Photographer unknown, Charles Blondin, Public Domain
Did you watch in 2020 when Nik Wallenda walked 1800 feet on a cable across the mouth of the Masaya volcano, an active volcano in Nicaragua? That was truly scary and unimaginable for this guy with two left feet. Wallenda not only comes from a family of wire walkers but is the latest in a long history of them.
One of the greatest high wire artists was a man known as Charles Blondin or “The Great Blondin” and he filled the newspapers with stories about him during the latter half of the nineteenth century. He was born Jean François Gravelet on February 28, 1824 in Hesdin, Pas-de-Calais, France. He was trained as an acrobat and made his first appearance as “The Boy Wonder” at age 5 or 6. He came to the United States in 1855 and achieved fame in 1859 when he walked an 1100 foot cable stretched across Niagara Falls. He repeated this feat a number of times blindfolded or pushing a wheelbarrow or carrying his manager on his back or on stilts. One time, he stopped midway and cooked and ate an omelet!
In 1869, the same year he rode a bicycle across a highwire in the Crystal Palace in London, to the acclaim of the Prince of Wales, he visited Youngstown. A highwire was strung across West Federal Street from the Excelsior Building (roughly in the same location as the Paramount Theater was located) to the Gerstle Building, just east of Hazel Street. Horse and buggy rigs and spectators gathered in the street below to watch him walk above Federal Street as easily as those below walked on it. This was exciting stuff for the small town of Youngstown. You can see a photograph in this Business Journalarticle. He can be seen in the middle of the cable in the picture. He stayed in the Tod House during his visit.
He continued to wow the crowds for many years. In 1896, at the age of 72, he crossed a lake in Leeds several times, repeating the feat blindfolded one time, and once again. stopping to cook an omelet on another transit. He died February 22 of the following year, just short of his 73rd birthday.
I would guess that he walked no more than 150 feet or so from one building to the other (John Young laid the street out as 100 feet wide, far less than his other feats. But I suspect few if any in the crowd would or could do what he did, nor any of us reading. This was big news in 1869!
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
Do you remember going to Lanterman’s Mill for the Old Fashioned Christmas when you were young? I don’t. Our memories are of taking our son there some time probably around the early 1990’s, during a visit back to Youngstown over Thanksgiving weekend. We were there during one of the early years of what became a Youngstown tradition, dating back to 1988. It began as a craft fair and became the “Old Fashioned Christmas” in the early 1990’s.
We walked from the parking lot and our first sight of the Mill as we walked under the bridge was of a big wreath on the front of the building and smaller wreathes in all the windows. The Mill looked like a scene out of Currier & Ives, particularly with the falls next to the Mill and the covered bridge in the distance.
One memory that stands out was discovering what chestnuts roasted over an open fire actually tasted like. Tastes are all different, but that one time was enough for me. Indoors there were tasty foods you could buy, Christmas crafts and artisan crafts persons, and a beautiful Christmas tree decorated as it might have looked when the mill was in operation. Of course you could also look at all the other exhibits as well as the machinery of the Mill.
There was entertainment including a hammered dulcimer player. We thought the sound of the dulcimer was so cool that we bought a cassette of hammered dulcimer music (remember cassettes?) that is still one of our favorite collections of Christmas music. We also bought a Christmas ornament of Lanterman’s Mill. I found the cassette but the ornament is buried somewhere in our house.
“Old Time Country Christmas” (which you can still find at Amazon), a wonderful memory of our visit to Lanterman’s Mill.
The highlight for the kids was a chance to meet Santa and receive treats from him. It was a magical day for all of us, recalling both the wonder of Christmas celebrations through a child’s eyes, and reminding us of one of the scenic treasures of Youngstown.
The Old Fashioned Christmas at Lanterman’s Mill, as I write in 2023, is now in its 36th year, and all the things that we loved about it when we went are still there (I don’t know what kind of entertainment they will have this year). It is Saturday and Sunday, November 25 and 26, 2023 (the Saturday and Sunday of Thanksgiving Weekend each year), 11 am to 4 pm. And because it is a giving season, visitors are invite to bring a new hat, scarf or a pair of mittens to decorate the “Giving Tree” for children in need in the Valley. If you have questions, you can call the Ford Nsture Center at 330-740-7116. And the best part. It’s FREE!
Our visit to the Old Fashioned Christmas at Lanterman’s Mill is one of our treasured memories, brought back every time we listen to that cassette. If you’ve been there, what are your favorite memories? And if not and you are in Youngstown, maybe this is the year to make some memories, maybe with the kids or grandkids, or maybe just with someone special.
