Truly lonely this place is flatter than it seems

Every 10 years I move a state west.

This is not by design, it just happens that way. In 1985, I left Ohio for Indiana. In 1995, I left Indiana for Illinois. You get the picture: one flat place after another.

2004 having rolled around, looks like I should start planning the big move to Iowa. This is not high on the list of priorities, as you can imagine. Instead, I've spent some time digging up the latest from my hometown.

Alas, outside of chamber-of-commerce sites, the Internet doesn't have a lot to offer us. This walking tour isn't bad, although there's a lot of ground to be covered between some of these locations. I remember sneaking up to the fence in back of the governor's mansion in the summer of 1980 and seeing the back of Ronald Reagan's head at a fund-raiser. (I'm a non partisan head gawker, though; in the late '90s, I saw the top of Bill Clinton's head from my office window as he came out of the Drake and got into a car. Wow, what a page-turner my memoirs will be!)

This site also includes some five-year old photos of our town's July 4 parade. As a member of the marching band 20 years ago, I too was required to participate in this. As you see here, a great deal of emphasis is placed on marching in line, staying in step, and posture, inasmuch as it's possible to stand up at all on a 90-degree July day. On a side note, I notice the band has changed from white to khaki shorts, surely a relief to many mothers.

Along with the marching bands come the politicians. It seems that state politics were a bit spicier in my childhood, but not much. The Wayne Hays scandal made some waves in the 1970s, as did (nonpolitician) Larry Flynt's brief residence in town. Closest thing to a shocker* seems to be a report that the city's mayor has come out as a "Democrat for Bush." This story was reported here, but I couldn't find any supporting material, except for the same item's being parroted by a dozen or so right-wing Web sites.

The only outlet to examine it was Alternet, which doesn't do much to clarify:

In fact, two of the four 'Ohio Democrats' haven't 'lived in Ohio for decades' and both supported Bush in 2000. One commented enthusiastically that 'he would probably support Bush's cause.'
That effectively leaves two Ohio state representatives who were 'persuaded' to join 'Democrats for Bush.'
....The press release for Miller's 'Democrats for Bush' kickoff address on the website contains not a single reference to any Democrat present either as a speaker or in the crowd.

Ordinarily, the politicians play it pretty close to the vest, as is the case with a former classmate of mine who now holds public office and who fired a political consultant for giving some dodgy advice. For some reason, this made news in Zanesville, but it's pretty much a nonstory as far as I can see.

Find of the day: compilation of satiric song lyrics, all related to Watergate-era American politics. Here's "Old Man Ripoff," a pause that refreshes even today:

"Oil is lovely and banks are pretty,"
Says Congressman Sykes to the Ethics Committee,
And Old Man Ripoff, he just keeps rolling along.
I grow weary of voters beguiling,
I'm scared of losing and tired of smiling,
And Old Man Ripoff, he just keeps rolling along.

Flat or no, we'll be headed there soon. Maybe we should follow this Columbus-area blog.

*Did I say "shocker"? Perhaps I misspelled "oddity."