IT'S THAT SIMPLE: If anyone wonders why "Views" doesn't document many current activities which happen in and around Vermilion, O. it is primarily because most are well documented by other local media. Like the coverage of the Olympic games in China (mit 400 gazillion pix of swimmers swimming and / or 300 gazillion ping-pong players ping-ponging) how many pix of people schmoozing at some social event, or running down a street in a pair of expensive tights with a number on their back does it take to allow folks to grasp the intent of photographer and / or publisher? For good or ill it is a fact that owing to the advent and availability of the digital camera documentation of these events is become superfluous.
The pic of the shale cliffs just above Vermilion's Olympic Club is not superfluous. What it is is an anomaly - an aberration.
No malice intended - I have often said that if one were to give a digital camera to a monkey there is a very good possibility that that monkey would take at least one reasonably good photograph.
It's that simple.
"History being made..."
MAKING HISTORY: These shadows were captured in the drive beside and behind The Vermilion News building on Grand Street (in Vermilion). The auto, decorated with pages of that newspaper, was apparently going to be used in a parade. This may have been at the centennial celebration in 1937.
I am unable to determine if the young woman on the right is Alice (Roscoe) Lindsay or my mother - Ella (Roscoe) Tarrant. But it is one of them. The young lady on the left is currently unknown (to me). The garage to the right of the photo (one can see the open door) was more of a carriage barn than garage was eventually razed.
Methinks the signs on the auto (i.e. "News Today is Tomorrow's History" and "Read Today's History The Vermilion News") very much describe a partial role of newspapers in our society. While newspapers are currently experiencing a decline in subscriptions across our nation they are necessary. Neither radio nor television is capable of filling in the necessary details of current events. And the internet as a medium is, by nature, far too subjective a news source. (As can be witnessed by my commentary.)
"Tiny"
B.N. (BEFORE NASCAR):
It may be hard for some young people to believe but there was a time when NASCAR (National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing) didn’t exist. That which eventually became a sport with one of the (if not the) largest fan bases in the world was born out of the moonshine stills in the American Southeast. After W.W.II “stock” (factory equipped) cars were modified to carry bootleg cargo and, in the process, outrun the local gendarmes. Competition among the drivers and mechanics of these vehicles quite naturally drove them (no pun intended) to test their skills in a venue beyond that required of their illegitimate occupations. It has been observed that the bootleggers’ raced on Sunday afternoons and then used the same car to haul moonshine on Sunday night. And where did they race? Until NASCAR was born on February 15, 1948 in Daytona, FLA the stocks usually ran on oval dirt tracks someone had crudely mapped out in farmers’ fields throughout the American countryside.
Until local resident, Jim Smith, shared several snapshots of some local denizens who were early participants in the sport of stock car racing (sans bootlegging) I had almost forgotten how popular it once was in Vermilion, Ohio.
The fellow in the accompanying photo is Jack "Tiny" Balogh. Jack has been gone now for some years, but this is exactly how I remember him. He was a dark, handsome, quiet man with an athletic build. I’ve no idea as to the reason he was nicknamed "Tiny" for he always seemed to be of average height to me. But then again my memory of him reaches back some 50 years when I was but a whippersnapper of ten, and he was in his early twenties.
When I first knew Jack he lived with his mother in a very small house next to Main Street beach across from F.W. Wakefield’s Harborview home (now the GLHS Marine Museum). Vermilion native, Bruce Eldridge, recalls that, "The house Tiny lived in was like a beach house."
Bruce also reflected on Jack’s interest in a variety of sports. He remembers "seeing a large Navy surplus black rubber life boat leaning against the side of the house when (he) used to swim at the public beach.” And also, “When I was in High School I would water ski with Tiny off Linwood Beach and played hockey with him on the Vermilion river next to Parsons fish house. The January Sunday afternoon hockey games would draw 20 to 30 people. It would be 9 degrees and we would be sweating."
Given all this it is not surprising that Jack would also have an interest in stock car racing when it came along. But he was always in fair company. The fellows I remember, offhand, as also being early racing enthusiasts had last names like Seals and Gerber and their many friends and relatives. And there were many.
One of the various speedways they raced was Sharon Speedway just across the Ohio State line in Sharon PA. It may very well be the location of this photo of Jack with Vermilion stock car #55. Take a good look at the background. The hay bales there were not there to serve as bumpers for the dirt race track. They were part of a farmer’s field. Today the Sharon Speedway is a NASCAR sanctioned asphalt track. And the cars that race there are a long way from a 1938 Ford modified by a group of good friends in a little garage in Vermilion, Ohio. But be that as it is, I’ll bet it was a great deal more fun.
