Dale Gieringer

       For those of us who think we've seen everything in Cincinnati, there's  a fascinating new tourist guidebook, "Secret Cincinnati:  A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure," by Kathryn Witt.  It lists dozens of attractions I never heard of before:  the American Sign Museum, the Berhringer-Crawford Museum, the Lucky Cat Museum, Jane's Saddlebag Whine Shop, the Party Source Spirits and Liquor Library, the Cincinnati Aviation Heritage Museum, the Old Ludlow Incinerator, Bobby Mackey's Music World, etc.   The book is on sale at the Harriet Beecher Stowe house on Gilbert Ave, which has reopened but in the process of restoration.

Philip Spiess

Wow!  What can I say, Dale!  I'll have to look it up!

Meanwhile, an historical note on the Cincinnati Gas Lights (another of Paul's great pictures, from Lafayette Avenue in Clifton):

Although I grew up with the gaslights on many of the streets in Clifton -- Lafayette, Middleton, Morrison Avenues, and Lyleburn and Wirham Places, among others (the lights of which, I am convinced, turned me into the dyed-in-the-wool Victorian I still am today), other suburbs have them as well:  Hyde Park (St. Charles Place, Zumstein, Burch, and Astoria Avenues, for example); North Avondale (e.g., Rose Hill and Marion Avenues); the Kennedy Heights/Pleasant Ridge area (e.g., Dryden Avenue and Kimberley Court); and East Walnut Hills (e.g., Keys Crescent).  Other suburbs are dotted with them as well:  Walnut Hills, College Hill, Fairmount, Mount Lookout, and Roselawn.  As of April, 1977 (when I did the research for my 1978 book, The Industrial Archeology of Cincinnati, Ohio:  A Guide for S. I. A. Tourists [i.e., the Society for Industrial Archeology], 1978), there were 1,117 gaslights remaining on about 170 residential streets in Cincinnati, but every so often, on petition by residents, a few more get removed and replaced by electrical fixtures.

The gas lighting of Cincinnati streets was first introduced into Cincinnati in 1841, with the gas originally controlled by the Cincinnati Gas, Light & Coke Co. (now the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co.).  In 1875, maintenance service of the gaslights was established by the Globe Light Co., at a cost of $29 per lamp per year; by 1879, there were 6,000 gas lamps in Cincinnati.  Many of the cast iron poles are marked with the name  and patent date of the manufacturer.  Some of the poles are relatively plain; some have winding ivy cast into them; some still have the cross-arm supports for the lamplighter's ladder -- at least eight different styles of lamp posts remain in use.  Some lamps will be seen to have a circular black metal disc hung from one side of the shade; this disc could be purchased by an adjacent homeowner, who hung it on the lamp to keep the light from shining in through a bedroom window.  Around the turn of the century, suburbs on the outskirts of the city, such as Oakley and Montgomery, had naptha lamps which were being serviced by the Sun Vapor Street Light Co.

The currently existing gaslights were all furnished with the Welsbach gas lamp burner in the 1890s (mostly around 1895).  Welsbach, an Austrian, had invented a superior type of gaslight mantle and glass-enclosed burner that prevented the wind from blowing out the light, as so often happened.  Some of the original patents indicate that most of the Welsbach burner development was done in the 1880s and 1890s.  The Welsbach Gas Light Co., now the Welsbach Lighting Products Co., was founded in 1877 as the Pennsylvania Gaslight and Globe Co.  For 98 years it was located in Baltimore, Maryland; it now resides in New Haven, Connecticut.  The Cincinnati-style gaslight became a trademark fixture of the company's; it was not made before 1890.

Until about 1966, Cincinnati's gaslights were equipped with automatic dimmers, small brass clocks attached to each lamp's gas valve; these automatically turned down the gas during the day and turned it up again at night.  They were wound every few days by employees of the Welsbach Gas Light Co., on contract with the city to maintain the lights; Welsbach employees had regular routes of daily rounds, checking, cleaning, and repairing the lamps and winding the clocks.  The clocks were finally removed to save the city the cost of the clock-winding service and -- irony of ironies -- to burn more gas!  Now [1978] with a gas shortage, the city would like to reinstall an automatic dimmer device!  The Welsbach Gas Light Co., however, left Cincinnati in 1972.

