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| Ohio's 88 counties color coded according to health rankings |
Scioto County and
the “Portsmouth Boys”
The health rankings which the Health Policy Institute of Ohio, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, makes about Ohio's 88 counties, on the basis of available statistics (click
here), is probably about as comprehensive an evaluation of an
Ohio county’s overall health, or quality of life, as we can get. Ohio’s health
rankings, include a lot of categories. It
is based on statistics regarding, among other things—to list them
alphabetically—air quality, alcoholism, diabetes, drug use, exercise, health insurance, junk food, level of education, obesity, poverty, premature death, quality of drinking water, recreational
facilities, sexually transmitted diseases, single parent families, smoking, teen
pregnancy, unemployment, vehicular deaths, and violent crime. If it is not
complete, it covers a whole lot of things, because a whole lot of things affect the health of a
county.
Which Ohio county is first in
the most recent (2013) Health Policy Institute health rankings? Gauega, up in the northeast corner of
the state. (Just as Scioto is a native American word, meaning deer, Gauega is also a native American word, meaning raccoon.)
I had never heard of Gauega until I saw it ranked as the healthiest county in Ohio. In 2008, Forbes magazine rated Gauega the fourth
best county in which to raise a family, fourth not in Ohio but in all of America.
Which Ohio county is at the
bottom of the most recent health rankings? If you haven’t already heard, and
you’re from Scioto County, you might be able to guess which county is 88th. Yes, Scioto County. When
all the categories are averaged out, Scioto is at the bottom. Why? No one
factor could account for why. There are lots of factors—economic, cultural, ethnographic,
political— some of which go way back in time.
Scioto County’s economic
problems are profound, and the chronically depressed economy may be the most
important reason why it is at the bottom
of the health rankings. After the Second
World War, the development of the so-called global economy led to the wholesale migration of American industries
abroad, where the cost of labor and raw materials were much cheaper. The global
economy was the death knell for the industries in south-central Ohio,
particularly for the steel and shoe industries of Scioto Country. But the
cultural, ethnographic, and political factors worsened the county’s economic problems.
From my observations of almost a
quarter century residency, the culture in southern Ohio, usually called Appalachian,
is exclusionary rather than inclusionary, collusive rather than competitive. The
people tend to be independent but not especially industrious, to be creative and colorful but not particularly enterprising. Clayton Johnson was reportedly overheard to say the locals never learned how to use alarm clocks. The culture
of south-central Ohio tends to keep everything in the family, using the term family
in its broadest sense. That culture is distrustful
of outsiders, to new ideas and methods. It is, in the language of anthropology,
endogamous, which is the tendency to
marry within the group, as opposed to exogamous,
the tendency to marry outside the group. But “married,” sociologically speaking,
means keeping things within the group, not just the family, and not just women
but opportunities and advantages, and especially in the last half century, the
money and pork government provides to the poor and unemployed of Appalachia. If Grapes of Wrath dramatizes the
predicament of the Oakies in the Great Depression, Taps for Private Tussie (click here) does the same for Appalachians in the early
1940s, during the Second World War.
Portsmouth Boys
The “Portsmouth Boy,” to borrow
a term from Frank Lewis, is at the apex of the endogamous, if not incestuous, culture of Scioto County. Economically and
politically, rich, gray-haired Portsmouth Boys control Portsmouth, the county seat. Because of chronic depression, Scioto
County has been on the dole, directly and indirectly, for about a half century.
The Portsmouth Boys decide for what and to whom government money is distributed.
The Marting Foundation is the most influential and notorious of the local
private organizations distributing government money.
The Scioto County Welcome Center
is the unofficial city hall created by and for the Portsmouth Boys with government money. I liken it to the social clubs that
the Mafia (who play poker instead of bingo) created in lower Manhattan (where I once
lived). The social clubs were fronts for rackets and for the laundering of
money derived from those rackets. The Scioto County Welcome Center laundered government money. Bob Huff was chief executive officer
of the Welcome Center, but he was not a Portsmouth Boy and he ended up being
the fall guy who was blamed when the racketeering
and the laundering of government money came to light.
On the day the new Grant Bridge was
opened in October 2006 (click here), after taking longer to build than the Golden Gate Bridge,
the cut-up Steve Hayes reported on WNXT that Bob Huff was outside giving
passing motorists the finger (a photo shows Huff waving, not giving the bird, as
if he was taking credit for the bridge). Bob Huff, not a Portsmouth Boy, was the one who ended up getting the finger
after which he got out of town, pending prosecution, assuming that ever happens.
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| Bob Huff waving, before he got the finger |
“He Who Pisses”
Instead of Scioto, an Indian
word meaning deer, a more appropriate native name for the county might be, Squunck, a native word for skunk. Squunck
means, literally “he who pisses,” which is what the former redneck mayor Jim
Kalb said I was not worthy of—not worthy of being pissed on. Our current black, philandering,
unelected mayor, the Rev. David Malone, is not much better. Both of them in
their parasitical careers, have declared bankruptcy, a fact that Frank Lewis,
of the Daily (except Mondays) Times (PDT), does not mention. Kalb and Malone are
just the kind of unsuccessful Portsmouth Boys, the kind of moral bankrupts,
that the rich Portsmouth Boys help get elected to public office. Kalb and
Malone, the dregs of the Portsmouth Boys, found in public office a refuge from
the shame and failure of their insignificant lives, failure being the unpardonable sin of American life. Kalb
would have long ago been fired from Kroger’s, where he was a lowly grocery
clerk, if it had not been for the protection provided by the Teamsters, the
union founded by a former Cincinnati Kroger
employee, Jimmy Hoffa. Kalb’s second wife at one time got a restraining order
against him. If only we could take out restraining orders against the rich Portsmouth Boys. That might at least
begin to improve the health, the quality
of life, in Scioto County.
The impassioned Austin Leedom’s has
denounced the most recent general manager of the PDT, Mike Messerly, as a tool
of the Portsmouth Boys. Since he is not a Portsmouth Boy himself, Messerly’s
job is no more secure than was that of any of his many predecessors. Although it is only a shadow of what it once was, the local
media, with Steve Hayes blatantly at WNXT and Frank Lewis more insinuatingly at
PDT, have been instrumental in helping the rich Portsmouth Boys remain in control of the county and city. The consequence
of the rich Portsmouth Boys remaining in control is that Scioto
County will remain 88th, at the bottom of Ohio’s health rankings and we will
continue to live in Skunk Holler. The county map above, with the color coding,
shows that most of the bottom tier of the counties are concentrated in south-central
Ohio, with Scioto (abbreviated SC) at the bottom of the map and in the rankings (see below), suggesting what
part of the human anatomy it is analogous to. In Scioto County we are married
not to the Mob but to the Portsmouth Boys.
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| Ohio County Health Ranking |
