Road Trip 2016 part two Christmas and a Baseball Game

October 5, 2016

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Road Trip 2016 Part Two

Christmas and a Baseball Game

There’s more to Cleveland than the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

By Jack Coll

Donna and I packed our bags and headed for the Black Hills of South Dakota to view Mt. Rushmore in all its glory. Following our emotional visit to Kent State University in Ohio on Sunday we shacked-up in a nearby hotel with Cincinnati Ohio on our minds the following morning.

We wanted to take in a ball game and have dinner at Great American Ballpark in downtown Cincinnati located on the winding banks of the Ohio River. I didn’t want to pass-up an opportunity to see Baseball’s first professional franchise.

However as we planned our day we took a morning detour to Cleveland, Donna and I tend to take a lot of detours on our road trips, some planned while others just happen. We wanted to visit the Parker family homestead located at 3159 West 11^th Street, the house has great historical significance, it was built in 1895 but that wasn’t the reason for the visit.

The 19^th-century Victorian house was used in the 1983 film “A Christmas Story.” If you’ve never seen the movie it’s a Christmas tale set in the 1940’s and centers around a number of plots including Nine-year-old Ralphie Parker wanting only one gift for Christmas, a Red Ryder Carbine Action 200-shot Range air rifle with a compass in the stock and “this thing that tells time” (a sun dial).

Ralphie receives a number of rejections about the Red Ryder air rifle, his teacher Mrs. Shields, his mother and the department store Santa Clause all giving him the same warning, “You’ll shoot your eye out.” For those of you who know the story Ralphie gets the gun on Christmas morning, hustles out to the back yard and fires it at a metal sign. The BB ricochets back at Ralphie and knocks his glasses off. Ralphie believes he shot his eye out as the BB knocked his glasses off his face, while searching for the glasses Ralphie steps on them and breaks them.

It really was an exciting visit to the house, all exterior shots of the house in the movie were filmed on location. As the guide told us if you watch the movie’s interior shots, when the curtains were open the scene was shot at the house, when the curtains were closed that portion of the film was shot in a sound studio.

The way the house in Cleveland became the site for the movie was interesting. The producers and location scouts sent out dozens of letters across the country and Canada asking if any large department stores would be willing to keep all their Christmas stuff on display for at least two months following Christmas so scenes for the movie could be shot on location. Only one store replied with a positive, it was Higbees Department Store.

There is a leg lamp in the front window, but not the original, for those of you who have watched the movie at least a dozen times, well then you’ll know that the original leg lamp was destroyed during the movie.

The main characters in the film included Peter Billingsley as Ralphie Parker, Jean Shepherd (the writer) as adult Ralphie (voice), Ian Petrella as Randy Parker, Melinda Dillon as Mrs. Parker, Darren McGavin as Mr. Parker, (The Old Man).

Two interesting notes on the old man’s character, one is the lead man the producers wanted as their first choice to play the part was Jack Nicholson, but Nicholson had just released “The Shinning” which many of the people involved felt would not make a good father figure in the movie and the second interesting part about the Old Man’s role was he was always muttering curse words when things went wrong like the heater and car breaking down. In the original script real curse words were being used, but Higbees Department Store who read the script before they would allow the use of their store in the movie stated that the curse words had to be removed or they would not sign permission for use of the store.

A tour of the interior of the house revealed the leg lamp in the front window that is lit 24 hours a day, a well decorated Christmas tree just like in the movie and a Red Ryder BB gun in the corner. They provided pink bunny pajamas complete with ears, a BB gun for anyone wishing to dress and take pictures of them. The kitchen was exactly the way it was in the movie as was the bedroom, bathroom and other areas of the house. As a matter of fact the owner of the house, Brian Jones who was a fan of the movie and his wife examined the movie frame-by-frame making sure all the details in the house matched the film.

A trip through the house is really a good time and worth going out of your way to see it. Buildings across the street have been purchased, one is used as a museum showing a lot of the original movie props and movie posters and the other building is a gift shop where leg lamps of all sizes among other movie memorabilia can be purchased.

After spending about an hour and a half at the Christmas Story House and snapping more pictures than I care to count we were on our way to Cincinnati to take in a ball game.

We arrived at Great American Ballpark in plenty of time, although the Cincinnati Reds are the oldest team in the league their ballpark was opened in 2003. Most people will ask, is it a nice ballpark? Well in my opinion it’s a cookie cutter ballpark like many of today’s ballparks, with centerfield cut-away giving the spectator in the right seats a view of the city and all the restaurants like Philly, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and so-on, but yes it is nice.

