The Absorbing Errand

Kindle Stuff and Mopping Up.

2010-09-01T13:43:00.009-04:00

Some blogger I turned out to be. Last post in January, I should be ashamed of myself. I blame it all on Amazon.

My family decided to present me with a most inspired gift this past Christmas, one that I did not realize at the time would become such a mesmerizing and time jealous device. A person like me with a portable library at their disposal at all hours on all days is like the proverbial kid in a candy store. I have gotten fat off of this candy, and have driven myself to near diabetic shock with the sheer volume of literature available at the touch of a button. I found myself downloading my next book while partway through the one I was reading. The Kindle has transformed the distribution of what I consider "me" time very dramatically. It has become a convenient enabler and companion in my natural escapist tendencies. Why get all worked up over things you can't control like oil spills and mosques at ground zero when you can just as easily lose yourself in post revolution France. The worries and frustrations of those pages were the spills and mosques of another time, only they had the guillotine and mad Emperors/Kings to concern themselves with. History has judged these epochs for the most part, and the modern reader can experience these things safely, able to walk away to get a glass of iced tea, never having to hear the blade fall or the dull thud at the bottom of the basket.

I immersed myself in these escapes in a reverie that has lasted for over eight months after which time I wandered around the nearly forgotten landscape of the internet. My foray into escapism had made me nearly blind to current events. Coupled with my banishment of television, radio, newspapers and pop culture in general in my life I discovered that I had missed a lot. Naturally when something on as grand a scale as the Gulf disaster occurred I was aware of what was going on, I just lack the kind of depth to discuss it in an intelligent manner. If you are not absorbing news or discussing it with others much of the common internet appeal vanishes, for me at least. I still like to look at the kitten pictures on lolcats though...

Many months ago a man whom I respect a great deal on EEticket.com forum informed me that I could not just reject the pop culture and hide under a rock with my ideas. I was close my friend, very very close. I may get there yet.

What I did miss about the net was a large cross section of truly decent people that I have been blessed to have come into contact with online. I have been unable to understand properly how folks never seen leave an impression on your life. You all know who you are.

In the Kindle Stuff section of this post I would like to offer what I think are the five best books I have downloaded on my Kindle. These tiles may or may not enter my top five of pre-Kindle times (hereafter referred to as PK times), but they were all damned good.

1. THE COUNT of MONTE CRISTO- Alexandere Dumas.
To those who have read it, have you found any book much better? The precursor to every
bad ass revenge movie. It has it all, and was consumed breathlessly.

2. WAR and PEACE- Leo Tolstoy
OK, it was long. Very very long. Tolstoy proved to be as adept at character development
and transmitting emotion as Dostoevsky. The ending left me a bit hanging though. Did I
mention it was long?

3. COD- Mark Kurlansky
I have a great deal of respect for a non-fiction author who has the skills to make a very mundane subject educational and entertaining. After having read The Big Oyster, Salt and
The Last Fish Tale Kurlansky is in my opinion the master of a possibly non existent genre.

4. CAPE COD- Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau either puts you to sleep or whispers in your ear like a warm spring wind. Cape Cod is great,Walden is possibly my all time favorite, Thoreau to me almost reads lyrically. I had the honor of meeting Kurt Vonnegut many years ago, but Thoreau would still get my vote as the author I would most like to have a beer with. Sorry Kurt.

5. CHARLATAN: AMERICA'S MOST DANGEROUS HUCKSTER, THE MAN WHO PURSUED HIM, AND THE AGE OF FLIMFLAM- Pope Brock
Mix together and old time medical scam artist, a somewhat receptive post patent medicine
populace and the testicles of a goat and what do you get? A true story of absence of human compassion on the one hand, and a generally uneducated, gullible, science can
solve everything victims on the other. Amazing read.

As for mopping up, after much research and many attempts at contacting the family of Edgar and Evelyn it has become apparent that this errand was an abysmal failure. So as a last attempt at matching this photo with a family member I have decided to post their entire names hoping that a google search might stir up a contact. The children are Edgar Kibbe and Evelyn Kibbe Rice both born in Jamestown N.Y. The Rices seemed to have migrated to Cleveland. According to obits I was able to obtain on the Rices, I feel reasonably sure that I found a son who just does not care enough to answer. Several letters to Kibbes and other related surnames in the Jamestown area have also met with no response. Very sad indeed. Perhaps next time we go to Salamanca NY I will stop at the Jamestown Library and Historical Society and try to drum up some new leads. I could not see paying what they wanted for hourly research to give away a picture that I already have a meager investment in. I am sentimental but cheap.

An odd note. Many months ago, as a favor to my son and his cousin Michael I pasted a few paragraphs on the Transylvanian Saxons that I had written for a family history book years ago. A cut and paste pre made blog entry, how easy is that. This particular post has outpaced the second most visited post on my blog by three times. Obviously more of us out there than I had thought.

Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to throw out a google fishing line for a project that I am working on. Anyone willing to share information, stories and/or pictures of the Displaced Persons Camp in Ansfelden Austria at the close of WWII please feel free to email me directly. This camp was also known as Lager/Haid or DP Camp 121.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading,

D

An Edgar and Evelyn Update

2010-01-26T14:59:00.003-05:00

As promised, I just wanted to drop a quick post letting anyone interested know where the "Edgar and Evelyn" errand stands.

First of all, the photograph itself was taken sometime around 1915. Edgar was born around 1910 and Evelyn around 1914. The photograph was taken in Jamestown, New York and the family according to the 1920 and 1930 census lived in Stockton, NY. Stockton is about 18 miles northwest of Jamestown.

Both were married, so I am hoping that the each had children and grandchildren to locate. Edgar passed away in 1970, Evelyn in 1997. I am presently working on collecting obituaries for them hoping to get the names of surviving children. Sometimes libraries will only give this information out for an hourly research fee, but they are free to look up if you are physically at the library. Perhaps an antiquing road trip to that area may be in order...

Just a final note on this kind of search. I am not worried at all about finding a person that this photograph should belong to, but my greatest worry is finding this person and them not caring at all that the photograph exists. That would make it doubly sad.

I will post again soon.

Edgar, Evelyn and a New Errand

2010-01-16T18:31:00.004-05:00

I love antique shops. I very rarely ever buy much of anything but I do love them.

For me an antique shop is more like a free museum of things that have just seemed to outlast their original purpose. I enjoy burrowing around inside, seeking out these items of another time and if I am particularly lucky on a given excursion I may find something that I have no idea at at what it is or what it was used for. I make a mental note of the item, perhaps a manufacturer name and once in a while snap a picture with my cell phone. The photographing thing is very quickly becoming taboo at these shops. Sometimes they do not want you to go home and google the same item and find out that their low discounted price might still be somewhat inflated.

Another phenomenon that happens in these shops is that there comes a day when astounded to find that you are aged enough to have actually used or owned some of these items when they were still serving their original purpose. Once in a while you round a corner and are faced with an item that touches off a memory long stored away of a favorite toy or a kitchen utensil that you can still picture a long passed Grandmother using in her kitchen. These never fail to make me smile, and are another of the main reasons I keep rummaging through them.

By now maybe you are asking yourself about the children, you know the ones at the upper right of this rambling post. Cute aren't they? In case you don't recognize them they are Edgar and Evelyn. He is five and she is eight months.

As I have pointed out in a series of blog posts in the past, these kinds of pictures sadden me. I know that the fine folks who have the little antique booths in the co-ops buy up estates that have gone to auction to acquire inventory to sell, but there is, to me at least, a big difference between selling a tea cup and some one's picture. These are photographs of some one's babies, some one's Grandfather, children that were dear to many people. I always think that the right person presented with that particular picture may be really touched and treasure it dearly. So, ignoring my distaste for these types of items being for sale, I bought this picture today.

A group of earlier posts in this blog told the story of a marriage license that I found in an antique store in Bolivar Ohio that I was able to reunite with a very nice man who was the wedded couple's grandson. The gentleman had reached his early eighties and was able to rescue not only the license but other family ephemera from the estate as well. This was a very satisfying experience for me.

My new errand is to put this particular picture of Edgar and Evelyn into the hands of someone who will dearly love to have it. Not sell it mind you, just give it. I have their names, ages and the seal of the photographer that took the portrait. Just like with the marriage license errand I will post any progress, or lack thereof as I go along if anyone is interested.

As you can tell, it has been quite a while since the last Errand post. If any of this is indecipherable or reads as gibberish you have my apology. I have just been busy chasing ideas and digging treasure... I will try to clean up the place a bit, update the books section and try to find something else compelling to tell a story about soon.

If any are interested about the marriage license adventure here are links to the posts:

http://theabsorbingerrand.blogspot.com/2008/02/another-errand-or-selling-ones-memories.html

http://theabsorbingerrand.blogspot.com/2008/02/another-errand-or-selling-ones-memories_28.html

http://theabsorbingerrand.blogspot.com/2008/03/i-am-very-pleased-to-report-that.html

Eulogy for a Decent Man

2009-06-21T21:26:00.001-04:00

“No man is an island, entire of itself;
every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less,
as well as if a promontory were,
as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were;
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.”

-John Donne

I first came upon this verse several years ago and was moved by the message that it relays. Naively, I had originally thought that the entire passage was the work of Ernest Hemmingway. Later I learned that Hemingway borrowed a portion of this passage as the title to a book he had written. I have never been much into poetry, but that does not mean that the meaning of this passage was lost on me.

I have been diminished this past week. I received a message from an old friend informing me that a most decent human being had passed away. This news was not the type of thing to be acknowledged and filed away with a touch of sadness, this loss made me sink inside. This world has too few truly generous, kind human beings to let this news speed by like so many other bits of news that we process each day.

Sometimes you have to stop.

Bob Hromika and I crossed paths several years ago when I joined a community of metal detecting enthusiasts. I knew nothing at all about the hobby, and Bob took me under his wing. Bob had incredibly big wings, he took everyone under his wing. As we corresponded in the weeks and months that followed I learned to respect Bob, or Boobie as he was commonly known, as one of those rare people who was just plain friendly to the core. He was always quick with encouragement and advice, a good joke or an invitation to join him on a hunt. He lived his life to a high standard, and I am very happy that I was privileged enough to have known him.

My condolences go out to his loving wife, and to his children and grandchildren.

The tolling of this particular bell has indeed tolled for me.

Godspeed Boobie.

Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens

2009-05-27T16:41:00.006-04:00

My wife and I had the pleasure of visiting our oldest child at the University of Pittsburgh a couple of weekends ago. We had not seen her since her Easter break, and between two jobs, a full class load and being responsible for planning several events for a major campus student organization, her schedule had not allowed for an afternoon visit in quite some time. She just smiles, rubs some dirt in the wounds and moves forward to face the next challenge. We are very proud of her and what she has accomplished. Our children all do us proud.

On this particular visit we had lunch at my favorite place in Oakland and then set off for the Phipps Conservatory. I was kind of on the fence about whether this was a good way to spend the day, I really had no idea what to expect. I was stunned by the overpowering beauty and sheer magnitude of what has been put together there. I was delighted with the visit, and would encourage anyone who is in the area to pay the Conservatory a visit. I doubt it will disappoint you.

The Phipps Conservatory is a two acre Victorian greenhouse that was a gift to the City of Pittsburgh by philanthropist Henry Phipps Jr. Phipps was a partner of Andrew Carnegie in the days of Carnegie Steel. Like Carnegie, Phipps believed that along with wealth came a moral responsibility to use some of that wealth to benefit the public at large. He built the conservatory at Oakland in 1893 at the edge of Schenley Park. Since then literally thousands of botanical specimens, both common and rare, have been added to the Botanical Garden's collection. The Conservatory houses a Palm Court, an Orchid Room, a Butterfly Room, a Tropical Fruit and Spice Room, a Desert Room and several more interior displays. Outside there is a Japanese Courtyard Garden, A Kid's Discovery Garden and an Aquatic Garden.

We were also fortunate enough to have gone when they had fine glass work by Dale Chihuly and Hans Godo Frabel both on display as we caught them in the process of moving the Chihuly display out and the Frabel display in. All very nice.

In all I took over 100 photographs, some of which I offer here as a slide show. This is the first slide show I have created in this manner so please forgive me if it goes horribly wrong...

A Tale of Two Well(e)s

2009-04-24T20:10:00.004-04:00

Before there was the internet, before there was satellite and cable TV, even before there were TV broadcasts at all the American family gathered in the living rooms of the country to be informed and entertained by a magical box that was the rage of the nation. Americans marveled at the radio, and most were not quite sure how the radio set really worked. Some who were more informed may very well have pondered the oddness of sitting in a room knowing that the ether around them was saturated with the strange waves that brought the radio to life. Regardless of the level of wonder one possessed one thing was for sure. Everyone loved the radio, with the possible exception of newspaper men.

Back in 1938 one of the most eagerly awaited radio shows of the week was the Chase and Sanborn Hour that aired at eight o’clock on Sunday evenings. This program featured, as many of the shows at that time did, interludes of band and dance music to entertain the listeners. What the Chase and Sanborn Hour had that the others did not was the duo of Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. The show was extremely popular and was far and away the champion of all Sunday evening broadcasts. One would think that a ventriloquist act would lose some of its magic over the radio, but it was popular.

On the evening of October 30th, 1938 countless families gathered around their radios at eight, like they had every Sunday night, to hear Mr. Bergen and his wooden friend. At about twelve minutes after the hour, Nelson Eddy came on the air for a musical performance. Today we may grab the remote and fly through the channels looking for something more interesting to enjoy while the interlude was on the air. The radio listeners of the day dial surfed, and a good many of them at that. Most ended up on CBS expecting to hear the Mercury Theater on the Air show. What they heard caught many of them about as off guard as people can be.

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Carl Phillips again, at the Wilmuth Farm, Grover’s Mill, New Jersey. Well, I hardly know where to begin, to paint for you a word picture of the strange scene before my eyes, like something out of a modern Arabian Nights.

Well then, the listeners thought, what could be so important in New Jersey that would force the regularly scheduled program aside for a live news flash. Maybe we better leave the dial alone and find out what is up.

I just got here, I haven’t had a chance to look around yet. I guess that’s it. Yes, I guess that is the… thing, directly in front of me, half buried in a vast pit. Must have struck with terrific force.

Military airplane crash or possibly, worse yet, a secret weapon from Nazi Germany?

The ground is covered with splinters of a tree it must have struck on its way down. What can I see of the object itself doesn’t look very much like a meteor, at least not the meteors I’ve seen. It looks more like a huge cylinder.

What the unwitting audience had fallen for was a carefully and brilliantly organized hijacking of the radios of the country that night. The coup was the brainchild of Mercury Theater producer Orson Welles. His show had been consistently haunted with poor ratings because of Chase and Sanborn’s dominance. Tonight however, he would hold the dial surfers in his spell for the next hour and beyond.

The dramatization was of the science fiction novel “War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells. The story was followed very loosely, with the dialog, geography and technology updated to fit a 1938 audience (the original was first published in 1897). By the time that the fictional Martians started emerging from their cylinders and wielding their lethal heat ray an amazing amount of the listeners began to take it as an actual news story. Panic ensued across the country. A mass hysteria about the Martians advancing on New York threw the entire city into gridlock. The aliens were shooting down planes, vaporizing people and emitting a black poisonous gas that was instantly lethal. What was the use of going back to the other network to fact check these claims? It was far easier to panic and run.

