The Imperial
During the 1950’s my hometown of Akron, Ohio was the world center for rubber production. Akron was headquarters for Goodyear, BF Goodrich, Firestone, General, Dayton and a host of secondary companies that made tires for all kinds of vehicles and conducted research at places like Goodyear Aerospace.
They built airships in Akron during the 20’s and 30’s and later, blimps, in the world’s largest structure without internal supports. It was so big it actually could produce its own weather, raining inside while there were clear skies outside.
The vulcanization process for producing rubber was invented by Frank Seiberling, a chemist at Goodyear who became president of the company and built the second largest home in the United States---Stan Hywet Hall, now a museum. It is located a couple of blocks from the Firestone Country Club, a regular stop on the PGA tour.
The city was prosperous in those days, although its factories left the air polluted, and the rivers as well. The Cuyahoga River, which flowed through Akron on its way to Cleveland, actually caught fire in 1967 and burned part of the docks in “The Flats” area of Cleveland, such was the level of pollution. Before European contact the earliest indigenous people---the Erie---and later the Seneca, Ottawa, Miami, Delaware and Wyandot drank the clear, clean water from the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie, and ate the fish that were found in abundance in all of Ohio’s lakes and rivers.
We lived there because my father had been recruited by Dr. Case and Dr. Planz of the Akron Veterinary Hospital when they were looking for a young vet who could attend to farm animals. They had contacted Dean R.R. Dykstra of the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine to recommend someone. Dykstra, who authored The Veterinarian’s Creed, a kind of Hippocratic Oath for veterinarians, was fond of my father and his industrious and committed focus on veterinary medicine. When young veterinary students at Kansas State were asked to voluntarily assist with emergency midnight duties at the huge veterinary field facility---birthing, attending to illnesses throughout the farm animal herds on site, etc., it was my father who consistently answered the call. Dykstra recommended my father for the job in Akron.
The “Rubber Barons” of Akron were incredibly wealthy and built huge mansions, as did various other industrialists there and throughout America’s industrial heartland, today known as the “Rust Belt”. Although they didn’t have the playboy reputation of many of today’s millionaires/billionaires, they indulged in some of the finer things in life.
Thoroughbred horses were an interest of Raymond Firestone, the last member of the Firestone family to serve as president of the company.
Raymond Firestone’s Akron residence was located on a 750 acre property in Bath Township, part of the Akron metropolitan area. There he kept up to 20 horses at a time, including retired racehorses. There were riding trails and a polo field. Today the property is known as the Bath Nature Preserve and is owned jointly by the town of Bath and the University of Akron, and contains ponds, woodlands, trails, meadows and bridle paths for horses.
After school one day I arrived home to find my father in his workshop in the basement. Around him were various bottles of medications, jars of creams, etc., and three or four of his medical books, opened to different sections.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“Oh, Mr. Firestone, the President of Firestone, has a prize horse with a serious skin condition. He’s very concerned about his horse. It’s pretty valuable---not like a cat or a dog.”
He was quiet for a few seconds then added: “It’s a thoroughbred and they can be very skittery---very nervous creatures, so maybe that’s what’s going on. I can’t find anything else that’s causing the problem.”
“Can you fix him?” I asked.
“I’m going to try.” he replied.
I wanted to believe he could sort things out but in those days---and even today---veterinary medicine can involve some hit and miss treatments and some creative problem-solving since your patients aren’t able to tell you what’s wrong.
He spent most of the evening in the basement mixing up some kind of concoction to put on the prize horse.
Every day for a couple of weeks Dad would drive out to the Firestone property on Ira Road and carefully rub his homemade concoction onto the horse. Slowly it got better. When it appeared to have cleared up completely he continued to apply the stuff daily for another week, finishing up on a Friday, three weeks in all.
On the next Sunday morning we got up and got ready for church.
We always exited our house through a kitchen door that led into the garage. Then we’d lift the garage door from the inside to get one of the cars out. That was the routine my father followed that morning.
And when he opened the garage door, there, parked in the driveway, sat a brand new Chrysler Imperial.
