The other Kettering

Usually, towns enter into twinning arrangements because of some shared feature: size, industry, heritage, physical location. Kettering UK is twinned with Kettering Ohio because they possess the same name – that’s it, period. Not the most imaginative pairing.  However, your favourite Poppies blog couldn’t leave it there, and so at great expense we flew our correspondent all the way to the US of A to investigate further.

Ok, I was there already, but here’s the thing. I had reason to travel to the fine city of Cincinnati, and looking at a map noted that Kettering, Ohio was (by American standards) quite close by. So in a spirit of civic exchange I set off to explore our namesake and in the process discover if we had more in common than a shared moniker.

The first discovery was that Kett, OH isn’t actually a town as we would call it. It actually describes itself as a city, but in reality is an outer suburb of Dayton. There is no obvious beginning or end to Kettering, apart from road signs that mark the boundary from identical areas of townships.

The next discovery was there is no discernible centre of our American twin. I headed down what I took to be the main road through town, expecting at some point to see a square, some older buildings, a courthouse, something. I was still looking when passing a sign announcing the next suburb.  So I doubled back by a different route, lured by something called ‘Kettering Towne Center’. Turned out to be a crappy shopping mall – so we have that in common.    

Say what you like about our Kettering, but at least you know when you’re in the middle of it.

This was all the more strange when the streets were lined with banners proclaiming ‘Kettering is home’ to this or that. It suggested a proud community bursting with distinctive features. Perhaps, but not immediately obvious! On our side, yes the town is generally shite but you can’t miss Wickies.  

By now I was curious to find the sporting heart of our transatlantic doppelganger. Google revealed no results for ‘Kettering soccer club’, but ‘football’ worked better. Of course this meant the version with shoulder pads and helmets, but let's take a look.  Down a side road I found the Chester A Roush stadium, home to the Firebirds.  It was basically a school ground, but on an American scale, which means opposing stands with enough seating capacity for League Two at least.

No idea who Chester A Roush is (or was) but the stadium named in his honour was blessed by an old Poppies scarf, left behind like the flag on the moon – and most likely in a trash can by the time you read this. 

So Kettering Ohio, thanks for the memories. It was great to visit, because now I actually feel better about the original version.

Coming up: Lahnstein – is it more than just an excuse for an exchange trip piss up?