Just found out today that the new South Green walking path that I take a lot to Stocker was formerly a Baltimore and Ohio railroad line: https://ohiotoday.org/all-aboard-the-bo-at-ohio /

I'd imagine that was a fun (and dangerous) way to get a quick way to class!

BTC, my son is the expert on SEO railroad history. When I get back from the Republic of California, I’ll ask him to give me the condensed version of the history of railroads in Athens County. I’ll post if you are interested. I do know that the east-west line that’s being referred to here came in before the Civil War, and it was a major mainline for years. I took a train out of Athens to Minneapolis with my mother and sister in the early 1950s. Changed trains only once, in Chicago. It was a type of train known as a streamliner. They came through Athens all the time, some had double-decker observation cars.

rpbobcat, “cutting it close” . . . You knew some stupid guys, as did I. There was more than one person killed by a train in Athens over the years. One of the last ones, an apparent accident involving a train-car collision at the Stimson Avenue crossing was later ruled a suicide, as was one earlier involving a student walking on the tracks, but most were true accidents and very tragic.

There was actually a train run from Cincinnati to D.C. and back that stopped in Athens and I believe Morgantown. I was going to a conference in D.C. with colleagues and we planned to take the night train from A Town to D.C. and have an all night bridge game on route. Unfortunately, just before the trip, they cancelled that route so it never happened so we end up driving. Sometime in the 70"s I believe.

I had an old fella tell me about the B&O train that came from Cincy. He told me the Reds would take the train through the area when they played teams on the East Coast. He was a young boy in Luhrig in the 1920s, and he was there when the train stopped and the Reds got off, while the train was being serviced. He told me the miners came up from mining and played the Reds in the field. I'm betting a miner made more than a pro ball player, at the time.

When the Reds' train came through in the '70s, did bobcatsquared's all-time hero, Pete Rose, come out to sell autographs to the co-eds or place baseball bets with student bookies?

The tracks were still here when I arrived in 86. A few trains ran from time to time. Remember winter quarter the most with how many people would slip and fall while crossing them after a night on Court St.

Actually my story is all true, but if you’d like to compare this story with someone who just makes stuff up and has been doing so for a much longer time than Rep. Santos you should cite President Biden.

Here’s a short list of some of the most outrageous:

https://tinyurl.com/mt3h87p4

Also, if you’d like some insight on the background of the Santos situation, you might like to read this WSJ op-ed by a friend of mine, Frank Scaturro, a leading scholar of U.S. Grant and of the Supreme Court’s retreat from Reconstruction:

The Political Machine That Made George Santos

In New York’s Nassau County, Republicans run for office when the GOP bosses say they can.

By Frank Scaturro
Feb. 1, 2023 6:49 pm ET

It is a real feat for a politician to shock the country with his perfidy, but Rep. George Santos has managed to do it. While the media peels back the layers of lies and misconduct along the New Yorker’s path to Congress, the local political system that made it possible has largely flown under the radar.

Nassau County, where most of Mr. Santos’s Third Congressional District is located, is home to perhaps the last remaining large Chicago-style political machine east of the Windy City, manned by armies of patronage workers in bloated municipal governments and lorded over by party bosses. But unlike in Chicago, this one is a Republican machine.

Mr. Santos faced no primary competition because Republican primaries in Nassau typically don’t happen—and when they do, they usually aren’t competitive. The chairman of the Nassau GOP has sole power to make candidate endorsements, and he is so preoccupied with what’s in it for him that he readily undercuts the interests of Republican voters. Prospective candidates who aren’t picked almost always make the sadly rational choice not to subject themselves to the buzzsaw of a rigged system.

I know this from personal experience. In 2009-10, I first ran for Congress in New York’s Fourth Congressional District, located entirely within Nassau County. I spent nearly a year building what was recognized as the only viable Republican campaign to unseat Democratic incumbent Rep. Carolyn McCarthy. While my fellow rank-and-file Republican committeemen and numerous elected officials greeted my candidacy with enthusiasm, I heard murmurings that the famously clannish bosses at the top didn’t view me as “inside” enough. Then-Nassau GOP Chairman Joe Mondello spent months looking for someone—anyone—to throw into the race with the purpose of beating me in a primary. Never mind that this would virtually guarantee a McCarthy victory. As Michael Barone wrote at the time, it appeared Mondello was “trying to boot an election in order to maintain his own personal power.”

When, at the 11th hour, the boss’s pick—a county legislator unprepared for the race—was announced, Republican committeemen were instructed that anyone supporting me should resign. Supporters who held municipal jobs or contracts ceased openly supporting me for fear of termination—and, on occasion, admitted as much to me.

