Living the dream, watching it die: The Road Trip to Findlay, Ohio
On the evening of Friday, October 9, 2009, it began… the Mother of All Road Trips: the long-awaited trip to Findlay, Ohio. (If you don’t know why we decided to drive to Findlay, Ohio… well, here’s a refresher.) The players:
Tom, one of the original Findlay boys…
Jimmy, the guy with no connection at all to Findlay except he wanted to get out of town for some reason (probably legal trouble)…
Steven, because he always wants to horn in on our fun…
And me (not pictured). Aren’t there enough pictures of me sullying this miserable site? Trust me, you’ll be sick of my pic by the time this is all over.
So we hit the road about 8 p.m. that night, delayed only slightly by detours to Tom and Jimmy’s cribs to pick them up. Twice to Jimmy’s, actually, since he forgot his jacket like the sucker he is and we had to turn around to go get it.
And so we drove… and drove. We passed the time by listening to Weird Al Yankovic songs (at Steven’s request) and to old Phil Hendrie shows (or at least the first few minutes of several old Phil Hendrie shows, until we could figure out whether or not a show was appropriate for sixth-grader ears). I was behind the wheel for the first shift, driving all the way to St. Louis, where we stopped for gas. The gas station was not far from Tom’s ancestral homestead, and so his brother and sister met us to say hi, despite the late hour. After we all took breaks, Jimmy took over driving duties and we took off for the Illinois border. Thankfully, we had not yet crossed that border when I turned around to ask Tom a question and realized that he was not in the van. We had left him back at the gas station.
As we hurriedly flipped around to retrieve our now-confused compatriot, I told Jimmy, “I don’t care what happens the rest of the weekend… that right there just made this whole trip worthwhile.”
Jimmy made it all the way to Indianapolis before we had to take a weewee break. The sun was seemingly rising as I retook the wheel and headed further east. I say “seemingly” because the closer we got to the Ohio border, the darker it got. Seriously… Indianapolis: the beginning of a new day. Ohio:
How did that happen? But we didn’t let our puzzlement take our eyes off the prize. The skies finally started to lighten over the Buckeye State, illuminating gray, heavy clouds. And yet, and yet… the closer we got to Hancock County, the more the clouds parted, and by the time we reached our destination…
…clear, blue skies. Welcome to Findlay. We had arrived!
What city puts its big “Welcome” sign in a frickin’ cemetery? Findlay, Ohio, that’s what city.
And so the explorations began. We wandered through the town until we found a sweet breakfast joint, where we quickly and greedily devoured everything edible that was placed in front of us.
After freaking out the breakfasting Findlay natives with our strange outsider ways and weird Missouri odors, we checked out the Findlay downtown area. Some highlights:
Tom is remarkably excited about the possibility of shoe repair.
Shoes are hot in downtown Findlay, apparently. (I know I used this one earlier, but it’s too weird not to share again.)
The Hancock County Courthouse.
The Great Scot grocery store (where Brian shops)!
The library (where Brian updates his blog)! Nominee for Best Use of Landscaping to Obscure the Name of the Place.
The hardware store where Brian works!
(As an aside: this was perhaps the creepiest hardware store I’ve ever patronized. I guess I didn’t really patronize it since I didn’t buy anything, but still. As soon as we walked in the door, every eye in the store was upon us. A middle-aged fella, probably a member of management, asked us in a deep, Karl Childers-esque voice, “Kin I help yew boys?”, and then literally followed us through the entire store, one aisle away. We’d walk past an aisle and there he’d be at the other end, watching us. We’d try to trip him up and walk back an aisle, and there he’d be. We could not get out of there fast enough. Jimmy kept imagining his face appearing all over town the rest of the weekend, popping up out of mailboxes and freezer cases to ask, “Kin I help yew boys?”)
The University of Findlay, home of the Oilers, who were playing an away game that day.
Also home to the UF Bookstore… nominee for Least Convenient Operating Hours (Saturdays, 11am-1pm).
