KNOX COUNTY — During the six-month Knox County On High series, the 200-year-old county was viewed from many angles, but always from on high.
Mount Vernon News reporters climbed up, and looked down, from the bell tower of Gay Street United Methodist Church in Mount Vernon, from the top of Kokosing Reservoir, from the roof of the old Centerburg High School, a Pike Township hillside at 1,345 feet above sea level, the Dowds-Snyder Funeral Home belvedere in Mount Vernon, Devil’s Backbone near Greer and many other high-altitude vantage points.
But the opportunity to view the county from the ultimate high-up vantage point came as reporters waited in vain for a call from a Coshocton County hot-air balloonist: An airplane ride with local pilots Ray Richardson and Chuck Whitney, in Richardson’s blue-and-white Cessna 172XP.
Whitney has been flying since 1966 and has 7,500 hours of flight time in his log books. The Danville native retired from teaching at East Knox High School and now flies for Ariel Corp./Energy Machine Inc.
Richardson is the administrator of the Knox County Career Center, has been flying since 1991 and has logged 1,700 flight hours.
Richardson piloted the plane and Whitney served as co-pilot, both pointing out the county’s landmarks.
Cruising at 132 mph, at an altitude of 2,500 to 3,000 feet, cows grazing in fields looked like ants, round hay bales wrapped in white plastic appeared to be kernels of popcorn scattered about a field and a gravel pit looked like a child’s sandbox, complete with little yellow backhoes and bulldozers.
Knox County, from on high, has a surprising number of bodies of water — little ponds, big lakes and, of course, the Kokosing River winding through the landscape. There are also many swimming pools in Knox County yards.
The fields, yards and woods of the county are laid out in attractive shapes; not just squares and rectangles but charming, rustic cookie-cutter shapes, too. Trees fill the lines between them.
From high above, power lines and their wide cleared rights of way march across the county and disappear at the horizon. A fast speedboat left a foamy white wake in the green water of Apple Valley Lake.
The altitude provided a new perspective ... a cemetery next to a wheat field is an interesting image from above. The wings of the new Fredericktown school poke out from the main building and, from the air, it looks like an object created from Legos by a child with a good imagination.
It’s easy to identify downtown Mount Vernon by the oxidized-green copper domes atop the Knox County Courthouse and the Memorial Theater. That Public Square is not becomes obvious from above. The square has so many trees that much of the lawn is hidden from view.
Fields of soybeans and corn are pocked with patches that never turned green or were intentionally left unplanted. Other fields have rows of crops growing in different shades of green. An old barn fallen in on itself looks like it was squashed by a giant foot.
“It’s neat,” Whitney said of his hometown as viewed from the air. “Danville hasn’t changed that much in the last 60 years.”
“Knox County is just beautiful right now,” Richardson said of the hour-long flight. “Everything is so lush and green.”
Happy 200th Birthday, Knox County ... you look great from on high.
This is the final installment in the Knox County On High series.
