Listing Through Life

This park was our primary reason for going to Canton. It’s the only house William McKinley lived in (apart from the White House) that’s still in existence. But before he lived here, it was the home of his in-laws, the Saxtons. His wife, Ida grew up here.

A local woman, concerned that there was no collection of biographies of First Ladies, started a library in a nearby building. Then, when this house came up for sale, it was purchased and restored and made part of the park, which then became a National Park so it could receive federal funding.

We started at the library, located in an old bank building.

The main floor has an exhibit on “Forgotten First Ladies.” My main take-away is that the term “First Lady” is loosely defined. It includes wives who died before their husbands became President, daughters and other relatives who served as White House hostess when the President didn’t have a wife (or had one who couldn’t serve as hostess for health reasons) and wives of Presidents who aren’t well known.

We were ushered into a video room where we saw a film about three of these women. A  young intern then gave us a guided tour of the exhibit, talking swiftly and ushering us past the exhibits far to quickly for us to take anything in. It was so ridiculous that my wife and I both stopped trying to follow her. All the exhibits had signs, so I don’t know why we weren’t allowed to proceed on our own. For some odd reason, we weren’t allowed to take photos, so I sneaked one just because …

We were quick-walked down the block to the McKinley house and turned over to another intern. This one was much more relaxed and allowed us to breathe occasionally.

The house has been through a lot since the McKinley’s lived here. The first floor was used as retail space and the upper two floors were a rooming house. Here’s what it looked like at one point.

There are a few pieces in the house that belonged to the Saxtons and McKinleys, but most of the furnishings are just period pieces. They have a few photos of what it once looked like that they use as reference.

The music box in the foreground and the piano in the background belonged to Ida. That’s her photo as a young woman over the fireplace.

One of the old photos and a reconstructed built-in bookcase.

The Saxtons study. The bookcases are original.

William and Ida lived in the house from 1878 to 1891 while William served in the U.S. House of Representatives. Their rooms were on the third floor. William’s study has been reconstructed. The desk in the foreground was his.

The “ballroom” upstairs contained an exhibit on the First Ladies. The dresses on display were Ida’s.

Ida’s chair and desk. She was an invalid, confined to a chair for much of her life. Her hobbies were knitting slippers and collecting fans, examples of both were scattered throughout the house.

We weren’t sorry we visited, but I wouldn’t recommend going far out of the way to get there because of the odd way we were rushed through the exhibit and the fact that not much about the house except the outer walls, some wood work upstairs and a few pieces of furniture are original.

We spent the night of the Fourth in North Canton, Ohio. I discovered that the local fireworks show was taking place in a park about two miles from our Best Western Motel. We walked across the street to a Cracker Barrel parking lot to look for a vantage point, but a ridge blocked our view and the mosquitoes were out. We got in the car and headed in the general direction of the park. Several blocks away we began seeing people on lawn chairs in parking lots along the road. We found a handicapped spot in a funeral home parking lot just as the show began and settled in to watch through the windshield.

It was the most pathetic fireworks show I’ve seen in a very long time. Here’s a time-lapse of about a quarter of the show.

We ate breakfast the next morning at a local Einstein Bros. near the motel, then hung out in our room until 11:00. On the Internet, I found a place called Taggerts Ice Cream Parlor in Canton. It sounded good, and we wanted to go. As this was our only opportunity …

I had a simple, but excellent, grilled-cheese sandwich with coleslaw. And a hot fudge sundae for dessert. Everything was great, but my favorite part was the restaurant itself. It looked like it hadn’t been updated a bit since the 1940s.

This was not high on my list of attractions to visit, but we were in Cleveland on the Fourth of July and this was open — and pretty much nothing else was.

We got there early enough to get a $10 parking space right across the street. There were a lot of visitors this day, but not so many that it was hard to see exhibits or find seats in the theaters.

The lobby had several props used in concerts.

The exhibits consisted mostly of guitars, drum heads, clothing and album covers from musicians past and present, inducted into the Hall of Fame and not.  They were arranged by artist, time period or genre, but there really wasn’t a story to any of it, just a collection of random stuff in displays that looked like this.

There were exhibits about the “greats.” Like the Beatles.

The Beach Boys

Elvis

Johnny Cash

And lots and lots of guitars, like these from Jimi Hendrix and Paul Simon.

We stopped off in a theater for 15 minutes or so to watch a history of American Bandstand, which was sorta fun. I thought the most interesting part was the history of Alan Freed, the Cleveland disc jockey who coined the term “Rock and Roll.” (Which is why the Hall of Fame is in Cleveland.)

We bought surprisingly-good but ridiculously-expensive sandwiches in the cafe and ate out on a deck overlooking Lake Erie.

The official Hall of Fame consists of a wall with signatures engraved in glass in alphabetical order. It was underwhelming.

There was also a movie about all the inductees, and we sat through the whole thing, to our regret. There were three screens, all showing different things in quick succession while snippets of songs played loudly. There was no structure to it. It would feature, for example, Elvis and play Elvis songs in the background and show Elvis photos and videos on the screen. Then it would feature Chubby Checkers, with pictures and videos of him and some other people and maybe a few more of Elvis. The whole time the names of the people and groups were running across the screen in various type faces that were often impossible to read. At the beginning, when it featured the early years when the more classic bands were inducted, it was OK, but as it went on, more and more groups that I didn’t care for, like Motown bands and rappers and pure trash like Beastie Boys and Red Hot Chili Peppers were featured. The whole thing was total sensory overload and made me sympathetic to those who consider rock music trashy across the board.

After we escaped from that we felt so beaten up that we just wanted to get away. We strolled quickly through the upper floors but avoided any more videos and didn’t spend much time on the displays — one of which was this oddity from Pink Floyd.

We decided to take a stroll down to the shore of the lake.

I came away disturbed. I’m not about to condemn music just because it’s considered Rock — I like a lot of it. But there is no question that many of the songs and most of the artists’ lifestyles are disgusting. When I’m choosing what to listen to, I can be discerning. At the Hall of Fame, I couldn’t, and it bothered me. I certainly wouldn’t recommend a visit with kids. It wasn’t until the next morning that I felt like I’d regained my equilibrium.

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.