Cincinnati's gaslights are now maintained [1978] by the Cincinnati Gaslite Co. (616 Delhi Ave., Cincinnati), which is under contract to the city.  It is paid $47.65 per lamp per year for this service; company employees make regular rounds, washing the globes, about 99% of which are now made out of polyethylene plastic, rather than glass (this was obviously not the case in 1962, when I was learning to drive:  I was dropping off our classmate Rob St. John at his home at the end of Lyleburn Place in Clifton, and, backing up to turn around, I heard a sudden sound of falling glass -- I had bumped into the cast iron post of the gaslight at the end of the street, and its glass shade -- perhaps already broken? -- had come crashing down), once every sixty days, and doing other maintenance.  The city itself now stockpiles replacement parts, and the Cincinnati Gas & Electric Co. bills the city for the gas used by means of an estimate based on "the laws of physics, the size of the orifice, and the gas pressure"; the bill is currently [1978] $73,000 a year.

For years there has been an ongoing struggle to save the Cincinnati gaslights.  (This has perhaps now ended, as a number of areas of Cincinnati, such as Clifton, are now designated as "Gaslight Districts.")  In 1959, the city first considered assessing property owners on gaslit streets for the difference between the cost of their lighting and that of standard electrical lighting; the city currently [1978] claims this difference is $66,000 per year.  The city's official policy [1978] on removal is that a majority of residents on any given block rules as to whether the lamps go or stay.  In 1978 many of the various local neighborhood councils and associations were fighting to save the lights, which would otherwide have been replaced by mercury vapor electric lights on ordinary wooden poles with overhead wires, or by boulevard lamps, glass globes on metal poles with underground wiring.  Defenders of the gaslights claim that their undeniable aesthetic charm adds to the desirability of residential areas that have them, which results in higher property taxes that offset the gaslights' operating costs; those who wish to see the gaslights replaced think that they are great wasters of needed energy resources, and that crime is higher (or at least the potential for crime is higher) in gaslit areas because of darker streets at night.  There is no hard data at present to support the claims of either side.  As of my writing in 1978, there was a move afoot to place all of the gaslights on the National Register of Historic Places (this has probably now been done, via historic districts, such as Clifton), but also as of my writing in 1978, the matter could well have become moot, as there was a bill at that time before the Ohio General Assembly (then already passed by the Ohio House of Representatives) designed to outlaw gaslights altogether!

Anyone care to update this?

Paul Simons

First many thanks Phil for the full and fascinating research on this most important technology. The only thing I can add in the way of updating is that I don't see any new public lighting being installed anywhere that isn't LED lighting. The increase of white LED power in the past few years has been phenomenal. Let us pray and act in such a way that this type power increase becomes restricted to LED's.

One more photo - Cincinnati seems to excite nostalgia, there's even a web page about it - http://www.city-data.com/forum/cincinnati/105963-mid-century-reading-road.html

But anyway, the photo - the Burnet Woods concrete slide - no fossil-fuel or high-tech renewable energy required, powered by gravity -

Philip Spiess

"Here we are again!" -- to quote a standard comedian line from the days of Victorian theatre.  And today I'm here to comment on that Concrete Slide in Burnet Woods, a picture of which Paul has put up on this Forum.

