Recently, we took a road trip to Ohio with another couple. It was a good break from the winter doldrums. We stopped to see old friends, renew old memories and revisit old, familiar places.

Ohio seems like it will never end. There are places of beautiful rolling hills, but then there are the seemingly endless, flat plains of the great craton…the corn belt that spans across several states in the Midwest.

We drove for three days and never left the State of Ohio.

One of the rewards of seeing old friends is that it is easy. Though you may not have seen them for several years, you begin talking with them like you saw them just yesterday–no long introductions–just a continuing of old, decade-or-more-ago conversations.

The focus of discussion was usually over lunch or dinner. Meals for those three days became reunion events.

The end-point of our journey was Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. The couple we were traveling with had met and gone to college there. We put two of our kids through school there and now have a grandson attending the University. It was “old home week” for all of us.

Appropriately, you drive into Oxford on two-lane, back roads winding through the corn fields of Ohio. The old water tower in the middle of town is gone, but the shops, restaurants and bars are all where they used to be. You could almost walk blind-folded around the town. It was lot of years ago when I was last here, but everything was much the same as it used to be. The campus, itself, is beautiful.

The new, big thing at Miami this year was that, at the time, its basketball team had a team record of 31-1. That has to be close to a record for a Division 1 school in the whole country. But, because Miami has an enrollment of “only” 20,000 students (as opposed to Ohio State with 65,000,) there were still some questions as to whether the team would receive an invitation to the NCAA playoffs. It all ended well as Miami of Ohio finally received an invitation to the “big dance.”

I don’t think that you can fully understand America without experiencing a place like Ohio. Most towns are still small, as are the houses…small, “Cape Cod” looking houses of wood frame construction line most of the streets. Family businesses and metal shops abound…and all of this is encased in a sea of farmland that seems to go on forever.

I have always liked Ohio. For me, we in Chautauqua County are much more midwestern in our thinking than we are eastern. Our politics reflect that as do our combination of large and small manufacturing businesses that dominate our economy here. The only place we seem to be slipping, as compared to Ohio, is in the decline of agriculture–the dairy farms that used to dominate our landscape here are now pretty much gone.

But, back to Ohio–if you get bored with cabin fever, maybe it’s time to hop in the car and head for Ohio. It will help you reconnect with your roots!

Rolland Kidder is a Stow resident.