2009 Shelby Ohio Bicycle Days Photos

Below is a collection of photos from yesterday's (July 11th, 2009) Shelby Ohio Bicycle Days parade. They were taken from the northern side of East Main Street at Wentz Avenue:

Shelby High School Marching Band

The Farm Tractor Brigade

Tiny Twirlettes

Tiny Twirlettes Marching
Llama Trot

Horse Riders and Cleanup Crew Close "Behind"

Candy Scavengers

King Midgets

It was an enjoyable Bicycle Days Parade, partly cloudy, breezy, not too warm. There was a good turn-out too.

Shelby Bicycle Days 2009

Shelby Bicycle Days is here!

For those who don't know, the Shelby Bicycle Days festival was combined with Shelby's 4th of July festival a few years ago, that's why the festival takes place on the 10th of July. Also, the date allows 4th of July travelers to return to Shelby and still enjoy the local festivities.

The 2009 Shelby Bicycle Days schedule is as follows:

Friday, July 10:

• 4-8pm: Log Cabin opens
• 4-10pm: Rides at Central Park
• 4-10pm: High School Avenue Food Concessions
• 4:30-10pm: Central Park Vendor exhibits
• 5-6pm: Band Stand music by the New Washington Band
• 6pm: Band Stand, Kiddie Royalty Crowning
• 6pm: Siegfried Park, Family Feud Softball Tournament
• 7-9pm: band music at Spiritual House
• 7-8:30pm: Skiles Field, Real Guitar Hero competition

Saturday, July 11:

• 7:30am: Central Gym, Whippet 5K Run registration
• 8:15am: High School Avenue, Whippet Fun Run
• 8:30am: High School Avenue, Whippet 5K Run
• 8:30am: Dr. Westbeld's Parking Lot, Cornhole registration & tournament
• 10am: Great Scot Parking Lot, Bike skills competition
• 12-5pm: Central Gym, TC 1st Annual 3-point shoot-out
• 12-11pm: Central Park rides
• 12-11pm: Food concessions open
• 12-8pm: Log Cabin opens
• 1pm: Parade preparation, Wentz Ave. & Grand Blvd.
  
• 2pm: Parade, Main Street, South Gamble, Tucker Avenue
• 2-5pm: Shelby Museum opens
• 3pm: Skiles Field, Real Guitar Hero finals
• 3:30pm: Band Stand, Shelby Help Line Ministries pie auction
• 4-10pm: Skiles Field, Christian music concert
• 7-9pm: High School Ave. & Main Street, Cloverleaf Square Dancers
• 10pm: FIREWORKS at SKILES FIELD!!

It should be a good time at this year's 4th of July and Bicycle Days Festival in Shelby, Ohio USA. Does it get any better than this for good, wholesome, hometown-small town fun? I don't think so.

I expect to be attending tomorrow's parade so later I'll post some photos. Looking forward to it! And it seems that this year, unlike in year's past, it should be a little cooler with highs in the mid-80s. On the downside, the Shelby weather forecast for tomorrow's festivities includes scattered thunderstorms. That's bad.

"When I was a boy," I too rode my little banana-seat coaster bike in Shelby's Bicycle Days Parade. It was carefully adorned with wheel-spoke noise-makers and handlebar streamers. Man, I could pop some wheelies on that thing. But proudly, if not reservedly, I displayed my bikemanship during this annual Shelby Parade under the hot summer sun. Inevitably, impatient and energetic youngsters would often crash into one another, sending adjacent kids tumbling to the asphalt - albeit at less than 1-mile per hour.

Shelby High School Visit

Last month I visited the Shelby Senior High School for the first time in probably 10 years. Wow. It's exactly the same as when I went there in the early 1980s and yet lots of details are very different. Of course, the architecture has remained the same since its building in, when, 1968??

I visited the High School for the annual Arts & Crafts fair which takes place every October in the Shelby High School basketball gymnasium and also in the YMCA gymnasium next door.


What I noticed immediately about the differences in the Shelby gymnasium is that it has a new scoreboard, new wall-art, and - the biggest change of all - the brand new bleachers! I don't know when they tore out all those long wooden planks but replaced them with short sections of red-or-gray fiberglass ones. That must have been a HUGE expense but it's good to know the high school, school board, boosters, or "other" take such pride in wanting the best for their kids.

The basketball bleachers were always an ominous mechanical mechanism. So many times I found myself sneaking around underneath with a little nervousness, not knowing WHEN the bleachers would be detracted, certainly slicing-and-dicing my body into an unrecognizable pile until the cleaning crew would find me after the next basketball game. At pep rallies we band members would sometimes drop our music, jackets, or even trombone slides into the unreachable depths below.

Same goes for the Shelby High School cafeteria. It was (and surely STILL IS) another location for all kinds of eating, flirting, food-fighting, and lots of other nonsense. The dining hall looks exactly the same, complete with trophy case and photos of past football & basketball team champions, top athletes, and academic overachievers. The only difference I could see are those cool-new cafeteria dining tables! They're still the fold-up/stand-up variety but they seem to have a plastic or fiberglass top as opposed to the old particle board we had. Also, the seats seem to be retractable, round plastic stools. We had the run-of-the-mill stackable chairs. I have to wonder how many children have fallen off of these new, round seats with only one leg.


