Imagine being 13 years old and going home every day for the next six years — to jail.
Nelson Smith, chairman of the board of The Energy Cooperative in Newark, called the Licking County Jail home for nearly the entire span of his teenage years, but not because he had committed any crimes. Smith moved into the Licking County Jail when his mother was hired in the early 1960s to be the head cook and jail matron, the person in charge of the female prisoners.
Take a dash of youthful curiosity, combine it with inspired teachers, and add a free curriculum, and that’s a winning formula for the Be E3 Smart program.
The E’s stand for energy, efficiency, and education, and the program’s goal is to help middle school teachers help their students understand the power of energy. It comes with the teacher’s curriculum from the Ohio Energy Project, a nonprofit based in Worthington, as well as energy efficiency items for students to use at home thanks to sponsorship support from 23 electric cooperatives serving Ohio.
Scaring children may seem like an odd way to make a living, but Goosebumps author R.L. Stine has a knack for it.
“You just sort of feel it,” says Stine, an Ohio native who grew up in Bexley. “In the beginning of writing a book, you have to decide how scary to go. If it’s not scary enough, the book is boring. If it’s too scary, it gets silly or ludicrous. It’s a fine line when you’re dealing with 7- to 11-year-olds.”
Aesculus is hardly a word that would strike fear into anyone’s heart. Yet Ohioans take pride in their Buckeyes — the traditional nickname for the sports teams at The Ohio State University that was formally adopted in 1950, but informally used before even the turn of the 20th century. The nickname was derived from the innocuous-looking native tree nuts that can be poisonous to Gophers, Badgers, Wolverines, and many other more fierce-sounding mascots across the country.
Location: Northern Ashtabula County between Lake Erie and Interstate 90.
Provenance: Roy and Debbie Brant established the orchard in the early 1980s, and built a barn that houses an on-site bakery and farm market. In 2014, they sold the 79-acre property to current owners Brian and Jenn Diehl, who operate Brant’s Apple Orchard with help from their two teenage sons as well as orchard manager Brian Morris and farm market/bakery manager Shelly Damon.
The ubiquitous historical markers seen on roadsides around the country have their own unique look, state by state. Those in Pennsylvania and Virginia have built-in mounting posts. New York’s use extra-large letters for better readability, but Florida’s have a smaller font that allows for more words. Alabama’s and Maryland’s markers flaunt their state flags; West Virginia’s exhibits the state seal; Mississippi’s highlights the state flower. Only one state has its historical markers topped by an outline of the state and the foliage of its state tree.
Just as Paul Bunyan cuts an enormous figure in American folklore, the Paul Bunyan Show has carved out a huge reputation as one of the nation’s oldest and largest logging and sawmill equipment expos. Started in 1957, the Ohio Forestry Association event takes place at the Guernsey County Fairgrounds and boasts some 130 exhibitors who feature everything from lumber products and services to chainsaw sculptures and power tools.
Chilled, it was President George Washington’s favorite dessert. Today, rural folk throughout the eastern U.S. hunt this delectable wild fruit each fall, keeping their favorite pawpaw patch as secret as they would their best spring morel mushroom woods.
Chris Chmiel first became interested in pawpaws while in college at Ohio University. “I like to hike, and I began noticing pawpaws on the ground in the woods, just rotting, going to waste,” he says.
Driving on Ohio Route 7 south of Steubenville near Brilliant, the first thing most people notice about the Cardinal Station power-generating facility is the snow-white plume emanating from the tall, thin dual stacks on the northern end of the station and from the shorter, stubbier tower to the south. The color of those plumes is significant. Long gone are the days when the stacks would send black smoke into the atmosphere. Thanks to more than $1 billion in investments in environmental equipment, that cloud is nearly all water vapor.
Greeted by four rescue dogs as I walk toward the 19th-century farmhouse in rural Licking County, I know their barks are more of an announcement than a warning. Once in the yard, the welcoming committee swells to include several turkeys, ducks, chickens, geese, and guineas before farm owners Jeff Wince and Chad Snelling open the door of their 1823 home and invite me in.
