Hankering Time

"Hankering Time ...  that's in February and March each year," wrote the old man in his 93rd year in 1968.

It's most assuredly hankering time for this woman in her 71st year.

I'm hankering for the brilliance of my forsythia planted in a row next to the highway - something special about that cheerful yellow display that soon gives way to long spikes of green.

I am hankering for the feeling of the moist, cool spring soil between my fingers and the miracle of sprouting seeds.

I am hankering for the first chorus of spring peepers from the spring run behind this old farmhouse.

Here the rest of what the old man had to say about Hankering Time.

"Some people have a hankering for new maple syrup, the most delicious of all of nature's sweets and surely the most delicate.

"The piscators are hankering for a mess of speckled beauties just taken from some of the 700 miles of trout streams of Potter County.

"Then there are the hankerers for the spring ephemeral greens known as the leek. And how some gorge themselves!

"There are many who hanker to get seeds in the soil for tomato plants and they are admiring the beautiful illustrations in seed catalogues.

"Youngsters are hankering for the time when they can cast away their school books and go swimming.

 "I am hankering for one of those early spring days – bright sunshine and warmth, shadbush in bloom, trees bursting with buds, peepers singing their mating songs, bees humming, a tiny brook babbling.

 "And so it goes at hankering for old and young." 

Local Women's History

Marian Wettrick (r)
with Donna Kell,
one of the young women she encouraged

Miss Wettrick was kind of a legend for me when I was growing up in Coudersport. Miss Wettrick was my mother's "gym" teacher in the days when the school's gymnasium was in the Odd Fellows Hall, located four blocks north of the school building on Main Street. My mother credited her with providing a rigorous education in nutrition, the muscles and bones and the health benefits of physical exercise. I could not imagine having to walk those blocks in the dead of winter wearing a gym suit but I was particularly enamored at the idea of this woman encouraging girls of the 1930s - long before Title IX - to be more than a pretty face.

I officially met Miss Wettrick when I joined a new book club being established in Coudersport in the 1990s. It was a group that included women of all ages - but Miss Wettrick was likely the oldest. I still have a book she recommended, "Friday Night Lights," on my bookshelf.

I was a witness to her tireless advocacy to move women into the male-dominated seats of power on borough council, in board rooms and onto the medical staff of our local hospital where women were few and far between. 

Seldom without her signature hat, Miss Wettrick offered her encouragement on the sidelines of local girls' basketball games until the end of her life in 1996.

Her encouragement of women continues still due to the Marian J. Wettrick Charitable Foundation.  She took great care in planning her legacy, working closely with Citizens Trust Company (now C&N Bank) where her father had been cashier. The resulting foundation awards scholarship grants to female graduates of Pennsylvania colleges who are pursuing a medical degree from a Pennsylvania medical school. 

1928

Born in 1912, Miss Wettrick (her given name was Marian but it was always difficult for me to address an elder by her first name) graduated from Coudersport High School and later West Chester College. She returned to her alma mater to teach physical education and health for several years before departing to accept a teaching position in Maryland. She later entered the public health field, studying at the Yale University School of Alcohol Studies and earning a Master's Degree in Public Health at the University of North Carolina.

She had extensive experience in the addictions field having served in various posts in both New York and Pennsylvania. From 1958 to 1964, she was employed by the Pa. Department of Health as chief of community organization for the Division of Behavioral Problems and Drug Control. Later as Director of the Department of Community Services for the National Council on Alcoholism, she was recipient of the Alcohol and Drug Problems Association award for her work in Aacoholism.

After she retired, she returned to her hometown, moved into the old family home on Main Street and  committed her time to church and civic activities, including Coudersport Borough Council, Family Crisis Center Board of Directors and the advisory board of the former Charles Cole Memorial Hospital. She was a charter member of the Business and Professional Women's Club.

It is my great privilege to serve on the Wetttrick Foundation's advisory scholarship selection committee. Each summer we work with bank representatives to review applications from exceptional young women from across the Commonwealth. We interview 12-16 candidates and award 8-10 scholarships annually.

