“…a wealth of exciting attractions”

The tourist brochure at the Gallipolis Holiday Inn counter is the skimpiest I’ve ever seen: a single sheet (one-third of a threefold brochure). “A wealth of exciting attractions provides a fascinating adventure for the whole family,” it says, but gives no specifics. I am convinced that tourists do not visit Gallipolis.

There is, needless to say, a web site: http://www.gallipolis.org.

Through a communications mix-up we arrived here with time to kill on Monday. I coerced Chris, my travelling partner, into visiting the only “exciting attraction” I could dig up, the Jewel Evans GristMill. It’s a dramatic post and beam structure surrounded by miles and miles of rolling nothingness. It looks exactly like a newly-build 18th-century gristmill which, in fact, it is. The mill is owned and run by Steve Evans, who is, in his own words the “black sheep of the Evans family.”

Bob Evans, his father, is a local celebrity and a very, very wealthy man. He made his fortune by building a many-tentacled empire of “Bob Evans Family Restaurants” through the Southland. The chain still thrives. Though I’ve never heard it before, the name Bob Evans appears to be a close second to Colonel Sanders in the y’all zone. He was born and raised on a sprawling ranch in Gallipolis. I think this ranch is the other “exciting attraction.” Our waitress at the Holiday Inn, who once worked for the Bob Evans corporation, informed us that the Evans dominion had recently swallowed up a second chain of family restaurants and some kind of upscale Mexicanoid franchise in two swift gulps.

I had lunch at a Bob Evans with my students this afternoon (there were few other choices). I guess the one thing that would distinguish it from a Dennys or Friendly’s was the fact that they seemed inordinately proud of their sausage. Please don’t tell the French people about this aspect of the so-called “French City.” I fear they would ask us to return the Statue of Liberty.

Back at the grain mill, customers were pretty scarce yesterday. I guess that if you’re scion of old Bob Evans you can afford to build your own 18th century grist mill in the middle of nowhere and run it as a hobby. Especially if you name it after mom.

Don’t get me wrong. Steve is a delightful fellow. He clearly loves the mill, loves milling, and loves talking with visitors about milling and showing them around. He speaks the gospel of stone ground whole grain, and his employees seemed to respect and admire him. His enthusiasm was infectious. I had a jolly time there. I smelled the fresh ground wheat smell, learned about the superior quality of antique French buhr millstones, and discovered that you judge the artisan who dresses your mill stone “by his mettle,” that is, by observing the pieces of his steel tool lodged in his hand. This is an occupational hazard of chipping away at the hard quartz. At least that’s what Steve says. I’m shlepping home several pounds of stone-ground wheat and corn — about four dollars worth, which seems to represent a significant portion of the days’ receipts. When I made the purchase, Steve couldn’t get the cash register to work.

Alas, Steve says that the vast Bob Evans Empire won’t touch even an ounce of his healthy, fresh-ground products, or, he says, any whole-grain foods.

The mill has (need I even mention it?) a web site, http://www.jewelevans.com, and you can buy Jewel Evans 10-grain cereal at the Vermont Country store in Manchester Center.

Coming Soon: Musing about Gadgets, Atlanta Georgia (mid-February), Travel as Aphrodisiac, and Life in Skyland

The Aminzade hotel class check

We are staying at the swankiest place in town, the Holiday Inn. I performed my hotel class check immediately after unpacking. Business travel hotels are caste-stratified more rigidly than India before Ghandi. Rank can be instantly established by a glance at toiletries and a quick measurement of the towels. My simple toiletry scale is as follows:

1) Cheapskate Hotel: 1 bar white soap in hotel-logo wrapper

2) Lower Middle: 2 bars white soap, nanobottle of combination conditioner/shampoo with hotel logo on labels. Shower cap.

3) Middle-Lower Middle: 2 bars white soap, one larger than the other, with hotel logo-labels. Shampoo/conditioner also bears a brand name (e.g. Jhirmack). Presented in rattan basket

4) Dead-Middle: same as MLM, but at least one soap is pink rather than plain white and there are separate nanobottles of conditioner and shampoo. There is also one other nanobottle of another toiletry fluid (e.g. mouthwash, hand lotion), and a disposable shoe-wiping cloth. The hotel name is less prominent and the famous hairdresser’s name is more prominent on the labels.

5) Upper-Middle: Same as DM, but several nb’s of famous brand toiletries, perhaps labeled “aromatherapy,” a rattan basket with cloth lining, non-rectangular soaps with no hotel logo, bizarre toiletry fluids (e.g. bath salts, body splash, cuticle scrub), and an unexpected utility such as a sewing kit.

The toiletry situation at the Gallipolis Holiday Inn shouts MLM. Two white 2-size soaps, Jhirmack Conditioning Shampoo, shower cap. Towels are 12″ x 44,” a cut above Best Western, but way below the Hiltons and Marriots of the world. Pardon if I seem to be picky about this, but thanks to expense-account food and other factors, I happen to have a waist precisely one Gallipolis-Holiday-Inn-towel-width in circumference and prefer to shave with the towel worn as a skirt.