By the way, as an extra treat, I thought I’d share this video of Joshua Messick playing “Carol of the Bells” on a hammered dulcimer in a setting not unlike Lanterman’s Mill. Takes me back…
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
Hubert Humphrey with Chaney High School students in background. Youngstown Vindicator, April 27, 1972 via Google News Archive
[This post recalls a personal experience of the visit of a presidential candidate fifty years ago this week. It is meant to remember a Youngstown event at which I was present, not to invite a political discussion. Please refrain from political comments and debates.]
I cannot identify myself in this picture, but I was in this crowd. It was Thursday, April 27, 1972. Hubert H. Humphrey was in the thick of a primary campaign for the presidency running against Edmund Muskie, who withdrew from the campaign that day, and a field of other Democrats that included George McGovern, Alabama governor George Wallace, Washington Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, and Representative Shirley Chisolm, from New York. They were running for the nomination to oppose Richard Nixon, running for his second term. Humphrey had lost to Nixon in 1968, after the disastrous Democrat National Convention in Chicago.
In a few months, I would be old enough to register for the draft and vote in my first election. It was the spring of my senior year, and so the chance to get out of class, out of the building, and to hear someone I might be voting for was a draw. It was for roughly 1400 of us out of a crowd of 2000 who watched as Humphrey landed by helicopter and then mounted a truck bed that served as his speaker platform.
Principal John Maluso, who passed just this year (2022), welcomed him. Then a classmate, John Jovich, chairman of the Chaney Political Speakers Bureau, introduced him. After fifty years, I do not remember what Humphrey said and so am relying on the Vindicatoraccount said.
He began by a promise designed to win our hearts, to create a cabinet level department of youth affairs. His argument was that “if they are old enough to vote and to serve in the armed forces they are mature enough to hold positions of responsibility.” Remember this was just two years after Kent State and all the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam.
He argued for releasing funds for a number of government projects that would create jobs and finance education. He argued that if we rebuilt Europe in World War II, we ought to rebuild America’s cities, as he helped to do in Minneapolis. Like almost every candidate ever, he argued for tax reform. Perhaps more controversial for the time, he favored amnesty for “draft dodgers” who fled to Canada, in exchange for some form of Peace Corps-like service to the country. While he opposed legalization of marijuana, he favored decriminalizing its use (yes, people argued this in 1972). He contended that President Nixon had not gone far enough in withdrawing from Vietnam.
Humphrey was just coming off a primary victory in Pennsylvania and would go on to win the primary election in Ohio, and actually won more votes in the primaries than Senator McGovern, but McGovern carried the key state of California in a closely contested election to win the nomination. As it turned out, he wouldn’t be running for a second time against Richard Nixon, who won the general election in 1972 only to resign office in 1974.
Still, I am glad I got to see him. He rose from mayor of Minneapolis to the U.S. Senate in 1948, running on a civil rights platform when this was extremely unpopular. He actually was the first to propose legislation to create the Peace Corps in 1957, later accomplished by President Kennedy, and he led the effort to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1964 before becoming Lyndon Johnson’s Vice President. His close association with Johnson’s unpopularity over Vietnam hurt his own political chances. Having failed in his first presidential bid, he returned to the Senate in 1971 where he held his seat until his death in 1978.
He was respected by political leaders of both parties and honored in death by former presidents Nixon and Ford, as well as President Carter. He was described as “a happy warrior” who fought for what he believed, but not with vitriol but with a smile. Bill Moyers wrote this of him, based on an interview with him in 1976:
He was called “The Happy Warrior” because he loved politics and because of his natural ebullience and resiliency. I asked him: “Some people say you’re too happy and that this is not a happy world.” He replied: “Well, maybe I can make it a little more happy…I realize and sense the realities of the world in which we live. I’m not at all happy about what I see in the nuclear arms race…and the machinations of the Soviets or the Chinese…the misery that’s in our cities. I’m aware of all that. But I do not believe that people will respond to do better if they are constantly approached by a negative attitude. People have to believe that they can do better. They’ve got to know that there’s somebody that’s with them that wants to help and work with them, and somebody that hasn’t tossed in the towel. I don’t believe in defeat, Bill.”
This is the man I saw on a truck bed in back of my high school four years earlier. He is rarely mentioned today and yet he defines for me the ideal of public service in public office. I’m glad I was there.
To read other posts in the Growing Up in Working Class Youngstown series, just click “On Youngstown.”Enjoy!
