Inspecting the City

On November 5th, 1975, Columbus residents awoke to the news that Mayor Tom Moody was reelected for a second term with a landslide 63% of the vote.  'Moody Wins Easily' was the front-page headline of the Columbus Dispatch.  The same day, a less heralded but equally moody Columbus resident emerged onto the local scene, making news in small print on page A-18 of the city's birth statistics:  "Mr. & Mrs. Jay Iams, 795 Clarington Ct, Boy."   For years I had quietly blamed my dad for my incurable moodiness, but this discovery seems to have exonerated him; I was born under the reign of Moody, and therefore I am.

The former mayor, who passed away last October, is remembered less for his moodiness than his progressive vision for the city during his nine years as the driver of the 'Bus.  Two-thirds of the current skyline reportedly went up under his watch, including the Huntington Center, One Nationwide Plaza, and the AEP building.  Moody also used his political savvy to set aside land for construction of Route 315 which, in an apparent tribute to Moody's legacy, is still under construction 34 years later.

Though history appears to have been kind to Moody's contributions as a mayor, he is remembered more, um, endearingly, for an incident that occurred during his final term in office.  He was out for a late night drive, perhaps after having a few too many drinks, and was involved in a car accident that is less noteworthy than the explanation he provided when asked why he was driving around at that hour:  "I was inspecting the city," he said at the time.

Given the opportunity to drive back in time with Mayor Moody, seat-belts fastened of course, what would Columbus have looked like?

City landmarks such as the Nationwide Plaza were under construction, and the Rhodes State Office Tower had been completed the year before, which at 692 feet surpassed the LeVeque tower as the tallest building in Columbus.  The old Ohio Penetentiary, the source of childhood nightmares for any kid unlucky enough to get a glimpse of it through a car window, was still nine years from its ultimate demise. The ghost of Sam Sheppard, the Ohio doctor who allegedly murdered his wife and whose story was the basis for the movie The Fugitive, may have still been roaming the Pen as Mayor Moody drove by.

On that day in 1975, when Moody's mandate to inspect the city was renewed, the citizens of Columbus were dealing with some of the same problems and questions as today's residents.  A sluggish economy led to a spirited national debate over the role of the government in getting things back on track.  One column in the November 5th edition of The Dispatch supported a recent speech by William Simon, then the secretary of the treasury, debunking the idea that the government can "identify, solve and somehow pay for all of the problems of society . . . a path that will inevitably lead to socialism in the United States."

Over at the Horseshoe, Buckeye fans were seeking redemption in the 1975 season after losing the January 1st Rose Bowl to USC by a score of 18-17.  Ohio State, with returning Heisman trophy winner Archie Griffin in the backfield, was ranked #1 in the nation at the time and with a scrappy Illinois team coming to town the following weekend,  the pressure was on coach Woody Hayes to have the team playing up to preseason expectations.  Sound familiar?

Non sports fans in Columbus had the option of heading over to the Southern Theatre to see Sidney Poitier and Bill Cosby star in "Let's Do It Again" while those searching for a little more spice could have opted for the Busty Russell Amateur Night over at the New Garden Burlesque at 5th and High. The burlesque house opened daily at 10am, meaning there were probably at least a handful of patrons checking out Busty when I was born at 2pm that day. The Garden Theatre still stands today, though it appears to be searching for a new owner or a wrecking ball.

Learning about Mayor Moody - and the city he inspected -  inspired me to go out and inspect the city for myself.  My city-wide inspection began last night with a trip to the Newport Music Hall to see Mat Kearney, an up-and-coming singer and songwriter who wears a fedora.  Between songs Kearney noted that the Newport is America's "Longest Continually Running Rock Club."  Though I couldn't confirm this claim, I can say that the smell in the bathroom alone was all the evidence that I needed:  the Newport has been around for a while, at least since Moody was reelected.

My friend Chris went along for the inspection.  As we walked into the Newport we worried aloud whether we'd be the only relics from the 1970's attending this concert, and then we spent nearly the entire opening act looking at every single person in our field of view and categorizing each person as 'older than us' or 'younger than us.'  It was satisfying to find an equal number of people in each category as this allowed us to feel neither young nor old, just somewhere in the very gray and confusing middle.  We also wondered if other people might be playing the same game; was someone out there giving us the once over and adding us to their own statistical survey? Who else was here on a city inspection?  We tucked in our bellies and maintained our cool.

Of course, a city inspection is not without its dangers.  Sometimes when night falls and beer spills, the wild animals come out to hunt. (See:  Cougars)

At one point, we had to avert our eyes when we noticed a pack of local Cougars belting out the lyrics of one of Kearney's songs.  They were high-fiving each other, too. Somehow it made us feel less cool to be howling the same lyrics that Cougars might enjoy, and we started to worry that if we sang too loud the Cougars would hear the sounds of fresh meat and pounce on us from the shadows of a nearby pillar.