Eventually, at one point in the show, CBS broadcast supervisor Davidson Taylor had received so many reports of the mayhem that he stormed into the studio and halted the play, much to the displeasure of Welles and partner John Houseman. They were to make an announcement immediately that the program was not live news, merely a dramatization of a classic book. The players were led to believe that there were thousands dead in the panic when in actuality nothing but a few bruised bodies, and more than a few bruised egos had been collected throughout the night.

This is Orson Welles ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that the “War of the Worlds” has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be, the Mercury Theater’s own version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying BOO!

Then it was over. People went home feeling very foolish indeed for having been so gullible. The public was outraged over the incident, but as is common with many pranks and practical jokes they regained their sense of humor and laughed at themselves. Orson Welles was tagged a irresponsible broadcaster, then an inexperienced young entertainer and finally a genius. He of course went on to create one of the greatest films of all time, “Citizen Kane”. Undoubtedly that night in New York was what launched the young man's occasionally brilliant career.

One would think that you could never pull this prank off again, but it has been attempted a few times. On Halloween 1968, WKBW radio in Buffalo, New York reworked the skit for their own use and put it on the air. A full twenty one days before the broadcast the station ran an announcement about the coming program every hour on the hour to avoid any panic. Still the Buffalo police fielded nearly four thousand phone calls resulting from panic over the show, and the Canadian National Guard sent troops to the Queenston, Peace and Rainbow Bridges to make sure the aliens did not cross.

Unfortunately another broadcast in another part of the world ended tragically. In February of 1944 a Ecuadorian radio station in Quito attempted the broadcast the play with no advanced warning. The play was being preformed in the El Comercio building that also housed the capital’s newspaper. That night the result was the same in one respect, thousands of citizens frightened out of their wits running around the city. Quickly the radio station announced that the show was a hoax, at which time the citizenry went directly to the El Comerico building and began to riot. By the time it was over the building was burnt to the ground and twenty radio station employees were killed.

Could we be fooled by this same hoax today? I think that we are far too advanced and informed to accept a story of this caliber without fact checking the information we would be receiving and immediately identifying it as a joke. We are the most sophisticated, technologically advanced people who have ever lived. We have the internet to call upon for these questions.

Those folks listening breathlessly to the horrors being witnessed in Grover’s Mills were the most sophisticated and technologically advanced people who had ever lived back in 1938. The radio was their internet, but very few took the time to turn that dial…

Italicized script denotes actual transcript of the 1938 Mercury Theater broadcast.

Lets Make a Deal

2009-03-14T19:17:00.006-04:00

Please forgive me for my prolonged absence from my blogging duties. I am a very amateur writer at best, and there are times when I cannot write anything interesting at all. I can think it, I just cant write it. Please accept this short story as a genuine, albeit rusty, apology.

Let’s play a little game.

Let’s pretend that you and I are in Holland in 1638. I am in possession of a small parcel that you are trying desperately to acquire through barter. Your final, desperate offer is as follows:

Two lasts of wheat
Four lasts of rye
Four fat oxen
Eight fat swine
Twelve fat sheep
Two hogsheads of wine (63 gallons each)
Four tuns of beer (a tun was approx 283.5 gallons)
Two tuns of butter
One thousand pounds of cheese
A complete bed
A suit of clothes
A silver drinking cup

Total value, 2500 florins. A very hefty sum in its day. You are a pleasant enough person and I am in a reasonably generous mood, so I accept your offer. Upon delivery of the grain and livestock and beer I will present you with the small parcel. A diamond perhaps? No. Gold? No. A precious ancient treasure? Not quite. You are immensely pleased nonetheless.

You are the proud owner of a single Viceroy tulip bulb.

The tulip was introduced via Constantinople to Europe in about 1600 after enjoying several years of popularity in Turkey. Year after year the bulbs grew in popularity until everyone from the richest to the poorest men in Holland were actively perusing, trading in or collecting any specimens that they could get their hands on. Some would spend half of their life savings on a single bulb just to show it off to friends. Needless to say the tulip market became very lucrative, to the point that a special section of their stock market was dedicated to nothing but the tulip trade.

You are happy because you got a quality bulb at a reasonable price at the height of the bubble. An Admiral Leifken would have cost you closer to 4000, a Semper Augustus would have been a steal at 5500. This particular bubble is referred to by historians as Tulipomania, and like all speculative bubbles this one was bound to burst.

The rich Dutch with substantial tulip holdings began to feel uneasy about the new found wealth producer and began to sell off all of their bulbs thereby flooding the markets and causing panic in the bulb trade. In a matter of a few months you could not unload a tulip bulb if your life depended on it. Fortunes were made and lost, some were just lost. Beggars who were elevated to high society quickly found themselves beggars once more. And, as in most bubble implosions, the folks left holding the lions share of the money that had changed hands did not flaunt it. Many turned it into foreign currencies and investments.

And what about you and your now worthless Viceroy? Like many of the common folk who got caught up in the mania and lost you probably bitterly planted the pricey mistake in your yard or somewhere in the countryside and felt foolish every time you saw it from that point forward. So many were planted that the tulip ranks with wooden shoes and windmills as a Dutch icon to those unfamiliar with the country.

And me? I am secretly drinking your wine out of your silver drinking cup. Perhaps there are contemporary lessons to be learned from the varied fortunes of the Dutch tulip traders over four centuries ago………

I recently read a wonderful book on the ginseng trade called “Ginseng, the Divine Root” by David A. Taylor which reminded me of the Tulipomania story that I had read years ago in a book titled “Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” by Charles MacKay. This work was first published in 1841 and many of the examples and accounts used in this post are from this work. The book has chapters on manias caused by slow poisoning, alchemy, Nostradamus, mesmerism and many others. I would encourage all to read both of these works, they are quite interesting.

Old News, New News

2008-11-29T15:45:00.008-05:00

A couple of weeks ago, I was involved in a discussion with several friends on the EE Ticket.com forum regarding the tragic shooting death of Amanda Collette. Miss Collette, 15, was shot and killed at Dillard High School in Ft. Lauderdale Florida earlier this month. The shooter was apparently a friend, Teah Wimberly, with whom she had argued. This incident is another senseless tragedy in an all too long list of senseless tragedies that play out these days. We offer our hearts to all involved, express our collective outrage at the incident, and wonder once again “what is wrong with people today?” or “what have we become as a society?”. We wonder where mankind went wrong, and where the sanctity and respect for life disappeared to.

On November 28th, this year’s version of the “Black Friday” kickoff to the holiday shopping season, the senseless violence and disregard for human life manifested itself again. A Wal-mart employee was trampled to death by over zealous bargain hunters in New York, and a gunfight erupted in a Toys-r-Us store in Riverside California leaving both gunmen dead. When shoppers were informed of the employee’s death and asked to clear out of the New York Wal-mart, several customers protested that they had waited hours outside to get in and continued their shopping. In Riverside, the gunmen having been the only killed or wounded in a toy store full of adults and children is somewhat miraculous.

Why can’t we as a society just go back to the “good old days”? My belief is quite simple. There were no “good old days”.

I believe that these types of senseless violence are nothing new at all. I think that incidents like the ones described above have always happened in some form. I think that the major difference is that we have access to so much news that some think that it this kind of tragedy is a modern day phenomenon.

My premise is this. All of these awful things that we hear about now, chances are we would have been unaware of not so many years ago. A murder, child abduction or senseless tragedy that takes place today is on CNN and hundreds of other news outlets in minutes. Everyone around the globe sees the event unfold, sometimes with live video feeds. A child abduction or shots fired by a disgruntled employee in small town America that is front page news in 2008, may or may not have made the half hour national news broadcast in 1978, and may not have appeared a newspaper two hundred miles away in 1918. But it still went on.

I am presently reading a terrific book by Harold Schechter called “The Devil’s Gentleman” that brought my thoughts back to the topic of this post. Without giving anything away, the book is about a famous murder that took place in New York City in 1898 that captivated the city at the time. Mr. Schechter points out very accurately that the media circus that ensued was something novel, and was a result of the rise in popularity of “yellow journalism” taking place at about the same time. William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer were using sensationalism and lurid accounts of crimes to get a circulation advantage for their respective newspapers, the “Journal” and the “World“. He points out that before Pulitzer, the typical New York papers offered some pretty dull reading, including Jay Gould’s World that he had taken over. Shock factor sells newspapers.

Schechter goes on to list some headlines used by these papers at this time.

FIENDISH PARENTS; ALIVE IN COFFIN; A CHILD FLAYED ALIVE; STRANGLED BY ROBBERS and QUINTUPLE TRAGEDY-AN ENTIRE FAMILY INIHILATED BY ITS HEAD!

These headlines, although sensational, did not make up these crimes. They just made them more vivid. They were meant to sell newspapers to a breathless, lurid news craving public. But the facts remain. The crimes reported on by these newspapers did happen. And they happened often.

Over then dozen or so years that I have been researching my family history I have looked through literally hundreds of rolls of newspaper microfilm from the early 1800s to the present day. One thing that has always struck me is that the stories of murder, tragedy and crime that were published in these early newspapers could easily, with some changes in language, be transplanted into your local paper tomorrow very seamlessly. People were senselessly killed, children were abducted, women assaulted and innocent people hurt and victimized just like they are today. The only difference back then was that the vast majority of these events ware reported solely on a local level unless the circumstances were extraordinary.

I offer you an example of something that happened not four miles from where I am sitting right now that happened long ago. It is all but forgotten except by some people who have a good grip on local history, and when it happened the news of it did not get very far from where it happened. This is a story that could easily be posted on CNN today, and we would all wonder what happened to society, and yearn for the good old days.

Back in 1930 a major portion of the land around where I live was deep mined for coal. Small communities, complete with a “company store” sprung up around the mineshafts where most of the local men made their living. Eventually even naming these short lived boom towns became too much of an effort and the mines in my area of the county were simply named after the mineshaft number designated by the mining company. There is a community not far from me that is still known as “Number 5”. Many locals still know the area on the county border near Brent as “Number 2”. It is here at Number 2 that a mass murder took place.

Marco Demifonte awoke on the morning of July 23,1931 and quietly waited until it was time to go to the mine for his shift. His sister in law was in the kitchen having coffee with Marco’s wife. A beginning just like any other day at Number 2, but for Marco this day was anything but ordinary.

Marco stood up and walked upstairs and returned to the kitchen very shortly with a shotgun that he used to hunt blackbirds. He promptly raised the weapon and shot and killed both women as they chatted. He then decided that it was a good time to take a walk through town. His route first led him past the house next door where his neighbor’s wife was out hanging laundry. He raised the shotgun once more and shot her in the head, killing her instantly. As he continued through town he came across nine year old Nick Sicilian playing in front of his house. The boy sensed something was wrong, and began to run. Marco shot the boy twice in the back, knocking him down both times, but the boy got up and ran into the house.

Nick’s mother immediately locked the door. She grabbed a pistol that she had in the house to defend the boy as Marco broke his way in. She tried to shoot him but the safety was engaged on the pistol. Marco shot her in the side and killed her with the butt of the shotgun. When he turned and saw Nick running away he shot him a third time, this time in the legs. He left Nick for dead.

Further into town Marco was confronted by a good friend, a local shoe maker, who Marco turned on and killed immediately. Word had gotten out to call the police, and the shoemaker was trying to slow him down or talk him into stopping. No sooner had Marco’s friend hit the ground when Union Supply company store manager George Masters, armed with a shotgun, came over the hill to help. Marco turned on Masters and pulled the trigger. The gun was empty. Masters immediately shot Marco in the legs while several men captured him and took him to the county jail.

Marco Demifonte spent the rest of his days at the Pennsylvania Institute for the Criminally Insane. George Masters was awarded a silver Carnegie Medal for his heroism that day. The police thought that young Nick Sicilian was dead, and told the funeral director to take him with the bodies of the other victims. A very observant Dr. David Vogan saw that Nick was not dead, and after 43 days in the hospital was released.

Nick’s father went to see Marco in jail to ask him why he had killed his wife and injured his son. Marco said he only meant to kill his wife and her sister because they were plotting against him.

If this same incident happened today it would dominate the national news for three days.

You see, people now are no more crazy or depraved than they were many years ago. A certain percentage of the population will always be. It is just that the whole world is considered “local” news these days.

The Transylvanian Saxons

2008-11-16T21:02:00.007-05:00

My son told me recently that he and his cousin Michael had developed a growing interest in their Transylvanian Saxon bloodline. He did not know the historical background of these ancestors, so I decided to pull a page out of our family history book to give them a background on where we came from as a people. Their interest is encouraging because this is the generation that will keep a potentially forgotten heritage alive.

For Michael and Jordan……

Transylvania. The word alone brings to mind lightning plagued castles, darkness and fog, and a pale man with odd teeth wearing a black cape. If asked, most people will inform you that Transylvania is a fictitious land that was created by Bram Stoker as a scene for a story. It was never a real place, or was it?

Back in the 10th century, after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, a land called the Hungarian Kingdom arose between the Byzantine and German Empires. The people of this land were called Magyars, and they were a pagan and aggressive people. The Magyars terrorized western Europe in the first half of the 10th century, looting and burning villages as far away as Spain and northern Germany. In 955, Holy Roman Emperor Otto I handed the Magyars a crushing defeat at the Battle of Lechfeld and ended the Magyars raiding days for good. This defeat was taken as a omen by the Magyar leader Duke Geza, and he converted to Christianity and organized a state.

As the country grew geographically, a problem arose for Geza’s son who was baptized Stephen I. His expanding kingdom did not have enough population to settle on, develop and defend his widening borders. A large portion of the land he had conquered was called Transylvania, or “land beyond the forests”. Stephen had a unique plan to solve his border problem, he would invite citizens of other countries to settle in these lands. He would entice them with land ownership, unheard of for commoners in feudal Europe, and by granting privileges and perks to these guest settlers. Each group could negotiate a deal with the rulers, and the privileges granted were many.

One such group came from Germany sometime around 1200. The Magyars were very short on skilled tradesmen and miners to take advantage of the many natural resources to be found in Transylvania. The German group filled the need perfectly and were able to negotiate a particularly good deal with the Magyars. These settlers were and are still known as the Transylvanian Saxons. For centuries the privileges given to these settlers were honored by whomever ruled Transylvania at that given time.

In 1526 Transylvania fell under the control of the Ottoman Empire, and again the Saxons were well treated, but wars with the Habsburg Monarchy landed Transylvania in their control in 1683. For the next two centuries the Transylvanian Saxons would be systematically stripped of all special privileges due to the Habsburg obsession with uniformity. The Monarchy believed that there should be no ethnic separation in their dominion, and all citizens in Transylvania were pushed down to the same social and political standing as the lowest subject. All were equal and at the bottom of the barrel except the ruling class, just as the Habsburgs liked it. The final insult came with the absorption of Transylvania by Hungary. The Saxons now had no independent identity, no political clout and no country to point to on a map. In 1867 they were treated to the coronation of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef as their King.

