Open The Gates Of The Temple

Palm Sunday - that triumphant arrival of white Jesus on a donkey, his long curly light brown hair streaming down his back, his carefully shaped beard and his steady, serious unsmiling eyes, though the people are throwing palm branches down and praising him. No worries about the poor donkey get his feet tangled in those sharp edges of the palm fronds. And the people shout Hosanna - to this day a buzz word that says CHURCH in my vocabulary. And by Friday (Good Friday they call it though it was the day Jesus died) he would be nailed to a cross after having to carry it through those same streets. Funny the memories we carry of the traditions of the church seasons.

Pastor Warren talked about change and memories yesterday at the Presbyterian Church. And in that familiar space, my church for all these 70-plus years, there was little Janie Heimel, crowded into the front pew off to the side of the sanctuary, gazing up at the choir loft where my dad, in his dark choir robe, was hidden from my view - a different angle than from the Heimel pew.

That's the Palm Sunday I remembered. It was the day the organist had prepared our Junior Choir to sing a special song. The youngsters and the Choir - with a capital C. Choir with Daddy, Uncle Roy and Dr. George and Mrs. Gosnell, the tall, stately woman my brothers said sounded like a sick cow. 

We were robed in the starched white smocks, puffy like the maternity dresses the moms wore and I was grateful it was only Palm Sunday and my new Easter dress wouldn't be covered up.

The song was "Open The Gates of The Temple"  and we sang "Open, O - O -pen" at the beginning, softly with our children's voices, standing in a group on the steps, joined in the verses by the the grownups,  the organ soaring over all of us.

I went looking in the music files at the church yesterday, after Pastor Warren had talked about change though I admit my thoughts strayed during the sermon, recalling that 1950s kind of church.  I wanted to see if my memories were true for we all know we cannot necessarily trust those thoughts that surface much like dreams at night. But I didn't find it, though many of the other pieces filed under Lent were familiar from later years, the years I was in the choir loft in my own long choir robe.

But then there was this published in The Potter Enterprise March 29, 1961.

How delightful to find myself in this photo - and singing as enthusiastically as I remember.

... And the editorializing in the picture tag line is likely to be a future blog post as our world today is certainly shuddering again.

Seeking The Light

It's the light I'm noticing these first days of spring. Light, never exactly the same from one moment to the next.

It's the way artists imagined and mirrored the light that struck me in a visit to the art gallery in St. Louis. I've come to leave all expectations behind when I step through the doors of these places, these carefully-curated spaces where human genius is on display. The acres of space, divided into vast rooms, the sticky tape on wooden floors warning us to stay back from the pictures, the works of art, hung at eye level on walls painted in muted colors. Lighting, the manmade kind, illuminating even the softest brush strokes.

Often in a stop along the way - as it was this time - I step back and allow myself to be surprised, delighted, stirred, troubled. Emotions in this human drawn from another - an artist who stared at a blank canvas and began.

Edward Mitchell Bannister
Woman Standing Near A Pond 1880
An African American, Bannister stated the
discrimination he experienced multiplied his
artistic struggles tenfold 

Paul Conoyer
The Plaza After The Rain - 1908

It was the light that captured me this time - from a dreamy cityscape, to the bucolic, to the gritty factory, the artist finding the light even in darkness. 

And so, back home in cold, drab brown northern Pennsylvania, I'm watching for the light all around me these days. Yesterday the morning's sunrise caught a trail left behind by a lone jet, carrying its load, humans, parcels, luggage – things moving from here to there.

Yesterday in the warmth of a day with sunshine, I needed the woods, the bare trees and ground flattened by melted snow. Spring. Carrying with me the artists' expressions of their worlds - my world. Seeing, observing bird song, puddles with globules of glistening amphibian eggs, a chorus of frogs and spring peepers, stilling as I passed by ... and the light.

A Right To Learn

Topeka, Kansas: one of the stops on our way back East last week. It was still frosty and cold when we located the Brown v. Board of Education National Park in a downtown neighborhood, not far from the state capitol building.

It's a stop Arthur put on the agenda, even though we knew the site wasn't opening for the day until later that morning.

