- Hey, Akron Akronites, welcome to the year-six kickoff of "Around Akron With Blue Green."

I'm gonna visit the very first bed and breakfast in the city of Akron.

I head over Cuyahoga Falls and meet up with the friends of Keyser Park.

I'm gonna head over to Wadsworth and hang out with the band, Detention.

And then I'm gonna take a ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

Then to kick this show off today I'm here at the O'Neil Bed and Breakfast, an historical house that's been here for almost a hundred years.

Let's go see what this amazing place is all about.

(upbeat light jazz music) - The house was started in 1922, completed in 1923, for William and Grace O'Neil.

William O'Neil had this house built as a gift for his wife, and William O'Neil was the founder of General Tire, they lived here until 1971.

(light jazz music) The house was ultimately donated to the hospital, none of the children wanted the house, the hospital, I don't know what they did with it exactly, but eventually they put it up for sale and it was sold and then I was the next owner after that owner, and I bought it in 1990.

The house was, to me, in really terrific condition.

It had some major problems, but nothing awful like it had been vandalized or anything like that, it was really a beautiful old house that needed a little care.

I was an English teacher, I never thought I would be anything but an English teacher, but when I was deciding to retire from teaching, this came along and it was the house that made me want to make it into a bed and breakfast.

One of the really terrific points of this house was that the house has eight bedrooms.

Seven of the eight bedrooms have a private living room attached to them and all eight have a private bath attached to them.

I don't use all of them, I use four for the bed and breakfast, that's a very manageable number for me, but it's so nice to see how in their time they lived with their own private living room accommodation.

Oh, I had traveled to England, they had wonderful old houses as bed and breakfasts, and it just seemed like a fun endeavor.

Just took the opportunity when I saw what I had and created a new image for it.

(upbeat light jazz music) It was about a year after I moved in that we decided to make it a bed and breakfast.

I had to go through all of the, the departments of the city, because the city had never licensed a bed and breakfast and that whole process took almost a year.

I want the house to feel comfortable, I want it to feel as though people can relax and enjoy so it is a mix of antiques and new items put together just to make people feel good when they come in, so that the house has a really good feel, not a feel of being untouchable, or a feel of being old and tired, but very viable for today and enjoyable.

(upbeat light jazz music) The guests that I have come from all over the world.

I was absolutely amazed how many different reasons people from different parts of the country, or different parts of the world, how many different reasons they have for being in Akron.

And one of the fun ones is I am exactly halfway between New York and Chicago and so I get guests because I'm halfway, and it's a good, a nice drive.

(light upbeat jazz music) I find it really fascinating that the house is built on several different levels.

There are steps between rooms going up, going down.

And when you go outside it's almost like the exact same pattern that there are steps between each of the yards and each of the yards was designated for a particular use, the pond yard, the croquet yard.

(upbeat light jazz music) My goals in doing the bed and breakfast was to, to make sure that people who drive by here look at this and say, "That is a beautiful old home."

I never wanted people to drive by and say, "Oh look, that's one of the old houses made into a business."

There's no sign, there's nothing about the outside, or when you come in the inside, that looks like a business.

It looks like a home, it functions like a home, and people feel so good that it really just feels like a home.

(light upbeat jazz music) Cooking, cleaning, laundry, and ironing, It's like every day (laughing).

I have no intention of stopping, I love it.

The only thing that deters me is I keep getting older.

When you love what you do the time just flies.

- So maybe there's a piece of history in your neighborhood you would like to preserve as well.

To find out more about that I head over to Cuyahoga Falls and meet up with The Friends of Keyser Park and learn all about their efforts to save a historic 144-year old farm home, let's go see what they're all about.

(light guitar music) - My first memories of this place have been the many trips through Northampton that my family took when I was a child.

My great-grandparents were from this area and worked at the local school, just down the street.

My grandfather was a school bus driver and my great-grandparents lived in the farm across the street from Center School.

(light guitar music) The foundation was built back around 1836, 1840, somewhere in there, and it started out as a 1 1/2 story cabin.

Fast forward to 1877, the Best family was a well-known family in Northampton at the time and the house was then built by a well-known architect by the name of J.C. Johnson.

So the Best family is probably the first well-known family that resided in the farmhouse, as well as over lot 45, they ran a dairy farm.

