Buckeye Lake

Though it is not in the Hocking Hills area, Buckeye Lake has been a popular vacation spot in central Ohio for a century or more. Originally more a swamp than a lake, dikes and dams were thrown up and it served as a ‘feeder’ for Ohio’s canal system from the early 1800s. As canal use fell off with advance of the railroads, it became a destination for tourists and weekenders around central Ohio—Columbus in particular. The lake lies nearly due east from Columbus.

In the mid-Twentieth Century, the amusement park and dance hall attracted visitors. Many of the best-known big bands of the era played there; my mother went to see some of them in the Thirties. Our whole family would visit the amusement park on occasion in the Fifties. Needless to say, this is a setting I could easily slip into a Hocking Hills story. It is a pretty straight shot up from Logan or Athens.

I remember the big hotel there, which was deteriorating badly when I was a kid. The Catholic church (Our Lady of Mount Carmel) was using it for Sunday school lessons. This was when we lived in Pickerington and drove over for mass. That would have been in the late 50s. I do remember my father (who was not a church-goer) would buy doughnuts at a local bakery. Some would be left by the time we got back to the car! These are just the sort of details from life that can be used in ones fiction, to add that needed touch of realism.

Many weekend cottages lay around Buckeye Lake. Whether those remain, I couldn’t say; I haven’t seen the place in more than half a century. I do know my father took my mother there more than once when he was courting her and when they were newly-weds. I also know they rented one of those cottages briefly when I was a baby. No memories, of course!

I’m posting a picture here of Dad rowing on the lake in 1940, just around the time my parents married, and one of the entry to the amusement park, sometime in the Fifties.

 

Christmas Past

My oldest solid memories are of Christmas 1952. I would have been still four months short of my third birthday. Before then linger a very few disjointed images. But I definitely remember that Christmas, when we had newly moved into our house in the Lake Forest subdivision of Naples. No furniture yet; the tree stood in a bare room and we came over from the motor court where we were staying to open our presents. I remember pushing my new truck around on the unobstructed floors.

Not sure where we ate Christmas dinner. That memory is not with me. Yet it was my ‘first’ Christmas, the first I can remember, the first I was old enough to know something was going on! Now, every Christmas has the increasing potential to be my last. I don’t do much on the day. A little porcelain tree is lit up on my desk. I might or might not have a pizza. Most of the Christmases past have faded — but I remember that one.

Nickel, a poem

Nickel

A penny for my thought?
It’s worth at least a nickel;
yet it can be bought,
though you may find it fickle.
It does float here and there,
alighting as it will
then flitting off to where
it might find its fill
of what is and might be
and maybe what can not.
So I’ll let you see —
is that nickel all you’ve got?

Stephen Brooke ©2025

Churches

If the next Hocking Hills novel runs into the Christmas season (it probably won't), I should definitely touch on the seasonal concerts at the Basilica of St. Mary of the Assumption in Marietta. More so in that James Fry’s girlfriend attends classes in that city, and is Catholic, to boot (as is James).

the basilica at Marietta

The church’s architecture is described as Spanish Colonial, quite different from the Gothic style of those in Athens and Logan, both built in the 1890s and both visited in the course of ‘These Remembered Hills.’ I attended St. John in Logan myself as a child (though only for one brief year or so).

I should mention that Pam Nossi does not attend Marietta College, which presents the concerts, but is attending a hair dressing school. That shouldn’t keep them from enjoying the music, however! Marietta College began presenting the concerts (which include Handel’s ‘Messiah’) in 1926, so it already had a long tradition when my story is set in 1962.

Now if he can only convince Pam to ride down there in his open Jeep.

St John church in Logan OH

The Farm

Fry Farm, the central setting for ‘These Remembered Hills,’ is based on a very real location where I spent some of my childhood. Although I have changed some place names and slightly tilted the directions, one could probably locate it from the description given in the novel.

And yes, there were caves—the very real Salt Petre Caves that are now operated by a nonprofit organization. Back then, it was my grandfather’s farm and my own father did some of his growing up there, roaming the hills, hunting, spending time in the caves. It was not much of an operating farm even then, but a country place for my grandfather, who had made his fortune in Columbus, in construction and lumber.

I’m including a photo of one of the caves as they are now. I may dig out some old photos later and scan them to post here. My descriptions of the caves and of the farm do come pretty close to the real place but I’ve allowed myself some artistic license here and there. Sometimes when I just didn’t remember details and only had maps to go by!

 The areas around the farm are very much ‘real.’ Logan, Athens, the various state parks (though I did rename the one closest to the farm). Columbus, too, which we visit in the course of the story. More on some of those places later.

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note: This is a re-post from my Hocking Hills blog. I intend to move all the material from it here and close it down. 

In the Rain

A poem of mankind's youth

 In the Rain

In the rain she heard her mother’s voice
and for a moment believed she lived again.
Did not the moon return, return to the night,
return in her own self? Had not the seasons
come in their turn, the cold, the fruitful
times of birth and growth? All things, she thought,
all things. The nursing baby, the blood of the hunt
and of the woman. Could it all be one?
Speak, again, my mother, she murmured,
falling into sleep. Speak in the rain.

Stephen Brooke ©2025

Sins, a poem

 Sins

The sins of my father are not my sins
but sins none the less. I
Forget them only to repeat them,
hide them from my children to see them
sin in turn. What  apathy 
can save me? What blind eye can I turn?

The hubris of tyrants makes each fall
in turn, but first we raise them up.
On the shields of the army,
we raise them, on the shoulders of
the workers. Yes, and on the backs
and hungry blood of each of us.

I can not lose myself here, drown
tomorrow in hypnotic seas;
each wave returns me to my shores,
insistent sand, a border to all
that seems real. Perhaps it is.
Perhaps our sins lie over there.

Stephen Brooke ©2025