July 10, 2010 – Day Sixty-four

We left the Niagara Falls area headed south through Buffalo, New York and after a couple of toll bridges and a short section of the New York Thruway, another toll road, we headed east through Pennsylvania and into Ohio, following the shoreline of Lake Erie. By the time this odyssey is finished, we will have traveled next to all of the Great Lakes.

My friend and fellow Miataphile, “Voodoo Bob” Krueger suggested I stop by Mentor, Ohio and visit the home of President James A. Garfield, since it was on our way and fairly near where he grew up. Bob also had become aware of my fixation of presidential residences.

Garfield was the 20th President of the United States, elected in November 1880 and assumed office on March 4, 1881. John Philip Sousa led the Marine Corps band both at the inaugural parade and ball.

But Garfield had little time to savor his triumph. He was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, disgruntled by failed efforts to secure a federal post, on July 2, 1881, at 9:30 a.m. The President had been walking through the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad in Washington, D.C. Garfield was on his way to his alma mater, Williams College, where he was scheduled to deliver a speech, accompanied by Secretary of State James G. Blaine, Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln (son of Abraham Lincoln) and two of his sons, James and Harry. Guiteau was upset because of the rejection of his repeated attempts to be appointed as the United States consul in Paris – a position for which he had absolutely no qualifications. Garfield's assassination was instrumental to the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on January 16, 1883.

Garfield became the only man ever to be elected to the Presidency straight from the House of Representatives and was, for a short period, a sitting representative, senator-elect, and president-elect. If sworn in, he would have been the first U.S. senator to be elected president; Warren G. Harding became the first to do so forty years later. However, Garfield resigned his other positions and took office as President, and never sat in the Senate, where that term began on the same day.

We were given the tour of his home, which is now maintained by the National Park Service, by a comely park ranger. Only Marianne and I and one other local lady were on the tour. Apparently Garfield’s home doesn’t rank with FDR’s Hyde Park, even though the home held the first presidential library.

He lived the property in Mentor for less than five years, dubbed Lawnfield, and from which he would conduct the first successful front porch campaign for the presidency.  Garfield’s wife, Lucretia, stayed a widow for the rest of her life, working hard to preserve the legacy of her husband.

From Mentor we drove south through Kirtland, home of the Mormons before heading west to the Great Salt Lake, until we reached the KOA in Streetsboro. We were going to meet up with a good friend of Marianne’s, Nancy Studebaker and her physician husband, Mark, in Hudson.

The KOA in Streetsboro was charming, complete with a lake for swimming and boating right in the middle of it. And it was only a few miles to Hudson, home to the headquarters of Little Tykes and Joann’s Fabrics.

We cleaned up our road grime and headed to the Studebaker’s home using a hybrid method of Nancy’s directions to Marianne and my blind loyalty to a GPS that really couldn’t find the correct address. After a jaunt through the countryside (that’s why we know about Little Tykes and Joann’s Fabrics) ,we finally found their lovely home on a quiet cul de sac in the country atmosphere that makes Hudson so quaint. After a little catching up on our lives since we saw them last August in San Diego, we headed to their favorite Mexican restaurant.

After dinner we took a quick tour of downtown Hudson, where a concert was being performed in the park in the middle of town. Hudson’s downtown it divided into two parts: the cute refurbished area and immediately behind it the new area made to look just like the old area. The entire place looks like a Norman Rockwell painting.

Back at their home we had a delicious homemade peach cobbler and then played Mexican Train along with their youngest daughter, Susannah. It was a wonderful evening.

And we eventually found our way back to the KOA.