The Trailside Museum in Burnet Woods (one of the city's oldest parks) in Clifton, now known as the Trailside (or Burnet Woods) Nature Center, was built by Franklin D. Roosevelt's "New Deal" agencies in 1939 (it apparently was a joint effort among the WPA [Works Progress Administration], the PWA [Public Works Administration], and the CCC [Civilian Conservation Corps]); the WPA and the CCC built many such structures, walls, walks, etc., in national, state, and local parks in the 1930s.  The building was designed by Cincinnati architect R. Carl Freund (1902-1959) in a distinctly Frank Lloyd Wright "Naturalism" style (the term does not refer to a "Nature Center," but to a style of architecture); Freund worked with the Cincinnati Park Board for many years, designing many of the shelter houses in the Cincinnati parks (the ones in Mount Airy Forest are particularly notable), but perhaps his grandest concept was one of his last -- the almost Expressionistic Bellevue Hill Park Pavilion in Fairmount (1950s), which, in a Modernist idiom, loosely follows the outlines of the old Bellevue House resort, which stood at the head of the Bellevue Hill Incline..  [I'll speak of the architect Henry Hobson Richardson's memorial in Burnet Woods, adjacent to U. C.'s College of Design, Art, and Architecture another time.]

I assume that the Concrete Slide was built at that time, 1939 (it has all the earmarks of having been built along with the museum).  As a child who grew up in Clifton, I attempted this slide a number of times, and I can say, quite honestly, that even in the early 1950s, if you were wearing short pants (I was), this slide was not for you -- do you know how rough basic concrete can be?  (It was.)  In the summer it was also hot!  Many years later, as a college student, I essayed it once again (in long pants) to try it out, and it was not really smooth sailing -- occasionally I had to "scroonch" myself along to get to the bottom.  From Paul's photo, it looks really smooth now (after 80 years of use) -- but I still would have second thoughts about going down it!  (If you want a real thrill, start at the top and drive at high speed down Richter Avenue in Western Hills, just off of Queen City Avenue, probably the steepest street in Cincinnati, including Ravine Street, and introduced to me by our own beloved Dale Gieringer!)

[N.B.:  Apparently there is -- or was -- another such Concrete Slide in Alms Park, but I have not seen it.  Has anybody?]

Paul Simons

Again thanks Phil for your exhaustive research. You can find almost anything on Youtube, so here's one fellow, using a piece of cardboard to reduce friction. When I ws there, a similar item was on the wall next to the slide, an indication of the generosity of Cincinnatians. Whoever left it had no idea who the next user might be - even a socialist or, even worse, an immigrant - but he or she left the cardboard anyway.

FYI - the road after the slide and nature museum, past the lake that once featured rowboats, ducks and a refreshment stand offering sno-cones for people and popcorn for humans and ducks alike, was closed, perhaps by executive decree. Maybe an athlete who had fallen into disfavor wanted to train there, who knows.

And now here's Jen at the Alms Park slide. As you can see, she isn't using any cardboard at all.

I called Jen to see how she did that, with no cardboard. She wasn't home and her husband didn't want to provide any information. He even seemed to take offense at my innocent questions. Probably not a native - more likely from Philadelphia, home of hostile, argumentative people.

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

Paul, you're not a Philly native so you're safe from that argumenative, grouchy stuff.

Jonathan Marks

I remember using cardboard in Burnet Woods.  And that probably wasn't recently.

Ault Park doesn't require it, evidently, as it's a much shorter and simpler descent.

Philip Spiess

The Alms Park slide looks much newer than that in Burnet Woods; in fact, it looks recent.

As to the park road which goes into Burnet Woods from Jefferson/Ludlow Avenue (across the street from former Cincinnati Republican political boss George B. Cox's grand mansion, for many years the Pi Kappa Alpha -- "Pike" -- fraternity house) being closed, I believe it's been closed to vehicular traffic for some time; I do not know the reason, whether to allow for joggers and pedestrians, or whether it no longer has an exit at the southen end -- the city has screwed around with the roads surrounding the University for years, almost since the days we were in high school.  The former suburb of Corryville, to the east of the original University campus, has practically disappeared, due to the expansion of the University over its former boundaries; it's now all called "Clifton" (which it's not!).  This began years ago with the re-routing of Vine Street at the top of Vine Street Hill (above Inwood Park) through the middle of Corryville and subjoining it with a piece of Jefferson Avenue, also twisted at its southern end; if you could ever get to the Zoo by still strictly following Vine Street, you were lucky!  The eastern-most portions of Corryville now tend to be called "Mount Auburn" (which, yes, abuts it on the east) -- when they're not also called "Clifton."

