by Ken Lahmers

Editor

With the cost of gasoline skyrocketing in the last few years, something which a lot of families used to do -- Sunday drives -- has gone by the wayside.

Many people just don't have the extra cash to drive around the countryside, visit relatives frequently in nearby towns and go out of town to eat at restaurants.

When I was growing up in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, Sunday drives were common at our house.

Most of the time, it was my dad, our neighbor Lorin Kail and I, but sometimes Dad and I would pick up Grandma Lahmers.

My grandma, who lived to be 96 years old, didn't have much of a chance to get out of the house. She wasn't very mobile, and she didn't ride often with Aunt Violet, whom she lived with for many years.

So she looked forward to drives in the country with Dad and I to places she was familiar with when she was younger.

Sometimes we'd go to Ragersville, where many times we'd see my great-aunt, who lived to be 100, sitting on her front porch which overlooked the county road into the small town.

We'd drive through Sugarcreek, Dundee, Winfield, Strasburg or Baltic. The trips usually included stopping at a soft-serve ice cream stand.

Sometimes Mom, Dad and I would head out to Fry's Valley to visit my great-aunts Annie and Beulah on Mom's side of the family, or to the Humrichouses in Stone Creek Valley on Dad's side.

Some of the places we'd drive through were Crooked Run, Cherry Ridge, Possum Hollow, Seibert Hill, Joyce Hill, Oldtown and Hummel valleys, plus towns such as Roswell, Barnhill, Gnadenhutten, Port Washington and Newcomerstown.

A COUPLE of times we stopped by the church cemetery between Peoli and Gilmore, where the great baseball pitcher Cy Young is buried.

I told Aurora resident Mike DeMay that I've visited Cy's grave, and he -- as any avid baseball fan would -- has wanted me to take him there ever since.

We've been trying to get together for the last three or four summers to go, and hopefully this will be the year.

Along our Sunday afternoon routes, Dad and I sometimes explored rundown farmhouses and buildings, or remnants of old clay plants, of which Tuscarawas County claimed many.

Sometimes we'd cruise down Route 250 past Tappan Lake into Harrison County to "hunt booms" -- look for big draglines and shovels in strip mines along the roads.

Many times in Eastern Ohio's coal country, we'd ascend a hill only to see a 200-foot or longer boom sticking up over piles of spoil, the overburden removed to get to the coal seams.

Usuaully, the equipment wasn't working on Sundays. Sometimes the giant machines were out of service and left to rust away, so we walked over and took a closer look.

One time Dad, Kail and I went in search of a man buried in an unusual grave.

Some of the oldtimers in the Stone Creek Valley still recall the story of the guy. Before he died, he began hollowing out a huge rock on his property to be his final resting place.

When he died, his survivors laid his body in the rock and cemented a slab over it, and his remains have been there ever since.

A coal company eventually stripped the land, but was not allowed to desecrate the grave and thus left a small patch of woods undisturbed.

We walked up an abandoned farm lane just a stone's throw from Interstate 77, explored the collapsing house where the man had lived and found the grave after about an hour.

WE ONCE explored a large former chicken house near Wainwright, which was rumored to be haunted, and we hiked over two ridges near my Grandpa/Grandma Spring's farm to find remains of buildings at the long-abandoned Wherley place.

One Sunday, my good friend Richard Staley and I walked a nearly 3-mile hollow deep into the woods, where decades before people had lived.

All that was left in the early 1970s were dilapidated homes and outbuildings. That land eventually was stripped, too.

Staley and I occasionally went to Stone Creek to walk through the 600-foot long train tunnel at Tunnel Hill. The route -- part of the Cleveland & Marietta RR and later Pennsylvania RR -- was active until 1976, but is now abandoned.

Another of my family's Sunday driving traditions was going to nearby towns after church to eat.

Two of our favorite destinations were the Swiss Hat in Sugarcreek and the Buckeye Hotel in Uhrichsville. Both are still standing, but no longer are used for dining or lodging.

In the late 1980s, the original Swiss Hat burned down, but was rebuilt and reopened. In the original building, diners fortunate enough to get a window seat could watch townsfolk and tourists strolling by outside.

The Buckeye Hotel was owned by Henry Spring, a wealthy businessman who operated an appliance store in New Philadelphia. He was one of the county's most renown historians.

One of our favorite places for Saturday night dining was the Zoar Hotel, part of the historic Separatist settlement. Dining ceased in the early 1990s, but the beautiful old 1833 building is still there.

How I do miss those leisurely Sunday drives!

E-mail:

klahmers@recordpub.com

Phone: 330-688-0088 ext. 3155