My four sisters and I sold the house where we all grew up, in Berlin, PA, a little over a year ago, after our dad died.
A few months ago, I learned that the company who owned the town’s potato chip factory intended to shutter it. The news was so shocking that my sisters and I texted each other about it. The Chip Plant? Oh, no, not the Chip Plant!
(We all called it the “Chip Plant.”)
Snyder of Berlin potato chips were one of my first introductions to Berlin.
My parents moved us to Somerset County when I was seven years old. My dad had accepted a position teaching Special Education at Somerset Area High School. Berlin is not in the Somerset Area School District. Berlin is in the Berlin Brothersvalley School District. My dad’s brother and the brother’s family lived a few miles outside of Berlin. My dad wanted to live close to my uncle. So, he rented a house a mile or two down the highway from my uncle. My dad knew that it would be an “easy” commute to Somerset because my uncle also worked in Somerset.
My sisters and I called the rental house “Joe’s House.” My parents rented it from a man named Joe. They also rented the house from Joe’s wife (we called her Joe’s Wife) and Joe’s daughter, Rita.
Joe used to live in Joe’s House with his wife and several kids. All of the kids left the nest except Rita. Joe, Joe’s Wife, and Rita moved out of their house and into an apartment on top of their garage. Then Joe rented Joe’s House to my parents.
Joe’s Garage was actually Joe’s Welding Shop. Joe’s Wife worked at Snyder of Berlin. The day after my parents moved us into Joe’s House, Joe’s Wife brought us several bags of Snyder of Berlin potato chips. She introduced us to the potato chip brand and to the role of Snyder of Berlin in our new community.
A few days later, I visited Berlin for the first time. The potato chip factory was a short walk down a residential street from our new school.
Rita rode the school bus with me and my sister K. Rita was a senior in high school. I was in the second grade. K. was in kindergarten. The Berlin Brothersvalley School District at that time educated their entire student population in two buildings connected by an “underground tunnel.” (Just like the US Capitol, except that it was traversed each day by a few hundred kids.) I thought that Rita was cool because she sat with (and horseplayed with) the other high school kids in the back of the bus.
Rita told me that my new bedroom at “Joe’s House” had been her bedroom. You know, before her parents moved her out of her house and rented the house to another family. Rita had to ride the bus each morning with the little girls who now slept in “her” bedroom.
I wonder if we should have all called the house “Rita’s House.”
A few months after my family moved into Joe’s House, we moved out of Joe’s House. My parents found a house to purchase in the town of Berlin. We walked to school. Berlin was small enough that we rode our bikes to every corner of the town. I often rode my bike past the Chip Plant.
Rita graduated from high school. I saw her name proudly written on a paper graduation cap taped to the wall of our shared school cafeteria. I was proud that I, a newcomer and a second grader, recognized a name on that wall. I graduated from that same school ten years later.
I smelled fried potatoes on windy days while I sat in class. We took Economics and did Junior Achievement in our senior year. As our “field trip,” we walked down the street and toured the Snyder of Berlin factory. There were 78 of us in my senior class. We divided ourselves into groups of five to ten each and laughed at the hair nets that we all wore. Some of my classmates waved at their family members working on the assembly line. When my sister K. took Economics / Junior Achievement two years later, a manager from the Snyder plant visited their class several times. He gave her a bunch of Snyder swag.
Every time my family rode past Joe’s House, we explained, “That’s Joe’s House!” Then a few moments later we pointed out the house that my uncle and aunt used to own. Two of my sisters were born after the “Joe’s House” era, so they needed to know about it.
I’m not going to get into the details about why the potato chip factory in Berlin got shuttered. You can Google all that. However, it closed last month.
I assume that Joe’s Wife eventually retired from the Chip Plant. However, a bunch of my former classmates and / or their family members probably didn’t have this opportunity. The Chip Plant’s role in Berlin will be hard to replace.
