Last brick street in Akron

Hometown photos by R. Dorman

Last brick street in Akron

Goodyear blimp building where some Corsairs were built during WW2

Fulton municipal airport in Akron named after "Shorty" Fulton. R.’s father picked him up at a prisoner of war camp on his 25th mission flying a B-17.

Akron is known for many things. 

I've played off its history in writing an alternate historical speculative fiction entitled Five Points Akropolis.

In Akron Alcoholics Anonymous had its beginning. Here’s the history of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Rubber was first vulcanized in Akron by Dr. Goodrich, Goodrich tire manufacturing helped establish Akron Ohio as the rubber capital of the world with many rubber companies throughout the city limits,—placing at number five on the Soviet bombing list. My family has an ancestral heritage of working in Goodrich. Akron became known as the capital of West Virginia, owing to migration from the hills and “hollers” of same.

My maternal grandfather came from there. We once took a trip through to the town nearest my grandfather's home area: Spencer West Virginia, out where he used to ice skate with bare feet... We were delighted to be among the hills and hollows.  He became an Akron police officer! There were labor riots in Akron and he told us that he—if he had to shoot—would've aimed for their legs. (I don't think he ever had to shoot.)

Akron is adjacent to the territory once in habited by the Erie Indian Nation, since called the Lost Nation owing to its slaughter and defeat by the western most Haudenosaunee tribes. Also known as the Iroquois Confederacy.

I lived in the alternate neighborhood of the parallel universe portrayed in Five Points Akropolis, often passing—on neighborhood visits—the historic farmhouse of John Brown the Evangelical abolitionist, who claimed God was with the abolitionists. A neighbor of General Simon Perkins, he was executed for his onslaught at Harpers Ferry (West) Virginia after a failed attempt raiding its Armory.

Here’s a MYTHPRINT review of Five Points Akropolis by my friend, Jennifer Grace. And here is a blurb:

“What is FIVE POINTS AKROPOLIS? An alternate future? An insecure past? Another present made of dense woodlands and waterways ... or of streets and buildings and crowds? Are its populations living beside one another in a welter of frequencies or wavelengths not generally experienced in Place and Time? A particular place called Five Points Akropolis. Three gangs of kids living on the same spot in different times, meeting up for the first time as Pluto descends.”

In Akron Sojourner Truth delivered her extemporaneous speech, “Ain't I A Woman?”

Her speech was delivered at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio, in 1851, and did not originally have a title.

Wikipedia