Marietta, Ohio-My Beautiful Town

Sometimes it feels to me that my life is nothing more than an unending search for beauty. I don't know anyone else who spends more time at it. It's really too bad my aesthetic quest doesn't pay, because I could be a billionaire. But then I probably wouldn't keep roaming around, searching for beauty. 

A semi-pro aesthetician like me does very well living near Marietta, Ohio. This little-sung brick-streeted town has a lot going for it. More and more I hear people literally go into raptures about Marietta. That didn't used to happen, but a lot of good things have taken place here since I came here in 1992.

I spent a gorgeous golden November afternoon gabbing with friends at the Local Artists' Show and Sale at the Lafayette Hotel. Then I walked down the levee to visit Mr. Lonely. After that, I crossed the Harmar railroad bridge. 

The new railing smelled sweetly of pine, shone in the late low sun, and lured me onward.

I always stop to consider this amazing sycamore limb. It just goes on and on. I take its picture, and always fail to capture its beauty.

I stood, dumbstruck. 

The river was like glass. Our beautiful "new" Putnam Street bridge sent a graceful reflection across the Muskingum.

Looking downriver, the Williamstown bridge crossed into West Virginia, across the mighty

 O-hi-o-se-pe. 

I crossed into Harmar Village and looked back toward town. Man. Beauty everywhere.

There was an InstaMeet last Friday, a tour of historic Marietta for people who like to post photos of Marietta on Instagram. I should have gone. I need to meet some more people in the area. Most of my friends live in my laptop, and I'm alone too much, I know that.

It would be nice to share this magnificent specimen of Magnolia grandiflora, for instance.

 

How it's survived our northern winters, how it throws dapples on that white house with its huge hard evergreen leaves. All those things. A miracle. It's so old its bark is shaggy and strippy, like a hickory's. And I love the homeowners for putting up with its terrible clattery drifts of fallen leaves, year round, for it has a tropical tree's habit of shedding leaves pretty much all the time. Clack, clack, clack. And they don't rot. I know, because I lived with a southern magnolia as a kid in Richmond, Virginia, and I hated raking those leaves. So much. But far more than that, I adored its huge white blossoms, the soft-winged orange soldier beetles that clambered around and coupled inside them, and I can still reconstruct every molecule of magnolia perfume in the back of memory's throat. Aesthetician from an early age. 

All these things came back to me as I gazed at the magnolia, rara avis among trees.

I walked a bit and came to Found Antiques, now home of Passiflora Studios. Quiet now, because wedding days are past. But soon enough they will start again. Phoebe worked here from time to time, and I loved to visit her. My, that's a nice blue farm table. But I don't need a table.

As I drove slowly home, I stopped at some favorite trees.

A gingko, throwing off her dress, setting the place on fire.

Throwing perfect little fans like gold coins to the ground below. How soon they lose their lustre!

The mighty twin sycamores of Second Street never fail to stop me in my tracks.

I get out to worship and record them here, most every time I pass. 

I wish there weren't a car in this shot, but it does give you some sense of scale. They are mighty, mighty trees. And people drive by them all the time. See, I can't. Stopped by the aesthetics of it all, footloose and frozen, too. Must say it's good of that sugar maple to kick in with the flamethrower, a meet backdrop for such a titanic tree. 

I headed home on the backest back road I could find, a new one for me, but already beloved for its cattle, its colors, its farmsteads.

The initial rollout, so tantalizing. Come along. I have something to show you...

Cattle set afire by the low sun.

The way that cherry-red pickup sits like a ruby in all the weathered wood; the maple dumping its color everywhere; the last sun stroking the gravel ridges.

A silo, such a rare thing anymore. Who has livestock, who needs to store feed? They are all dying out, the small farmers. You have to hit the dirt roads to find them.

Foxtail grass and a landscape straight from Grant Wood, gumdrop trees and perfect valleys.

My father would have slowed down to eye this tractor, that Chevy pickup, that barn. I, his daughter and made more of him than anyone, do it for him. 

