Listing Through Life

I’ve watched A Christmas Story perhaps three times, but my wife’s a big fan, so when she found out the house in Cleveland used in the movie was open for tours, we had to go.

Jean Shepherd wrote a memoir of his youth in Hammond, Indiana called In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash. When the stories in that book were turned into the movie, the name of the town was changed to Hohman. But most of it was filmed in and around Toronto — except the scenes of the outside of the house and Higbee’s Department Store, which were shot in Cleveland.

Some guy who made his living making and selling leg lamps found out the house was for sale. He bought it and restored it and opened it as a museum. He must be making good money because he’s since bought two houses across the street, one for a gift shop and one for a museum. He’s also funding the restoration of other houses in the neighborhood.

As we drove up, we saw a guy motioning us into his yard where we could park for $5. I decided to try other options first and found a free spot in a tiny parking lot between the gift shop and museum across the street.

We paid a ridiculous amount for the tour and were ushered into the house by an enthusiastic young woman. (That’s her on the other end of the couch looking into the camera in the photo below.} There were probably 30 of us crowded into the front room as she gave us some information. She then let us wander about.

None of the scenes from the movie were shot in the house and the rooms aren’t even arranged the same way but the owner has done a good job decorating the place to look like the sets in the movie.

Since nothing was authentic, there were no limitations on what we could touch. People wandered about reenacting scenes from the movie.

We were then ushered into the backyard where we saw the shed where Black Bart and his men hid out.

Then it was across the street to the museum where we were allowed to wander about some more. It’s tough to know exactly what we were seeing there. A lot of the stuff looked very authentic, but most of it didn’t really claim to have been actually from the movie.

In the garage outside was a 1938 Oldsmobile like the one used in the movie. Or perhaps it was the very one used in the movie. Hard to say.

There was also a firetruck similar to the one used in the scene where Flick gets his tongue stuck to the flagpole.

We bought a bunch of stuff in the gift shop, but not one of these suits.

A guy who lived three houses up the street gave the film crew free use of his driveway. In exchange, they gave him a part in the movie as the guy who delivered the leg lamp box. Some years later, he was given a leg lamp in honor of his role and he proudly displays it in a special window in his house.

The next morning we drove through downtown Cleveland and found the store that used to be Higbees. It’s now a casino.

After my circumperambulation of the Ohio state capitol, I wandered inside. The lower level, or at least those parts of it I had access to, were given over to displays and artifacts related to Ohio history.

The first room had a county map of the state on the floor.

A replica of the Liberty Bell.

A stagecoach was tucked in a corner next to a stairwell to represent the way people traveled to the capital when the statehouse was first built.

I took the elevator  up a level to the rotunda. This is the rather odd skylight in the weirdly-abbreviated dome.

There were several giant paintings, most of which looked vaguely familiar. The top one is The Battle of Lake Erie — Perry’s Victory.

The Treaty of Greene Ville

Dawn of a New Light

The Lincoln-Vicksburg Monument, commemorating the 1863 Civil War battle with a phrase from Lincoln’s second inaugural address.

A statue of Thomas Edison which will be moved to the National Statuary Hall in the United States Capitol in October, 2015 to take its place with other statues of great Americans.

There was much more of this type of thing, and it was fun to wander around and look, but I didn’t have time to take the guided tour.

I spent an hour and a half on a rainy Monday morning exploring outside and inside the Ohio Statehouse in Columbus. Here in the approximate order in which I happened upon it, is what I saw.

I parked on the street about half a block away, and approached from the southeast. This was my first view of the weird abbreviated dome.

There’s a Civil War cannon at each corner of the plaza.

Monuments to soldiers of (left) the Spanish-American War, the Philippines Insurrection and the China Relief Expedition and (right) World War I.

The west side. I still think (and always will) that the cupola without a dome looks unfinished and weird.

President William McKinley Memorial. McKinley was a native of Ohio and governor of the state from 1891 until 1896 when he became President. When McKinley was in Columbus, he and his invalid wife Ida lived in the Neil House Hotel across the street from the Statehouse. As William walked across the road to work, he would stop at this spot and wave his handkerchief to his wife who was watching out the window.

The statues on the sides represent peace and prosperity, both with children who represent future generations.

The quote is from the speech he made in Buffalo, New York just before he was assassinated.

The state seal of Ohio

This statue is called “These Are My Jewels” referring to a legend about a Roman woman named Cornelia who, when asked where her jewels were, returned with her sons. The seven men around the base are seven natives of Ohio who were active for the Union during the Civil War. They are Generals Ulysses S. Grant, William T. Sherman and Phillip Sheridan; Generals and Presidents James A Garfield and Rutherford B Hayes; Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase; and Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. It was created for and displayed at the World Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893.

James Thurber, a native of Columbus, wrote the statue into a short story titled The Day the Dam Broke. He described a mob of women climbing onto the shoulders of the Jewels to escape an imaginary flood.

The north side. The Columbus Dispatch sign advertises the local newspaper which has been published since 1871.

Peace, in honor of Civil War soldiers.

The east side, with flags for each of the counties in the state. They, and the curved white walls at each end of the plaza, commemorate the soldiers of World War II and wars since then.

Christopher Columbus Discovery Monument. The city is named after Columbus. The statue was created in 1892, on the 400th anniversary of his founding of America. It was moved to the capitol in 1932. The base was created in 1992, on the 500th anniversary.