Mark J. Price: Can you identify this strange rock unearthed in Tallmadge?
How good are you at cracking codes?
Annette Miracle, 87, of Tallmadge, would like some help in identifying a strange rock she unearthed a couple of decades ago in her yard at Robin Ridge Condominiums.
More:Mark J. Price: What does this sign mean?
It was around 1999 when she discovered the stone while trying to plant sod near her condo. The shovel clanged on a hard object about a foot deep.
“When I hit it, I thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to get that out,’ ” she said.
She dug around the edges, loosened the dirt and pulled up a small, flat slab.
“I was surprised when I got it out,” Miracle said.
The white, irregularly shaped stone is about 10 inches tall, 15½ inches wide and 2½ inches thick. It weighs about 6 or 7 pounds. The surface is worn.
When she took a closer look, the rock appeared to have carved letters, so she cleaned off the dirt and found an inscription:
H - W
HIGH GRADE
XX
MA - 1551
What on earth does that mean?
“It certainly isn’t a grave marker,” she said.
She theorized that it’s an excavating stone. Maybe it’s a survey mark. A road construction sign?
Robin Ridge is northeast of the intersection of South Avenue (Route 91) and Eastwood Avenue behind the former Kmart. The condos were built in the mid-1990s, but the carved stone looks like it could be 100 years old.
Old maps at Akron-Summit County Public Library indicate that Cornelius A. Johnston (1842-1933), former officer of the Summit Mine Coal Co., owned a 93-acre farm on the Tallmadge site a century ago. Is the stone related to the mining industry?
Miracle placed the mysterious tablet near her back steps with some other flat rocks.
“I’m just using it for a steppingstone,” she said.
She’s often wondered about its original purpose.
We’re betting that someone will know. If you can help identify the inscription on the rock, please send an email to mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
“It’s gotta be something, but I don’t know what,” Miracle said.
Akron as a second language
We’re still receiving responses on whether it’s proper to live “on North Hill” or “in North Hill.” I say the former but I keep hearing the latter.
Bernadette Leigh said the column took her back to her freshman year at St. Vincent-St. Mary High School in Sister Bonita’s English class in 1980.
“She would say, ‘How do you “catch a bus“?’ and many other such idiomatic phrases,” Leigh recalled.
Leigh chuckled when she imagined how “on North Hill” might have sounded back then in the 80-year-old nun’s distinctive voice.
“She would be cheering you on for that article,” Leigh said. “In fact, I’m sure she is in heaven.”
Jane Schultz hails from New Jersey where “water” is pronounced “wooder,” but she’s noticed a curious speech pattern in Ohio: missing irregular verbs.
“The car needs washed.” “The roof needs fixed.”
She has a point. Those phrases sounded completely normal to me as a kid until the English teachers at North High straightened me out.
For those who don’t see anything wrong, it should be: “The car needs to be washed” or “The roof needs to be fixed.”
“I can only assume that Ohioans are Shakespearean by nature,” Schultz joked. “To be or not to be.”
Name that space
Stow resident Ed Arida, 68, smiled when he read our snarky item on Kent State University naming “spaces” in recognition of philanthropic gifts from deep-pocketed donors. I can’t afford to spare a few million dollars so my beloved spaces must remain nameless.
Like me, Arida and his wife, Marj, are proud alumni without a fortune to donate.
“After reading your article, I also would like a named space,” he wrote. “Since you are a highly respected journalist with ‘boatloads of clout’ at our shared alma mater, perhaps you could lobby for the both of us.”
He thinks an appropriate space would be “The Edward J. Arida Disciplinary Area for Dopey Undergrad Antics.”
“I, shamefully, did enough goofball things that almost any undesirable place on campus would work,” he noted.
It can go next to the “Mark J. Price Once Fell Asleep on This” Bench.
Get to the point
I’m sure you’ve read about that couple getting arrested at Cedar Point. Apparently they were having a little too much fun on the Giant Ferris Wheel. Police were not amused.
The giant wheel is 145 feet tall, so if they had hoped to join the Mile High Club, they fell about 5,135 feet short.
I guess they didn’t “see da point” in renting a motel room.
Mark J. Price can be reached at mprice@thebeaconjournal.com.
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This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: What is it? Can you identify carved rock dug up in Tallmadge?
