Back at the end of August, I took a road trip.
My destination? Sidney, Ohio … a three-hour drive north of Lexington. I timed my departure to avoid morning rush hour in Cincinnati, and in Dayton. There was still the usual big-city and road-construction traffic to deal with, but soon enough I was north of Dayton, admiring the tidy farms along the interstate.
I arrived in Sidney around lunchtime. On the town’s picturesque courthouse square, Richard Scott (owner of the popcorn wagon) and his helpers were putting the wagon in place and setting up all the various props for our photo shoot: the vintage popcorn and peanut boxes, the flags with the correct number of stars to match the era of the wagon, etc.
The biggest photo-shoot prop of all, of course, was Sidney’s courthouse square. On these same streets, a similar wagon sat for nearly fifty years — from the early to the mid-twentieth century — dispensing fresh popcorn. As I and a local newspaper photographer took our photos, more and more people gathered on the square to catch a glimpse of the wagon that resembled a part of Sidney’s history.
Once we were finished, everyone worked to load the wagon back into Richard’s specially made trailer … and we all drove home.
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Richard Scott's popcorn wagon ... this is one of the photo angles we tried, but not the one that ended up on the cover of the magazine
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this is closer to the image you've (I hope!) seen on the cover of the October issue ... the wagon in the foreground, with a glimpse of Sidney's beautiful courthouse behind
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Sidney, Ohio, is a small town of about 20,000 people ... with a remarkably beautiful town square, in the center of which sits this courthouse (here, one of the entrances), built in 1881
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a larger view of the courthouse, including its tall clock tower
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on the corner of the square, the Monumental Building (built in 1877) was dedicated to the county's Civil War casualties; I've heard stories of major events, parties, shows, even circus performances being held in the huge second-floor exhibition space
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the statue of a Civil War soldier at the top of the Monument Building's facade
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across the street from where we were photographing the popcorn wagon: the 1918 People's Bank, in a building designed by Louis Henri Sullivan
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a close-up of one of the creatures over the bank's doors
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the side of the bank building designed by Sullivan; he is considered the "father of modernism" and his work inspired the Chicago architects who have become known as the Prairie School
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on the corner, with the Monumental Building across one street, and the bank across the other, is the Spot to Eat, which has been here since 1907; the current building dates from the 1940s
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the nostalgic interior of the popular lunch Spot on the corner of the square
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while we were busy photographing the popcorn wagon, twins Larry (on the left) and Garry Leapley brought a photo of themselves from 1955, standing in front of Sidney's early-20th-century popcorn wagon; they later helped load the wagon back on its trailer
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as we finished for the day, Richard closed up the drop-down windows ...
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... and trotted down the sidewalk pulling the wagon, to get it into position to ...
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... ease it carefully over the curb and into the lane we had blocked off ...
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... and turn it to face the trailer ...
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... and get it lined up ...
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... and up the ramp ...
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... and into the trailer and on its way home!
The Slower Road 