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…my ongoing attempt to be as cynically witty as Ambrose Bierce…

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Ohio is a mysterious place, full of haunted places and haunted people. The southwestern edge of the state rubs so close to the deep south that a harsh twinge of it can be felt and heard in the people who live there; and the northeastern corner is seasoned with a pinch of east-coast brashness toned down only by the Midwestern wholesomeness that permeates the entire state.

There is natural beauty as well as barren industrial sadness, and the typical native Buckeye is a person with one foot firmly in the past and one reluctantly in the present. Rod Serling was a Buckeye; so was Ambrose Bierce. Both wrote eerie tales of madness and despair.

I was born and raised in Ohio, and I left the state twice: once for the lure of California, the second time for the greenery of Oregon. But Ohio is and always will be a part of me: one cannot escape entirely from it. The small town feel of my childhood has left its imprint on me. When a cop rolls slowly past me in a parking lot, I wave politely. I respect authority. I am kind to strangers.

With every presidential election, Ohio is suddenly all over the news. It languishes in obscurity for the rest of the year. Nobody vacations in Ohio, and few voluntarily move there. I have always found it interesting that Ohio is heart-shaped, but also shaped (sort of) like a small version of the whole United States.

The Heart of it All. That’s the state motto, and in some ways it is right on the money. Ohio is located roughly five hundred miles in all directions from over fifty percent of the entire population of the United States. So, even if you’ve never been there, the odds are good that you live within five hundred miles of the state line.

Perhaps this explains the preponderance of famous Buckeyes. It seems that everyone who is anyone is from Ohio, or has at least done time there. Some of these Buckeyes have made their home state proud while others have stained its reputation.

It is also known as the “birthplace of aviation,” home to the Wright Brothers who were the first to fly. Wright-Patterson air force base sits near Dayton, supposedly housing the alien cadavers from the wreckage of The Roswell Incident of 1947. When I was in college, me and some of my stoner friends drove over there, high on weed, intent on sneaking in to have a look at Hangar-18. But we chickened out when a guard with an M-16 asked us our business when we reached the security checkpoint. We said that we were lost and he gave us directions back to the freeway. Note to future ufologists: you can’t just drive into Wright-Patterson and have a peek at Hangar-18—especially if you’re stoned.

Extra-terrestrial or not, Ohio is home to twenty-four verified space travelers. More astronauts come from Ohio than from any other state. Who knows the exact reason for this, but I think a lot of it might be the basic Midwestern dream of escape. A lot of small town boys and girls have dreams of going off to New York City or San Francisco. Maybe some of them just dream bigger.

Some of Ohio’s more famous astronauts include John Glenn, Neil Armstrong, James Lovell Jr., and Judith Resnick. Judith, unfortunately, was one of those who died in the infamous Challenger explosion of 1986.

Whatever the reason, there is a strong element of flight and space exploration in Ohio. NASA has a location in Cleveland, and is, perhaps, the only employment reason, barring a multi-million dollar NBA or NFL contract, that one would willingly move to that dying city. When Lebron James left Cleveland it made perfect sense to me. The guy grew up in Akron: cut him some slack. Like a million other young Ohioans before him, he too just wanted to see what else was out there in this great big country. But Clevelanders are fierce about loyalty, a strategy which never works. Just like being with an overly-jealous lover, when you feel too controlled, your natural instinct is to get far, far away.

Flight—literal or figurative—is something that Buckeyes have always done. Some go all the way to the moon, some just go to Miami, Florida.

If you’ve never driven the rural two-lane highways of Ohio, then you don’t really know the unique flavor of Midwestern loneliness. Indiana has it, but the roads are bumpier. Ohio’s back roads are smooth and narrow, and the houses are from another time. There are tall brick houses that stand in patches of nothingness set far from the road. One wonders who lives in them. Most of the land has been cleared for farming, but there are patches of dark woods that sit alone and look like they might house monsters.

And some of them do. Ohio produces a high percentage of our nation’s monsters. Some of them have never been found. The Cleveland Torso Murderer worked the banks of the Cuyahoga River during the 1930s and ’40s, killing the homeless men and women who camped along its shore. He was a gruesome fellow who cut his victims into neat little pieces. True, he is surely dead by now, but we still don’t know who he was and we likely never will.

Jeffery Dahmer is another guy that Ohio could do without. He lived in Akron, and killed his first victim there. Charles Manson grew up in Cincinnati. Matthew Hoffman, Ohio’s latest psycho-killer, stuffed his victims into a tree-trunk and kept a poor girl captive in his basement. Anthony Sewell, man of the hour before Hoffman showed up, did nasty things to prostitutes in the bad part of Cleveland.

This excessive number of serial killers who were either born or lived in Ohio has led some to speculate that the state does funny things to a person’s mind. I don’t agree entirely. My Grandpa spent his whole life in a boring Ohio town and he’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet (although I’ve never seen what he keeps in his crawlspace). And there are other states known for their tediousness. Texas and New Mexico, for example. These too are the kind of places one might go to shoot a horror film, particularly the kind involving isolated farmhouses. In all of these places, repression is the norm. Ohio is the kind of state that tries to keep its residents in their respective boxes, and this repression sometimes erupts in violent ways.

There was a hunter who drove the backroads of Ohio and killed other outdoorsmen. His modus operandi was simple. He would find an isolated area that he knew to be a favorite of hunters or anglers, and if he saw a truck or car parked there, he would stop. Then he would creep into the woods with his rifle and shoot the hunter or fisherman dead. Then he would drive back home and go about his quiet Ohio life.

I go back every once in a while. My sister still lives there, as do my mother, stepfather, and my grandpa. My father left in the 1980s. First to Madison, Wisconsin. Then to California. Like a lot of Midwesterners, he felt the strong call of the West. Now my Dad is dead, buried in Ohio. His mother wanted to bring him back there to be planted in the ground. I’d love to make some kind of sweet metaphor about how you can never get away, but what does it even matter. Bones are bones. Does it make a difference if they turn to dust in California, Florida, Spain, Portugal, or Ohio? My Dad is rotting away in the heart of it all, skin stretched back over clenched teeth, snow on the ground six feet above him, dead twiggy flowers blowing in the church-bell night.

Eight of our nation’s Presidents were born in the Buckeye State. Perhaps better than any other, William H. Taft embodies the spirit of both Ohio and America at large—large being the key word. Taft was obese before it became the national trend. He weighed roughly three hundred pounds: no small accomplishment in the days before Mickey D’s and Taco Bell.

Taft took a lot of grief from the press, who said that he was “no Teddy Roosevelt.” He lacked the flash and style of his predecessor. Critics panned him for lacking political acumen. What could be more “Ohio” than that? Only those Ohioans who leave young and dream big can escape the boring drone of the Midwest that lulls you into complacency. And those who do escape tend to go far in the other direction (think: Marilyn Manson).

You might think that I am against my home state, but I am not. I love Ohio. I can still smell the damp air from the deciduous woodlands; I can still see the water snakes weaving along over rocky creekbeds. There’s nothing like a simple Midwestern childhood. Ohio’s astronauts, presidents, serial killers, all of them shaped by the state that is shaped like a heart—and what is the heart but the source of all our joy and sorrow?