Author Archives: Ron Haines

The Midwest means corn to most folks, just no getting around it.  This past June when I was there, the stalks weren’t yet high enough to block the view of the wide plains and vast sky of the region.  As … Continue reading →

I like front porches.  I’ve mentioned that a few times, most notably in this entry.  I like the looks of a porch, the philosophy behind them, and the need for my mind to have one at my disposal. So what’s … Continue reading →

I have seen and will see a lot of forks in the roads in my travels.  But I had never seen an actual fork. In the road. Until the day I passed through Rock City, New York.  There, where the … Continue reading →

I made it a point when I was in the Midwest recently to revisit a desolate campsite in the swamps of northern Minnesota.  It was the site of the first of several amazing kindness-from-strangers incidents I had experienced during my … Continue reading →

Shoddy Mill Road, the sign says.  This one’s in Glastonbury, CT., but I have seen them elsewhere in my travels around the northeast. These are not new roads in newly developed areas, so the name obviously originated a century or … Continue reading →

I was roaming around the Midwest recently and decided to stop at a small, Mississippi River town in Illinois called Oquawka, a place I had been once before. Its name makes it memorable enough, but for me it was a … Continue reading →

One of the big red drying barns I featured three years ago in my little story about the waning Connecticut shade tobacco industry is now just a pile of lumber waiting to be carted away. NOW! THEN:

From the style of this old gas station I’d say it belongs on Miami Beach, but I happened upon it along Route 82 in decidedly untrendy West Taghkanic, NY.  It’s empty now, just waiting for someone to give it a … Continue reading →