I'd like to someday take a tour of the Shelby High School halls, visit some of my old classrooms, check out the empty locker rooms and weight room, and even look into the bathrooms. Surely they look tiny now. Almost all of my teachers have since retired except for one or two. Sometimes I'll run into the retired ones in the stores and shops around Shelby or Mansfield. It's always nice to see them.

Little MailMan Wannabe

In the weekday afternoons after lunch I'd often sit on the sofa back and gaze out the window to the end corner of our block. I'd wait and I'd wait. What was I waiting for?

THE MAILMAN! It doesn't take too much to impress or excite a 6 or 7 year old boy.

So there I was, looking through the tall, thick, double-hung windows just waiting for Mister X. I can't remember his name but I'm certain my mother made sure I addressed him as Mister Johnson or whatever it was and not to bother him in his duties.

As soon as I spied him between the houses, walking towards the corner of South Gamble Street and Earl Avenue, I'd shout to my mother, "I'm going to see the MailMan!" as I'd grab my coat off the hook next to the door and throw open the screen door with a BANG! Downhill I'd run to the corner, hoping to get to the mailbox before Mister Johnson.

When I was fast enough and meet at the mailbox, huffing and puffing, I'd greet Mister Johnson with a big smile. I remember he always wore the same mailman's uniform; black leather shoes, navy blue pants, navy blue jackets with lapels and gold buttons, navy blue billed hat with a kind of insignia in the middle, and always a white shirt and black tie. It must have been easy to do his laundy.

So I'd meet Mister Johnson at the mailbox and give him that big "Oh Please! Oh Please! Oh Please!" smile and he couldn't resist. He'd pull out this long chain from his deep pocket and at the end were was seemed like hundreds of keys. He'd fish out the appropriate key and hand it to me. I'd put it in the mailbox keyhole and turn gently and down would fall the metal door, exposing dozens of envelopes.

This was probably against his Mail Man rules but he let me anyway. He never did, however, let me touch the envelopes he's scoop out and put into his shoulder bag. I just stood and watched him work. When he was done, he'd let me lock the box up again, he'd give it a tug to be sure it was shut, then he'd take the key back.

I don't even remember if he ever knew me by name but I was the only boy who would meet him at that mailbox nearly everyday for those two years. When I didn't go outside because it was raining or snowing or I was tired, I'd watch him walk from house to house delivering envelopes to people's front porch mailboxes. In Shelby, nearly EVERYONE had/has a front porch as did we. I'd always think, "Wow. That must be the best job in the world. You get be outside everyday, talking to interesting people, walking at a relaxed pace, and you get to open all those cool mailboxes."

Again, it doesn't take much to impress a 6 or 7 year old boy in a small town - in 1971 or so. Now, it takes A LOT to impress a boy of the same age.

Shelby Ohio Blog Entry #1

Shelby, Ohio USA. This is small town, middle America where the streets are safe, the people are generally nice, the population of nearly 10,000 residents is almost 100% Caucasian, and living is easy and slow. Easy and Slow - that's JUST the way they like it. There are no traffic jams, you often see people you know on the street, the air is clear and clean, and they publish the names and addresses of traffic violators in the local newspaper - The Shelby Daily Globe - which is about 8 pages long. There's one high school and only a few elementary schools. The main street going through the town is called, you guessed it, MAIN STREET.

I grew up in Shelby, Ohio, Richland County, but wasn't born there. I was born about 45 miles away on the way to Cleveland, Ohio but we moved to Shelby when I was only a baby, around 1966.

We lived on Earl Avenue in Shelby and, for me, that was the best place on earth. Mom stayed home with my older sister and me until we were old enough to walk to school on our own. The walk to the Central Elementary School was only a few hundred yards away, in fact, so the location was perfect.


The house was near the corner of Earl Avenue and South Gamble Street (S.R. 61) the block was perfect to ride your bike - or "Big Wheel" - around and around and around the four sides, over uneven stone slab sidewalks, pushed up by large maple tree roots. But that didn't stop us neighborhood boys to race each other daily to see who could complete the circuit the quickest. I, being tall - and fast- for my age, won nearly every time, unless I was upset but a tree root, unloading mailman, or crashing with another racer while going around the corner.

Basic data of Shelby Ohio is listed below as stated on the Shelby Ohio WikiPedia page HERE.

As of the census of 2000, there were 9,821 people, 4,073 households, and 2,667 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,949.3 people per square mile (752.4/km²). There were 4,330 housing units at an average density of 859.4/sq mi (331.7/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 98.40% White, 0.14% African American, 0.18% Native American, 0.35% Asian, 0.37% from other races, and 0.56% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 1.02% of the population.

More Shelby Nostalgia to come!