Tag: Ohio

Carpooling

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Bob Stratton tells of driving home from work in Lordstown when a thunderstorm rolled up:

“One of the fellas in the car said, ‘Hey, the car behind us is sure coming comin’ up fast with its brights on.’

“It was no car. It was rolling lightnin’ that hit us.”

They drove on to a diner. “I smell something singed,” the waitress said.

“If that’s all it is, we’re lucky,” they laughed, and then told her what had happened.

Several weeks later, stopping there during another storm, the waitress was now telling them their story.

“You must not recognize us,” they laughed. “We’re the fellas it happened to.”

Inside Charles F. Kettering’s mind

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The prolific inventor, entrepreneur, and civic influence Charles F. Kettering was still alive in the Dayton community when I was an aspiring chemist in my youth.

My career in science never materialized, but his influence as an inspired ideal of leadership remains.

You may recognize the name from the famed Sloan-Kettering cancer research hospital in Manhattan or from the city in southwest Ohio named in his honor. He also led the research teams that invented the electric cash register, the automobile electrical self-starter, and no-knock gasoline. Other work made the diesel engine practicable as well as the refrigerator and, in time, air conditioning. In all, he had 186 patents, second to fellow Ohioan Thomas Edison. He was a founder of Delco (Dayton Electrical Laboratory Company) and from 1920 to 1947 was head of research for General Motors.

As a power in the new General Motors corporation, he aligned with management pioneer Alfred Sloan – as in that Sloan-Kettering Hospital in Manhattan,.

Let me repeat, there’s even a city named in his honor.

Today we have another Double Tendrils.

Get ready to know him better. Let’s start with his perspectives on the creative process and problem-solving, especially as they apply to engineering and invention.  Here’s what he said:

  1. If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
  2. I don’t want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can’t be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn’t know a thing can’t be done – and he goes ahead and does it. … The person who doesn’t know something can’t be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.
  3. Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success. … 99 percent of success is built on failure.
  4. An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
  5. Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need. … A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
  6. All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise, we would never have anything new.
  7. A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.
  8. Research means that you don’t know, but are willing to find out.
  9. We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better … because we will spend the rest of our lives there.
  10. If I want to stop a research program, I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.
  11. When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I’d place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: “Leave slide rules here.” If I didn’t do that, I’d find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss, you can’t do it.”

And now for his perspective on life itself.

  1. There is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.
  2. The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
  3. If you’re doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.
  4. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
  5. My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
  6. If I have had any success, it’s due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.
  7. The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
  8. No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
  9. You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
  10. Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.

He really was one who made America great.

The original wild child of the White House

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

The eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt was renowned for her wit and unconventional ways even before she married Nicholas Longworth III, a Republican leader from Cincinnati who eventually became the 38th speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Here I was, planning to sample some of her sharp retorts but now feel compelled to offer ten points about her remarkable and long life to age 96 as a most remarkable observer of life in the nation’s capital.

Please consider this cut-and-paste biography.

