Day Three - July 1

This morning Pee Wee and Danny drove up from Cincinnati and Jimmy and I drove on more Ohio scenic routes. Jimmy and I really enjoyed seeing the tidy little Ohio towns and different landscapes than what we're used to seeing. It may be boring to some, but this was one of the purposes of the trip - to get out and see the heart of America and we really liked it. We stopped in a couple of towns, read a little history here and there, stopped at the Tri Valley High School football stadium (a lot of the high schools have artificial turf around here). We meandered and explored until we rendezvoused with our other travelling companions in Charm, Ohio in the middle of Amish territory.
We visited the Keim Lumber Company - kind of famous for its Amish made furniture. It had hundreds of types of lumber from hundreds of types of trees. Coffee table tops ranged from $400 to over $5000. We left empty handed.
We ate at Grandma's in Charm - Danny was amazed by the Amish servers - their simple appearance, their bonnets, their dialect, so he talked one of them into a group picture. It is pretty amazing to see the happy Amish people immersed in their daily life - so much different than ours - horse and buggies, untrimmed beards, etc.
From there it was time to get to the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio. Pee Wee and I visited the baseball version in Cooperstown three years ago and we enjoyed this one just as much. We even managed to get my favorite football coach inducted today. Yes - Jimmy Chupp is now in the Football Hall of Fame. I wrote his name on a small piece of paper and was barely able to slide it between an exhibit and the wall in an area where it will never be found. So Jimmy Football is now in the Football Hall of Fame. Congratulations Jimmy - Johnny Football has nothing on you.
From Canton we drove 30 minutes to Kent, Ohio and found our way to the May 4 Memorial. At Kent State on May 4, 1970, four students were killed and nine others wounded by the Ohio National Guard while they were protesting the Viet Nam War. I remember the incident very well - hundreds of colleges and high schools across the nation protested with "sit-ins" over the next few days. I can vaguely remember being a part of that at McCluer High School my junior year. The Memorial is very well done and interesting to follow and to read about. But like other places we've visited - Columbine, VA Tech, and Aurora, Colorado, it also just plain sad.
Good deeds were hard to come by today - we tried and we asked but good deed doing was slow. We handed out another water bottle to a "Slow - Go" sign guy at a construction site. He had the Go side out when he should have had the Slow, and he had the Slow side out when he should have had the Go, but we still felt he was deserving of a good deed water bottle so he received one along with a Good Deed Doers card.
We're staying the night in a Comfort Inn in Kent. I'm working on the blog while my three buddies are playing in the pool, as if they were eight year-olds. There's a water slide and other things for kids. I think I'll end this for tonight ... so I can get in the pool, like an eight year old.