Discover Dayton

by Phil Rowe
Prologue --- Dayton, Ohio was included on our RV trip to the eastern U.S. and Atlantic Canada because we have relatives and friends there. As tourists with a delightful and well-informed guide we discovered that Dayton is a really neat place. It was GREAT fun.
Our big activity for the evening was an outing to downtown Dayton. We and the Neefs decided to go out to dinner at one of several new restaurants in the restored part of the city. But first Bob Neef wanted to show us Dayton's newest and most controversial public art display, a sculpture depicting the Wright Brother's first flight. The work is one of those modern impressionistic pieces that's not immediately understandable to the general public. In fact, there has been much media lampooning of the thing, a city block long and a 60-foot high collection of welded metal parts resting upon pylons.

When the relatives visited us in Albuquerque a few years ago we took them to see our fair city's latest artwork. That was a joke called "Chevvy On A Stick" by citizens not amused by spending 50,000 taxpayer dollars to literally place an old Chrevolet automobile atop a pylon and cover the whole thing with blue ceramic tiles. So now it was their turn to thrill us with Dayton's own artistic endeavor.

We then went to Pacchia's restaurant, a trendy, noisy and overpriced Italian place. The meal and wine was pretty fair, but the conversation and banter about government-sponsored public art projects was great fun. It seems that Dayton spent several times what Albuquerque did for statuary many folks ridicule and really didn't want. Politicians and bureaucrats in both cities have apprently been bamboozled by the artistic crowd into spending money unwisely for such nonsense.

We had a great evening, even if the cultural experience was a bit of a joke. But after dinner we took a tour through some restored and renovated neighborhoods near downtown Dayton that are a positive and worthwhile effort by the city and civic groups to revitalize historically important areas. Dayton has made much progress and is to be commended.

Our stay in the Dayton area included visitations to several interesting and historic places. Carrillon Park is a beautiful area that includes historical buildings and exhibits in a delightful wooded and grassy setting. 19th century and early 20th century Dayton comes alive. Famous nameslike Kettering, Patterson, Wright, Huffman and Deeds were contributors to the city's growth and success. The Carillon itself is a showpiece and it plays throughout the day.