Things had deteriorated indeed.

For further information visit:

http://www.saxonlodge.org/

http://www.atsaxons.com/

Upper Picture: Saint Stephan of Hungary, or Stephan 1 from Wikipedia
Lower Picture: Alliance of Transylvanian Saxon fraternal organization logo, Cleveland Oh.

Where The Errand is Going

2008-11-08T10:58:00.004-05:00

I think that every once in a while an individual needs to sit down and do some priority adjustments in their lives. I have preached this process to my children many times because I think that it relieves some of the stress that we unnecessarily put our selves through each day, and that can never be a bad thing.

The process is simple. Take a sheet of paper and draw a vertical line straight down the center. Label the first column “Things that work for me”, and the second “Things that do not work for me”. They can just as easily be “Thinks giving joy” and “Things causing grief” or anything else your imagination can come up with.

The object of the exercise is to recommit your self to the items in the joy column, and making an honest effort to eliminate the things in the grief column. The more thing you can eliminate in the grief column, the less stressed you will find your life is. I understand it is a very simple minded exercise, but I have found it helpful over the years.

While compiling these two lists in my head recently I found a few things that were no longer giving me the amount of joy that they once did. One was a local newspaper discussion forum that has degenerated into nothing more than a mean spirited attack laden bitch-fest. There are many good people who still frequent these discussions, but they are becoming fewer as the nasty members are driving them away. A week ago they were eliminated from my life.

Another was a metal detecting forum that I had the honor of being a moderator on. It was and likely still is a wonderful place to hand out and discuss detecting, coins, bottles and finds. With all of this going for that fine group of friends, an unfortunate inability to agree with some of the practices at this forum caused my disappearance there .I did not feel an “I am done!!” type of post was warranted, I just simply left my friends to continue without me.

By now you are probably wondering where this post is going. You see, by eliminating my affiliation with these two sites The Errand’s readership has dropped by about 70%, mostly from the former, some from the latter. I had a pretty good run going for a while, and was enjoying the fact that people took the time to actually read something that I had written. So for now The Errand remains in the joy column, and if you are reading this you have my sincere thanks.

The future of my oddball corner of the net is fluid at the moment. The Absorbing Errand concept that lead to its title is from a quote by Henry James that always appears in my title banner. In a nutshell it says to me that the only way that a person can be truly happy is to find a diversion, bordering on obsession, that can take his or her mind away from the grind of everyday life. We all need that, a hobby is a great example.

My problem has always been finding an interest, becoming consumed by it, and at some point losing interest and tossing it aside never to be pursued again. In the last 20 some odd years my mind was filled with baseball, fishing, canoeing, kayaking, a long Civil War research period, family tree research, lighthouses, astronomy, politics, metal detecting, antique medicine bottles, Ancient Roman coins and antiques in general. Rarely do any of these overlap, and typically one had to be pronounced dead before another could begin. I think I may have ADHD.

At the moment I have no true Absorbing Errand. I am caught between a quickly dying interest and the next wave of mania that will drive the next phase of my errand . I still have the history to post here, as I will certainly continue to do. Other subjects and diversions are up in the air at this point.

If anyone stops by from the TT family, I just wanted to say thank you from both of us for your friendship and support. If we do not cross paths again you all will be sorely missed.

As for new friends I have been blessed with, hang on tight this thing could go anywhere…….

Expect a new history post very shortly.

Mr. Hume's Honorable Absorbing Errand

2008-10-13T22:30:00.005-04:00

This past week I had the good fortune of spending yet another week of vacation time at Cape May NJ. Cape May is amongst my favorite places to be on the planet. A laid back atmosphere, clean beaches, wonderful food and spectacular Victorian architecture are just a few of the many pleasures that the resort town has to offer. Through a system of rigorous saving and financial wizardry on the part of my wife we were able to return to our beach getaway for the seventh time. We never get tired of the town. I doubt we ever will.

One of the things that we put aside at least one evening to do on every visit is to attend the flag ceremony that takes place at Sunset Beach every evening from May to the end of October. This beach is one of the most beautiful places to watch a sunset on the east coast. The scene is a fitting backdrop for a deeply touching event that has been a labor of love and deep respect for a very special man that I had the honor to speak with on this trip.

Our story starts in Collingswood New Jersey where in the 1930s three boys became very close friends. These boys were Joseph Hittorff, Walter Simon and Marvin Hume. As is the case with most groups of school friends there came a time when schooling was over and each boy had to choose a path to follow into adulthood. For Joseph and Walter the United States Navy was the path chosen, and for Marvin it was college.

A few weeks before Christmas of 1941 Marvin Hume’s life, along with the lives of all Americans, was changed forever by the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor. This attack robbed Mr. Hume of both of his boyhood friends, Ensign Joseph Hittorff was aboard the USS Oklahoma and Seaman 1st Class Walter Simon was assigned to the USS Arizona. Serving his country in the wake of this cowardly attack was a moral imperative for the heartbroken Hume. He left school and served in the Navy for three years, during which time he saw firsthand the horrors of warfare.

When Mr. Hume finished his service he took a job with McDonnell Aircraft as an engineer, but a lifelong love for minerals, gemstones and fossils led him to abandon aeronautics and open a mineral and fossil shop on the Atlantic City boardwalk. Business at the store was good, and Mr. Hume expanded his business into the wholesale of fossils and minerals to other retailers. One of his customers was the owner of a stretch of beach and gift shop in West Cape May named Preston Shadbolt. One day while making a delivery to Shadbolt’s shop, Mr. Hume was asked if he would be interested in purchasing the property because Shadbolt was ready to retire. A price was set, and a gentleman’s deal was sealed with a handshake that very day.

Preston Shadbolt was an avid Kate Smith fan, and each night when he took the flag down from the old wooden flagpole he played her rendition of “God Bless America”. It had become a tradition over the years, and Mr. Hume assured Mr. Shadbolt that this tradition would continue at Sunset Beach. Marvin Hume not only continued this tradition, but expanded upon it to make it what it is today.

He decided that he would put a twist on the ceremony, and at the same time honor his lost boyhood friends and all other soldiers who fought, and some who died for their country in WWII. Mr. Hume put out a single advertisement in the paper asking if anyone had a casket flag of a veteran that they would like to have flown and taken down with honor at Sunset Beach. This was the first and only ad he needed, flags were being offered at an astonishing rate by families, and some donated by various veterans organizations.

The ceremony, which begins about fifteen minutes before sunset begins with the reading of a brief biography of the individual veteran who is being honored that evening. Then a moment of silence followed by Preston Shadbolt’s favorite “God Bless America” by Kate Smith. Then the National Anthem is played and then Taps as the flag is lowered and taken into hand by Mr. Hume and members of the veteran’s family if they are present. Otherwise help is requested from other veterans present, who step forward proudly to participate in the somber, touching tribute. Then the assembled crowd is left to watch the sun set, with perhaps a different perspective than ever before. I have attended this ceremony numerous times, the experience defies description.

When I decided to post this story, I went to Sunset Beach to search for Marvin Hume. I found him in the fossil and mineral shop surrounded by wind chimes and beautiful quartzes and geodes and fossilized creatures. I was able to speak with Mr. Hume for about twenty minutes, in which time I heard a collection of wonderful stories. I could easily have listened for hours, some stories of war, some of honor and sacrifice and some of Cape May history. He even told me proudly that he was responsible for getting Paul Tibbits, pilot of the Enola Gay that dropped the first atomic bomb, to come to Cape May to promote his newly published memoirs.

“He told me “Marv, Cape May is such a small place” and I told him I would get a large crowd to come. He ended up signing books for five and a half hours”.

“I told people, this is the guy who ended that war.”

So, the ceremony goes on. It will resume sometime this May, as it has under Marvin Hume for 35 years now. At an amazingly spry 87 years old Mr. Hume continues to lower the flag personally every night that the ceremony takes place. He has enough flags already to cover most if not all of 2009.

“Sometimes I don’t come in until five or six in the evening now, at 87 it takes its toll.” he says.

We walked outside and took some pictures. When it was time to leave I shook his hand and told him what an honor it was to meet him. Of course he deflects all praise that he receives by telling you that the men who those flags belong to are the ones who deserve all the honor, he is simply doing what is right. He has remained dedicated to that principle.

I still consider it an honor to have met Marvin Hume.

The Donora Smog

2008-09-13T14:17:00.010-04:00

The time around the turn of the 19th to the 20th century was arguably the time frame when the biggest and most dramatic changes were taking place in the way that the common American lived. Western Pennsylvania was no different in this respect, as young men began to leave the family farms searching for work in the newly industrialized cities that were cropping up on river banks all over the state. The metamorphosis from an agrarian society to an industrial power launched the U.S. into world prominence, and fattened the wallets of the industrialists that financed the movement.

Once the birth of this way of life was complete and the excitement of the revolution wore off, Pennsylvania was left with thousands upon thousands of workers whose whole existence revolved around keeping the machinery of progress humming, regardless of any inconvenience or hardship that this may cause them and their families. These men worked hard, smoked hard and drank hard. They became involved in their community and attended church with their families on Sundays. These men were the backbone of America.

Donora, Pennsylvania was a town that was populated with this type of men and their families. Nestled comfortably in a horseshoe shaped bend in the Monongehela River in eastern Washington County, Donora was not only an industrial town, but a sports town as well. Stan Musial was born in Donora in 1920, where he played high school ball with Ken Griffey Sr.’s father. Ken Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr. were also born in Donora. The town was equally football minded, and Donora was voted the second best high school team in the country in 1945.

Stan Musial’s father, Lukasz, worked at the American Steel and Wire Company. This company, along with the Donora Zinc Works, a Carnegie Steel Company plant, and the Matthew Woven Wire and Fence Company rounded out Donora’s major employers.

By the time that 1948 rolled around, Donora had attracted a primarily immigrant work force to the Monongehela Valley. While the men went to the mill everyday, some of the wives worked also, or they raised children and kept house. Undoubtedly it occurred to the people of the town that visibility often seemed poor, and that at times they would have to sweep soot off of their porches sometimes several times a day. Some days it was hard to see at all. Some may have noticed a lack of fish in the river here, and the fact that house paints deteriorated more quickly than was usual.

In late October of 1948 a weather phenomenon called a temperature inversion, which acts like a barrier against any lower air rising into the upper atmosphere occured in the "Mon Valley". All of the pollutants that we streaming out of the several smokestacks in town were being forced back to ground level and the poisonous air stagnated. On October 29th, a yellowish fog enveloped the town causing near zero visibility. But life went on as usual, and the good people of Donora went about their business.

On the following Saturday, doctors started receiving calls from people reporting respiratory distress in elderly residents and some of the ill. Then some of the younger residents began to have trouble breathing. Doctors, firemen, police and volunteers worked around the clock trying to tend to all of the needs of the sick. The local Clergy made their rounds offering Last Rites to those who were dying, or seemed close to it. Drug stores stayed open all night to help with the demand for supplies. Several of these helpful people complained about being hampered by the smog to the point that they were having difficulties finding specific houses.

After an emergency meeting of the Donora Board of Health with Red Cross officials, they struck an agreement with the Donora Zinc Works to shut down production of their smelters to reduce dramatically the plant emissions into the air. On Monday rain began to fall, and the skies around Donora cleared. The Donora Zinc Works resumed operations shortly thereafter.

In the short amount of time that the “Donora Smog” held sway, 20 people lost their lives. Hundreds remained ill for a time after. Estimates are that a full one third of the population of the town was hospitalized and/or treated for respiratory maladies. The Donora incident is what triggered the chain of events that led to the 1955 Clean Air Act, and served as a catalyst for most if not all of the legislation aimed at air and water quality since.

For all that Donora did for pollution control measures in the U.S. the town slowly declined like so many steel boom towns in the “rust belt”. The Donora Zinc Works and its parent company U.S. Steel were sued for a million dollars over the incident, but settled out of court at 250,000 dollars. The company never admitted any wrong doing on their part, and a shady investigation all but exonerated the companies involved. In 1996 an industry consultant named Philip Sadler admitted that "It was murder.... The directors of US Steel should have gone to jail for killing people." In 1957 the Donora Zinc works was closed and by 1967 U.S. Steel had shut down all operations in Donora. Almost 6,000 jobs were lost.

Top photo: Donora Zinc works a seen from Gilmore Cemetery, 1948

Lower Photo: Donora photographed at noon, October 29, 1948 Both Pittsburgh Post Gazette Magazine

Although I had read about Donora long ago, a great deal of memory jogging and fact checking was provided by

http://www.donorasmog.com/. I encourage you to visit and learn more about this tragic event.

Petroleum, Parrafin, President

2008-08-26T19:34:00.006-04:00

A Pandora’s Box of sorts was opened up in Venango County, Pennsylvania in August of 1859. As I am sure that most of you may recall from your school days, this is when Colonel Edwin Drake drilled a well at Titusville that gave birth to the oil industry. What Drake accomplished in 1859, although reasonably significant seeming to him at the time, would eventually become the uncontrollable petroleum industry that keeps us under the proverbial thumb to this very day.

Venango County would go on to make some men wildly rich, and would bring others to the brink of despair, much as fortunes are made and lost on oil in the 21st century.
Some of the wells that were drilled into the Venango County ground were producing up to 300 barrels of oil a day, at roughly $10 a barrel. Back in the 1860s, $3,000 a day was an incredible return on an investment and some wells were producing this output day after day. A good well could make a man very wealthy, very fast.

Stories of the fortunes being made on Venango County oil began to circulate widely, and naturally this created a boom industry in the area. Investors with pockets full of money came to the area to lay claim to a slice of the oil pie. Along with these speculators, there was non drilling monies to be made. Barrel makers, hotel men, hardware suppliers bankers and timber men made a good buck too. An anecdote that I read many years ago went something like this:

A young man looking to make a good wage working the oil fields of the area walked and hitched rides all the way from Canada to make some money to take home to his growing family. Upon his arrival at Pithole, Pennsylvania he sat down to rest against a huge pile of lumber.

Before long a man supervising the drilling of many local wells and in desperate need of timbers approached the young man.

“How much would you sell me that whole pile of lumber for?’

The Canadian glanced up at the pile and answered “$1,000”

The supervisor paid him immediately in cash and had his crew begin to haul the lumber away.

The young man pocketed the $1000 and immediately started walking back to Canada. It is not known how the lumber’s true owner reacted.

Every once in a while a well that produced copiously and consistently just stopped flowing. It was discovered that a by product of the crude oil, paraffin, would begin to harden at lower temperatures or when cold ground water entered the well. In some cases the paraffin plug was so thick and hard that the drillers had to contract a “shooter” to attempt to fix the problem. A shooter was an individual who would try to dislodge the paraffin by lowering an explosive charge into the well. The best and most expensive charge was a “torpedo” filled with nitro-glycerin that was routinely successful is getting the flow going once more.

