Going to the Ox Roast

In that great expanse of America located in what my liberal friends call fly-over country, somewhere in between New York City and Los Angeles, is the little town of Shiloh, Ohio. It is located about 20 miles northwest of Mansfield near the bustling towns of Plymouth, Willard, and Greenwich (pronounced Green Witch). About 10 miles up the pike is the town of Shenandoah (pronounced shawn-a-door), just a little ways from Celeryville. Population is about 850. It has a diner, a Methodist and Lutheran Church, a post office and a bank, and an historical society. My late father-in-law’s barber shop still has the barber pole outside even though the space is now occupied by a beautician. This is America.

I have never been one to ascribe some sort of special status or wisdom or insight to life to those who live in small towns, or any one else for that matter. On the other hand, I am not willing to dismiss them as country rubes and racist bumpkins who cling to their bibles and guns because they don’t understand the complexities of life. These are the folks who work hard and raise their families without ready access to many of the modern amenities a lot of us take for granted, and without the social ills that so many of us urban dwellers have come to fear. The folks from Shiloh represent America in the purist sense. I should know. My wife is from Shiloh, and she reminds me of her good common sense on a daily basis. We are the ones who look a little different to her, not the other way around. The phrase “what’s wrong with you people?” is one I have heard for going on 40 years now!!!!

Each year, the Shiloh Volunteer Fire Department sponsors an Ox Roast the last week of July. The population of the Shiloh jumps from 850 to about 10,000 as people flood into the town to enjoy this little slice of Americana. The firemen dig a deep pit on the outskirts of town, then stoke a fire in it for several days to get it hot enough. Then they load up the pit with 10,000 pounds of seasoned beef wrapped in individual packages of aluminum foil, and lets them cook for about 12 hours or longer. The pit yields a beef that is tasty and smoky, and sells for $3.00/sandwich. The event starts on Friday, but sandwiches are usually sold out about by late Saturday afternoon. At the beef stand you go to the left for a sandwich and drink. You go to the right if you want a sandwich and the "fixin’s" which means baked beans and lots and lots and lots of homemade pies…hundreds of them donated by the local citizenry. Just a stone’s throw from the beef tent you can get locally grown roasted corn on the cob dipped in a bucket of butter. Live dangerously, and use lots of salt.

On one side of the street is a mammoth tent for bingo frequented mostly by the ladies. Across the street and next to the railroad tracks that run through town is the Amvets Hall…where you can sit outside with your beer on a hot night and watch the trains go by. Across the tracks is where they have specialty events like the tractor pull. And at 7:00 on Saturday night the town fills up with people to watch a parade that lasts over an hour with entries coming from as far away as Cincy and Toledo. People actually line up beginning around noon in order to get a good spot in the shade with a clear field of vision. By 7:00, both side of the streets are filled with people out for an evening’s entertainment of the Plymouth High School band and tractors on parade.

I hadn’t been to the Ox Roast since before my father-in-law died over 15 years ago. This year was special. My 82 year old mother-in-law, a life-long resident of Shiloh, was named Queen of the Ox Roast. They put a crown on her head, sat her in a convertible to ride in the parade, and for an evening she was Shiloh royalty, Queen Bonnie. We had to be there to share the moment and the tribute to a family that has,over the years, contributed much to the good of the town. 

Not much had changed since the last time we went down to the event. They moved the beef stand across the street. But my wife said that her Auntie Helen usually worked the home made pie table, and sure enough, there she was selling slices of ground cherry pie for a buck (ground cherries are really teeny tiny tomatoes, and make a great pie!). And what was really nice was the street was crowded in the middle of the afternoon. Folks were coming out to chat and talk and reminisce and talk some more about politics and corn.

I don’t know when and if we will ever get back to another ox roast. It will seem anticlimactic after the special excitement of this year. But I can tell you that yesterday’s nostalgia is today’s reality in Shiloh, and I think it will be that way for many years to come.