1913 was not a good year for Middletown, Ohio. This picture doesn't show the half of it; it was really much worse than this. All of the water, sewer and gas mains were washed away to a depth of 8-10 feet. People and livestock perished, and buildings were destroyed.
There were people who actually traveled to Middletown to gawk at the destruction after the flood as a form of amusement. They got amusement all right; they were arrested and put to work at street cleaning. I think we couldn't do that today, which is a shame.
The Middletown Public Library has lots of pictures of this terrible flood, including gawkers being put to work (see picture #148), on their website.
American Rolling Mills was a steel company, founded in 1900 in Middletown. Today it is known as Armco. Tom T. Hall wrote a song entitled The Rolling Mills of Middletown. Click here to see the lyrics.
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A perfect balance of fascinating card and equally fascinating information. Your blog remains a delight.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I say arrest them and put them to work! I'm sure the Nashvillians would appreciate the help! I do have to scrape the chicken poop off of the top of the nest box, but the coop is a dusty dirt, so the poop is usually trampled into the dirt. A couple of times a year I take a shovel in to dig up dirt/poop clumps. I switch it with garden dirt.
ReplyDelete~Randy
It is a shame we can't: 1) gawk to be amused, or 2) arrest to clean streets?? We do the first all the time, it is called reality TV.... The second wouldn't fly because prisoners would sue (and win) for having their rights violated somehow.
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