Lost Ohio: More Travels Into Haunted Landscapes, Ghost Towns, and Forgotten Lives

by Randy McNutt

  The laughter of Leo Tumbleson and Nate Pence floated out over Bentonville, as they stared northward. Toward the flour mill, the restaurant, and the hotel that existed, vividly and securely, in their minds.

  16

  Satisfying an Agrarian Myth

  On a drive through Owensville in Clermont County, I stopped to buy a soda in a drab old drugstore. The steaming heat of late summer dropped from villagers’ brows and swirled, almost visibly, around the front door of Woodruff’s Pharmacy. Inside, the talk was of the heat. Too hot for the county fair. When will the heat break?

  Heat was always a harbinger of good business at the country drugstore, a 32 x 50–foot room on the first floor of Charles Woodruff’s house on Main Street. The wooden floors were rough and dark. Color advertising signs were lined and faded. Woodruff’s was among the last of the independents in the rolling countryside, a throwback to an older time and place—rural America.

  Woodruff was sixty-seven years old, with gray hair, an easy smile, and a rather wide midsection. He had worked behind the fountain since he was nine. From this lofty vantage point, he had seen all manner of things, and he had seen many country stores come and go.

  “One morning,” he recalled, “I guess it was in the 1930s, old Doc Haas was sittin’ here at the counter. Somebody came runnin’ in asking for a doctor, and I said, ‘Well, we got one right here.’ The fellow said there’d been a wreck out on U.S. Route 50, and the victim’s ear had been cut half off. Doc turned around and said, ‘Oh, we can take care of it right here. We don’t need to go to the hospital. Just bring him on in.’ I said, ‘But Doc, you ain’t really gonna do that in here, are you?’ He said, ‘Sure, son, we’ll just get a little Lysol and my needles and sew it on.’ So we went right to the back room and did the job. And I went from fixin’ sodas to being a physician’s assistant in one day.”

  The story made his wife, Ruth, moan in mock disgust from the rear of the store. Then he finished: “Well, the funny thing was, that man who was in the wreck stopped in the store about a year later. He said, ‘I bet you don’t remember me, do you?’ I just looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, I helped sew your ear back on.’”

  The tale brought hearty laughter from the customers sitting on the stools that face the scratched fountain counter. Woodruff smiled and gently dipped some more ice cream. Many of his customers came here out of habit, as they had for years. They enter, greet Woodruff, and sit in a room crammed with an unusual assortment of bottles, amber jars, a red penny scale, oak and cherry cabinets, hand-lettered signs, and kites.

  “We used to have chickens out back when I was a boy,” Woodruff said. “Some of the fellows would come by about one in the morning when they came home from dates. They’d stand out front and yell to me upstairs, ‘Get up, Chuck! We got some chickens for you to fry.’ At the time, of course, there were no all-night sandwich places around here. So those boys would come by the store and bother me. I’d come downstairs and fry chicken for them at one in the morning. Oh, we’d have a great time sittin’ around eating all that chicken.”

  “Tell it all,” Ruth said.

  “Well, the next day, I’d come out back to find that I had fried my own chickens. Even Red Boy, my prize pet rooster. Yeah, those old boys had gotten into our henhouse. And Red Boy was the worst for it.”

  The villagers probably had their own impressions of Woodruff’s confectionary anachronism, and so do city people. Local people mostly thought of his store in connection with some childhood idyll. City people, however, looked at the store and saw what they wanted to see: The myth of agrarian life, small-town happiness, and a place where everything moves as slow as seasonal change and is as simple as a chocolate soda. Woodruff knew these things weren’t necessarily true, but why should he be the one to tell them?

  “Yeah, the good old days,” he said. “Oh, I guess the ’30s and ’40s were good days for this town; people was workin’. But that wasn’t always good times, either, with the war comin’. There was a lot of hard work then, and before. When I first started workin’ in here as a kid in the ’20s, I had to pack everything in ice every day. Now that’s hard work. Put a little salt around it, and keep it good and cold. Ev’ry mornin’ you had to draw the water off and pack it again. There was a lot of work around here. Old Bob Jones, the ice man, he used to drive up here every other day from Batavia in a Model T Ford. We had to have a three-hundred pound block of ice every other day.”

