Ohio Is Really Lovely This Time of Year

You know, I got so indignant about Rent, I totally forgot to mention what we did on Saturday, which was to stumble upon the birthplace of General George Armstrong Custer, in New Rumley, OH.

We were actually looking for a bathroom for me, having spent the last three hours driving around Carroll County, which looks like West Virginia. We drove past a sign for the memorial, which unfortunately I cannot find a picture of, because it is the biggest yellow and blue billboard, and Sean swears that the caricature of Custer on it looks like Duane Allman. The nearest fast food restaurants were in Cadiz, and I really wanted to see the memorial, so I justified that since it was a national park thing, there would be bathrooms of some sort.

There were two signs on the way to it, in case you got lost. The first was big and yellow again, saying "Welcome to Custer Country!"

The next one said "Ralph Nader for President!"

The one after that said, in the same handwriting, "No trespassing, day or night! Shut Hell Up!"

For the record, there was no bathroom, only a statue and a picnic table and one of those park sign stands you see that are big informational posters encased in thick dirty plastic. Lots of stuff about all his different nicknames, his family, where he went to school. The lovely little anecdote about how when he was nine, he was sitting in church against a window. Some boy who wasn't allowed in church pressed his face up against the glass, and Custer punched the kid in the face, through the glass. And another little sentence about how he tried to court his future wife Libby for two years, but she wouldn't see him cause he kept getting into drunken fights at her house. She only agreed to marry him once he quit drinking (and probably once her father insisted).
Then they also had a section about how the government sent all the Indians to this reservation, then discovered gold underneath it, so they manufactured the war to have an excuse for getting rid of all them. There were some very sad ink drawings by a surviving chief, depicting the battle.

When we left, we tried the only bar in downtown Rumley for a bathroom and a drink. They had no liquor and the only beers we could get were in cans. Bud, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Pabst. The bar was in fact pretty busy for a Saturday afternoon.
On the way back we passed the high school, in the middle of barren farm hills, with a sign proclaiming tonight was prom night, but Sean didn't want to stick around and look for arriving couples :(