Each week, The Extraordinary Times catches up with leading voices from the local historical and cultural scene. This week’s guest is iconic WVXU journalist and host of All Things Considered, Bill Rinehart. Bill grew up in Nebraska, wanting to get into radio. 31 years ago, he got his wish with a shift on a college radio station. The next year, he was hired as an overnight DJ on a nearby commercial station. From there he moved from town to town, up and down the dial. From Nebraska to Iowa to Ohio, Bill has worked in commercial and public radio, as everything from DJ to reporter to host. Bill roots for the Reds, watches Dr. Who, and lives in downtown Cincinnati with his collection of books.
* What have you been up to this summer? I took a lovely, socially-distanced vacation to California and back—I had a roomette to myself on Amtrak’s California Zephyr on the way west, and rented a car for the long drive back. Otherwise, I’ve been finding new shows to binge with my brother’s Hulu account, reading a few books from the late James Crumley, and going for long walks to watch the sun rise. * Tell readers about your new local segment on WVXU, OKI Wanna Know. First, how did you get started? The news is about what’s happening now: big, important powerful things. OKI Wanna Know covers the little things that gnaw at you, but aren’t generally earth-shaking stories. I asked the boss, Maryanne [Zeleznik], if I could start poking around and she thought it was a fun idea. Then the pandemic hit, and investigations got sidelined. We wanted to produce the stories and air them during the quarantine as a nice distraction, but there was too much important information to get out, so they got put off until now. * How do you pick out and research your topics? The first three editions are just little things that I’ve noticed. I live in Downtown Cincinnati and spend most of my off-time here. The first three topics are just the nagging questions that have stuck with me. After these three, we’ll be relying on queries from listeners. * What Cincinnati-area curiosities are you excited to learn more about for your show? We’ve received a handful of good questions so far, and I’ll start investigating them as I can. There’s still my regular duties, and no shortage of serious news these days. * OKI Wanna Know recently discussed Cincinnati-born President William H. Taft, who lacks any statue in his home city commemorating his time in the White House (one at UC Law School remembers his tenure on the Supreme Court). Given the furor over statues in general, do you think they still serve a useful purpose? Do statues still serve a useful purpose? That answer will vary from person to person. It’s important to point out there are two statues in Cincinnati still in the creation process: Ezzard Charles and Marian Spencer. (Someone pointed out to me that statues may have started to fade in popularity as photography became more accessible.) * You're beloved as the voice of WVXU's traffic report. What's the strangest object you can remember blocking the road? Couches, chairs, fridges, and baby toys are all pretty odd things to find in the road, but one can understand how they get there. (Falling off a trailer or a truck as they’re moved.) One spring, when Kellogg was underwater, a friend dared me to say “it’s the Ohio River.” But the one that made me say “what?” was the pig. The day after the Flying Pig, there was a report of a pig on the road in Mount Lookout. I did the thing, and a few minutes later got an email from a listener: They owned the potbellied pig, who had escaped. They say the pig was out on a leash to watch the race the day before, and apparently wanted another taste of freedom. Explore OKI Wanna Know plus more from Bill Rinehart at WVXU online: https://www.wvxu.org/people/bill-rinehart
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Each week, The Extraordinary Times catches up with folks from the local historical scene. This week we welcome Randy McNutt. A native of Hamilton, Ohio, Randy is a freelance writer and independent record producer. He has worked as a reporter, columnist, and feature writer at the Cincinnati Enquirer, a contributing editor for Ohio Magazine, and a staff writer for Design. His feature stories have appeared in newspapers and magazines across the country. He has also taught writing at Miami University, the University of Cincinnati, and the Antioch Writer’s Workshop. He has recorded rockabilly, country, soul, and rock music for labels in a number of countries, including the United States, the Netherlands, and Germany. His latest single, “Pain” by Little Flint, has just been released in the UK. * How did you construct a writing career from the old, strange byways of rural Ohio? When I was a junior at Miami University in the 1970s, the city editor of the Cincinnati Enquirer turned me down when I applied on campus for a summer internship. Defeated but not ready to surrender, I applied at little weekly in Lebanon, Ohio, and was hired. I rewrote press releases and did obits, mostly. We were crammed into two small rooms. The editor, a kind widow nearing retirement age, demanded that I lie down on the floor of the “newsroom” twice a day to do sit-ups. The women in the ad department must have thought the new guy with the clip-on tie was crazy. The editor didn’t want me to hurt my back on an old folding chair. My