And something that was actually pretty cool: The Stately Raven Bookstore, housed in an old church.
Steven kept begging to return here all weekend. Not that I blame him, it was pretty cool. But Findlay waits for no man, and we couldn’t spend the entire day in the one interesting place in Findlay. (Oops, I did not mean to say that out loud.)
By this point, the three grown-ups—who did not sleep all night in the backseat like certain 12-year-olds who will go unnamed—were getting pretty tired and cranky, so we headed to our hotel.
It was on the east side of town, which seemed… I don’t know… kind of newer and more developed, with a mall and large chain stores and that kind of thing. It still seemed vaguely run-down and depressing, though. It was still unquestionably Findlay, Ohio.
Anyway, we checked in to the hotel room, which was pretty nice although it very oddly kind of smelled like curry, and then collapsed for a solid two hours. (Except for the ever-energetic and youthful Steven, of course, who stayed up playing video games on his Nintendo DSi.)
The brief restful respite gave us the energy we needed to explore the rest of the bustling Findlay metroplex. We went to check out the north side of town, passing Kimmel’s Mountain Man Meats.
(We took this picture just because Jimmy giggled uncontrollably every time we said the phrase “man meats.”)
The surprisingly attractive and architecturally modern Owens Community College. (Why? Because a fictional character’s fictional girlfriend went there. Fictionally. I know, I know… I have a problem.)
The Cube! (Home rink of Findlay’s minor-league hockey team, the Grrrowl.)
After The Cube, we wandered around town looking for an Oktoberfest thingy that we had seen advertised on the Internet (yes, Findlay has the Internet). We were pretty pumped about this thing, as it promised an appearance by Grammy-nominated polka powerhouses Fred Ziwich and His International Sound Machine. We expected a busy, boisterous street fair, with the aroma of sausages and sauerkraut and the sound of accordions and oompah-oompahs wafting through the air. But as we approached the site, our hearts sank. Not only was there hardly anyone there, it wasn’t even outside. It was inside a small senior center—sponsored by the Agency on Aging!—and there was a $5 cover. Disgusted and cheap, we turned our backs on the Oktoberfest and drove away, searching for souvenirs.
On the way, we briefly stopped off for a walk around the picturesque Blanchard River, which periodically overflows its banks and ruins everything.
Around the river were plenty of ramshackle, dilapidated buildings covered with graffiti. It was frankly kind of creepy, and this was the middle of the afternoon. I can’t imagine how scary the area would be after dark.
Anyway, back to FindlaySouvenirQuest ‘09. Turned off by the high prices at the University of Findlay Bookstore, we decided to check other retail options: Wal-Mart, Kohl’s, Meijer, and so on. Of course, as it turns out, UF won’t license its stuff to anyone, so we couldn’t find any Oilers memorabilia anywhere. (You couldn’t swing a dead cat without hitting a display chock-full of Ohio State crap, though.) Finally, after making phone calls and checking ye Internette, we located a sporting goods store at the Findlay Village Mall that would suit our purposes nicely.
The store had a nice selection of Findlay High School Trojans togs, and the three of us spent a solid hour pawing through every single shirt and hoodie and sweatsuit on display, trying to decide what to purchase. (There were only three of us because Steven wanted no part of the Findlaywear search, opting instead to browse a nearby bookstore.) Tom, Jimmy, and I wavered and dithered so long I was afraid they would throw us out, but we finally made up our stupid minds and bought some relatively plain T-shirts that just said “FINDLAY” on them. GO TROJANS!
By this time, the Scramble Marie’s breakfast had long since worn off and we were a mite peckish. Thus, we made our way to a place I’d been pretty excited about trying: a dive-y local burger joint called Wilson’s Sandwich Shop. I had seen lots of cool things on Yelp about it, plus George Motz sang its praises in Hamburger America.