  1. Alice Roosevelt was the only child by the future president’s first wife, Alice Hathaway Lee, a strikingly beautiful and charming Bostonian banking heiress of deep Brahmin roots who died at age 22 of previously undiagnosed kidney failure. This death came only two days after giving birth to Alice and 11 hours after Teddy’s mother also died, all in the same house.
  2. Grief-stricken, Teddy turned his daughter over to his unmarried, elder sister, Anna. The infant dwelled in “Bammie” or “Bye’s” book-filled Manhattan house while on her father recovered on Western adventures. Once the child back under his roof after he remarried when she was three, he never spoke to his daughter about her mother. So deep was his despair that he tore pages from his diary and burned letters. Alas. Can it get more gothic than this? Distraught after her death, he almost never spoke of her again and prohibited mention of her in his presence. His autobiography even – imagine this – omitted her name. His daughter reflected this practice after her own marriage, preferring to be called “Mrs. L” rather than “Alice.” We can only imagine what her therapist would have made of this, had she had one. Or, for that matter, how the psychological impact affected his politics.
  3. Bammie somehow remained a significant influence on young Alice, though eventually from a distance after marrying and moving to London. Alice later spoke of her admiringly: “If auntie Bye had been a man, she would have been president.” Got that? Over her own father?
  4. As the daughter became more independent and chafed against her father and stepmother, her Aunt Bye still provided needed structure and stability. Late in life, Alice said “There is always someone in every family who keeps it together. In ours, it was Auntie Bye.” Does anyone else sense a writing prompt here? A historical novel, perchance?
  5. A celebrity and fashion idol by age 17, Alice’s social debut in 1902 was highlighted by a gown made of what was soon dubbed “Alice’s blue.” The dress sparked both a women’s clothing trend and a popular song, “Alice’s blue gown.”
  6. Scandalously, Alice smoked cigarettes in public, rode in cars with men, stayed out late partying, was spotted placing bets with a bookie, and had a pet snake named Emily Spinach – named after a spinster aunt and the green vegetable. (Her five half-siblings added a badger, guinea pigs, birds, cats, and dogs to the menagerie.)
  7. Her wedding in February 1906 in the East Room of the White House was the social affair of the season. The groom was 14 years her senior, a scion of a socially prominent Ohio family, and widely whispered to be a Washington womanizer. The event was attended by more than a thousand guests while thousands more crowded outside hoping to glimpse the bride. Alice wore a blue wedding dress – not white – and theatrically sliced the wedding cake with a sword drawn from an unsuspecting military aide.
  8. When the Roosevelts moved from the White House, Alice buried a voodoo doll of Nellie Taft, the new First Lady, in the front yard. When the Taft White House later barred Alice from her former residence, it was the first but not the last administration to do so. Next in line was Woodrow Wilson, who barred her in 1916 for a bawdy joke where he was its butt.
  9. In 1912, Alice publicly supported her father’s Bull Moose presidential ticket while her husband remained loyal to his mentor and fellow Cincinnatian William Howard Taft. During that election cycle, Alice appeared on stage with her father’s vice presidential candidate in Longworth’s own district. When her husband narrowly lost his House seat that year to a Democratic challenger – by 101 votes – she joked that she was worth at least 100 votes. Although her husband recovered the seat in 1914 and stayed in the House of Representatives for the rest of his life, Alice’s campaign against him caused a permanent chill in their marriage.
  10. During their marriage, Alice carried on numerous affairs. Best known was her long, ongoing liaison with Senator William Borah of Idaho. When Alice’s diaries were opened to historical research, the pages indicated that Borah was the father of her daughter, Paulina Longworth (1925–1957). Even in this sensitive situation, Alice’s famed “brilliantly malicious” humor was inescapable: she had originally wanted to name her daughter “Deborah,” as in “de Borah.” And according to one family friend, “Everybody called [the daughter] ‘Aurora Borah Alice.’”

Before you start your car, thank this auto pioneer 

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

When we think of many of the technological advances that impact our daily lives, we usually don’t know the names of their inventors, even when we know the businessmen who got wealthy as a result. Elon Musk did not invent the Tesla, for instance, nor did Bill Gates invent the internet or Henry Ford, the auto. The list is actually a long one.

Consider John William Lambert, mentioned in a previous Tendrils.

I remember visiting an early coworker and, upon seeing an old car with an impressive Lambert name in brass across the radiator sitting at an open garage door, I asked, “Ann? Is that car any relation to you?” She replied that her grandfather used to make them but otherwise conveyed no knowledge that he had been so prominent a figure.

Here are ten facts from his life.

This was the breakthrough vehicle.
  1. He invented the first practical American internal combustion gasoline automobile in 1890 in Ohio City in Van Wert County, Ohio, where he tested it on the village streets early the next year. It was the Buckeye gasoline buggy, a surrey-topped three-wheel runabout with one seat. It had a three-cylinder, four-stroke engine.
  2. In 1891, that horseless carriage became the first automobile offered for sale in the United States. Priced at $550, it attracted no buyers.
  3. Undaunted by the buggy’s reception, he turned his attention in 1892 to making stationary gasoline engines for farm and industrial factory use.
  4. Lambert’s base of operations was the Buckeye Manufacturing Company, which he had founded in 1884 as a farm implement manufacturer and moved in 1892 to Anderson, Indiana.
  5. His experiments with drive-train technology led to the Lambert friction gearing disk drive transmission. The gradual, or gearless, transmission became a signature feature on all of his future cars.
  6. His next attempt at an auto line came in 1895 with a model called the Buckeye. It was a four-wheel modification of the buggy but failed to find buyers.
  7. His first marketing success was the Union, released in 1902. About 300 of the tiller-steered cars were sold.
  8. In 1906 he introduced his first Lambert, establishing himself as one of the more successful automakers of the time. Production peaked from 1907 to 1910 with 2,000 cars a year.
  9. Buckeye Manufacturing, which built the cars, had moved by 1905 to Anderson, Indiana. The Lambert Automobile Company was one of its subsidiaries. Touting its Lambert Friction-Drive Automobiles and Trucks, the Buckeye factory mass-produced Lambert’s cars, gasoline engines, and auto components as well as fire engines, railroad inspection vehicles, and steel-hoof tractors before closing in 1917. At its height, the company had more than a thousand employees.
  10. Lambert held more than 600 patents and died in 1952, age 92, in Anderson.
At its prime, the Lambert came with 15 layers of hand-painted color.