But such was not always the case. Take the example of a group of four stage actors that decided to try their luck at the game. They created the “Dramatic Oil Company” in late 1863 and operated a well named “Wilhelmina 1”, a few miles from Drake’s Well. Through out the rest of 1863 and through early 1864 this well produced at a lack luster 25 barrels a day. Then they fell victim to paraffin, and it stopped all together. They made a last ditch monetary investment and brought in a “shooter” to clear the well. Unfortunately, either by hiring an inexpensive, inexperienced shooter, or by the shooter using an inferior explosive or method, the attempt failed miserably. Not only did the oil not resume flowing, but the well was damaged to the point where it never would again.

In September of 1864 one of these actors decided that maybe oil riches were not in his destiny. Financially broken and tremendously bitter he caught a stage to Meadville Pennsylvania and for some reason boarded a train for Montreal to meet a few partners involved in another of his many ventures.

Upon his return from Canada, the young man fell back on his acting career back in Maryland. He probably thought himself the world’s worst oilman, but he was a surprisingly good actor. Although he would never gain the fame that his brother Edwin did on the stage, he was popular and well liked amongst the ladies of Baltimore and Washington D.C.

But, it turns out, that becoming an oil baron was most definitely not this young actor’s destiny or claim to fame. He sealed his destiny at Ford’s Theater in Washington D.C. on April 14th, 1865. The would be oil tycoon, John Wilkes Booth, had chosen to pin his name to history in a far more infamous way. Perhaps a more successful shooter back in Titusville may have kept this shooter an obscure, forgotten millionaire as opposed to one of the greatest scoundrels of all time.

Something to think about for sure.........

A New Friend of The Errand

2008-08-16T12:30:00.004-04:00

Of local interest, I would like to share with my readers from and around Northwestern Pennsylvania a forum based website that I am sure that you will find interesting. The site is called the Double E Ticket and is based in Crawford County.

For those of you that frequent discussion forums of a local nature, you will find Double E Ticket to be one of the best organized and user friendly forum formats that you have seen. A local forum, state level discussions, politics, environment, it is all here. The homepage opens to national news feeds before going to the local level, making it a natural candidate for a browser home page. I think you will be very happy that you visited.

So, if you live in, or are from Crawford, Mercer or Venango Counties and are looking to get into a growing discussion board with super features, I recommend registering there and joining the discussion.

I don’t think that you will be disappointed.

Also, I have added a button in the left hand column for Project Gutenberg. Free Digital Literature.

More posts to come soon !!

D

Random TV Post

2008-08-13T21:07:00.005-04:00

On February 5th, 2006 the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl XL.

I don’t bring this up because I am a Steeler fan, because I am not. I don’t bring this up because I am a football fan, because I was at one time but am no longer. I bring this up because I live in Western Pennsylvania, and the Steelers playing in the Super Bowl caused a great deal of excitement in this area and my school age kids were caught up in it. They made me promise to watch it with them and I did, cheering for the Seahawks just to aggravate them which they will tell you is what I like to do best.

I bring this particular event up for one reason. That game was the last TV broadcast I have ever watched. Before that game I had not watched for another couple of years. There is no television in my living room anymore at all. I have never seen Dancing with the Stars, American Idol, Survivor or any of these shows that have gained a wide viewing audience in the last decade. I have no problem at all with people who do spend their evenings watching these shows, I just choose not to.

For me there is nothing more amusing than the stunned looks that I get from people when I inform them of this. They typically look at you with a momentary disbelief, as if you are kidding, and then it sinks in that you are serious. Then they glance at you as if you were a leper and continue the conversation talking to someone else. Several years ago I got a call from the Nielson Ratings people who wanted to send me a journal and asked me if I would fill in what I watched over the course of the month. I told the nice lady that I did not watch TV. She responded that it did not matter if I only watched 5-10 shows a month, it would still be helpful if I told them what they were. She did not get it. I thanked her kindly and hung up the phone.

The reason that I do not watch is the same reason I no longer buy music or pay attention to sports. One day I just realized that the popular culture had nothing in it that I was interested in. I was no longer willing to swallow what the people at the TV networks and their advertisers wanted to feed me. I wrote in a previous post about the Medicine Shows and how the entertainment they provided was simply a means to get the audience to stand still so that they could hammer them with the sales pitch. The first clue that I was having a problem following pop culture is that I did not understand the point of most of the commercials anymore. Some I was not even sure what they were selling.

What do I do then? I do a lot of reading, mostly non-fiction history with some of the classics of literature thrown in. I spend some time each night on the internet, chasing down some idea or another, or researching whatever subject happens to be the absorbing errand driving me at that time. I belong to some forums on the net that discuss a wide variety of topics, and am a moderator on the antique bottle board at Treasure Times Forum. And of course, I stop in here now and again to bore you with trivial details about my life, or to tell an interesting story that floats to the surface of my mental collection.

Interestingly enough, the wife does not watch either, nor do two of my three children. All are avid readers and independent thinkers which I think is a direct result of not being indoctrinated by television. It worries me the amount of people who can name the last “American Idol” winner or all of Angelina and Brad’s children but would be hard pressed to tell you who the Governor of Pennsylvania is, or the Secretary of Defense, State, or their Senators and Congressmen. They can tell you why someone was voted off of an island, but not how the elected people who are running a good portion of their lives have voted on anything.

Maybe these elected officials like it better that way. I think they would rather have us entertained and oblivious.

I have also found that I enjoy YouTube, where I found this gem from the movie “Network” from 1976. This message is as serious and applicable today as it was when the movie was released. If you are offended by objectionable language you may want to ignore it.

Howard Beale/Network 1976

Last Walk Down the Midway?

2008-07-28T22:27:00.004-04:00

This past Sunday afternoon, the wife and I decided that we were going to take a little drive. I found some information on the net about an antique shop in Meadville, Pennsylvania that we had not visited yet. My wife and I enjoy antique shops, along with several other things that all seem to involve the past.

This post has not so much to do with the antique shop, although it was such an interesting place I feel compelled to mention it. Troyer’s Antiques is just north of Meadville on Route 19. If you can imagine a three story tall aircraft hangar type of building literally stuffed with remnants of the past, Troyer’s is a must see. Even if you are not an antique collector, the experience alone is well worth the time spent. I should also mention that it is only guaranteed open on Sundays.

When we had finished browsing, we decided that we would take a ride over toward Conneaut Lake Park. This is of strictly local interest, the park is a place where a good amount of the folks in the area where I grew up spent countless hours of enjoyment as children. As mentioned in a previous Errand post here: http://theabsorbingerrand.blogspot.com/2008/02/requiem-for-old-friend.html

The main ballroom of the park was a victim of an arsonist in February of this year, and another major building in the park suffered a roof collapse shortly thereafter. The park has been financially strapped for decades, and this is very likely the end of the century old amusement park.

The day was perfect weather-wise, and the draw to visit the park one more time was irresistible. We spoke of pleasant memories recalled from highly anticipated visits to the park so many years ago. Somewhere inside we both knew that this visit was going to be more like visiting an old friend who’s illness has left him in a greatly diminished state. A friend who’s future is very doubtful. Rumors of condo development on the site are starting to circulate, but how much of the park, if any, will be preserved is still unclear.

For those of you who have not gone out to see the park in its present state, I did a walk through and took some pictures. The ballroom is entirely cleared away now, but the condition of the “Ultimate Trip” building has worsened considerably. The skeletons of rides, and the silence of the once proud “Blue Streak” coaster was eerie on such a beautiful summer day.

http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e335/the-absorbing-errand/Conneaut%20Lake/?albumview=grid

I apologize for the sentimental drivel, but it truly is sad.

After our sobering tour of a silent amusement park we came upon a sign that pointed out that Linesville, Pennsylvania was six miles west, so we turned the painfully inefficient and very politically incorrect SUV right to see another site common to people in this area. Just about everyone from around here has been to the Linesville spillway at least once, but to attempt to explain the spillway to someone who has never been there is a pretty tall order.
In 1932 the State of Pennsylvania flooded the Pymatuning Swamp and created a flood control area called the Pymatuning Reservoir. There is a point in this man made lake where The water on one side of the causeway that crosses the lake is a few feet lower than the other, and the water cascades through a man made spillway if the level on the high side becomes too great.

Maybe someone can fill us in on how this all started, but for as long as I can remember we would go up to the spillway, buy a few loaves of stale bread, and feed the incredible mass of carp that congregate around this spillway. At one time it was billed as “Where the ducks walk on the fish.”. This was not a tall tale at all, but you almost have to see it to believe it. Thousands upon thousands of hungry carp turn the surface into a churning sea of mouths and eyes as the ravenous fish await a handout. This has become such a draw that last year the state spent a great deal of money building a beautiful new concession building and a very nice landscaped walkway to view the astounding site from.

This is the stuff that nightmares are made of.

The Curse of Distraction

2008-07-13T17:17:00.004-04:00

I have been silent for well over a month now, distracted by the business of life and by the many joys and chores that are commonly associated with summer. I tend to be easily derailed from things that I should be doing, often by a burning desire to follow a thought or idea until I am completely satisfied that I have given it adequate thought and/or study. I will try to make up for my wanderings with a story for you about an individual who was famous in his time for being unable to control these impulses.

On October 13th, 1876 George Edward Waddell was born in Bradford, Pennsylvania not far from the Kinzua Viaduct site that was the subject of a previous Errand post. Like most boys who grew up in places like Bradford, he was raised very differently than similar boys raised in or around big cities. George’s oddness may not have been apparent to the good folks of Bradford at the time, a lot of young boys have problems focusing their attention on a given task. To them I am sure that he was just “a boy being a boy”. A boy with a particularly live arm.

Sometimes these simple country boys are born with a talent that can only be realized by transplanting the boy straight into the heart of the big city. George was a big, strong country boy who had an impressive command of the mechanics of pitching a baseball. A great fastball, a curveball with control, and the ability to throw the screwball to get the batter to chase a bad pitch got him noticed by Major League scouts and landed George in Louisville to pitch for the Colonels in 1897. His country boy ways quickly earned him the nickname “Rube” which was a common term for a hayseed or hillbilly at that time.

Rube Waddell did not let the scouts who assessed his talent down. After a period spent with several minor league clubs, Rube was back with the Colonels by the end of the 1899 season. Before the season started in 1900, the National League pared itself down to eight teams, which led to the “pirating” of the Colonels’ roster , including Waddell, Honus Wagner and Fred Clarke by the Pittsburgh team of the new National League. This is the story as to how the Pittsburgh Pirates got their name.

Rube pitched for the Pirates in 1900 and 1901, and went on to pitch for the Chicago Orphans, Connie Mack’s Philadelphia Athletics and the St. Louis Browns. One of the first “power pitchers” in baseball, Rube led the American League in strikeouts every season from 1902 until 1907. He won the American League pitching “Triple Crown” in 1905 with a 27-10 record, a 1.48 ERA and 287 strike outs.

Unfortunately for Rube Waddell, his brilliant performance when in focus would be eclipsed by his antics when he lost focus. Rube was notorious for his binge drinking episodes, but this was not entirely uncommon amongst players at this time. What was unusual was the times that he lost his focus while on the mound.

Apparently it was not unusual for Rube to forget he was playing baseball all together. It was not un usual for him to be on the mound in the midst of a game and become so distracted by the sound of a passing fire company that he would throw down the ball and glove and run out of the park to watch it go by. Eventually fans in opposition parks caught on to his attention span problems and came up with distractions of their own such as holding up shiny objects or cute puppies to get Rube’s attention between pitches. Reportedly he could become transfixed by these distractions as if he were entranced. He even missed a few scheduled starts because he was off fishing or shooting marbles with kids. Through all of these attempts at getting Rube unnerved on the mound, he still found enough focus to strike out 2,316 batters in his choppy career. In a 1902 game against Baltimore Rube struck out three batters on only nine pitches. He also threw 50 shut-outs in his career and once struck out sixteen in one game.

An undistracted Waddell may have been too much for opponents to handle in his prime. His frequent lapses in judgment and discipline did cause several problems with managers and teammates, which is why he was pawned off on other teams so often, even when he was a dominating force on the mound. The following story is told about Rube by Cooperstown historian Lee Allen:

"He began that year (1903) sleeping in a firehouse in Camden, NJ, and ended it tending bar in a saloon in Wheeling, West Virginia.. In between those events he won 22 games for the Philadelphia Athletics, played left end for the Business Men's Rugby Football Club of Grand Rapids, Michigan, toured the nation in a melodrama called The Stain of Guilt, courted, married and became separated from May Wynne Skinner of Lynn, Massachusetts, saved a woman from drowning, accidentally shot a friend through the hand, and was bitten by a lion.". The truth of this story may be slightly stretched.

When Rube’s Major League career was over, he hung on to pitch a couple more years in the minors. After the 1911 season, Rube moved to Hickman, Kentucky where the Mississippi River flooded that winter and threatened the town. Rube spent hours standing in the icy waters stacking sandbags to save Hickman, but quickly developed a cold that became pneumonia. The weakened Waddell soon became victim to tuberculosis.

Eventually the very ill Waddell was sent to a hospital in San Antonio, Texas where he passed away on April 1, 1914. He was just shy of his 38th birthday. Rube was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 1946.

I hope that this story will interest readers who visit The Errand on a regular basis, your patience is very much appreciated.

Do I hear a fire truck ?

Rock of Ages

2008-06-05T21:56:00.008-04:00

I went for a walk in the woods this past Sunday. Not just any woods, I walked to a very special place to take a couple of pictures to share with you. This is a story that I have wanted to post for a long time because it is one of the more interesting that I have to tell. I waited until now because without the photographs the story would lose its awe inspiring quality. So down the railroad tracks I traveled once more, and up the hills amongst the rocks where rattlesnakes and copperheads are rumored to be plentiful, and snapped some pictures to go with this post. I can be obsessive about an Errand post.

Obsession is what this post all about. Obsession is a preoccupation that a person develops that precludes other things. More often than not an obsession is unhealthy. If a person couples his or her obsession with compulsion you have Obsession Compulsive Disorder or OCD. This person feels an uncontrollable urge to act upon the object of their obsession, repetitively and untiringly.

OCD is typically diagnosed as a mental illness having to do with the serotonin levels in the brain. People begin to exhibit these behaviors, which leads to a diagnosis and treatment. The story I am telling now has nothing to do with serotonin levels and neurotransmitters, but with another thing rarely found in a person’s skull. A metal plate.

The subject of our story is a young schoolteacher named Douglas Stahlman who, according to legend, had a rather violent falling out with a lumberman behind a local saloon in Brookville, Pa. No one seems to have remembered what the fight was about, but one thing was for certain. Douglas lost. Lost so badly that it left a good size chunk of his skull collapsed. In a medical procedure that was quite risky in the 1890s a surgeon was able to reinforce the fracture with a metal plate.

The plate began to make Douglas act a little oddly, which did not really surprise anyone who new what had happened to him. It was not just everyday in small town America that someone had his head patched with metal. I am sure that the townsfolk pitied him to some degree, then the possibly surgically implanted case of OCD began to manifest itself. Douglas found Jesus.

