Athens Ohio Archives

July 10, 2014

Beer Comes to Ohio University

Curator Jessica called to ask if she could use one of my photos to promote the Athens Country Historical Society & Museum’s Historic Tavern Tours this week. It’s all part of the 9th Annual Ohio Brew Week Festival, not that university students need any excuse to quaff beer. [Miz Jessica explained to me later I was wrong. Brew Week was cooked up to help the bars out during the slow summer season when the student population drops off.]

Kenny Kerr pours the beers

It was a chilly February day in 1969 when Kenny Kerr (the guy with the shiny hairdo) of Kerr Distrubuting poured the first beers to be served in Ohio University’s Ohio Room in Baker Center.

You had your choice of Stroh’s, Stroh’s or Stroh’s. And, it was low-test 3.2 beer. Low-point beer, as it is more accurately called, is a beer that contains 3.2% alcohol by weight.

Since it could be sold to 18-year-olds, it eliminated having to determine if a drinker was 18 or 21. I don’t think I ever saw anyone carded at the Ohio Room, probably because most college students were at least 18.

Theory about binge drinking

When I was in Athens over Halloween, I debated going uptown to shoot the costumed pub crawl festivities, but opted out because (a) it was cold, (b) parking was a problem and (c) one of the OU Post’s former editors from my era said, “I got tired of having my shoes puked on.”

He went on to explain that we lived in a different era: we didn’t have any money in 1969. Students would pool their cash with a few friends, head over to the Ohio Room for a couple of pitchers of 3.2 beer, do some socializing, then go home. Now it’s all about large quantities of booze, he said, and the streets are filled with inebriated students engaged in inappropriate behavior, some of which finds its way onto the Internet.

Pouring beer like water

Here’s a gallery of photos of the day when Stroh’s beer poured like water – and according to some purists – tasted about the same. Stroh’s, by the way, had an interesting history. It started as a regional beer, then ended up as the third largest brewer in the country. It even marketed a Stroh’s ice cream. A whole bunch of market changes caused problems for the company, though, and in 1999, after being in business for 149 years, it sold its labels to Pabst Brewing Company and Miller Brewing Company.

Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the gallery.

June 18, 2014

Beware Curators with Cookies

My Road Warriorettes have been coming through in a big way. A big box of cookies from Curator Jessica from the Athens County Historical Society and Museum arrived last week. This week it was a package of the best peanut brittle in the world that Anne Rodgers picked up on her way through Marianna, FL., on her move to Texas.

I got a text from Jessica this afternoon: “Awake?” She knows that I am a frequent napper, so she always checks before calling. When I gave her the OK, she made some small talk, then said, “OK, now for the bad news.”

I wondered if she was going to tell me that this sign was for her. I wasn’t looking forward to breaking in a new Curator Jessica. No, it wasn’t that.

No chance to take it easy

Then, I figured we had been turned down for a grant we had applied for. Nope, No news on that front.

“We’re taking down your Friends on Robinson Road exhibit on Monday, and we hoped you had something that we could replace it with.”

The first time I met Curator Jessica, I was about three hours out of Athens when she called to ask if I could pull off a major exhibit on Martin Luther King’s National Day of Mourning in three weeks. I liked her spirit, and we did it.

Three weeks is doable, but three days is stretching it, cookies or no cookies.

A tailor in 1968

We agreed that one that focused on Athens downtown landmarks, particularly where I could contrast photos from the late ’60s and early ’70s with contemporary pictures would be something quick to pull off. That’s why you get to see tailor Frank Richey looking our over Court street on December 21, 1968.

Frank’s building in 2013

Frank is long gone, but the building his shop was in survives.

So, instead of a normal post, you’re going to see a huge data dump of the photos we’re considering. We figure the 100-plus photos here will cut down to about 30 when all is said and done. Not shown are two panoramas I shot last fall. They are going to be almost four feet wide by about 10 inches tall.

