I hate Sawmill Road.
Those of you who live in Columbus know what I am talking about. For those of you who don’t live in our fair city, think of a landscape denuded of nature and replaced with the worst imaginable combination of asphalt, concrete, strip malls, overhead power lines, parking lots, ugly signs, chain stores, and cars, cars, cars.
When you are on Sawmill Road, waiting — and, with the ridiculous traffic congestion that you always find there, you are assured of doing lots of waiting — depressing sights await you in all directions, unbroken by green space. It’s like the worst aspects of commercial development have been mashed together by some giant economic forces and crammed into a grim four-mile stretch of road.
Shortly after our family moved to Columbus in 1971, I took driver’s ed. The part of the course where you actually drove a real car took place on Saturday mornings, with the driving instructor supervising and several students trading places behind the wheel. After I got picked up we always drove north to Sawmill Road. It was a country road then, with trees and unbroken farmland on both sides. About a mile up you would find Tuller’s Fruit Farm, a family farm and apple orchard with a rambling wooden store. We would stop there for a cup of cider and a glazed doughnut before continuing with our lessons.
Sawmill Road was a pleasant drive 40 years ago, and now it is a nightmare that you avoid unless you absolutely must go there. During the intervening years no one did anything to limit the wretched excess, and now the damage is irreparable.
The Ohioana Book Festival is free, easy to reach, and open to the public. Parking is free, too.
It’s like old times — or, at least, it’s like the run-up to the 2012 election, when the President and Mitt Romney and Joe Biden and Paul Ryan and their minions seemingly were somewhere in Ohio every day. Since then, Ohio has dropped off the political map a bit, and that is fine by me. It’s been nice to return to our daily lives and get to the point where a visit by the President is once again a big deal, rather than a tiresome cause of another pre-election traffic snarl.
It was an exciting season for the Blue Jackets, and even non-hockey fans like me had to appreciate this team that wouldn’t quit and ended the season playing as well as anybody in the NHL. Still, I’m not much for moral victories. The fact remains that the CBJ didn’t quite play well enough to make the playoffs, and that is the bottom line.
This year, no one except the most ardent fan had any reason to expect anything different. The Blue Jackets had traded their best player, Rick Nash, and had a grab bag roster. But the team has jelled under the stewardship of coach Todd Richards and has a hot goaltender, Sergei Bobrovsky, who has instilled confidence in his teammates. To the delight of fans, the team has been terrific in April and has been especially good on its current west coast road trip, on which the Blue Jackets have won four out of five games. With 
