Gettysburg Non-Battle Tales

Photo by Jonathan Woytek, June 2023

Jonathan and I travelled to the Gettysburg area for a family event last month. Jonathan had never been to Gettysburg prior to this (except for driving past it on Route 30). So, after we checked out of our hotel, we drove around the battlefield before we drove home.

I learned the night before from a 12-year-old history buff that Little Round Top and Devil’s Den were both under remediation from the National Park Service and thus closed to the public.

“What else should we visit, then?” Jonathan asked me.

I remembered the Pennsylvania Monument and we directed Google maps to give us driving directions to it.

The Pennsylvania Monument is the largest state monument on the battlefield. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania dedicated the uncompleted monument in 1910. The 50th anniversary commemoration for the battle happened in July 1913. The monument was completed in 1914 and rededicated on July 4, 1914. That’s what Wikipedia says, anyway.

(Wikipedia doesn’t mention this on the monument’s page, but Gavrilo Princip assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914. This set off a chain of events that resulted in the start of World War I on July 28, 1914. The United States entered World War I in April 1917.)

I didn’t bring my camera with me but Jonathan brought his. You can see the above photo and all of Jonathan’s other Gettysburg photos here on our other blog.

What Jonathan’s other photos didn’t show is this: shortly after we parked at the Pennsylvania monument, a bus bearing the name of a college in northern Michigan pulled up to the monument. Lots of college-looking kids poured out of the bus. A man who looked like a teacher reminded the kids to “remember your assignment.” The kids ascended to the top of the monument.

Now, on the PA monument, one can access a balcony underneath the dome at the top. In order to reach this balcony, you must climb the steps seen in the photo, and then climb a metal spiral staircase that is not seen in the photo.

I overhead a young man talking to a young woman. The young man must have been a member of a fire department, because he referenced “my district” and “fire call.” He told the young woman that the call was for a structure fire. The building in question had a spiral staircase “just like the one here.” He told her that the spiral staircase at said structure fire got very hot and that he had to carry a hose up it. “That was the worst fire call that I’ve ever had,” he said.

In order to get back on their bus, the Michigan college students had to tell their teacher which “spot” they had been assigned to identify, as they pointed in the direction of it. “Peach Orchard,” “Wheat Field,” “Devils Den,” “Little Round Top,” various students said.

A reenactment group positioned across the road from the PA monument demonstrated how to be Civil War infantry soldiers. They marched. They loaded rifles with powder. They fired. There were no bullets. We learned that the National Park Service doesn’t permit the use of bayonets on NPS grounds; nevertheless, we saw a bayonet demonstration sans bayonet. The NPS staffer identified the group as volunteers re-enacting a regiment from Maine. However, three of the men were actually from Germany.

A short trip down the road from the PA monument (the PA monument was still in sight) we stopped to look at some other monuments because a vulture sat on one of these other monuments. The vulture’s mate stood on the ground nearby, eating a squirrel. Jonathan photographed the turkey vulture on the monument. You can see two photos of it on our other blog.

Eventually, another car with a PA license plate pulled up next to our car.

“The vultures return at this same time of year, every year,” the driver told us.

It was about a week before the anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Jonathan said, “One of them was eating a squirrel before I scared it.”

The driver speculated about the vultures’ presence in July 1863.

“You know what they were feeding on back then, right?” he said.

Then he drove off.

The Lincoln Highway: A Novel

I took a little break from blogging to focus on other interests. My sister K. still blogs actively. You can read up on her adventures raising two active boys, training for races, and learning to play the guitar here on her blog. My sister and her family also travel for fun adventures. In fact, K. and her husband (Mr. K.) both finished the Broad Street Run in Philadelphia last month! Our family is very proud of them.

In the meantime, let me tell you about a novel that I read about a month or so ago. Jonathan gave it to me last Christmas (I think). This novel is “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles.

The actual Lincoln Highway is the first transcontinental highway in the United States. Here in Pennsylvania, the Lincoln Highway is Route 30. I graduated from college at Saint Vincent along Route 30. Tourists can drive to both the Flight 93 Memorial and Gettysburg by choosing Route 30. Jonathan and I travelled home from my sister’s wedding in Eastern PA back to Western PA by driving Route 30 to Greensburg. My parents used to travel Route 30 from our our home in Central PA to visit our family in the Pittsburgh area. I’ve blogged here before about interesting and reputedly haunted places along Route 30 in Pennsylvania.

Spoiler alert:

Absolutely nothing in the fiction novel “The Lincoln Highway” by Amor Towles takes place in Pennsylvania.