And then it was around 1905 that the Keyser family moved from West Virginia to Northampton and purchased the farm house and the farm, and then began farming the land themselves.

(light guitar music) When Alva and Leona Keyser passed away in 1956, their daughter, Carrie Keyser-Swain took over the home and the land.

She and her husband did not farm the land they just rather enjoyed it during their time while they resided in the house.

And Carrie actually sold her home to the city, as well as donated many, many acres back around the early '90s and she passed away in 1995 and that is when things started to sort of change around here.

The house has never been lived in since the early '90s and has fallen into a state of pretty severe neglect since then.

(light guitar music) This house was slated to be demoed and that was first announced back in February of 2021, but really the story goes back many, many years to probably the late 2,000's when the Northampton Historical Society first made efforts to try and save the farm house.

It wasn't necessarily slated for demolition at the time, but it had sat vacant for over 20 years at that point and the historical society had made efforts trying to work with the city, as well as Cuyahoga Falls Parks and Rec Department, to try and save the farmhouse and repurpose it.

So that began around 2009.

(light guitar music) It starts, I think by community awareness, first and foremost, that was sort of how our grassroots effort began.

I sort of came in contact with like-minded people that had a similar interest in saving the farmhouse from demolition, and I would say that the first step would be community awareness, first and foremost.

From there, we then contacted the city and wanted to speak with not only Mayor Walters, but also the Parks and Rec Superintendent, Sara Kline.

because this is a city park we sort of needed to be in communication with not just the mayor, but also, you know, the park as well so they could be aware of our efforts.

And what we wanted to do was create a partnership so that Friends of Keyser-Swain Farmhouse, could work with the city and Parks and Rec in order to preserve the farmhouse and repurpose it.

(light guitar music) We actually created a pretty detailed plan that we presented to the city and sort of our vision for this park is to kind of tie-in the barn and the farmhouse, as well as this gorgeous property into being all one usable space.

We sort of see the farmhouse being repurposed into an adaptive reuse building.

even though it is smaller in scale, we could see it being used as a possible smaller rental facility alongside the barn and we think that repurposing the barn into an event center would be a great asset to the park because originally they wanted to tear down the farmhouse to build an event center in its place.

(light guitar music) So at this stage the city has agreed to not tear down the farmhouse, which is excellent, and that was what we wanted to see happen.

At this time they have stated that the farmhouse is going to be structurally stabilized and exterior renovations are going to take place simultaneously with improvements to Northampton Town Hall, which is also a historic building in its own right.

We are thrilled that the city has decided to save this incredibly historic piece of property, and we are on standby to assist in any way we possibly can and we hope to be a part of the process in the future.

- Next up I'm gonna head over to Wadsworth and hang out with the band, Detention.

Even though they're a group of teenagers they play everywhere from The Whiskey a Go Go all the way up to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, let's go see what, Detention's, all about.

(cymbals clanging) - I was in 7th grade when the band formed and now I'm a freshman in college.

- I was in 6th grade.

- I was in 5th grade.

- He was in 5th grade when he joined, so I was in, I was a freshman in high school at the time.

- So wait, if you were in 7th, I was in a like 4th, right, right?

- That would be correct.

- Yeah, math, I'm good at math.

(laughing) (clapping) ♪ Just gettin' thicker man all the time ♪ ♪ Other ways say you were in decline ♪ ♪ Will you calm down ♪ No ♪ Will you calm down ♪ No - Me and Luke had been playing music together for a really long time, like, so the PorchRokr Festival in Akron.

Both of our bands played in a row on the same porch and he needed a bass player so I ended up joining that band.

It lasted another about two years after that and when that broke up, we formed, Detention.

We got Elliott almost right away and then we had another guitar player, he wasn't the greatest fit, so about almost four years ago, Evan joined the band.

The band has been playing together for six years, this full lineup has been playing together for almost four.

♪ I'll be down with ♪ I'll be good and ready ♪ Good and ready, good and ready, good and ready, go ♪ ♪ Good and ready, good and ready ♪ - I got forced into playing piano when I was about three years old.

I hated it and I could not play so I stopped until like third grade.

I started again, I was also terrible at it, so my dad bought me a bass 'cause that's what he played and I've just been playing it since then.

