My father used to say, “We’re not snowed in. You’re snowed out.”
Everyone wants to be the last one in with a set of keys to keep everybody else out, you know? But the reason they’re coming here is because of those values, those relationships that develop and a community with a town square with shops and a courthouse. Hopefully new residents keep that same spirit and value system.
Certainly the maple festival has been around a long time, but I don’t think there was ever much maple syrup produced here. It’s mostly produced in the farms surrounding us.
My great-grandfather was a barber by trade. He got into undertaking full time in 1909.
My parking lot, right up on the hill, seems to get more snow than any other place in Chardon.
That’s how you can tell if someone is local. If they don’t remember where that big rock used to be, they’re not from here. You’re not considered a local until the last person who remembers you moving to town dies.
There are only like four places in the world that have our snow, true lake-effect snow.
Air comes across an open body of water, immediately goes into a high elevation, where it dumps.
I was asked once, “Wasn’t Chardon better when you were growing up in the ’50s?” My answer was, “Yeah. I could walk down Main Street, knew all the shops, knew everyone on the street.” But if you could have asked my father if Chardon wasn’t better when he was growing up, he would have said, “Oh yeah. You walk down Main Street and you know all the stores, know all the people; it was way better in the ’30s.” And then if you ask my grandfather in the teens if Chardon wasn’t a better place, he would have said the same thing.
My youngest son is graduating in 2010. His great-grandfather graduated in 1910. So that’s a hundred years of our family being in our schools, graduating from our town.
They trusted great-grandpa, then trusted grandpa, then trusted dad, trusted me and hopefully they’ll continue to trust my son as we go on. That feels good.
The guy who snowplows our place, my dad knew his dad and their dads before that.