About 1900 Douglas came under the influence of a Chicago based faith healer named Dr. John Dowie, founder of Zion, Ill. Douglas became enraptured by the Scriptures that he read, and did what any other self respecting man with a metal plate in his head would have done. He grabbed a hammer and chisel and started chiseling these scriptures into any sizable rock he could find. He even carved the sacred texts into trees on the hillsides. When he was finished he had chiseled over 500 individual scripture excerpts totaling nearly 15,000 individual letters into the rocks on this hillside alone. His work, although on a smaller scale, can be seen in other locations in the area.

Douglas was committed to Dixmont Hospital in Pittsburgh around 1920, where he whiled away his days serving as the inmate librarian until his death in 1937.

As you walk up into the hillside which houses Mr. Stahlman’s Magnum Opus it is very easy to walk by several of his carved stones without even noticing them. Then the light will catch one of the larger rocks at precisely the right angle and you will see a couple of words. On closer inspection you realize that the rock is literally covered with the neat, uniform, consistent letters of an artist. You will find it hard to believe that they were carved free hand, one by one with nothing more than a common chisel. Some of the words are larger script as if he was making a demonstrative point. One rock simply says 100 FOLD.

The truly humbling effect of this experience is when you step back from this room sized rock that you have discovered and take a look around you. Just like when the Munchkins came out of hiding for Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, you begin to realize that all of the rocks, big and small, upright or lying flat are carved in the exact same manner. They are every where. The scale of this work is hard to imagine unless it is seen.

I hope that these photos and the ones in the cabinet of curiosities link in the left column will give you some feel for what Mr. Stahlman did. If you ever happen to be in the Brookville area and would like to see them, drop me an email and I will do my best to give you adequate directions to see them for yourself.

A Journey Well Started

2008-05-30T21:16:00.004-04:00

It has often been said that opposites attract. I imagine in most cases this simple rule is very true, but not much is said about how these polar relationships adhere over long periods of time.

Take myself and my dear wife for instance. We may have a few aspects in our personalities that are opposite, but our marriage has proven time and time again that it is the similarities, like interests and common values that have kept us together for 18 years. Both of our sets of parents set out to raise decent children, and I feel that they did an admirable job in both cases. We have tried our best with our children, hoping that we have instilled this decency in them. Things look good, but time will tell.

Amongst the decent children that my parents worked very hard to raise is my youngest sister. Her consistent good nature, ready smile and infectious laugh have brought me a great deal of joy over the years. The opposites rule again does not apply to her, and she succeeded in finding and marrying a good hearted, caring man to spend life with. A man that is more brother than in-law to me. To see them interact in the business of life makes you feel reassured that all is well there.

On May 28th, at 10:10 pm EST, my baby sister gave birth to her first child, Elizabeth Nicole. “Izzy” as she is called was 5lb 13oz. And 18 inches long. Izzy was born on her Mother’s birthday, which seems somehow appropriate. This baby is blessed with a very nurturing environment.

So to Tony and Trina, congratulations. With all of my kids nearly raised and on their own, your journey has begun. The kindness and compassion that you both possess will over the years make Elizabeth a most fortunate child indeed.

You two have made Mom and Dad very happy and proud.

D

A Memory Blown Away

2008-05-19T22:19:00.005-04:00

Many cities in the United States saw a rapid industrial growth in the decades following the American Civil War, and Buffalo, New York was certainly no exception. And if you want to have a successful center of industry, you must have the fuel to run it. In 1858, miles away in Titusville, Pennsylvania Edwin Drake drilled the first oil well. Oil would become the fuel of industry and transportation for future generations but in 1880, the year that Drake died, the industrial life blood of Buffalo was coal.

By 1880 Buffalo was consuming over three million tons of coal a year. Coal was used to fire the furnaces in the factories, ship boilers were fed coal so that they could deliver more coal to other Great Lakes cities and to keep the factory workers and sailors warm at home during the brutal Buffalo winters. Even the locomotives that brought the coal were powered by coal. Luckily for Buffalo, Pennsylvania had plenty of that too. Getting this coal to the Buffalo market quickly and efficiently from Pennsylvania was a priority of many businessmen at this time, not least of which was Civil War General Thomas Kane.

General Kane was the president of the New York, Lake Erie, and Western Railroad and Coal Company. The vision that Kane had for the company was as large and impressive as its name. To get a trainload of coal from north central Pennsylvania to Buffalo meant taking a long, circuitous route around the Kinzua Valley in McKean County. General Kane was more of a straight line kind of guy. He proposed his straight line to civil engineer Octave Chanute. They decided to build a viaduct over the valley.

The contract for the bridge was awarded to the Phoenix Bridge Works Company and within six months the stone abutments were complete. Iron work began on April 10th 1882 and in an astonishing 94 working days the 40 man crew had completed the highest and longest railroad bridge ever built. The viaduct was 301.5 feet high and 2,053 feet long and was promoted as the eighth wonder of the world. It weighed 3,105,000 pounds. In 1900 the iron had to be replaced with steel to accommodate the heavier loads and traffic that became common, not because of any flaw in the original structure.

Back in the eighties a person could hop on a train in Marienville and take a 97 mile train excursion that was highlighted by crossing the valley twice on the viaduct. I never had the pleasure of taking the train ride myself and regret having missed it. Numerous times I have walked across the bridge and back, the awesome autumn scenery coupled with the un-nerving experience of noticing the 300 feet of drop between each tie that you stepped on. I was more than a little afraid of heights then, and I swear that the constant wind sweeping down the valley moved that bridge side to side. I was not alone in this belief. Something about the viaduct compelled me to drive out to Mt. Jewett to admire her every time I took a retreat to my family’s mountain cabin nearby. I would stare at it and imagine 40 men over a century ago doing their heavy iron circus act live, without a net.

In 2002 a DCNR inspection of the bridge stopped all traffic, train and pedestrian. Some of the steel had been found to be rusted through, creating fears that the winds in the valley may shift the center of gravity of the structure and cause it to collapse. In February 2003 the W.M. Bode Co. began the painstaking restoration of the viaduct. But it was not to be.

On July 21, 2003 at 3:15 p.m. a category F1 (wind speed 73-112 mph) tornado struck the side of the viaduct. Eleven of the steel towers that supported the bridge were torn off of their concrete bases and hurled into the valley below.

Very soon it will be five years since the viaduct came down. The State Park that hosted visitors to the structure since 1970 is still there and open. You can no longer approach the bridge or hike down into the valley beneath it, at least not since last I heard. There is still an interpretive kiosk and an observation deck. After five years I still have not driven out to Mt. Jewett to look at the wreckage first hand.

Maybe I will drive out this year……

Top: Postcard of bridge, although not in Bradford.
Bottom : Courtesy of Jim Battista/www.kinzua.net

The Amazing Waterford Hero

2008-05-08T21:13:00.005-04:00

Western Pennsylvania was pretty much considered the frontier around 1800. When settlers began pouring over the Allegheny Mountains to settle this frontier, they did what most settlers tended to do. They flocked together because the Indians and the French were pretty hostile to their predecessors and there was greater safety in numbers. They built forts so that the town and surrounding farms had a place to run to safety if these enemies attacked.

Another thing that people tend to do when settling a frontier is to remain close to water. If you look at the vast majority of old cities of the world this becomes apparent. Water was life, transportation, power for mills and a ready source of food. It is not surprising that the settlers of Western Pennsylvania gravitated to Pittsburgh and Erie, the former at the confluence of three major rivers, the latter on the Great Lake which leant it its name. Naturally a path formed between these two settlements. Today that path is State Rt. 19, commonly known as the Perry Highway.

The Highway was named after Perry because most of the materials needed to build the fleet that made Oliver Hazard Perry a war hero had to be brought from Pittsburgh to Erie. It followed the path that now bears Perry’s name. But Oliver Hazard Perry is not what this story is about.

When George Washington was a Captain in the British Army he traveled extensively in Western Pennsylvania on behalf of Virginia Governor Dinwiddie. His objective, put quite simply, was to make it clear to the French that it was in their best interest to leave the Allegheny Valley. Several forts went up through the valley, one of them being Fort LeBoeuf is Waterford, on State Rt.19. There is a tree in Waterford that Washington himself, according to legend, climbed to get a good look at this French fort in 1753. The site of Fort Leboeuf boasts the only memorial to Washington that portrays him as a very young man and in a British military uniform. But even Washington is not the star of this story.

If you really love obscure and amazing historical figures as I do, you might give the Fort a passing glance on your way to Waterford Cemetery. In the center of this old cemetery you will find some graves of soldiers who fought in the Revolution. Under a grizzled old tree you will also come across a horizontal tombstone that years of weathering has rendered barely readable. A sign was erected some years ago that tells a remarkable story. The stone reads:

Michael Hare, born Armagh County Ireland June 10th 1727, was in the French War at Braddock’s defeat, served through the Revolutionary War, was with General Arthur St. Clair and was scalped at his defeat by Indians. Died on March 3rd, 1843 aged 115 years, 8 months and 13 days. His wife Elizabeth died March 3rd 1813 aged 90 years.

French and Indian War, Revolutionary War, and survivor of a scalping (an unpleasant and typically fatal event). Then you pick up the pieces of your life, get married, survive your wife by over 20 years (the tombstone math doesn’t quite work out) and die at 115! Mr. Hare had certainly led an extraordinary life, even when you leave out the fact that Michael Hare enthusiastically volunteered to fight in the War of 1812. Apparently there was still some fight in Mr. Hare, even if he was 85 at the time.

If you ever find yourself traveling through Waterford on Pennsylvania Rt. 19, take a short detour to pay your respects to a truly amazing hero. Look for the 300 year old maple in the middle of the cemetery, Michael Hare is lying at its base, likely making the tree tougher.

An Honor Bestowed

2008-05-02T13:21:00.001-04:00

I learned something interesting yesterday. Apparently there is a type of blog post that I was totally unaware of its existence. It is called a “blog carnival”. A blog carnival is a periodic blog post that is designed to display a sampling of some of the best recent blog posts in a specific subject category. Typically compiled monthly, the carnival is hosted by a different blogger each month. This author is responsible for sifting through found and/or nominated blogs and choosing which to include in his or her blog carnival. Lots of new links and information, good stuff.

I also learned yesterday that Tim Abbott, author of a great blog called “Walking the Berkshires” saw fit to include a link to The Errand and a sizable quote from my inaugural post in his Cabinet of Curiosities blog carnival back in January. I would like to thank Tim for my inclusion in his list of deserving blogs. I am only sorry that the thank you is months late, as I found it quite by accident.

This specific carnival, and Tim’s wonderfully entertaining blog can be found here:

http://greensleeves.typepad.com/berkshires/2008/01/cabinet-of-curi.html

Selling the Sagwa

2008-04-26T12:08:00.005-04:00

John E. Healey and Texas Charlie Bigelow are very likely a big part of your life, yet the vast majority of people have absolutely no idea who they were or what they did. You deal with their legacy most every day. This is the story as to why this is.

Victorian America was living in an interesting balance between old world fears and new science. Victorians were terrified of contracting dreaded diseases like tuberculosis (consumption), cancer and kidney disease. True to the Galenic theory of keeping the four bodily humors in balance to remain healthy, physicians had compiled an abysmal record of confronting these problems. The Victorian mind began to become suspicious of the high priced and rarely successful treatments. This distrust of the medical profession was especially prevalent among the impoverished and poorly educated.

Another thing that they were taught to fear was Indians, but an interesting phenomenon was occurring as the Indians were pushed further and further west. The folks in the east became interested in all things Indian; the “noble savages” had gone from bloodthirsty brutes to possessor’s sage wisdom in the span of about two generations. Indians were all the rage.

The ability to grasp these two facets of the late 19th century mind was what brought Mr. Healey and Mr. Bigelow together. They figured that if they could convince the American public that these wise Indians had long ago conquered the physical ills that they dreaded so much, and that they themselves had learned their secret, they may be able to turn a buck. In 1881 they mixed up, according to legend, a batch of aloes and stale beer and named this new found cure-all Kickapoo Indian Sagwa.

They had the product, now for the marketing. Newspaper ads were fine, but what of the massive percentage of the population that did not bother with newspapers, who could not read English or could not read at all? No radio or television airwaves for Healy and Bigelow. They had to take their Sagwa to the streets. They imagined that they would have an extremely difficult time assembling and keeping a crowd with somewhat unbelievable promises of restored health alone. They needed a gimmick.

The answer that they came up with was to hire Indians, hundreds of them. It did not matter if they were Kickapoo or not, just that they looked like Indians. The idea was that a group of Indians would draw a crowd of curious spectators by performing ritual dances, telling stories and singing supposedly Kickapoo traditional songs. It worked incredibly well at drawing a curious, receptive crowd and set the mood for them to be subtly manipulated.

In between entertaining acts, the Healey and Bigelow pitch man would take center stage and make his wild claims to those assembled, always with the promise of more and better entertainment to come. This promise kept the crowd from dispersing after the act, which kept them present for the sales pitch. Dozens of the Indians would go out in the crowd bearing bottles of Sagwa bent on creating a buying frenzy. They would yell for “more bottles” to be brought out, and lead the frenzied crowd to think that they would run out of Sagwa. This prompted folks who were on the fence about buying to snatch up a bottle before it was too late. This was the birth of the “American Traveling Medicine Show.” Pretty soon all patent medicine manufacturers had their own shows staffed with comedians, vaudevillians and “freak shows”. They went to slaughter houses and procured hookworms that they would put in jars and claim that their nostrum had driven it out of a human host. They hung hand bills and trade cards. They painted their medicine sales pitch on rocks and trees. This phenomenon lasted into the early 1900s.

How does this figure into your 21st century daily life? The same tactics that were used to sell Kickapoo Indian Sagwa are the basis for modern day advertising. Television provides you with entertainment, but only to hold you on the couch to watch the commercials, because you are waiting patiently for the next bit of entertainment. Radio operates much the same way. Billions of dollars are spent by companies every year to try to figure out how to make their 30 second sales pitch most effective. You are assaulted daily with these ads and more. Trade cards became business cards. Painted trees became lighted signs. Painted rocks became billboards.

Thus ends the story. Next time you are sitting on the couch watching TV and a commercial comes on, keep in mind that the advertiser is simply “selling Sagwa”.

For any interested in aditional reading on the subject of patent medicines I would suggest "The Toadstool Millionaires" by James Harvey Young, Phd. This book both inspired and provided some factual background for this post. It can be read free and in its entirety at

http://www.quackwatch.com/13Hx/TM/00.html

A Most Tragic Picnic

2008-04-13T13:13:00.004-04:00

If you lived and worked in Chicago in the first quarter of the 20th century, the thought of a summertime picnic and wide open spaces would likely appeal to you acutely. Trading the hustle and bustle of the cramped city for an idyllic day of relaxation and enjoyment had to have been good for the soul. Knowing that one of these excursions was planned, and you were invited, would cause a great deal of anticipation.

For the Chicago area employees of the Western Electric Company this type of outing was an annual event looked forward to by employees and their families all year long. When the plans were announced for the 1915 picnic, the location chosen was Michigan City, Indiana. Michigan City was just across the lake from Chicago, and the attendees would get the added treat of a steamboat ferrying them to the event.

The chosen steamboat was the S.S. Eastland. The Eastland was large and luxurious with plenty of room for the passengers. They could spend the crossing watching the lake front grow smaller then larger, or they could spend it dancing to the music of the orchestra in the dance hall. A large crowd of 2500 employees and families boarded Eastland on the morning of July 24th to be ferried to the opposite shore.