More spoilers:

The novel begins in the 1950’s in the Midwest. (Rural Nebraska.) The story jumps from several different points of view. I’m not completely sure who the protagonist is. At the beginning, I thought that the protagonist was 18-year-old Emmett Watson. Then, I decided that the protagonist was his eight-year-old brother, Billy. Now, I think that the novel has several protagonists.

Anyway, the first chapter begins when Emmett is released from a prison farm after an encounter with the town bully that turned deadly. Emmett and Billy’s father has recently died of cancer. The bank has foreclosed on their bankrupt farm. Emmett initially planned for the brothers to start over in Texas. Billy convinces Emmett that they should instead travel west along the Lincoln Highway – to start over in California, and also to look for their mother in San Francisco. (She walked out on the family when Billy was an infant.) Okay, California it is!

Some adventures happen before the brothers can leave Nebraska and all of its terrible memories. Some additional protagonists appear. The brothers are finally on their way to travel the Lincoln Highway west – or so they think. Something happens to cause them to travel east instead. Some of the protagonists have an adventure in Illinois involving an Abraham Lincoln statue. After several chapters or so, everyone arrives in New York City.

Several more adventures happen. Finally, a bunch of the protagonists set off to travel from Times Square (the eastern beginning of the Lincoln Highway), through the Lincoln Tunnel, west on the Lincoln Highway to San Francisco (the western end of the Lincoln Highway). They are actually ready to go this time, guys! Or so they think.

This novel is all about the Hero’s Journey. The author gave us several pretty big clues to help us figure this out. Billy carries around a book of stories about heros and their journeys. One of the characters is even named Ulysses. It’s fun to pick out all of the Easter eggs about Greek Mythology.

Also, even though the book takes place over the span of a few weeks in June 1954, several of the protagonists have flashbacks to stuff that took place in the 1930’s and 1940’s. So, even though it’s postwar America, the protagonists are still dealing with trauma from the Great Depression and World War II.

This was a fun book to read. Pennsylvania readers, don’t be disappointed that none of “The Lincoln Highway: A Novel” took place in the Keystone State.

Changing of the Queen’s Guard

Changing of the Queen’s Guard, Buckingham Palace, London, September 2009 (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Here’s a photo that I took in London in 2009 at the Changing of the Queen’s Guard at Buckingham Palace. (Yeah, I know that this photo isn’t the world’s best. At least nobody will rip it off, I guess.)

This was my first non point-and-shoot camera. I took about 300 photos of the ducks at St. James’s Park on this same trip. Looking back, I’m surprised that I took any photos at all of this particular morning ceremony. I didn’t plan my attendance at this event well. Jonathan was busy with a work conference (that’s why we were in London). I was on my own for this excursion to Buckingham Palace. Our hotel was directly across the river from the Tower of London. I overslept that morning. I had to rush to make it on the ride for the London Underground. (Yes, I minded the gap.) I showed up at Buckingham Place just a few minutes before or a few minutes after this ceremony started. The place was PACKED. I didn’t realize how hard it would be to get a spot in the crowd where I could see anything.

The ceremony included not one, but TWO marching bands.

A lot of the other spectators were dressed up. Some of the women wore dresses, Easter churchy hats, etc. I didn’t even think to dress up to go to Buckingham Palace. I grew up going camping (tent camping and pop-up camper camping and cabin camping) for vacations. It didn’t even cross my mind to take “nice” clothes with me for a tourist trip. When I was a kid, we wore our nice clothes for school, church, and dentist appointments. Not for travel. I’m an American and I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I’m also just weird.

Anyway, either the day before or the day that I took this photo, I learned that Buckingham Palace was open to the public only one month out of the year. I happened to be in London during the very month that Buckingham Palace was open. So, I purchased a ticket and toured Buckingham Palace. Again, I wore clothes that I had packed specifically because I wouldn’t miss them if the airline lost my luggage. Other people in my tour group dressed as if they were visiting Buckingham Place.

The tour ended in the palace’s garden. There was a tea vendor and tables set up for tourists IN the garden. Therefore, tour participants could choose to purchase tea and have “teatime” in the garden at Buckingham Palace. It personally seemed to me to be a money grab, but whatever. A bunch of the women wearing dresses and Easter hats seemed to be into this.

I’m glad that I had the opportunity to tour Buckingham Palace. If I ever make it back, it would be interesting to see how things have changed and will change under the new monarch.

