was an annual fan appreciation day held at the park that was hosted originally by WIXY radio 1260 AM and later by WHLO radio 640 AM. They booked some of the biggest stars in rock 'n roll to appear at the bandstand there in the park, including: Tommy James and the Shondells, The Outsiders, Music Explosion, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Neil Diamond, Left Bank, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Chylds. There was also Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and Glass Harp.

The price of admission in the rock 'n roll days? Fifty-cents to a buck and a half. Earlier on it was only a dime.

A horror movie, “Closed for the Season”, was filmed at the abandoned park in 2008. It should be released sometime later this year.

After a wonderful time at my friend's mother's birthday party, the wife and I headed up the road toward Chippewa Lake. I suppose the drive took 15 minutes.

As we turned from Lake Road onto Main Street, the short road that ended at the gates to the park, we could see that we were not the only people on that bright Saturday interested in getting a close look at the old park. There were maybe 20-25 cars parked near the old gate and we could see some people wandering inside the fence at the site. We parked our car, grabbed our camera and walked up to the old entrance gates. A man near there was telling us “visitors” that we were allowed to go in and look around, but to stay out of the buildings. They were unsafe.

As we walked past the gate in the fence that had kept people out of the site since 1978, the first thing we noticed were the bulldozer tracks. They were all over. The trees and some of the brush had already been removed leaving lots of stumps and churned up dirt. Most of the buildings that had been there from the amusement park days were either crumbling ruins or were charred from vandalism fires over the long decades of neglect. On the hillside to our right as we walked up the hill was the remains of the grand ballroom. A bored teen vandal had torched the place in 2002 and most of the building had been lost in the fire. There was still even a faint hint of charcoal smell in the air from that old fire.

On our left as we entered the park sat the Big Dipper roller coaster. Although this ride was in ruin, the tracks were still held aloft by the tough old timbers that had held them for so many years. Trees sprouted between the ties of the tracks in places and you could see that some of the railings had rotted away over the years. Further into the park to the left you could still see the loading/unloading platform for the coaster, the handrails to direct the lines of excited riders still standing in places, even some paint still on the old boards here and there. If you closed your eyes and listened very closely you could almost hear the faint screams of the coaster riders as they started down that first steep hill.

Moving further into the park the view opened up to the lake ahead and a number of collapsing buildings near the waterfront. Boat ride pier? Boathouse? Possibly parts of the old bathhouse. Maybe. It was hard to tell now.

About halfway toward the lake and a bit to the south stood the old ferris wheel. It still stood on its vee-shaped stanchion, looking as if a slight touch or even a stiff breeze might cause it to start turning again. But when you approached closer you saw a large tree had sprouted and grown up completely through the wheel. Its turning days were long over.

If you looked down, from place to place you could see the narrow-gauge tracks that used to allow the old steam engine and tour train to travel around the park. They were mostly gone, but if you looked closely you could see them rising out of the earth for a couple dozen feet then descending again into the ground.

Not too far from the entrance sat the remains of the Tumble-Bug ride. It still even had the four round cars sitting on the tracks, looking like, with a little brush clearing, some oil and some electricity, the thing could start right up. The stories I've heard also say there were only four Tumble-Bugs built in the world, three in the U.S. and one in Europe, and one of them was sitting right there in front of us.

There were other sojourners wandering the grounds that Saturday. Most of them gray-bearded men and gray-haired women, contemporaries of the wife and I. We pilgrims passed each other, looked in each other's eyes and saw a kinship, a sharing and stirring of old memories and common experiences. We'd nod and say, “Been a long time” or “Lots of memories” or “Man, would you just look at this place!” Our aged eyes moved over the grounds, recording, measuring the present to the ghost of the past that lived in our memories. Sometimes they jibed in odd and interesting ways. Most of the times you drew a blank. You'd say to yourself, “I remember this and I remember that but where is this now and where the hell is that?”

I remember going there as a child in the early '50's. I have pictures my dad took that chronicle my attendance there. I remember going there on dates in the mid-'60's. I still remember the girl's names. Dad even talked about visiting there back in the 30's and early 40's in his childhood, before the war. And my grandfather even mentioned it in passing a couple times as how he rode the trolley there in the old, old days.

Chipp had been there for a long time.

But today it was akin to going to a funeral. You looked at the deceased and saw who it was but also who it wasn't. The essence of the individual was gone. All that was left was the husk of what once was, an empty vessel.

Chippewa Lake Park is now like that deceased friend. It's still there. It has the same name. It resides on the same 90 acres it's always sat on. But it's not really there anymore. It's a ghost, a shadow, a mirage of its former self.

It sits in the sunlight and the starlight, in the rain and the snow and the echoing years, dreaming its long, long dreams of the long-ago times. It waits for the sounds of the turnstiles in the old ticket booths to turn again, for the excited voices of the people coming into the park again, for the hum of rides getting up to speed and the shrieks and laughter of the people riding them again. It knows that its last days are here and that, in a few weeks or a few months, what it was will no longer be.

But, of Chippewa Lake Park, this I will certainly believe:

On particular days in the future, years and years in the future, from certain hotel room windows or from the front doors of new beach-side cabins, it will still be possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of a gleaming new roller coaster full of riders roaring with screams of delight. If you squint your eyes a bit out the window of the restaurant you're sitting in you might even catch a sudden sight of a brightly-lit ferris wheel turning and turning in a star-filled summer night. And if you pay close attention as you wander through the newly landscaped grounds of the hotel or school or whatever might be eventually built there, the faint scent of hot dogs, caramel apples and cotton candy will be easily recognized wafting in the breezes from some unknown origin.

And if you listen closely you're likely to hear a rock 'n roll classic come trickling and echoing into your ears from a ghostly bandstand just around an unseen corner from where you are standing.

The ghost on Main Street will live a long, long time, both in our memories and in our hearts.

May she not go quietly into that dark night.