A Weekend Away. Tales of Yankee Power.

Last weekend we had one of our little adventures. It was a trip in a time machine/space ship traveling at right angles to reality. Food, fun, fire and a bottle of bubbly from plastic tumblers at a picnic table right next to a wooded hill. Three days of escape, chilly hikes through thick trees and a foray into the retail, fashion exposition, food emporium known as Yellow Springs street fair. 

Yellow Springs almost seems like its own country. A liberal, congenial, aging, poor community in southwestern Ohio, crowded with old buildings filled with progressive ideals. Street Fair amplifies, intensifies the values of the little village. It is the best place to find tie died t-shirts, Baja shirts and leather bracelets that we have found.

I remember a trip to Tennessee, when we walked through a small shop advertising itself as a different time and place. It was filled with incense, Frisbees, Dead head stuff, knit caps, army jackets, all at premium prices. All trying to appeal to a sense of better days left behind for a price. Simon and Garfunkel played silently, softly, comfortably in the back ground. I enjoyed the stroll, but didn’t buy anything. Everything was packaged and prepared and folded and presented as if it were a museum. It was too sterile, too orderly to ever represent the chaos of real life.

Yellow Springs and Street Fair don’t have that problem. It is a medieval market with Puerto Rican food, Cajun delicacies, bourbon chicken, jazz on one corner, blues on the other. Cigar box guitars, jugglers, and people packed into narrow paths, filled with a dizzying variety of products. If you want something you have to earn it. Fight your way to the front and claw it off the pile. Retail as a combat sport. Exhilarating, and you really appreciate your purchase.

We stayed at Buck Creek State Park, a wonderful area just north of Springfield. We have come to relish state parks. And Buck Creek was no exception, wrapped around CJ Brown Reservoir it is a treasure of trees snuggled into farms and pastures. You have to love the contrast.

Buck Creek is delightful. The cabins were everything we have come to expect. It is hard to describe the feeling of seclusion even though there are cabins so close you could hit them with a poorly thrown tennis ball. Whoever devised the layout had a flair for the use of natural barriers to provide a sense of distance. We sat around our fire pit and it was as if we were the only people in the park, even though it seems most of the cabins were in use.

There is one difference between Buck Creek and the other state parks we have tried. The level of courtesy was drastically inferior. We arrived a little early, it is hard to time it exactly, sometimes you are a little later than check in and occasionally you are a little early.  It wasn’t a lot, and we had already driven past the cabins, just to see where we should be. Since it was Friday, and Thursday in the fall is probably pretty slow in most parks, the place was almost abandoned. It was obvious that housekeeping was finished, nobody was anywhere near the area. It was quiet, empty.

“You can’t check in until 4:00.” She looked at me, and there was no “customer service” in that look. It was hard to say if she was angry or just indifferent, sometimes those feelings are too much alike. I worried we might stand there for forty minutes. With silence crashing around the small room, it was Catholic school all over again, a steely, apathetic glare and me with no place to hide. I wasn’t sure if she wanted me to leave and come back at a “more appropriate time.”

Eventually, she lowered herself to allow me to check in. But not before she warned me about the danger of trying to get into the cabin ahead of time. We took her seriously, and walked around the Lake View Trail until 4:00 precisely. Then we went in, unloaded our car, and made ourselves at home. It is so easy to make yourself at home at a state park.

We will go back to Yellow Springs, and we will definitely go back to Street Fair, and we will probably go back to Buck Creek, it was too nice, and had too many things we want to see. But, we won’t show up until 4:00 and we won’t expect to be treated as a guest.

Welcoming Winter with a Little Good Luck.

Yesterday was a good day. Street Fair is our fall kickoff event. We welcome the coming winter with a trip to Yellow Springs. Of course, as far as traditions go it is in its infancy. Just two years old, but, traditions have to start somewhere, right?

It is also an accidental tradition. Last year we planned to go to Yellow Springs just to wander through town, in and out of the little shops, having an appetizer, some coffee, maybe a drink. It is our kind of place, filled with small specialty shops, book stores, little restaurants, and bars. All uniquely Yellow Springs, all uniquely exotic and off beat. Somehow, by some stroke of good luck, we happened to plan our trip the very day they were having Street Fair. Now it is on our calendar, and if you are anywhere around central Ohio in the middle of October you should go. There is a charm and frantic energy to Yellow Springs and Street Fair is the outlet for all the accumulated passion of such an enchanted place. 

We talked to an artist in Marquette, MI last summer, we stumbled in to her shop wandering around waiting for the frieghter to dock and load. She struck up a conversation with us, we have walked through places like hers before and it could be as cold and silent as a tomb. Not there, though, she was so friendly. She had several awards tacked onto her walls and signs explaining her teaching schedule in Michigan and Florida. She was clearly a talented person. She was also an outgoing person, polite, and funny. I looked at a series of paintings, an industrial time lapse capsule captured in stark colors, straight lines and harsh, unforgiving geometry. Without lifting her head from her work in progress she explained the definition of the series. The birth, growth and decay of an industry, building or business. In those few sentences she opened my eyes to the value of a painting, the story and meaning behind the oil and canvas. Somehow I thought she would be at home in Yellow Springs.

This year we have decided to add an event to our warm welcome to the chill of winter. Midnight at Moonville. Moonville is an abandoned mining town in southeastern Ohio. There are rumors of a Moonville Ghost. A man was killed in the raiload tunnel, appropriately known as the Moonville Tunnel, and has been stuck in the area, wandering, lost and alone ever since. I’m not really sure what Midnight at Moonville is all about but the poster says enough for us.

It was another thing we kind of stumbled on. We rented a cabin at Lake Hope not far from the Moonville Tunnel, and since we are who we are we had to go looking for Moonville, and the Moonville Cemetery. We didn’t find them, nor did we find the Moonville Ghost. We decided to go back, an internet map in hand and find town and the graveyard, and maybe the ghost. Though there is no map for that. He is supposed to hang around in the tunnel, showing up occasionally.  Through the wonders of Facebook and the ability to follow and like things Midnight at Moonville showed up on my Facebook page. 

There were no cabins available so we decided to drive down and back. But, good fortune popped up again, someone cancelled and we snapped it up. Now, all of the sudden we are welcoming Old Man Winter with Yellow Springs Street Fair, a long weekend, a kayak excursion, a visit to Taco John’s, Moonville, possibly the real Moonville, and one of the best brunch buffets known to man. 

So winter be damned, we are going into the season with a smile, a nice tan, maybe, and full stomach and a story. Stay tuned.

Yellow Springs and the Power of the People.

This weekend my wife and I are loading up and going to Street Fair in Yellow Springs, OH. Yellow Springs is a fantastic little town. There is a liberal arts college there which pours a little extra soul into the streets, shops, bookstores. Street Fair is the festival that focuses all of the energy into a point. Admittedly it is a point that is about 4 blocks long and two blocks wide, but, it needs to be that big just to hold the power.

And it is power. It is the power of a lone sax player standing on the corner, right in front of the burger and beer place, just ripping through jazz riffs until the sensual drift of the rhythm pulls you along. It is the magic of the lone musician with a guitar made from a cigar box and amplified through a tiny speaker just plucking a blues melody in front of the Speedway station, because they let him use their electricity. Blues music can really soothe the soul, a simple progression in the hands of a master can move you to a place of such intense feeling. Even when it is played, or maybe especially when it is played, on a small wooden box guitar built by hand. It is magic.

So much magic. It is the magic of the local historical society trying to preserve the beauty of those simple streets, despite government cutbacks and apathy,  by selling homemade cookies, brownies and pies. There is a magic buying street tacos from the elementary school booth, trying to pay for a new swing set, staffed by volunteers flipping carnitas filled with pork, chicken and steak. A special magic when a child's smiling face, missing a tooth in front asks you in all seriousness "do you want it really hot?" "I want it to make me cry." and they laugh and douse it with mild sauce, smiling the whole time. You have to throw a few dollars in the tip jar for that kind of service. Tacos made with love.

You have to love the festivals in small towns, the community, even when you are not part of the
community. There is a flow, even when all movement stalls, and it does, often. The small streets are crowded with booths, back to back down the middle and on both sidewalks, which makes traffic rely on cooperation. Sometimes, though, something calls to you, some bauble, some piece of art, some exquisitely tie dyed shirt, and you have to stop and admire the love and talent that went into it's creation.

And really, that is what it is all about, creation, a community has to be a creation of all the inhabitants. It doesn't matter if it is a small town, a Facebook group, a circle of friends, it needs the life of the members. I have always been kind of an outsider, and at least when I got older I learned to pretend it was my choice. Which makes things like Yellow Springs Street Fair so wonderful me. I can go and be part of a bigger community without ever risking trying to be a part of anything. Or maybe I just like the tacos.

It's a wicked world we live in.

One mans chicken is another mans traveling companion, named Falcon.