Tales of Burton, Ohio

Burton, Ohio is an unique and somewhat odd place that once upon a time I co-created a website and co-wrote a book about. Not Twin Peaks odd, but different than most of us are use to.

Several years back I was called by their local library and historical society to come out for an interview for a project after a long time resident of the town had passed away and left a nice chunk of money to be used to further saving the history of Burton. Or at least the wording was somewhat close to that.

It's an interesting place if you feel like stepping back a couple decades into the past as I'm pretty sure there wasn’t a building in their downtown that had been built before the 1940s. My kind of place really, except I cant remember seeing a single tavern.

A week or so after the interview I got a call from their town librarian offering me the job but expressing her concern I couldn't provide the amount of hours they needed on the project. Which I couldn't as it wasn't the only project I had going on. She asked me how I would feel if I hired a second person to work with me. When they mentioned the name of the only other interviewee they had considered hiring I realized I had met the guy briefly in the past and liked him. It was pretty lucky really as I now work with him daily and have co-authored two books with him.

I remember our tour of the town as if it was yesterday-really, not a cliche as it was that much fun. The tour was essentially walking around the town square for an hour being shown the “points of interest”. The highpoint for me was when our tour guide tried to give us some advice on where we could go for lunch. The three or four American Diners on the square were pointed out to us, and we were told if we wanted something “exotic” there was a Chinese restaurant about a mile out of town. Don't know what they would have done if someone tried to open a Thai restaurant in town.

At first I was also really thrown by Century Village. Billed as an authentic representation of a Western Reserve Village from 1798 to the end of the 19^th century, it at first seemed to me as an odd mashup of houses from 1798 and 1892 right next to each other as if that's where they were built, when they so clearly weren't. And if they didn't have a blacksmith shop then they built something to look like an old blacksmith shop. Over time I began to see the historical value of the village, but at first......

It all turned out well as I think Thomas and I did a great job on the website and book, but that's a post for another day.