desk was an old card table and my typewriter came straight out of the 1920s. Walking to the ice-cream parlor one afternoon, I ran into the local bureau chief for the Enquirer. He asked if I wanted to be his “stringer”—correspondent—to cover events in Wilmington, Ohio. I said yes, and I didn’t even know where Wilmington was. As it turned out, that farm-centered little city became important later in my writing experience. One day when I was talking to the bureau chief in his office, I noticed a stack of news releases on his desk. He flipped through them, saying “nope, nope, nope” as he tossed each one into the trash can next to his desk. When he went to the rest room, I dug them out and found one about a planned anniversary ceremony for the survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The event was at the Peace Memorial Resource Center at Wilmington College, a small Quaker school. This interested me. So, I went over there, interviewed several people, and wrote an advance feature. A week passed. I thought the paper wouldn’t run it. Then one afternoon a student ran up to me and said, “I read your story on the A-bomb, man!” I bought a paper and there it was—my story with a couple of my photos. It ran the day before the ceremony, so the Associated Press had time to pick it up. People from Japan started calling the paper, asking for me. Of course, I wasn’t there, but by this time that same city editor knew I existed. After I graduated, he hired me as a weekend copy clerk—I fetched coffee for arrogant reporters and changed teletype ribbons. I continued to write, too. Soon I leaped from copy clerk to bureau chief in then-rural Clermont County. I worked in a one-man office in the village of Batavia. My editors considered Clermont the boondocks of the universe, but I considered it fertile ground for characters. I passed through forgotten places like Rome, Neville, Tranquility, and Blowville. I loved them all. Slowly, I improved my writing. The editors all but ignored me for a year, which allowed me to experiment and roam the back roads. Unintentionally, they allowed to fail because, frankly, who cared? Then one day John Baskin, senior editor of Ohio Magazine, offered to publish a story, if I cared to submit one and if I had a thick enough hide to take his verbal punches. Sure, I did. Well, at least I wanted to sell him a story. He lived in Wilmington, familiar turf. Baskin liked my first story. He told me to rewrite it—four times. Before it even ran, he said, “What’s next?” That’s when I hit the blue roads and continued to write about rural people. He had unleashed me upon the Buckeye State. I discovered Sodom, Henpeck, and Dull. Meanwhile, Baskin wrote long letters telling me—bluntly—what I was doing right and wrong. I will be forever grateful. I tried to keep up with some excellent writers, including Baskin himself, author of the well-received “New Burlington: The Life and Death of An American Village,” and Josephine Johnson, who had won a Pulitzer in 1935 for her novel “Now in November.” By 1990, Baskin and a partner had formed a regional publishing company. They asked me to write a book about college football. I suggested a nonfiction book about ghost towns. Baskin liked it. But after a year, I discovered that I couldn’t write a book based solely on ghost towns because nothing was left in them. I threw out half the book and started over, expanding my view of ghosts to include forgotten people, places, and things. Finally, in 1996, a new book emerged from the murky swamp of my mind. My jaw dropped when it started to sell. It is still my best book out of the twenty-some I’ve done because of its quirky people, my personal experiences, and love that shines from between the lines. Baskin titled it “Ghosts: Ohio’s Haunted Landscapes, Lost Arts, and Forgotten Places.” When I pointed out that the book had no spirits, he said, “It’s a metaphor.” This was news to readers for the first few months. Then they caught on. The book is still in print with another publisher. Eventually, I ended up with a trilogy: “Ghosts,” “Lost Ohio,” and “Finding Utopia.” All travel narratives, all about Ohio. * What single nugget of history concerning your hometown of Hamilton, Ohio, would you most like to share with the world? The Soldiers, Sailors and Pioneers Monument—also known as the Memorial Building. It dates back to about 1903. On top stands a bronze statue named Billy Yank, a Union soldier. The building’s theme is universal. Every time I go in there—which is not often—I have a powerful and moving experience. I recall the days of my youth when I went there with my friend Michael Cahalane. We looked at the artifacts, and stared through the porthole window watching the Great Miami flowing below us. We imagined Anthony Wayne’s army stomping through the wilderness. We both appreciated our city’s roots, especially its sacrifices during the Civil War. A couple of years after we graduated from high school, he died a hero in Vietnam. For years after, I rarely went into the building, except to write a short feature story about its history. Only about a month before I had finished writing “Ghosts,” I stopped at the Memorial on gray winter afternoon. I don’t know why. To my surprise I saw Mike’s picture, in a Marine uniform, and a couple of his medals on display in an old wood and glass case. A wave of sadness hit me. As I walked