May 20th

I spent most of the day with two of my favorite people who spent their formative years in Indiana – Larry Bird and Abraham Lincoln.

Spring Valley Junior – Senior High School is now located on Larry Bird Boulevard. The woman in the principal’s office told me I couldn’t see his trophy case in the gym because they’re getting the gym ready for this week’s graduation. So I just took a picture of his bust (in a Celtics uniform) outside the community center next door.

Then I learned that French Lick was legendary, at least among Midwesterners, long before Larry Legend came along, and the reason can be found in the name of the school – Spring Valley. As in Hot Springs Arkansas, the area has natural springs and the West Baden Springs Hotel was built in the late 1800’s for the rich and famous to improve their health. When the railroad was persuaded (!) To come to town, the place was expanded in 1902 into the largest free-standing dome in the world until the Houston Astrodome was built. The luxurious complex went out of business with the stock market crash. It was used as a Jesuit seminary, a college and was about ready to be torn down until a wealthy couple restored it in the 1990’s and added a casino. I took a self-guided tour and it is once again the place to be if you have money to burn.

We all know that Lincoln was born in Kentucky and entered the law and politics in Illinois. The Lincoln Boyhood National Monument shows in a film and exhibits in the visitor center that Tom and Nancy Lincoln moved from Kentucky 100 miles to southern Indiana when Abraham was 7 and his sister Sarah was 9, to escape the slavery culture and to get a clear title to land on which to build a cabin and farm. Abraham lived there until he was 21. That’s where he learned to read, split rails and ferry travelers across rivers. Nancy died when he was 9 and Tom got remarried to a widow with 3 children so there was a blended family. Then Abraham went off to Illinois and history.

Hiking from the visitor center is a cemetery where Nancy and other pioneers are buried, the site of the family’s cabin and a reconstructed farm. One of the trails has 12 stones from different places in Lincoln’s life, including Kentucky, the Indiana cabin, his law office and the White House.

I spent the evening in the very lively riverfront area of Cincinnati. I saw the baseball and football stadiums that replaced Riverfront Stadium. I went on the SkyStar ferris wheel. And I walked across and took plenty of pictures of and from the 1867 (now pedestrian-only) Roebling Bridge. If the name and the pictures look familiar, it’s because its designer John Roebling did the Brooklyn Bridge 16 years later in 1883.

The song of the day, for the first of my four days in Ohio’s cities that begin with the letter C, is “My City Was Gone” by The Pretenders.

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