We arrived in plenty of time so we took a ride through the city looking for a hotel room under $250.00 for the night with no luck so we pulled into the ballpark and handed the attended twenty bucks to park, (it was a very close parking spot to the stadium) and headed over to the stadium early in hopes of getting in early to grab a bite to eat.

We realized that we were really early and the gates wouldn’t open for another 45 minutes giving me time to walk-around the stadium to view the Ohio River with my camera in tow. Heavey rain clouds were hanging overhead as I wandered around the stadium I realized that the old Riverfront Coliseum was part of the sports complex connecting with Riverfront Stadium years earlier, and then I saw the historical plaque.

On December 3, 1979, eleven ticket-holders were crushed and trampled to death as they attempted to enter the coliseum for a “WHO” concert, hundreds of others were injured.

Just as I went over to the take a picture of the memorial marker outside the doors where the eleven kids died the skies opened up and a heavy downpour of rain blasted the area for more than thirty minutes.

The only shot I had of not getting wet down to my underwear was to run over to the empty coliseum and hope a door was unlocked. Fortunately the door I grabbed hold of opened, I stepped inside and watched the rain come down in buckets for the next thirty minutes. I knew Donna had a dry-spot taking cover at the ballpark so I just stood there looking out at the rain and thinking about the eleven kids that got crushed to death all those years ago trying to get inside the very doors I was standing behind.

Looking back on that incident from December 3, 1979 it was reported that the origin of that disaster was traced in part to the practice of general-admission seating. None of the tickets reserved a seat, the ticket allowed the ticketholder to enter the venue and find a place to watch the concert. Of course you would want to get as close to the stage as possible. The later you got through the doors the farther back on the floor you would be. It was reported that as many as 14,770 of these $10.00 general admission tickets had been sold for the show.

There were also too-few doors opened and too-few ticket-takers to handle the sudden influx of fans once the doors opened. When the doors opened the crowd of at least 7,000 surged forward either crushing fans up against the very doors I was standing inside of to avoid the rain or were stomped to death.

Many people were surprised when the “Who” took the stage despite the parade of ambulances outside the building. Well two things contributed to the show going on, the first was Cincinnati’s new Mayor at the time Ken Blackwell feared a riot breaking out inside the coliseum possibly resulting in more fatalities and according to Rolling Stone Magazine published sometime later Pete Townshend and Roger Daltery were not told of the tragedy that had happened outside until after the concert was over.

It was reported that “The Who” by all accounts were devastated: “There’s no words to say what I feel,” Daltery told a Cincinnati rock station at the time, “I’m a parent as well. I’ve got a boy 15, and two little girls. All I can say is :”I’m sorry for what’s happened.”

In a separate interview at the time Townshend added, “For us, it’s deeply painful, because we live off these kids. They’re our bread and butter.”

Ironically just two and a half years earlier a similar situation had taken place at the same arena, when 2,000 fans rushed the doors at an Elton John concert on August 3, 1976. There had been other crowd control-related incidents during previous dates headlined by “Yes” and Led Zeppelin.” A story appeared in a 1976 edition of the Cincinnati Enquirer where fire captain James Gamm expressed concern over festival seating and was quoted as saying that he feared bodies could “Pile up in a major catastrophe.”

First-come, first served ticket sales were eventually banned in Cincinnati. Nearly three dozen lawsuits were filed following the December 3, tragedy, by 1984 they had all been settled. No charges were ever filed regarding the eleven deaths.

The memorial marker that I was staring at through the glass door I was standing behind as the rain fell was dedicated in 2015, I wondered why it wasn’t until nearly 36 years later that a memorial marker was dedicated? It had been paid for entirely by individual donations, and I also wondered about that.

As I stood there I said a few prayers for the victims, just as I had done the night before at Kent State University.

The heavy rain let up and stopped just as quickly as it had started, a lot of water fell in a very short time. I found my way back to Donna and told her where I had taken shelter from the storm and reminded her of the “Who Tragedy.”

Just about then the gates to Great American Ballpark opened up and we had a front-row dinner table overlooking the wet field. It wasn’t the home-teams night as they lost to the Marlins 6-3. There were four or five home-runs during the course of the game, it was very exciting to watch.

Five minutes after we left the ballpark we crossed a bridge into Kentucky and within a half hour we settled into a hotel room, one of the nicer rooms we stayed at come to think of it.

I had some trouble sleeping that night, it was only our second day on the road trip and I had paid respects at Kent State University and Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Coliseum. All Kids, how terribly sad.

On Tuesday we jumped on Route 66, later stopped at Ronald Reagan’s childhood home and settled in Dyersville Iowa, where we visited the “Fields of Dream,” Twice!

Next I will tell you a little bit about the “Field of Dreams.”

Here are some photos: