American Sign Museum and Grand Finale Day Trip

Thursday, June 28, 25 or us took a leisurely trip down to the Camp Washington area of Cincinnati. We visited the newly opened American Sign Museum. Of course many of you remember that we visited the museum a couple of years ago. However, they just opened in a new location of their with very nice facilities. They have many more exhibits and also feature an operating Neon Sign Shop in the back. Tod Swormstedt the founder of this museum was kind enough to give us a very good tour.

Some of the oldest signs are over 100 years old with newer ones being from the 50s & 60s. I enjoy the neon signs and learned that not all of these really use neon gas. The gas is what give the color and other gases can be used for different colors. Colored glass tubes are also used. Of course not all of the signs are neon. Many are bulbs, back lighted or even just hand painted.

I think my favorite area of the museum was the store front areas. These were made to look like actual store fronts with signs that you would see on the stores or inside. One store was an actual disassembled storefront that was brought into the museum and reconstructed.

After Tod finished explaining the signs to us they took us into the working Neon Shop where two of the employees were making and repairing neon signs. They actually did part of a project with us and talked us through the process. This was extremely informative and interesting.

I received nothing but rave comments about this part of the trip. If you are interested in visiting this museum on your own or with a group, check out their website American Sign Museum. NOTE: Be sure to go to the new location. This site still lists the old address!

Following the Sign Museum tour, we advance back up I-75 to Glendale and the Grand Finale for our lunch. Lisa and I chose an abbreviated menu with several lunch selections and also dessert. Wow, everything was delicious. This place is noted for their romantic atmosphere and also their desserts (finale)! So, if you are looking for a great location for a special occasion, you will definitely want to consider the Grand Finale.

I think many of our Young at Heart came on this trip primarily to enjoy a good lunch at Grand Finale but in the end, everyone really enjoyed the museum tour, too, and were happy to have done both. I hope you enjoyed this little tour via the blog with us!

REMEMBER, YOU CAN EASILY SEE THE PHOTOS IN FULL SIZE BY DOUBLE CLICKING!

Young at Heart Luncheon Program–June 5, 2012

I think we had a very good luncheon program for everyone this month. It started with a couple of problems. We discovered that our planned speaker was going to be out of town that day so I had to do some juggling with the schedule and Stan Goode readily agreed to trade his original date and this worked very well for us. Also, this program is a week earlier than our normal second Tuesday of each month because Vacation Bible School is going to run the second week. That meant that some of our people had other things scheduled and we anticipated a lower than normal participation. Initially, our caller information confirmed this would be the case. Normally, we have a significant number of people not show after telling the callers that they planned to be here. This time our number of “no shows” was low and we had a good number of people show up who had not responded. So, the end result is that we had more people than anticipated. They were rewarded with a very good program and meal.

Grace Averitt played the grand piano as our musical prelude while people had a chance to visit prior to our program.

You can hear Grace’s Piano Prelude HERE.

Following this piano music, I opened the program with a few jokes and acknowledged Birthdays and Anniversaries. Then, we had a very nice musical solo by Christina Comer.

You can hear her solo, HERE.

Of course, our primary program included being entertained by “Stan the Magic Man”. Stan is a retired Sheriff’s Deputy and has been entertaining in programs like ours and with children for many years. He has a large number of tricks and illusions that he can do and I’ve never seen him do the same ones in the three years that he has been performing for us.

 

Stan talked about the church above being empty but we found people from all over the world just as we learned when we were children, “Jesus Loves the Children - Red and Yellow, Black, and White; they are Precious in HIS Sight!”

Stan fooled with our minds on the rabbit trick and let something slip, so that we “thought” we knew the secret. Of course we were wrong and this didn’t turn out the way we thought.

Stan’s mother, Doris Goode, is one of our regular members. It is always good to see her but I know it is special for her to see her own son perform.

Following Stan’s performance, I did a short talk about Fathers and our Heavenly Father. You can hear what I had to say, HERE.

Next month, we are going to do something very different. You will not want to miss our July 10th program. I won’t tell what it is but will say that we’ve never had this kind of program before. It will definitely be something to tell your children and grandkids about. If you miss the July program, you won’t have any “Bragging Rights”.    Bring your cameras, and enjoy our “Mystery Program” on July 10!

We will also plan some special music.

Next, I hope to cover our Day Trip to the American Sign Museum in Cincinnati and to the Grand Finale Restaurant.