Shortly before the primary, the organization’s leadership put the word out among members that I needed to be defeated to prevent other Republicans from emerging in future elections to run for any number of elective offices in Nassau County. Heaven forbid the bosses lose their control of nominations.

The machine ultimately beat me with a negative campaign based on a Santos-worthy fabrication: that I was a Democrat. As the bosses well knew, I was a lifelong conservative Republican and longtime GOP committeeman who labored for decades in my home township of North Hempstead, a Democratic stronghold, trying to elect Republicans.

I ran again in 2012 and 2014, and the bosses beat me in low-turnout primaries with the same combination of intimidation and lies—adding to the “Democrat” charge the flourish that I was an “ultra-liberal.”

Over the five years following my last campaign in 2014, top Republican officials in Nassau County were convicted of public corruption or fraud charges, including New York’s senate majority leader, the Nassau County executive and his chief deputy, the town supervisor of Oyster Bay, and a Hempstead town councilman who had long played a central role in county and town government.

Until the Santos story became a national media frenzy, Nassau’s Republican political machine thrived in the shadows. In the face of intense scrutiny, Mondello’s successor, Joseph Cairo, called for Mr. Santos’s resignation. If even a tiny fraction of the attention now given to Mr. Santos had exposed Nassau County’s endemic corruption from the beginning, Republican voters might never have been afflicted with booted races and felons in office—and, not coincidentally, some of the most expensive local government in the country.

The Third Congressional District was clearly winnable for Republicans in 2022. Its district lines had been redrawn favorably; in 2021, a backlash against Democratic misrule had triggered a local Republican electoral tsunami; and there was no incumbent in the race. Several candidates wanted to run for the seat, but Mr. Cairo did not pick them. What did Mr. Santos, who was not an insider of the kind customarily anointed by the party bosses for winnable races, have to offer? His biographical fabulism was primarily about his financial prowess. Most of the media are asking where his money came from, but just as important is where it went.

Mr. Santos was one of the top contributors to Nassau GOP entities, with political action committees tied to him and his sister donating $185,000 in 2021-22. On Jan. 11, Mr. Cairo called on Mr. Santos to resign and announced that he had returned his donations. “We trusted him,” said Mr. Cairo. “And shame on us for doing that.”

The Santos scandal isn’t an isolated instance of negligent vetting. It is the product of the machine’s toxic combination of illicit tactics to shut down primary competition and a pay-to-play culture. Until this racket is broken and power is given back to the voters of Nassau County, expect more betrayals of the public trust. Not that they will be as headline-grabbing or match the cartoonish magnitude of George Santos’s reputed con. His story is singularly egregious but it comes as no surprise that it happened in one of the most corrupt counties in America.

Mr. Scaturro is a former Republican counsel to the Senate Judiciary Committee and House Select Investigative Panel on Infant Lives.

Yep, you started it, so I jumped in!

https://www.explorehockinghills.com/parks-trails/parks/mo... / Had a fun time hiking at moonville when I was in school

So, comparing me to Santos wasn’t political, but my comparing Santos to Biden was political? I get it now. Bashing me by comparing me to a discredited Republican isn’t political. But, dare anyone mention that a Democratic might have an honesty issue, that’s political, if not treasonous. I’m glad you made me aware of the BA ground rules.

My son knows all about that M&C railroad. In fact, he wrote a paper about the history of it. Perhaps, he’ll let me post a link to it.

Sorry, you two — SBH and bobcatsquared — are kind of like Ying and Yang. But, I apologize for misdirecting my statement. Nonetheless, SBH, it was a political statement you made, and I didn’t start the whole political talk. I just responded in kind. I can’t buy either of you a beer on Saturday, but I’d be happy to do that at an upcoming game. I’m now in the Republic of California visiting my daughter and her family. I’m scheduled to return to Athens on Monday. It would be nice to put faces with my antagonistic duo.

I really don’t know why you two decided to pile on after I made that post. While it was an unusual day, it’s not like I said I had a visit from Martians at Crosley Field. A few more details: Ernie and some players were behind a fence. Ernie was engaging with fans across the fence and some were handing him baseballs and other items to autograph, which he did. I didn’t get an autograph at that time — just a wave, a friendly smile and the exchange of a few words. I did get a handwritten personal note from him years later when I made a donation to his charitable foundation. I have no idea why Lou Boudreau leaned out the window and asked me if I wanted a ride — maybe because I was the only one in the area wearing a Cubs hat? At any rate that’s what happened if you chose to believe it or not.