Nows and Forevers

Somewhere on Interstate 70 in Ohio

I’ve driven this side of Interstate 70 only a handful of times in my life. But they’ve been for significant reasons, so some of the memories remain, no matter how long ago. It’s funny how that works.
On the trip out of Pennsylvania, and for much of the trip to Columbus, it doesn’t look too much different than Pennsylvania. Miles and miles of, well, miles and miles. Eastern Ohio, at least, here, isn’t flat. It is the Midwest, no doubt. But that’s really a glance at the map instead of the look out the window. It’s remarkably green and hilly. If it weren’t for the unfamiliar and unmistakably Ohio names, I could be anywhere east of here.
It’s only when you get past Columbus do you reallize you’re no longer in the Northeast. That’s where the land flattens, the farmland starts to grow, and all the other parts of the countryside morph into what East and West Coasters call flyover country.
I’ve certainly flown over it a lot, both for business and personal reasons. It’s by this time, when I fly out of New York, that I am not really looking outside anymore. But now that I live in Flyover Country, I have a different perspective.
This stretch of road, where I ride now, reminds me of a part of my life, long gone, but also pretty important even though I didn’t know it at the time.
My first time here was in September 1981, when my family left New England to drive to my uncle’s wedding in Indianapolis, where his bride grew up. The trip from Connecticut to Scranton wasn’t that remarkable. I have spent more than half my life living in that stretch from central Connecticut to the Hudson Valley of New York, and I knew it well even then as a 12-year-old. And I spent a lot of time in the car as a kid, visiting my maternal relatives in the Scranton area.
But Pennsylvania, that vast commonwealth, I had never driven the length of it all the way before. I don’t remember a ton, but I do recall seeing oil derricks off the highway, poking and rhymthically swinging up and down.
I was fascinated by that. It isn’t something you see where I grew up.
We stayed the first night in Cambridge, Ohio, which my grandfather told me was near the hometown of John Glenn, the famous astronaut. That was cool, but other than that I don’t remember anything else of the trip. At least not in Ohio.
The Buckeye State was, through no fault of its own, unremarkable. What I remember next is crossing over into Indiana, and a sign that said it doesn’t follow daylight savings time. It’s funny, again, how you remember that.
I was only in Indianapolis for four days, and we left that Monday and drove all the way back home after the wedding so that I could start school that Tuesday and my mom could go back to work. I had no idea that I would be going that way again, only four months later, when my mother, stepfather and I drove all the way across the country to our new home in San Diego in January 1982.
That became a signature event in my life, and it partially began with this stretch of road, from Connecticut through Ohio and a great way on Interstate 70.
That was 41 years ago. It took a long time for me to come back to Ohio. I flew over it a lot, but didn’t drive I-70 here until the spring of 2009, when my father and I visited the Air Force Museum in Dayton, and again in 2017 when he and I went to Hamvention, a big amateur radio convention they hold here annually.
And that’s why I’m there again, on my own for the first time when I drive this way, in 2023.