Brown v Board Of Education National Historical Park
Displays at this site have been flagged
by the Trump administration due to mentions of "equity"

Brown v. Board of Education was a class action suit filed by 13 Topeka parents and their 20 children against Topeka's Board of Education that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It challenged the "Separate But Equal" legal doctrine. Under the doctrine, if 'equal' facilities were provided to each, services could be segregated by race. Of course, the myth that services provided to African Americans were 'equal' was just that - a myth. Almost without exception, black students went to inferior buildings, were provided outdated and inferior materials and taught by teachers who were paid much less than their white counterparts.

from the National Park Service brochure picked up at the site:

"By 1952, NAACP brought to the Supreme Court four of the five cases involving school segregation that were consolidated as Oliver L. Brown et al v. The Board of Education of Topeka et al. Arguing before the high court, Thurgood Marshall held that the racial classifications were inherently unconstitutional, as were separate educational facilities to accommodate such classifications The unanimous decision handed down on May 27, 1954, was one of the most significant in U.S. history ... it opened the modern civil rights movement for African Americans and laid the foundation for similar movements by other minority groups."

Though we didn't have time to visit the museum, our time walking the grounds and reading placards brought home the inequalities buried in our country's history.

And yet, under our current President and his team, there is a defined goal to change how Black history is presented in national park sites and museums. New federal directives ("Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History") target parks, museums and monuments. 

This mural covers a large warehouse adjacent to the park,
a colorful and moving reminder of all that has gone before

The Organization of American Museums has responded:  "The effort as outlined is divorced from the realities of an evidence-based, comprehensive telling of the U.S. past, and is part of an aggressive push to flatten American history into a narrowly conceived, unrepresentative, and simplified story... Americans consistently say they want a full, honest and unvarnished presentation of our nation's history. This White House enterprise, therefore, is an affront to individuals across a wide spectrum of the American public who treasure their right to learn and think for themselves."

In the quiet of the weekday morning,
echoes of footfalls on this
pathway to a brighter future

The Flying Fortress

It was on the way home from a satisfying spring break time with our family in Arizona, on routes vaguely familiar from last year, that we stopped to take in the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio. In addition to the acres of aircraft on display indoors, memorials of war and its fallen soldiers have been erected here  - from markers honoring individual valiant airmen to others recognizing the service of groups in the way the Air Force organizes its bands of fighting men and women. 

The shadows were lengthening Thursday afternoon when we located this in its parklike setting, untended since groundskeepers swept away fall leaves.

It is a memorial to the 483rd Bombarbment Group (H) of the U.S. Army Air Force, my father’s group and though he’s not here to ask, I suspect he was on site as the memorial was dedicated in 1983. Standing next to newly-planted trees with others who climbed aboard a Flying Fortresses and thundered into the sky over Italy in 1944- smiling balding men with white belts buckled around thickened waists, the ones who came back.

My dad flew 50 missions as a tail gunner. As we were growing up, he didn’t talk,  much about it, like so many of the veterans of that war. There was a box of souvenirs tied with a length of sisal twine on the shelf in the closet in their bedroom. His khaki shirt, the olive drab jacket with its patches, a weathered leather jacket, and a purple heart.

There were the annual Christmas cards from far-away places like Winner, South Dakota, and California and Florida featuring black and white pictures of families that looked a little like ours, greetings from the men who flew with my dad. Johnston, Lynch, , Mallett, Nielsen.

His service is chronicled a bit in the pages of our local newspaper. Here's an excerpt from a  letter home to his parents in July 1944,:

“I got myself one today and it makes me very happy. I just couldn’t believe my eyes when he pointed his nose at our tail and I really opened up on him.”

And this, an official press release received in August of that year:

Staff Sgt. Joseph P. Heimel was one of a group honored for exploits over German, July 18. Sergeant Heimel, tail gunner on a 15th Air Force Flying Fortress, is expected home in the very near future.

 Officially from Italy, the following was received Tuesday.

"In recognition of one of the outstanding bombing missions of the war, a Distinguished Unit Citation has been awarded a B-17 Flying Fortress Group of the 15th Air Force commanded by Col. Paul L. Barton of Ludlow, Vt. 

"Presentation was made in a recent ceremony at the group’s Italian base, at which Maj. General Nathan F. Twining, Commanding General of the 15th, pinned the coveted blue citation ribbon on the group’s colors. 

"The group was cited for an action July 18 when 26 Fortresses of the group participated in a mission against the airdome and installation at Memmingen, Germany. Adverse weather scattered the bomber formations en route to the target with the result that the Fortress Group approached the objective alone and without fighter escort. 

"Shortly before reaching the airdrome the bombers were attacked by some 200 German fighter planes. The fighters bored in at the rear of the formation, and in the first sweep destroyed the last box, wiping out one entire squadron. 

"Pressing their attacks relentlessly the fighters knocked down seven more Fortresses while the remaining bombers fought on to the target and dropped their bombs with devastating effect. During the spectacular air battle the group’s gunner accounted for 65 enemy planes destroyed or damaged, many of them falling to the guns of stricken bombers before they plunged to their death. 

"In addition the group’s bombs destroyed or damaged 35 more planes parked on the enemy airdrome. In all Col. Barton’s unit lost 14 Fortresses and 143 officers and enlisted men."

And this from September of 1944:

“Mrs. Joseph P. Heimel, Coudersport, received a cablegram Tuesday morning from her husband, T. Sgt. Joseph Heimel, tail gunner of a flying fortress, that he had completed his 50 missions. He is hopeful he may soon be home from his sojourn for months in Italy."

In November that year:

"S. Sgt. Joseph P. Heimel arrived at his home here Thursday on  a richly deserved furlough. Joe was tail gunner on a flying fortress and was on fifty missions over enemy territory. He is visiting his wife and little son."

 

And finally in September 1945:

S. Sgt. Joseph Heimel returned from Indiantown Gap late Friday with his honorable discharge tucked carefully away in his pocket. Joe served as a tail gunner on a bomber for fifty missions over enemy territory, and later served as an instructor at Laredo, Texas. he is delighted to return to his home, wife and son at their place, once more a civilian.”

Vernal Equinox

Spring arrives today with its requisite rain showers predicted.

Here's how my grandfather, W.D. "Golly" Fish remembered a long ago spring ..

A pleasant memory –

It may have been a dozen years ago. The season was spring when the early birds were returning from the south. The locale was the East Second Street bridge over the Allegheny River.

There was at the time an elm tree on the river bank perhaps 25 or 30 feet in height. There was a gently but copious fall of soft snow that melted almost as soon as it touched the earth.

At the very top of the tree was a Song Sparrow, pouring forth his most liquid and delightful song. The long winter was gone and Golly was thrilled as he listened. He wished he could join in the sweet melody.

Since he could not, he silently thanked the little Song Sparrow, and wished for him and his mate a happy family life in the north, plentiful food, with a safe journey back south in the autumn.

Just one of Golly's many cherished memories.

– from 1965 

"Syruping" Off

 Warming days and freezing nights bring the best conditions for maple sap to flow. These days most producers use long, colorful lengths of tubing running from tree to tree, the sap gathered in large stainless steel tanks and transported to elaborate evaporators in well lighted sugar houses.

Grandfather Golly Fish wrote often over the years of his love for maple syrup, looking forward each srping especially to a jug of the pale, first run maple nectar.

Here's a memory he shared in his Golly column in 1968.

Sugaring time is almost here again and comes to mind a boyhood experience in sugar making. The time was about 1884 or 1885. The pal in the project was a lad about Golly's age by the name of Floyd Kelly but known as Dick. We remained friends all the years until his demise.

It was quite a problem to acquire all of the various items needed and neither of us had any money. We found a large old cast iron kettle that probably would hold a barrel of sap. This we mounted on three large stones so a fire could be built under and around it.

Sap spiles could be purchased at two cents apiece but we had to make ours. We whittled plugs four or five inches long from pieces of pine that fitted into holes bored into maple trees. The other end was spout shaped and a gimlet made a hole to let the sap run from the trees.

For sap buckets we each borrowed and we found a few tomato cans to hold sap.

When the sap flowed we gathered it from four or five trees and put it in the big kettle we had scrubbed and scoured. A fire was built and we were in business. A trouble was to find dry wood but some sogs of old rotted logs were dampeners and it was a long time before the sap started to boil.