He Has a Road Sign Along Route 30 in Ligonier Now

Photo of Fort Ticonderoga in New York State by Jonathan Woytek, circa 2009. General Arthur St. Clair faced a court martial for retreating from this fort and leaving it in the hands of the British in 1777 during the Revolutionary War. In 1791, St. Clair commanded the United States forces during their worst defeat by Native Americans, in present-day Ohio. A historical marker and a monument along Route 30 in Ligonier memorialize St. Clair’s final residence.

Arthur St. Clair, the commander of the American forces who suffered the worst ever defeat in United States history by Native Americans, has a road sign on Route 30 in Ligonier Township, Pennsylvania.

I learned about the road sign (erected by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission) from this article by Renatta Signorini on Triblive.com.

The Trib article did not mention Arthur St. Clair’s 1791 military defeat in The Battle of the Wabash. I had to learn about this defeat by reading, first, The Red Heart (a fiction novel by James Alexander Thom) and later from Wikipedia.

The Trib article also did not mention that St. Clair faced a court martial after he retreated from Fort Ticonderoga – and left it in the hands of the British – in 1777.

From what I read about General St. Clair, his supporters argued that St. Clair didn’t have adequate resources to succeed at Fort Ticonderoga (which is in present-day New York) or at the Wabash (which is in present-day Ohio).

The road sign on Route 30 commemorates the Westmoreland County home where St. Clair lived at the very end of his life. The location of St. Clair’s grave a few miles away in Greensburg became a prominent public park named after him.

I myself travel on Route 30 between my current home and my hometown in Somerset County. I’ve never actually noticed the PHMC marker, or the monument installed by the county. That section of Route 30 is sort of tricky to safely drive, so I’m glad that the Trib notified me to the presence of this sign.

If you want to learn more about Arthur St. Clair without leaving Route 30, you can head on over to the museum at Fort Ligonier. The museum has pieces of Arthur St. Clair’s parlor installed in it. From what I read, the United States failed to repay a substantial debt owed to St. Clair. St. Clair lost most of what he owned, including the residence that contained this particular parlor. His possessions were sold to repay his own creditors. According to local folklore, General St. Clair’s ghost and his wife’s ghost haunt the fort’s museum. My fourth grade class visited Fort Ligioner several decades ago. I didn’t see any ghosts. I re-visited the museum in 2018. I still did not see any ghosts.

Just as an aside, I’ve previously blogged – several times – about Simon Girty. I learned from Wikipedia that Girty fought with the Native Americans at St. Clair’s defeat.

If you want to learn more about General St. Clair (or about Simon Girty), I recommend the website for the Heinz History Center.

Shout-out to Ghost Tour Operators

Nemacolin Castle. (Bowman’s Castle.) Brownsville, PA. Circa October 8, 2011. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Firstly, I added a few more photos of downtown New Kensington. Some were of the December parade. I also added a photo of the new Anne Frank mural. You can click on the “Murals” tab in the last post to see all of my posts that include mural photos.

I have a new podcast rec for people who like spooky things. I personally listen to this on Spotify. If you don’t do Spotify, it’s available on other popular platforms. The podcast is “Ghost Tour” from Southern Gothic Media.

I’m already a HUGE fun of Brandon Schexnayder’s “Southern Gothic” podcast. I’m such a fan that I joined its Patreon membership. So, I barked and drooled (not really) when Schexnayder announced that he partnered with Alicia King Marshall of Franklin Walking Tours to produce “Ghost Tour.”

Ghost Tour” currently has only one season. The hosts interviewed the owners and operators of ghost tour companies. I’m not talking about the “scare houses” with theatrical blood and gore and manufactured horror stories. Those are fun for some people. That’s not the theme of this podcast. I’m talking about those research-based ghost tours at historically significant sites. For instance, in Episode #5, Alicia King Marshall discussed the ghost stories that Franklin Walking Tours told about the 1864 Battle of Franklin in Franklin, Tennessee. In Episode #7, the hosts interviewed Janan Boehme, the Tour Manager / house historian at the Winchester Mystery House in California.

Ghost Tour” attracted me since I’m curious about how to create a historical ghost tour.

In other news, Troy Taylor from American Hauntings (a podcast, book, and ghost tour company based in Illinois) did a shout-out to southwestern Pennsylvania in one of his recent Zoom livestreams. He specifically referenced Nemacolin Castle in Brownsville. He also referenced the borough of California, Pennsylvania. Nemacolin Castle is a 1700’s and 1800’s -era home that I blogged about here. It sits on a cliff overlooking the Monongahela River (the Mon). It was built in sections over multiple decades. The same family lived in it from the 1700’s up through the 1900’s. Multiple ghosts from multiple generations reputedly haunt it.