The passenger capacity of the ship had been recently increased more than twofold, and fresh concrete had been poured into the deck timbers to support them. With the Titanic disaster so fresh in everyone’s minds, the addition of several lifeboats as a result of LaFollette’s Seaman’s Act was probably reassuring.

But a picnic for these hard working people was not to be. When the gangplanks were raised to begin the short journey, the Eastland leaned significantly to port. The festive crowd on the dance floor noticed the slant, and before they knew it the dance floor was sloped thirty degrees. As furniture, dishes and a piano hurtled across the floor toward them, some unfortunate passengers were crushed and killed outright.

At 7:28 AM, the S.S.Eastland simply tipped onto its side in the Chicago River, still at dock. Hundreds of passengers and crew were thrown into the river, and many were trapped inside and underneath. Ladies in the heavy layered dresses of the day were weighted down and drowned, and many did not know how to swim. Many, many children were onboard. Despite the heroics of several bystanders who dove into the river or found buoyant objects into the water for survivors to cling onto, the loss of life was considerable. It took days to recover all of the bodies which were taken to makeshift morgues for identification. In many cases all family members had been on board, leaving no one to make the identification.

The final count of the losses in the Eastland disaster showed that 844 people had died on that July morning. Of this number 472 were women, 290 were children and 82 men. The loss to the ship’s crew was four.

What went wrong? Seems that a combination of the doubling of the passenger capacity, the deck reinforcing concrete and the 10-14 tons of additional lifeboats put aboard to save lives had in fact changed the center of gravity of the ship. The Eastman became much too top heavy for the ballast of the ship to compensate for. Predictably, the owners and crew of the shipped were cleared of all criminal responsibility by a Chicago Grand Jury.

An interesting twist of a side note to this story surfaced while the divers were recovering bodies and working to prepare the hull for being turned upright. A diver named William Deneau discovered a crude, one man submarine on the bottom of the river. This sub was subsequently called the Foolkiller, and was complete with the skeleton of the submarine pilot and that of his dog. Deneau had it dredged up and displayed the sub and the bones on the South Side of Chicago for quite a while. To this day no one is sure of the builder, age, or who the pilot of the Foolkiller was.

But in Chicago you could see the pilot, sub and dog for the bargain price of a dime….

It has been pointed out to me by Adam Selzer from wierdchicagoblog.com that the Foolkiller was not discovered by Deneau during the rescue and recovy efforts, but serveral months afterward while laying cables. Thanks Adam.

Photo: Chicago Daily News negatives collection, DN-064932. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society.

Overkill Department

2008-04-12T19:15:00.005-04:00

I just wanted to make everyone aware of a few features that have been added to The Errand.

First of all, I have noticed that I had the comments option restricted to registered Google users. This restriction no longer exists, and only existed to this point because I pretty much don't know what I am doing......

Second, in the column to the left you will now find a link to an Absorbing Errand discussion board. Feel free to visit and leave a comment, brief bio or a suggestion. If you register as a forum member I have created discussion boards designed to talk about Errand stuff, hobbies and interests and most anything else. Think of it as sitting and talking around my kitchen table. Get your own coffee.

I sincerely hope that these new features will be successful in turning my blog into a community of good people who share common interests, and like to discuss interesting stories and ideas.

How NOT to treat a hero

2008-04-09T22:49:00.004-04:00

Western Pennsylvania is rich with history, and rich with good stories. Over the years I have collected these stories and filed them away in the dark recesses of my mind. I did not know at the time what I was going to do with all of these tales, but later in life I did find them very effective in boring my kids to tears. When many families were taking daytrips to amusement parks and other fun spots, I dragged these poor kids to just about every historical site within 200 miles of our home. They were good sports, and proved to have a remarkable talent for recalling these educational jaunts in later years.

“Dad, today in history Mr. So and so was telling us about the Battle of Lake Erie. I already knew what happened, we talked about that.”. I did something right.

Now, my dear reader, I will use them to bore you to tears.

Speaking of Lake Erie, after the Revolutionary War this lake was to be the northern boundary of the newly formed United States. The British had agreed on this point, along with setting the Mississippi River as our western border. General Washington was just fine with this. It was taken for granted that the British would leave the area now occupied by Ohio and Eastern Indiana and head for Canada. The British in actuality did not leave, nor did they intend to do so any time soon. The trade in pelts trapped in this area was making them rich so they were in no hurry to leave. They utilized friendships with the local Indians to fight a proxy war on their behalf and supplied them with ball and powder. The Indians under Chief Little Turtle were more than happy to help because they stood to lose as much as the English if the Americans settled west. Little Turtle’s victories against the American Generals Harmar and St. Clair had given the Indians significant momentum. Enter Anthony Wayne.

“Mad” Anthony Wayne was a successful veteran of the Revolution and highly respected by Washington himself. He named Wayne to head the new “Legion of the United States” and was sent to Pittsburgh to prepare a body of men to turn the tide on Little Turtle. Wayne moved his headquarters to Cincinnati and waited for the order to attack. On September 11th 1793 Wayne began his campaign north. He drove the Indians ahead of him, and the chase ultimately ended at the Battle of Fallen Timbers just south of modern Toledo. Wayne moved south and set up Fort Wayne in Indiana, and the Indians were forced to sign the Treaty of Greenville in 1795. Thus ends the boring history text book lesson, now it gets interesting.

Anthony Wayne was a hero, but as most heroes that outlive their heroics do, he lived out the short time he had left with the mundane chore of overseeing the dismantling of British forts on the frontier. Late in 1796 Wayne had a serious case of gout and suffered mightily waiting for his personal doctor, J.C. Wallace, to arrive to attend to him. Wallace had served at Fallen Timbers under Wayne. Anthony Wayne died in Erie on December 15th, 1796. At his request he was buried in Erie in a wooden coffin marked with his name and date of death on the lid in brass tacks. End of story.

No. Twelve years later, in 1808, Wayne’s seriously ill daughter decided that she wanted her father’s body removed from Erie and brought back to be buried in the family cemetery plot in Radnor, Pa. She sent her brother, Isaac Wayne, to Erie in a two wheeled carriage called a sulky to bring him home. Isaac recruited none other than Dr. Wallace to assist him in this task. They went to the Old Blockhouse and dug the General up. This is where the problems began.

When the body was exhumed, it was apparent to all present that Anthony Wayne had hardly decomposed at all. The body was in amazingly good shape for twelve years of burial. Isaac couldn’t very well toss the still fleshy body into the sulky and head back to Radnor. After some heated deliberation they decided what was the best thing to do.

They got a kettle and boiled up some water. Anthony Wayne, hero, was cut up and his flesh was boiled and scraped off of the bone. The bones were put in a box on the sulky to be taken to Radnor, and the rest of him was put back in the grave in Erie. It is said that the original kettle is on display at the Erie County Historical Society, but this has been debunked.

“Mad” Anthony Wayne, hero of Fallen Timbers, occupies two graves hundreds of miles apart in Pennsylvania. It is very doubtful that this arrangement would be appreciated by Wayne, and the say on dark quiet nights around the Blockhouse in Erie you can still faintly hear the rumbling of the sulky, and the clicking of the hero’s bones.

Uncleaned Coins Arrive !!

2008-03-24T20:46:00.005-04:00

Got an envelope today with the six uncleaned coins that I ordered inside.

First impression, very positive. After some poking around on ebay looking at what was available (mostly corroded mystery discs), I decided to order from a dealer who was recommended to me by a friend.

I poured the coins out on the table and was amazed by what I saw. Detail! Nice outlines of Emperors and legends are easily seen. I don't foresee any frustration in this lot. "Premium Uncleans" is the way to go, stay away from ebay.

Doesn't hurt to have a premium source either. Kevin will treat you right.

http://nobleromancoins.com/

Soaking now, I will keep you posted.

D

A few more "before" pics on Cabinet of Curiosities link at left

Water, Money and Lives

2008-03-15T12:52:00.004-04:00

“God’s Country”. These two words are on just about every sign that you see welcoming you into Potter County Pennsylvania. The inhabitants of Potter County will refer to it in much the same way. A beautiful landscape virtually unspoiled by the hand of man and industry for the most of the 20th century, it makes for pleasant Sunday drive scenery.

Potter County’s second claim to fame is that in Coudersport you will find the headwaters of the mighty Allegheny River which flows to Pittsburgh. The river can be easily straddled at Coudersport, as my youngest daughter did for a photograph many years ago. This spot is also, theoretically, the meeting point of three different watersheds. If one were to dump a bucket of water on this theoretical spot, one third would flow to the Chesapeake, one third to the Great Lakes and the last third to the Gulf of Mexico. At least that is what I have been told.

And if you were, in fact, taking a leisurely drive through the county on a Sunday afternoon you may end up traveling south from Coudersport on Rt. 872 and come across a Pennsylvania State Historical Marker overlooking massive hunks of seemingly random concrete. You have arrived at a story.

I wrote that the county was unspoiled by man for “most” of the 1900s. Back at the turn of the century Potter County was a very busy place. The industry that dominated this area was the cutting and stripping of hemlock trees. This was done by immigrant men that were called “woodhicks” or just “hicks”. They chipped the bark off of the trees because it was the key ingredient in a liquid solution used in hide tanneries. These men are perhaps unjustly remembered by a word still used to describe unsophisticated country people.

These men would gather in the town of Austin, which grew up around Freeman Run. Eventually the hemlock trees, and most other trees were gone off of the surrounding hills and things became economically bad. In 1900 a Senator named Frank Baldwin, and some less than scrupulous county commissioners, lured New York paper maker George Bayless to build a pulp paper mill on the banks of Freeman Run above Austin.

The Bayless Mill was thought of as a godsend by the people of Austin, as it employed over 200 of its residents. Freeman Run was inconsistent in terms of constant water flow, so Bayless decided to dam up the run so that he could control flow. He hired a civil engineer named Hatton to build the structure, a 50 foot tall 534 foot long monster of concrete and steel to hold back 275 million gallons of water. From the very beginning, in true corporate style, Bayless pressed Hatton for more speed and lower cost. Hatton was made to cut corners that he personally considered ill-advised at best, but Bayless got his hastily built, inexpensive dam.

Hatton’s worst fears became evident for the first time in January of 1910. Force from an unexpected thaw caused enough pressure to physically bow the dam 36 feet, and cause water geysers to erupt from the ground far below the dam. Dynamite was used to relieve the pressure, and Austin narrowly avoided a disaster.

The good folks of Austin were not so lucky on a primary election Saturday, September 30th 1911. On this day, with a large crowd of shoppers and voters in town the dam cut loose launching millions of gallons of water and 20,000 board feet of pulpwood toward the town.

Everything from the Bayless Mill whistle, to cable operators to a Madame at a bordello from which she witnessed the break tried to warn the citizens, to no avail. Hundreds of stories have been told of heroism and tragedy from that day. Newspaper accounts in New York had the death count at 500, in London they reported 2,000 dead. When all was said and done 50 people were known victims, and an additional 38 were missing and presumed dead.

Austin died that day for the most part, many moved away. George Bayless offered to build another mill in Austin if they agreed not to sue him for the estimated six million dollars in losses. Unbelievably, they accepted.

This structure is what you are looking at standing at the marker. You can drive down to a small park and walk among the ruins. You can walk around Austin and the second mill. But being another area dam disaster so closely on the heels of Johnstown in 1899 relegated Austin to be forgotten by history.

Unless, of course, you want to take a drive.

Picture courtesy of Penna Historical & Museum Commission

A New Hobby ???

2008-03-15T12:43:00.003-04:00

A guy named Doug turned me on to uncleaned ancient Roman coins during a discussion on the Treasure Time Forum. For some reason I had always assumed that coins from 1500-2000 years old were probably all in museums, auction houses and high dollar collections. Doug showed me that this is not so. He is just one of the great people you will meet if you decide to visit the TT forum. I think you will like it.

Anyway, I am ordering my first few unidentifiable coins today. The trick is to get them clean enough to be able to unravel the puzzle of its origin and age.

I'll post some "before" photos when they arrive.

D

An Errand Completed, or Buying Back One's Memories

2008-03-06T11:14:00.005-05:00

I am very pleased to report that the Reinhart letter had just the effect that I had hoped it would. Last night I recieved this email from the letter's recipient:

Dear Mr. XXXXXX,

You were very thoughtful to track me down and it is appreciated. Indeed, Cally Reinhart and William Reinhart are my grandparents. Every things checks out in the family tree that was started a few years ago.
I would very much like the name of the shop name and the telephone number if you are able to send it to me. My email address is XXXXXXXXXXXXX if it is easier to email it to me than using US mail. Either way would be fine. All of Williams and Cally's children are deceased and at this time I am the only grandson with the name of Reinhart still living. I will be 80 years old in May of this year. I do not have any idea of how the Marriage License reaches the Canton shop. PERHAPS ONE OF THE SONS OR DAUGHTER PUT IT IN A SALE OR ONE OF THE GRANDCHILDREN
Thank you for the effort you put in to tracking me down

Most sincerely.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I certainly hope that he is able to acquire the certificate, and that he is as thrilled with it as I am to have led him to it.

Any Karma points involved in this?

Despair and the Kiss of Life

2008-03-05T18:55:00.002-05:00

Despair and hope are two words that can be considered as perfectly opposite as any other pair of terms in the English language. When the despair of one individual becomes hope for countless others, it becomes a good story. I like a good story.

Paris at the tail end of the 19th century was a very popular place to be. The city was a metropolis teeming with music, art and science. Some of the most talented individual in many fields of endeavor seemed to naturally gravitate to Paris. With all of this exciting, wonderful stuff happening here our story starts with a singular young woman. A woman filled with despair. An anonymous girl who would take a most unlikely posthumous journey through the next century.

We know that our young woman was in despair for one reason. She was found floating in the Seine River, very much dead. Fishing bodies out of the Seine at this point in history was a disturbingly common occurrence. The Seine was a dumping ground for murder victims, and drowning oneself in the river was a popular form of suicide among Parisian women. The authorities found no signs of foul play on our young lady, so she was classified as a suicide and sent to the morgue near Notre Dame.

Something extraordinary took place at the morgue that evening. A pathologist on duty that night was apparently quite taken by the young girl’s beauty and innocence and decided to take a plaster cast of her face to create a death mask. The masks were popular items to collect at this time, although they were almost exclusively of famous men. The Lorenzi family of Paris were the modelers who ended up with the cast of the girl’s face, which they decided to produce and sell. The obvious female face stood out from the death masks of the men that lined the shop and sold like crazy. She became well known as “L’Inconnue de le Seine”, French for unknown woman of the Seine.

Our young lady became all the rage in Europe’s bohemian communities. Her face inspired poetry, performance art and literature. She became a superlative for a generation of young European girls to strive for, and the ideal for young European boys to find and fall in love with. The girl with no name or history became a European icon. I imagine more than one adolescent boy at this time pulled the mask off of the wall, closed his eyes, and touched his lips to hers.

