I assumed that the postcard belonged to a former owner of the home, and shared a picture of it with my friends on Facebook.  Some long-time Amherst residents made comments about remembering a Scheide family that lived in the city half a century ago, but no one knew who C.W. Scheide might be.

My mother is a genealogy buff who has experience hunting down information about people from the past.  When she saw my picture of the old postcard on Facebook, she decided to do some hunting.  A few days later, she emailed me several  images of old newspaper clippings from the Chronicle-Telegram that told the fascinating story of C.W. Scheide.

In his time, Charles W. Scheide was one of Lorain County’s most famous residents.  He was a noted photographer who devoted 70 years to photography and won state and national recognition.  Mr. Scheide, who was often referred to as “Elyria’s Mark Twain” because of his striking resemblance to the writer, was born in 1870 and died on May 2, 1957.

That means the postcard I found in my basement was mailed more than three months after Charles Scheide passed away.  Also, according to the old newspaper clippings, Charles Scheide lived in a house on East River Street in Elyria when he died.  So, why was a postcard addressed to him hidden on top of a rafter in my home in Amherst?

A few Amherst residents on Facebook mentioned that they had an elementary school teacher named Mrs. Scheide, and I’m assuming that the Scheides in Amherst were relatives of Charles Scheide.  Perhaps the electrician who mailed the postcard that I found wrote the wrong city on it, and it was delivered to the only Scheide house in Amherst.

Or maybe there’s another explanation . . . I’ll probably never know why a half-century-old postcard addressed to a famous Elyria photographer was hidden in my Amherst basement.

Here’s a 1957 editorial from the Chronicle-Telegram that tells the story of Charles Scheide’s life.  I hope you’ll take the time to read it, and that you find it as interesting as I did.

Charles Scheide Was An Artist

From the Chronicle-Telegram, 1957

Charles Scheide was one of Elyria’s most colorful and best known citizens of his generation. His work in photography won state and national recognition.  He was widely known for his skill in the field to which he devoted 70 years of his life.

He was born in Elyria in 1870 and started his career in photography in a studio here when he was still in his early teens. He opened his own studio in July, 1895 and closed it only a few years ago.

He was an artist who photographed most of the residents in this area during his long career. In his files were pictures of people and places taken by him more than 60 years ago and he possessed many reproductions of photographs which had been taken long before he was born.

He was proud of “Old Elyria” and the many photographs made by him through the years preserved much of Elyria’s history. He was always happiest when he displayed photographs showing three or four generations of well known Elyria families. There was a sparkle in his eye when he told a youngster of “taking grandma’s picture when she was a little girl.”

In the later years of his life he received many requests from people for pictures of loved ones he had photographed more than a half century before.

One of the finest photographs Mr. Scheide ever made occupied a prominent place in his studio collection. The president of Wooster College heard about Mr. Scheide’s ability as a photographer and asked him to photograph an elderly man who was a landscape gardener for the college for 50 years. Mr. Scheide took the picture which was acclaimed by many photographers as one of the finest they had ever seen.  When Mr. Scheide received tribute for the excellency of this photograph he said “The light must have been just right.”

Several years before his death, A. C. Hudnutt, publisher of the Chronicle-Telegram, suggested to Mr. Scheide that he “make a collection of photographs” of early Elyrians and places of interest in the community when it was a small town. Together, they worked on the project and the photos were contributed for a special room in Elyria Library where they have been seen by many people and still hold much interest for students of Elyria’s history.

All through the years, Charles Scheide, a true artist, used the time-tested methods which he learned early in his career. He never accepted “new fangled gadgets” and took pictures of large groups at meetings without the use of modern flashlight bulbs.

He was at his best when reminiscing about the Elyria he knew when a young man. He was a link between the older and the younger generations and had a photographic record through which he traced many families and important events.

Charles Scheide loved the beautiful and for many years the yard of his place on East River street was a showplace with its beautiful lawn and evergreens.

Mr. Scheide was a hard worker and a good business man. He invested in industries and real estate and was long associated with the Perry-Fay Co. as a director and principal stockholder.

He was often referred to as “Elyria’s Mark Twain” as the resemblance was striking.

Those-who knew Charley Scheide will miss him. Elyria will not be quite the same without him.

The Amherst Transfer Station will be open Wednesday, April 3^rd thru Saturday, November 30^th.

