YESTERDAY WE VISITED THREE U.S. Small Towns residing in time-machines of sorts. Today in Part 2, dailypassport’s Marissa Kozma describes three more of these towns, one in my native Ohio, one in Massachusetts whence my undergraduate years, and the last in Texas, a state I think of these days as a less than habitable drive-through.
Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Marissa notes, “Incorporated as a village in 1844, Chagrin Falls is an idyllic Midwestern town. Though it sits just 20 miles east of Cleveland, it looks like it belongs in the film Back to the Future instead…. On Main Street, visitors can peruse storybook shops selling local art and antiques, and admire historic properties near the town’s namesake waterfall.”
Chagrin Falls. Image by Sophal Yan from Natural Ohio Adventures.
Full Disclosure: Despite Chagrin Falls being 20 miles east of Cleveland, and my spending much of my youth in Cleveland’s east side and eastern suburbs, I don’t believe I’ve ever been to this charming town. Google Maps indicates it’s 7.1 miles from Ursuline College, where I taught part-time whilst in grad school, 8.1 miles from where I lived in Mayfield Heights at the time, and 12.8 miles, more or less in the same direction (south), of Willoughby Hills where I worked part-time for a pal’s pizza restaurant during summers off when teaching at the College of the Virgin Islands on St. Thomas.
I cannot speak with authority, but doubt that Mario Fazio’s, which still thrives on U.S. Route 6 in Willoughby Hills, has ever had another math Ph.D. pearl diving dishes and monitoring pizza ovens.
Speaking of U.S. Route 6, I can note it has appeared recently here at SimanaitisSays in “An Anglophilic Recommendation.”
Plymouth, Massachusetts. Marissa recounts, “There’s perhaps no better place to take in America’s colonial past than Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Mayflower first docked 400 years ago. Today, the quaint New England town is home to cranberry farms, the famous Plymouth Rock, historic mills, colonial homesteads, and other well-preserved nods to the nation’s past.”
Approaching historic downtown Plymouth. Image from Visiting New England by Eric Hurwitz.
Not to divert from Marissa’s choices yet again, though I’ve been through Plymouth on my way to Cape Cod, I found more to write about in another Massachusetts town rich in the past, Salem. In its favor it has appeared twice—count them, twice!—here at SimanaitisSays: “Witch Hunt? I’ll Show You a Real Witch Hunt” and “You Go, Grrls!—19th Century Massachusetts.”
The first is self-explanatory, given the term’s recurrence ad nauseam by a current presidential candidate (the Queens Hoodlum, the one with 34 felonies (but who’s counting?)).
The second citation is considerably more uplifting: It’s about the book The Peabody Sisters of Salem, by Louise Hall Tharp, Little, Brown, 1950.
From left to right, Elizabeth Palmer Peabody (1804 – 1894), Mary Peabody Mann (1806 – 1887), Sophia Peabody Hawthorne (1809 – 1871). Images from The History of Women and Education.
“The sisters,” I wrote, “were raised by forward-thinking parents amidst New England’s Transcendentalism, a movement that stressed the inherent goodness of people and nature. The three received home education far beyond the norm for early 19th-century women.” Or, I might add, far beyond the low-information types today.
Gee. I seem to have drifted off-topic. Shall we call it a “weave”? Or just admit that I like Salem better than Plymouth.
Terlingua, Texas. Marissa says, “Those who take the long drive to Big Bend National Park in West Texas shouldn’t miss Terlingua. This former mining town was founded by the Chisos Mining Company in 1903 after the discovery of cinnabar, an ore that contains mercury. Now a ghost town, the remote village is home to just a few restaurants, galleries, gift shops, and bars — but that doesn’t deter visitors eager to get a glimpse into the region’s early 20th-century past.”
Sorry, Marissa. What with the Lone Star State’s current practices on women’s right, voting rights, and general backwardness, here’s the nearest about which I prefer to write: “Not Just Another Indicted B.S. Artist.”
But thanks, Marissa, for rekindling other trippin’ memories. ds
© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2024