Since 1996,  62 young women have received scholarship awards totaling $2,023,000* as a result of Miss Wettrick's careful plans.

As I tell the applicants every year, Marian J. Wettrick was one strong-willed woman!

*as of May 2022

Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?

My mother has, for many years, expressed her strong dislike of Daylight Saving Time. She asked me yesterday when she could cash in all the daylight hours she's saved over her 99 years.

This weekend, we'll all be grumbling about losing an hour of sleep - even those who profess to like the change. The New York Times today tells me "What To Know About Daylight Saving Time" with the following: "to farmers, daylight saving time is a disruption foisted on them by the federal government. To parents, it's a nuisance that throws bedtime into chaos."

Here's the opinion of one Potter County farmer from April 1943:

"The Enterprise is in receipt of the following which we admit we do not know how to handle so we pass it on to our readers: 'Can't you give the farmers a break in the Enterprise on daylight saving (war time, so called)? I know that very many of your readers are farmers and of all the handicaps that the farmer has to contend with, this foolish law is the most vicious. I see that there is a bill up in Congress to repeal this nuisance. Every farmer ought to write to his Senator and representative asking him to use is vote and influence to get rid of this handicap. The farmers have been regimented, strangulated, handicapped, red taped and bulldozed until they are not much better than foreign peasants. It isn't any wonder that with insects, blight, floods, droughts, ceilings and red tape in nearly everything that so many farmers are throwing the sponge and departing cityward where they can make more money in a month than they can on the farm in a years,. Think it over."

30 March 1950:
Daylight saving time! The same old bugaboo is just in the offing. Here's one of those "do not use my name" letters: 'Daylight saving time is a detriment to school children and farmers especially. If others like to have an extra hour at night, they can get up an hour earlier, only leave the clock alone. The sun doesn't rise any earlier or set any later by fast time.'

23 April 1953:
Daylight Saving Time begins Sunday in Coudersport as in all other towns in this section - over the whole country, as a matter of fact. There are those who complain bitterly over tampering with the clock but since this is a country of majority rule we may as well set all the timepieces ahead Saturday night and smile. There will be arguments and we'll hear plenty of them but we've heard 'em before so what's the use. Be sure to set your clocks and watches ahead so you'll be on time for church Sunday morning and we hope the sun will shine brightly.

29 April 1954:
The change over to advanced time was made with no hitches in schedules Sunday. How different it was a few years ago when first daylight-saving was proposed, discussed and finally adopted generally. There are still people who do not like 'tinkering with time,' but we do not hear it discussed - and cussed - as a few years ago, and we do not know of any city or town that does not change over to DST.

Does anybody really know what time it is
... does anybody really care?
If so, I can't imagine why.
We've all got time enough to cry
– Robert William Lamm
Chicago

As the notes of this Chicago song flow from Arthur's trumpet as he practices downstairs, I leave you with this from my mother's father. 

"Soon will come again advanced time –daylight saving time. Some of us wonder what we did with all the daylight saved over the years."

Local Black History Month

It's Black History Month. Reflecting about black history and being somewhat immersed in local history of late, what about local black history? I began with a personal post here. And now I share my reflections on this little bit of Potter County's black history - history from my times.

It was in 2020, the first summer of the Covid-19 pandemic that I came across this piece of Potter County black history. I was handling long-forgotten documents, picking up the pieces of a long-form writing project I had put aside years ago and researching in old newspapers.  A free trial of newspapers.com opened up the archive of The Potter Enterprise and I went to October 1951 - to find a record of my birth - and a record of the times in which I was born.

This was the shocking headline on October 25, 1951

Ulysses Men Invoke Reign of Terror

in Effort to Drive Negroes From Village

One of the trio of pictures on the front page of the newspaper. And the accompanying news story begins:

"The race problem in America found expression in Ulysses on Saturday night - and it was promptly labelled 'alarming' by many leading citizens.

"Another incident Sunday night near Ulysses indicated, according to one citizens, that a 'virus of race hatred is not limited by geography.' Both incidents were believed to be attempts to drive a small group of Negroes from the community by terrorism. ..