And, yes, Paul, the refreshment stand by the side of the lake in Burnet Woods -- providing exactly the refreshments you said, to ducks and humans alike -- I haven't seen open probably since I was in 7th or 8th Grade (we call it Middle School now, but we certainly didn't then -- we called it "Junior High School").  And there were the rowboats.  At the southern end of the park road, which ran along the western edge of the Burnet Woods lake, where the road connected with the University roads (I don't have a map before me to recapture the names), back in the trees stood a very old barn or garage-like building (it may or may not be there still), which served as a maintenance shed for the park.  My father remembered that, as a boy, when John Robinson's Circus was in town (its home base was Cincinnati, in Terrace Park, though it toured nationally -- I should write it up sometime) he (being a Corryville native) was sometimes hired to water the elephants, which were being housed in that shed -- were they performing at Carson Field in Nippert Stadium on the U. C. campus?  (I don't know.)

As to the Burnet Woods Lake itself, that was where we all went ice-skating in winter, when they put up the skating flag at the entrance to the park, announcing that the ice was safe enough to skate on.  (Yeah, every once in a while we skated on the Twin Lakes in Eden Park at the edge of Walnut Hills, but that was much further afield.)  I well remember skating in Burnet Woods at some time in my WHHS days, and smashing headlong into Mike Pahner (our classmate Steve Pahner's older brother), who was coming at breakneck speed the other way, a revolting development which broke my glasses and gave me one hell of a bloody nose!  When the weather wasn't sufficiently cold for lake skating, we often had skating parties (some of them birthday parties) on the indoor rinks at Cincinnati Gardens (now torn down, I've heard).  Ah, yes!  those were the days, my friends!

Jerry Ochs

Did you follow the FIFA Women's World Cup?  I just found out that Rose Lavelle, an athlete with incredible skills, is from Cincinnati.  Unfortunately for her, she did not attend WHHS; she went to Mount Notre Dame High School.  Three cheers for Rose!

Barbara Kahn (Tepper)

It seems we didn't have a lot of the same experiences growing up but Phil struck a chord with me when he talked about Cincinnati Gardens and the skating rinks. I didn't know if was gone but that makes sense that it would be.  I learned to skate there and loved it. 

The lower level parking lot is where my driving teacher took me to practice. He ate Gelusils the whole time. I never knew if that was just for me or everyone. I suspect he wasn't cut out to deal with new drivers.  

Paul Simons

Phil - Driving around the UC area is totally different these days from what it was. The hospital complex is integrated with the campus. However the Esquire Theater is still there on Ludlow, and at the corner where Ludlow becomes Jefferson and intersects Clifton Ave, the Skyline is still there. This proves the existence of an omnipotent, benevolent, magnanimous God, if you happen to be at that corner in Cincinnati, and not in a cage in El Paso Texas.

Jerry - I did follw the US Women's team, mainly because that Megan Rapinoe has the grit to speak her mind, to, as they say, speak truth to power. And, these athletes are inspiring, especially the ones who stay in it as they get a bit older than average. We had a pitcher here in Philly, Jamie Moyer, who stayed active in MLB well into his 40's.

Barbara - I can remember trying to ice skate at Cincinnati Gardens. Trying but no good at it. I have heard it was torn down, maybe only in the last few years. I saw both The Cincinnati Royals with The Big O (Oscar Robertson) there, also The Beatles. For the Roayals game they had a deal - if you bought something at the Robert Hall clothing store across the street you got a break on admission so I bought a nylon winter coat, best coat I ever had.

"Where the values go up,up,up/ And the prices go down, down,down/ Robert Hall this season/ Will show you the reason/ Low overhead, low overhead!"

