Aaron Adams’s Blowhard Blog

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.

About a week ago I wrote about a swimming pool in the neighborhood where I grew up and the pictures a friend of mine had from the 1950s of the pool being built. I’ve obtained the rest of those pictures and I’m posting them here for those who may be interested. If you’re from the Kettering, Ohio area and you want to know more specific information about each picture, leave a comment and I’ll reply to you.

Click the links for full resolution (very large) pictures.

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Tim and I want to reproduce as many of these pictures as we can this spring when the weather improves to show how much things have changed in half a century.

I found out last week that the area of modern Kettering where Indian Riffle Park is located was known as Oakdale. Looking at these pictures and seeing the trees around the pool, I can understand how the area got its name. Many of those trees still exist in the park today.

I took a handful of pictures of the snow from my driveway this afternoon for a friend, and I liked some of them enough to post them here.

More local history, this one particularly relevant to me.

The neighborhood where I grew up was built in the mid-1950s. There’s a private swimming pool there named Crestwood, and my parents bought my brother and I a membership for several summers. My friend Tim Miller, who has helped me practically rebuild large portions of my house, is the current maintenance man at the pool. Today he e-mailed me this picture of the swimming pool being dug in 1955.

I know the house I grew up in was built in 1956, and it was among the first in the plat. Considering the distance of the pool from my house and what I know from neighbors about how the neighborhood developed, this pool must have been in the middle of a farm field. Stroop Road, the nearest major road to the pool, was a dirt road at the time, and it ended at the Creager house and Wagner Road. (The big curve was added in the early 60s with the development of Indian Riffle Junior High and Fairmont East High School.) It’s just amazing to me to see someplace I’m very familiar with as it existed long before my time.

Tim tells me he has some more pictures, and I’ve demanded that he bring them over for scanning. Hopefully we can do that this weekend.

I was reading the Daring Fireball linked list and I noticed that John Gruber posted an Onion article he liked. So I figured, what the hell, I’ll go ahead and post one I’ve loved for years.

Why Can’t I Sell Any Of These Fucking Bibles?

I read that when it was originally published, and I literally laughed myself to tears. Wow, 1998 was a long time ago. It seems like a whole different world. Where has my life gone?