Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

Yours truly will be a guest yet again tomorrow night (Wednesday, May 16) on Your Mac Life to talk about the new MacBooks and WWDC. The show starts at 8:30 PM eastern. You wouldn’t want to miss my pearls of wisdom and insightful remarks wrapped in dry, sardonic, barely-perceptible humor would you? I didn’t think so. Be there!

First of all, I completely disagree with the premise, and hence, title, of the show. Memorization of facts does not make you smart. Your ability to effectively apply what you know in a given situation makes you smart. In that sense, I am certainly far smarter than any fifth grader.

Secondly, anyone who would subject themselves to this humiliating premise on television for the gawking and mockery of others is, by default, dumber than a fifth grader. The fact that I am not, and never will be, on that show proves I’m smarter than a fifth grader.

Enough of these ponderous, tiresome, drawn-out game shows with their stalling-as-suspense drudgery. It’s time for the 24-hour House channel.

As long as a century and a half ago, miles of hedge fences crossed the Bellbrook / Sugarcreek Township area. This article about hedge fences, and the subsequent picture, courtesy of the Bellbrook Historical society, comes from the April 9, 1966 issue of the Xenia Gazette.

The most fun about a hedge fence was collecting the hedge apples to be used as missiles in a game of war. The more aggravating things about a hedge fence were the time and hard work required to trim and and that it shaded the ground and robbed crops of moisture for a rod or more on either side. As a result, hedge fence declined in popularity with the introduction of woven wire fencing at the turn of the century, and since then farmers have been using horses, tractors, and bulldozers in attempts to dislodge it. Finally, only a fraction of the original mileage once in use exists.

But at one time the importing, sale, planting, and trimming of the osage orange variety of hedge was a profitable operation of J.H. Racer & Co. at Bellbrook. Harold Berryhill, who, with his wife, is heading up village plans for a sesquicentennial celebration there June 16-19, uncovered the evidence of this early enterprise.

The tree is native to Texas, can reach a height of 50 feet and a diameter of two feet, and is a tough, durable wood that serves for years when employed as fence posts. When used as a fence, the trees were planted in a line about a foot or two apart and, after a few years, cut off to four feet and kept trimmed.

A healthy growth resulted in a thick, thorny foliage that made an acceptable fencing for cattle, sheep and horses, but not so effective for swine. Berryhill found that J. C. McMillan was advertising plantings in the Xenia Torchlight as early as 1852, and that William T. Berryhill, of south of Bellbrook, was running ads for it in 1854.

His terms were 25 cents per rod for setting out the trees and 75 cents per rod when the fence was perfected. The land owner was required to clear the land and plow and harrow the rows and to board the workmen while they were on the job.

In some cases, the hedge was planted form seeds obtained from the hedge balls or apples, a sphere about four inches in diameter and light green in color that exudes a milky, gummy substance when bruised. John H. Racer, who patented the Racer Hedge Fence, was the son of a Major Racer who moved to Bellbrook about 1878 and occupied a house still existing at the end of the Little Miami River bridge on the Lower Bellbrook Pike.

The papers of the 1882 period reported that Racer and this brothers were doing a lively business in planting and trimming hedge and built a “neat little office” which exists as part of a house west of the river bridge, now covered with imitation brick siding.

Racer’s ads quoted the cost as 60 cents a rod, offered two trimmings a year for $3.50 for 100 yards. His ads appeared occasionally in the Bellbrook Moon and in 1891, he bought the paper, expanded the size of his ads, and made offers to outside agents.

Hm, that old J. H. Racer building looks familiar. Where have I see it before?

It’s now the Crowl Funeral Museum in the center of town, pictured here during this year’s Sugar Maple Festival with the Sleepy Tom exhibit in front. After it was the Racer HQ, it served as the office for the local undertaker, who embalmed bodies in the building and poured the blood into the ground out back to dispose of it. Many of his original implements and fluids, as well as a child’s coffin, are currently on display each Saturday.

So why do I bring up hedge fences? There is one known existing example of a hedge fence in this area, and it happens to be located in a park two blocks behind my house. It’s part of Sugarcreek Metropark and they call it the Osage Orange Tunnel. I took this picture of the tunnel two summers ago, and the picture doesn’t do it justice.

But wait, there’s more! I said one known existing example. There is, in fact, another hedge fence that’s close by and I don’t know if anyone else is aware of it.

My fiend Tim Miller was checking out a wooded area behind a hospital that’s under construction just down the road when he found it.

Yep, those are the remains of a hedge fence. It’s hard to tell in the pictures, but the trees are close together and arranged in a straight line. Tim and I walked back into the woods this weekend to check it out. It’s very overgrown and years of forest clutter make it look awful, but it’s there. I really really hope whoever owns that land is aware of the fence and its historical value, and I also hope there are no plans to demolish it. In any case, Tim tells me he’s already in active contact with someone who may have the ability to help preserve it, so we’ll see.

In addition to hedge fences, another type of historical vegetation around here is large oak trees. At one time these large trees were numerous in this part of Ohio, but most of them fell to the settler’s axe. Now they are rare, and the aforementioned Sugarcreek Metropark protects three of them in a cluster, known as the Three Sisters.

It’s very difficult to get good pictures of three large trees, but here’s the best I have on file at the moment, from the park.

I’ll give you one guess what’s directly at the end of the hedge fence.

Yep, another giant oak, probably every bit as big as the ones in the park. According to information provided by the park, the trees there are more than 550 years old. If size is any indication, this tree was probably just beginning its life as Columbus crossed the Atlantic. That’s hard to imagine!

If a hedge fence and some very large, old trees are attraction enough to section off land for a regional park, I think the hedge fence and large tree Tim and I saw this weekend are worthy of some kind of mini-park status. I’d hate to see them torn down to make way for yet more insipid shopping we don’t need around here. If Tim’s contact doesn’t pan out, perhaps I’ll contact the parks district to see if they’re interested in preserving these historic trees.

Guess who sat down next to me tonight at Outback steak house. Clark freakin’ Howard. Wow! We talked for a few minutes about the Mac and how I built the cheapest kitchen remodel he’d ever heard of. He was super nice and didn’t mind talking.

Neat-o.

I want to link to an article to reinforce some points I made in a previous article.

Teachers leaving profession in droves

Teachers stifled by bureaucracy and blocked from making decisions in their own classrooms are leaving teaching in droves, according to a new study by Cal State University’s Teacher Quality Institute.
…
In the Bay Area, the sky-high cost of living and comparatively low salaries also make it hard for new teachers to stick it out, particularly in rough conditions.

Sabrina Walasek loved teaching middle school science and math in Daly City and Felton, near Santa Cruz. But after six years, the Oakland resident found herself worn out from keeping kids in check .

“The amount of energy spent on discipline and behavior management just got to me after a while,” Walasek said.

The stress wasn’t worth the pay, she said.

“It was almost impossible to exist in the Bay Area on that salary,” Walasek said.

I don’t intend this post to make any judgments about the teachers, their situation, or their motives. But I did notice that the reasons many teachers seem to be leaving their jobs are the same reasons I left my job in education. Just an observation, but obviously I have a lot of lingering thoughts and feelings about that past situation.

Here was the real kicker in the article, at least for me:

The 1,900 teachers surveyed by the institute said they left mainly because of the endless amounts of paperwork, constant interruptions and fruitless meetings that take time away from actual instruction, said Ken Futernick, principal author of the study and director of K-12 Studies at the institute.

Welcome to just about every other job in America. In this respect, you’re not unusual.