Small-town Weeklies
For those of you brand new to this blog, please check out www.OurNationsTreasures.blogspot.com There I post travel stories, usually with lots of pictures. The stories run every other week in four small-town papers in southwest Ohio.
My issue of The Franklin Chronicle is waiting in my mailbox when I get home today. After retrieving the mail, I walk into the house, kiss my husband hello, and sit at one end of the couch. Mark reclines on the other section, covered with his afghan watching basketball.
Mark makes fun of The Chronicle—because it is just a hometown paper, so any little accomplishment a resident makes gets featured. For instance, when My Lost Summer was published, The Chronicle ran half-page spreads about it two weeks in a row--not to say not to say recovering from a coma, writing a book about it, and having it published is a small accomplishment--but half-page articles two weeks in a row? Wow. And that was before I started writing for the paper.
On the front page of this week’s paper is a smiling photo of a young guy—from Franklin—who will be manager at the Wal-Mart opening on State Route 73 right behind some property my mom owns. See, he grew up in Franklin, went to U. of Cincinnati and worked at a Wal-Mart while he was in school. After he graduated he earned a spot in Wal-Mart manager’s training and then moved to a store in Dayton. Now he’s moving back to Franklin and going to be head honcho in his hometown. It is a cute story, kind of “local boy makes big.”
Mark good-naturedly comments, “That’s front page news? You are from such a ho-dunk town.”
Deeper into the paper I read a story about a Franklin man who has worked at the local mattress factory for 10 years, and it takes him just four minutes to make a hospital bed while constructing a regular mattress that you and I might sleep on requires 30 to 40 minutes. You might think this guy’s job pretty ho-hum, and he agrees that the work is monotonous, but what makes it all worthwhile are the occasional special orders for oddly shaped mattresses. Above the story is a picture of the mattress builder and the owner of the mattress store holding up a big mattress shaped kind of like a scallop shell. A home builder ordered it special for his daughter to put in a house he’s building in Indian Hills, the most up-scale neighborhood in Cincinnati. It’s where the movie Traffic was set (and filmed right here in Cinci).
When I thought about it, that made me laugh a little—that a man making a mattress made the paper. Mark just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
As the final seconds of the basketball games ticked away, I turned to the columns page to read something by Matt Reese, who lives in Pickerington, Ohio, which is not near here. His column is sponsored by Ohio’s agricultural industry and is likely syndicated to papers all over Ohio. Anyway, I like reading Matt. I’m not really an aggie but I enjoy reading good writing, and I can tell Matt has had training in how to pen words together—or he has a good editor at least.
So I’m reading along and being quiet when UNLV calls a time out. With no action to watch, Mark looks over at me and asks, “What’re you reading about now?” I turn my head to him and crack a smile at what I’m about to say.
“A raccoon dinner being organized by a local Lion’s Club.” We both get a good laugh at that one. (The dinner started in the 1940s as a joke but has grown from there. The Lions serve 500-600 people on raccoon dinner night.)
But Franklin is not such a ho-dunk town. After all, Wal-Mart opens next month.
My issue of The Franklin Chronicle is waiting in my mailbox when I get home today. After retrieving the mail, I walk into the house, kiss my husband hello, and sit at one end of the couch. Mark reclines on the other section, covered with his afghan watching basketball.
Mark makes fun of The Chronicle—because it is just a hometown paper, so any little accomplishment a resident makes gets featured. For instance, when My Lost Summer was published, The Chronicle ran half-page spreads about it two weeks in a row--not to say not to say recovering from a coma, writing a book about it, and having it published is a small accomplishment--but half-page articles two weeks in a row? Wow. And that was before I started writing for the paper.
On the front page of this week’s paper is a smiling photo of a young guy—from Franklin—who will be manager at the Wal-Mart opening on State Route 73 right behind some property my mom owns. See, he grew up in Franklin, went to U. of Cincinnati and worked at a Wal-Mart while he was in school. After he graduated he earned a spot in Wal-Mart manager’s training and then moved to a store in Dayton. Now he’s moving back to Franklin and going to be head honcho in his hometown. It is a cute story, kind of “local boy makes big.”
Mark good-naturedly comments, “That’s front page news? You are from such a ho-dunk town.”
Deeper into the paper I read a story about a Franklin man who has worked at the local mattress factory for 10 years, and it takes him just four minutes to make a hospital bed while constructing a regular mattress that you and I might sleep on requires 30 to 40 minutes. You might think this guy’s job pretty ho-hum, and he agrees that the work is monotonous, but what makes it all worthwhile are the occasional special orders for oddly shaped mattresses. Above the story is a picture of the mattress builder and the owner of the mattress store holding up a big mattress shaped kind of like a scallop shell. A home builder ordered it special for his daughter to put in a house he’s building in Indian Hills, the most up-scale neighborhood in Cincinnati. It’s where the movie Traffic was set (and filmed right here in Cinci).
When I thought about it, that made me laugh a little—that a man making a mattress made the paper. Mark just rolled his eyes and shook his head.
As the final seconds of the basketball games ticked away, I turned to the columns page to read something by Matt Reese, who lives in Pickerington, Ohio, which is not near here. His column is sponsored by Ohio’s agricultural industry and is likely syndicated to papers all over Ohio. Anyway, I like reading Matt. I’m not really an aggie but I enjoy reading good writing, and I can tell Matt has had training in how to pen words together—or he has a good editor at least.
So I’m reading along and being quiet when UNLV calls a time out. With no action to watch, Mark looks over at me and asks, “What’re you reading about now?” I turn my head to him and crack a smile at what I’m about to say.
“A raccoon dinner being organized by a local Lion’s Club.” We both get a good laugh at that one. (The dinner started in the 1940s as a joke but has grown from there. The Lions serve 500-600 people on raccoon dinner night.)
But Franklin is not such a ho-dunk town. After all, Wal-Mart opens next month.
posted by Elizabeth Evans Fryer at 5:30 AM
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