Columbus or Bust - Saturday

Saturday dawned, and with it the prospect of trying out yet another different type of shower system in the house. This one turned out not to require too much advanced knowledge, with two controls rather than one. Shower designers must fall over themselves to build ever more complex setups, usually in the guise of reducing the manufacturing cost, so every shower I have to interface with in hotels or Airbnb places is a bit of a challenge. But then that’s just me.

 

Our first port of call for the day was the “Happy Little Treats” bakery, purveyor of fine vegan things, which was about ten minutes away. Without going into too much detail, we emerged with a big box of baked goodies, and looked set for the day. 

 

Then we headed south to the rural idyll that is Baltimore, Ohio. There lie the earthly remains of a distant relative of mine, one William Franklin Mayne, and his wife Eliza Jane. He was the third born son of Henry Mayne, who left Leeds (my home town) in the UK in 1822, and set off for the New World. He started quite a dynasty on this side of the Atlantic, of which old WF was at the vanguard. The drive down was only about forty minutes, and while the land was a bit more undulating thereabouts, the fields were full of corn and beans, and the houses looked much the same as in southern Ontario. Nearer Baltimore, the houses were bigger and generally set in more land, which I supposed denoted the presence of money, although this was still all in the middle of miles and miles of fields. As we drove along the arrow straight roads lined with electricity poles, I couldn't help thinking of the scenes in the movie What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? when a caravan of Airstream trailers rolled down such a road. I guess the road could have been anywhere in the Midwest.

 

Baltimore was just a nice little town servicing the surrounding rural area. Old WF and his family had lived in the village, known as Basil originally, but had been absorbed by its bigger neighbour, Baltimore. Today, though, it was the Old Basil Cemetery we were visiting. I should point out here for the Brits reading this that Basil is pronounced “Bay-zil” on this side of the pond; I mention that just for authenticity of course. One of Basil’s claims was that it was a stopping point on the long-defunct Ohio and Erie Canal, which was the source of its early prosperity, but of course you all knew that already.

 

Old WF had been the village doctor in the second half of the Nineteenth century, and a property developer as well, given that he owned much of the land Basil (sorry, West Baltimore) now stands on. The word “owned” is a misnomer because the land would have been appropriated from the native people that had lived here for thousands of years before European contact. Indian removal had started after the Revolutionary War, about a hundred years before WF acquired the title, and was likely either Shawnee or Wyandot land. In any talk of North America, it’s important to acknowledge these facts.

 

When we arrived in West Market Street, there was a parade underway, so clearly someone had told them I was coming. It was a wee bit bizarre to be browsing the cemetery while there were people dressed up like ice cream cones, or riding multi-seated quad-cycles, just a few yards away. Anyway, we found WF’s grave fairly easily, revelled in the general aura of Mayneness, and took some photos.

On the way back to the car, we looked carefully at a house that I thought had been built by WF but re-reading the entry in the Baltimore Community Museum Facebook page, it was a newer house we were looking at, but on the site of WF’s original dwelling. Still, it was a significant space for me.

 

Then it was back to the big city of Columbus. We’d been there before a few years ago and had remarked how clean and tidy the downtown core was. While not actually downtown now, we did get a good view of it from the highway, perched as it is on a little rise, and very nice it looked too. 

 

Back at the house, we chilled a little (essential given how warm it was getting outside), and prepared for the main event of the weekend, the match between Chelsea Football Club of London, and Manchester City FC of, well, Manchester. Both English Premier League teams were in the USA on a pre-season tour, and they were booked to play each other at the Ohio State Stadium. That’s not a soccer stadium, but as it seats 102,000, it was better for the money men than using the much smaller Columbus Crew MLS soccer stadium. When I said it was getting warmer, it was also getting darker, which was of course a prelude to a huge rain storm. It was not looking good because the Ohio stadium doesn’t have any cover over its seats. Fortunately, the storm passed quickly, but then the heat started to build, so it looked like we’d likely drown, or boil while watching the game.

 

The wise decision was taken to utilize an Uber rideshare car to get us to the stadium, and young Hassan, our driver, sped us into the huge campus that is Ohio State University. We were still some way from the stadium as we passed parking lots with spaces at $20, which made the Uber decision make real sense. When we were dropped close to the stadium, a bar, The Varsity, was full of Chelsea supporters singing and shouting, and it was more than reminiscent of the Fulham Road on Saturday afternoon than a hot afternoon in Ohio. As we approached the ground, there were many thousands of Chelsea and City shirts in evidence, plus a whole raft of other football shirts, from El Salvador to Arsenal.

Completed in 1922, the stadium is a horseshoe shaped concrete edifice that these days can hold 102,000 paying customers. It’s normally the home of the Ohio State Buckeyes football team but is often used for University events as well. If nothing else, it’s impressive. The downside was that the playing area isn’t really built for soccer, so the pitch laid out was a little narrow, and probably short as well, but from our seats up in the nosebleed section, it was difficult to tell. I have mentioned already that there is no covering over any of the stadium, so if it was going to rain then we were going to get soaked. As it turned out, it stayed dry, but the ambient air temperature that afternoon was around 30C, and when the sun shone, it was seriously hot up there on the concrete cliff face.

 

The facilities in the stadium were OK, plenty of water to be bought, and beer, and hotdogs, at a price of course. The men’s toilets on C deck were pretty awful, but that was down to the users, not the providers. There was some merchandise being sold, but the people behind us took about thirty minutes and $200 to come back with not very much at all, so that was pretty much what we expected. 

 

The pre-game stuff was all US professional sports nonsense. Mascots, crowd-cam, stupid games and a “host” trying to get everyone warmed up. The sound system was pretty good, and the DJ providing the music wasn’t bad, but it just went on too long. The giant screen at one end of the stadium was a mass of flashing images and, this being the USA, non-stop commercials.

 

When the game started, at least the music was stopped, although the people behind us did ask, out loud, why that was. They thought the music might liven things up a bit. The game wasn’t great, pre-season friendlies never are, even though things had been built up like it was a cup final or something. The referee, surely FIFA accredited, was dreadful, dishing out a penalty when City’s captain fell over in the penalty area, then handing out yellow cards for even the mildest contact between players. That didn’t help. Nor did my team being beaten 4-2. I couldn’t quite deal with the music and flashing screens when goals were scored, a camera operator rushing onto the pitch to record the players’ celebrations was a bit mad, and every corner kick was greeted with a commercial “This corner kick is brought to you by Rinky-Dinky Airlines”. That’s just not done in European football. Still, it was only a practice match, so what did it matter?

 

The 72,000 paying customers in the ground seemed to enjoy the spectacle, and I’m glad we went, because it was quite the event. One day the Premier League should organize a competitive game in the US, without all the music and the lights, and held in a stadium with a roof on, at least over the spectators. Then you’d get the crowd noise and not be distracted by Rinky-Dink Airlines every few minutes.

 

Coming out of the stadium was OK, it’s a big place and didn’t feel too crushed as everyone made for the exits. I thought it looked and felt a bit like the old Wembley Stadium in London as we headed out down the stairs but given that the Ohio stadium was built at around the same time, it shouldn’t have been surprising. We needed to walk a bit to get away from ground and the main bulk of spectators, and even when we did and bagged another Uber car, the traffic was still horrible. Mind you, the driver was pretty good with the back streets and had us home in record time.

 

It was too late to go out for dinner at that point, not least because a lot of places close at 9pm (this isn’t Europe, for sure, where places don’t even open until 9pm), so it was pizza and beer at home, along with a cheesy but moral Tom Hanks movie on the big screen.

 

Goodness that was a busy day.