'Look at Miss Ohio'

 

Berea, Ohio

     Doing my morning stretches — have to see how far we can push this rotator cuff repair — I called up Apple music on my iPhone where I'd left off last night, at Gillian Welch singing "Look at Miss Ohio." Usually I'd progress to the next song; instead I backtracked to the beginning:

Oh me oh my oh

Look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her ragtop down
She says "I wanna do right, but not right now"

     Not sure what the song is about, exactly, but the terminology seems to evoke the Ohio I remember, 
with beauty queens and tiaras, fun times and convertibles. I actually went out, once, with a high school classmate who had a 1965 Mustang convertible — her father's, I assume. I remember the car well; the date, not so much.
     I'm a sucker for Ohio songs, which are distinct from Cleveland songs, like Ian Hunter's "Cleveland Rocks," — pressed into service as the theme song for the Drew Carey show, with its joyful burst into downtown, though they, sadly, cheaped out when it came to paying rights for the vastly superior original. but hired an imitator.
     Starting with Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young's classic protest "Ohio," lately, like "Look at Miss Ohio," they are vaguer, less defined. The National's "Blood Buzz Ohio" has a weird freeform quality to it, but I like the grim, relentless tone.

I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees
I never married, but Ohio don't remember me

     Chrissie Hynde feels like she deserves a category of her own. 

      I went back to Ohio, but my city was gone
      There was no train station
      There was no downtown

     Cuyahoga is a Native-American word, the name of both the county Cleveland is in, and the river that runs through it. I never listened hard to R.E.M.'s "Cuyahoga" beyond its nostalgic tone. "This is where we walked/This is where we swam/Take a picture here/Take a souvenir." The line that touches me now, seeing that my home state has slid into Magaland, is "Let's put our heads together/And start a new country up."
     Of course, just being about Ohio isn't enough. Patty Griffin's "Ohio" is a droning dirge, not even the talents of Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant able to save it.
     There's only one way to end this. I wouldn't be here without Ohio State University, where my parents met in 1954. "The Buckeye Battle Cry" might not touch on the University of Michigan fight song, "Hail to the Victors Valiant," but it's the best we've got, and it'll have to do. "Our honor defend/We fight to the end." That sounds like a plan.