History – The Parnassus Pen

O.J. Simpson and His White Bronco Upstaged this High School Civics Banquet

This photo was taken on June 17, 1994, while the police chased O.J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco.

The American Legion Auxilliary (it was called the American Legion Ladies Auxillary when I was a kid) chose me to represent my school at Keystone Girls State in 1994. The Berlin chapter usually just sent one girl, but in 1994 they sent two girls. I think that the American Legion (no Ladies in that name) was supposed to send a boy from my high school to Keystone Boys State as well. No boys applied, thus they funded two girls.

Girls State and Boys State are one-week programs held on college campuses in almost every state to teach rising high school seniors about civics and citizenship, American-Legion style. The programs held in Pennsylvania have “Keystone” at the beginning of their names because Pennsylvania is the Keystone State.

At the end of the week, we held “State Elections.” We elected one girl as “Governor” of Keystone Girls State. This lucky girl received a trip to Washington, D.C. to attend Girls Nation along with the girls elected as “Governors” of the other Girls States. Boys State also holds elections. They send delegates to Boys Nation. However, they are set up differently. (Note: I haven’t seen this documentary, but apparently it touches on the differences.)

My parents strongly encouraged me to sign up for anything that would “look good on a college scholarship application.” I wasn’t down with sports or STEM. I really enjoyed my Social Studies and History classes. So, I threw my hat in the ring for this fine opportunity. Two of my younger sisters also attended Keystone Girls State the summers before their own senior years of high school.

Per this Wikipedia page, “In 2020, the New York Post published an article citing Boys Nation and Boys State as summer camps that groom future presidents and governors.”

If a program attracts thousands of kids with enough of an interest in politics for them to give up part of their summer vacations to do politics, then it makes sense to me that some of those kids eventually achieve success in politics.

If you listen to the podcast “The Dollop with Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds,” then check out the first few minutes of “Episode 456- Scott Walker.” Future Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker attended Badger Boys State. (Wisconsin is the Badger State.) Walker then got sent to represent Wisconsin at Boys Nation in Washington, D.C. There, he met Ronald Reagan. The Dollop referred to the program as a “Model UN ripoff.”

I don’t know anything about Model UN (Model United Nations) because my school didn’t offer an option to attend Model UN. I bet that the types of kids who attend Model UN are the same types of kids who attend Girls State and Boys State, though. They most likely have parents who encourage them to sign up for anything that could increase their chances of getting into a good college and / or receive money to fund their attendance at that good college.

We lived in a college dorm for a week at Shippensburg University. When we checked in, we received housing assignments that corresponded with our “city” assignment. We also received an assignment to one of two political parties. Each city had an equal number of citizens from each of these parties. The parties were NOT related to any existing political party in the United States. They just happened to have the same primary colors.

We lived on the same floor and in the same section of that floor with every other citizen of our “city.” The authority figure who lived on our floor as a sort-of Camp Counselor / RA was Mrs. Heeter. So, the name of our “city” was “Heeter City.” The photo at the top of this blog post are the citizens of Heeter City. On the first evening, we gathered for a Heeter City town hall.

The activities during that week were stuff that you would expect from a civics camp run by the American Legion. We had flag raising and flag-lowering ceremonies every day. We had lectures on flag ettiquette. We had “General Assembly” sessions where people gave speeches and held debates. We practiced parliamentary procedure.

The dress code was professional attire. My first office job after college was for a financial services company owned by the chair of that county’s Repubican Party committee. The dress code for that job was the same as the dress code for Keystone Girls State in 1994.

We knew about the dress code ahead of time because the American Legion or the American Legion Ladies Auxilliery sent us a list of what to pack. In addition to the office clothes, they asked us to bring a dress for the end-of-the week banquet. I think that they referred to it as an “Inauguration Ball” for the winners of all of the state elections.

