We were pleased to attend the 150th annual Centre County Grange Encampment and Fair this week. The historic affair started in 1874 as an extension of the National Grange to improve the economic wellbeing of farmers, a group particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the Civil War and economic downturn.
It was lovely. It was not stinking hot, nor humid, nor rainy, nor muddy, nor particularly crowded. And! It was Seniors Day, so our admission was gratefully free!
But it was not our first visit. In 1976, the singing/touring group I was a part of, Re-Creation, performed on the Grange Stage with a patriotic afternoon show in our red-white-and-blues, and in the evening, in our gowns and leisure suits with our Christian program. What I remember most was that it was quite cold that evening: we guys buttoned up our lime green leisure suits right to the neck, covering up our lusciously large, pointy-lapelled shirts with the large green triangles on them. What you can’t see from this image is our two-toned green vinyl shoes!
For comparison, here’s a pic of the same stage this week with the famous Van-Dells performing in their farewell tour. As you can see, the little shed situated right on the stage deck is gone, and they’ve built a full-sized grandstand. The only thing’s the same, even though you can’t see it, is the mountain in the distance.
Anyway, we enjoyed viewing the competitive crafts, canned goods, fresh vegetables, prize-winning boxes of hay, and livestock – even the light farm tractor pulls. You can’t see those just anywhere anymore. Here are a few views of the wares and encampment. Sorry no animal pics this time, although we did visit the beef and dairy cows, goats, rabbits, chickens, sheep, and swine stalls.
Celebrated all across the country today is Park and Recreation Professionals Day—an annual, deserving recognition of those who work to keep our public spaces clean, safe and ready to use.
These dedicated professionals preserve, maintain and improve our natural and cultural assets that support local economies, healthful and active lifestyles, and vibrant and resilient communities. They and their diverse public services are truly indispensable!
And it pleases me immensely that the Day’s special purpose, which I conceived while walking on a neighborhood trail six years ago, has since been so embraced by people nationwide, who recognize and celebrate what these local heroes bring to their own communities.
Earlier this week I attended the Centre County Commissioners to receive their Proclamation of the day. Today I was privileged to present at a “Spotlight Celebration” highlighting Butler County’s exemplary park and recreation staff, programs and facilities.
I join with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro in encouraging all “to learn about the remarkable work of park and recreation professionals… and support their efforts by exploring our beautiful local, state and national parks.”
Last Saturday we skipped over two ridges and two valleys amid central Pennsylvania’s corrugated countryside to purchase some perennials.
On our way, we enjoyed the scenery of both the Rothrock State Forest on the mountains and the productive farmlands in the valleys – taking special note of how neatly these farmsteads are maintained: no junk, no weeds, no untrimmed borders, no peeling paint, nor even any disorganized equipment of any kind.
We had entered Amish country. Our main destination was a particular greenhouse known for its abundance and variety of home-grown plants. Its parking area included places for non-motorized vehicles. It is owned and tended by polite, plainly-clothed Amish men and women, who, when they converse with each other, use their own dialect. They take cash or check, but no debit or credit cards. And they’re not open on Sunday.
On our way back north, we noticed a simple sign pointing to “Historic Hilltop Cemetery” and hung a right onto an S-curving dirt road leading up a conical hill with an enclosed split-rail fence at the summit. The grooved dirt eventually petered out to a grassy path between crop fields near the top. The view was spectacular and better than these pictures show. And like the rest of its well-tended surroundings, the cemetery was immaculate.
We discovered the gravestone of Captain William McAlevy, veteran of the Revolutionary War (b. 1728, d. 1822, aged 94.) In 1778, he had built a nearby fort, whose name lives on today in the unincorporated village of McAlevy’s Fort. We also noticed the headstones of a few soldiers of the Grand Army of the Republic, from Civil War days.
What a special spot for a peaceful place to spend an eternity! We respect those who had gone on before for their part in our nation’s history, and to those who today tend their graves, allowing folks like us to visit and appreciate.
The other day we took a short trip to the abandoned ruins of nearby Scotia Barrens, tucked away in the mixed hardwoods of central Pennsylvania. We’d heard about them, but didn’t know anything of their origins.
Our directions were to enter at the gate (which one?) and stay to the left at each branch of the trail. We apparently lucked out on our first pick, and found ruins within a few minutes of walking in the early spring woods.
Our first discovery was the concrete block outline of an old square foundation, that still had some duffy steps cut down into the ground in what may have been a cold cellar. But there were few clues to anything else of its history.
But soon, the brightly-glaring graffiti on a concrete structure caught our eyes through the green-tinted brown: an odd-shaped, rusting, reinforced concrete collection of columns and plates with an interior pit, leading to what appeared to be an old spillway.
