A Visit From The King?

Sometimes one comes upon little bits of information in old newspapers that takes one on a journey to discover more. For example, this bit in a Potter Enterprise from early June in 1939, written by my grandfather in his weekly column.

"Got within 17 miles of the King and Queen of England early this morning. That's the nearest we expect to get to their royal highnesses. They passed through Port Allegany. We rested in the arms of Morpheus."

I turned first to my 99-year-old mother (daughter of the scribe referenced above) who had no recollection of this visit, though she would have been 15 years old at the time. Anglophile/Librarian Teri McDowell, herself a resident of Port Allegany these days, also drew a blank. However, both remembered that the President Roosevelt served hot dogs to the King and Queen on that visit and indeed, it's true!

From the FDR Library and Museum website:

"Even more relaxing and informal was the following day's event - a picnic. FDR brought the couple to his new hilltop retreat, Top Cottage, on the eastern portion of his estate for an old-fashioned, American-style picnic. Much to the horror of FDR's mother Sara Roosevelt, the King and Queen of England were served hot dogs on the front porch of the cottage. Although the press made a great deal about the hot dogs (the picnic made the front page of the New York Times), the menu also included more delicate fare fit for a King and Queen."

More research led me to these gems: An announcement of the impending royal visit appeared in The Potter Enterprise several months before it happened.

It turns out that 2,000 turned out to observe the train as it stopped for water in Port Allegany at 1:00 a.m.

The train carrying the British Royalty passed through this area in the dark of night and a few local state policemen were called to stand guard.

Now I am wondering if there is anyone alive who remembers standing to watch the royal cars lumber by on the railroad tracks in northern Pennsylvania deep in the darkness of a June night.

Hunting Season

It always seemed to me that many in my orbit looked at Thanksgiving as a day to get out of the way to usher in the true Potter County holiday - deer hunting season.

As the daughter of a man who made his living at a grocery store that catered each season to the hunters filling hundreds of God's Country camps, Thanksgiving was the chance to catch a breath before the seven-day-a-week madness that was hunting season. It seems to me the only time my dad missed church was the Sunday before Monday's deer opening when the store was open for the hunters.

Hunting also played a big role in the Metzger family with the senior Arthur guarding his days off from his government job so he'd have plenty of time to hunt with the junior Arthur. Later on, it was our son who carried on the tradition and still later, our crack-shot daughter-in-law.

Ask any of my generation about hunting season, and you'll hear stories of our normally sleepy town crowded with the guys in their red Woolrich hunting togs. It was a good time to be a waitress at one of the town's eateries for those men were often big tippers and the extra hours for early morning breakfasts brought more than pocket change for Christmas shopping. But at the same time, mothers and especially fathers cautioned us youngsters to walk the streets only in a group. As one mother put it "We don't want to be caring for a baby with a red cap next year."

It was common for folks to "take in hunters" each year, offering a bed - often bunk style - and serving two meals a day and packing bag lunches for the hunt. The movie theater had movies all through the week with westerns often the choice.

At the newspaper office, where my mother worked, the big push came just before hunting season as the "Sportsmen's Special" was prepared - each year adding more pages, more advertising and more copy. The genius idea of soliciting hunting stories from subscribers brought even more readers.

.... from 1960

At the paper, excitement continued throughout the two-week hunting season as the newspaper sent a photographer to capture each proud hunter with his/her prey. Thus the "dead deer" issue was born - usually published the week between Christmas and New Year's - when photos of each entry in the Big Buck contest were published. 

It's hard to imagine for all but those of us who remember how to dial a telephone, but Bell Telephone set up special "message stations" in Coudersport and Galeton for several years in the heyday of hunting mania to accommodate the hunters and their need to communicate with folks back home.

And speaking of the newspaper, I leave you with this from my grandfather's weekly column in The Potter Enterprise, penned in 1954.

"This writer was surely glad Monday morning – sour, dreary,
foggy, dark – that he had not lost a deer.
Therefore he did not have to hunt for it."

He continues writing:

"Still it would not have been at all bad to be a member of a
hunting camp with a group of good fellows. Just because he
joins such a group does not mean that he has to ram through
the woods, with bramble and briar digging the cuticle from his carcass; he doesn't have to stand watch on a
runway in the rain and snow and chilling wind.

Nope.

At the camp there is warmth and good, and congenial fellows;
stories, song, wit and wisdom (?) and memories so pleasant
they will last for years to come.

