jericho, ohio
Wayside Shrine Jericho
The Star Lite Motel SHadyside, Ohio
Marian Shrine
Bethelem W Va
The Cinderella Bridge
Fairy Onion Church,
Cleveland
Center Of The World, Ohio
Grotto Park, Jericho
St Paul's Church,
Jericho
The Road To Jericho:
Township Hwy 37
Hail In Ohio
'I had no idea what she was talking about until she dragged me out of the car and made me stand next to the town sign while she asked a passerby to take our photograph.'
'The long driveway was flanked by towering oak trees and led to a vast red-brick mansion surrounded in its entirety by a terrace built of smooth white stone.'
'Ethan gently took hold of my wrists and placed my hands on the base of the statue. I slowly felt my way around the rough stone, starting at the bottom with the folds of her robe and working my way up towards her head, standing on my tip-toes.'
‘That boyfriend of yours has set up a tent by the wayside shrine,’ said Deacon Joe. ‘Told me he was fixing to move in there for a spell.’
‘Ethan said that?’
‘He did, honey,’ said Ada.
‘Well, he does love camping,’ I said half-heartedly.'
'Mama described everything in detail: the huge floor-to-ceiling screen of gilded Russian icons that stretched across the entire front of the altar, the most enormous glass chandelier you could imagine, and dozens of stained-glass windows reflecting shafts of coloured light on to the tile floor. Not to mention the murals: there wasn’t a single patch of wall or ceiling that hadn’t been decorated with pictures from the gospels, so you felt like you were stepping right inside the Bible.'
'A fanciful construction of lacy arches and thirty-foot-tall wrought-iron spires that looked like something straight out of Disney.'
'It was long and low and looked like a thousand motels in a thousand towns across the Midwest. Most importantly, it looked like something we could afford.'
'From the outside it looked like it belonged to someplace far more exotic: a series of cubes built in desert-coloured stone, with a square tower on one side that rose straight up like a skyscraper.'
'The town sits in fairly flat farmland and looks pretty ordinary, with modest wooden shingled houses, neat picket fences and tidy front lawns. You can’t help but drive right through it, as the county highway splits it down the middle, but most of the other roads lead nowhere.'
'At first it wasn’t so bad, just tiny balls of ice pinging down on us, but as we picked up our pace the hail got bigger and bigger, until it was crashing down like frozen golf balls.'