"One of the chief targets of the anti-Negro feeling is Mrs. Louise Underwood, a widow with two small sons in school. They occupy a shack not farm from the Ulysses Vocational High School and reportedly are on relief.

"Shortly after 7:20 o'clock Saturday night, the neighborhood in which the Underwoods live was rocked by a dynamite blast. Almost immediately after the explosion, the Underwood shack was caught in the glare of a six-foot fiery cross blazing less than 50 feet away."

 

"Terror stricken, Mrs. Underwood and her two sons sought refuge in the parsonage of the Baptist Church about three blocks away. The Rev. Howard R. Faulkner is pastor of the church. Assured by the clergyman they had nothing to fear, the Negroes returned to their home ....

"The six men allegedly responsible for the incident were seen by the Rev. Mr. Faulkner as they roared away from the scene in their car. Attracted by the dynamite blast, the clergyman was on the front porch of the parsonage when the car carrying the men sped past.

"After learning what had happened, the clergyman went to the home of one of the men he had seen in the car and accused him of 'acting like a child.' The man, whom the clergyman did not identify, freely admitted taking part in the cross burning."

The reporter then launched into a report of the Rev. Mr. Faulkner's sermon that Sunday and went on to report the Rev. Mr., Faulkner's observations about Mrs. Underwood and the other negroes. 

"The clergyman said that the townspeople had cause for complaint insofar as the behavior of some of the Negroes was concerned. ...

"Habits of the two sons of Mrs. Underwood were a source of embarrasment to white neighbors, one of whom is the mother of a small girl. ...

"Much of the objectionable behavior was chargeable to 'the increasing boldness' of the Negroes in stores and other public places, the clergyman said.

"Basically, however, the 'shameful episode' was rooted in the resentment of a few men in an all-white community against the continued presence of Negroes, the clergyman led the reporter for this newspaper believe. ...

"Interviewed at home, Mrs. Underwood said she was frightened and upset and would leave as soon as possible. 'Never in all my years in the south did I see a fiery cross,' the woman said. 'Guess I had to come up here to Pennsylvania to see one ...  up here in Ulysses, Pennsylvania.'

The article continues with the following subhead:

Shotgun Fire Rakes House

Fourteen Negroes in a dwelling ... located between Ulysses and Gold were terrorized about 11:00 p.m. Sunday by a barrage of shotgun fire. According to Charles Jackson, one of the Negroes, 10 or 11 charges were poured into one side of the house. Several 20 gauge casings were found on an earth and 40 feet away. ...

"All 14 said they had planned to remain this winter and work ... 'Now we're going to leave - and right away,' an unidentified woman said. 'The devil is shonuff after us - he sho is' "

In the following week's paper came was this report.

This editorial appeared in the newspaper the following week.

I found no further reference to Mrs. Louise Underwood and her children. No one I have spoken with has any recollection of this story from more than 70 years ago.

Flash forward -  there's this ...

Black History Month

It's a good bet that most of my generation from this small town would recall the Skinners, who lived on  West Street, and Missouri Latham, who lived on Woodlawn Avenue as the only black folks in our little community back in the 1950s.

Mrs. Latham's rambling white house was across the Allegheny River behind my family's home. I remember watching from my little hideaway behind the bushes in our back yard as this tall, thin woman, her hair confined in a kerchief, emerged from her back door across the concrete ditch, toting a laundry basket to hang clothes on a clothesline strung in a sunny spot next to the channel. Mrs. Latham went to our church, where she sat in one of the back pews and always wore a hat and white gloves. My father was a pall bearer at her funeral at the church in 1970.  

The Skinners raised a family in Coudersport. My mother remembers their son and daughter going on to attend Hampton Institute (an historical black college) in the late 1930s. Granddaughter Beverly visited her grandparents some summers in the late 1950s and Mr. Skinner checked with the authorities to make sure it was all right for her to use the community swimming pool.

But the other folks with black skin in this white skin world were the migrants who followed the vegetable harvest north every summer, many traveling with their families.  At times, there were more than 3,000 itinerants here. Every fall,  there were a few dark faces in school – there and gone before leaves fell from the trees. 