Hunting is only part – a small part – of the pleasure
of a few days away back in the wilderness
with convivial companions.

There may be a thrill - there no doubt is - in leveling
a rifle, drawing careful bead on a prize buck and
seeing him drop while running a full speed.
Never having even shot at a deer, this writer does not know.

But even so, bagging a buck is only part of the
pleasure of hunting. There are scores of sportsmen who
have been coming to this famous hunting ground for years and years, and who have yet to get their first deer.
They come just the same each hunting season and the memories are cherished - so precious money could not buy them.

The Commissioner Shanty

It was too beautiful to stay indoors this afternoon so the chores had to wait while we took a little hike in Penn's Woods. This time it was the Commissioner Trail on Denton Hill.

Wondered why it's called The Commissioner?

Here's an explanation from my grandfather, W.D. "Golly" Fish.

And here's another story about the Commissioner from 1945.

And here's the rest of the story!

Independence Day

On Independence Day in 2022, 246 years after that steamy day in Philadelphia when the Declaration of Independence was signed, I've been thinking of the junior high school version of the American Revolutionary War.  It was all about little factoids to memorize. Lexington and Concord, The Boston Tea Party, the 13 original colonies, the Founding Fathers - Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, the esteemed George Washington with his ill-fitting wooden false teeth. Many of those names would be in the list of Presidents we needed to memorize in order. I'm still able to start that list: Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Jackson and then it gets muddled for me. Then there was the question that Mr. Schaub assured us would be on the test ... what was a cooper?

The only woman I remember learning about was Betsy Ross. She's the woman George Washington visited with a design for a flag for the new country. After a bit of wrangling, she convinced him that the 6-pointed star he had envisioned should be a 5-pointed star. The design featured 13 stars in a blue patch with 13 alternating red and white stripes. And in that little house on a side street adjacent to Independence Hall, Betsy created the first flag.

But here's the thing: The story of this lone famous revolutionary woman is likely not true! This story surfaced during the Centennial, promoted by Ross's family based on stories carried by her children and grandchildren.

(From Encyclopedia Britannica): The first official national flag, formally approved by the Continental Congress on June 14, 1777, was the Stars and Stripes. That first Flag Resolution read, “Resolved, that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation.” The layout of the stars was left undefined, and many patterns were used by flag makers. The designer of the flag—most likely Congressman Francis Hopkinson, a signer of the Declaration of Independencem, may have had a ring of stars in mind to symbolize the new constellation. Today that pattern is popularly known as the"Betsy Ross flag" although the widely circulated story that she made the first Stars and Stripes and came up with the ring pattern is unsubstantiated. Rows of stars (4-5-4 or 3-2-3-2-3) were common, but many other variations also existed.

Someone Else's Birthday

I missed posting this on my grandfather's birthday - June 6. That would make him 147 in this year when his daughter (my mother) will celebrate her 99th birthday. She's his only surviving offspring, along with seven grandchildren and I'm not going to be able count the great-grandchildren on my fingers.

He shared this story of his birth in his Golly column written in 1964:

"The lightning flashed and the thunder rolled over the backwoods and hills in a humble home in West Union Township, Steuben County, New York, on June 6, so many years ago that no one now living can remember the exact year.

Such was Nature's celebration as Golly entered the world, according to his mother's version of the event.

The year was 1875.

The old house is gone. The owners of the farm have changed several times. The spring, down over the hill, is still gushing forth. clear cold sparkling water.

Golly was only two years old when his family moved from the Barker farm but remembers several incidents that occurred, such as breaking an ancient egg, left as a nest egg, and smearing himself with the smelly contents."

And while I'm on the subject of his birthday, read about how he celebrated his 93rd.

"Well, Golly had a birthday. it was his 93rd. It was Thursday, June 6. He had not talked about it but hully gee, a lot of friends remembered 'that famous day and year.'

There was a lull in the activities at the Enterprise office and shop while the dozen or more employees enjoyed a beautiful birthday cake that appeared. It was just as delicious as it was beautiful. Some cakes are beautiful period.

Greeting cards, a flock of them, from one coast to the other and each brought most pleasing memories. We wish we could say thanks to each one personally."  

 

Farm Wife

My friend Eppie is an artist and a musician and a writer. Though we're a generation apart, we've been friends since her mother-in-law introduced us back when her kids were little. On this Sunday afternoon, we were among those gathered on the courthouse square to support a fund-raiser for the people of Ukraine. Her life path has brought her back to Potter County in the last year after a period of time in Tennessee and Washington, D.C.  She and her family are bringing new life to her husband's old family farm, a dream-come-true for him but for her - not so much.

