Category: default || By jt3y

Sunday was another road trip day, and again took me through the Hoopie State. This time, I pointed the Mercury west toward Wheeling.

Say what you like about the Mountaineer State, they have a very enlightened attitude toward speed limits. I-70 and I-470 through much of the northern panhandle are 70 miles per hour, which strikes me as a fairly sensible and prudent speed limit on a six-lane interstate with banked curves. The tank of Shell Premium I bought before setting off was well worth the extra money.

My destination was Bellaire, Ohio, right across the Ohio River from Wheeling, where I to interview someone for a freelance project. Bellaire had been a glassmaking town during much of the 20th century, and many people also worked over in Wheeling or in the coal mines back in the hills. There are still some working coal mines, and some steel mills, but otherwise, the valley has been suffering for decades --- not unlike the Mon-Yough area, come to think of it.

(An aside: I am fairly convinced that there isn't a blue state/red state divide as much as there's a town and country divide, or even a new vs. old divide. I saw a lot of Kerry signs still in evidence in Bellaire and Wheeling, and a lot of Bush signs out in the rolling hills west of Bellaire. Ohio and West Virginia, of course, both went for Bush. I suppose if you live out in the country, and there's a new shopping center down at the Interstate, and you don't have to look at abandoned buildings and shuttered factories all day long, the economy looks pretty darn good. I'll bet it doesn't look so good if you live in Bellaire or Wheeling. But I digress.)

Downtown Bellaire is dominated by two bridges --- the big stone bridge that bisects the town and carries the CSX Railroad, and an abandoned toll bridge.

The toll bridge is a truly bizarre site; on the Ohio side, they just chopped it off in mid-air. You're driving along south on Ohio 7, and approaching this very imposing, Victorian-era truss bridge --- one that wouldn't be out of place in Downtown Picksberg --- only to see that it's just dangling in mid-air. At least they left the ramps in place on the West Virginia side.

A question, for anyone who might know the answers: If the bridge is in hazardous condition, shouldn't they tear it down? And if it's safe, why don't they fix it up and open it to traffic? Wheeling's only growth business seems to be tourism, and the Bellaire Bridge is an impressive enough landmark. I'd go out of my way to drive across it.

The big story on front page of the Wheeling News-Register concerned a protest in front of the sheriff's office down in Monroe County. Apparently picketing steelworkers were arrested in front of an aluminum plant in Hannibal, Ohio --- a piece down river from Bellaire:

At the heart of the union workers' complaint Saturday was the fact that a bond hearing was not being made available to the incarcerated workers until Monday.

Ronnie Blatt, chairman of the grievance committee for Local 5724 at Ormet, said the corporation was in the process of bringing in replacement workers or "scabs" when some striking union members were placed under arrest Friday by members of the Monroe County Sheriff's Department with help from other area law enforcement agencies.

Officers maintain they were only following a court order that limits the number of pickets to 10 people at the Ormet plant entrances. Anyone else who did not leave the area was subject to arrest. Sheriff Maniford Keylor could not be reached for comment following Friday's arrest and was not at the sheriff's office on Saturday when the union members staged their protest.

This part made my eyebrows raise, too:

Deputies had no comment on the matter Saturday but said they were looking into the legalities of the protest taking place in front of the sheriff's office.

I hope it didn't take too long for them to look into the legality of the protest. It's at the very top of the Bill of Rights; they'll find it under "First Amendment," where it says the right of the people "peaceably to assemble" and "petition the government for a redress of grievances" can't be abridged. (Not even by big companies or county sheriffs!) And while they have the Constitution out, they can read down to the part about the right to a speedy trial (that's the "Sixth Amendment," for those of you playing along at home).

In the meantime, it's nice to see that the days of the Coal and Iron Police are still alive and well in the Ohio Valley, where the local constabulary gets sent out to help break up strikes, just as they were used in Western Pennsylvania during the 1900s.

Anyway, the interview was a success, and I even got some homemade cookies to take home. On the way back, I listened to the Stillers scratch out a victory against the Redskins. Driving through the backwoods of Ohio in the late fall, listening to football on the radio and eating homemade snicker doodles, is not an altogether unpleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon!

...

Submitted without further comment: This photo, taken along one of Pennsylvania's interstates, from National Lampoon. Don't you hate it when this happens?




(I've been trying to figure out where that photo was taken; it looks like it might be a Troop D car, which would put it up around Butler somewhere, but I don't know for sure.)

(UPDATE: I found the original site from which that photo was taken! It's definitely from Troop D, Butler, but it's not from the Butler station --- it's from one of the other barracks. The original photo shows the trooper is clearly laughing when the photo is taken, so it's good that she had a sense of humor about it. I stepped in a pile of wet cement on a Homestead sidewalk years ago. I only ruined a pair of shoes, but I was entirely less amused!)

(Also via the Lampoon Website: A bike race goes terribly, terribly wrong. And a warning: The Lampoon site is obviously not very family-friendly, and only marginally safe for workplace viewing.)