Philip Spiess

Barbara:  Cincinnati Gardens was not only where I went ice skating many times, but it was also where I saw my first "Ice Capades" and other ice-skating shows (as well as a couple of Shriners' Circuses, and occasional games of the local ice hockey franchise, the "Mohawks").  I believe I had my 12th birthday party as a skating party there (Spring of 1958), and someone gave me a kids' illustrated version of "Best Tales of Sherlock Holmes," which captivated me.  (Dick Ransohoff, with whom I was close friends in those days, also introduced me to Christopher Morley's edited edition of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, a copy of which I still have; I've been a "Sherlockian" ever since.)

Cincinnati Gardens was also where the Dan Beard Council (Cincinnati and Hamilton County) of the Boy Scouts of America held its annual Scouting Show.  Our troops (Boy Scout Troop 3 and Explorer Scout Troop 3 of Clifton) took a booth every year to demonstrate some aspect of our Scouting activities.  The year I remember (I think it was our senior WHHS year), we had taken two booths at Cincinnati Gardens, several aisles apart, in order to demonstrate various aspects of signalling from one booth to another -- Morse Code by "telegraph key" (my telegraph key was later used by the Smithsonian Institution in 2008 to transmit by transatlantic telegraph a message of greeting to the Science Museum in London to commemorate the sesquicentennial of Cyrus Field's laying of the Atlantic Cable in 1858), Navy Signal Lamps with shutters, also doing code, and wooden towers we had built from which Scouts signalled to each other by "Semaphore," using flags.  The public could write messages to be transmitted from one booth to another on actual Western Union telegraph forms (we had pads of them), but the public's interest in sending messages far exceeded our abilities to transmit in good time -- good as our abilities were, we were running way behind.  Fortunately, we had also supplied our booths with U. S. Army field telephones (relics of World War II) -- and so we (our classmates Don Dahmann, Tom Gottschang, Rob St. John, Jim Stillwell, and I) got on the field phones secretly and read the messages to the other booth, which then wrote the messages down on the Western Union forms as if they had been sent!  [Note:  First point of the Scout Law:  "A Scout is Trustworthy."  Also a missing, but essential, point of the Scout Law:  "A Scout is Cunning (nay, Devious), but (being a Boy) often is Creatively (nay, Alarmingly) Ingenious."]

Yes, as I understand it, Cincinnati Gardens, and its later skating annex, are gone (any local classmate want to report on this?), yet that is also where we held city-wide band and choir music festivals, great choirs and orchestras directed by Mr. Worrell, Superintendent of Music in the Cincinnati Public Schools (where the hell did the actual audience sit during those performances?).  And Cincinnati Gardens was also where my father explained to me, at a very young age (I think it was as we entered one of those ice shows), that the doorway entrances which opened onto the sitting area of the arena from the corridors behind were called "vomitoriums" (actually "vomitoria") after the ancient Romans.  And, lo! not two minutes after he told me this, I had to sidestep a puddle of vomit someone had just deposited in the entrance we were passing through!  History indeed was unveiling itself before my very eyes!  Final note:  At some time, somewhere near the end of the 20th century, when I was in Cincinnati, and busy photographing all the Cincinnati outdoor sculpture of which I was aware (to make a comprehensive inventory), I photographed the several bas-relief panels (three?) depicting the sports which were played in the Gardens, and which were on the outside of the original building (I wonder if they were saved?).