She told me she'd spent spent the morning holding onto their sheep as their hooves were trimmed. "They're not the wooly sheep, they're the hair kind," she related with a roll of her eyes. "I'm really NOT a farm wife." 

A farm wife! It was my turn to roll my eyes as the memory of a long-ago farm wife surfaced. I promised her I'd share this essay I wrote 40 years ago for a writing workshop. It is titled "The Farm Wife."

He told me I wasn't much of a farm wife. 

Now it must be understood that I am the fourth generation of family women to stand at my kitchen sink, to dig in my garden, to stock those rough shelves in the cellar with rows of jars of home-canned vegetables and fruits, to hang sheets on the clothesline, to gather lilacs in the spring and apples in the fall. 

The women who came before me were farm wives. They fed the chickens and gathered the eggs. They put on their coveralls and barn boots and milked the cows, and threw the hay. They planted and weeded and hoed and harvested and canned. They cooked meals that are still legendary on Crandall Hill. They baked wonderful bread – and not just any bread. They baked salt-rising bread. They drove trucks and tractors. Their floors were shining and their windows sparkled. They sat under the shade of the maple trees and snapped beans and shelled peas, and with their strong, capable hands, did what had to be done.

When it comes to me, it must be understood that I am a town girl. I don't like farm animals - actually I'm a bit afraid of them. I'm allergic to hay. When I first came to the farm, I knew nothing about gardening and all I knew about canning was learned with Miss Ora Goodrich standing over me, making sure that my hair net was firmly attached to my head. I knew little about hanging clothes, nothing about driving a truck or a tractor.

But I loved living in the country and soon there were diapers flapping on the clothesline behind the house. I remember one day when they all blew away and I had to collect them from the field!

I planted a large garden and although it was weedy, I harvested baskets of tomatoes and green beans and was very proud of the jars slowing filling the shelves in the cellar. I baked my own bread – but not salt rising. I learned to drive the truck - though it was only Ranchero, however, with an automatic transmission. Sometimes I would gather the eggs. When it came time to butcher the chickens, I dipped them in the boiling water and plucked them.

I have come a long way. But it was a summer afternoon and the baby was asleep. The breezes blew the laundry on the clothesline. I was waiting for the pressure to go down in the canner. I could steal a minute with a book under the lilac bush.

The little guy was the neighbor's son. His father was doing some work on the horsebarn and sometimes he would come along with his dad and swing on the swings and play in the sandbox. I looked up from my book as he peered over my shoulder. "Reading?" he asked.

"I really like to read, Stevie," I answered without looking up, trying to discourage any hint of conversation.

"Well," he said. "You're not much of a farm wife." 

 

Tea Kettles

I performed my bi-annual cleaning and polishing of our kitchen cupboards today as the rainy day sent me inside to work The kitchen we resurrected in this old farmhouse has high ceilings and a space above the modern cabinets where I display family heirlooms and other things I enjoy from a distance - an old cookie jar, the beautiful re-purposed old canning jar decorated with lilacs painted by my friend Olga, and an assortment of old pitchers. 

There are two tea kettles up there - the Revere ware one that simmered endlessly on the burner-with-a-brain on Thelma Metzger's kitchen gas range and this one from my side of the family.

from Allegany County, N.Y. to
Potter County, Pennsylvania

I remember this old kettle holding a potted plant on the terrace in our backyard when I was a teenager. Some years ago, my mother decided I should have it. She tucked a little note inside that told its history. It had belonged to her grandmother, Abbie Collins Fish who lived in Whitesville, Allegany County, New York.

My grandfather (W.D. Fish, known as Golly to his readers in The Potter Enterprise) writes of its storied history in one of his newspaper columns.

"Mother's old tea kettle - Golly has it. We are going to write about that antique utensil some of these days, of how Mother, a great reader, would let her light kettle melt its seams while she was all wrapped up in a story or article, and she would have to return to the very old and very heavy kettle to use until the sum of money was available to buy another."

Happy Mother's Day!

Addendum April 15, 2024

Scanning old photo negatives (these from the 1930s) brings serendipitous surprise!

 I've marked it with an arrow so you can see my great-grandmother's tea kettle on the gas heating stove in the front office of the old Potter Enterprise building.