Spokane was the smallest city to host a World's Fair. It was 1974 and my mom and grandparents were more than enthused about it being in their tiny, fair city. My grandfather, Oliver Ohde, was lucky enough to get to see all the exhibits the day before it officially opened. The next day, however, he passed away from heart failure. And so, being nearly ten years before I was born, and before my parents even met, I never got to meet him.
I suppose there's something about this Expo, and its remnants (the skeleton of the canvased pavillion still stands in River Front Park today, along the Spokane River), are part of my way of remembering him, even though we never met.
It also seems fitting that the entire theme of this World's Fair was conservation of the environment and working to better humanity's relationship with the earth. And so the quote, "The earth does not belong to Man; Man belongs to the earth," is one of the most poignantly sincere things I've ever heard.
-XO
All photos from on What Makes The Pie Shops Tick?'s Flikr.
No comments:
Post a Comment