That Time I Poured Punch

On this day 55 years ago, I served punch and cookies at an open house celebration.

The newspaper clipping reports: 

Cookies, made by staff members and wives, and Russell Stover chocolates, courtesy of City News, were served with punch by Mary Domaleski and Jane Heimel. Essie Eimer presided over the guest book and Mary Miller, receptionist, directed the visitors.

It was Thursday of this week that I paid a quick visit to that "new office building," as I'd heard reports The Potter Enterprise (now known as The Potter Leader-Enterprise) office will be no more. The lettering on the big front windows has been painstakingly scraped off,  photo files, stacks of newspapers and even the lingering aura of cigarette smoke gone along with  the big sign above the door. I wondered as I pulled open the door to the entry way and made my way up the couple of steps, how many times I had done that before?

Gracious and personable Della, the local face of the Leader-Enterprise, was kind to allow me one last look at the office building that holds so many memories, though the door to the 'back room' was off limits as the new owner of the building has, for years, put that space to uses other than printing and publishing.

There may have been some courting
going on in that 'new building'
back in 1970 ...

Though I was part of the small-town printing and publishing business for nearly 20 years in one capacity or another, I sometimes forget how enterprising (no pun intended) the staff was in finding ways to boost revenue - ever striving to raise the advertising percentage ratio to make a little money.

The July 15, 1970 edition featured many advertisements like these:

Della tells me that the Leader-Enterprise will continue to be published with production and the rest of the business being coordinated through the Wellsboro office.

Though it's been decades since my dream of carrying on the family's newspaper tradition died, the closing of this chapter brings a whisper of loss. 

Celebrating Independence Day

 

Our teenage grandson is visiting us for a couple of weeks this summer and it makes me realize how different the world we inhabited as children in the 1950s and 1960s is from the fast-paced, highly connected world of 2025.

Of course, this is not a stunning insight!

I have the gift of my grandfather's writing to tell me of his childhood.

From 1958, when I was seven years old ...

I'm saving my nickels in my second childhood for celebrating the Fourth of July as I used to save pennies in my first. But there's a difference –

Over at Whitesville in childhood No. 1, I used to go to Landlord Jones' ice house, and dig and dig until I could find a piece of ice buried deep in sawdust. Then I dickered if the ice was a five- or 10- or 15-cent piece.

Mother had prepared the milk, eggs, flavoring – and what it takes. Then came the breaking the ice and packing it around the freezer can in the wooden tub, and turn and turn and turn!

The resulting ice cream - at last was satisfying of course – wonderful!

In childhood No. 2 –

Step in almost any store and buy the stuff, but it takes nickels rather than pennies and – 'taint half as good.

Advertising of Fourth of July celebrations –  One could count on a mammoth spread eagle and sure to be found were such expressions as 100 Guns at Sunrise, Music by Martial Band and Cornet Band, Grand Parade, Fantastic Parade, Patriotic Speech, Square Dance, Excursion Rates on All Railroads, Ox Roast, Spectacular Fireworks Display - or it might be called Pyrotechnical Extravaganza.

Times change – 

No longer do we drive Old Dobbin to town and tie her in the church sheds.

There ain't no Old Dobbin and there ain't no church sheds.  There ain't no pink lemonade –

There ain't even no peanut roaster with a little tin whistle so shrill it could be heard a long way off.

There ain't no fantastic parade. There ain't no greased pole to climb with a big two dollar on top!

Fourth of July – bah! If you should look for me that day, I can be found at Folly in the Nine Mile, seated in the shade by that dinky lake, maybe listening to the birds, or half asleep, dreaming of Fourth of July celebrations that were celebrations in childhood No. 1, or maybe listening to a ball game over the little portable radio.

If I get burns on my fingers, they will not come from firecrackers but may come from broiling a steak over a charcoal fire. Wistful thinking - look at the price of steaks! More likely I'll bust a bun and insert a wiener.

Here on Crandall Hill we shot off a few fireworks after sunset to celebrate the 249th birthday of our country.

I would have to bet that this custom (shared in my grandfather's column in 1968) wasn't part of anyone's Pyrotechnical Extravaganza in 2025!

"Shooting anvils" was a Fourth of July feature at celebrations when I was a small boy. We wonder if any reader of this column can remember such noise makers!

Just for your information we'll tell you how the trick was done. An anvil was placed on the ground well away from homes. On top of it was placed a piece of metal with a hole in it that would hold perhaps a quarter of a pound of gunpowder. On this was carefully balanced a second anvil.

Nearby was a wood fire that kept the end of a small steel rod red hot. The shooter touched a trail of gunpowder on the lower anvil, igniting the explosive. The top anvil may have gone 20 feet in the air. The explosion rocked the hills.

Loading the anvil and keeping fire to heat the rod was quite a task so the blasts did not come very close together.

That was how the trick was done some 80 years ago.

Update: It turns out I was not correct as I surmised anvil shooting was a thing of the past. Check out this report from July 4, 2025.