A Proud Man - Charles Fred Jones aka "Butch"

I've written about my grandfather and his pride in his work before. I'm grateful that the Cincinnati Transit Company published a bimonthly news magazine called The News. I thought I had pretty much gleaned what I could from their publication until I found out that the Cincinnati History Library and Archives had some copies I may not have reviewed. A trip to the library uncovered some gems I had not previously discovered. What joy! And so I share them with you -- my fellow Joneses.

It's Done with Ropes

From The News, May-June 1946, p. 17.

The News was a bi-monthly publication of the Cincinnati Transit Company, aka "the bus company." My Dad, John Thomas Jones, worked in the "car barn" where his father was the foreman. This picture was taken one year after Dad served in England during World War II. Eventually he would become a mechanic, and later, an electrician. The picture in the magazine had more detail that the one I was able to reproduce, but you get the idea. I love it when someone comes up with a simple solution to a problem they face -- as this one was. Dad would have been 25 at the time of this picture.

An Unexpected Find Thanks to Google Books

In the evening when I am half-watching TV, I often search for the names of family members on google books. (Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE google books)? Last night I was searching on my grandfather, Charles F. Jones. Up came a reference to The News published by the Cincinnati Transit Company where both my grandfather and father were employed. Thanks to our wonderful Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton Co., I was able to "Ask A Librarian" to find this article on microfilm and email me a digital image free! So here is today's piece of gold.

In truth, The News labeled the picture incorrectly. From left to right it should read Pfc. Charles F. Jones, Jr., Sgt. Robt. L. Jones, and Cpl. John T. Jones.The article refers to two of the sons meeting in England, and I have a picture of that. It also references a separate article in The News and a picture in the Enquirer -- so I guess I have more hunting to do.

John and Bob in England

Update: Here is the same picture as it appeared in The News, periodical published by the Cincinnati Street Railway, July/Aug.1945, p.7.

Dad's House in the 1937 Flood

2424 Eastern Ave. (now Riverside) from the 1937 Flood

Yesterday, Bryan Phillips, owner of the East End facebook page, texted me that there was a video on you tube that had a picture of my Dad's house 2 minutes and 30 seconds in.  I couldn't wait to check it out.




Brian Gordon posted this video on facebook in April, 2010. Here is how he described it.

I contacted Brian Gordon for permission to embed the video and a "snip" of Dad's house on this blog. He graciously agreed. Although we have a picture of Dad's house in the flood, I don't think it does justice to just how bad the flood was for the Jones family. I'm also grateful for Brian Gordon's description of everything on this video.

I guess it gives a whole new meaning to "A River Runs Through Us."

It's the End of an Era

Today marks the demise of one of the most prominent landmarks in the East End -- Highland School. This school has gone through many changes during the past 15 years or so.  After no longer being used as an elementary school, the school became home to one program after another including an Inland Waterways Program, a Montessori School and later the East End Heritage School. My Dad lived directly across the street from the school and attended it during his elementary years.

Despite several attempts to repurpose the building, none of these efforts came to pass.  Located in the flood plain of the Ohio River, it was difficult to obtain financing. I'm told there were restrictions about how big the footprint of the building could be and deed restrictions from a large underground pipe behind the building.  Empty and abandoned for several years, the last coup de gras (deathblow) came from vandals who removed gutters and downspouts allowing the building to be overtaken with mold. It only took a little over a week. Pictured is the transition . . .

The Beginning of the End
Photo Credit:  Bryan Phillips

Earlier Today (8-30-2012)

Photo Credit:  Bryan Phillips

Later Today

I spoke to the man from O'Rourke, and he told me that it will be another month before everything is cleared away.  They are recycling rebar, concrete, and everything that can be salvaged. If you look carefully at the picture in the bottom right, you can see the roof-line of my Dad's former home. I can't help but wonder if it will be next.

Paddlefest 2012

Paddlefest 2012

This past Sunday in Cincinnati, over 2200 people took to their canoe, kayak or other non-powered mode of transportation and paddled down the Ohio River from Coney Island to the Public Landing -- a trip of eight miles.  Unfortunately, no matter what I did, I couldn't capture it as I would have liked because I needed a telephoto lens.  Just take my word for it -- it was fantastic. One of the stated purposes is to celebrate the resource that the Ohio River is to our community.

The East End - Guest Author Dorothy Weil

Several years ago, I read a book The River Home by Dorothy Weil. It touched me.  In the process of writing this blog, I've repeatedly recalled some of the images of the East End and the Ohio River that Dorothy so poignantly described. One chapter, in particular, discusses the educational experiences of the so-called "River Rats" from one Cincinnati neighborhood.

Today I wrote to Dorothy and asked permission to share one chapter with you.  She graciously agreed to allow me to do so. If you love her writing as much as I do, take a few minutes to visit her website, to learn about her and the books she has published. She has also assisted in the production of several videos about life on the river and in the East End.

So with Dorothy's permission, I share with you "The East End."

The East End

School was a big Victorian building between Eastern Avenue and the railroad tracks. It was the oldest school building in the city, with wooden beams in the gym and chutes to slide down as fire escapes. We all longed to try them, but fire drill was just a march through the halls and onto the playground.

The playground was only ten feet from the trains that chugged through regularly, throwing soot over everything. When we kids played kickball we came away looking like end men in a minstrel show. Also in the blacktopped yard were the "shacks" where the "dumb kids" went. These were separate barracks manned by the strongest and most fearless teachers and populated by the hopeless.