Paul:  As I said, the suburb of Corryville as it was constituted in my father's youth (and which I delineated the boundaries of for the Cincinnati Historical Society in the 1960s) -- it included Mecklenburg's Gardens, and its main north-south axis was Vine Street -- has been subsumed, as near as I can tell, by the University of Cincinnati (the University hospitals used to be considered part of Mount Auburn, just to the east of Corryville). As to Clifton and its Ludlow Avenue, Ludlow and Jefferson Avenues used to join each other at Brookline Avenue (the entrance to Burnet Woods), not at Clifton Avenue; have they changed it?  What has been for many years now the Clifton Skyline Chili was originally Stier's Drug Store (it had a lovely black marble or Formica soda fountain with chrome swivel chairs -- with arms -- on pedestals); Stier's later moved further west on Ludlow Avenue, and to the other (south) side of the street.  The other Clifton drug store was that owned by our classmate Steve Pahner's family (Pahner's Drug Store).  Just east of Stier's Drug Store was the Virginia Bakery of immortal fame (best Schnecken pastry you'll ever find outside of Germany -- and inside Germany as well!); luckily, its history has now been written up in Tom Thie's (his was the Virgina bakery family; my great-grandmother was intimate with old lady Thie, who used to give my sister and me free cookies) and Cynthia Beischel's Virginia Bakery Remembered (Charleston, S. C.:  The History Press, 2010) -- thankfully, it includes the full and detailed recipe for Schnecken.

And Paul:  I believe the 3rd and 4th lines of the Robert Hall's jingle went "Robert Hall is in season / To show you the reason . . . "  Imagine my astonishment some years ago, here in North Springfield, Virginia, to hear the father of one of our Boy Scouts, a native of Virginia (I'm still an Assistant Scoutmaster at my age, by the way), singing that jingle in the parking lot!

Paul Simons

Phil - I have no doubt you're right about where the street name changes from Ludlow to Jefferson. My experience of that stretch of road is to drive or walk along it, no documentarian or historian here. About the Robert Hall jingle - there again I don't claim perfect accuracy. Please note that I am offering no opinion one way or the other concerning German pastry and I will leave it to others to explain why the best beer according to many is not made in Germany but rather in Pilsen, Czech Republic. 

Chuck Cole

Phil's post about Virginia Bakery led me to search online.  While the paperbook version of the book about the bakery is out of print with a used copy going for more than $80, you can get an ebook for $10.  It has the detailed history and all of the recipes.  

I also remember Virginia Bakery's competition--the Jewish Bakeshop on Melish.  They also made outstanding schnecken and dobos torte, which was one of my favorite desserts.  You could also get dobos torte at both the of the Lenhardt's restaurant (one owned by each of two feuding Lenhardt brothers) but it was better from  Virginia Bakery or The Jewish Bakeshop.  

Jeff Daum

Philip, interesting regarding the annual Dan Beard Council scouting event at the Cincinnati Gardens.  I don't recall that even though I was very active (Eagle Scout with Palms, Ner Talmid Award, Order of the Arrow, and a Life Member of National Eagle Scout Association) in Troop 127 (Bond Hill) of the Dan Beard Council .

Re your comments on ice skating: I do remember one year actually skating in and being part of the Ice Capades local 'talent.'  Also ice skating at Burnett Woods.

Philip Spiess

Chuck:  All I can say is "Wow!"  I bought two copies of the Virginia Bakery book (one for myself and one for my sister) just before last Christmas at $20 or less!  It must have been selling like, well, "hot cakes!"

Jeff:  Perhaps the Scouting event at Cincinnati Gardens was evey other year; I'm not sure (one year our troop featured our German band ensemble, which also played at WHHS pep rallies; we marched "oompah-ing" around the Gardens).  I became a member of the Boy Scout Order of the Arrow as an adult, being initiated along with my son (that was fun!).  Although I never became an Eagle Scout (I was two merit badges short -- I'd become involved in WHHS theater by that time), my son did; I'm the "goad" for our troop's prospective Eagles, pushing them through and making sure their paperwork is in order.

Paul:  Concerning Ludlow Avenue, I thought perhaps the city had changed some street names, given its propensity for altering or terminating streets in that area of Clifton.

