toledoblade.com --

ON A recent Sunday, I opened my eyes to the world around me and learned a few lessons.

The day started by listening to a conference speaker named John Francis. He was the final speaker at a Rotary district conference held at Maumee Bay State Park.

Some 30 years ago, feeling there was an environmental crisis, Mr. Francis decided to give up cars and walk everywhere to draw attention to his cause. But he did more. He felt himself to be too much of a talker, so he decided to "shut up" for 17 years and listen, and observe. He is now walking across America in the name of world peace.

His comments made an impression.

We left the conference around noon and headed out State Rt. 2, which when heading east, turns into Jerusalem Road. We passed Tri-County Tire on the left, a little later Diamond's Gentlemen's Club on the right, and then came upon Bench's, which is a farm market and greenhouse.

This is where my wife, the gardener, wanted to spend an hour or more, checking out Bench Farms' selection of hard-to-find plants, including its scented geraniums.

Having some time to kill, I decided to take Mr. Francis' advice and see what there was to observe in a part of Ohio that was only a stone's throw from Toledo, but rural in nature.

Quick snapshots.

I continued to drive east and after a few miles came to a building at Jerusalem and Teachout roads that caused me to laugh. Around its cornice were the words, "SCREAM! 'TIL DAD STOPS THE CAR." It was DJ's, a Dairy Queen kind of place with a country feel serving malts, sundaes, and ice cream cones.

Not far beyond DJ's, I saw a sign for Bono Baptist Church and turned right down Main Street. The church sign said it had Thursday Bible Study, and morning and evening service on Sunday. There were a lot of pickups outside the plain and small white steepled structure and the pews were nearly full.

I was told by a local that Bono had seven or eight named streets and about 70 to 100 people living in it, many of them "older folks." It used to be called Shepherdville, but an Italian fisherman named Bono brought friends and family to settle there many decades ago, and the town name got changed. A few houses, the church, and one tavern is about all there is in Bono.

Leaving Bono I saw some boats that appeared to be sitting in a field, so I headed over that way. Actually, the boats were in two channels off the Ward Canal about a mile from Lake Erie. There was dock space for some 100 or more boats in each channel.

The docks are owned by Meinke Marina East and the Cooley Canal Yacht Club.

The yacht club was founded in 1953 and was instrumental in getting the canal widened from 60 feet to 120 feet and seeing the construction by the Ohio Division of Natural Resources of a 420-foot riprap stone jetty that significantly reduced the possibility of flooding in the area. In the same location is Metzger Marsh, a coastal wetland wildlife resource, the restoration of which was completed in 1997.

A birder told me the area comprising McGee, Ottawa, and Metzger marshes is one of the "Top 10 Sites" in the U.S. to identify migratory birds. Warblers (25-plus varieties), sparrows, red-winged blackbirds, great blue herons, thrushes, tanagers, gulls, and terns are just some of the birds in this wetland preserve.

I climbed over the riprap onto the beach of Lake Erie and found 39 dead sheepshead. One was particularly big, three feet long and a good foot wide - could be a record! The gulls were feasting. A man fishing said some kind of bacteria killed them.

Heading back to Bench's, I stopped at Jack's Super Market. Originally it was a small convenient store with a butcher shop. It has expanded over the last four decades, by just getting longer. It is about 33 feet wide and 150 feet long and has an extensive selection of foodstuffs and fresh meat. Not far away was a small community with obviously French roots, with street names of Toulon, Bayonne, Marais, La Fontaine, and Bordeaux.

I pulled into a house auction where a man had recently died. All of his belongings were out on the lawn and being sold, along with his house, barn, and six acres with lake. He had the same stamp album I did as a boy in the early 1950s. Playboy magazines going way back, some unopened. Sea shells, tools, hi fi set, 33 1/3 rpm long-playing records, framed prints, easy chairs, kitchen utensils, bowling ball, and boxes and boxes.

Seeing his "stuff" caused me to think of the things we collect and never get rid of, either because we are lazy or can't bring ourselves to part with items that denote a fond period in our lives.

I had gone 19 miles in only an hour and 10 minutes. I thought of Mr. Francis and all that he must have seen when walking and being silent.

My little sojourn was capped when a snowy egret floated down from the sky and landed near a large turtle sitting on a stump in the Ward Canal along Jerusalem Road.

So, what I did was nothing startling, just observing slices of life.

The lesson for me is that if I just take some moments from time to time to look outward, to really absorb what is around me, my life is enriched.

Phineas Anderson is the retired Head of Maumee Valley Country Day School and president-elect of the Rotary Club of Toledo.

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