  The drugstore had been a part of Owensville longer than even Woodruff could remember. His father, Roy, bought the store in 1924 from the brother of a Mount Orab physician, and it was renamed Woodruff’s. Chuck Woodruff had an old photograph, the kind with a hard backing, lying on a shelf above the fountain. Taken around 1927, the photograph shows Roy and Chuck standing stiffly behind the cherry counter and its marble top. The soda men look proudly across the room, toward small round tables and chairs with tiny wire legs. A metal sign for Bruck’s Near Beer hangs on the wall.

  When the infrequent someone would ask about near beer, Woodruff would pause in disbelief. “Why, it’s near beer,” he told me. “Looked like beer, tasted like beer, but it had to be less than one percent alcohol. Same as a soft drink, really. I hated it then, I hate it now. In them days, of course, there was no Seven-Up. You had your orange, sarsaparilla, root beer, lemon-lime, and your Co’-Cola. During Prohibition, we sold Bruck’s Near Beer—you see, they weren’t allowed to call it beer—and old Bruck’s kept right on goin’. It was the only brewery in Cincinnati that worked, that I know of.”

  When the Depression hit in late 1929, things toughened in Owensville. Woodruff was in high school, the old Owensville High School, where all grades were in one building. He continued to help his father in the store, and played guard on the championship basketball team of 1930. One of his teammates, a farm boy, rode a mule to every practice that year.

  The Depression was momentarily set aside in the early 1930s when gold was discovered in Brushy Fork Creek. “It all started when some flakes of gold were found in the water,” Woodruff said. “Pretty soon, people were comin’ down here pannin’ for gold, and one fellow brought a good-sized little hunk into the store for us to see. A farmer used his land for a little strip-mining, and he brought a gold mining company in. But they never did make much money out of it. I even panned a little myself. Probably washed it all away.”

  The gold-mining farmer had a daughter who was an actress in Hollywood. She brought her husband, a songwriter for Hollywood musicals, to Owensville on a vacation about this time. The next time they came, they brought some friends: Alice Faye, George Gobel, and George Jessel. “They all came into the store pretty near every day when they were in town,” Woodruff said. “I wouldn’t have even recognized ’em, but I had heard they were in town. Alice was in here twice. She didn’t try to show off or anything.”

  In those times, Roy Woodruff kept a good supply of horse liniment, mineral tonics, and veterinary Absorbine, which the older people liked to use as a liniment. Woodruff also stocked things such as Dr. Lyon’s Tooth Powder and Sozodont, “the timely, delicate tooth wash.” Chuck Woodruff still carries it too, because one man in town uses it. As a pharmacist, Woodruff also keeps a lot of things that his customers find difficult to find in convenience stores and supermarkets. His version of the store, however, has moved ahead, if ever so slightly. The nickel ice cream cones were twenty-five cents—inexpensive by 1980s’ standards. Sodas cost sixty-five cents. But the wooden floors were still gritty, and the whole store looked liked something out of a faded color postcard. Woodruff’s groped to find its way in the modern world.

  “I haven’t changed things much since I moved to this location in 1948,” Woodruff said. “I guess I’d lose my identity if I changed it. I don’t know, maybe I’m looking at it the wrong way, but you’d be surprised at the number of people who like to come in here just to remember.”

  Perhaps Woodruff’s ways were good for business. Shopping was a circumspect matter to many small-town resident
s. Newcomers, of which Owensville has had a liberal share, didn’t seem to care as much about buying tradition. Maybe that’s why the subdivision dwellers outside of town preferred to stop at the new discount drugstore so frequently.

  “Oh, I hear they’ve got nearly everything in that store and not much of anything,” Woodruff said nonchalantly. “You see, I’ve never actually been in it, but that’s what I’m told. The other day a man said that the place looks like a hardware store that got stunted in growth.”

  They do things differently at the chain store. The police scanner doesn’t blare and, unlike Woodruff, the chain’s operators don’t close whenever there’s a fire in town. Woodruff, the only charter member of the Owensville Fire Department, will leave the store if the department needs him. Some things, he said, are more important than business.

  He extends that philosophy to public service, too. He served three terms on the Clermont Northeastern Local School District’s board of education. He enjoyed it; it had purpose. Whatever his reasons, Woodruff served, time moved on, and his three children grew up and took their own old-town memories with them. One son became a physician, and the other children made it known that they wanted no part of ever operating a country drugstore. Woodruff respected their decisions, without being upset.

  Ruth looked sternly at him. “I told the kids I’d kill them if they ever went into this business. It’s a lot of long hours and hard work.” The look on her face showed she meant it. To avoid her stare, Woodruff turned toward the end of the fountain and observed a curly-haired young man sitting on a stool, sucking down a chocolate soda. He had overheard a part of Woodruff’s old school tales. “Yeah,” he said with a straight face, “they sure upgraded the board of education when you left it, Woody.”

  Chuck Woodruff shook his head, his contagious laughter shaking the store. “And they sure upgraded the school when you left, Squeaky. Now, what else will you have, anyway?”

  Ruth walked over to her husband and gently took his arm. She smiled at him. It was the smile of a wife who was proud of her husband and their life together.

  Woodruff sat down on a stool and stared at the scuffed soda fountain counter. “Well, I’ll just work as long as I can,” he said. “What else you going to do? Oh, I haven’t made a lot of money, but I do feel that I’ve made a lot of friends in this town. I’ve made a small contribution. And I’m happy. You have to be happy.”

  And the myth goes on.

  17

  Harry and the Midway

  On a steamy July morning in 1917, at some long-forgotten fairground in rural Ohio, the cane man escorted his son to a well-worn place behind a midway tent. The boy quivered. He could not recall his mischief that day. Finally, his father said, “Boy, somebody has to be the entertainer. Make folks laugh, make them forget their troubles.”

  That afternoon, little Harry C. Dearwester had his debut on an apple box, next to a brass scale. To guess people’s weight. For the next thirty years, he accomplished the impossible: he guessed correctly 90 percent of the time—and amazed everyone. They didn’t mind a dose of weighty realism. After all, they had come to the fair to have some fun. Besides, that Harry had a knack. When he grinned, the people responded—even when he informed them that they weighed 250 pounds. That’s why he never left the fair. Where else could a man tell people they were corn-fed and not get punched in the mouth?

  Harry’s life paralleled the heyday of the county fair in Ohio; he spent a lifetime walking through dusty midways at fairs from Lake Erie to the Ohio River. Kids bragged that they could beat him at his own game, but they were wrong. He won every time when he saw them smile.

  Once, long ago, a kid played Harry’s cane-rack game at the Butler County Fair in Hamilton on a hot July night. His father fed him quarters until he reached the two-dollar limit. The kid couldn’t win. He tossed the rings, but they bounced off the tops of the canes. Then, he ran out of money. Seeing the boy’s disappointment, the cane-rack man tapped the last ring with his fancy cane, and the ring fell over the top of a pretty red cane. The boy took the cane home and displayed it prominently in his small room. Every year after, for years, he returned to see the cane-rack man. Time passed and the boy turned into a teenager, and his thoughts turned to more complicated matters. Eventually, he stopped going to the fair with his parents.

  Then one hot day, while on assignment for a magazine in Findlay, the adult “boy” saw Harry Dearwester at the Hancock County Fair. To the boy, it seemed that only a few months had passed since he saw Harry, who was still pleasing crowds of children. The visitor decided to stop and talk.

  Harry’s world was inside a wooden orange rectangle, among hundreds of canes stacked vertically and in front of eager kids, who tried to toss lightweight wooden rings over them. Some kids couldn’t throw a ringer if they were standing a foot away from the target. The visitor watched as Harry tried to tip the rings in the kids’ favor, and most of the young ones left with flimsy but fascinating and brightly colored canes. Harry always saw to that. Some, the prized ones, had unusual handles, in the shapes of animal heads.

  Ohio’s county fairs were Harry Dearwester’s personal neon world, circumscribed by the midway and a web of cotton candy. But his world changed. As more farms melted into suburbs in the 1980s and 1990s, the county fairs in more populated areas became the ghosts of our agrarian past. The number of Ohio farms declined from 215,000 in 1947 to 78,000 in 2001. The trend continues as farmers encounter low prices and high interest in developing their land.

