I might want to consider I am cursed
Sep. 3rd, 2022 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cornerofmadnessYou're not going to believe this day
Got a late start on my vacation in spite of getting up before the alarm. I’m not sure what happened but suddenly it went from 10 to 9 to twenty after. Time is weird. Then in spite of what I said to mom about going the way I know to Marietta (as I go thru it every time to go home from my parents) I turned around and followed my GPS which is going the shorter way.
That’s why I did it but then I remembered, wait rt 7 is SLOW. It’s shorter but it’s not fast. My way is 55-70 mph the whole way. WHY did I do this? I’m a fool but I made it to Marietta to get on the sternwheeler which is what I had slotted out as my first vacation Activity. I turn down the brick, narrow street (Marietta is OLD for America, one of the oldest cities in Ohio) . I get to Front street where I need to turn only to find out the ONLY street to the dock has a PARADE on it. I now have to wait for the parade. The locals told me yeah you need to park on a side street. Okay why wasn’t the road blocked off?!? Or at least had a sign saying this was happening? I can’t pull out onto the damn road and into the parade of course.
I call the sternwheeler to ask why would they do this? This is a yearly happening. The helpful locals told me so. Oh yes we're making a list of people who can’t get here. Why then did you not just put the cruise at 1 pm or cancel it since you can NOT travel the road. I don’t know but we can call you back with what to do. I said can you just put me on Monday?
Yes fine. The cops are at the end of the road so I get back in my car (as why not get out and watch the parade) and my car won't start. WHAT? WHY? I put up the hood. The cops circle back for me. Has my battery gone dead? The lights were only one like 2 minutes before I caught it.
AAA has an automated system that wants me to go on but I’m not able to do that. Then it wants to text me a map. After trying that like 3 times they finally put me through to a live person (Also a service that helps stranded travelers should ONLY have live operators)
I finally get thru when one of the cops has circled back to me and someone with those jumper packs tries to help. It fails. The cop says I'll go to the station and get a bigger one. AAA says wait on them and call us back if it’s not the battery and you need a tow. They leave the jumper pack sit on the battery and it seems like it’s trying to charge because things slowly come back on in the car. . It takes two more jumper packs, each bigger to get it started.
In the meantime my windows are down and can't be raised and then it rains. My car's soaked. I'm soaked. Finally the battery has just enough juice to get my car in neutral and the cop pushes me to the side of the road instead of in the middle of the intersection. I'm out 200$ for a battery.
I had to pee the whole time because I didn’t stop to pee on the way up because I was late. I race to the one place I wanted to go to eat, the Historic Harmar Tavern (Harmar village is the oldest part of time I believe) . I get a harmar jam dog (beef hot dog onion jam and cheese) onion rings and a pumpkin cider by Ace because it’s not too early to drink at noon after this day. That was the best cider I’ve had in America. It was on par with the stuff I had in Wales.
I get to my next destination, the Castle and the tour is sold out. Come back in an hour or tomorrow/Monday. I decide to check into the Lafayette early and go back to the Castle if I can. and my 'steamboat captain room is smaller than my bedroom at home. I'm laughing hard it’s so small. When they said it was like a ship’s berth they weren’t kidding. Theres’s about a foot of space on three sides of a double bed and that it. It’s a very cool haunted historic hotel (Original hotel was built in the 1800s, burned 1916 and this one was built 1918) .
I went back to the Castle and still barely got in. Who knew this many people wanted to see some old house? It’s lovely and actually was three separate residences brought into one room. The original part is about 1808 and he was a potter. They had some of his pottery still. The main residence started with a lawyer and his family who had some tangential political importance in the mid 1800s. Jessie lived there with her mom Lucy, moving in with her grandfather at age 14 and leaving when she died at age 100.
The Bosleys rebuilt it and between them (they wanted it to be a museum after it was their residence but sadly both died before finishing) the preservation society, they got back Jessie’s belongings or at least some of them. The guide was very unhappy their Jessie’s nieces sold everything, contents house and land in less than 2 weeks post Jessie’s death.
They had some neat hair art pieces. Also interesting was the bedroom set upstairs which was hand carved by one of the women in the family. Honestly I had never heard about upper class ladies taking up wood working as a hobby in the 1880s.
From there I came back to my silly room (there’s a house boat tied up outside my window that I’m apparently spying on) I hit Marietta Brew Pub for a bacon beer cheese burger and a milk stout.
Hidden Marietta’s ghost tour was so much fun. Before we even got going I saw a dude in a jester outfit busking on a unicycle and another dude walking his Argentinian lizards (I pet them).
