Just For Fun

My newspaper editor grandfather didn't care much for the Beatles. He writes in his weekly column:

A beatle or a beetle -

What the difference? Both are merely annoying insects.

The next week he dabbled a bit in Latin. 

Golly remembers a heading used by one old fashioned sheet: "Multum Items in Parvo Space"

He learned its meaning as many brief notes in a small space.

Now as Golly sees on the TV screen a bunch of mop-heads, he thinks of "multum" hair and "parvo" brains.

Evidently he wasn't the only one ... even the basketball coaches from Oswayo Valley didn't care for the Beatles.

A second place finish in the Homecoming Parade for the Senior Class in the fall of 1964.

The Roulette Drive-In chose to run "A Hard Days Night" with The Three Stooges.

Meanwhile in Galeton, the teens were excited to go downstairs to the balcony to see the film!

Smitty didn't open his Record Cellar until 1968 so the 5 and 10 was the place to get your hands on the newest releases.

What We're Told

It had been attached to my bulletin board in Niagara Hall at Penn State Behrend, this anti-war poem by e.e. cummings.   And over the years, Arthur and I have often applied the 'nipponized bit' fragment to particularly bone-headed behaviors we've observed - even in ourselves.

Today with another kind of war - the war against that relentless two-year-old, Covid 19,  the poem resurfaces.

It's been two years in the long life of my mother, the woman whose husband was born in the midst of another pandemic all those years ago.  Two years for the two-year-old granddaughter in Alaska who knows nothing of the times before.  Two years for the big grandchildren, their carefully planned routines upended and new ones often requiring face masks.  Two years for our offspring and their partners, responsible now for these children in a world where even a trip to the grocery store could seem perilous, where day care and school are canceled. A world where working from home added layers of complication and layers of convenience too.

And it's been two years for us too. At first we couldn't find hand sanitizer and toilet paper. At first we learned how to wipe down the groceries from the store. At first we turned to the sewing machine to fashion our face coverings. We heard about shut-downs and lockdowns, essential workers, social distancing, testing, CDC, FDA, MRNA, PCR, Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson.

In these two years of a worldwide health emergency, we've been told many things, and some of those things we've been told we believe.

(I've written about the worldwide pandemic in other posts, here and here. )

*The final lines of e.e. cummings' poems refer to Manhattan's dismantled Sixth Avenue elevated tracks, which were bought as scrap metal by Imperial Japan three years before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Gobbler's Knob

I've been a little obsessed lately with Gobbler's Knob. Where's that you say?

Here's how my grandfather (W.D. "Golly" Fish) wrote in the Potter Enterprise of this place so close to his heart.

"Gobbler's Knob, with its feet all wet in Nine Mile Run and its head amid the clouds. Wonder if that mythical gobbler of Paul Bunyon size will frighten visitors and native alike, as he calls his harem? Or will they delight in his mighty call and stand entranced, rooted to the mountainside!"

" 'State Park for Winter Sports To Be Opened By January On Denton Hill'  We will stand for the above heading except the Denton Hill part of it. According to our speedometer it will be four miles east of Denton Hill. Since it will be only about a half mile from Golly's Folly, probably octogenarian Golly will be there the opening day with his skis. Ha, ha, ha."

"Golly reached the top of Gobbler's Knob the other day – away up where the ski enthusiast will take off – come next skiing season at Denton Hill State Park. He took a long look down one of the runs. It was steep and a long way down to the bottom of Nine Mile Valley. Packed snow, with woods on either side! The thought of pushing off – Golly wanted no part of it. He might have felt differently 40 or 50 years ago. However, there will be plenty of folks – old and young – who will take the power tow, reach the pinnacle of lofty old Gobbler's Knob and let loose! Zip! And there you are!"

