Jessica Cyders Archives

August 6, 2015

A Garden of Fireworks

Not only did Curator Jessica make me get up early to shoot the Wilkesville Fourth of July parade, she insisted that it would be “fun” to watch the fireworks being shot over the Ohio River at Middleport, half an hour south of Athens.

It was chilly enough that a light jacket felt good. We got a parking place about a block from a decent vantage point, and I set up a tripod.

For you photo geeks, I locked the ISO at 200 because I wanted to force the camera to use a four-second exposure at about f/8. I usually pushed the shutter release when I heard the firework leave the tube. That would capture the rocket tail and most of the display.

I would have liked to have gotten at least one shot with the crowd visible in the foreground, but there wasn’t enough ambient light to capture them, and I was too lazy to walk back to the car for a strobe. Miz Jessica offered to go back for it, but I’ve learned that it’s not a good idea to trust your Road Warriorettes with the car keys. Sometimes they hold a grudge for some imagined slight during the day.

Fireworks photo gallery

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

August 5, 2015July 4, 2021

Wilkesville’s 4th of July

Curator Jessica and I went to Wilkesville to see if Long and Son General Merchandise store was still around so I could update photos of it I had done of it on an icicle day in 1969. We didn’t see anything that looked like it on the main drag, so we stopped into a small diner where we had an excellent lunch and found out that the building was long gone.

On the way out, we saw a flyer for the Wilkesville Fourth of July parade. She gave a squeal of excitement.

I gave Miz Jessica my standard “Do You Know How Many Small Town Parades I’ve Covered?” speech, but she is not one to be denied. The next morning, I found myself getting up way too early to head to the Vinton County town.

They’ll have at least two spectators

“The good news for the town,” I told her, “is that we just freed up a spot for two more people to participate in the parade. A lot of these towns are so small they have to draw lots to see who will be spectators.”

Fourth of July photo gallery

I won’t tell Curator Jessica, but it was fun to see how everybody showed up with their homemade floats and flags. I have to say that I was a little discomforted by the casual way they treated the flags, but I guess the Flag Code isn’t something covered in school these days. Click on any photo to make it larger, then use your arrow keys to move through the images.

May 4, 2015May 4, 2015

Dean Kahler, Shot at Kent State

I suspect one or two of my readers will grouse again this year, “Why are you bringing up Kent State? It’s ancient history.”

Dean Kahler has a good answer for that: “History will hurt you if you don’t learn about it. It’s important that you learn about it, and it’s important that you don’t forget about it so you don’t repeat it.”

Dean was one of nine students injured by National Guard gunfire on May 4, 1970, at Kent State University in Ohio. He was a first-quarter freshman, a farm boy from near Canton who was a conscientious objector because of his religion. He had read about demonstrations in the newspapers and national news magazines. “As a farm boy, you don’t get a chance to go to protests,” he said, ” because the cows have to be milked.”

Classes were supposed to be held as normal on May 4, so Dean decided to drive onto his campus to see what was going on. He was in the parking lot behind him in this photo, 300 feet away from the closest National Guardsman, when he saw them turn “with their deliberate motion.”

When he saw them turn, “I knew they were shooting.” He dropped to the ground because there was nowhere to run to and no cover for him.

Like when you pith a frog

[Watch the video to hear Dean tell about the shooting in his own words.]
“I knew I had been shot because it felt like a bee sting. I knew immediately because my legs got real tight, then they relaxed just like in zoology class when you pith a frog,” he said. He never walked again, but he has turned into a highly competitive wheelchair athlete.

After the shooting stopped, he called out to see if there were any Boy Scouts around who could turn him over. “The only thought that came into my head was if I was turned over, would I bleed more internally than externally? I thought (shrugs shoulders) there’s a 50 / 50 chance that you’re going to die one way or the other. I knew I might die. I had a really good chance of dying, so I wanted to see the sky, the sun, leaves, peoples faces. I didn’t want to be eating grass when I died.”

Dean and my old publisher

I was honored that Dean drove down from the Canton area for the opening of the Athens County Historical Society’s exhibit The Sky Has Fallen that contained scores of my photos. Dean, who was a well-regarded Athens county commissioner for eight years, is talking with Kenner Bush, my old publisher at The Athens Messenger.

