This week, I’m doing Kristine Hansen’s virtual spring break travel writing class. A big part of the class is a daily writing prompt about a travel topic. Today, we are to write about the emotional arc of a recent trip. For me, that was back to Ohio to see family and visit Lanterman’s Mill, a flour mill built in 1845 and located pretty much down the street from where I grew up.
So here goes!
The Old Mill never seemed like a big deal when I was coming up, in Youngstown, Ohio. It marked the point on Canfield Road where we turned to go to our house, and it was a place we walked to sometimes on evenings or weekends in the nice weather. Taking the sidewalk, it took about five minutes to get there; using the park trails took about fifteen minutes or so. It was just another thing to do. In fact, the mill was a little bit freaky, operating as a small nature museum filled with lots of taxidermy representing the native fauna and guaranteed to spook young children.
Over the years, I’ve discovered that the mill is a big deal. My husband was blown away when we first came to my parents’ house; he was stunned to discover that the mill, now fully restored and known as Lanterman’s Mill, was right there. He was also amazed that we thought it was part of background, not much different from the Dairy Queen or St. George’s Church.
I’ve also had plenty of opportunities to spend a lot of money and travel great distances to see things that weren’t more impressive. This isn’t reverse snobbery at play; only that I’ve come to see that growing up by a 150-year-old flour mill nestled in a wooded gorge isn’t all that common.
Youngstown is an impoverished city; the steel mills that put the area on the map have long closed up shop, and the General Motors plant employs far fewer people than it once did. As much as I like the mill being a bit of a secret, I wonder why there hasn’t been economic development around it and why the city hasn’t pushed the park for tourism. It’s that great.