My dad learned how to be a high school Special Education teacher at California University of Pennsylvania while he courted my mom in Pittsburgh. Dad refers to the school as “Harvard on the Mon.” I was really excited to discover that I have a family connection to a place that Troy Taylor visited.

Taylor also gave a shout-out to a tattoo parlor that he patronized in that region. I’m trying to track down the name of this place so that I can get a tattoo from the same person who gave Troy Taylor one. I’m that much of a Troy Taylor fan.

Humor doesn’t translate very well on the internet. I’m not really going to drive out to Brownsville just to do this. It’s a 120 mile round trip from my house. Gas is expensive and I don’t like to drive. I’m still glad that southwestern Pennsylvania made a good impression on Taylor. The American Hauntings podcast, hosted by Troy Taylor and Cody Beck, is available on Spotify, iTunes, and other platforms.

Valley High School Color Guard; Mural by Shane Pilster

Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Here’s another photo of Valley High School’s marching band at the December 2021 Christmas Parade in downtown New Kensington.

I didn’t grow up in New Kensington. I grew up in Somerset County. However, I was in my own high school’s marching band for four years. Well, first I was in my elementary and junior high concert bands. I wanted to quit before high school. The high school band seemed like too much work. My parents didn’t want me to quit band because they had already invested money in my music interests (or lack thereof). My parents had a handful of other kids. (There are five of us!) They realized that I had a better chance of getting college financial aid if I had “high school marching band” listed as an extracurricular on my applications. Also, I have never been accused of being “too physically fit.” Most likely my parents figured that participation in the marching band would force me to get some exercise. So, four years of marching band it was!

It worked out well for me. Almost all of my high school friends were also in the band. I’m old. I remember stuff differently than how it actually went down. However, I remember all of the fun stuff about band and very little about the unpleasant stuff. (For instance, band camp.) I’m trying to work on a lifestyle change. I get discouraged about all of the extra walking. I remember that I actually walked much further during four years of football games and parades and practices. (All while blowing through a woodwind.) I can totally up my walking game now!

I recently Googled my old band director. He retired from teaching. He now performs professionally with other professional musicians. He didn’t just put in his time and then let his art atrophy. He’s still going strong. I find this inspiring.

Anne Frank Mural by Christian Miller

Anne Frank Mural by Christian Miller. Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Mural by Christian Miller who is from New Kensington. Thanks to Westmoreland Community Action and Marvin Birner.

Anne Frank Mural by Christian Miller. Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Mural: “Rising Phoenix” at Voodoo Brewery by Shane Pilster

Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

If you Google “New Kensington” and “Voodoo Brewery,” you can find a lot of photos of Shane Pilster’s “Rising Phoenix” mural. In fact, here are photos that I took last December, a week after Krampus brought me my camera.

You can also find a lot of information about New Kensington’s Voodoo Brewery / Voodoo at the Ritz and Old Town Overhaul with a quick Google search. Here’s such an article from the Trib.

So, for this blog post, I took a bunch of photos that showed the “Rising Phoenix” mural in the background as the community gathered for New Kensington’s Christmas Parade.

Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

I felt really defeated last spring over the setbacks that Jonathan and I had encountered in trying to rebuild our front porch. I wrote a snarky post on this very blog about how murals weren’t going to solve New Kensington’s problems. The murals weren’t solving any of MY problems. My sister Elizabeth is a hero because she read the post right after I published it. She told me that I was harsh. I took the blog post down about an hour after I published it. The post now resides for eternity in blog post hell. Or, maybe it resides in blog post purgatory because with my luck it’s cached somewhere.

But, now our porch is almost complete. I feel much more hopeful about my future here in New Kensington.

Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

These marchers arrived on a bus from Valley High School in New Kensington. I watched the bus arrive. It travelled past me and unloaded on the next block over from where I sat waiting the parade to begin. I saw kids sitting next to the windows, holding their trombones.

Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

I have a soft spot for the high school marching band. I marched in a high school band when I grew up in Somerset County. I played the clarinet.

I don’t remember getting to march past any cool brewery murals, though.

Mural: New Ken by Bernie Wilke and Other Artists and also a Santa Claus Cameo

Mural by Bernie Wilke and Other Artists. Fourth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. December 4, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

I cheated and posted a version of this photo on Facebook yesterday so that I could share it with New Kensington’s Fire Department.

I wrote before that my eyes have a “little bit” of a strabismus. I’m having a really terrible time figuring out if this photo is straight, even with the tools on my Lightroom software. So, please let me know if this photo looks crooked. A close family member told me that my photo cropping on this is fine, but I don’t believe them.

