It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But not necessarily in that order.
When I first set foot in Ashland in 1997 to begin a 16-year stint covering government and crime beats, it was a different city. Where proud old buildings once stood side by side along downtown streets there were voids, like a gaping mouth with half its teeth missing.
Foundation fragments pocked the landscape like bomb craters — soon to be leveled and paved over for parking lots. For no apparent reason.
At the time, city and county officials conspired to relocate the police station, municipal court, county jail and sheriff’s office way the hell out on East Main Street.
The town’s iconic ma and pa restaurant, Nardini’s Confectionary, remained on Church Street — till the owners John and Peggy Edwards passed. Then echoes muffled by time were all that remained of the spirited conversation that played out daily in the booths and at the lunch counter. To this day the aftershock of John’s grumbling still registers on the Richter scale.
Otherwise, there wasn’t a whole lot left. A few core businesses remained: Home Hardware and Irwin’s Office Supply. Downtown banks changed ownership regularly, which didn’t inspire confidence among the notoriously frugal populace.
Other than that, a few sleepy bars functioned as halfway houses for the county jail. They might as well have posted signs advising patrons they could expect to be served beer, booze and citations for disorderly conduct by intoxication.
Even the liquor store abandoned its downtown digs. Longbrake Carry Out pulled up stakes and moved to the northeast corner of the city.
Among businesses that remained were a furniture store and law offices. Lots of law offices. Which prompted one municipal court clerk to remark, “Downtown Ashland’s a great place to shop — if you’re in the market for a sofa or a divorce.”
In the early days of my watch, local officials and business leaders undertook a downtown beautification project dubbed Streetscape. It was met with a fair measure of criticism.
Understandably so. Why gussy up downtown when the city and county were moving key offices out to the eastern reaches of town?
Fast forward to March 2026. The folks here at Ashland Source convinced me that Ashland still had a few stories to be told. And who better to tell them than some old fart who worked as a beat reporter way back when?
It’s a tall order since I’d been semi-retired for 13 years. But a calling’s a calling. I can’t not write.
When I returned to Ashland to start making contacts — old and new — I found myself in a different place.
In 1997 downtown parking spaces weren’t hard to come by. They are now. I find myself parking blocks away from where I need to be. Out of habit, I sometimes park in front of what had been the Times-Gazette building.
It feels good to get out and pound the pavement again — like all those years on my daily rounds. Often to the displeasure of certain people in management who deluded themselves that a beat could be covered by telephone.
New businesses occupy Ashland’s old storefronts and vacated law offices. The voids that generations of neglect opened up between the city’s stately old buildings have been filled with inviting little parks and, of great importance to us older folks with compromised bladders, public restrooms.
What hasn’t changed are the people, people with stories to tell. Old stories. New stories. All are worth telling.
I can almost hear John Edwards barking, “What are you waiting for? Get your ass out there and have at it.”