November 1959

 

The view from Gobbler's Knob late 2021

It's been years since skiers zipped down from Gobbler's Knob. The ski area has been shuttered since 2014. The sign still says Denton Hill State Park and it's still within the State Park system. Just last week, officials from DCNR opened up the shuttered lodge and hosted a session to offer up Gobbler's Knob to development as a four-season "Adventure Center." The state is looking for concessionaires to work with them in a public-private partnership.

I am hoping that this suggestion, posted on the Save Denton Hill facebook group, will gain some traction.

"How about a ski resort with a little soul? Maybe just run the poma, a little grooming on the hill below it for beginners. Just clean brush and manage glades on the upper mountain for those who like to earn their turns. Allow car camping and you'll have a pretty hardy group of skiers who currently drive to VT and NH to car camp and ski glades. Very little overhead costs, and you won't create a Disneyland atmosphere (like is happening everywhere Vail and Alterra buy up) in the middle Pennsylvania's more secluded, wild and beautiful counties. Ascutney in Vermont is a good model to follow. As is Brattleboro or Cochran's in Vermont. All family or township owned. Some managed by volunteers. 

My grandfather wrote this in July 1958, as construction of the ski area was underway:

"Just now, however, we are thinking more about the new winter sports area than famous Ole Bull and his famous Stradivarius. Golly can close his eyes and see hundreds of colorfully clothed skiers dotting the Nine Mile mountain, Gobbler's Knob, – some descending at high speed –some on the uphill tow, some taking a spill, some at the lodge for a snack or a coffee break, or to get warm at the great fireplace filled with blazing logs. Great doings in the Nine Mile Valley – come next winter."

Christmas Eve 1970

 

It was cold and snowy that Christmas Eve as a group of high school classmates gathered, heady with the intoxication of being with familiar pals at the midpoint of sophomore year of college - though I can't say whether other intoxicants were in play. Sophomore always brings to mind the high school teacher who related sophomore translates to wise fool, though I cannot remember which teacher.

And so we went to The Reverend's rambling old house, a familiar hangout for us, to spend the evening away from the watchful eyes of our parents, before duty called him to preach the sermon for the combined Methodist-Presbyterian candlelight service at 11.

 I see the red velvet maxi skirt Susan wore that night, hand crafted by her mother who was often found sitting at the Singer sewing machine in the corner of the den in their big foursquare house on West Street. And the care taken in curling our long flowing locks - mine tamed with Clairol's heated rollers - the off-white ones with the spikes.  Debbie's  hair was perhaps her natural color by then. Carol, always the lady, with her legs clad in panty hose and neatly tucked to the side. I was hiding in the back, always self conscious, and next to me Arthur. Not a classmate, he was new to our group. It was six months into our relationship and six months before we were married by that same Reverend.

Even the boys were dressed up - Jeffrey with his special tie-dyed striped jeans and a baggy sports jacket. He had affected pipe smoking - this one with tobacco, no doubt. Dan chose a striped sport shirt and there's Tom, comfortably lounging in oxford cloth and denim. Keck in the back, wearing a brown bulky sweater that was a bit too long in the sleeves. Was his hand raised to instruct The Reverend as he struggled with Susan's Instamatic camera or was he directing the action as he so often did?

This photo surfaces every five years or so as our Class of 1969 marks off the years since graduation with a reunion, and we pore over the faded photos in albums and scrapbook memorabilia to remember.

The Reverend kept a framed copy with him as he moved on in 1972, first to Mansfield and then to Ohio and finally back to Coudersport. It was found among his effects after he died.*

*I find when mining memories for writing practice, the universe often coughs up other so-called ticklers. Yesterday I came across a letter from The Reverend, dated December 23, 1981. I share some of his closing words here:

"I often think of you both - particularly since I have a Christmas Eve group picture taken in 1970 I believe. You are two of the nine people in the picture. Yes, Debbie Lewis is in it too, in case Jane wants to know. The picture is displayed in my living room. My love to you both. God bless you all."

