The Road to Waldo(Ohio)

Yesterday I headed the 100 or so miles though the back roads towards the small town in central Ohio called Waldo. Where is Waldo you ask? About 20 miles north of the Capital City of Columbus nestled in the corner of the Delaware, Morrow, and Marion County conjunction...just inside Marion County....I met up with an old friend from the 1990s, Bill Clem...more on that after the headlines:

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Glenn Beck Says______:

"If Health Care passes in the Senate form, the economic end of the nation is at hand".

http://www.glennbeck.com/content/articles/article/198/33342/

Do you agree? If not{or if you do} check out the facts"

http://www.atr.org/userfiles/111809pr-comptaxreid%282%29.pdf

This should be enough to scare the Hell out of any non-freeloading, non-Marxist, "Legal" American....unfortunately, the Democrats and their Kenyan born leader Barack Insane Obama have only the above in mind when spending money and controlling the politics of the country.

Wake the Hell up America!

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Sports____

#15 Ohio State Basketball got it's first big test in New York against defending national champs North Carolina, ranked #4 at this early point in the season:

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/recap?gid=200911190443&prov=ap

The Buckeyes trailed the entire game but made it close in the end...UNC remains undefeated, OSU falls to 2-1 with the consolation game in NYC against #13 Cal tonight. The Tar Heels take on Syracuse for the 4 team title.

Being a Duke fan first in roundball and an OSU fan second...I hate seeing anybody that I root for losing to Roy Williams and the Tar Babies....

The Road to Waldo(and back)___

As I have written on many occasions in the past few years on this blog and my Ancestry Blog:

http://israelhouseworth.blogspot.com/

The small(population 325) town of Waldo in central Ohio is the town from where most of my double sided Houseworth family spread out from in the middle and late 1800s. GGG-Granddad Israel Houseworth and his sons Solomon, Frederick, and George, settled in Waldo around 1840, along with the wives...most of their children were born and raised in the Delaware and Waldo area of central Ohio. Many "Houseworth" stones can be found in the Waldo Town Cemetery.

My Great-Grandparents Nelson(son of Solomon) and Mary Ann(Daughter of Fred and Ursula) were first cousins...apparently not that uncommon back in the day, due to large families and rural living...or at least that's what they say? Who really knows?

Anyway after Frederick died great-great Grandma Ursula became a large property owner in and around the town.....on one of her properties the Waldo City Park now rests.

Meeting up with Bill Clem____

Bill Clem his wife Sandy, and their two kids Billy and Shannon lived in Celina for a spell back in the early and mid 1990s. Billy played soccer for me and his dad and played for his old man against my little league baseball teams back in the day...Bill was also a drinking buddy at the old Lakefront Racquet Club....Sandy and Bill moved with her job to Marion, Ohio,(about 15 miles north of Waldo) back around 1996. Billy, now a coach and math teacher in Marion, helped lead his Marion Pleasant team to a State Baseball Championship back in 2001 as the starting catcher, he now coaches baseball and basketball at MP. Sadly Bill's wife passed away for cancer a few years back, and although I had talked to him several times in recent years, I had not seen him since Sandy passed away. I had talked with him in person last in 2001 on a rainy semi-final state baseball game, back in that spring of 2001.

Bill has a new women in his life, and seems to be the same old Bill...a good guy for sure. We had a good 2 hour visit over the famous Bologna Sandwiches at G&R Tavern, a couple of beers and I took him for a visit of the family plots at the local cemetery.

I took my damn camera, planning on getting some photos of us...but during the conversations forgot all about it....we parted with a promise to get together for a longer visit next time around. He wanted me to drop over to his house, but knowing I would down a couple of quality beers with him....I didn't want to drive those back roads home for 2 hours with "beers in my belly". Such a concerned wimp I have become..... :{

The Road Back to Celina____

Saying our goodbyes with a handshake, I headed out the back country roads towards west central Ohio. State Highway 47 goes through some small rural towns that the ghosts of the Houseworths haunt these days...Richwood, West Manchester, Prospect, and others. I headed out 47, finally cut off a few country/country roads towards Rushsylvania...I bypassed Bellefontaine, drove on through Indian Lake and Russells Point, on Route 33 towards Wapak, St. Marys, and finally home to Celina.

I did plan on taking some back road routes to find some old bridges to photograph, but time was short{due mostly to the early darkness these days}so, I got a few photos along the traveled route and didn't wander off the beaten path too far.

Of course I fired up a good cigar and a large coffee for the trip home, and arrive back just before dark on this cloudy, rainy, typical November-like Ohio day.

Basketball and Ohio State-Michigan weekend___

Basketball officiating tonight some 70 miles north to Edgerton...don't ask me why I took a scrimmage that far north for $60, there is not much profit in it with gas at $2.65 a gallon. But I do like to travel in decent weather and see other places and different teams...if you remember I took a Varsity football game up there in October. So I am familar with Edgerton and teams in the Green Meadows Conference, from football, basketball, and especially baseball, where I do about a half dozen league games per year.

I should get home around 1o:30 or 11pm, just in time to grab a shower, have a beer, hit the sack and get up at 6am for another varsity boys scrimmage at Waynesfield, some 40 miles back east off US 33.

If I and my legs and back survive all of that....I will kick back and watch the annual Ohio State-Michigan football game at Ann Arbor. Under Jim Tressel, the Buckeyes have owned the Maze and Blue during the decade of the 00s...tomorrow look for them to continue that faze of the bitter rivalry. But never take this game for granted, with the Rose Bowl clinched, OSU needs to not look past Michigan, who have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Back Later>>>> Enjoy the weekend before Thanksgiving.

Photos-top/the Waldo Park now site on the property owned by my GG-Grandmother, Ursula Scribner Houseworth back in 1878. These days the most famous spot in Waldo is the world famous G&R Tavern, where the famous Bologna Sandwiches are served...along with a cold beer, they are at the top of my menu. Waldo as it looked on the plot map in 1878...the circled properties were the homesteads and farm land of Ursula Houseworth./On the way back from Waldo on State Route 47, I snapped the photos of a long abandoned bridge outside of Richwood, and as you enter West Mansfield on Rt 47 you are greeted by the long ago abandoned grain elevator at the railroad tracks.