As to Pilsener beer, it was developed in 1842 in the city of Pilsen, by Joseph Groll -- who was a Bavarian!  He'd been invited to the city to improve its beer, which apparently was terrible.  He created the "Pilsner Urquell" using purified water, which was probably the "secret" ingredient that made it so good (think of what most available water sources were like in those days).  Historically, Germany's beer was the standard, given that Duke Wilhelm of Bavaria had invoked the "Reinheitsgebot," or beer purity laws, in 1516.  Then there was "King Gambrinus," the legendary "King of Beer" (or "patron saint," although he wasn't a saint), possibly a Duke of Flanders and Brabant (near the mouth of the Rhine); he became a popular advertising figure in the late 19th century (I have a glass advertising sign for Cincinnati's "Gambrinus Beer"), and many breweries of the period had statues of Gambrinus on their pinnacles (Fort Wayne, Indiana's Gambrinus Brewery had one as late as the end of the 1960s).  Finally, I should mention Gustav Luders' 1903 operetta, The Prince of Pilsen (later made into an early movie, which has disappeared), which featured a lead character who kept going around asking everybody (it became a famous punch-line), "Vas you efer in Zinzinnati?"

Paul Simons

I think I asked this before but don't remember the answer. Does anyone remember tap rooms of local breweries(Burger, Schoenling, Hudepohl, Weidemann, and there are more) that welcomed school class tours? I swear I remember going to one, and it seems it was before anyone was old enough to drink. Not even 3.2 beer which would get one as drunk as any other beer.

Steven Levinson

My mother loved Virginia Bakery's schnecken dearly.  Also the butcher shop on Ludlow, the name of which I can't remember.

Nancy Messer

Something I thought everyone should know about.  On July 11, 2019 Duke Steiner, Rick's son, passed away at age 20.  The funeral was today at Weil Funeral Home.  I don't know any of the details.

Jerry Ochs

Paul,

I went to Prague in 2013 to place a stone (metamorphic of course) on the grave of Franz Kafka.  During the week that I was there I made an effort to drink every brand available (sort of a workout for my kidneys).  I haven't been to Germany but I have read that beer is taken very seriously there.   "Very seriously" would be a gross understatement of how the Czechs feel about their beer.  The Krusovice brewery was founded in 1581.  For Uneticke it was 1710.  One can enjoy a (very clean) glass of unpasteurized and unfiltered beer.  There is even a bicycle repair shop/tavern in the Zizkhov neighborhhod.  And then there is the sausages to go with the beer.  Put Prague on your bucket list.

Paul Simons

It's tough to go from beer to the death of a classmate's son who was known to many. Rick's sons Duke and Ace drove the shuttle back and forth, to and from a parking area at the laast reunion at Dave Schneider's place. High spirited, generous, just like Rick. Twenty - that's too young.

Thanks Jerry and Nancy for your reporting. Point taken - live, enjoy life, it can end anytime. Anytime.

Bruce Fette

So many topics.

I cant say anything about Rick's son. I didnt have the opportunity to meet him. But I completely agree that 20 years old is way too young.  

I did have the wonderful opportunity to visit Germany many years ago. The trip included visits to crazy Ludwig's castles, and to the German fields where they grow hops and brew one of their very popular beers for Octoberfest. Sorry I cant remember the name. Sorry, I did not have the opportunnity to visit Czech Republic. But my son's girlfriend is there right now. Who knows, she may have opportunity to bring some back.

But my real reason for weighing in tonight is to recognize that this Tuesday, 50 years ago, is the day that the massive rocket design by Werner Von Braun's team and 400,000 US systems developers blasted off to take the Appllo team to the moon. An of course, this Saturday is the 50 year anniversary of the landing there.

I dont know about anyone else, but while I was working at Texas Instruments (TI) in Dallas,one of my UC college chums was working at NASA Huston (and continued for another 35 years). Perhaps many others have friends and relatives who worked on Apollo, or worked directly on it themselves. My closest connection is that my Dad was an engineer working on the moon buggy, in Ann Arbor Michigan, and he has a home movie of him with an astronaut.

So with that intro, Phil, please add some historical perspectives.

