Ohio鈥檚 stay at home order has led citizens to look for coping mechanisms to stave off boredom and fear over the virus.
County Lines producer Renee Wilde lives in rural Greene County and shares the unique way her husband is dealing with this, and how it parallels what another Miami Valley resident did during the Great Depression.
My husband is dumping another load of rocks onto the front porch. This has become his daily routine during Ohio鈥檚 stay at home order. In between working from home, and scraping the paint off our crusty old farmhouse, he鈥檚 been taking breaks to climb over the fence and into the farm field adjacent to our house - scouring the field for interesting small rocks which he then loads into two canvas tote bags, and carries back.
鈥淚 find these way, way out in the field,鈥� he tells me while sorting through his haul. 鈥淢y guess is those are 80 pounds a bag. They are super heavy, and it sucks really bad to haul them back.鈥�
When asked why he does it, his response is "because they are beautiful, and they are free. Future projects.鈥�
The rocks are really beautiful. Each one is a different size and shape is colors ranging from red to green to blue, with some containing fossils.
鈥淵eah, I hit the motherload,鈥� he says looking them over. 鈥淚t looks like there was some kind of creek bed, I don鈥檛 know, a quarter mile out into the field, and that鈥檚 where the best ones are. In this round here, the red ones are the hardest to find.鈥�
鈥淭he variety pack like the cool green and white one, those are harder to find. Lot鈥檚 of white ones.
So this little batch out there, way, way, way out there, was chocked full of ones that had red in 鈥榚m. So I got a bunch.鈥�
In the past he鈥檚 used these field gathered stones to make perfectly smooth, conical cairns on the property. A cairn is a man made stack of stones, used since prehistoric times - typically as landmarks.
鈥淩ight now I am just placing my rocks along the edge of my porch, in kind of a nice, foot wide row,鈥� he says lining up the rocks. 鈥淪ome of the little ones are layered to fill the voids where the big ones kind of intermingle. It鈥檚 very attractive, and it鈥檚 very satisfying for my OCD, to try and keep the edges of funky, irregular, roundy kinda rocks as even as I can.鈥�
This is all reminding me of a similar situation during another stressful time in U.S. history involving a local Miami Valley man. It鈥檚 actually the first radio story I ever made, back in 2013, about a Folk Art roadside attraction called the Hartman Rock Garden located behind a house in a quiet suburban Springfield neighborhood just 15 minutes from our place.
Here's an excerpt of that tape which includes a guided tour of one man鈥檚 attempt to stay busy during a time of massive layoffs.
~~~~~~~~
HARTMAN ROCK GARDEN GUIDE: This is where it all began. This is the beginning of the hobby gone wild, as they said.
NARRATOR: It was the great depression. Ben Hartman like many others had lost his job. He began looking for a project to occupy his time, and that鈥檚 when he began collecting rocks. After 8 years and a lot of coffee, his backyard became a shrine that expressed his personal views on family, religion, and patriotism.
Ben harvested the materials for his creations from the stream that ran behind his property, rubbish piles, and donations from friends and visitors. He was also known to send his kids out with buckets after the streets had been freshly graveled, to collect the rocks off the road.
HARTMAN ROCK GARDEN GUIDE: We don鈥檛 know how many stones were used to build this, Ben always said about 20,000 to build the tree of life, so when you start adding it up, there were a lot of rocks.)
~~~~~~
Check out the while you鈥檙e stuck at home. It鈥檚 a pretty impressive testimony to how one man dealt with the adversity of his times.
It took Ben Hartman 8 years to transform his backyard. My husband has only been at it two weeks. But as this pandemic drags on, who knows, we might end up with our own roadside attraction, or at least some cool yard art.
"Again, not looking at my phone, not freaking out, not wearing a mask,鈥� my husband reminds me, 鈥淛ust doing my thing, and having a moment that is just kind of satisfying.鈥�
鈥淓verything鈥檚 just better with rocks.鈥�
is WYSO's series on rural life, made possible by a grant from Ohio Humanities. This story was created at the at WYSO.
Copyright 2021 WYSO. To see more, visit . 9(MDA5NTM4MTIyMDE0MTg3NDc2MTVlZjdmNQ001))