  Not losing sight of their agricultural roots, the fairs keep trying to attract younger people with nonagricultural programs. Some fair boards book heavy metal bands, offer competitions for the best Web designs, and display creative writing. Since 1980, the fairs in Ohio have been transformed as metropolitan areas have changed from rural to suburban. Even in agriculturally predominant counties, the fair is a slicker product these days. And in the many urban and suburban counties, fairs are a slim reason to get together and show off a dwindling number of large vegetables and animals.

  The old fair days are lost now in the twilight of our rural past. Harry knew this, yet persevered. He no longer needed the paycheck, but he needed the fair.

  He looked older and smaller than I had remembered. I envisioned a strong, large man, but on this day Harry was anything but large. He wore a cheap polyester blue ball cap with the words “Harry’s Cane Rack” on the front, a denim shirt, and plaid pants. White stubble stood out on his leathered, tanned face. When he laughed, deep wrinkles appeared and his smoky voice boomed deeply.

  Relaxing with a can of Coca-Cola and a cigarette, Harry sat under a tree and recalled a life on the road, all fifty-eight years of it, mostly at Ohio’s county fairs. He knew he was growing old and that his time was short.

  “I’ve had experiences,” he said. “Could write a book and then do another and never tell the same story twice.” He thought of himself as a relic on a now-flashy midway. The kids enjoyed the thrills and lights. His game was a simple one from another time. He looked around—now nothing but electronic games and booths with big stuffed animals and even a device to gauge how fast a person can throw a hardball. This was not Harry’s kind of place, but it was the only place left for him.

  “My father spent fifty-five years in the games,” he said. “He was a big man, six feet eight inches and 247 pounds in his shirtsleeves. People listened to him. You understand why. He started out as a bartender in Findlay. Then I became a bartender. He hit the road with the games and so did I, following in his footsteps. He always said, ‘If you can’t swim, stay out of deep water.’ So I did. I stayed with him. The cane rack is the only game I love and the fairest game around. I hate to say it, but I’m the oldest concessionaire in the state—seventy-five years old. Now, I’m the old-timer. There ain’t any others like me. I remember it all. We used to have great crowds when the fairs had the buckin’ bulls. What happened? Humane Society ruled them out. These days, we got the demolition derby. Aw!

  “I’v
e seen too many changes. You used to be able to sell the American people anything. They’re greedy. That’s no secret. But what they saw and what they got were two different things. All we had to do was give somethin’ a fancy name and the people would flow into the tents to see it. I’ve enjoyed every bit of the fairs, though. I’ve met a lot of interesting people. They say, ‘Here comes the cane-rack man.’ I don’t remember their names, but I remember their faces. When I’m gone I don’t know who’ll get all this junk. I just hope it’s somebody with some sense.”

  For thirty years, Harry operated a scale at the fairs. He guessed people’s weight. He learned to read minds by watching the movement of the eyes. He used to say anything to get the people to step up to the scale. “I’d tell them their daddy owned a butcher shop. People would stand and watch me forever. They’d come up in overcoats in September, with pockets filled with heavy stones. I’d just add on a few more pounds and guess right again. I’d say, ‘Lady, I’ll weigh you—horse and all.’”

  As people moved closer, he walked among them with the assurance of a beekeeper. Maybe his luck was some genetic inheritance. “To show you what respect my mother had for me,” he said, puffing hard on a cigarette, “she bore and reared me on a fairground.”

  Fairs were mainly daylight events then. Farmers rode in on buggies and ate something called Hokey-Pokey ice cream and waffles. Harry paid six dollars to set up his cane rack. If a fair spilled over into the evening, Coleman lanterns had to be strung up along the dusty walkways. Then the fair people left as quietly as they had come. They could pack everything they owned, jump on an express train in Greenville at eight, and disembark in Van Wert by midnight: daredevils, medicine men, cowboys and their bucking bulls. They all climbed aboard the train.

  Harry’s father crisscrossed Ohio by rail, just to open his cane rack. He started it in 1892, and for fifty-five years he made it a fixture at Ohio’s county fairs. He refused to take it outside the state. He said he was born in Ohio and he would die in Ohio. Harry took over the game in 1947. He loved the rapid-fire ballyhoo: “Hey, folks, welovetoseeya hook’emandhang’em! Hey, yeah. We got dog heads, eagle claws, rat feet—all canes from old Japan. Try it, three rings for a quarter, ten for a dollar. Hey! Who else and how many … ?”