Home again, facing west

Finding a photo like the one I posted yesterday... well, it was like pulling on a raveling.

Casting about for other views of the city in which I was born, I found the east-facing perspective relatively less common. At left are five more images of Massillon -- 1850, the 1930s, 1941, 1955 and 1966 -- looking west toward the river.

(Click on the collage for a larger view; if your browser re-sizes images to fit your screen, you may have to click again to display it at full size.)

The graphic chronology intrigues me. Naturally, I identify most with the latest photos, since they depict the city's "main drag" as it was during my childhood. Massillon's annual Sidewalk Festival, for example, preserved in the 1966 image, was something that I remember looking forward to all year long. (Check out higher-resolution versions of that Life image here and here.)

That 1955 photo is my favorite, though -- the Tiger Swing Band high-stepping through town on a football Friday, Obie in the lead, six cheerleaders captured in mid-leap. (Higher-res image here.)

Lest anyone get the idea that I'm painting this blue-collar city as perfect, even idyllic -- it was neither.

I'll take my leave of the subject by suggesting that KintlaLake Blog readers make one more visit to Google Books. "A Town's Troubled Mood As a War Comes Home: The 'credibility gap' widens in Massillon, Ohio" (Life, August 12, 1966) is a stark portrait of my hometown during America's turbulent mid-1960s.

"Massillon, like many small cities in the country's heartland, is a blend of payroll town and rural trade center, of boosterism and nostalgia for the past, of complacency, generosity, bigotry, progress and decay."

"Though it voted for Lyndon Johnson over (Barry) Goldwater in 1964, Massillon, like much of America between the coasts, is politically, economically and socially conservative. It has a staunch John Birch chapter. Its citizens voted down urban renewal and twice rejected fluoridation of the city's water. Its school system, run by young Ph.D.s, is good. But progress has largely bypassed the shabby downtown, which is losing shoppers to the suburbs."

The eight-page article is, for this native son, poignant. It's also disturbing in places, particularly if filtered through present-day sensibilities, but I'm here to tell you that it's real, honest, accurate.

It's home.