Ohio with Attitude

For the uninitiated, it's easier to describe what Ohio isn't than what it is. There isn't an accent, other than the measured Midwestern enunciation of national news anchors. The state lacks the East Coast's pretension and the West Coast's self-absorption. No one prattles on about Ohio attitude, and rarely do you hear a news story about the latest Ohio fad. A lot of Ohioans seem to move to California, which may explain why TV characters are always from here, or live here, or have family here. The state honors tradition but lacks the South's reverence for it. We aren't known for peaches or jambalaya. We don't eat grits, lox, or lutefisk. We haven't inspired any entrees at Applebee's.

And here's the thing: I'm not really from Ohio. I don't even have family here, and upon arriving, I couldn't claim so much as a friend of a friend anywhere in the state. None of this, however, has prevented me from discovering and enjoying its true character. The state and its people are accessible; they just aren't vociferous. Those who see Ohio as a tabula rasa haven't done enough looking. If they did, they'd find a rich, colorful, and sometimes contradictory culture that can't be adequately summarized on a restaurant menu or in sitcom banter.

The Space Between the Notes

When I drive around Ohio, the first thing that strikes me is its small-town feel, and not just in the country. There are no metropolises here, only cities. Columbus, despite being the capital and largest city, delights in its Cowtown nickname, and Ohio in general has a down-to-earth attitude that's all the more remarkable because of its large population, industrialization, and (ahem) urban sprawl. The breakdown helps: There's no New York or Chicago to dominate an entire corner of the state with turnpikes and Starbucks. Instead most of its 11 million people dwell in or near seven prudently spaced cities: Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton, and Toledo.

Much of the small-town charm stems from architecture, a veritable buffet of styles from the eastern United States: Cape Cod, plantation-style, Federal, Greek and Gothic Revival, Victorian, post-Victorian, and modernist, including a half dozen Frank Lloyd Wright-designed homes. Ohio ranks third in the number of sites on the National Register of Historic Places. Many towns have taken steps to preserve and restore their treasures, especially in northeastern and southern Ohio. Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, just north of downtown, has one of the largest and most impressive collections of Italianate architecture in the country, and more and more housing developers are seeing the potential here.

Gateway to the Midwest

Ohio's architectural variety makes sense when you consider the region's helter-skelter pattern of settlement. Gateway to the Midwest but just eastern enough, the state bridges the vital gap between Lake Erie and the Ohio River, the two key entry points for pioneers who stormed in from all over the East Coast. Early settlers generally were either Protestants migrating from New England or Virginia, or they were German - Quakers, Mennonites, Moravians and Amish. (The state still has the largest Amish population in the world, centered around Berlin, near Canton.)

Ohio soon became a crucial crossroads for trade as well as a land of bounty for agriculture. Glaciers that pushed through the western two-thirds of the state during the last ice age created amazingly fertile plains and helped form the rivers that make much of Ohio so accessible. Settled in a popular trade center, Ohioans had plenty of contact with later pioneers moving west and with people from all regions who were passing through.

A Buffet of American Pie

With so many influences, Ohio is a healthy slice of Americana. What to do? With Ohio's bicentennial and the centennial of the Wright brothers' first flight in 2003, this summer's festivals and historical celebrations will give you plenty of options:

• # Bicentennial Wagon Train, a 150-mile, 10-county tour from June 23 through July 14 (www.ohio200.org)
• # Old Northwest Territory Primitive Rendezvous, in Lockington on June 28 and 29
• # Inventing Flight: The Centennial Celebration from July 3 through July 20 (www.inventingflight.org)
• # Ohio Bicentennial Tall Ships festival, held between July 9 and 13 in Cleveland and July 16 and 20 in Toledo (www.clevelandharborfest.com; www.tallshipstoledo.com)

Museums are nearly an official pastime in Ohio. The newest, the Lois and Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, has the art and architecture worlds buzzing. The New York Times has called it the most important building constructed since the end of the cold war. The architect Zaha Hadid created a bulging, precariously balanced urban masterpiece that will accelerate Cincinnati's downtown revitalization and bolster its already impressive array of arts offerings.

And in May the Cincinnati Art Museum opened the much-anticipated Cincinnati Wing, an airy, naturally lit showplace with 15 galleries dedicated to such noted hometown artists as Frank Duveneck and John Twachtman. With the Reds (America's first professional baseball team) now playing in their new Great American Ballpark, this is definitely Cincinnati's year to shine.

But any year, or any time of year, will do for an Ohio visit. Our kitsch and pop cultural artifacts rival anything on Route 66. Stop and gawk at the world's largest cuckoo clock (23 feet tall) in Wilmot or Fields of Corn, an art installation of 6-foot-tall concrete ears of corn near Dublin. Check out artist Claes Oldenburg's giant Free Stamp in Cleveland's Willard Park. Or take in the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Akron, the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in Columbus or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland.

Famous or not, the people here possess a quiet confidence, a clarity of purpose, a security in place. James Thurber, a Columbus native, wrote, "Half of my books could not have been written if it had not been for the city of my birth." A mix of East Coast esthetics and Midwestern values in Ohio has given rise to an astounding number of statesmen, industrialists and icons: eight presidents, Thomas Edison, John D. Rockefeller, B.F. Goodrich, Clarence Darrow, Orville and Wilbur Wright, Neil Armstrong, and John Glenn, for starters.

These are names people ordinarily remember from history books, the names of great Americans that transcend states. That, in the end, is Ohio's secret. It's a little bit of every state all rolled into one. Choose the arts, the history, the sports, or the kitsch, served up by people eager to prove that small-town is big-time. Just don't look for us at Applebee's anytime soon.

By Brad Crawford