Stixy: For Flexible Online Creation Collaboration and Sharing

I think it has been a lot of years since the restaurant/cocktail lounge mentioned on the sign existed.

A modern view from Google Street view. The street car tracks are now buried in the pavement. The white wash has been removed and the store fronts remodeled, but it is the same building.

The only interior shot we have of the store

My Picture of the corner. The store is now occupied by Liberty Income tax service.

10 Dec 2011 So naturally being just a few blocks from the Art Museum I had to check it out.

In Life
Left: Matilda (Twilly)
Above: Carl Sr. My Grandfather
Right: Harry
Below: Elisa

I have several photos of Matilda visiting my Parents in Ft. Lauderdale from long before I arrived. This was part of the "Scanning all old photos" project people who worked with me were so tired of hearing about.

As you may recall I visited my Mothers home town Screven GA earlier on my trip. Now it was time to pay Homage to my Fathers side of the Family. He was born in Tiffin Ohio. My Great Grandfather owned a drug store in town. My brother and I had no idea where it had been but one day I did a web search and discovered a historic listing of businesses that had existed in Tiffin. "Weidling and Son" drug store was on the list along with an address. There was also a historic drawing of the corner. Soon I was on Google maps and found a street view of an old building, there had been some remodelling but it was the same building, it still stood. I had a destination.

The only exterior photo we have of the drug store. A zoomed in clip of Grand Father Harry to the right. He died in 1927.

At some point the store fronts have all been remodelled and the left interior wall was taken down to widen the space. A nice lady at Liberty Tax took a photo of me standing in the original space.

Since I had so much difficulty finding these markers I made careful notes of the location and took GPS reading. But the fact is that Tiffin is an out-of-the-way place. I am possibly the first to visit these graves since 1946 and quite possibly the last to visit ever. So they will rest in peace from now on.

Historic drawing looking south on Washington Street. Note the street car tracks. My Great Grandfather's store was in the white building to the right.

7 Dec 2011 Renting a car in Toledo for the 1 hour drive; I stepped into a coffee shop a few doors down from where the drugstire had been and struck up a conversation with some old timers I saw there. Some of them had been in town a long time but in 1927 even the oldest was too young to remember much now. I did find out from them that the location had remained a drug store under a different name for a long time after it was no longer Weidling and Son. They directed me to a historic photo of the building hanging in a nearby corridor. In this photo it's called "Andrus Drugs"

Still 7 Dec 2011 Then it was off to the graveyard.

I had found information about the grave site on the Find-a-Grave web site. It was clear about which graveyard and section but the rows within the section are not marked. I walked and walked and walked looking for Harry and Matilda's grave marker and was just ready to give up when, there they were !

Wife Matilda passed in 1946, 19 years after Harry and 10 years before I was born. Their daughter Elise died young at the age of 43 in 1929. Her marker is nearby. Their son, my grandfather, had moved to Florida long before then.

6-11 Dec 2011 My "base" for the trip to Tiffin was nearby Toledo Ohio. I had taken a room there (no CS Host unfortunately) and rented a car for the day trip. I spent a few more days in Toledo. The place I stayed was the "Hotel Lorraine". I found it on Google Maps. Not hotwire like usual. One of the great things about an old style downtown was how close together everything was. This place was ideally located for my purposes. even now just a block from the Greyhound Station, a couple blocks from a car rental and less than a mile from the Toledo Art Museum. This hotel was about as old and run down as they get. Everything worked (barely). No need for A/C this time of year and it's good thing because a sign in the lobby proclaimed that this place has been a hotel since 1925. There was no cable TV, no A/C nor did they provide fans. I can tell you the heat worked well; in fact I had to open a window a few times because the room was so hot with no way to throttle it. The bed was almost too firm for my taste (sleep number 11) but it was clean. There was just a trickle of hot water in the tub and I was very skeptical I would be able to take a hot shower. But they had installed a super water saving shower head on the old pipe and with it there was just enough hot water for a shower. So it was maintained at a minimal level but they did maintain it. It was very quiet in fact I was very comfortable there. It was in fact a kind of a neat place to stay. Maybe I am a bit weird but I like old buildings and a Film Noir atmosphere.

All this reminds me of another episode of "This American Life". A true story of a couple of young boys who discover a mysterious old house. You can listen to it here, it's called The House on Loon Lake

A couple from Edda's favorite guy.

In the antiquities section I saw this plain brown pot and a bowel. Not much to look at but note the age, between 5 and 6 thousand years! Think about that, at the time Jesus was ascribed to live this little pot was already at least 3000 years old. More ancient to him than he is to us by at least 1000 years. What was the world like for the person who made this pot? They could never have imagined that after 50 centuries their handy work would be on display in a world where people fly across the ocean.

Impressions of Toledo

Maybe the Noir hotel I stayed in colored my impression but I am quite sure Toledo is struggling with the recession a bit more than most. Chicago seemed relatively bustling but down town Toledo, well, it did not seem especially blighted, probably because I think there has been some effort put into clearing abandon buildings and sealing up empty ones. There were quite a few empty buildings that seemed to be well sealed.

One of the things I would like to do (but never had much opportunity or the nerve) is to explore abandoned buildings. I find them fascinating. The hobby is called "Urban Exploration". My problem is that I don't have much tolerance for risk of arrest, a big handicap in that pass time. Of course the sites are not advertised, often people who discover them keep it secret. Abandoned mills, power stations, factories. I get the feeling Toledo would be a good place to find such things, but they may be all over the place if you know where to look.

Dispatch 5c

My visit to Tiffin

and Toledo 6-11 Dec 2011

Click here for the INDEX

So with that I bid farewell to the ancient Hotel Lorraine. I hope it finds better times as I walk to the next block to the waiting room of the Greyhound bus. From there I am on my way to Bloomington Indiana via Indianapolis.

Click Here to go on to Part 5d

Bloomington

Crawfordsville and Louisville

Click here to return to 5 B