Curator Jessica and I met Dean when we went up to the Kent State May 4 Visitors Center to talk about how the historical society’s museum could work with the visitor center on future exhibits about the protest era. I thought he was just a helpful volunteer until it became obvious that he had more than book knowledge about what happened that day.

The man who prevented a massacre

The Center had one of the most powerful videos I’ve ever seen anywhere. When they played the sound of the gunfire, I lost it. That was followed by a clip of professor who probably prevented a massacre. He stood between the guard and the students and begged the students to sit down. When the situation somewhat stabilized, the students took off in different directions “so that someone would be alive to tell the story.”

So, how long am I going to ride this story. Probably every May 4, just like my old chief photographer, John J. Lopinot will send me a message that just says, “Never Forget.”

May 2, 2015March 4, 2021

Rendville Public School

You’re probably wondering how a town with only 36 people left in it can generate so many posts. Well, this is the last one until I visit the place again, but I think it’s one of the most interesting. Curator Jessica told me to turn right one road too early to get to Rendville proper, but we didn’t much care. Jessica is a lot like Mother: always looking for the road not taken.

Part-way up a tall hill, a huge, falling-down building came into view. We’d never have seen it in a few more weeks when the leaves are all out. There was a pickup truck with its window rolled down parked in a little turnoff leading to the building. I figured that must mean somebody was around. There were no no-trespassing signs around, so we hoofed up the path, noting fresh footprints in the soft ground.

Click on the photos to make them larger.

Marvin filled us in

Nobody answered my hail, so I went to the front of the building while Jessica prowled around back. Before long, I saw Jessica and Marvin, who said he grew up near the building, which turned out to be a school. “When it closed, it was left just like they were going to have classes the next day. There was even a bell, but someone made off with it.”

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Rendville had a sizable black population: “That’s how Rendville came about,” Marvin recalled the local lore. “They ran all the colored out of Corning.”

Interestingly enough, though, both races attended the school, which dated back to the 1880s.

Convict bricks

Marvin pointed out that some of the walls were made of “Convict Bricks.” They were stamped “Convict Made; 1926; Ohio State Brick Plant; Convict Made.” They were a “hard brick,” unlike most of the older parts of the building that were “soft brick.”

Jessica, who is a bit of a brick expert, said she had never seen any like this before.

Like something from Gone With the Wind

I had the feeling I was in a movie set for General Sherman’s Atlanta urban renewal project (minus the fires).

Long hoof up the hill

Miz Jessica, a triathlete, is one of those people who runs even when nobody chases her. She volunteered to walk down this sidewalk that connected the school to the town, shooting photos along the way. I volunteered to pick her up at the bottom of the hill in my van.

Note the arched window

I asked Jessica to dig up some information about the school. The Little Cities of Black Diamonds archive has a photo of what the Rendville Public School looked like. The Corning High School had a building that looked so much like this one, I thought maybe someone had mislabeled the photos.

She squinted closer than I did and determined the window shapes and the bell tower were different.

Look for the blackboards

The easiest way to determine if an old building was a school or not is to look for the blackboards.

Disembodied voice

I was down in the boiler room when a disembodied voice said, “Hey, Ken.”

I peered around to see where the sound was coming from and said, “Holy Bleep!” when I saw Jessica and Marvin peering down from above. When I followed them, I found it was less scary than I thought. There was a good poured cement set of stairs between two convict brick walls that was perfectly solid.

Earlier Rendville stories

The story about a a mystery in the Rendville Cemetery has drawn some interesting comments from folks who knew the whole story (you might have to press Ctrl-F5 to see new comments).
A reader solved the mystery of a cryptic message scrawled on the side of a building on the main drag. You’ll have to read his comment to find out what “HOWE – West Virginia monkey with a white cap on. What’s he going to do when Halloween comes” meant. Makes perfect sense when you know the town and its players.
I’m not sure if the one-room school with the two-hole outhouse was in Rendville proper, but it’s close.

If you are interested in old coal towns (many which have disappeared), stories about labor and railroads, swing over to the Little Cities of Black Diamonds website for some interesting reading and pictures.