- So my parents bought me like, just like a really cheap drum set for Christmas when I was like three and then I started playing it and then I started taking lessons when I was five, and yeah.

- And a yeah.

- [Luke] And yeah.

- I started singing with my dad at like family reunions when I was like really little and then like one of the biggest things that I started doing before the band was I've been playing PorchRokr every year, since it was a festival, was that 2013 when it first started, yeah, probably 2013, yeah, me and my dad did that together, just me and him, him playing guitar and me singing along before I joined the band and that was, I guess, one of the biggest things that like helped me enter the world of like performing and singing for an audience and stuff, so yeah.

- I started playing guitar when I was eight and I did this thing in Strongsville called, The School of Rock, and I did that for a few years and I stopped when I was about 11.

So like in the time that I, like after a few months after I stopped, when they invited me to join their band, and yeah that's about it.

I mean, my dad is super musically inclined, like not musically inclined, like he doesn't play anything, but music has always been around I feel like.

(bass plunking) - Definitely, that was probably the craziest weekend of my life, besides like maybe the festivals this summer, but at the time it was definitely the craziest, because we flew out like a Friday night, we went to The Black Keys show, they invited us to come hang out backstage and so we got to do that then the next morning we toured Devo's studio, hung out with them for a little bit then we went to our show at The Whiskey a Go Go and Pat Carney showed up, which was just like, that was insane.

♪ Doing okay ♪ So you're 56 minutes away ♪ So many (indistinct) - We played the Wonder Festivals this past summer, Wonderbus and WonderStruck , that was Columbus and Cleveland.

And at Wonderbus we played main stage before Kesha, who was the biggest act on the main stage, so we played on the same stage as Kesha, and a bunch of other super-awesome bands, that's like one of the top experiences personally.

Like as far as like venues and stuff go, I mean that, and like The Whiskey a Go Go have been like the craziest places that we've played, but like, oh yeah, we have, of course the, of course the Rock Hall, yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

(laughing) That wasn't crazy at all, yeah, we played the Rock Hall a couple of times, we played inside and outside.

(rock music) - We record as live as a full band and it's basically just like scratch guitar and vocals and then we go back and tweak the bass stuff and then I come in and do guitars and usually it's like layered guitars and stuff like that, and then she comes in and does the vocals once the instrumental track is basically done.

And then once the vocals are there we kind of add whatever we think it needs, basically.

♪ What do I have to do to get you on line ♪ ♪ I wish we could, but you won't answer any way ♪ - [Guy] I'm going to school for business so I can help run the band as a business.

- I've been in like a School for Visual Arts since I was young, but it's all like, a lot of it is all for like merch designs, album cover, all that, like all band graphics is like.

Everything right now is circling back to this.

In the future we want to release an album so we can start touring right away.

We just got booked for three more big festivals next summer that are not announced yet.

Yeah, just writing music and playing everywhere, like we just wanna, we just wanna play all the time, at least I wanna play all the time.

If there's anything that you guys, does anybody want to take the microphone?

- I would love to play all the time.

- All the time.

- We're writing lots of songs right now and it's really fun.

♪ (indistinct) ♪ So make it go - Now to wrap this show up today, I'm gonna take a ride on the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad all the way through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 26 miles north and then 26 miles south to learn about it's history and all the amazing things you're gonna see along the way.

Let's go see what the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad is all about.

(train bell dinging) - [Katelyn] When I first started I knew nothing about trains and I actually thought they were on a loop, that is not the case.

So, if you ever wondered how a train travels from downtown Akron to Independence, we actually have locomotives on both ends.

So going, for example, south to Akron, you'll have an engineer on the south end who will operate the train going south and then once he gets to Akron Northside, to head back north, he'll actually get out of the locomotive, go all the way down to the other locomotive, get in and operate the train going back to Cleveland in a different locomotive.

(upbeat orchestral music) The Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad actually runs 26 miles, downtown Akron to greater Cleveland and Independence, so our Rockside Station to our Akron Northside Station, is exactly 26 miles.

So through that you actually go through the Summit Metro Parks and then into the Cuyahoga Valley National Park and we're actually the only nonprofit railroad to run through a national park.

And along the way you'll see several different sites, such as Beaver Marsh, Indigo Lake, a lot of those recognizable sites that people know in Akron and Cleveland, and a lot of nature to take in.

