He probably wouldn’t admit it, but Joe Simons is rip-snortin’ history buff. If you look into those eyes you see a yearning nostalgia for the past. He has a remarkable appreciation for the good-ol’ things. A camera buff, one of his goals in life has been the building of an impressive photograph collection of those finer things in life-those things he and his wife thought were impressive or fascinating or they just plain liked. Being camera buffs they just naturally were compelled to constantly take pictures for their growing collection.

    After his wife passed several years ago, Joe retired, and devoted even more time to travel—usually within Ohio. He found that you don’t have to travel thousands of miles in order to find wonderful discoveries: Ohio has many a quaint-and-curious village and town. Judging by the volumes, I’d say his specialty is fire trucks. He has visited such little known hamlets as Devil’s Town, Climax, Henpeck Corner, No Name, River Stix, Tobasco, and a personal favorite: Knockemstiff (and yes, these are all real Ohio towns. Don’t believe me? Look them up on Google.). In each of these places he visit the village or town fire house. He sweet-talks them into opening the doors (if they can get them open) so that he can take photos of their apparatus.

    Before he ventures off somewhere he just picks an obscure point on the map, grabs his camera and equipment, hops in his pickup and off he goes. He has photos of some unusual finds (all very well documented, of course) including a steel-wheeled steamer and an early 1800s hand-pumper, and several of the former fire houses in Cincinnati. Judging by the number of fire truck albums (last count was at 20 or so) he has been a busy fellow. He can tell you where Ahrens Fox tested their apparatus. Joe has albums of fire apparatus catalogued by county—and any resident of Ohio knows that our state has many counties! One could easily spend an entire weekend going through his many fascinating albums.

    In addition to his love of historical fire service trucks and stations, he is also very fond of everything that is older—especially that which was well-built and enduring. Joe has albums on quaint wood-covered bridges;  disappearing downtown buildings; big locomotives; old-fashioned red cabooses; the geometric built-to-last-forever iron bridges; those little one-room school houses; quiet and probably historic, old churches; farmer-built log cabins; and if you can find them: the forgotten canal locks. If it’s old, a product of craftsmanship and skill, he will probably take a liking to it and several pictures of it as well. Ask yourself: is it interesting? If so, chances are he has a photo album of it somewhere in his surprisingly well-organized home that has become a library of favorite things.

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