🚂🏷️ Two Symbols of Transport, Two Symbols of Legacy

Among the heirlooms passed down from my grandfather, Jerry Blackstone, two small objects have carried extraordinary weight in my life. They may seem modest at first glance, but together they embody the story of my family’s enterprises, my own childhood memories, and the broader arc of the social mobility that shaped us.

The National Molasses Train Car Paperweight

This miniature bronze tank car, engraved with National Molasses Co. (and added info: N.Y.Y.D. and Bird’s Eye View Sugar Water), once sat on the wooden counter of the Thornville Elevator in Thornport, Ohio. To a young boy, it was more than a desk ornament; it was a symbol of the bustling grain business my grandfather owned and my father managed. I remember its weight in my hand, the feel of the metal, and the way it seemed to echo the larger rail cars lined up outside the nearby rail depot.

By my teenage years in the late 60s summers at the mill were filled with the dust of wheat harvest, the clatter of boxcars, and the camaraderie of my brothers and me as we helped probe the incoming wagonloads of wheat and how we would then prepare train cars for shipments. That tiny train car became a stand-in for the industry itself: the movement of grain, the rhythm of commerce, and the family labor that connected the Blackstone family into the fabric of our small-town's economy.

The 1915 Ohio License Plate

The second artifact is a weathered black-and-yellow Ohio license plate stamped 1915 — two years after my grandfather was born. I found it nailed to a wall in the back room of Thornville Hardware, my grandfather’s other enterprise. Even as a boy, I felt the metal plate’s resonance. I could imagine it affixed to a Model T, rattling down dirt roads where horses still trotted. For Grandpa’s generation, such plates marked modernity and progress, a tangible sign that the world was moving forward.

For me, the plate symbolized Grandpa's own remarkable journey: Leaving home in Carroll, Ohio, at 17, because of disagreements with his own father, Grandpa worked on local farms then became more settled under a local doctor and businessman, proving himself through smarts and diligence. His acumen and hard work eventually earned him ownership of both the grain mill and the hardware store, which were staples in my boyhood experience. It was this story of mobility — from humble beginnings to respected entrepreneur — that inspired me to make my own way in the world when I became a young man.

Legacy in Small Things

Together, these two artifacts — one tied to rail, the other to road — remind me that history lives not only in grand narratives but in the quiet endurance of people’s everyday objects. They carry the weight of family, community, and the inviting possibility of movement forward. Though Thornville Elevator and Hardware has been gone for over 30 years now, these simple items endure, whispering lessons about resilience, progress, and family legacy across the generations.