I like that Hidden Marietta try to correlate history with ghost stories (warning us against one commonly told axe murder story in one building the LaBella hotel). I was fascinated by Buckley Island in the middle of the river. In the colonial days (when this was the Western expansion in 1788) it was a pest house, where people with smallpox, cholera etc were ostracized to die without infecting the whole time. In the late 1800s early 1900s it had an amusement park on it by day, gambling dens/brothels by night and then finally everything was destroyed in 1913’s flood. You KNOW this is going into a story.
My own hotel the Lafayette has a history too. First the mayor’s house was here and burned. Then two hotels, one I can’t remember side by side with the Bellevue. They burned as well (after surviving the 1913 flood which led to the raising of the city so a lot of ground level parts of the buildings used to be the second story.) and the Lafayette was built in their place. In the 30s it was expanded by Mr. Hoag and he’s supposedly still here along with a few maids etc.
We saw a coffee house where ‘Jellybean’ is seen. She has been seen in the windows above the coffee shop multiple times. Weird thing is there is a picture from the 20s with a little girl in there. Even weirder it’s now an apt taking the guide by surprise (also get some damn curtains people. I can see everything you’re doing). There was the haunted art gallery/bookstore (now republican headquarters but is for sale so who knows what it will be), haunted by James Weber, a famous local artist who really wanted to be more. He didn’t want to be a grocer (their store still exists) Just as he was about to get to live his best life in Paris, dad died and he had to come home to Marietta to help mom. Turned him into a bitter person.
A collection of buildings Adelphia Music Hall/Hackett Hotel/the Galley (which I plan to eat tomorrow) This was once a brothel and the ghosts here don’t like men. The Hackett hotel has the steepest damn steps going up it. Glad I didn’t stay there but it looks neat’
It’s a mile and a half walk. I did fine except one stretch but after that I was okay. So bad day ended well.
Now I'm sitting in a haunted hotel in a lightning storm.
Harmar Tavern
The Castle
inside my hotel
my wee room
watch the wheel kill me in the night
decent selfie that's the lafayette in the background
the busker
just walking mah lizards
Buckley island
haunted coffee house
Former brothel
ETA Are you kidding me?!? I thought I smelled smoke and wondered did lightning hit something. Next thing I know the fire alarm is going off and I'm limping down five flights of stairs to sit in my kitty PJs on a stone bench in the rain. The kitchen WAS on fire. Why did I leave home?
Got a late start on my vacation in spite of getting up before the alarm. I’m not sure what happened but suddenly it went from 10 to 9 to twenty after. Time is weird. Then in spite of what I said to mom about going the way I know to Marietta (as I go thru it every time to go home from my parents) I turned around and followed my GPS which is going the shorter way.
That’s why I did it but then I remembered, wait rt 7 is SLOW. It’s shorter but it’s not fast. My way is 55-70 mph the whole way. WHY did I do this? I’m a fool but I made it to Marietta to get on the sternwheeler which is what I had slotted out as my first vacation Activity. I turn down the brick, narrow street (Marietta is OLD for America, one of the oldest cities in Ohio) . I get to Front street where I need to turn only to find out the ONLY street to the dock has a PARADE on it. I now have to wait for the parade. The locals told me yeah you need to park on a side street. Okay why wasn’t the road blocked off?!? Or at least had a sign saying this was happening? I can’t pull out onto the damn road and into the parade of course.
I call the sternwheeler to ask why would they do this? This is a yearly happening. The helpful locals told me so. Oh yes we're making a list of people who can’t get here. Why then did you not just put the cruise at 1 pm or cancel it since you can NOT travel the road. I don’t know but we can call you back with what to do. I said can you just put me on Monday?
Yes fine. The cops are at the end of the road so I get back in my car (as why not get out and watch the parade) and my car won't start. WHAT? WHY? I put up the hood. The cops circle back for me. Has my battery gone dead? The lights were only one like 2 minutes before I caught it.
AAA has an automated system that wants me to go on but I’m not able to do that. Then it wants to text me a map. After trying that like 3 times they finally put me through to a live person (Also a service that helps stranded travelers should ONLY have live operators)
I finally get thru when one of the cops has circled back to me and someone with those jumper packs tries to help. It fails. The cop says I'll go to the station and get a bigger one. AAA says wait on them and call us back if it’s not the battery and you need a tow. They leave the jumper pack sit on the battery and it seems like it’s trying to charge because things slowly come back on in the car. . It takes two more jumper packs, each bigger to get it started.
In the meantime my windows are down and can't be raised and then it rains. My car's soaked. I'm soaked. Finally the battery has just enough juice to get my car in neutral and the cop pushes me to the side of the road instead of in the middle of the intersection. I'm out 200$ for a battery.
