Roadtrip: Side quest in Northern Ohio

Sunday morning in Youngstown Ohio, I almost put my road trip to an abrupt halt. I had just visited a surplus store near downtown which featured in its parking lot an “urban assault vehicle”, a camouflage painted car with a giant slingshot on the back. I’ve been led to the car in question by Roadside America, one of my favorite resources for exploring unexpected corners of unfamiliar towns. Going back into the downtown, either I missed a curb jutting out into a lane or a chunk of curb had crumpled and fallen into the lane. One were another, I hit a good size chunk of concrete at about 30 miles an hour, bending my front right rim and instantly deflating my tire.

The “urban assault vehicle” at Star Supply in Youngstown OH

Fair enough, I had a jack and a donut, and I decided I put on the spare and limp to the nearest tire repair shop. And then I discovered that I bought a jack too big to fit under Amy’s beloved Prius C. So, tow truck, friendly open-on-Sunday tire center and the discovery that 15 inch wheels are pretty rare and that Goodyear didn’t keep rims in stock. They helped me get my donut on, I went and bought a jack that actually fits under my car and drove slowly to Akron after exploring a bit more of Youngstown, including the magnificent Butler Institute of American Art and a wonderful back alley in Warren, Ohio that’s dedicated to celebrating local hero Dave Grohl.

Dave Grohl Alley, Warren OH. It’s a real thing – look it up.

I made it to Akron last night for a walk through the beautiful downtown and headed out at 9am to RNR Tires, who advertise lots of wheels in stock. Perry, the friendly counterman, explained that no one wants to upgrade their car with 15″ wheels, and so there are none in stock. He sent me out to a salvage yard to look for Toyota Prius wheels. And so I found myself armed with a lug wrench and my trusty breaker bar at Pull-a-Part of Akron, Ohio.

Pull-a-Part is great. I so wish we had one of these in Western MA or the Albany NY area – I would be a regular. It’s a junkyard where the wrecked vehicles are carefully lined up and cataloged. Each has been jacked up and rests on rusting wheels for your parts-stripping convenience. A search of their database revealed a 2005 and a 2008 Prius. I was halfway into removing a wheel from the 2008 when I realized that it had five lug nuts and that Amy’s car has four. So I searched instead for anything with 15 inch wheels and four lug nuts. After much exploration I found a thoroughly stripped Nissan Altima that seemed to fit the bill. I bought an aluminum wheel for about $50 and brought it back to RNR, fully expecting it would either be too wide for my tires or that the four holes would not match my studs.

That’s a bent rim, alright.

But to my great joy, they did. Perry and his crew mounted my tire on the Altima wheel and I am dictating this post, headed south towards Columbus, Indiana, a town renowned for its modernist architecture.

There’s something to be said for having your plans interrupted. Akron was going to be a brief stop on my itinerary. But in ending up there last night, I took a long walk through the downtown, which is gorgeous. There’s a minor league ballpark beautifully positioned on the canal, which is lined with a walking path, where the canal tow path used to be. University of Akron has built or refurbished a splendid building the main street and there’s a mix of municipal, university and retail spaces that means that even without classes in session, there was activity on the streets last night and the sense of a live, vibrant city. I’m planning on stopping back on my return and visiting the art museum, which was closed when I was there.

The real joy of the unexpected detour is that it forces you to travel in a different way. When you’re a tourist, you’re seeing the sights. Along the way, you might find some great restaurants or get a sense of the vibe of a city by walking around. But you won’t really know what it’s like to try to do something in that place. My happiest years of traveling involved my travel first for Geekcorps, and later for the Open Society Foundation where I worked for 15 years as a board member. I went everywhere from Ghana to Egypt to Haiti as a business traveler with people to visit and things to do. While I saw some sights, I also had the joy of trying to hold meetings and do business in very different places and cultures.

So my side quest was a great introduction to some of the joys of Northeastern Ohio. Youngstown struck me as a classic example of a hollowed out city. There’s stuff going on in the region, but it was certainly not in the downtown of the city. Sunday morning isn’t the best time to encounter a place, so I don’t want to be unfair, but there was not a lot open in the central city. I looked for a hardware store to buy a jack, then an auto parts store, and eventually just for a place where I could buy a cup of coffee while waiting for the tow truck – there was nothing until a few miles out into the suburbs. Later that day, on my spare, I tried to find the Metropolitan Tower, a landmark buildings and discovered most roads in the downtown closed. The reason was a gas explosion that destroyed another landmark building and shut down many of the streets. The crumbing building in the picture above reflects a tragic accident, but it felt a bit symbolic in a city that’s lost 65% of its population since it’s peak in the 1930s. Still, the town is active and busy in a ring of suburbs just around the city where nice folks tried unsuccessfully to help me get back on the road.

Akron’s beautiful renovated is surrounded by a wealth of scrap yards, salvage yards, and other practical resources appropriate for a distinctly car-oriented city. Akron has been the home of Goodyear and Firestone and has evidently moved into polymer engineering as tire production has moved overseas. But it’s still a car town. As I was stripping the donor Altima, at least a dozen other teams came by to grab the parts they needed and fixed up their rides in an impromptu open-air garage in the parking lot outside.

I’m grateful to have been sidetracked in Akron and happy to be back on the road. A special shout-out to Perry who guided me through finding an appropriate wheel, mounted and wouldn’t charge me for his time. Needless to say, I left him a nice tip. If you wheels in Akron, stop by RNR. If you want to have a good time, I recommend the Pull-A-Part. And I heartily recommend Akron, which is a new favorite spot on the map for me.

The trip so far: Driving by Data Set By the numbers: What statistics can and can’t tell you about undervalued cities A Square Deal in Binghamton Buried, with dignity, in Elmira

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