A redtail crosses, of course. 

And the Graces stand naked in a row.

Halloween Night

Fresh from my double catting, I walked on, deeper into Marietta, Ohio's old downtown. One of our favorite shops is "Found," an antique store with a difference. It's very beautiful, and poking through it is a lot like going through your grandmother's attic. You're supposed to open the cabinets and drawers, cupboards and chifferobes. Inside them you'll find things for sale. It's a wonderful concept. 

Old bikes are parked outside, lending a timeless feel to the storefront.

It was closed, so I made noseprints on the glass.

I love this interior. It wasn't just that it was Halloween night. It was spooky in an absolute sense.

Going around the side of the building, I found this character.

Time and weather have not been kind to him/her. Weather is rarely kind. 

That's not creepy. That's really creepy.

I looked up the street, the lights coming through maples all afire.

Not a soul was stirring. Old Texaco pumps glowed. I sang softly, "You can trust your car to the man who wears the star, the big red (bright??)Texaco STAR!"

It was getting dark, and I didn't fancy walking across the old railroad bridge in the dark. So I started back toward my car.

I heard quiet footsteps behind me, and turned around to see Michael Myers and a couple of colleagues. Oh!

May I take your photo? The kid who wasn't in costume tried to melt away, and Michael raised his knife. Great, thank you! 

 Half my brain was chuckling, and the other half was semi-liquid and going EEeeeeeeeeee.

Although I purposely didn't pick up my already brisk walking pace, I'll confess I was happy to get off that bridge and veer off to the side, letting the three go by.

Everything looked a little spooky at that point. I stopped to look at the names on a monument on Front Street, honoring the 48 pioneers who made the first settlement in what was known as the Northwest Territory.

Rufus Putnam, yes, I know that one, and Anselm Tupper. We've got streets and a camp (with bonus Adena snapping turtle mound!) named for them. Ebenezer Sproat. Earl Sproat. Jabez Barlow. Phineas Coburn. Theophilus Learned. Their names have sweet music to my ear. My eye stopped, circled and stooped on the sixth name. Peregrine Foster?  Why couldn't my parents have named me Peregrine?

Musing on the unfairness of it all, and wondering why a moniker like Peregrine hadn't occurred to us when it came time to name our kids, I walked on. We could have had a Phoebe and a Peregrine. Dang!

The lights shone beautifully on the darkening Ohio.

I followed an insistent noise, as of a small two-cycle engine, to an historic church.  I looked at the awning that had been stuck on the poor old building, like an elephant's trunk, a honk nose on a clown.

And was arrested by the movements of a man, wielding a...chainsaw?? Yikes!

Alone in the dark, he did a graceful dance. Fallen leaves fled terrified before him. Just a man with a  leaf blower. On a Saturday night, in the dark, on Halloween. Reason told me he was clearing the parking lot and sidewalks before Sunday morning services. But...in the dark??

That's not creepy. That's...really creepy.

Clearly, some levity was needed. It was time to meet Bill and go to Liam's play, "Vampires and Werewolves." Liam had the part of Paris in this send-up of "Romeo and Juliet."

I have to say he made a striking vampire. Ectomorphic, pale--and they didn't have to do a thing to his hair. 

He emoted beautifully, with a kind of swoopy voice and mien. 

He had a thing for Juliet, but she only had eyes for Romeo.

Who was a werewolf. Please note Liam's hands. They're for real. 

My favorite shot from the play.

Afterward, out in the hard light of the school hallway. 

Liam and Katy the werewolf. 

Owen made an incredible Michael Jackson.

The cast and crew outdid themselves. I was so proud of them all, and glad to see how much fun they'd had in the making of this hilarious show. Way to go, Ms. Huck and FFHS Drama!

I peeked in the ticket booth to find Phoebe's hand-painted cinder block from her senior year. It cracks me up, and brings a little clutch to my heart, too.

Thus ended a creepy, spooky, catty, fun, perfect Halloween night.