Headhunter pitched another one at me today.
In Marietta, Ohio. Looks like a small town in SE, Ohio.
So what’s it like? Is it part of a larger urban area or what?
Marietta, Ohio. No, it’s not really part of large urban area at all; there are no large urban areas in southeastern Ohio. Marietta doesn’t strike me as a bad little town (I’ve driven through it once or twice), but if you’re definitely a city type of guy, it’s probably not where you’d want to live permanently.
It’s a very pretty town. It’s quite near Parkersburg, WV, but that really isn’t an ‘urban’ area as far as I’m concerned. (Although way more urban than where I live, for sure.)
Wish I could tell you more, but I’ve only driven through there a couple of times and never really visited.
I agree with Jessity that the town is quite lovely. And it’s also near a lot of parks, trails, etc., so it’s a good place to be if you like to hike and camp.
IIRC, good bluegrass bands come through Marietta pretty frequently in the summer. I’ve never actually been to a bluegrass concert or festival there, but I’ve seen flyers and posters advertising them.
I lived in southern Ohio for a while. The area is very pretty, lots of nature, local history, and that quaint small-town charm. If you’re into that sort of thing, you’d probably like Marietta a lot.
But be aware that it’s a good long way to the next big city, so if you’re into the conveniences and amenities of city life, Marietta might not be quite the place.
Rust Belt relic. Think down-scale Wheeling, WV.
Actually, I think it’s much nicer than Wheeling.
Marietta is about 30 minutes south of where I live in West Virginia. It’s a nice smallish town with a fantastic downtown area that offers wonderful antique stores (think about four city blocks with stores on each side), unique boutiques from ladies’ clothing to fine chocolates, and a nice college with a beautiful campus. The town is bordered on the east by the Ohio River and the waterfront is designed with aesthetics in mind: sculptured hedges, riverside parks, fountains, and a boat landing.
Marietta has a sternwheeler festival every year in the summer which draws a large crowd and lends a festival-like atmosphere. The town also has a spectacular Fourth of July event and a Zydeco blues festival every year. The Blennerhassett Hotel is one of the city landmarks, which dot the downtown area.
I’ve heard the schools are top-notch in Marietta, but couldn’t say from personal experience.
The town is directly west of Williamstown, W.Va. which is another nice (albeit smaller) town with a great (for W.Va.) Italian restaurant. And, Marietta is about 15 minutes northwest of Parkersburg which has boomed in the last 10 years and is quickly outgrowing its boundaries. Parkersburg is larger than Marietta and offers more shopping, dining choices, schools and such.
From Marietta, you are about two hours (give or take 30 minutes, depending on traffic, road conditions, weather, etc) from Columbus, Charleston (W.Va.), Morgantown (W.Va.). Cincinnati is a little further IIRC.
If you have a free weekend, I’d recommend a trip to Marietta to scope it out for yourself. It’s a nice town, but you may want something a little larger, less personal than Marietta.
Aaaaauuuuuuugggghhhhhhhh!
I hit “Submit” too soon. I should have written “Lafayette Hotel” instead of Blennerhassett.
Hear that whooshing sound? That’s my W.Va. History teacher rolling in her grave.:smack:
I lived there when I was 3 or 4, which doesn’t make me much of an expert, but it did form some very fond early memories of white snow and cherry trees, hills and skating on frozen ponds. My mother used to pull me on a sled when she walked to the store.
My brother-in-law went to college there and had some good experiences rock climbing in the hills and such.
This thing is heating up. The publisher came back from a vacation early to speak with me today at 4PM.
Now I’m all nervous about leaving DC.
Well good luck to you if this is something you really want. 
And that’s the issue, isn’t it? I’d be knocking things over in the hope for better.
“Now tell me about Marietta, OH”
Well, I can tell you about something that happened there . . .
Back in the bad old days (we’re talking late 70’s here) I went there to visit a friend who was going to Marietta College. Being about 21,000 miles from the nearest hint of civilization, and sure that even the students of Jane Goodall hadn’t set up any observation posts nearby, we were forced to avail ourselves of the local tribal customs. Marietta, it seems, is right about smack on the West Virginia border, right about where the Muskingum meets the Ohio. In other words, if either God or the federal government ever knew this place existed they had long ago suppressed the memory so deeply that even their therapists and a fistful of Thorazine couldn’t tease it out of them.
After crossing the mighty Ohio into unchartable territory, my friend basically ordered me to keep the engine running while he wandered up a hill. It needs to be noted here that everything in West Virginia is uphill from wherever you are. Even after you come back down, wherever you want to go is uphill from there. The Ohio River is psychological sea level, for all practical purposes, and seems to be uphill from Marietta. Anyway, just to spite every single stereotype lodged in my mind he came back to the car with a one quart mason jar filled with genuine white lightning. Either that or he captured a series of small woodland creatures with bladder problems and Sterno addictions. From the taste, it was impossible to tell.
After that my memory is a little spotty.
Sometime well after midnight I recall meeting a number of people on top of an iron railroad truss bridge over the Ohio River, and debating who should move forward, who should back up, and who was such an asshole that they should be pushed off. I have a vague recollection of a policeman giving us various ultimatums over a bullhorn, then giving up in frustration and going home, and I remember small snippets of what was, at the time, a simply brilliant argument about how the water below was both a huge safety net and the reflection of the will of the collective consciousness, flowing, inexorably, to the sea. The town of Marietta was to our right, uphill, West Virginia was to our left, uphill, the planet Jupiter was above, uphill, and the Ohio River was below, also uphill, and to be honest they all looked pretty much the same. So, being young, drunk, stupid (See also: young), drunk (See also: stupid), and young (See also: drunk), we decided that fighting the crowd across what seemed to be ten miles of 24 inch wide girders of unreliable slopes to get back off the bridge was pointless and unneccesarily wasteful of a hard earned drunk. So we jumped.
What I wanted to tell you about Marietta is that, even though the only thing you can do there for fun is get drunk on possum piss and jump off a bridge, don’t do it. It hurts a whole lot, and they have a crummy hospital that only serves lime Jello and condescending lectures.
Gairloch
Let’s give him a big hand everyone! That was brilliant.
But I’m glad I’m a smart adult now. That reminded me of my adventures at Frostburg State in the 80s.
My ‘informal’ talk with them yesterday turned into an hour (oh my cell phone charges!).
Now they’re all coming into the office on Friday so I can meet with them. I’m probably driving but they’re seeing if they can arrange a plane to pick me up.
How 'bout them apples?