3-12-2012- almost car show time

        grass will be turning green soon and car shows will abound this year despite gas prices. we will still enjoy one of our favorite pastimes. these are pictures from the car show at golden age retirement center in the lovely hills of carroll county. the old county home was converted into a skilled nursing facility to provide nursing care for carroll county residents . a place where they could spend their days in the splendor of a farm environment. its rural location lends itself to a comfortable place to be . my grandma and my dad (step dad for any perfectionists out there) both stayed at the facility and my sister works there. i might be a little biased about these folks but even i was always at home there, as i visited the folks there. i regretted not spending more time with my grandma there , but don't know as she would have noticed. just a thing about getting on in years and is hard to accept for those left behind. 

       so it was nice to visit when i didn't know any one on a personal basis  that was staying there. they had a real nice car show , ice cream social , music and entertainment , and it benefited the golden age retirement home. they have a great staff of well meaning folks and i feel this is a cause that needs supported more. 

        i have some great photos of memories such as the ford falcon. can remember one neighbor guy who had a ford falcon hard top and it was jacked up all the time , forever putting clutches in it. 

         that was back in the time when gas was plentiful and it wasn't what slowed us down as teenagers. it was usually because we were broke down that limited us to using our feet. i remember having a 56 ford pickup like the green one, and it  was quite the runner . it would lay a strip on easy street at least 60 feet long and bark the tires and leave a mark in second gear. course we just had a shifter on the column.. it was a f-100 with a 292 cu. in. engine.

        we didn't have no plates or drivers license , let alone insurance and if mom would have found out she would have strangled us. we were never supposed to take out on the road and apparently our half mile lane wasn't nearly as impressive as laying black marks on a paved easy street. it was a rite of passage among us bowmandale boys as we called our selves. sneaking out of the house in my early teen years and heading for easy street in middle of night to help a fellow bowmandaleite out was the norm. how we ever got by with it i will never know . and dad used to give me hell squirrel hunting as he said i was noisier than a bull in a china shop,  well if he only had said it that way or if he knew how quiet i could be when it came to sneaking out of the house, he sure would have slept with one eye open. i can remember heading over to magnolia and outside of town in the swamp across from the drag strip there was an old oil well road . 

        we were up at around 12 midnight after having went to bed with our chlothes on up and out the door we went. as we ran down the lane and to the neighbors house and loaded into his car and headed over to the swamp to help push another bowmandaleite of mud when he launched his car out of one mud hole into another huge one . things were floating in the floorboard of his car as we laughed at how stupid his car looked in moonlight in middle of lake magnolia as it was now called. he said he was mud puddle jumping in his `1974 mustang and mud obscurred his vision and he ended up launching himself pre dukes of hazzard style 30 feet into mud puddle. and there he sat. we couldn't do much but offer him a shoulder to cry on as in morning he would have to tell his dad that his car was stuck and needed a tow. we laughed about that night for a long time till something else stupid happened in neighborhood , just down our lane and take right on easy street.

       

     it was nice of all these folks to show up for their annual open house , dinner, ice cream social , as it allows the residents to interact with the public when they can. and you find out what this place is all about . and that is helping people. i saw a lot of smiles of people who were happy to be there. to help or to be helped made no  difference as all were in a giving mood. i only hope i have served the event well . 

 
        i would like to thank all the people who organized this really great event ,also to the community for supporting them . great job. for more information contact : Carroll County, Ohio - Provided by the Carroll County Commissioners