On either side of this structure were two tall narrow berms that were higher than the top of the structure. Could it be a railway line that permitted an emptying of hopper cars? Yet if there had been a trestle, there was no trace of it. The berms sloped down on either side to the valley floor in 200 feet or so. Clearly they were manmade, and, judging from the size of the trees growing on them, was abandoned some 60-75 years ago.
Leading a hundred feet in the opposite direction from the incongruous concrete skeleton were parallel lines of squat, square posts, each bristling with a stubby, rusty rebar or two. At the other end of this dotted line was another superstructure, likewise decorated in lively graffiti and mystery.
As we headed back to the gate, we met an old man wearing a blaze orange sweatshirt and a white beard scraggling all the way down his neck, and his border collie named Duke. We asked him if he knew anything about the ruins, and he declared he sure did!
His is the only house on the nearby road, we learned. Duke thinks the whole property is his backyard, and the old man allowed that he lets him believe it.
He told us that the structures were from the 1940s when the place was open-mined for iron ore, and washed out of the ground. The berms were to retain mud from flooding away. But the earlier industry was logging to create charcoal the nearby Centre Furnace. In the 1880s, Andrew Carnegie purchased the land and was the first to employ steam shovels to dig an open pit for ore. (“Did you see the pit?” No? Well, follow me!”) Carnegie sold out to a local company in 1890, who eventually shut down operations in 1909. And within a few years, Scotia became a ghost town. Except for its brief respite in the 1940s to meet the World War 2 demand for iron, its days of being reclaimed by nature have continued ever since. The land is now preserved as Pennsylvania State Game Lands 176.
another heartwarming episode of “Life as I Remember it Ought to Have Been”
Today is another day of cancelled school while the populace waits for its hopeful interrupting snowfall. In anticipation, the streets have already been sprayed with snow-melting solution, the public works guys are counting overtime hours, and it’s a great excuse for a surprise holiday.
Remote workers: you got nothing.
But back in MY day, an accumulating snow, much less a forecast of it, was no reason for changing the day’s plans.
(Disclaimer: my bachelor’s degree is in forecast meteorology; and this is no bash against my brother and sister prognosticators!)
But as I was saying, back in MY day, things were different.
I have a vivid memory from a particular wintry day back in the early 60s, when Good Ol’ Bus 4 ambled up our unnamed road to our farm in rural Moore Township, Pennsylvania. Cold. Windy. Snow covering the yard, feeding troughs, fields, road and everything. Me, bundled in my red coat with the hood up and tied tight round my face with a threaded shoestring, wearing tall, black rubber boots, each with a half-dozen railroad-track latches, and clutching my metal Donald Duck lunchbox with matching thermos inside, I stood dutifully next to our mailbox held aloft by a red, white and blue painted plank figure of Uncle Sam.
The bus arrived just as expected, I giant-stepped into the maw of the yellow beast, and it trundled its load of captive minors toward another day’s sentence in jail (which today might be called “The Learning Facility.”)
But in just another two hundred feet or so, the bus lodged itself in a blustering snowdrift that had dammed the roadway between our barns. “Schlegel,” the bus driver, gave it the old college try to plow his way through, but today the game appeared to be already decided with the low score of Stubborn Snowdrift: 1, Good Ol’ Bus 4: 0.
I quickly and opportunistically offered to hop off and go back to the house and tell my parents. But Schlegel wouldn’t have it. With an order to his charges to “Stay on the bus!” he abandoned us to trudge back to the house. Inside, my parents allowed him to use the party-line telephone to call the school (what were they thinking!?) and let them know we were stuck in the snowbank between a pair of barns isolated in the backcountry wintry wastes.
Eventually, Schlegel returned and resumed his seat at the front of the bus, and closed the bifold door. And there we all sat in the damp cold on the hard bench seats. And waited.
And waited.
And waited.
And then, in the distance, appeared an growing yellow smudge amid the swirling snow: Rescue!
Another bus crawled toward us from the other side of the world, turned itself around, backed up to “Our Drift,” and invitingly opened its door to the frigid wilderness.
With Schlegel stomping a path through the monstrous frozen whitecap, each of us snow-hopped across to Mean Ol’ Bus 6, retook our seats, and resumed the long, cold trek to No Excuses Consolidated Elementary School.
I couldn’t possibly tell you what I learned that day in class, but the memory of that singular adventure is a permanent fixture of what happened back in MY day!
Note: I sure wish that my dad had hustled outside with his Argus and taken a Kodachrome of that stuck school bus, but he stayed inside while all us kiddos built character. Instead, I offer these photos from another winter’s day when the Township’s bulldozer eventually got us plowed out—after we had run out of food, and my dad had skied into town to fetch some groceries.