Ann Shepard (Rueve)

I just learned of Duke’s passing this morning in an email from Laura Pease. I was able to attend the visitation and spoke with Corky, Ace, Jan, Duke’s mother, and the rest of the family. His death was sudden, last Thursday.   Gail was in town, staying at Rose Hill, but I didn’t get a chance to see her. 

The link: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/duke-steiner-obituary?pid=193380881

I also just learned of Birdie Johnson McIntosh’s passing on July 6. This is the link: 

https://www.herbwalker.com/notices/Birdie-Johnson-McIntosh

Philip Spiess

Of course, we are all now at our "End Times" -- not approaching our "End Times," but at our "End Times" -- and thus it is precious for us to be able to share our reminiscences, memories, and the good times we have had, or are still having, together.  (But to die at 20 is too young, a tragedy.)

To speak of Prague is to bring forth a legend from the heritage of my many Jewish friends, namely, the legend of The Golem of Prague.  The Golem, a creature created from mud and which (in most legends) cannot speak, has been a part of Jewish legend since at least the 12th century (Adam, according to one legend, was at first a Golem, as he was created from the earth, or mud).  But the most famous Golem is that of Prague, created by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in the late 16th century to protect the Prague ghetto from the rapacious attacks of its enemies.  After a number of exploits, Rabbi Loew had to remove the Golem's life-force when it started running amuck.  It was supposedly buried in the attic of the Old New Synagogue in Prague; the Nazis actually went looking for it there during World War II, but they found nothing (a legend, however, says that the Nazi who went into the attic was struck dead).  Many stories have been written about this Golem; perhaps the most renowned is Gustav Meyrink's Der Golem (The Golem, 1914; reprinted by Dover Publications in Two German Supernatural Novels). A notable German silent expressionistic film was also made of The Golem:  How He Came Into the World, by Paul Wegener in 1920; it is still available on CD.  The cities of Chelm and Vilna were also known to have Golems.  [Is it a stretch to suggest that the Gollum in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings cycle had its origin in the Jewish Golem?]

Bruce:  My own story of the moon landing is rather minimal.  However, you want context?  Supposedly Cyrano de Bergerac made a voyage to the moon in the 17th century (it's written up in the literature of the period); then there was Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865), wherein members of the "Baltimore Gun Club" fire a passenger rocket at the moon.  It was made (Nelson Abanto, take note!) into an opera by Offenbach (1875), and made into one of the first silent movies by the Frenchman, Georges Melies, as A Trip to the Moon (1902); this is available on CD (I showed it to my Middle Schoolers when lecturing on the history of cinema).  H. G. Wells also wrote an early science-fiction novel on the subject, The First Men in the Moon (1901).

But these are not my story.  On the night that our astronauts landed on the moon in 1969, I was ushering at the Cincinnati Opera, which was then still located in the Cincinnati Zoo (how that came about is another story, which I'll relate at another time).  I believe the opera was Donizetti's The Daughter of the Regiment, starring the soprano Mary Costa (Jon Marks, I think you and I have discussed this before).  When she came to the line, spoken to the tenor who would become her lover, "You don't impress me like those soldiers do!", she interpolated "You don't impress me like those astronauts do!" -- and the audience went wild!  The Zoo had set out numerous television sets around the beer-selling stands surrounding the Opera Pavilion, and we all went through an extended intermission, drinking beer and watching Neil Armstong land on the moon.  It was pretty exhilarating.  (I also know a hilarious dirty joke about the moon landing, told to me by Jeff Rosen, but I will only transmit it to you in private.)

I still find it astounding that, around 1890, H. G. Wells predicted that man would land on the moon by the year 5000; however, my grandmother, born in 1900, lived through the Wright Brothers' first manned aerial flight in 1903 -- and only 66 years later, i.e., 1969, while she was still living, a man landed on the moon!

Jerry Ochs

Bruce et al.,

JFK was murdered in 1963, Malcolm X in 1965, both MLK Jr. and RFK in 1968.  I was about ready to give up on the human race when Apollo 11 lit up my world again.