There were smart kids and dumb kids, fat kids and skinny kids, bad kids and good kids. One of the boys in my sixth-grade class was a Down's syndrome child; the other children called him Dopey after the dwarf in Snow White and teased him without mercy. Howard, a tall, handsome boy, had a horrible smell, a smell so bad no one would be his buddy in line or take his hand. No one did anything to help these children. Our teachers were old maids, usually with iron-gray hair. They dressed in subdued colors and sensible shoes. They loved their subjects and encouraged the alert and motivated. They had no interest in social problems or the unprepared. Howard probably never knew what was wrong.

Every kid had a nickname, usually based on his or her worst feature: there was "Tits," a boy who had pronounced breasts, and "Wharthog" and "Meatface," both struggling with pre-teen acne. I was dubbed "BBD" for "Big Butt Dorothy."

We were seated by level of achievement. I was soon competing for the first seat in the first row by the door. Poor Howard brought up the rear in the last seat in the last row by the window. In between were rows of dozing kids as the teacher lectured on the Constitution and "Initiative and Referendum."

Even singing class was hierarchical: the sopranos were "Bluebirds," the altos and tenors were "Robins," and the basses and lower-voiced were "Crows," a nomenclature that obviously favored the higher registers.

In spite of my standing in the class, or maybe because of it, I felt out of place. I was a new kid on the block once again, a kid who talked like a book.

Though I might have been smart, I was still a "River Rat." I hated writing down my address: "Boat, Foot of Donham Street." I wanted a house number and a street name, something solid and respectable. Everyone else lived in secure homes that stayed put on the small, shady streets of the East End, while I hiked up to school from the river. 

I spent hours in the library at the corner of Donham and Eastern reading Louisa May Alcott and the Brontes. The Brontes gave me romance, but Alcott gave me more solid dreams. I wanted to have a family like Jo's: intelligent, peaceful, loving and living in New England in a shingled house with lilac bushes and apple trees. Half headachy from print (I was always suffering various aches and itches) and due for dinner at the yacht club, I would walk a block down Donham, then often be held up by a stalled freight train. To get by, I would climb under a coupling or crawl under a car, fully prepared to hit the dirt and lie flat if the train started.

The kids of the East End were quite aware of the area's low-class reputation and soon taught us not to mention where we were from if we went outside the neighborhood, to the skating rink or downtown: "Just say you're from Hyde Park or Mt. Lookout." 

In spite of the neighborhood's lack of wealth, the part of the East End around McKinley School was quite pleasant, like a small river town. There were shade trees along Eastern and some houses with historic charm. I was chosen to appear on a radio program featuring school children from various neighborhoods, and learned that the East End was originally called Columbia and was the first community in the city to be settled. The riverfront was once the town of Fulton, where steamboats were built. We had a pioneer cemetery near Lunken Airport and historic residence built by Benjamin Stites, an East End founder.

Clustered around the school on Eastern Avenue were a supermarket, a beauty parlor, a clothing store, a bank, a movie theater, a post office, a diner, several bars, a chili parlor and an old-fashioned notions store with pull-down stools. Everything families needed could be found there.

In the days we lived there, people paid little attention to the river, unless it flooded or gave up a dead body or did some other asocial thing. We roller-skated and hung around in the school yard. There were parks in the lower East End, toward town, but we never went to Turkey Ridge or below because the kids there were rumored to be really tough. 

Mom warned us to stay away from tough kids and told me not to let the older boys get me alone anywhere: "They may have desires you younger children don't know about." True, there were a couple of boys in the school who shaved or had chins black with stubble, but they could be avoided. We ran pretty free in our nearby streets, never worrying about bad areas or hoodlums. We went to the movies, Jim and I, at night, along with some kids who lived right next door to the coal yard near the tracks.

Back down on the river, I practiced kicking the kickball in the field above the marina. More than anything, I wanted to be a good player, but I was never more than a bunter. Occasionally, I wandered over to the woods where the shanty boaters lived. Nettie and Annie went to McKinley, and their brother "Pig Iron" was receiving his education in the shacks. Their boat, an old scow with no motor, was moored among the willows. Their bathroom was a seat over the water and a bar of soap on the rope.  The family grew their own vegetables on the small bit of land where they moored, and they kept chickens. Clarence, the father, fished for their dinner and made his own "raisin jack." He and the other shanty boaters "rolled coal" for their stoves from barges that were tied off across the water. The minute a tow boat left a barge full of coal on the ice breakers -- to be picked up later -- and puffed out of sight, an armada of small boats surrounded it. Clarence, along with his cohorts, was out in his skiff filling it with chunks of coal. He would come back from a raid so weighed down, the oarlocks of his boat were at water level.

Mom though shanty-boaters interesting and colorful and encouraged me to make friends with them. But when Daddy got wind of my visiting them, he forbade me to go back. To a steamboat man, the shanty boaters were thieves, riff-raff, no-account.

As usual, I depended on company from Jim, who was willing to let me tag along with him until more interesting male companions came along. Mom needed my services to help cook. Chopping cabbage for coleslaw, our usual salad, and frying pork chops were chores I enjoyed. I hated trying to make "oleo margarine" look palatable, like butter. We squeezed a tiny glob of red dye into a pound of white lardy stuff and kneaded it in. We did everything to the accompaniment of the radio, our one link besides school with the world beyond the river. We sang along with the endlessly played soap ads: "Rinso white, Rinso bright / Birdies sing all day long." We would never forget the slogans: "Ipana for the smile of beauty, Sal Hepatica for the smile of health."

Soap operas played constantly: "Backstage Wife," "Lorenzo Jones," "Just Plain Bill," "Life Can be Beautiful."   I believed in the last one, utterly.

Dorothy Weil, Author

Note: I would love to read your comments, as I am sure Dorothy would, too.

                                                                  Kathy