Hours of operation will be:

Wednesdays:  8:00 am – 4:00 pm

Saturdays:  8:00 am – 1:00 pm

Due to increased costs for the disposal of yard waste the following tip fee schedule will apply:

Amherst Residents:

Yard Waste         $3.00 per yard

Waste                   $5.00 per bag

All Others:

Yard Waste         $12.00 per yard

For information on what types of material will be accepted and the fees charged, please call Allied Waste at (440) 458-5191.

According to an article from the Chronicle-Telegram, some Lorain County residents have fun by panning for gold in Elyria’s Cascade park.  And gold prospecting ventures are often planned by amateur panning enthusiasts on the Vermilion River, as well.

Panning for gold is often associated with western states like California that saw a gold rush in the 1800′s, but it’s a little-known fact that you can find small traces of gold dust, flakes and nuggets in almost every one of the fifty states.  And gold prospecting clubs exist all across the midwest, including the State of Ohio.

So, what are you waiting for? If you’ve ever had dreams of finding gold, then grab a pan and visit a local Lorain County stream to prospect for some flakes of your own.

Before I get into the details, let’s highlight the important part here: the average Amherst water bill will only go up by $1 per month each year of the increase.  And even after this adjustment has been fully implemented, Amherst will still have water rates that are lower than the Ohio average.

Your water rates are determined by the Safety Service Director, and Amherst City Council plays no role in approval.  But as a courtesy to council and Amherst residents, Mayor Taylor asked city consultant John Courtney to come to the meeting and give a presentation outlining why a water rate increase is necessary.

The city has projected that the water revenues at their current rates will not be enough to meet rising costs of purchasing water from Elyria and Lorain in coming years.  In order to meet the projected costs of purchasing water in 2015, Amherst will need to increase its current water rate by about 12%.

Rather than raise your rates by 12% all at once, the city has decided to increase water rates by 4% each year over the next 3 years (2013-2015).

The average water bill for a residential customer in Amherst is currently around $26 per month.  After this 12% overall increase, the average water bill in 2015 will be around $29 per month.

Keep in mind that the first annual increase outlined in this plan will not go into effect until January 2013.

In case you’re wondering, the last water rate increase that Amherst residents saw was back in 2009, when rates were raised by 4%.

The City of Amherst has approximately 6,100 water customers, and the average residential usage is 4,500 gallons of water per month.

Thank the Environmental Protection Agency.

Up until this year, the City of Amherst was able to take the leaves it collected to nearby local farms, which used them for compost.  It was a win-win situation for everyone involved: the residents got their leaves picked up for free, the City of Amherst didn’t have to drive far to dump them, and local farms got free composting material.

Enter the Environmental Protection Agency.  Thanks to new EPA regulations that are being enforced on the City of Amherst for the first time this year, those leaves from your yard can no longer be given to local farmers.

So, where do the leaves have to go now?  The EPA now says that the city must take leaves to government inspected, government approved and government licensed “compost facilities.”  Apparently the leaves are hazardous to the environment because of the gasses they give off when they decay (or something like that).

And as you can probably guess, all of that government licensing and inspecting costs money.  Only facilities in Lorain County that have the dollars available to bring their location up to EPA standards will be allowed to take leaves from local cities.

So, what does that mean to you?

To start out with, it means that leaf pickup in the City of Amherst now takes longer.  Instead of taking them to a nearby farm, all of those leaves now need to go to an EPA-license compost facility in the City of Lorain.  That means a much longer drive time . . . and when you have leaves to pickup at hundreds of individual homes, that drive time really adds up.

But it goes beyond just the extra distance that the City of Amherst has to drive to dump your leaves.  Those additional miles also mean higher gasoline costs to operate the city trucks, more maintenance costs and damage to the vehicles, more man-hours to transport, and other expenses.

And guess who has to pay for those higher gasoline and maintenance costs?  That’s right: you, the Amherst taxpayer.

So before you think that the Environmental Protection Agency’s ridiculous government regulations don’t affect you, think again.  Some local cities, such as North Ridgeville, have stopped offering free leaf pickup services for residents due to increased program costs.

And with more regulations piling on from government agencies like the EPA, I wouldn’t be surprised if other cities facing budget problems start asking themselves whether leaf pickup is a better use of money than more essential services like street repair.