downstairs in a daze, I opened the heavy wooden door, ready to leave. The curator, an older vet, glanced up from her desk and asked me if I was OK. I choked up a bit and stepped outside. I’ll never forget her words: “You’ll be back. You’ll have to come back.” I went home and immediately added that scene to the older story I had already written. I then added my memories and my take on how the Memorial holds our town together. I slapped the new piece into the manuscript as the last chapter in the book. I had finally returned home. * Do you see any parallels between the corona virus and earlier pandemics in American history? I remember my paternal grandparents talking about the Spanish Flu of 1918-1920 in Cincinnati. During the crisis, my grandmother was about to give birth to my father. I didn’t comprehend the impact of pandemic as we sat on their front porch when I was a child. Polio was my generation’s big crisis. Kids were wearing metal braces. I wanted a bike. I had no way of knowing the Spanish Flu happened concurrently with other societal turmoil. The war—World War I, that is—had ended. Soldiers were returning home, and they needed jobs. Prohibition had started, and in beer-happy Cincinnati this was a big deal. Forty years later, my grandfather, who by then worked in an asbestos factory, was still complaining about “near beer.” Through all this, the city functioned—life and commerce continued. I suppose my grandparents just muddled through it. I suppose people were more resilient then. They had a deeper sense of community. * Music features prominently in your writing. What particular artists or recordings have fascinated you most over the years? The music business itself fascinates me. In my teens, I dreamed of producing records. I met another Hamilton guy, a singer named Wayne Perry, and we cut records and wrote songs. I was fortunate to experience the thrill of seeing one of my productions rise on the national charts, only to experience the downer of seeing it fall. Hamilton was an important place in the regional music scene then, in the 1960s and 1970s. Later, Wayne went to Nashville and wrote five No. 1 hits. I got into narrative writing, a lot of it music stories. As a kid, I knew who Buck Owens was, and Dave Brubeck, and the Zombies, and even the scratchy Mrs. Miller. By the time I turned twenty my record heroes were producers and songwriters. I identified with them—guys like Chips Moman, the Memphis producer who cut big hits by B.J. Thomas (“Hooked on a Feeling”) and anyone else who dared enter his funky old American Sound Studios in Memphis. In 1999, I decided to write a music book something like “Ghosts.” I mapped out a long vacation and headed south. I came up with “Guitar Towns,” a travel book that is also part history and part memoir. I went searching for my fading musical heroes. At his home in Nashville, songwriter Dan Penn explained how he wrote his hit songs. The guy is the best white soul singer I have ever heard. In Muscle Shoals, bassist David Hood gave me a tour of the iconic Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. I love the stuff from there, including the soulful records by Delbert McClinton. In Memphis, I met some studio and club musicians who had cut hits for Sam Phillips at the birth of rock ’n’ roll, the hot ones like “Great Balls of Fire” and “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.” The aging musicians had recently formed a group called the Original Sun Rhythm Section. This would be their last twang. Marcus Van Story, the upright bassist, invited me to a concert at the Overton Shell, in the park where Elvis played before he hit big. As I stood in the wings that evening, watching these legends pick, I was seeing music history happen. I still love all the stuff that came out of hole-in-the-wall studios in unlikely hit capitals—Cincinnati, New Orleans, Norfolk, Muscle Shoals, Cincinnati. They all had indigenous sounds. I’m fortunate to have interviewed a number of musicians and producers of their eras. I just called them up and asked them if I could talk to them. Other meetings were serendipitous. One day in Shreveport, at noon, I walked into an empty club owned by Elvis’s Vegas guitar player, James Burton, who had become famous among musicians for his good licks. Shreveport was his hometown. I walked into the empty club and saw a guy standing at the top of a ten-foot ladder, precariously stretching his arms to screw in a huge light bulb. I looked up and said, “Sir, can you tell me where I can find James Burton?” He peered down and said, “Son, you’re lookin’ at him. I’m the janitor, too.” We talked for a long time. I put him in “Guitar Towns,” along with dozens of other players who are now only fleeting echoes in the night. How can I forget Roy Head, the wild-man of Houston and the soul singer of “Treat Her Right” fame? He told me about the night he bit Elvis on the leg. I can’t get enough of those roots stories and sounds, even when they are viewed through the prism of the commercial music of their day. At the least, I hope I’ve captured a bit of their energy. Any new projects as we speak? I always have projects in the works. I’m not doing any recording. I don’t want to put the musicians and myself at risk. But I continue with my books. My role model is John Ruthven, the acclaimed wildlife painter. Though John is in his nineties, he keeps