© Kent Jones 2016
During the 1950’s my hometown of Akron, Ohio was the world center for rubber production. Akron was headquarters for Goodyear, BF Goodrich, Firestone, General, Dayton and a host of secondary companies that made tires for all kinds of vehicles and conducted research at places like Goodyear Aerospace.
They built airships in Akron during the 20’s and 30’s and later, blimps, in the world’s largest structure without internal supports. It was so big it actually could produce its own weather, raining inside while there were clear skies outside.
The vulcanization process for producing rubber was invented by Frank Seiberling, a chemist at Goodyear who became president of the company and built the second largest home in the United States---Stan Hywet Hall, now a museum. It is located a couple of blocks from the Firestone Country Club, a regular stop on the PGA tour.
The city was prosperous in those days, although its factories left the air polluted, and the rivers as well. The Cuyahoga River, which flowed through Akron on its way to Cleveland, actually caught fire in 1967 and burned part of the docks in “The Flats” area of Cleveland, such was the level of pollution. Before European contact the earliest indigenous people---the Erie---and later the Seneca, Ottawa, Miami, Delaware and Wyandot drank the clear, clean water from the Cuyahoga and Lake Erie, and ate the fish that were found in abundance in all of Ohio’s lakes and rivers.
We lived there because my father had been recruited by Dr. Case and Dr. Planz of the Akron Veterinary Hospital when they were looking for a young vet who could attend to farm animals. They had contacted Dean R.R. Dykstra of the Kansas State University College of Veterinary Medicine to recommend someone. Dykstra, who authored The Veterinarian’s Creed, a kind of Hippocratic Oath for veterinarians, was fond of my father and his industrious and committed focus on veterinary medicine. When young veterinary students at Kansas State were asked to voluntarily assist with emergency midnight duties at the huge veterinary field facility---birthing, attending to illnesses throughout the farm animal herds on site, etc., it was my father who consistently answered the call. Dykstra recommended my father for the job in Akron.
The “Rubber Barons” of Akron were incredibly wealthy and built huge mansions, as did various other industrialists there and throughout America’s industrial heartland, today known as the “Rust Belt”. Although they didn’t have the playboy reputation of many of today’s millionaires/billionaires, they indulged in some of the finer things in life.
Thoroughbred horses were an interest of Raymond Firestone, the last member of the Firestone family to serve as president of the company.
Raymond Firestone’s Akron residence was located on a 750 acre property in Bath Township, part of the Akron metropolitan area. There he kept up to 20 horses at a time, including retired racehorses. There were riding trails and a polo field. Today the property is known as the Bath Nature Preserve and is owned jointly by the town of Bath and the University of Akron, and contains ponds, woodlands, trails, meadows and bridle paths for horses.
After school one day I arrived home to find my father in his workshop in the basement. Around him were various bottles of medications, jars of creams, etc., and three or four of his medical books, opened to different sections.
“What are you doing, Dad?”
“Oh, Mr. Firestone, the President of Firestone, has a prize horse with a serious skin condition. He’s very concerned about his horse. It’s pretty valuable---not like a cat or a dog.”
He was quiet for a few seconds then added: “It’s a thoroughbred and they can be very skittery---very nervous creatures, so maybe that’s what’s going on. I can’t find anything else that’s causing the problem.”
“Can you fix him?” I asked.
“I’m going to try.” he replied.
I wanted to believe he could sort things out but in those days---and even today---veterinary medicine can involve some hit and miss treatments and some creative problem-solving since your patients aren’t able to tell you what’s wrong.
He spent most of the evening in the basement mixing up some kind of concoction to put on the prize horse.
Every day for a couple of weeks Dad would drive out to the Firestone property on Ira Road and carefully rub his homemade concoction onto the horse. Slowly it got better. When it appeared to have cleared up completely he continued to apply the stuff daily for another week, finishing up on a Friday, three weeks in all.
On the next Sunday morning we got up and got ready for church.
We always exited our house through a kitchen door that led into the garage. Then we’d lift the garage door from the inside to get one of the cars out. That was the routine my father followed that morning.
And when he opened the garage door, there, parked in the driveway, sat a brand new Chrysler Imperial.
© Kent Jones 2016