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I have close to 300 pages of unsolicited testimonies that give my writing skills praise and my philosophy a warm welcome. I spent the time to express myself in a way consistent with my free spirit philosophy. While I did post off-topic inadvertently, this article was about travel, because I returned to Ohio to visit my family.
I first wrote what I expected them to accept as my first assignment for this travel course I am taking with Matador U.
I first wrote what I expected them to accept as my first assignment for this travel course I am taking with Matador U.
I posted about the area I am from. It was called, "I Was Born in the Ohio Valley." It drew interest because I grew up just across the river from Point Pleasant, W. Va. It elicited the most readership and was an intended travel story.
If where I was born means nothing to you, it was the setting for the blockbuster film with Richard Gere, Debra Messing, and Laura Linney, "The Mothman Prophecies." It is set across the river in Pt. Pleasant, W.Va. I have actually spoke to eyewitnesses of the actual event that took place at Christmas of 1967
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This is the home of the official Mothman Prophecy museum. The thing I always wondered, is they could have added a whole new dynamic to the story. If you notice the Muriel below. It is new...at least to me. It depicts the story of Chief Cornstalk.
His tribe of Cherokee Indians occupied that area. He had been pushed further and further back. When white men wanted the area where two major rivers meet. They could ship East and West on the Kanawha River and all of the way from Pittsburgh to the Gulf on the Ohio.
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Finally, he would bargain no more. He began ordering raids on local settlements. He ordered the wrath of an aggressive US Military pushing west.
The story has it, that just before he was shot down, he stood at the edge of the convergence and cursed the ground before he died.
How can they leave out true shit like that? The Mothman become purveyor's of the curse. You open with a chief whailing out something in his native tongue as soldiers line up with rifles pointing and someone yells, "Aim...Fire!" The full moon reflects in a pool of the dead chief's blood. Then Let Richard spoon Debra in the closet they were looking to buy.
I am one of only a few who have heard first-hand tales of those times. My own father had used the bridge only a couple of hours before it collapsed. My father has retold the story enough that he remembers how busy it was and that it took especially long to cross that old bridge would shake when you were idle on it due to congestion.
Eyewitnesses reported that a flash and a loud bang was seen on the first tower. I suspect the flash was from the sudden release of kinetic energy by one of the cables breaking. Because they would tell how the bridge would sway like a snake.
They also reported a large winged bird of some kind take flight from the top of that tower and fly south along the surface of the river.
Like they portrayed in the film, these are good, honest people. They are embarrassed about telling others the chilling experience they had with this alleged Mothman.
Another interesting fact that could have added more to the film is an area known as "TNT."
I have no idea how the name came about. But during WWII, the military constructed a hidden bunker base. It is rumored to have a network of tunnels built just below the surface during the height of the cold war.
On the outside, it appeared as just a uninhabited series of gravel roads, with an occasional bunker-type structure. It was this area people rumored most of the siting's.
I remember being told all of these things and about the actual collapse.
Then screams were heard as the bottom dropped out of a section of the bridge. They did get the part about the headlights shining up from the bottom of the river, but Christmas presents would be swiftly taken down stream in a mighty river like the Ohio.
Diver's were on the spot quickly but I cannot tell you whether they were able to save anyone. I know about a week later, post dives came back with reports of catfish the size of Volkswagens lurked in the dark murky waters at the bottom of the Ohio River.
I must admit it is a weird attachment. I never tell people the name of the city I was born in, because it only leads to me repeating it several times.
It is the thriving city known as "Gallipolis." The name is Latin and translates to the "City of the Gaul's"-or as we know them, the French. The French 500 evidently pitched their tents there and by 1790 declared themselves an independent municipality.
I know, that's the kind of writing that will have you aroused. I just have to fit in the technical stuff. My mother lives in Rodney now anyway.
Rodney is on the way from downtown Gallipolis to a small town known as Rio Grande. I hope it wasn't named after Raccoon Creek...
Anyway, we discover another fun fact about the area I spent the first half of my life. A farmer, Bob...Evans, yeah, that's it Bob Evans has his original farm up there.
Now, you find the Bob Evans Franchise still growing as he lasted until his eighties. He died only a few years back. In fact, my mother had talked to him about a problem they shared, because his property bordered my mother's.
My mother was one of his original waitresses. He was a good man with a recipe for good sausage and a dream he watched get fulfilled early in his life and only grew over time. His products are in local supermarkets.
If I was not in the middle of transferring data and could find the pictures, I have some of his farm. I remember that it used to host an apple or foliage festival. They had farm exhibits and tractor rides. It was surprisingly popular considering how dull the attractions were.
I moved away in 1989 to manage a Domino's Pizza location in Steubenville. It was the owner's flagship location and I was in a relationship with his daughter.
It doesn't add up that he would transfer me away if he wanted my relationship to continue with his step-daughter. I lost out in that situation and was working hours that opposed having a social life in every way possible.
Weekends were the busiest time. I worked from 4PM to 2PM both nights. I was off on Sundays and worked the day shift on Mondays.
Going back to the whole premise that humans are hard-wired against sustained dread or prolonged restrictions. I was getting more than my paycheck would even come close to the sacrifices of working that schedule is to a newly single, 19 year old adolescent.
My testosterone levels were peaking and I was handling matters far too often. I quit and moved North to Pittsburgh.
I was there under the premise of getting an education. The truth be told, I was just running scared. I had lived in a small city my whole life.
Neither of my parents graduated. In fact, I was the only one between them and my sisters who graduated the conventional way. My mother suffered from Major Depression for my entire life as a child. No one ever heard of anti-depressants in the 1970s.
As far as I could tell, they would shock the depression out of you. It had no lasting effects and erased her memory.