accepting commissions. At this point in my life, the only books I want to write are about people who interest me. For the money, I’ve had to write too many stories and a book or two that bored me. Books are like spouses. You don’t want to be stuck with one you can’t stand. I want to do things that please me, and I hope my enthusiasm allows readers to enjoy the subjects as much as I do. Unfortunately, not all of us can go on as long as John, riding a wave of good genes and a love for his work, but we can try. Each week, The Extraordinary Times catches up with leading folks from the local historical scene. This week we’re delighted to welcome friend and colleague Steve Gordon, administrator at Miami University’s McGuffey House and Museum. For 30 years Steve wore several hats while employed at the Ohio Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) before returning to Miami where he earlier had earned his B.A. and M.A. degrees in American History. * For the uninitiated, what is the McGuffey House and Museum? Allowing me a prefatory comment, former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill has been credited with the well-known refrain, “All politics is local.” If this axiom is true, then might we suggest all history is local, or at least agree its connective tissue is essentially local? In many ways it is the “localness” that connects Americans with history. At McGuffey House and Museum, a house museum long centered on the educational legacy of William Holmes McGuffey, the historical message is fundamentally local. McGuffey began his career as an early faculty member at Miami University, where he taught ancient languages and Moral Philosophy. Toward the end of McGuffey’s tenure at Miami (1826-1836), he wrote a series of graded school texts that became standards widely known as the McGuffey Readers. The story of the Readers illustrates how local history, in this case a university professor writing a series of textbooks in his Oxford, Ohio home, significantly facilitated advances in literacy in the United States for nearly a century. From the founding of the museum in the 1930s until the 1990s, the principal message was almost solely centered around the near mythic life of McGuffey and to a lesser degree the McGuffey artifacts housed in the museum. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, then under the guidance of Curtis Ellison, director, and Beverly Bach, curator, the museum expanded its mission to more fully explore Miami University’s heritage through education, research, history and public programs. More recently, based largely on primary research conducted by Dr. Elizabeth Johnson, a museum docent, current interpretation incorporates a broader examination of other families who lived in the house, coupled with such subjects as gender issues, domestic workers, student boarders and student life, and through individuals associated with the house the social history of Oxford. Further research conducted by Miami faculty and students has expanded and revised conventional interpretations while underscoring the importance of studying local history through the prism of national contexts. Not to be overlooked, the National Historic Landmark house (1833) is itself the museum’s most important artifact, and is a valuable portal to understanding Oxford’s significant 19th century material culture.
Given the historic authenticity of the house, interior signage and modern intrusions are kept to a minimum. Visitors to the museum are offered guided tours by trained staff and students. These tours are intended to be more conversational in tenor than a memorized script. With closure of the museum to the public in March, we posted a series of “Video Vignettes” online. Presently, our primary focus is how to safely accommodate visitors when the museum re-opens in August, assuming the best. As of July, the Oxford Museum Association through its historic sites is the only museum in Oxford open to the public. All Miami museums remain closed per guidance from Miami University, and as of this writing it is not certain when non-university personnel will be granted visitor access. While moving information access to websites and social media has helped maintain connections, we also recognize face-to-face, interpersonal engagement is still preferred by the majority of our audience. At McGuffey House and Museum, we look forward to the safe return of all visitors. Experiencing the real artifact and the virtual place, whether it is an 1833 house or a cast iron boot jack, cannot be replaced on a flat screen. For many Americans, their first contact with history often begins at a local history museum or historic site. Events of the past few months remind Americans how history is not only about the past, it is tangibly about the present, as we have witnessed in the debates associated with statues, monuments, flags, protests, individual rights and a legacy of racial injustices. As professionals, it is our responsibility - and our challenge - to make museum experiences authentic, inclusive and meaningful. We all recognize history offers all of us powerful teaching opportunities. |
AuthorMatthew Smith, PhD (History). Public Programs at Miami University Regionals. Historian of Appalachia, the Ohio Valley, & the early American republic. Archives
February 2024
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