Update: I published a post to begin 2025 today recalling a neighbor from childhood. She was Louise Dudley- always Mrs. Dudley to me. She was a member of the Presbyterian Church, and came to be a friend to The Reverend. He featured her writing in his book "Poets Of Potter County" and often used her poetry for special occasions at church.

During our gathering that long ago Christmas Eve, the Reverend received a phone call with the news that Mrs. Dudley had died that afternoon. I share here her Christmas poem:

 

Pease Porridge Hot

Our Thanksgiving table was set for six on Thursday. My 'little'* brother Paul and his wife, Lugene, family friend Steve Green and my mother were expected to join Arthur and me. My mother came early to help with preparations and stood at the kitchen sink to peel potatoes. After she finished,  I fixed her a cup of tea and she sat by the fire, enjoying all the ways it warms.

"Mother used to recite nursery rhymes to us," she told me when she returned the empty cup to the steamy kitchen. Then she launched into this one:

“Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold

Pease porridge in the pot, nine days old;

Some like it hot, some like it cold

Some like it in the pot, nine days old”. 

My mind immediately went to the twenty-first century version on You Tube that sends my eldest granddaughter into fits of giggles. But she took me back to the beginning of the twentieth century. "It was your fireplace that brought it to mind. Imagine a pot hanging on the fire for nine days. Wonder how many people got sick after eating nine-day-old porridge?"

She allowed that having to live on pease porridge day in and day out was grim but it was better than the alternative - starving.

*Paul, who is three years younger than I and the youngest of our family of five siblings, is everyone's little brother, though he likely is the tallest of us all these days.

(Click here to read  memories of my childhood Thanksgivings, written last year)

Rally For What Cause?

The Free Pa folks have planned a rally in the back lot of Kightlinger Motors (site of Pro-Trump rallies before and after the 2020 election) to support some citizens who have decided to launch write-in campaigns to become school directors for the Coudersport Area School District.

The rally was originally scheduled for October 30 and promised a mask burning, along with the face painting and the trick or treating and the hot dogs and the bonfire.

For you see, these citizens are rallying because they are incensed at the idea that a public school should require public health measures such as vaccination against disease and the implementation of mandated public health measures. It would appear this position is misguided and untenable, and the state has made it clear public schools must comply. (This from the Coudersport school's website.)

I'm not sure how it came about, but the date for the rally was changed (likely because no one wants to mess with the annual trick or treat rituals) and when that change was made, the planned mask burning was removed from the poster. Perhaps, in light of the extremely low vaccination rate and high rate of Covid-19 transmission and death in Potter County, they need those masks!

 

Hand-Me-Downs

A milestone birthday approaches. In the midst of the apprehension of reaching an age that once seemed so very far away and so very, very old, I've been helping to clear out my mother's little yellow house while settling her in a new, much-smaller space.

That intimate task brings to the surface a fact I cannot ignore. I am becoming my mother.

It's not just the times when my children will say "Yes, Grandma Barb" when her sage advice comes from my mouth. It's a whole collection of things - literally - that I have made my own. 

It's the colorful assortment of used twist ties in a kitchen drawer. It's the rinsed-out plastic bags and bread wrappers stored away for another use. It's the way I wash the kitchen towels and dishcloths and cloth napkins in a load by themselves, with hot water and every-so-often bleach. It's the perfectly-good jelly and mayonnaise jars with lids on the pantry shelf.

It's the boxes of photos sorted yet another time, one-by-one from one stack to another as the waste basket moved in front of the couch to receive the discards remains empty.

And this morning, pulling a load of work clothes (you know the ones - the patched ones, the stained ones, the ones with ripped seams and missing buttons) from the dryer, I decided that wonderful old soft blue t-shirt (a castoff from my then-teenage daughter) was just too immodest even for garden work.

I cut away the seams to make this pile of rags - so like those in the carefully-labeled bag I found in the back of  my mother's pantry just last week.