The grim truth is that Gallipolis, Ohio is smack in the middle of Appalachia, and is a good approximation of any business traveller’s idea of hell. Night life here is a windowless sports bar with a large satellite dish and a swarm of Harley-Davidsons parked outside. Outside of the Holiday Inn, the restaurants are either fast food or have the word “family” in their name. I had arrived with some vague hope of a great barbeque joint hidden in the West Virginny hollers within driving distance, but my hope has failed. Tonight we drove across the river to the finest restaurant in driving distance. It was a beautiful old building, nicely appointed with very pretentious but mediocre food (sorbet between courses, but the menu offered “Filet of Mignon”)

Happy-go-lucky and easy-to-please as I am, there are two insults I take personally: this is the only place in North America I have ever visited that does not have an NPR station, and nondiary coffee “creamer” (which I thought had disappeared with mood rings) appears, undead, on the Holiday Inn breakfast table.

Coming soon: The Bob Evans Dynasty, visit to a gristmill, Musing about Gadgets

The 500 French Suckers

Gallipolis lies on the Ohio river near the border of West Virginia. It was settled by 500 French suckers in 1790. They were offered land in the Ohio Territory by something called the Scioto Company. That name would have made anybody I know immediately suspicious, but remember, these folks were suckers. Besides, land in the Americas in those days was a lot like stock in Internet companies today. They arrived in the new world with visions of great wealth and made their way to Gallipolis only to discover that the Scioto company had skipped the minor technicality of actually purchasing any land before writing the deeds.

After the suckers petitioned Congress and President Washington, the Ohio Company (which was a lot like Microsoft in those days) sent woodsmen to build a small settlement on the banks of the Ohio River. The French suckers, remarkably, managed to surivive and even thrive as river traders, especially after they killed off the natives and other settlers by feeding them heavy cream sauces until they died of myocardial infarctions.

I’m sorry. I made that last part up. But they did thrive as river traders. They are known today as “the French 500.”

Gallipolis means “city of the Gauls,” and is pronounced by everyone here “gal-a-police”, with the accent on the “police.” By the same rules of etymology and pronunciation, Superman lives in a city pronounced “Metro Police.” Even more remarkably the river, and eventually the state, were named after the Japanese phrase for “good morning.”

That part is true, but I think it’s actually a coincidence.

The setttlement, now a town of sorts, boasts “The French City Press,” “French City Chiropractic,” “French City Mobile Homes,” and, welcome to the 1990s, “French City Software.” Not much sign of real French presence any more though. Conspicuous by its absence is the signature of Franco America: a looming rose-windowed cathedral dominating the town. My hotel does list the “St. Louis Catholic Church” alongside a dozen Protestant ones, the Mormons and the Mennonites. The phone book lists almost none of French names I know from Vermont. Searching hard I find one Leclair, one Beaumont, two Legrands, and three Pelletiers. Oh, and maybe those 6 Bowdens were once Beaudoins. But there are 18 people named Click, 9 Snodgrasses, 11 Zirkles, and a whopping 76 Crabtrees, not to mention Paula Zickafoose, who lives on Jerrys Run Road.

I’m sorry. Telephone book reading can have its addictive qualities on a boring evening, and it’s healthier than hitting the hotel bar.

From the look of the place, the history of Galopolis hasn’t been a tale of unmitigated progress since the days of the 500 French Suckers. There is a small historic downtown with a few bright spots, but it’s largely occupied by dusty shops run by elderly people who have paid off the property loans and don’t need to sell much to stay open. The Wal-Mart and the minimalls down the road are where the retail action is happening.

Still, with a little imagination the old buildings along the riverfront, looming brick and wood warehouse structures and small staid Protestant brick homes, can evoke Marblehead, Newburyport, or Portland. You can almost hear the swearing of ship captains and sinewey dockworkers, smell the cheap rum and stale beer of the taverns, catch the wink in the eye of the harbor brothel girls, and taste the escargot and frogs legs. This was once a hoppin’ town.

Outside of town there’s the Pine Street Cemetary, and across the way the cramped and humble “Pine Street Colored Cemetary.” On seeing this. all visions of New England evaporate, and you know that, Mason Dixon line or not, you’re in the South.

The riverfront in town also hosts some very ostentatious and truly hideous contemporary homes. They appear to have been built in the 1980s or 1990s rather than the 1950s or 1960s. That is, rather than being characterless pastel rectangles they are nighmarish accretions of several incompatible architectural heritages. These homes are to architecture what a bacon bagel, a 24-ounce Swiss Chocolate Cappucino, or “French Country Tofu” is to cuisine.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about the thrills and hotspots of Gallipolis for the business traveller, and how to judge the class status of a hotel in seconds.