(upbeat light music) - [Adam] We operate over trackage, which originally started as the Valley Railway in 1880, it then became part of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company, then that became the Chessie system, and then that became CSX, and now it's CVSR.

The Scenic Railroad was founded in 1972 as the Cuyahoga Valley Line, it became the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad in 1994.

We operate all diesel trains.

We bring in steam at least once a year, with our Steam in the Valley event.

We have a beautiful fleet of wonderful streamlined passenger cars from all over the country.

The one we're in now, the St. Lucie Sound, was built for the Florida East Coast Railway as a lounge car.

(light upbeat music) - [Katelyn] So many people don't know we are actually a 501 C3 nonprofit, so we highly rely on the generosity of our volunteers.

So one of the fun facts I always like to share, that most people don't know, is everyone you see on the train is actually a volunteer.

So from the engineer, to the conductor, to the train men you see, we actually have 1200 active volunteers who participate with us throughout the year, so CVSR is really powered by volunteers.

♪ Oh da, da, da, da - I volunteer because I love trains, but I also enjoy interacting with people.

In the background you hear kids crying, you hear kids laughing, you see so many people, like people making faces at me right now while I'm talking to you.

There's a group of people here, you meet new people every day, and every day is a different experience.

And if you volunteer, you could become an engineer on the train.

They'll teach you how to become an engineer through our volunteer program.

I don't wanna go that far, I'm just happy here talking to people.

(upbeat music) - There are no actual passenger cars on this line that were native to the Baltimore and Ohio, back in the day, they've come from all over the country.

The California Zephyr cars operated between Chicago, and LA, and San Francisco.

The St. Lucie, for example, it came from Florida and we have cars from the Pennsylvania Railroad, we have cars from the New York Central Railroad, they're just, they came from all over the place and they've been wonderfully restored.

Our locomotives, many of them came from Canada, actually, the ones we have on today are from America though.

It's really a very unique fleet and most of the cars were built by the Budd Company, which was one of the main competitors, the famous Pullman Company, you know, the Pullman Palace Car Company, they invented the sleeping cars, and dining cars, and passenger rail travel, as we know it, and the Budd Company, they excelled in streamlined-lightweight cars, like we're in now.

This is, you know, steel and aluminum, as opposed to all heavyweight steel so they were much lighter in construction, they were meant for the streamlined era and they had all the amenities you'd ever want.

You know, bars, dining accommodations, sleeping accommodations, they're just very luxurious cars.

(upbeat music with bells chiming) - [Katelyn] It might be October, but it's already Christmas here at the Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad.

For the last 27 years we've been doing a Christmas train and this will be our 28th year and we are thrilled because we are offering an all-new Christmas train program called, The North Pole Adventure.

So you can still expect a lot of the same Christmas festivities, such as singing Christmas carols, meeting elves aboard the train, cookies, hot cocoa.

We're still encouraging wearing pajamas so wear your matching pajamas, but a part of the program that I'm really excited to see is writing letters to Santa.

So this year we have a new character on board, called the North Pole Postmaster, and you actually will have the opportunity to write your letter to Santa aboard the train, and then he will come by, grab your letters, and you will see him once he gets to the North Pole, hand-deliver your letters to Santa to the North Pole Post Office.

(train rumbling on tracks) We're lucky because all our events they do well, the community has welcomed us back with open arms after opening up after COVID-19 and having to shut down, people are excited to be on the train so we're thrilled that people are coming out and supporting us and enjoying our rides.

(train whistle blowing) - Thank you for watching the 6th year kickoff of "Around Akron With Blue Green."

Now, if you have any questions, comments, you just wanna leave me a message, you can reach me at www.AroundAkronWithBlueGreen.co, or you can catch me on social media.

Thank you, and have an amazing day.

Hey, Akron Akronites, thank you for watching the season six, ah.

(sirens wailing) Police sounds.

Hey Akron Akronites welcome to the season, ah.

Which they've played all over the country from The Whiskey A Go Go, to the Hollywood rock and, ah.

Ba-da bup, ba-dup-bup, bup.

To learn more about that I head over to Cuyahoga Falls and meet up with the friends of Keyser perk, and learn, perk.

(upbeat digitized music)