History Knox goes to Heritage Days at Malabar Farm on Sept. 26 & 27

LUCAS — Wish me luck, friends.

Ohio Heritage Days is coming up again at Malabar Farm State Park, on Sept. 27 and 27, and I will be once again selling and signing my historical books, as well as offering a bonus batch of miscellaneous Ohio history books in order to encourage interest in reading and history.

It’s painfully obvious that many people today — even some extremely powerful people — neither read nor know a damned thing about history. I can’t change the world, but I do try to influence my little corner of it.

But, frankly, last year just about did me in. Both days last September, the festival was saddled with the remnants of a tropical hurricane which turned Pleasant Valley into a giant mud pit. Foot traffic was way down, and my book sales were about half what they usually are.

If I get washed out a second year in a row, I will be exiting the book-selling business (and, by extension, the book writing business) and I’m not sure I won’t wash my hands of local history in general if it comes to that.

When you fund your book inventory out-of-pocket, and the cost of living keeps getting more and more vicious, something has to give.

But I do enjoy digging into history to share stories that might otherwise get lost in the dust of time. I have even come to feel like it’s one of the main reasons I was even put here on this strange and lovely planet.

So, I suppose that if the universe (and my readers!) want that activity to keep going, we’ll all have to find a way to keep the ball rolling. This year I will be debuting my latest book, The Maplehurst Murder, based on a 1905 Mount Vernon murder case.

You may have read about it here when I first researched it, but I assure you that I dug up much more for the deep dive in the book.

I had no idea when I started it that it would be story which would straddle history from the Civil War to the Great Depression, and stretch geographically all the way across the U.S. and Canada.

It just goes to show, even what appears to be a small story might conceal epic tragedy just beneath the surface. But that’s always the case with the stories that I put in book form.

I’m very proud of what happened one year when I gave a talk at the Cleo Redd Fisher Museum in Loudonville: After the 45-minute talk about Ceely Rose, one of the audience members came up to me and said, “So, why should I buy your book after you just spent nearly an hour telling me about it?”

I smiled at him and said, “Trust me.” The man came back the following year, when I returned to the CRF Museum for another talk.

“You weren’t kidding,” he said, “You didn’t cover half of what’s in that book in your talk.”

He has made sure to buy each new book since then.

For those of you who would like to hear about the new book, I will be appearing at the Knox County Historical Society at 825 Harcourt Road in Mount Vernon, on Wednesday, Oct. 7, at 7:30 p.m. to discuss and show pictures from The Maplehurst Murder.

The museum will have copies of the book on sale.

In the meantime, as I make my plan of attack for Heritage Days and the fickle early fall weather, let’s all hope for great conditions and a parade of people ready to read.

If you can, come see me at the festival, give me some feedback about the work I do, and buy some books or make a donation to my travel/research expenses.

There’s little money to be made in writing about local history, but a passion for it has gotten me through eight years of writing this column and writing five books closely related to it.

Ideally, I have a few more historical true crime cases waiting in the wings for a book-length treatment, including stories I’ve written about here.

Among them are: the fraternity hazing death of Stu Pierson in 1905 at Kenyon; the false confession of runaway Romy Cotell, who ended up an inmate assigned to the tuberculosis hospital in Mount Vernon; and then there’s always the disturbing crimes of Nellie’s notorious Cletus Reese.

It would also be nice to gather a “greatest hits” collection of History Knox columns in a book if we make it to 10 years, which isn’t that far off.

To do those things, we need to keep this ball rolling, despite the cost of gas and everything else these days.

If History Knox or my other projects have ever kept you entertained or edified, let me know, and let me sign a book for you at Heritage Days, Sept. 26 and 27, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at Malabar Farm State Park, 4050 Bromfield Road, Lucas.

Just as Malabar Farm was started to plant seeds of knowledge, we can join that mission, too.