In the early 60s a local developer planned four large enclosed shopping malls around Columbus, Ohio: Eastland, Westland, Northland and Southland. The first 3 were built. They were later eclipsed by newer malls and have all since been torn down. Southland was never built. The south side of Columbus is the “wrong side of the tracks”. It was never wealthy. Urban sprawl and fancy homes and stores went north and east. The west side, the “hilltop”, etc. is it’s own story. The south side got the sewage plant. The south side got the landfill. I call the huge mountain of trash off 665 “Tell¹ Columbus”. Centuries from now archaeologists will be digging it up and wondering what god was worshiped with the plastic remnants of McDonald’s “happy meals” toys. The south side got the rendering plant. Road kill is brought in from all over the state and meets (meats, pun intended) it’s end there. The south side got the gravel mines. For a while it had the trash burning power-plant, nick-named the “cash burning power plant” because it was always breaking down and never generated the profit the grand urban planners dreamed of. I think the same people keep dreaming of light rail replacing cars. In days long gone the south side was home to the patent-medicine/miracle cure “Peruna”. There are reasons the FDA was created to temper false claims about “medicines”. The south side is home to the local horse racing track. There are elements of the rust belt. There is a closed steel plant somewhere down there, and they still make railroad car wheels.

Southern and Eastern Ohio are part of Appalachia.
When some people moving up from the Appalachian regions landed in Columbus, “the big city”, they thought they’d “made it” in some sense. The prime example of this was Bob Evans of restaurant fame. He was a pig farmer from southern Ohio. The original, long-time headquarters of Bob Evans restaurants was just across the street from the never-built Southland mall. I guess Bob thought he’d made it when he reached the poor side of Columbus.

My mother was from a farm south of Columbus. We eventually moved to the north side where I grew up. My friends were sons of college professors, laywers and engineers. You wouldn’t tend to find these people on the south side. I would not say the people I grew up around were wealthy, pretentious, high-society types … but I did have to deflect those charges at times (from someone who’s father was a doctor?). So maybe there was an element of truth.

I don’t think Mom was ever completely comfortable in that world. She always said that the people “down home” (around the farm where she grew up) where “real people”. The country singer Johnny Paycheck of “take this job and shove it” fame was from a town near there. The old friends we visited at the annual chicken supper at Dry Run United Methodist Church were unquestionably “real people”. For her, I think “real people” where people who worked hard, were honest, not pretentious, who respected others and who shared the same values.

Skyline Chili is my favorite restaurant. Yesterday, I had lunch at the Skyline that is right next to to the former Bob Evans headquarters. Looking out across south High Street at the failed southland mall, I felt somehow at home. I think I’m my mothers son. Give me the south side. Give me “real people”.

Footnotes

¹ In archaeology, a “tell” is an artificial mound formed by the accumulated debris and stratified layers of many successive settlements built on the same site over hundreds or thousands of years.