"My first experience with black folks was when my grandmother took me to a migrant camp," related my friend during a recent dinnertime conversation.

And instantly I was sitting next to MY grandmother in her black and white Chevrolet, bouncing across a rutted dirt track on the way to deliver clothes to a migrant camp one summer. It was hot, the windows in the car were open. Grandma was intent on her driving and on her mission to help the poor .

I remember a long, shabby barracks, open doors and weathered steps and the dry packed earth. Boxes of donated used clothing in the trunk of the Chevy – faded t-shirts, shorts, pedal pushers, blouses missing buttons - perhaps even some of my own outgrown clothes.  And the sad, uncomfortable feeling that these little girls would pull on panties that had first belonged to others.

Later that same summer, a team of all-stars from nearby migrant camps came to Coudersport for a softball game at Metzger Field against a team of local men. The church women prepared a picnic for afterwards at Mitchell Park. Again, my grandmother was there and so was I.  It was there, for the very first time, I had a bologna sandwich with mustard on white bread.

 work of Kerry James Marshall, American artist
from the Cleveland Art Museum
(acrylic and collage on canvas)

 

   

The Old Rail Splitter

In the days before the Monday holiday celebrating two presidents with February birthdays, we observed Abraham Lincoln's birthday on February 12, the date he was born in 1809.

An unknown artist created this mythical,
life-size portrait of Lincoln used at public
rallies during his presidential campaigns.
Notice the image of the White House
on the distant horizon

From the pen of my grandfather, I found this piece from the 1960s.

 

Today is Lincoln's birthday. The former president has been called the "rail splitter," but somehow we cannot believe he ever split many rails – he had other chores first as an attorney and later as president of the United States.

There is a trick and know-how to rail splitting and if Lincoln did much of such work he had to know!

This scribe is no expert as he never split a rail in his life. My dad was a carpenter – and a good one. There are a goodly number of houses and barns in Whitesville and vicinity standing today that he built. As a youngster, I learned a few tricks from him, and one would have to do with splitting rails.

In winter carpenter work was pretty much suspended because of cold weather. In order to earn a living he built sap tubs, bobsleds and axe handles. The latter were made of hickory but no hickory grew in the vicinity of Whitesville so he had to buy hickory butts from some distance. A butt was from the larger part of a tree and long enough to make a handle.

The trick in splitting was to always split from the smaller end. In that way the wood split straight with the grain. It would apply to splitting rails or other articles.

Those axe handles Dad made were really beautiful, especially the ones for a single bit axe. They were so graceful and smooth a fly would fall off one. Dad got 50 cents apiece for those handles. This scribe, a lover of wood, would give ten bucks for one today.

I've rambled a long way from Abe's rail splitting but we'll bet he splits rails from the small end of the log.

Another time he wrote:

February 12 - we thought of the day as the birthday of good old Abe Lincoln, rail splitter and one-time president of the United States.

A great urge came over us to split rails and we grabbed an axe. The trouble was that we had no pine logs, and just what would we do with the rails if we split 'em?

We were stopped right there. To celebrate the event, we recited, as best we could remember, Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, and let it go at that.

-30-

Football

It's no secret that I am not a fan of football. 

It is interesting to note that perhaps it's hereditary.

October 12, 1911

(Letter to Editor) 

Saturday I had business at State College, Pa. was fortunate enough to see a game of football between teams representing State College and Pennsylvania College of Gettysburg. The play was fast and furious and when State College had given the last college yell of victory, fully 2000 strong, the score being 31 to 0 several men had been carried off the gridiron.

But this was tame as compared with the game of “push ball” in which the freshmen and sophomores took part. This was made an annual event at the college last year and as the writer had never seen it played before it made a decided impression upon him. … Yes, I did get excited and yell like an Indian, “Give it to ‘em freshies!” But at the same time, my humble opinion is that it is brutal and I like it not.

Yours very truly, W.D. Fish, Williamsport Pa.

And for the fact-checkers, this is what I found: