Electric co-ops were established to provide electricity to people living in rural communities. Folks in rural America had been mostly ignored by electric companies that didn’t see enough potential profit to run electric lines into the country. In the 1930s, a public-private partnership was forged to provide the large capital investments needed to build and operate rural electric systems.
For Tony Ahern, volunteer service work truly was a leap of faith. It has led him around the world, where he has helped bring water, electricity, and transportation options to those in need.
“When I first started doing these trips, it wasn’t as if I had a grand vision,” he says. “I just wanted to do something, so that’s what I did. I decided I would just go on faith that I would find the right projects. I didn’t need a whole game plan.”
To Roger Rhonemus, it’s almost like a Christmas bonus.
Every year for about 20 years now, Rhonemus, who farms 800 acres of corn, soybeans, and hay in Adams County, looks forward to receiving his capital credits check from Adams Rural Electric Cooperative.
Two decades ago, Rhonemus, 60, used those annual checks, which typically go out to Adams REC members each November, to buy Christmas presents for his three children. Now that the kids are grown with families of their own, he uses it to buy presents for his eight grandchildren. And he couldn’t be happier.
No one ever went into the vintage toy business out of dreary obligation.
In fact, many of the people we met during our look at vintage toy stores around Ohio started as hobbyists collecting the memories of their own childhoods.
“A hobby turned into a business,” says Mike Patterson, owner of Mike’s Vintage Toys in Springboro, describing his career path.
Harrisville, West Virginia, boasts the oldest operating dime store in the United States. Berdine’s Five & Dime began as a general store in 1908 and has been operating at its current location on Court Street since 1915. It looks to be ready for an even longer stay.
For some 25 years, I raised beagles for hunting cottontail rabbits. Reluctantly, I gave it up about a decade ago when my oldest dog died. What I miss most about the sport is the sound of the chase.
Hunters call it hound music.
My longtime friend and fellow outdoors writer Mike Tontimonia is another who knows the sound well. A member of Carroll Electric Cooperative in eastern Ohio, Tontimonia estimates he’s owned 150 beagles during his lifetime — both hunters and field-trialers — with as many as 20 dogs in his kennel at any one time.
The electric power “grid” that serves our country is a complex and highly technical system that depends on hundreds of organizations working together, each responsible for specific roles, to make it work. Its reliability and stability also depend on common-sense rules from federal regulators and power system operators that direct the actions of electricity providers, both large and small. I have voiced my concerns, on occasion, about ill-conceived or over-reaching regulations that add costs or undermine reliability with little or no benefit to consumers.