Ref: www.nascar-info.net/nascar_history_1.html; The Earl; Special Thanks to: Jim Smith and Bruce Eldridge
7/17/05
10:50 AM
"You can trust your car
to the man who wears the star..."
WALKER MOTORS:Six years after entrepreneurs Howard Coffin, Joseph Hudson, Roy Chapin, and George W. Dunham, et. al. founded the Hudson Motor Company a man by the name of E.G. Walker began to sell the autos they manufactured in Vermilion.
The Hudson Company made a number of positive contributions to the design of these early machines. They were among the first to produce closed (as opposed to convertible-type) car models (1911). They moved the steering wheel to the left side of the cars; the hand control(s) to the inside and center of each vehicle; and introduced the self starter and dual brake systems to the industry. In 1916 they revolutionized the auto manufacturing world when they introduced the first balanced crankshaft, thus ushering in what automobile historians know as The Age of the Super-Six. And then, in 1932, came their piece-de-resistance; the Essex-Terraplane. It was a powerful hill climber, fast (it set speed records), and it was thrifty.
When Pearl Roscoe took the accompanying photo of the E. G. Walker Motor Sales building for advertising purposes in 1937 sales of the Hudson Terraplane automobile was brisk. So was business at Walker’s Texaco gas pumps along Liberty Street. (Needless to say the Occupational Safety folks would have a coronary problem if such a condition existed today.)
This building should be familiar to most Vermilionites. It is now the Ritter Library Annex. But I digress. Prior to the time Walker built his garage here the site was occupied by the Decker Livery (a detail I personally view as being extremely ironic as well as the electric train rails that can be seen running in front of the building). When this photo was taken the building just to the left (west) of the garage was Fred Becker’s blacksmith’s shop. To the right (east and unseen) was Becker’s two story home. Next to it, on the corner of Liberty and Grand Streets, was G. P. Martin’s Pontiac dealership. And directly across the street from Walker’s place was Stone’s Chevrolet and Oldsmobile dealership.
Mr. Walker’s dealership thrived until World War II when Hudson suspended new auto manufacturing and used their factories to build aircraft parts and huge engines for the Navy. After the war (1948) Hudson had come back with a completely new concept in auto design that, however influential in the industry, never allowed them to recover the popularity they had previously enjoyed with the Terraplane.
During the caesura two of Walker’s sons (Gene and Dick) took over and formed the Walker Brothers (Chrysler) Dodge-Plymouth Dealership. Vermilion’s current court bailiff, Dick Baker, was the last auto dealer to occupy the building.
It may be that the building seems, today, an unremarkable structure. But in 1937 it was a state-of-the-art auto garage and showroom selling, showing, and repairing state-of-the-art vehicles. But like the livery it replaced and the motorcars once sold there, supplanting the electric trains and horse drawn wagons and carriages that long ago sped along West Liberty Street in Vermilion Village, it is not gone, but is forever changed.
ed. comment: This building is slated to be demolished to make way for a new addition to Vermilion's Ritter Public Library. Like the livery it replaced it will soon be gone and forever forgotten. C'est la vie.
4/10/05
6:10 PM
DON'T JUST SIT THERE WITH A MOUSE IN YOUR HAND - BUY SOMETHING FOR YOUR DOG:
Take a cyber visit through my on-line store.
This enterprise is new to me so I don't know what to expect in the way of response - but it is actually very nice. Over the next weeks and months I will be adding (and deleting) different items with different pix that folks might like to use for gifts or just have for themselves.
So take a tour of the shop. Tell me how you like it and what you might like to see on some items. I'm always open for business and for reasonable requests and suggestions. If nothing else just do a little window shopping. It's fun!
VERMILION VIEWS GIFT SHOP
Also note that all the video (MP4) podcasts (where used) are done in the "Quicktime" format.
Stay with me on this project. Things will get better. (I pro-mize.)
NOTE NOTE:Past podcasts are no longer available in the on-line archive. They just take up too much disk space. But if one really, really, really wants to acquire a copy of a past cast it can be had by contacting moi - and I will place it on a disc and send it to ye for a minimal fee.
Incidentally, "Viewer" Larry Hohler who is a big part of the Hope Home in Kenya wants folks to know that the children they are assisting are safe - midst the turmoil raging around them in that country. Methinks all "Viewers" should take a good look (go to the links section of "Views" for a virtual tour) at how the project really, really helps underprivileged children in this 3rd world nation. It is sincerely a worthwhile effort. And if ye can spare a few bucks it can certainly go a long way.
If you're looking for my old links section (pictured) I've replaced it with a pull-down menu (visible in the small box next to the word "Go"). If you're looking for links to more Vermilion history check that menu.