Well, our sojourn to Ohio to visit family and friends, even some of Concetta's high school classmates, has come to an end and, as Willie so eloquently put it, we're on the road again. We did get off to somewhat of a late start this morning since it was hard tearing ourselves away, but by 10:00 A.M. we were backing out of the Moose Lodge parking area where we'd had the rig "plugged in" for the last four days, and had begun our trek westward on Ohio Route 224. As always, we were avoiding the "blue roads," the ones William Least Heat Moon wrote about in his book, "Blue Highways," and we're sticking to the rural farm roads as much as possible.
When you travel the blue highways, you get to see everything like you're looking at it through the wrong end of a telescope. Everything is just far away and tiny. But when you travel the farm roads, you see America up close and personal. Sometimes this can be sad, like when you get to see a 1940s-era passenger car, universally known as a "heavy-weight," sadly moldering the years away in a farmer's barnyard, or some fabulously beautiful Victorian home that the owners have simply abandoned to the elements.
But sometimes you see a beautiful, beautiful farm where all the fences are white as snow, the barns are brilliant red with dazzling silver roofs, and fledgling corn plants march away to the horizon in all directions. Not sure those little plants will be elephant-eye high by the Fourth of July, but we'd like to think so.
Most of the time you can set your own pace on the farm roads. I like to watch the mirrors and when I get more than five or six cars behind us, I'll find a wide spot on the shoulder and pull over to let them pass. That way we can travel a few miles per hour under the speed limit, and thoroughly enjoy all the scenery without anyone being too annoyed with us.
Of course, you don't always escape the 18-wheelers on the farm roads. There are still a few "black sheep" drivers out there trying to avoid the mandatory weighing stations on what one long-haul driver told me they call the "super slab." An 18-wheeler is supposed to weigh no more than about 78,000 pounds. If they weigh more, the truck can be held up and the company fined. But unscrupulous drivers will sometimes load far more than the allowable cargo so they can make fewer runs for more money. Then they travel the back roads whenever they need to avoid being weighed. The overly heavy trucks do much to destroy our highways.
So it was today as we cruised from Mogadore, Ohio, near Akron on Route 224. We passed a dozen different tiny towns, crossed a half dozen rail lines, and just enjoyed the sunshine. Yes, I said sunshine. Ever since we reached Ohio the sun has been shining non-stop. I was a little disappointed as nothing much presented itself in the way of photographic subjects. I could have stopped and shot a few of the aforementioned Victorian houses, but that was about it. We did photograph another piece of roadside Americana when we found a barn, this time freshly painted, with a Mail Pouch tobacco advertisement emblazoned on the front.
Since I didn't bring you up to speed on barn advertising earlier, here's what Wiki has to say about them: "A Mail Pouch Tobacco Barn, or simply Mail Pouch Barn, is a barn with one or more sides painted from 1890 to 1992 with a barn advertisement for the West Virginia Mail Pouch chewing tobacco company (Bloch Brothers Tobacco Company), based in Wheeling, West Virginia. At the height of the program in the early 1960s, there were about 20,000 Mail Pouch barns spread across 22 states."
"These barns can be found in Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin, West Virginia, and California. Unfortunately, an increasing number of the barns have fallen into dilapidation or have been demolished. They are usually hand-painted in black or red with yellow or white capital lettering, read as follows: "Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco Treat Yourself to the Best." Sometimes they are surrounded on the left and right by a thin vertical blue border."
"Initially, barn owners were paid between $1 and $2 a year for the advertisement, equivalent in 1913 dollars to about $20–$40 today. But more importantly, they received a much desired fresh coat of paint to preserve the integrity of the wood. Mail Pouch painted their message on one or two sides of the barn (depending on view-ability from the roadway) and painted the other sides of the barn any color the owner wished. Many of the barns were repainted every few years to maintain the sharp colors of the lettering."
"After World War II, many of the barns were painted by Harley Warrick of Belmont County, Ohio. He once estimated that he had painted 20,000 barns in his life, spending an average of six hours on each. Warrick claimed that he always began each barn with the 'E' in the word 'Chew.' Other barns were painted by Mark Turley, Don Shires, and several others. Their initials remain preserved on some of the barns with the date of the painting. These initials can be found on the blue border surrounding the front side, or nearer to the roof."
"The Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which sought to restrict the vast number of local advertisements that were being placed near highways, exempted Mail Pouch barns since they had been deemed historic landmarks."
"In 1992, the owner of Mail Pouch Tobacco, Swisher International Group, decided to suspend the use of barn advertisements when Warrick retired."
"In the heyday of barn advertising (c. 1900-1940) many companies paid farmers to use their barns as roadside ads, with other tobacco products (such as 'Beech Nut' tobacco) and local feed and grain stores being the most common, but Mail Pouch was the only product advertised in so widespread and consistent a manner in this fashion."
And there you have it. I hope to have more material tomorrow as we wend our way west, weather permitting. There's an awful lot of great roadside attractions between Ohio and Nevada. And when YOU hit the highway, we wish you Happy Traveling!
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