James Proffitt

While the Skeanses live in a home tucked away down a gravel lane in a quiet, peaceful, wooded area of the island, other spots on Kelleys — especially on those busy weekends — have an altogether different vibe, and the island’s roads can feature some chaotic twists and turns.

“[Riders] can be very happy and like to sing songs,” Natasha says. “One time I had a football team. They were like 55 years old, and they decided to share all the songs they used to sing back in the day.”

At one point, Miller says, a local coal company took note of all those nuts and briefly entered the chestnut game as a side-gig. It soon went bankrupt, however; the folks who bought up the land were looking for deer hunting sites rather than an agricultural specialty crop. 

Drivers in Ohio pass them by, often without a second thought — a small cross or a bouquet of flowers, a candle or a stuffed animal, any of a number of seemingly insignificant trinkets. But to the folks who have erected these roadside memorials, they mean the world. 

Joy lives in Duncan Falls, a sleepy town nestled against the rolling hills along the Muskingum River southeast of Zanesville, where she’s a longtime member of New Concord-based Guernsey-Muskingum Electric Cooperative. When they finally reconnected, Brad noticed she was suffering some health issues, and clearly needed a change. 

Ehrbar is one of a half-dozen full-time Kelleys captains, who, along with nine part-timers, keep the service’s five boats running from Marblehead to Kelleys Island nearly year-round. “In season, we’re running a boat every 30 minutes — we just raise the ramp and go,” Ehrbar says. “But in the off-season, we’ll give a couple minutes leeway here or there.” 

The kitchen and its chefs cook and serve up free food created with wild-harvested Ohio game, including fish, fowl, and other critters. And Ken Fry, ODNR outdoor skills specialist, says it all began when he was cooking up such treats from the bed of a pickup truck with a pop-up tent at a Jefferson County farmers market a while back.

“It was so well-received that I presented the trailer idea to my supervisor and he liked it and said, ‘Let’s go with it,’” Fry says.

Most kids of the day ended schooling and began working full-time after eighth grade. But Norton took a different path. He entered Lakeside High School (now Danbury High) in 1908. Along with track, he also competed in football, baseball, and basketball, and he carried a 4.0 academic average all four years there. 

According to the Lakeside Heritage Society, he also worked for a local railroad, operating a locomotive and cleaning and repairing buildings and equipment. He often clocked 10-hour days, six days a week.

Klier has moved plenty of homes for lots of different reasons — some legal, like for zoning issues; others more sentimental. Klier’s moved a lot of older homes. Much older. Like an 1813 timber frame home on Lake Erie.

“Oh, heavens yes,” he says. “A home that’s been in the family for generations, for example. You really have to love the house to do something like that, to go through that process.”

Esquivel said there are disadvantages to owning an old bus, including the “old rust-bucket” itself (as she describes her 1972 camper) and the constant attention it requires. 

“People are always saying, ‘I love your car!’ and ‘Can I look inside?’” she says. “Of course, I always let them. And people offer to buy it all the time, too, but I would never sell it.”