I had to pee the whole time because I didn’t stop to pee on the way up because I was late. I race to the one place I wanted to go to eat, the Historic Harmar Tavern (Harmar village is the oldest part of time I believe) . I get a harmar jam dog (beef hot dog onion jam and cheese) onion rings and a pumpkin cider by Ace because it’s not too early to drink at noon after this day. That was the best cider I’ve had in America. It was on par with the stuff I had in Wales.
I get to my next destination, the Castle and the tour is sold out. Come back in an hour or tomorrow/Monday. I decide to check into the Lafayette early and go back to the Castle if I can. and my 'steamboat captain room is smaller than my bedroom at home. I'm laughing hard it’s so small. When they said it was like a ship’s berth they weren’t kidding. Theres’s about a foot of space on three sides of a double bed and that it. It’s a very cool haunted historic hotel (Original hotel was built in the 1800s, burned 1916 and this one was built 1918) .
I went back to the Castle and still barely got in. Who knew this many people wanted to see some old house? It’s lovely and actually was three separate residences brought into one room. The original part is about 1808 and he was a potter. They had some of his pottery still. The main residence started with a lawyer and his family who had some tangential political importance in the mid 1800s. Jessie lived there with her mom Lucy, moving in with her grandfather at age 14 and leaving when she died at age 100.
The Bosleys rebuilt it and between them (they wanted it to be a museum after it was their residence but sadly both died before finishing) the preservation society, they got back Jessie’s belongings or at least some of them. The guide was very unhappy their Jessie’s nieces sold everything, contents house and land in less than 2 weeks post Jessie’s death.
They had some neat hair art pieces. Also interesting was the bedroom set upstairs which was hand carved by one of the women in the family. Honestly I had never heard about upper class ladies taking up wood working as a hobby in the 1880s.
From there I came back to my silly room (there’s a house boat tied up outside my window that I’m apparently spying on) I hit Marietta Brew Pub for a bacon beer cheese burger and a milk stout.
Hidden Marietta’s ghost tour was so much fun. Before we even got going I saw a dude in a jester outfit busking on a unicycle and another dude walking his Argentinian lizards (I pet them).
I like that Hidden Marietta try to correlate history with ghost stories (warning us against one commonly told axe murder story in one building the LaBella hotel). I was fascinated by Buckley Island in the middle of the river. In the colonial days (when this was the Western expansion in 1788) it was a pest house, where people with smallpox, cholera etc were ostracized to die without infecting the whole time. In the late 1800s early 1900s it had an amusement park on it by day, gambling dens/brothels by night and then finally everything was destroyed in 1913’s flood. You KNOW this is going into a story.
My own hotel the Lafayette has a history too. First the mayor’s house was here and burned. Then two hotels, one I can’t remember side by side with the Bellevue. They burned as well (after surviving the 1913 flood which led to the raising of the city so a lot of ground level parts of the buildings used to be the second story.) and the Lafayette was built in their place. In the 30s it was expanded by Mr. Hoag and he’s supposedly still here along with a few maids etc.
We saw a coffee house where ‘Jellybean’ is seen. She has been seen in the windows above the coffee shop multiple times. Weird thing is there is a picture from the 20s with a little girl in there. Even weirder it’s now an apt taking the guide by surprise (also get some damn curtains people. I can see everything you’re doing). There was the haunted art gallery/bookstore (now republican headquarters but is for sale so who knows what it will be), haunted by James Weber, a famous local artist who really wanted to be more. He didn’t want to be a grocer (their store still exists) Just as he was about to get to live his best life in Paris, dad died and he had to come home to Marietta to help mom. Turned him into a bitter person.
A collection of buildings Adelphia Music Hall/Hackett Hotel/the Galley (which I plan to eat tomorrow) This was once a brothel and the ghosts here don’t like men. The Hackett hotel has the steepest damn steps going up it. Glad I didn’t stay there but it looks neat’
It’s a mile and a half walk. I did fine except one stretch but after that I was okay. So bad day ended well.
Now I'm sitting in a haunted hotel in a lightning storm.
Harmar Tavern The Castle inside my hotel my wee room watch the wheel kill me in the night decent selfie that's the lafayette in the background the busker just walking mah lizards Buckley island haunted coffee house Former brothelETA Are you kidding me?!? I thought I smelled smoke and wondered did lightning hit something. Next thing I know the fire alarm is going off and I'm limping down five flights of stairs to sit in my kitty PJs on a stone bench in the rain. The kitchen WAS on fire. Why did I leave home?
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