Mount Vernon Footprints
Gratitude 7/10/2025
I am grateful for the gift of a new day.
My heart is filled with gratitude for the many blessings I have.
I will appreciate the small joys and express my thanks in all circumstances.
Let my attitude of gratitude bring joy to others.
Yesterday was an emotional day for me. I am grateful for the memories of footprints of places I have been before.
As I’m getting older and have had the experience of living in the same place, a place I visited as a child, I have specific memories of experiences I have had.
Yesterday morning I had a new client appointment in Mount Vernon in Knox County, the next county north of Delaware County where I live. Mount Vernon is the county seat but the sprall from Columbus has not reached it, as it has towns around me like Westerville, Delaware, and Sunbury. In fact, Mount Vernon is losing population.
When my mother was growing up out here in the 1930s, those were little farming villages that seemed to be worlds apart. Now they are suburbs of Columbus with an explosion of housing developments and shopping. Sunbury is no longer a village. Sunbury, Ohio used to be a sleepy, little town in eastern Delaware County. Nearly doubling in size in the past 20 years, Sunbury passed 5,000 residents in 2020 and advanced from a Village to a City in 2021.
I have been to Mount Vernon many times over the years.
1960s I have a memory from the late 1960s of my grandmother taking me and sister Lynda on a series of errands that included going to a Ben Franklin store in Mount Vernon, where she bought some sewing supplies, I think. It seemed like such a long way away. We were teenagers and were staying an extra week alone with Grandmother. We lobbied her to get us some soda, which she NEVER bought, but she bought some for us that day.
1970s After I graduated from college in 1976, I came to Mount Vernon to buy a lamp shade to replace one that had deteriorted on an old lamp at the farm. On the town square there was an old fashioned lamp shade store, almost like an old mercantile. It went out of business years ago.
1970s Stewart and I come up to Mount Vernon a few times to go to Mazza’s, Mount Vernon’s “famous” Italian restaurant.
1970s We attended a folk concert, at Knox Memorial Theater, a historic venue in Mount Vernon since 1925.
1970s I bought a used VW Beetle convertible that was freshly painted but turned out to be rusted out and dangerous. While we were parked somewhere, a guy, Dwane, who worked on VWs came up and asked about our car. Turns out he was a VW mechanic and he offered to switch the engine into a solid frame. He worked at a shop up in Mount Vernon where the tranfer took place. He lived with his girlfriend, Cindy, in Mount Liberty, a little community between Centerburg and Mount Vernon. We got together with them a few times. Years later I ran into Cindy at a Turkish cultural event in Columbus. She and Dwane had married and had two sons. But Dwane got into drugs and had a lot of legal problems. They had divorced.
1980s Mom used to come out for a week or so every summer. One time we went to visit the cemetery in Mount Vernon and found the graves of my great great grandfather, Joseph Metzger, buried in the Catholic section of the cemetery and my great great grandmother, Rachel Walker, buried in the Protestant section along with several of their children. Mom told a story that had been passed down that Joseph was born a Catholic, with his parents coming from Switzerland to Perry County, Ohio where the first Catholic church in Ohio was located. Joseph’s first wife had died and he married Rachel Walker. One of their children, Clinton Nicolas, was my great grandfather. Joseph was a Catholic until the Priest asked him to do one more thing for the church, and he decided he had had enough and left the church. so his children with Rachel were NOT Catholic. Still he is buried in the Catholic section.
1984 After I got laid off in 1984 from Warner Amex QUBE, I received Unemployment Insurance. While waiting to find out if I would get a job at Merrill Publishing, I was offered a job at the Otterbein College Library in Westerville. I turned it down and the Labor Department stopped my Unemployment Insurance because you are not allowed to turn down work. My dad, who was high up in the Federal Unemployment Insurance Program came with me to the hearing in which I appealed the decision. Stewart and I along with my dad and stepmother, went to Mazza’s for lunch, and then Dad and I went to the hearing. Dad didn’t say much but was interested to see how this worked on an individual basis. My appeal failed, but it was a great memory.
1984 On another summer visit Mom and I went up to Mount Vernon to see Robin William’s new movie, “Moscow on the Hudson” at a theatre in downtown Mount Vernon. It was a strange movie to see in this farm town. The movie theater is no longer there.
1990s Sister Alice and I went to Mount Vernon to investigate family history. We drove around looking for the Metzger homestead in Mount Vernon. It was a two story farmhouse where my great aunt Joanna and Great Uncle Merritt were married in 1916 when my grandmother Charlotte was 16 years old. We drove around and around. At one point I spotted an old man in a rocking chair on the porch of house. I parked the car and decided to go up and ask if he knew anything about it. It turned out he not only knew where the house that was now torn down had been, he had been a student of Albert Metzger, the younger brother of our great grandfather, who taught high school! We drove out to the location and there was a little one story suburban house where the homestead had been.
1990s On another trip Alice and I visited the Mount Vernon cemetery, the library, the country courthouse and the historical society looking for information about our ancestors. We copied the wills of several of our family members. We also visited the Mount Vernon museum where there was a big Paul Lynde display, including his Thunderbird!
1999 For a short time our older daughter had a “boyfriend” in Mount Vernon. She had gone to a Bat Mitzvah at Kenyon and met him there. We drove her up to Mount Vernon to go to the movies with him.
2001-2002 We drove up through Mount Vernon almost every day to Amity, an Amish community near Mount Vernon. We had contracted with Albert Raber and his brother to restore our barn that my grandparents had had built in the 1950s. Of course, being Amish, they didn’t drive. They got a “taxi” driver to bring them down in the morning. They they worked on the barn all day. At the end of the day either Stewart or I would drive them back home, up through Mount Vernon. We’d stop so they could shop at specific stores or get soft ice cream! That went on for at least six months.
2000s Cousin Charlie had an exhibition of his artwork and photography in Mount Vernon at the downtown branch of the Nazarene University. His parents and siblings, along with me and Stewart enjoyed his artwork, including his “Public Hangings” exhibit of photographs of laundry hanging out to dry.
2009-2013 We took daughter Madeline on a college tour of Kenyon College in Gambier close to Mount Vernon. She is accepted there and over the next four years we make several trips to Gambier and Mount Vernon. We get to know the stores and restaurants. We got to know the hospital where Madeline had exrays after suffering a fall. Mazza’s had closed in 2008 after its 69 year run in downtown Mount Vernon, but we enjoyed Mexican and Indian and other restaurants on our trips.
2018 Mazza’s reopened at a new location, not far from where my great great grandfather’s property was off of Upper Gilchrist Road. We enjoyed the opening weekend.
2023 For our 42nd anniversary in September we went up to Mount Vernon and went to The Alcove, a fancy restaurant on a main street in Mount Vernon. We had a coupon! At the next table I talked to a family of parents and two children. It turned out they were visiting their daughter who was a student at Kenyon, as we had done 14 years before. Oh, my.
2024 For our 43rd anniversary in September we went to Mazzas new location.
2025 Last night after my emotional day, we went back up to Mazza’s for dinner. We both had the famous Mazza salad. I had manicotti, and Stewart got spaghetti and meatballs. We shared a Moscow Mule.
The beauty of living in a place for many years is that you have many memories. I’m grateful for these footprints of my life.