 

How relative is time, anyway?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Let’s consider fourth place, as far as length in time. That is, realizing that I’ve been dwelling in Eastport four years now strikes me as a bit of a shock. I’m finding it difficult to make sense of the fact, at least in light of earlier landings.

Quite simply, I’m still settling in here, even if it’s in my so-called sunset years. And, yes, I’m still feeling this is it, a very suitable end of my road, even if I am being greeted by name by people I don’t recall knowing, this is in sharp contrast to earlier locales.

For perspective, those shorter spans were in my early adulthood: Bloomington, Indiana (four years in two parts); Binghamton, New York (1½ years, in two parts and three addresses); the Poconos of Pennsylvania (1½ years); the town in northwest Ohio I call Prairie Depot (1½ years); Yakima, Washington (four years); a Mississippi River landing in Iowa (six months); Rust Belt in the northeast corner of Ohio (3½ years); and Baltimore, my big-city turn and turning point (three years). You’ve likely met many of them in my novels and poems.

Looking back, each of those addresses was filled with challenging turmoil and discovery, soul-searching yearning as well as glimmers of something more concrete and fulfilling just ahead.

In contrast, my longest period of living anywhere was Dover, New Hampshire (21 years), my native Dayton, Ohio (20 years), and Manchester, New Hampshire (13 years).

Important people linked to the Gem City

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In this case, they weren’t necessary born in Dayton, but the city did play a role in their success.

  1. Wright Brothers, inventors of the airplane
  2. Charles F. Kettering, prolific inventor
  3. John Henry Patterson, founder of the National Cash Register Company
  4. Thomas Watson Jr., of IBM fame after being fired – twice – by Patterson
  5. James Cox, Democratic presidential nominee and newspaper publisher
  6. Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Black poet
  7. Scotty Reston, editor of the New York Times
  8. Frank Stanton, head of Columbia Broadcasting Company (CBS)
  9. Milton Caniff, master cartoonist
  10. Mike Peters, freewheeling cartoonist

I should also mention Larry Flint, pornographer, who established Hustler magazine, named after his bar.

 

Memories of Cincinnati

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 1 Comment

As I mentioned in a previous Tendrils (June 10), Cincy was the “big city” of my youth, an hour drive to the south once Interstate 75 opened.

Here are some memories.

  1. Music Hall:  Completed in 1878 and newly renovated, including a meticulous shrinking of the breathtakingly gorgeous main auditorium, this Venetian Gothic classic is the home of the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops orchestras, May Festival Chorus, and opera and ballet companies. I treasure the concerts I’ve heard there, often from the second balcony. It’s certainly among the oldest concert halls in America, with the Central City Opera House in Colorado being the closest rival for the title I’ve found so far.
  2. Carew Tower and Fountain Square: The observation tower 49 stories above the downtown, accessed by a “rocket speed” elevator, was my introduction to skyscrapers. It’s architect, William Lamb, went on to be one of the chief designers of New York’s Empire State Building, completed the following year. Fountain Square, in a dark canyon when I knew it, has since been given an airy plaza and become even more of a gathering place.
  3. Taft Museum: This small art collection celebrates one of the residents of the historic 1820 home at the edge of downtown, Charles Phelps Taft, half-brother of President and Supreme Court Justice William Howard Taft, who had accepted his nomination to the candidacy from its portico. The house fronts Lytle Park.
  4. Mount Adams: With the major art museum, repertory theater, Mahoghany Hall bookstore and jazz bar, a family-run Italian sub shop, and a once-famous Rookwood pottery operation at its edge, this was a bohemian center when I knew it.  
  5. Izzy Kadetz: Legendary Jewish delicatessen downtown where customers obeyed the owner’s orders, including, “Eat and get out!” He also charged customers based on their ability to pay.
  6. Zoo: I mentioned the opera in a previous post, and it’s no joke, but there’s more to the zoological and botanical garden. Home of the last known passenger pigeon, the institution has since pioneered species preservation and been a leader in creating habitats shared by various species.  
  7. Union Station: I vaguely remember a childhood train ride from Dayton and our late-night return. The grand 1933 train terminal was considered a masterpiece, one of the last, and today stands as the Cincinnati Museum Center, including the historical, children’s, and natural history and science museums. I think we went to the zoo during the day.  
  8. Riverboats: Several times during my youth, I found myself part of a group taken out on the Ohio River for a paddleboat trip. I heard a real calliope in the process.  
  9. Shillito’s: Cincy’s oldest department store was boldly art deco when my paintings and designs were included in the annual Scholastic Art competition displays on one of the upper floors. It was quite an honor and thrilling. Pogue’s, a somewhat more old-fashioned department store, was also fun to pass through. Shillito’s, Rikes of Dayton, and Lazarus of Columbus eventually became Federated Department stores, which ultimately took over Macy’s, including its name. Got that? Macy’s headquarters wound up in Cincinnati, returning to Herald Square in Manhattan only in 2020.
  10. King’s Island: The amusement park famed for its huge wooden roller coasters is my most recent encounter with the Queen City of the West, as Cincy had become known by 1820.  I remember the park’s earlier incarnation as Coney Island – or Coney Island of the West, to distinguish it from the tip of Brooklyn – where it was prone to flooding from the Ohio River. I did, in fact, visit once on a riverboat outing that originated and ended downtown. I’m surprised to see the first site survives as a water park. The visit to the current operation came while visiting my hometown. Accompanied by my two daughters, we ventured forth to the outskirts of Cincy facing Dayton and had a most memorable day.

Memories of places in the town I grew up in

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

I’ve mentioned a few others, such as the art museum, in other posts here. Now, to add a few more, in no particular order. Again, I’m looking at Greater Dayton rather than strictly inside the city limits.

  1. NCR: The National Cash Register Company’s world headquarters looked more like an open college campus with linden trees and pristine lawns than an industrial jumble behind barbed wire and hurricane fencing. It even had a fine auditorium and pipe organ, used for its gatherings of salesmen but also the concerts of the Civic Music Association – I heard a number of famed musicians there. And I was awarded my Eagle Scout badge and later my high school diploma on its stage. And, oh yes, I can’t overlook Old River, the employee park with the lagoon and boating, a fine miniature golf course, and a huge outdoor swimming pool – when one of my buddies whose father worked at NCR and thus had a pass to the park asked if I wanted to go, there was only one possible answer. Please!
  2. The corner display windows at Rikes department store: The pioneering retailer was the place to shop in town, and anytime we took the bus, say to the library or a movie, we’d wind up checking the latest display – especially at Christmas. During my senior year, some of my art work was used in the background of the featured fashion.
  3. The YMCA: I learned to swim at the indoor pool and sometimes applied my allowance to a grilled cheese sandwich later, over on the men’s side. And then, little kid that I was, I enjoyed the freedom of taking the bus home on my own.
  4. Frigidaire employee park: Thanks to my best friend’s father’s employee pass, we spent many summer nights enjoying free Starlight movies. My dad worked for another General Motors division in town, one that had no such benefits.
  5. Troop trails: My Boy Scout troop had a long hike one Sunday a month, in addition to a primitive camping weekend. Our routes often followed a river or crossed farmlands or even trekked along railroad tracks. I remember especially a few that traced the abandoned Miami-Erie Canal with its mule bank and its eerie remains of limestone locks left in vines and trees.
  6. Suicide Hill: A decent snowfall (quite modest by what I’ve experienced since) meant sledding at Hills and Dales Park. How insignificant the slope looks now, but there were some serious injuries. I had a near call.
  7. Memorial Hall: It really wasn’t designed for concerts, but it’s where the Philharmonic performed, and since my dad had access to tickets, I heard many top soloists. Hard to believe now, actually.
  8. Our big ugly high school: built in the 1960s and long since torn down. In my memory, I recall it more than the older but equally ugly elementary school.
  9. Yellow Springs: Once I got my driver’s license, the bohemian town in Greene County, home of Antioch College, became a welcome retreat. Its funky stores, before funky was a word in my consciousness, were mind-expanding. Nowhere else could we find Earl Grey or gunpowder tea or sticks of incense or perfumed soaps. Then there was the professional summer theater series at the amphitheater, itself a revelation. By that time, I was in love, at last. And that leads to mention of a covered bridge by moonlight: Yes, making out afterward in the moonlight at a covered bridge that’s no longer existent down an unpaved road.
  10. The Art Theater: Where I first saw foreign films, black-and-white alternatives to Hollywood’s commercial concoctions. And then there was the Lemon Tree coffee house next door with its folk music and blues.

My, all that was a world ago in my life.