Waiting for Anne to call

If I see Anne’s Caller ID show up on my phone, I’m going to be slow to pick up. No telling what she’s going to want me to do for my package of peanut brittle.

Athens, Ohio, photo gallery

Click on any photo to make it larger, then navigate through it using your arrow keys.

May 14, 2014

A Photographer’s Dream

It was finally time to put Athens in the rearview mirror. Friend Anne and I were waiting for Curator Jessica to come back from fighting the Civil War over in Marietta for a bunch of school kids (the Yanks won again), so we headed out to pick up some more road food and for me to get cash for the trip. It was seriously warm: the temperature was 85, with a heat index of 89.

As I turned down State Street, Anne asked, “Did you see the blow-up swimming pool in front of that house? It looked like it had a couple of college girls in it.”

I glanced back and acknowledged her vision acuity: “I’d have killed for something like that in 1969,” I muttered.

‘The girls? I thought you were married by 1969,” she noted.

Taking the pressure off

“No, not the girls, the chance to knock off a piece of feature art at the start of the shift. Having something in the bag for the next day takes the pressure off.”

With that, I did a U-turn and headed back for some easy blog content.

Kayla Wickersham, Dayton, and Mallory Widmar, from a suburb of Cleveland, had just moved into the house behind them a couple of days ago so they could start their senior year at Ohio University. Feeling like I was back at a freshman mixer, I asked the usual lame question, “What’s your major?” I didn’t write the answer down, and I retreated before asking for their signs.

The guys in the first photo had been talking to the gals when I walked up, but I must have spooked them. They leaned on a parking meter for a few minutes, but then meandered off.

This third guy wandered up just as I was starting to cross the street to climb into my car. Before I could even get my seatbelt fastened, he had jumped into the pool with the girls. The bait, clearly, was working.

May 13, 2014May 13, 2014

Ken at the Kennedy

Curator Jessica said we needed to go to the Kennedy Museum of Art at The Ridges to see a couple of my photos that are on exhibit.

I fit in well there because the Kennedy is housed in what was once the administration building for the Athens Lunatic Asylum. Within two years of its opening in 1874, it was rebranded The Athens Hospital for the Insane.

That was only the first in a long list of names it would wear as public sensibilities changed until the facility closed in 1993. The hospital would be called, among other things, the Athens Asylum for the Insane, the Athens State Hospital, the Southeastern Ohio Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health Center, the Athens Mental Health and Mental Retardation Center, the Athens Mental Health and Developmental Center, and then (again) the Athens Mental Health Center.

It is still a stunning building

Despite the fact that parts of the facility have been allowed to deteriorate, you can see how ornate the fixtures were. The patient rooms were designed so that each would have a window. The original plan was to make the rooms so small – roughly 100 square feet – that they wouldn’t house more than one patient. Curator Jessica said that overcrowding forced them to put two and three to a room at times.

I’m uncomfortable with the A-Word

Even though I went through Ohio University under a fine arts program, I was never comfortable using the Art-Word in connection with my photos. I saw them as news when they were taken, though they have become history now that they’ve acquired some whiskers.

Part of that reticence is that art galleries like to search for hidden, deep meanings, and expect art to make bold statements. This, for example, appears in the room that houses my two prints.

I have always contended that my photos are straight-forward, what-you-see-is-what-you-get frozen slices of time converted to ink squirted on toilet paper and pitched in a puddle in front of your house.

Two shots from the protest era

The two photos the museum elected to display as examples of testing boundaries aren’t what I would consider to be my strongest images from that sequence, but I’m honored that they made the cut at all, I suppose.

The picture on the left is of graffiti on the Main Green’s War Memorial. The boundary it was stretching was polite discourse: one of the words written on the statue was a less euphemistic term for male bovine excrement.

The second photo was of a line of male and female protestors linked arm in arm marching exuberantly down the town’s main drag.

You can see the photos in this Kent State era post. The first shot is number 9 of 86; the marchers are in number 15 of 86.