Going to Take a Break
McKinley's Monument
From all this
work talk. Instead I am going to write about my trip to Mc Kinley’s monument
and the presidential library at the Stark County Historical Society. A friend
and I had the opportunity this last weekend to make a long postponed trip to
the Historical Society. The last time I was there I imagine it was the fourth
grade, if I remember right and that would have been in Miss Dusky’s class at East
Sparta Elementary School in East Sparta Ohio. It seems yearly till we were in
the seventh grade, field trips would be the norm with teachers in the grade you
were in specializing in a specific field trip. I can remember touring the
museum and viewing the monument, but my biggest item I remembered was the Planetarium.
Dueber Hampden Watch Works building clock mechanism
This time I went
with the intention of viewing an artist Ferdinand Brader’s extensive work of
landscape pencil renderings of farmsteads he visited and then was commissioned
to do an aerial imagined rendering of the farm and its surrounding features in
an everyday setting. Most if not all of his renderings were dated and signed,
plus there was a detailed name and location as well the county and township
where the drawing was to depict. I thoroughly enjoyed his work and it is
reminiscent of aerial photographs of farms like ours they would fly over and
then take a black and white photo, then contact the farm owner, and would
furnish them with a painting that had been hand colored with paints that hid
all the little things about your homestead you intended to fix but never was able
to get around to it. This was then hung in a prominent place so visitors could
get a better idea of what your home place was all about, just by viewing the
painting or in Mr. Brader’s case, his pencil renderings. Mr. Braders work was
eerily reminiscent of Grandma Moses’s work or her work was in the same pattern
as his as so the case must surely be, as the scenes depicted in her work looked
a lot like his. Not the same style completely but close. In his life he had
done close to 900 of these renderings in the Ohio and Pennsylvania area mostly,
and of all of these I think there is only about 250 in circulation still, and
are now fetching prices in the 10, 000 dollar range. Mr. Brader finally came in
to some money and returned to Europe and was never heard of much after that.
More can be found in an autobiography available at this link. I was also able
to find in the collection of about 40 of his renderings at the Historical
Society, was one from just up the road at the Howenstein farm in Pike Township
and Stark County. I have a bad picture but will include it anyhow to show his
style.
Mr Brader's Howenstein farm rendering.
looked like someone ripped grandmas kitchen out of her house and moved it to Canton
There were
numerous displays from local industry past and present, from Timken roller
bearings to Dueber Hampton Watch Works to Belden Brick which were staples to providing
continuous employment to thousands of present employees and past retirees of
these Stark County businesses. There are displays regarding the importance of
the canal system and then the railroads in developing Canton and Stark County
into an industrial hub. Also how the railroad and interstate commerce system
still passes through our area, and is beneficial to us here and the nation in
general. Upstairs you are able to step
back in time and visit a replica village reminiscent of early Canton filled
with memorabilia of days gone by. No detail is spared when trying to replicate
an earlier time when automobiles were new and roads were still dirt. It is
interesting to visit and walk through shops necessary to make life in a growing
city reminiscent of an early Canton of the time.
this is the Laff in the Dark lady from Meyers Lake. they gave her a new dress and painted her up and i believe she is missing her mink stole and ratty hat
The planetarium
has somehow shrunk, or somewhere I had grown large, imagine that. As now it seemed much smaller but still reminiscent
of the way it was when I was a child of 10. The person who did the presentation
for the planetarium show is gone now, and a professor from where he didn’t say,
but who gave an interesting mythology explanation to the stars, while allowing questions
i had remain unanswered. He seemed to
have left little time to answer anything. It was still interesting but I felt
it could use an update as it would be neat to do a spaceship liftoff sequence,
and eventually entering the darkness of space all from the seats of the
planetarium would be neat. Seems they could try and do something in cooperation
with NASA and update and create an interesting adventure without leaving Canton.
Ahhh but who am I? Maybe some rotating seats and a new sound system could be
quite the crowd pleaser.
We viewed Mc Kinley’s
library and refreshed myself with the history of his assassination and life as
a president. The mausoleum and monument had been closed for four weeks but
still we had to trudge up the 96 steps to the summit of the monument as I took
a pic of the grounds of Monument Park. They also have an interesting science and
natural resources exhibit that we viewed with interactive science projects and
animals we could view. Overall I enjoyed the visit there and it was well worth
the 8 dollars apiece it took for admission. I would recommend this to anyone
with kids, or like myself anyone who has not stepped foot back inside their
halls for 48 years. It is always nice to see how much you really do remember some
times. And if you have never been there and are a resident of Stark County it
is well worth the visit to see what everyone is talking about when we mention
places and sites around canton.
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