Or perhaps, dear reader, it was you doing the lip pressing. You see, in 1958 Dr. Peter Safar approached toymaker Asmund Laerdal with plans for a project which Laerdal would accept. Dr. Safar was a pioneer of CPR, and what he proposed to Laerdal was the development of a training dummy to teach his life saving technique to the masses. They both knew that to get men to go lip to lip with a “doll” it had best be female.When pressed for a face for his “Rescue Annie” mannequin he chose, of course, “L’Inconnue de le Seine”.

Annie has become quite possibly the most kissed face in history. If you think back, you will likely remember Annie helping you learn CPR. But maybe you did not know of the unknown woman of the Seine.

Despair becomes hope.

A Eulogy for the Windpuppy

2008-03-02T14:13:00.003-05:00

While I am waiting patiently to see how the Reinhart letter goes over, and also for the snow to melt so I can investigate the stones that were seen at the coal pile cemetery, I would like to make a post to thank a long time hunting companion and family friend for twelve years of reliable service. Alot of the Absorbing Errand would not have been possible without her.
Back in 1996 I was the father of three children, with one in a baby car seat, the old sedan just was not cutting it space wise any more. We saved up our money and kept our eyes opened, and that year we bought a 1995 Ford Windstar mini-van to haul the family around in. Although the thought of a mini van made me cringe at the time, its utility of purpose was a godsend. With 20k on it, it was a good deal.
I have often thought that if we would have put a bumper sticker from every place that van took us you would not be able to tell what color it was. It hauled my family on endless daytrips, vacations, events, and everything else you would expect the family wagon to do. We drove it so much that we compiled 100k by 2000, and decided to purchase another Windstar to round out our child hauling years.
Myself, being the driver of the secondary vehicle in the family inherited the 95. I put big home made wooden crossbars on the roof rack to haul canoes and kayaks, pulled out the back seats to give me truck bed like space an took it everywhere. This vehicle became legend where I work, and picked up the name Windpuppy. The Windpuppy took me to canoe trips, bottle digging, metal detecting and on runs to Lowe’s. Back and forth to work alone was 25 miles a day. I have had that van in places and situations where 4x4s feared to tread.
I took the Windpuppy to Gettysburg one autumn and slept on an air mattress in the back at a KOA. It was not the first nor the last time it served as camper. Back in 2002 the transmission on the new Windstar exploded at 70 mph on our way to the NASCAR race in Bristol. Stranded in Westin WV, my in-laws drove down to pick us up while a local dealership replaced the transmission. They brought the Windpuppy.
My appreciation for this particular van was constantly reinforced by the absolutely awful performance and reliability of the new one. I will never own another Ford, and they will never build another Windpuppy.
Last summer, while having the oil changed, the Pennsylvania winters caught up to the old girl. One of the lift supports went up through the rocker panel, and the underbody looked grim. I have been driving my daughter’s car while she is at school, and the Windpuppy sits under a tree in my back yard. Every once in a while a coworker will ask if I will try to resurrect her yet again, and the wife often asks me when I will get it out of the yard.
Today, I cleaned the flotsam and jetsam of a few years of detecting finds, bottles, maps and various other doo-dads out of her for her final trip, one to the junk yard. 178,720 miles on her and all the memories that she transported us to. She has been one worthy of a eulogy.
Windpuppy will meet with a dignified end though, because I will drive her and park her at the yard myself, under her own power. Ten more reliable miles…………..Godspeed my friend.

Another Errand, or, Selling One's Memories. UPDATE!!

2008-02-28T21:02:00.003-05:00

If anyone is following my quest to match an antique store marriage certificate with a descendant of the recorded couple, I thought I would throw up an update.

After a few days of research on the family of Mr and Mrs Reinhart, I am reasonably sure that I have located one of their grandchildren, and I wrote this letter to him tonight.

Dear XXXXXXXX

My name is XXXXXXXXX and I am writing to you regarding an ancestor of yours.

I am an avid family tree researcher and I am also interested in antiques. I have an appreciation for documents and family heirlooms, and I know what they mean to the families that are fortunate enough to have them. When I see one of these items for sale in an antique shop it bothers me, these things belong with the families that care about them.

Recently my wife and I were in an antique shop outside of Canton, Ohio and came across a beautiful framed marriage certificate announcing the union of William Reinhart and Callie Pfister on October 22, 1891 in New Philadelphia Ohio. I jotted this information down because I always like to try to match these items with the families who may appreciate them. My research indicates that these may be your grandparents. This is just something I do to put my mind at ease about these very personal items for sale.

I assure you that I am not selling this item, nor do I know the name of the shop owner who is. I did not even notice a price. If I were the shop keeper I would give you the item free of charge just because it is the right thing to do, but that is just me.

If you would like more information on this item please feel free to write. I will look up the address and phone number of this shop and send it to you. If I have written you in error, or you would like me to contact another family member, please let me know.

I don't know if I will get a response or not, but I am satisfied with the attempt. I will let you know what happens.

Another Errand, or, Selling One's Memories.

2008-02-24T16:37:00.006-05:00

As was mentioned in the "Sublimity" post, myself and my wife enjoy visiting antique shops whenever and wherever we can. It gives us a chance to get out of the house on a wintry day and take an enjoyable drive through the countryside. And drive we do.

On the occasion of my birthday, my wife invited me on an antiquing journey that took us about two hours from home. It consisted of a rapid fire tour of no less than eight antique shops. A day out with the woman I love, doing one of the things we like to do best. It doesn't get much better than that.

Antiquing, as I have mentioned before, makes me very happy. I love to look at these remnants of another time, and sometimes these remnants make one wonder about the journey that an item makes between its manufacture and its appearance in an antique shop display case. Some things come from local estates and sources, some things that have a known source make unlikely journeys over hundreds of miles to end up in these shops. I am reminded of a recent sighting of a soda bottle from a local bottler in Florida, for sale some fifty years later in Pennsylvania. One can only imagine its history.

One of the very few thing that disturbs me on these trips, or makes me unhappy, is the sale of items of a somewhat personal family items. I guess it is the genealogist and sentimentalist in me that allows this to bother me. Hundreds of old tin type photographs, framed portraits of people long gone, and personalized items trigger a sadness in me that I can't explain. I guess these pictures belong with the family of the person or persons in the image, I wish I could buy them up and give them to the families that probably don't know that they exist, or wonder what ever happened to them.

At the second stop of the whirlwind tour I came face to face with an item that I may be able to do something about. On the wall, in a gilded frame, was a very ornate marriage license. Not the legally issued type, more like the keepsake type that some thoughtful individual gave to the couple as a memento of this important event.

The marriage occurred on October 22nd, 1891 in New Philadelphia, Ohio. The groom was named William Reinhart and the bride was Callie Pfister. A truly beautiful framed document. I made a promise to myself.

I have tracked generation upon generation of myself and my wife's family over the past twelve years. I know how to follow a paper trail into the past, and then ride these facts into the future.

A descendant of William and Callie Pfister Reinhart will find this document, and if they want it will own it. I am going to try to make it happen.

I will keep you posted.

The Queen of Sharon

2008-02-16T10:12:00.005-05:00

The City of Sharon, Pennsylvania is your typical industrial boom town. The city existed before the steel mills came, but the direction of the city was taken in hand by steel people. The mills that were set up in town by the likes of Buhl and Carnegie would become the life blood of the city for decades to come. When the mills began to shut down, Sharon began to shut down. What is left is a city that has seen better days. Several dedicated people have spent enormous amounts of time and money to revitalize the downtown area, but they battle uphill. The City itself has fallen upon rough financial times. I hope the dedicated Sharon folks succeed.

Back in 1921, one of the heyday years of the industrial boom in Sharon something unusual happened. On May 10th, amid the industrial machine a carnival was taking place at the corner of Clark and Sharpsville Avenue. On this may 10th, Lena Miller died of pnuemonia.

Death by pnuemonia in itself was not unusual in 1921, not even death at carnival was unusual. What was unusual is that Lena Miller was a gypsy queen.

Lena was the daughter of Louis Mitchell, king of the Russian Gypsies in North America and wife of Frank Miller, who was King of the tribe that was traveling with the carnival. Lena told gypsy fortunes to the curious at the carnival. A fortune told by royalty, a rare opportunity.

Her passing touched off a funeral that the residents of Sharon had ever seen, nor would they ever again. Gypsies descended on Sharon from all directions. This was a big deal, and they came to pay their respects to the queen as she lay in state in a tent at the fairgrounds.

When all of the gypsy dignitaries and family members arrived the funeral was set for the 13th of May. A large customary feast was held at the fairgrounds, and afterward the official services began. The queen wore the extremely colorful garb of the gypsies, as did the gypsies in attendence. She was buried with jewels, gold jewelry and gold coins on her eyes. After a 45 minute service, Lena was kissed by family members and the oak and silver casket was closed.

The Sharon police needed the assistance of carnival workers to keep the path for the pall bearers open to the hearse. The band from the carnival lead the procession to Oakwood Cemetery, where Lena would be laid to rest. The procession is said to have taken 30 minutes to pass a given point, with hundreds of brightly dressed mourners, a band and the hearse itself flanked by flower carrying pall bearers. It is said that over 200 automobiles entered Oakwood for the burial itself.

True to gypsy tradition, the casket was lowered into the ground, at which time many of the mourners approched the grave and tossed gold coins on top of the casket to be mixed in the dirt. This was done because they believed that the gold coins were compensation for any sins that the deceased may have committed, and to buy favorable mercy for those surviving. None of the mourners would leave until a heavy flagstone was placed on the casket as a vault. The family would not leave until the gates closed. Gypsy guards were allowed to stand a 24 hour watch over the grave for ninety days.

A simple obelisk still marks the grave of the Gypsy Queen in Oakwood amongst several empty burial plots bought by the gypsies to insure that a person digging an adjacent grave may help himself to some of the Queen's gold or jewels. She was all but forgotten by all but the most stalwart local historians, but interest was momentarily renewed when the local newspaper did a story on her recently. Before this nobody would believe my Gypsy Queen story. Alot of things have happened in Sharon since Lena Miller passed, but I doubt that any of it was as exotic and unusual as this event.

stone photo by John Zavinski of the Herald newspaper

The Sublimity of Memories

2008-02-13T19:02:00.001-05:00

Think about this. If the human brain remembered everything, it would take you as long to remember something as it did to experience it. If you dredged up a memory of an afternoon at the park your brain would call up random thoughts, smells, noises and sensory stimulus that you experienced while you were at the park. It would take another afternoon of equal length to remember it all.
Fortunately for us, the brain goes through a constant assessment of what needs to be kept, and what can be thrown away. It puts the items that it decides are keepers on a shelf, like a book, and stores these things in an amazingly efficient manner. I would imagine that some of the things that your brain stores will never be called into play again. By the same token, something could trigger your brain to take a memory off of the shelf that has been collecting dust there for decades. Good or bad, this triggering process pulls a memory off the shelf and shows it to your conscious self whether you like it or not.
These shelves in your brain are a cabinet of curiosities within itself. Not even you have a good grasp on what this wunderkammer contains. You are the curiosity and the curious. All due to the sublimity of the human mind.
The fact that I very much enjoy visiting antique shops is a direct result of this concept. More than the enjoyment of the hunt and the purchase, I enjoy these shops because they are a rich source of triggers. I can visit these shops all day and never find anything I would like to own, but it is never a day wasted.
Games and toys may trigger childhood memories, magazines newspaper and music take you to specific times and places in your life, and certain items may remind you of people you cherish or people you had not thought about for years. These shops supply the triggers that allow me to look inside my own cabinet, to look for things that I may have forgotten were there.
I very seldom go through an antique shop without smiling to myself at least once. A pleasant memory is worth its weight in gold. When you are sharing these memories and thoughts in the company of someone you love, all the better.

Wheaton Glass

2008-02-09T16:52:00.001-05:00

Wheaton, N.J.

This embossing on the bottom of a bottle is bane to beginner collectors everywhere. It refers to the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville N.J, formerly known as Wheaton Village. These bottles and flasks that decorate antique shop shelves and flea market tables nationwide are notorious among bottle collectors as being reproductions and/or fakes. Wheaton produced several reproduction and “fantasy” bottles in the 1970s and 80’s. They were all clearly embossed “Wheaton” on the base.

I am sure that the good people at Wheaton were not trying to pass off their work as originals. It was probably more akin to trying to duplicate and mimic the incredible skill that the original glass blowers displayed while making the classic designs. These bottles were similar but there were always significant differences in the Wheaton edition. They also made flasks with historical themes and miniature bottles. They are all quite nice, just not old. Some people collect nothing but Wheaton issues.

If you put the opinion of bottle collectors aside, the folks at Wheaton make some truly beautiful and amazing things. The free blown glassware that they produce every year is highly sought after. These are not mimic bottles. These are true glass art.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to visit the Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center in Millville, N.J. Leesa and I spent a very pleasant afternoon browsing at the shops, watching glass blowing demonstrations and visiting Wheaton’s Museum of American Glass. If you are ever in the Millville/Vineland area, a visit to Wheaton is an afternoon I am sure that anyone would enjoy.

To view my awful photography of my day at Wheaton:

http://www.putfile.com/album/176384

To visit Wheaton’s website:

http://www.wheatonarts.org/

Requiem for an Old Friend

2008-02-02T09:55:00.000-05:00

At the end of the 19th century men cut the thick ice that formed on the surface of Conneaut Lake. Large blocks of ice were a valuable commodity with the advent of the home ice box, and the ice from this lake froze particularly thick. Hardy Crawford County Pa. men would cut the ice into blocks with huge ice saws, and then drag them to the railroad spur so that they could be shipped to ice houses in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. The ice trade was lucrative for these railroads when the lake was frozen, but when it melted they had a virtually unused rail line. This was not good business.

Being that the lake was the only draw that the railroad had to work with in 1892, they decided to build Exposition Park on the lakeside and bill it as a tourist haven. And people came, and bought railroad tickets in Pittsburgh and Cleveland. In the winter ice out, in the summer tourists in. A good money maker.

Well, the park grew and built hotels. They offered paddle steamer rides on the lake. They had Music Halls and convention centers, picnic areas and some early amusement rides. In 1908 a major fire destroyed a good portion of the park. They rebuilt quickly.

One of the new buildings was named the “Dreamland Ballroom”. A huge hardwood floor with room for large crowds, a balcony lining the whole of the second floor dance hall. A beautiful piece of work. It opened in 1909. In its heyday in the 30’s it drew the likes of Perry Como and Doris Day.

Amusement rides continued to be built, most notably a carousel in 1910, Dodgem cars in 1923 and the Blue Streak roller coaster in 1938. All of which are still there. The name was changed to Conneaut Lake Park. Looking back through the history of the park, fire and financial woes constantly haunted its grounds.

I spent a good amount of time at the park when I was a kid. We did not have a tremendous amount of time nor money, and a daytrip to Conneaut was a big deal for us. When I came back from two year army tour in Korea, one of the first things that I did was take my younger siblings to the park. It was that special.

The ever present money problems closed the park in 1995, its first such closure in 103 years. It reopened in 1996, but it got to a point where you wondered every spring if the park was going to open for the summer again. I took my kids there as much as possible, and they loved it. But it was not enough, the park did not open for 2007.