One of the major events of my life was the day I confronted her about the affect her parenting had on me. I told her the unspeakable emotional abuse she would employ in my presence and even as her target.
I didn't get the big show of remorse I was expecting. She claimed to have no recollection of any of the events I described. I could tell by her discomfort and rush for me to end this recollection, spoke to the effect she remembered more than none.
I had chose to forgive her in 1999. I wasn't going to carry around resentment for her when the anti-depressants stopped those behaviors. I wasn't going to blame her and let matters go, until she recalls moments of my transgression, and immediately discounted my therapy because they always go to the mother, father, or legal custodian to find events that would trigger adverse effects in their patient.
I remember they all say "blame the mother...It's always the mother." I am thinking, "uh, yeah...the mother, the father, those two people who copulated and now have inherited the obligation to teach a new life the way to live, to parent, to know what it means to be an adult.
Why would she have so much trouble accepting that she has contributed the most to my early development. She stole my security by changing faces so quickly. A smile that turns into a scowl on cue with the sound of a car pulling in was all of the warning I would get.
Get to my bedroom. I have made the mistake of trying to linger in the shadows where I could see the TV, but I was always called out to testify.
I had nothing close to the capacity to understand why they would scream so loud. I could not connect with how I got involved. Both of them are calling for me, and in my head, Dad was the lesser of two evils.
He may have been emotionally unavailable, but I felt more secure in his company...I say that just as I remember when he pulled a knife on me once, and when he through a glass vase full of coins at me and through the wall.
I still remember how they believed in capital punishment. My father would rage and hit me with the end with the metal buckle. They would strip off limbs that were really limber to use as a switch or more like a bull-whip...
Enough talking about the good old days. TBC
I must admit it is a weird attachment. I never tell people the name of the city I was born in, because it only leads to me repeating it several times.
It is the thriving city known as "Gallipolis." The name is Latin and translates to the "City of the Gaul's"-or as we know them, the French. The French 500 evidently pitched their tents there and by 1790 declared themselves an independent municipality.
I know, that's the kind of writing that will have you aroused. I just have to fit in the technical stuff. My mother lives in Rodney now anyway.
Rodney is on the way from downtown Gallipolis to a small town known as Rio Grande. I hope it wasn't named after Raccoon Creek...
Anyway, we discover another fun fact about the area I spent the first half of my life. A farmer, Bob...Evans, yeah, that's it Bob Evans has his original farm up there.
Now, you find the Bob Evans Franchise still growing as he lasted until his eighties. He died only a few years back. In fact, my mother had talked to him about a problem they shared, because his property bordered my mother's.
My mother was one of his original waitresses. He was a good man with a recipe for good sausage and a dream he watched get fulfilled early in his life and only grew over time. His products are in local supermarkets.
If I was not in the middle of transferring data and could find the pictures, I have some of his farm. I remember that it used to host an apple or foliage festival. They had farm exhibits and tractor rides. It was surprisingly popular considering how dull the attractions were.
I moved away in 1989 to manage a Domino's Pizza location in Steubenville. It was the owner's flagship location and I was in a relationship with his daughter.
It doesn't add up that he would transfer me away if he wanted my relationship to continue with his step-daughter. I lost out in that situation and was working hours that opposed having a social life in every way possible.
Weekends were the busiest time. I worked from 4PM to 2PM both nights. I was off on Sundays and worked the day shift on Mondays.
Going back to the whole premise that humans are hard-wired against sustained dread or prolonged restrictions. I was getting more than my paycheck would even come close to the sacrifices of working that schedule is to a newly single, 19 year old adolescent.
My testosterone levels were peaking and I was handling matters far too often. I quit and moved North to Pittsburgh.
I was there under the premise of getting an education. The truth be told, I was just running scared. I had lived in a small city my whole life.
Neither of my parents graduated. In fact, I was the only one between them and my sisters who graduated the conventional way. My mother suffered from Major Depression for my entire life as a child. No one ever heard of anti-depressants in the 1970s.
As far as I could tell, they would shock the depression out of you. It had no lasting effects and erased her memory.
One of the major events of my life was the day I confronted her about the affect her parenting had on me. I told her the unspeakable emotional abuse she would employ in my presence and even as her target.
I didn't get the big show of remorse I was expecting. She claimed to have no recollection of any of the events I described. I could tell by her discomfort and rush for me to end this recollection, spoke to the effect she remembered more than none.
I had chose to forgive her in 1999. I wasn't going to carry around resentment for her when the anti-depressants stopped those behaviors. I wasn't going to blame her and let matters go, until she recalls moments of my transgression, and immediately discounted my therapy because they always go to the mother, father, or legal custodian to find events that would trigger adverse effects in their patient.
I remember they all say "blame the mother...It's always the mother." I am thinking, "uh, yeah...the mother, the father, those two people who copulated and now have inherited the obligation to teach a new life the way to live, to parent, to know what it means to be an adult.
Why would she have so much trouble accepting that she has contributed the most to my early development. She stole my security by changing faces so quickly. A smile that turns into a scowl on cue with the sound of a car pulling in was all of the warning I would get.
Get to my bedroom. I have made the mistake of trying to linger in the shadows where I could see the TV, but I was always called out to testify.
I had nothing close to the capacity to understand why they would scream so loud. I could not connect with how I got involved. Both of them are calling for me, and in my head, Dad was the lesser of two evils.
He may have been emotionally unavailable, but I felt more secure in his company...I say that just as I remember when he pulled a knife on me once, and when he through a glass vase full of coins at me and through the wall.
I still remember how they believed in capital punishment. My father would rage and hit me with the end with the metal buckle. They would strip off limbs that were really limber to use as a switch or more like a bull-whip...
Enough talking about the good old days. TBC
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