The Old Northwest

A whisker over 40 years ago, the family and I up and moved to Oregon. Me, move, Oregon… that’s really all the explanation one needs.

A dear friend whose knowledge of US history was less complete than I would have thought, gave us a set of books — tomes, really — that described in exhaustive detail all there was to know about the Old Northwest.

Oregon is in the Pacific Northwest and was mentioned not at all in the pages of that well-intended (and likely expensive) collection. The Old Northwest, on the other hand, was ceded to the US after the Revolutionary War and included all or part of what is now Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. As complete as those tomes were, reading even one of those books was like trying to read Proust. Or Dostoevsky. A much better (simpler) understanding of The Old Northwest and the people-and-politics that made it happen can be found in ‘The Pioneers’ by David McCullough.

So here I am today in The Old Northwest. Ohio, to be exact. Two dozen miles north of Cincinnati and the Ohio River, my trailer hooked up to water, sewer and electricity at an RV park in Lebanon, OH.

Just as if I was back in Kilgore, I had to make a Walmart run. (This to satisfy the questioning of my daughter who asked if I was eating my vegetables. I now have vegetables.) Getting to Walmart from this RV park was like stepping back into The Old Northwest. The downtown commercial district — stretching for quite a number of blocks in four directions includes magnificent buildings that predate the Civil War and, even today, appear to house what appear to be thriving businesses. Beautiful homes marked with historical designations and, apparently, fully occupied.

Some parts of the world have learned how to incorporate today’s technology in yesterday’s structure.

I’ve ridden my motorbike through Ohio three times. Surviving today’s oh-my-God traffic across the river marked my fourth border crossing. Before the week is over, or within a few days of that, I’ll have exited Ohio and crossed into Pennsylvania.

When settlers, more or less commissioned by the U.S. government, crossed the Appalachians in a move to push the US boundaries westward, they launched their flatboats in the Allegheny River and floated down to what is now Pittsburg and then down the Ohio before debarking and settling at what is today Marietta. If my history is not exact it’s probably because I didn’t finish that three-volume set back in 1982.

However we got here, Americans built homes, businesses and farms. Today I’m surrounded by the proof of that. And it is lovely.