And brother, it didn’t disappoint. All the place serves is “hamburgs” and fries and “frosted malts.” Totally old-school, and wicked delicious. Steven tore into his hamburg like nobody’s business, and the rest of us followed suit.
(It was so good that I saved my little Wilson’s-branded Styrofoam cup and have it on display in a curio cabinet at home. Seriously.)
Stuffed full of beef and chocolaty dairy products, we decided to turn in for the night. We headed back to the hotel to kick back, chill-ax, and watch bizarre, unsubtitled Japanese variety shows on the cable system. Oh, Japan… something is so dreadfully wrong with you, and I. LOVE. IT.
The next morning dawned bittersweet, as we knew that this was the beginning of the end. We cleaned up, then cleaned out the continental breakfast buffet downstairs. We wolfed down the pastry/cereal/fruit in front of the TV, still glued to Japan TV. Even the news is hilarious on this channel! (Can I just say that “Salaryman Kintaro” is ten kinds of awesome?)
And so… we tossed our junk sacks suitcases in the van, and pulled away from the hotel. But there was so much more to see, we couldn’t stop ourselves from taking a few more photos on the way out, including:
A shot of the gorgeous intersection where Findlay High School sits.
The KFC where fictional Tommy worked back in the old-school web site daze.
A drive-thru liquor store… apparently considered a good idea in Ohio.
And some other random junk.
I pulled over to the side of the I-75 on-ramp to get one last shot of Findlay, in the form of an overpass emblazoned with the city’s nickname.
And that was that. South to Dayton, then west on I-70 all the way back to Kansas City.
Well, almost all the way… first, there was the Incident in Brookville, a little town west of Dayton where we stopped to get gas and somehow got roped into changing a lady’s tire for her. Oh, to have recorded a video of that comical process… it took all three of us almost 45 minutes to change a single tire. Yes, there were some unique problems that kept it from being a run-of-the-mill tire change, but a single real man probably could have completed the task in 15 minutes.
Still, we got it done, and got back on the road for 10-11 hours of boring, monotonous driving, enlivened only by:
- Dropping by the old high school where I used to teach in Marshall, Illinois
- Fearing for our lives as Tom took the wheel for a while
- Getting a phone call from my mom and trying to explain to her why on earth we drove to Findlay, Ohio
- Laughing as Jimmy, who had taken the wheel in St. Louis, slammed on the brakes and threw his Jack-in-the-Box burger to the filthy floor
- Singing along—loudly and annoyingly—to the extensive 80s-pop playlist on my iPod
Finally, around 10:30pm Sunday night… home. Two days on the road, covering nearly 1500 miles, staying in Hancock County, Ohio for barely 24 hours. It was a fabulous weekend, not because of the bizarre destination, but because I had three buddies to share the experience—laughing, pointing, being laughed at, being pointed at. We did something goofy, something unquestionably odd, just because. Why not? It’s as good a reason as any.
And most importantly, it helped me get Findlay out of my system. It helped exorcise those Findlay demons from my soul. I’m over Findlay. SO OVER FINDLAY. So I need a new obsession, a new destination for next year’s pointless road trip.
Fall 2010… Who’s up for Osaka?!
4 Responses to “Living the dream, watching it die: The Road Trip to Findlay, Ohio”
Leave a Reply
October 21st, 2009 at 8:14 pm
Sigh! Now I can a happy woman
October 21st, 2009 at 9:50 pm
Wow… Great Scot has 15 POUNDS of potatoes for only $2.99?!?
October 22nd, 2009 at 10:19 am
Hilirious…..my fav is the Butt Shop –
January 3rd, 2010 at 9:38 pm
dude, so over findlay myself. graduated 1975. moved away, saw a bit of the world and settled in the southwest. went back once and it was like a time warp, everything was the same. the circuit on fridays nights downtown still going roundy roundy. the people looked the same. still talking the same ol’ topics and yes, suspicious of outsiders. amazed some of the places you photographed are still around. thanks for the nostalgia.