Drivetime

A diamond in the rough - greeting me as I head out of town this morning.

Most days I travel 28 miles - 45 minutes - to work. I travel along good old U.S. Route 20, one of the stalwart old east-west highways that helped move America westward and then move goods and folks back and forth in large volume. At least until the Interstate was built - in the form of the Ohio Turnpike, about five miles to the north. Now 20 is just an overbuilt and underused connector, with remnants of bygone motels and other travel-oriented businesses scattered along its corridor.

Anyhow, here is a handful of highlights along my daily soiree to the workplace. I would show pictures on the way home but, sadly, with the change in time this weekend, I have entered into my "doom and gloom darkness" portion of the evening drivetime. Thank goodness for books on CD, music on CD, and XM radio, which temporarily has an entire 24/7 channel devoted to Led Zeppelin...
Twenty minutes from home I pass through Bellevue. Below is a shot just entering downtown. They are trying a program to get building owners to jazz up their facades. It is taking some effort to get people interested. It will take some doing. They lost McClains, an old restaurant/tavern that had been around forever, passing through three generations before hanging up the "For Sale" sign, and the retail base is fairly slim these days.
Next in line is Clyde. I post this picture (below) of Route 20 clipping through town because of the horrendous number of wires strung up there. Do you ever notice those things? It just doesn't speak "21st century" to me. Which is actually kind of ironic, because Clyde has been messing with a project where they were delivering Internet service over power lines.
Clyde is noted for two things, mainly. First, it was the home and provided inspiration for author Sherwood Anderson, who wrote "Winesburg, Ohio", pretty well known in literary circles, but painting a rather dismal portrait of how people behaved in small-town America.

The other big thing is the Whirlpool plant. This is the largest washing machine factory in the world. Here we see the old factory, and the more recently constructed distribution center. They are connected by a conveyor that reaches over a road. Something like 3,000 employees work here. I hope in this recession that the world still demands new washing machines, or Clyde and environs are going to be hurting, big time.
Then after another expanse of farmland, we arrive in Fremont, where I claim to work, and we cross the mighty Sandusky River to get downtown.

This view above is rolling down East State Street toward downtown. About a block farther to the right is a new CVS drug store that has been completed for about two months, but whose shelves remain empty. The story is this: CVS follows a strict policy where they can only open a certain number of stores every year. They are reaching their allotment for 2008 and so this store will stand empty until its grand opening in 2009. Meanwhile, a holiday season and part of a flu season will escape their cash registers. Seems counterintuitive.

We need rain.

But actually, of all the images of my commute, I guess I like that lone tree back where I started, all golden in the fresh morning light, about as much as anything...
And along my drive I was able to snap a weird object in another town I pass - Monroeville. That object will appear Friday...