Notes from my Knapsack 12-11-24

Notes from my Knapsack 12-11-24
Jeff Gill

Walking tours gone by, and why that's okay (because it has to be)
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Joyce and I first came to Granville in December of 1989. We'd been told "you have to see the Christmas Candlelight Walking Tour."

They were right.

We fell in love, frankly, with the whole thing. The weather was perfect, cold with occasional flurries. We ended up by default going into the late lamented "Granville Life-Style Museum" of Hubert & Oese Robinson's house next door to the United Church of Granville, and I met Gloria Hoover for the first time. A few steps south was my first visit to the Old Academy Building and the rich history that's taken place inside those walls.

We heard a choir sing in what was then the First Baptist Church and I met Rev. George Williamson; we heard woodwinds play at St. Luke's Episcopal Church where I got to talking to Rev. Harry Sherman on the porch, leading to the most incredible long lunch of my life a few months later with him and his old friend Rev. Robert Farrar Capon, which is a story for another day.

We ate yum-yums at Aladdin's, shook hands with the new president of Denison University, Michele Tolela Myers, at Monomoy Place (with no idea Joyce would be working directly for the next president, Dale Knobel, fifteen years later, let alone retiring from Denison twenty years after that!), and we wandered amazed through the Avery-Downer House where I got to know Paul Goudy, and we agreed to meet later to discuss historical matters.

Up and down Broadway we strolled, music continuing at Centenary United Methodist, and handbells at First Presbyterian, where Joyce would be directing that group a year later. Gazing up at Swasey Chapel's spire, then just 65 years old (as opposed to its centennial this year!), we wondered about the Denison campus, which we were to come to know so well.

These were the days of Victoria's Parlour and Hare Hollow and Taylor Drug in the middle of the block where Village Coffee now does brisk business. There's more I wished I remembered that I've forgotten, but the overall sense of wonder and delight still is with me.

Obviously, much has changed. The house where Oese's kitchen and bedroom set were left undisturbed, clearly her hope and intention, is now a private residence and her collection and some funds (not enough to keep a stand-alone quirky museum running) resident with the Granville Historical Society, probably the best outcome for all concerned. I got to speak at Gloria's memorial celebration at the College Town House a few years ago, and we all talked about the many things that have changed in the village.

Today, the restaurant options range more widely than I think any of us might have imagined that night in 1989. The shopping is a bit different, and you might say the range is both more limited, and wider. There's stuff at CVS we didn't used to have, and there are curios and knick-knacks you can't find; The James Store I still hear women missing, though I regret never going inside myself.

For me, the marvels of the Granville Times Book Cellar will continue to be part of my subconscious. It's hard for me to walk into the 1828 Kussmaul Gallery building and not make a beeline for the stairs into the basement. So many finds still on my shelves, and conversations alongside the heavy-laden shelves.

All those layers of past uses and practices, helping to support the vivid reality of what we have now in downtown Granville: they're out of sight, but in no way out of mind.


Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's delighted to have preached in most of the churches mentioned in this reminiscence! Tell him what you recall that's now no more at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack77 on Threads or Bluesky.