We were a persistent pair of boys and in time we had a small amount of syrup but it was a dark mess and gritty to the taste. If memory serves correctly we "syruped off" only once and then went out of the business, but –

It was real fun for a couple of kids.

I shared another of Golly's maple sugaring memories here several years ago. 

Black History In Potter County

 

Where do we hear local stories of local black history?

Are the teachers telling  of  Asylum Peters - or Peter Asylum from some sources - buried on Ayers Hill. In 1810 census, the population of Potter County was 29. Among those was listed Mr. Peters, colored, a slave. The Potter County Historical Society has purchased a cemetery marker that will name Mr. Peters, not as a former enslaved person, but rather in his rightful place as a Potter County pioneer.

Are we sharing the stories about local stops on the Underground Railroad? The Mann Houses - in Coudersport and in Millport and other stops along the way to freedom in Canada. W.W. Thompson, local historian and founder of The Potter Enterprise, told a story, some years after the Civil War, about the discovery of a hidden room, complete with a straw tick and blankets in a commercial building at the corner of West and Third Streets, a building once owned by J.S. Mann

Rev. E.S. Toensmeier preaching from the pulpit of the Presbyterian Church in 1906: "The attempt to paint slavery as an ideal institution as is being done in so many quarters should meet with the condemnation it deserves. There were doubtless homes in the South where the relations between Master and Slave was one of affection, of loyalty, of kindliness yet when you have said all you can in praise, the fact remains it was slavery. The Negro was a human being who was bought and sold."

Are they hearing stories from the CCC Camp at  Bark Shanty? The newspaper piece from 1941 relates "Mr. W.C. Handy will play his music 'conceived in torment' as the featured attraction of a program of entertainment sponsored by the camp."The Bark Shanty Camp was a negro camp. 

And who remembers the time The Globe Trotters, described as the "negro wizards of the hardwood," played a game against top local basketball stars in the spring of 1948. 

And what about teaching about the migrants who played a big role in the county's rich agricultural history. To help develop the county's agricultural economy, farmers of the late 1940s and 1950s, began to put more acreage into crop production - peas, beans and potatoes in particular. And so, crop workers from the south - mostly black folks - were brought to the county for harvest. 

Newspapers of the day chronicled the influx of more than 3,000 individuals, while at the same time touting the economic impact for the county.

"A talented writer could almost produce another "Grapes of Wrath" book with the setting in Potter County."

"The Enterprise has pointed up squalid living conditions in migratory labor camps. The paper only finds fault with those old buildings with leaky roofs and no sanitary facilities where scores of men and children are crowded in, and in many cases each man and woman is charged one dollar a week room rent."

"If the workers fight and cut each other or commit other crimes, the cases are reported truthfully. If slot machines are seized or men arrested for the sale of intoxicants, the reports are made. Isn't it just possible that showing of condition will have a tendency to improve them." (1950) 

"Potter County is not only paying gigantic bills of costs to enforce the law but it is being given most damaging publicity because of the bringing of hundreds of Negroes here as farm crop workers."

And this ... 

"Law and order took a holiday Monday at a migrant worker camp in Bingham Township, four miles north of Ulysses. Crimes ranged from assault and battery through sale of illegal intoxicants to selling venison to Negro crop workers. Right in the middle is the white boss at the camp."

And in the background, the work of  local communities of faith.

"The pastor stressed the importance of the assistance-type service rendered. 'Right here in Potter County during farming season there are far more people who need help than society likes to admit. But caring for the deficiencies of mankind in a modern and expedient way is something new, something not wholly accepted."

From 1952, Father Moore from Christ Episcopal Church commented:

"Let us look at some of the remarks migrant workers in Potter County have made. 'I needed that help, Reverend, that cold night. My children were hungry and shivering. Every bit of clothes and grub were tops. God is good, Reverend. He is good!' "

Rev. Mr. Moore concluded: "In the two years that migrant workers have been practically aided by the churches in Potter County, we have gained much ground in helping these people to see a better day among us - to say nothing of the perils that stem from the sullenness of stark poverty.  The church believes that the future dangers of crime, disease and delinquency can be 'bought off' by continuous assistance."