Features
Layhigh Road is a little-traveled ribbon of asphalt in rural western Butler County. Occasionally, however, a traveler might encounter a sleek, black locomotive emerging from the woods and thundering down the track that crosses Layhigh behind an X-shaped crossbuck. As quickly as the locomotive appears, it fades away, a phantom train in broad daylight.
Let’s look to the future: It’s mid-July and incredibly hot, just as it’s been every summer. On one of those 80-80 days — in the ballpark of 80 degrees accompanied by 80 percent humidity — the condensation pools on the table around the base of your glass of iced tea.
Conveniently, ice is but a few steps away. Open the freezer, twist a white rectangular tray, and cubes fall out; push a button on the door and crescent-shaped ice chips cascade into your glass.
Maps make for good reading. In the names of places, you’ll find some history, drama, romance, biography, and even some fiction — or at least some mistakes. All that and more lies within a map covering College Corner, Ohio. It’s a quaint place, an unassuming, long-established village with quirks that few towns anywhere could claim.
On Thanksgiving Day 2017, an uninvited guest arrived at an Amish farm just a few miles north of Berlin, Ohio — and decided to stay. It was a young snowy owl, and the bird hung around for several weeks, perching atop the peaks of Orris Wengerd’s several barns. It quickly became a celebrity, attracting hundreds of birders and photographers.
Location: On the grounds of the Ohio Statehouse at the northwest quadrant of Capitol Square. Provenance: Created for an Ohio exhibit at the 1893 World Columbian Exposition in Chicago, These Are My Jewels is a sculpture featuring bronze statues of seven Ohioans — Salmon P. Chase, James A. Garfield, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, Philip H. Sheridan, William Tecumseh Sherman, and Edwin M.
What’s Cow Patty ice cream? According to Dan Young, CEO and chief ice cream scooper at Young’s Jersey Dairy, that’s customers’ most common question. Folks need only glance at the pasture where Young’s Jersey cows graze to figure out what inspired Cow Patty’s name, but Young considers the question an opportunity to interact with guests.
Pumpkin pie may rule on Thanksgiving, but at Lebanon’s Golden Lamb, Sister Lizzie’s Shaker sugar pie gives it serious competition. The cream-style pie, a perpetual customer favorite, is based on a recipe that was accidentally discovered after Robert and Virginia Jones purchased the Golden Lamb in 1926.