But tonight, there would be no attack, no car accident, no stirring on the streets of Columbus.  We mouthed the words to Kearney's songs, keeping one eye on the stage and the other on a swivel.  Moody would've been proud of the guy who was born on his re-election day; on this night, the city was at peace under my watch.

The Day Ohio Went Dry

Saturday’s big game between Ohio State and Southern Cal gave me a front-row seat to the wondrous effects of alcohol on the human mind. Little else can explain the sight of a young man with a painted face muscle his way through a crowd to confront an elderly couple wearing USC colors and yell “You suuuuuuuuuuck!”

It makes you wonder: what would life be like without alcohol? Once or twice I’ve stopped drinking for a few months for different reasons – medication, general self-disgust – and found that I sleep better, lose weight, and save money. But when I'm face to face with the golden glow of a frosty draft or the velvety, seductive tones of a glass of red wine, I always give up trying to give up alcohol.

If it’s hard to imagine giving up drinking for a month or two, it’s even more difficult to fathom that there was once a time in American history where the government tried to make everyone give up drinking. Forever! These were the days of the Anti-Saloon League and Prohibition. Given all of the recent arm-wrestling over health care in this country, can you believe that the government once worked together long enough – it took almost a year to get the required votes – to pass a constitutional amendment banning the “manufacture, sale, and transportation of intoxicating liquors”? You really have to care about public health to get that one passed.

Unfortunately, the idea proved to be so terrible, or at the very least impractical, that it became the first amendment of the constitution to be wiped off the books when it was repealed by the 21st amendment, aka the That Wasn’t Such a Great Idea After All Amendment.

As I watched thousands of Ohioans get drunk on Saturday, I wondered whether they knew of Ohio’s deep roots in the nation’s effort to ban alcohol at the turn of the century. The national Anti-Saloon League had grown from the efforts and organizational strategies of Anti-Salooners in Ohio, more specifically of Howard H. Russell, a lawyer and divinity student in Oberlin in the 1880’s. Russell and others had concerns about the emerging influence of brewers nationwide who had figured out how to produce, transport, and refrigerate their product in large quantities. Middle-class workers began to drink the cheap, readily available grog during their lunch hours, sometimes having the beer delivered in pails by local school-children.

One thing that Ohio taught other states leading the charge to prohibition was the value of holding ‘local-option’ elections which enabled voters to decide, on a town-by-town level, whether the town should be wet or dry. This grassroots campaign to rid the nation of sweet, sweet beer was driven in part by the efforts, publications, and propaganda of the American Issue Publishing Company based right here in Westerville. Eventually American Issue became the most widely circulated publisher of temperance literature, with over 300,000 copies of its journal published in 1907.

The literature printed and distributed from Westerville included newspapers, fliers, magazines, and cartoons promoting the voice of the temperance movement and highlighting all of the wretches of drinking. One section of American Issue published fictional, cautionary tales for young people tempted to drink. The best one I read was called “Pasture Gossip,” about two horses named Gypsy and Barney hanging out in the pasture swapping stories about the local drunks and the saloon keepers conspiring to keep them drunk. In the end, they conclude that it’s much better to be a horse, where at least your mind is safe from the poisonous ale plaguing the townspeople.

American Issue also composed songs to be sung at prohibition rallies throughout Ohio and the rest of the country. The chorus of one song called “The World Is Going Dry” goes like this:

We’ll work for prohibition
Wherever men are found;
We’ll fight the liquor traffic
In earth’s remotest bound;

Come join the mighty army,
Help raise the battle cry!
Rally now with us,
Be up and ready,
We’ll make the whole world dry!

As a means to stir up support for a cause, this song was not all that different from the one I heard sung by 100,000 people Saturday night at Ohio Stadium, where the world was not going dry:

And when we win the game,
We’ll buy a keg of booze,
And we’ll drink to old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

The origin of this song dates back to, you guessed it, the early 1900’s around the time that the brewers were gaining strength and the teetotalers began to fight back with songs of their own. When the eighteenth amendment was ratified in 1919 banning the production and sale of alcohol, the words of the Ohio State song – which was actually a patchwork of other songs from other schools, including Michigan of all places – were changed to:

And when we win the game,
I’ll tell you what we’ll do
We will yell for old O-hi-o
Till we wobble in our shoes!

On Saturday night in 2009, exactly one hundred years after American Issue was wallpapering the state of Ohio with anti-alcohol admonitions, Buckeye nation confirmed that the warnings have fallen on deaf ears as 100,000 Ohioans drank, yelled, and, when the game was over, wobbled their way out of the ‘Shoe.