Hill Farm

A collection of pictures I found here and there online of the place in the Hocking Hills of Ohio we named the Hill Farm when I was a kid (and visited and sometime lived there). Although Fry Farm in my novel ‘These Remembered Hills’ is not exactly the Hill Farm, it is based fairly closely on it. And the ‘Seven Caves’ are pretty similar to (but, again not exactly the same) the Saltpetre Caves there. The novel, of course, is available from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) in print or as free ebooks.

Big Pine Creek flowed through the property. At Fry Farm we have Hemlock Creek. The picture here could be anywhere on the creek’s flow; it is definitely not the swimming hole in the novel but the low cliffs and the gravel spits are similar features.

Cliffs of that sort are everywhere. The ones here are on the way up to the caves. Easy enough to go over if one isn’t careful — at least I feared they were as a kid!

I remember squeezing through here on the way to the first cave. And, of course, had to include that in the story.

  

This big open rock shelter cave is very much like the spot where Jim’s sister was pushed to her death — and where he fought for his own life later on.

Sundries

 

The picture is of the O.U. Sundry Store in Athens in the late Fifties, before Jim Fry (the protagonist of 'These Remembered Hills') attended Ohio University. In 1960, Campus Sundry Store opened at a new address. He would definitely know and probably shop there when he began classes in ’62. It is entirely likely to show up in a future novel.

Generations of Ohio University students shopped there, before it closed relatively recently. Anything they needed!

This is the last post I'm bringing over from the Hocking Hills blog. But I shall, of course, write more about the area here. 

 

Bobcats

another post brought over from my soon-to-be-defunct These Remembered Hills blog:

Ohio University, in the city of Athens, plays a somewhat central role in ‘These Remembered Hills’ and will continue to do so in any sequels. Athens is some twenty miles down the road from Logan and should be about thirty miles from the Fry Farm. That would depend on the route one chose to drive, though most come to a fairly similar figure.

Jim Fry, who already has completed a couple years of college at Ohio State plus a four year hitch in the navy, chooses to enroll at Ohio University both because it is conveniently close and because of the reputation of its art program. Art is what he has decided to study after leaving the service. Also, an old friend of Jim — or of his late sister — is an instructor there.

The university is spread on relatively low land near the Hocking River and is — or was — known to flood with some regularity. This is alluded to in the novel but we have yet to experience it. That is a definite possibility in a future story.

The art building is at a bit of a remove from the rest of the campus and I have noted this in the novel. Much of the rest of the geography of the university and Athens in general I have fudged a bit — the businesses and such, in particular. It’s fiction, after all. I haven’t been strict about any of the other locales in the novel either, but in general it is all close enough. No blatant rearranging of the scenery!

I might mention that Ohio University has also popped up in other novels in another series, written under a different name. That would be the Women in the Sun books (‘One Summer in the Sun,’ ‘One Christmas in the Sun’) which appeared under the Sienna Santerre pen name. A young athlete, a friend of the protagonists, chooses to attend the college. The university itself, however, does not actually appear as a location in the stories.

So we can expect the university to appear in any sequel to ‘These Remembered Hills’. Maybe the Bobcats football team, too. Jim will definitely be driving to classes in Athens come Fall. He might even take his bike to ride around campus.

Cliffs

 

I was curious about what had become of the farm in Ohio’s Hocking Hills where I had done some of my growing up, so I went to Google (knowing the street address — it was just a rural route number back then) and found the street view picture. Very little is left of what was there more than a half-century ago when last I saw the place. Only the same sandstone slabs by the road that underlie everything! The trees have grown up so much that the cliffs on the ridge behind are no longer visible from this roadside angle.

Those cliffs play a starring role in ‘These Remembered Hills.’ Fry Farm in that book is closely based on our ‘Hill Farm,’ including the cliffs and the vultures that nested on them through the summers. I could look out my bedroom window on the back of the old farmhouse (replaced now) and see the rising sun shining on them, the vultures launching when it grew warm enough for updrafts. If one were standing in the road there, the creek would be to ones back, with its own cliff walls. Cold water but a swim was welcome on a hot summer day.

There are quite a few such cliffs around the area. Easy to fall over — or to be pushed from, and so gave me a starting point for my mystery story.

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.

 

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. 

Remembered

A passage from These Remembered Hills, a Hocking Hills Mystery from Stephen Brooke and Arachis Press