Out of the Frying Pan

A Question for You

Here is a little something to think about: What is in your own back yard?

As a kid I always seemed to look for things that most people around me never thought of looking for, things that other kids or even adults took for granted, didn’t think about, or never thought to ask. This story is again about my hometown in Ohio, but then again, it’s about something that many home towns once had, though most people now wouldn’t realize it.

Being the curious type, I found the location of my town’s “Bone Yard Hollow.” Never heard of a place like that? Your town may have one. Permit me to tell you about my town’s burial place for dead horses, mules, and other animals.

Located in the hollow were two slaughterhouses, owned and operated by a local butcher at the turn of the century. It was these two businesses that first used the hollow as a burying place for the bones of steers, heifers, calves, pigs, and yes... for horses.

During that era, there were at least a thousand horses in town. Streets were crowded with one- and two-horse delivery wagons. Some of the larger wagons of coal companies and wholesale firms had four horses. There were more hitching posts in town than there are parking meters today.

Each grocery store had a delivery wagon pulled by horses. There were milk wagons, coal wagons, water wagons, and band wagons. Moving companies used wagons and the brewer’s big horse pulled a wagon, making deliveries of kegs all over town. The ice plant had a whole fleet of horse-drawn wagons, even the baker made his deliveries driving a horse. Each drayman drove his own horses with his flat wagon and the garbage carts were horse-drawn as well. So were the fire trucks, funeral cabs, hearses, hacks, and patrol wagons. Every doctor owned a horse and buggy to visit the sick, and there were many other privately-owned horses in town. A young man could even rent a horse and buggy by the hour to take their best girl out on a Sunday afternoon drive.

This explains why a horse graveyard was necessary.

As a young boy, I was curious about where all these horses went, so I started asking questions. The older men in town (including my Uncle Hayes) provided me with answers.

Bone Yard Hollow was just east of the Kelly fairgrounds, in an area now known as Beachwood Park. More than fifty years ago, the city built a “pesthouse” there, a hospital for patients afflicted with infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. Later, the pesthouse was torn down to be replaced with the city incinerator. That, too, was abandoned years ago, and the grounds were made into a park.

No one seems to wonder why the grass is so lush and green in that park.

If you were to park your car at the Big Boy drive-in on Campbell Drive, which was once known as Old Oz Road, you’d be right where the gates uses to be, to the place once known as Bone Yard Hollow.

So - here is a little something to think about: What is in your own back yard?