Countdown: Random Places Immortalized in Music, #5

As a refresher, this is a bit of a geography lesson, looking at oddball places that musicians have chosen to sing about, or at least include in their lyrics. And next on the list, number six, is...

Seneca Township, Ohio

"The farms of Ohio had been replaced by shopping malls, and Muzak filled the air from Seneca to Cuyahoga Falls."

So, I will admit, this one presented me with a bit of a dilemma. In "My City Was Gone," The Pretenders chose to name several real places in their rant about the suburbanization of the state of Ohio. And apart from several distraught instances of the state name being spat out, three other locations can be dredged from the lyrics.

First comes "South Howard," which took a bit of digging, as initially I thought it could be a reference to the very real, and very minuscule town of Howard, Ohio. Turns out I was wrong, it's actually addressing South Howard Street, which was once a pleasant store-lined thoroughfare through Akron, and was abruptly bulldozed in the name of "progress" sometime in the seventies or eighties.

Last is Cuyahoga Falls, which was easy to identify as the very unexciting "second-largest city in Summit County." The list of attractions includes a YMCA and a cave. Next.

And the middle location (which would be the one I chose, who would have guessed?) turns out to be the most obscure. I fully expected to find another boring minitropolis like Cuyahoga Falls, I mean it sounds like a place, right? Seneca, Ohio.

But as it would turn out, there is no "Seneca, Ohio." Instead I was left with four choices. The first was Seneca County, but that wasn't obscure enough for me. Next I was left with no fewer than three "Seneca Townships." What is a township you may ask? It's kind of a random divisional unit the grain belt uses to slice-and-dice up large expanses of farmland so that a resident doesn't have to describe where they live as just "the middle of nowhere." Or something like that.

Anyways, long story short, turns out one of the Seneca Townships is smack-dab in the off-center of Seneca County. Two Senecas in the place name? That has to be the place.

And so, that's how this arbitrary section of central Ohio, home to all of 1,585 people, and one unincorporated community of two dozen houses named "Berwick" is declared to be THE "Seneca."

As a side note, (actually mostly as a poke at Randor and LT Archie Hicox) it turns out, despite the railroad tracks through Berwick having been pulled up years ago, outside there is indeed, a boxcar still waiting...

"A, o, way to go, Ohio."