Bernie Wilke and other local artists, including local volunteers, painted this mural in the spring of 2021. Here are the photos of that I took of the Work-In-Progress Mural and also of the mural dedication.

If you leave the Pennsylvania Turnpike at the Allegheny Valley Exit, drive through Cheswick and Springdale, and then turn right to drive across the C.L. Schmitt to cross the Allegheny River into New Kensington, you will see this mural as you enter downtown New Kensington.

The very first time that I ever came to New Kensington, I drove here on Route 56 from Johnstown. I lived in Johnstown at that time because I worked in downtown Johnstown at my very first post-college job that provided health insurance. (I used to refer to the job in Johnstown as my very first “real job.” But, you see, that’s not fair to anybody who worked with me at Wendy’s or McDonald’s or Wal-Mart before I found an office job with health insurance in Johnstown. So, I’m going to replace “real job” with “job that provided health insurance.”)

On my very first trip ever to New Kensington, I visited my future husband, Jonathan, at his then newly-purchased house in Parnassus. Then, I watched a New Kensington Civic Theater play for which Jonathan provided tech and manual labor.

I left New Kensington in the dark on that visit. I intended to use the Pennsylvania Turnpike to drive to my parents’ house in Somerset County. This being my very first trip to New Kensington, I had no idea how to access the turnpike from New Kensington. I did not own any mobile devices that had GPS.

Jonathan said, “Oh, how about if I drive to the turnpike on-ramp in my car, and you can follow me. The turnpike is really close to my house, and it’s no problem at all for me to just show you where it is.”

So, I followed Jonathan to the turnpike entrance. Turned out that the turnpike was NOT “really close” to Jonathan’s house. The drive took us 15 minutes with no real traffic. Jonathan later admitted to me that he feared that I would get lost finding the turnpike and thus I would never agree to drive to New Kensington ever again if he left me to locate the turnpike on my own.

Anyway, I took the photo at the top of this blog post yesterday during New Kensington’s Christmas parade. I considered skipping the parade this year because my mom used to drive up (drive down?) from Somerset County each December to watch the parade with me before she passed away in 2018. But, we didn’t have a parade in 2020. So I went to the 2021 parade.

The above photo was an afterthought. The parade route started on Fifth Avenue, made a left, made a second left, and proceeded onto Fourth Avenue. So, the parade route has a U shape. I set myself up to watch the entire parade on Fifth Avenue. After the parade ended for the people watching on Fifth Avenue, I cut across the parade route to re-watch the tail end of the parade on Fourth Avenue. I crossed Fourth Avenue behind the end of the parade and I kept walking until I stood directly across Fourth Avenue from the New Kensington mural. Just then, the fire truck carrying Santa Claus passed by the mural. I decided at that moment to take out my camera and try to grab a photo. I really wish that I would have pre-planned this. Maybe I could have gotten a photo of Santa Claus looking at the camera.

But, I can’t complain about a photo that I didn’t plan at all.

Mural: Shine by Ashley Hodder

Mural by Ashley Hodder. Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. November 27, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

Here is a photo of the mural “Shine” by Ashley Hodder.

I wanted to shoot this mural against a blue sky with no cars in the foreground. Maybe I’ll still get to this. However, every time that I drive down this street with my camera, the sky refuses to cooperate. Cars line both sides of the street. I’m lucky that I found a decent place to park today. I won’t complain about a thriving downtown.

I shot this mural once before. As the artist painted it. Here is the work-in-progress on the evening of September 24, 2021, during the September edition of New Kensington’s “Final Fridays.”

Mural by Ashley Hodder. Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. September 24, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)

The building to which this wall belongs housed the former Bloser’s Jewelers. Crews filmed a scene from the 2019 movie adaptation of Maria Semple’s fiction novel “Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” inside this building.

The story actually took place in Seattle. The movie producers used Pittsburgh and the towns around Pittsburgh (such as New Kensington) as a stand-in for Seattle. Pittsburgh’s a less expensive city. (New Kensington is even less expensive.)

I read the book. The book underwhelmed me. I guess that that whole story was kinda tongue-in-cheek. Most of the humor went over my head.

I didn’t see the movie yet. I kinda want to watch it just to see the scene that was filmed inside of this building. But – the release date kept getting pushed back. Then, I found too many other ways to waste my time than to watch a movie adaptation of a book that I didn’t enjoy.

My Call to Action: Did you watch the movie Where’d You Go, Bernadette?” What did you think of it?

Mural by Ashley Hodder. Fifth Avenue, Downtown New Kensington. November 27, 2021. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)
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