Some aggressive fundraising and deals with local business and government brightened the prospects for the summer of 2008. We looked forward to another season.

On the morning of February 1st, 2008 fire consumed the Dreamland Ballroom and many of the adjacent buildings and shops. This may very well be the death blow to our beloved park. While fighting the ever present financial problems, another fire may have ended it all. All that I feel is nostalgia and sadness.

Thank you for reading what will probably go down as my most long winded post ever.

The photograph above was shamelessly stolen from the best Conneaut Lake Park site on the net. Please visit them and offer my apologies.

http://www.clpjunction.com/news.shtml

Absorbing or obsessive ?

2008-02-01T18:37:00.000-05:00

Ok, so I have touched on some detecting and antique bottles which are both major parts of the absorbing errand that I chose to put myself on. Another is family tree research, which the vast majority of folks would find boring to think about, let alone spend more than a decade actively pursuing as a hobby. During the ten year period of my most intense research it was the only hobby I had time for. If asked at that time what I did for fun, the response was always the same.

I collect dead people.

On Christmas Day, 2005 I published a book marking the ten year anniversary of our research. Our database had grown to well over 3,200 people, and it was time to get something in print. I have decided that for the purposes of this blog, an excerpt from the introduction to my book sums up this part of the errand very well. I may not mention it again. It is as follows:

As human beings each one of us, as a matter of vanity or pride, likes to think of ourselves as a truly unique individual. In a world crowded with billions of other people, this sense of self, works to make a person feel as if they are not a mindless member of the mass as a whole. Each one of us spends a lifetime making endless judgments based on the realm of what we as an individual feel is acceptable, enjoyable, worthy of our time and efforts or what we feel is in the best interest of ourselves and the people we love. All of these decisions in our lives are made using a baseline that each of us has created within ourselves over the time that we have lived. We are self appointed arbiters of right and wrong, good and bad, likes and dislikes in the universe that we create within us. Simply put, me.

The choices that we make concerning our private universe also develops the way that other people perceive us. Whether another person is to despise us or fall in love with us is dependent upon the way that they perceive the individual in question. Just like real universes, we can pull some close to us and within our influence, while others we simply push away. Most of us allow some to get a good idea of what their private universe is like, but we still never lose that sense of “me”.

The obvious flaw in this is that we are born into this world without this baseline. The experience that allows us to make these important decisions is instilled into us by persons that have pulled us into their influence, most importantly of which are the people who saw fit to bless us with life itself. The early stages of the unique individual are made of building blocks provided by our immediate ancestors, our mothers and fathers. They in turn are making judgments in your best interest using a baseline which was greatly influenced by the previous generation, and so on. It is safe to say that most of what makes up you as and individual has been in development through countless generations before you. Simply put, you are a product of them.

As a child you are given a collection of these building blocks, be it biological or by personal contact and experience, to do with as you wish. The process of maturing is comprised of taking a constant inventory of these blocks. Some
we may discard over time, some we hold forever dear to us. We rearrange them to suit us, trying unconsciously to create a foundation that we are comfortable enough with to hand down to our children as their starting set. And so it goes.

A truer understanding of who you are may be obtainable through the understanding of the people who have handed down these blocks through generations to arrive at you as an end result. The odds against two random people out of all of humanity specifically meeting each other and having a child have to be about that of hitting the lottery several times in a row. But in every generation this happened several times in your personal history to make you who you are. If any of these seemingly random events was different or did not take place at all, chances are you would be very different. It is more likely that you would not be at all. You are actually a miracle of circumstances.

New Feature

2008-01-29T18:14:00.000-05:00

I have added a guestbook so that I can get a better feel for who is visiting my blog.
I would appreciate it a great deal if you could take the time to sign it and leave a comment. I hope to use this to make the blog better for the kind folks who take the time to read.

Thanks very much!

Winter project thus far neglected

2008-01-27T19:39:00.000-05:00

As explained in my intoductory post, a wunderkammer is a German word which translates roughly to "cabinet of curiosities". These cabinets were in vogue in the 16th and 17th Centuries, and the basic idea that they represented would eventually develop into the concept of the museum. We take these priceless collections displayed at major museums around the world for granted today, but at one time anyone who thought they were anyone had a personal collection of curiosities to show to anyone who would take the time to look. One would imagine that the exotic displays of natural, and too often unnatural, items in a socially conscious young man's collection may give him an aura of education and of worldliness.

And in the world that his contemporaries were living in, who could argue the authenticity of anything that was presented as authentic? Ships at this time were traveling the globe in search of exotic ports rich with trade goods and spices. These ports were also full of stories, legends and flat out fabrication. And the traders new how to turn a buck on the wunderkammer phenomenon. While all of Europe was in constant astonishment at a world getting ever smaller and ever stranger, the appetite for something unique in your personal cabinet was a matter of status. This was a big deal during the Renaissance. Unicorn horn, two headed toad, mummified finger of a saint, sliver of the True Cross. All fair game.

My meager attempt at this concept revolves around a type tray that I bought at an antique shop for ten bucks. It has multiple compartments for the storage of movable type letters used in old printing presses. The idea is to accumulate something interesting to place in each compartment, and when finished put a glass plate over the drawer and hang it on the wall. I have various items to put in the holes already but I need to collect them up out of a myriad of drawers and containers and boxes that collect this sort of thing around the house.

I'll start an inventory, then we will discuss this again. Thanks for reading.

For more on wunderkammern:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabinet_of_curiosities

Librophilia

2008-01-20T18:55:00.000-05:00

Recently I got into a somewhat frustrating exchange on a local newspaper forum regarding the funding of the largest public library in our area. The gentleman who I was debating with thought that libraries should be funded by private monies alone, with none from the city or state. This was not the hottest point I argued that night.

He went on to say that the Internet has struck libraries obsolete. I will admit to being a bit of a library lover. There is something about the feel and smell of the thousands of bound treasures on the shelves that give me pleasure. If the Internet has done anything to the libraries, it has made them somewhat unruly as most of the branches provide access to the net within the library. Some of these patrons are inconsiderate of the staff and other people trying to study and enjoy.

Shortly thereafter I saw this on the net.

At one time not so terribly long ago in history, libraries were held in as high regard by academia as the cathedrals were by the clergy. In fact the clergy was responsible for some of the first libraries ever.

The Church built grand cathedrals of astonishing beauty inspired by the pursuit of Heaven.

Academia built libraries on just as grand a scale inspired by the pursuit of knowledge.

Here are some of the most beautiful, courtesy of Curious Expeditions. Enjoy!

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

Coal Pile Cemetery concluded (almost)

2008-01-20T18:46:00.000-05:00

It would all be simple enough, I just had to get a signal off of that fence. The debris pile was called the “ash pile” locally, and it is big enough that the children used to sled ride down it in the winter. I estimated the amount of ground that the pile would cover. It would have been somewhat bigger than your typical family cemetery.

The newspaper story explained that it was started as a family plot for the folks who lived on a farm slightly north of the ash pile. He said that if you crossed the road in front of the old farm house and walked into the woods you would walk right into it. I reckoned that the gate would be on the house side of the fence, and that the fence would be roughly oriented as the house was.

My plan was to trench diagonally into the pile until I got an iron signal. I have been in a couple of cemeteries in my life and one thing is certain. A person could walk a straight line through most of them without running into a stone, but diagonally is another story. I hoped to hit a stone if I missed the fence.

I got the Ace 250 ready early on a rainy/snowy morning in late March of that year. I made sure I had a thermos of hot coffee and plenty of cigarettes (I smoked then). I parked in my friend’s driveway and walked down the trail that was the Hallville switch. I had scouted this area a few times throughout my research, which made the newest twist to the cemetery quest particularly maddening.

No Trespassing signs. Yellow caution tape. Strong threats written on the signs with a name and phone number. Maybe the folks who live close to the switch told the landowner I was poking around the coal pile. Locals have walked their dogs and hunted back there for years. I sat smoking a cigarette and watched the rain drip off of the bill of my cap. Disappointed to say the least. If a person will go through the trouble to post his property like that, he will likely go through the trouble to prosecute. I went home.

I called the number and left a message a few times, but never got a call back or an answer. Possibly the owner also knew what was there and did not want anyone poking around. Could be right of way and ownership issues involved, who knows. All that I know is that time allowed me to all but forget about that cemetery. I had not thought about it for quite a while.

That is, until my friend came to work one morning a couple of weeks ago and said:

“Gary found a stone and maybe some fence while muzzleloader hunting.”. Very close by but not under the pile.

I will be taking a drive to the switch very soon.

Hallville Coal Pile Cemetery pt.2

2008-01-17T20:27:00.000-05:00

Slabtown got its name from a sawmill that operated on the west bank of Wolf Creek back in the late 19th Century. A gristmill operated across the creek on the east side, but the seemingly endless slabs of wood on the west gave this section of town its name. It included a ford further up the creek where people could walk across or go on horseback.

Our research on the final resting place of the Dunkerley's ended with a stab in the dark phone call to a man who hed the cemetery records for an older but well maintained grave yard above the ford and on the west bank of the creek. They had no gravemarker, but the were on the plot map. Mystery solved, time to move on.

No. The Coal Pile Cemetery would not leave my mind. The gentleman who submitted the article to the newspaper back in the sixties said that he spoke to mineworkers who worked the Hallville switch and they said that they remembered seeing stones there. Years after the hallville mine was closed, the tipple was moved to another location and the ground was strip mined by another company. The only part of the property not stripped is around where the tipple stood. Did they know what was there?

All that I know is a cemetery under a pile of coal scrap did not seem right to me. I figured that the easiest way to prove that the cemetery was there was to find the fence with a metal detector and then work my way in until I found a stone.

And if I did find something, who do I tell? Would anyone care? The few people who I discussed what I was doing with thought that I was a bit touched. This is not unusual.

I bought a Garrett Ace 250 that March.

Hallville Coal Pile Cemetery pt.1

2008-01-16T20:37:00.000-05:00

I purchased my metal detector to find wrought iron. Seriously.
While thousands upon thousands of folks buy metal detectors to find gold, silver and other precious metals I had no such intentions. Coins? Jewelry? No. Iron, you bet. Sure, finding these sorts of things are very intriguing but that was a secondary thought for me.

This all started about two years ago with a question that arose while we were researching my wife’s family tree. I was at the county courthouse checking on records pertaining to the death of her paternal second great grandfather, John Dunkerley.

Seems that Mr. Dunkerley was listed as having been buried in a place called “Slabtown” according to the death register. This is local for me, and having been doing this family tree thing for over ten years I had a pretty good grasp on county cemeteries.Research lead me to the fact that "Slabtown" is now a part of the neighborhood of Hallville. The only one that could be considered Hallville was a Catholic cemetery. Mr. Dunkerley was not Catholic.

A few weeks later a friend of mine discussed this listing with her mother, who had lived in Hallville all of her life. The result was an old newspaper clipping from the early 1960s by a gentleman who was telling stories of his youth. Hallville was a coal mining area with a railroad spur that was used to load coal into rail cars. The loading apparatus was called a tipple, and next to most tipples was a pile of coal and stone residue. This gentleman said that he remembered when there was a cemetery where the tipple was. He said he went back years later but the cemetery was gone, and the pile of residue was where he remembered it being. He said that it had a lovely wrought iron fence around it complete with a gate.

I was going to find that fence.

The Lower Farm

2008-01-13T12:35:00.000-05:00

I live in the "old homestead" house on my father in law's farm. It is about 130 years old and about 15 years ago we gutted it entirely and redid it. I didn't even have running water, but it had two new fangled electric circuits. But this is for another post.

There are no less than 4 houses on the farm, two newer and two ancient. The other ancient house sits on a lot that I refer to as the "lower farm". This house has also been occupied since the mid 19th century and was one of my favorite places to metal detect. It is at the end of a long lane and is surrounded by woods and a stream. Very peaceful.

Shortly after the bottle bug struck I recalled an old dump that cascaded down a steep hill near the house, and the bug kicked into high gear. The pictures of bottles on the net that intrigued me most were the old, cork top quack medicine bottles from the mid to late 1800s. It disappointed me that all that I could find were screw top bottles.

One afternoon that fall patent med bottles began to appear in the hillside. I dug them out carefully, like an archaeologist. This went on for a month, two or three every time I went down.
The "golden age" of my collection. I will post some pics soon.

I have not found another pocket like that since. I do a little digging and much more buying now.
My wife developed an interest in antiques, and I tag along and find a nice one in a shop occasionally. Actually I think I enjoy the shops more than she does. My med collection is at about 50 bottles give or take. The hardest thing I have ever done was toss out all of those bottles from the strip mine. I still love them all.

The bottle bug

2008-01-10T20:46:00.000-05:00

A little more than a year ago myself and two of my kids were stumbling through some local woods while geocaching. The area that we were searching had been strip mined years ago and is a series of valleys and ridges that one would have to be in excellent physical condition to traverse. Or you could just be overweight, stubborn and a little crazy. Naturally, we went in the hard way.

After we passed through our third valley with the GPS still telling us to go onward we climbed up the next ridge and that is when it happened. I got the bug. The new valley we were looking into was literally half filled with bottles. I thought that this was pretty cool and marked the location on my GPS. We went on and found the cache.

For some reason the bottle dump returned to my mind often that week. The next weekend I went back to the valley and poked around. I dug through old milk bottles, coke bottles, medicine and household bottles. They were clear and amber and cobalt blue and green. If a bottle struck my fancy I put it in my backpack. I could not zipper it closed when I was finished. A forty year old fella collecting garbage from the 1930s? That would have been me.

After about four or five return trips with the kids I realized that something had to be done about the bug. So many of these bottles were interesting that we used to have to select the best from our pile of keepers so that we could carry them out without a mule team. You could not turn around in our shed without knocking bottles over.

This was the beginning stages of the disease. I found that I was not alone in this pursuit by searching the net. The stories were similar to mine, kind of like listening to AA meeting stories. The trick was to specialize in a particular type of bottle or surrender your house to the glass.

Then came the Lower Farm dump.........

A Wunderkammer of sorts...............

2008-01-06T14:26:00.000-05:00

There is something about the blog format that calls out to the exhibitionist in us all. People who would otherwise be apprehensive to express his or her opinions, beliefs, dreams or interests to others feel protected while generating blog posts. Anonymity emboldens a person who is typically introverted into showing a little of the stuff that they are made of. It is alot like allowing someone to watch while you are cleaning your bedroom closet. As you unload your mess on the floor, the spectator gains clues as to how you live and think. You may do yourself proud or you may embarrass yourself, but you are anonymous so it is all good.

There is something about the blog format that brings out the voyeur in people too. As a reader of this blog you are willingly sitting back and watching what comes out of the closet, good or bad, and you can walk away at any time with no explanations needed. But you are also anonymous so it is all good.

A wunderkammer is a German word meaning "cabinet of curiosities". Once you reach a certain age you realize that all along you have been collecting the materials to make yourself a human wunderkammer . These curiosities you have collected become what you are. Having one of these cabinets and not sharing it with the curious is an injustice to your life collection.

Now, I invite you to look inside.