A lot of the girls brought the dresses that they wore to their high school proms that spring. That’s why the photo at the top of this post includes a lot of girls wearing prom dresses. Obviously not everyone had a junior prom dress. The citizens of Heeter City posed for this photo at the banquet / Inauguration Ball. I am standing in the top row with most of the other tall girls, fourth from the left. I am wearing the blue prom dress that my mom sewed for me. A girl who was good at art volunteered to draw our city’s official “sign.” (Nobody voluntold her to draw it.)

We moved into the dorm at Shippensburg University on Sunday, June 12, 1994. On the opposite side of the U.S. on this same day, a woman named Nicole Brown Simpson and a man named Ronald Goldman were murdered at Nicole’s residence. Wikipedia told me that it was evening on the West Coast when this happened. We had already met our fellow citizens of Heeter City and we were probably asleep in our new beds. My new roommate had already had a heated conversation with her boyfriend on the landline phone in our room.

I had never heard the names Nicole Brown Simpson or Ronald Goldman before. Nicole’s former husband was retired football player and movie star O.J. Simpson. I had no idea who O.J. Simpson was, even though I had probably watched the first Naked Gun movie by 1994 and O.J. Simpson was one of the actors in that movie. He had also appeared in an orange juice commercial that I had seen.

Our dorm had a television in the lounge. Early in that week, I watched a teaser for the tabloid show Hard Copy. It called out the double murders of the former wife of a football player-turned-movie star, and also of her male friend. I didn’t watch the actual show because I was busy doing politics with other strivers.

By the middle of the week, both of the political parties at Keystone Girls State held state primaries. These were the elections which decided which candidates from each party would run for the Keystone Girls State general election on Friday. One of the citizens from Heeter City won her party primary to run for State Treasurer, and one of the citizens from Heeter City won her party primary to run for State Governor!

By that point in time, we had already been lectured at General Assembly because one day at the flag raising ceremony, somebody had responded to the American flag with a formal military hand salute. This was not appropriate because we were not veterans or wearing military uniforms. One day they let us wear shorts to General Assembly because of the hot June weather. This relaxation of the dress code was revoked the next day because people started to prop their feet on the seats in front of them. Hopefully a professional dress code would encourage people to sit professionally.

Somebody gave a speech in General Assembly that maintained that “nobody should get a free lunch.” Another citizen of Girls State advised that she was offended because her family qualified for free lunch at her school. The original speech-giver clarified that she only mean it as a colloquialism, and no offense was intended.

My roommate at Heeter City fought with her boyfriend over our room’s phone every night. She insisted to him that she wasn’t talking to men at GIRLS STATE.

We held our general elections on Friday, June 17, 1994.

Our Heeter City citizen who won her primary for State Treasurer also won her general election! She was now the Treasurer of Keystone Girls State! The position didn’t have any actual responsibilities. She got to wear a cool-looking sash for the group photo and the Inauguration Ball. In the above photo, she sits to the left of Mrs. Heeter.

Our Heeter City citizen who won her primary for Governor lost in the general election. In my opinion, this was the only race in Girls State worth “winning.” The winner got to attend Girls Nation in the US Capitol. They might possibly meet President Clinton, since he attended Boys Nation when he was in high school. Such a bummer that she made it all this way, just to lose on the final night. She didn’t even get a cool-looking sash to wear. She is sitting, sash-less, to the right of Mrs. Heeter.

I watched Mrs. Heeter try to cheer her up as the Inauguration Ball emcee announced the general election winners. Losing elections is just a part of politics.

One of the other citizens of Heeter City (not my roommate) announced that she had called her boyfriend in between the photo-taking and dinner. He told her that some famous person that I had never heard of – some football player – was leading the police on a chase down a highway in L.A. This girl’s boyfriend was watching it unfold live on television when she called him.

A bunch of the girls at my table decided to cut out of dinner early and go watch the news coverage of the police chasing O.J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco.

Very few people stuck around after they finished their dinners. When I returned to the dorm, citizens of the various cities sat around watching the coverage of the Bronco chase.

We all went home on Saturday morning. I may have exchanged a letter or two with one of the other citizens of Heeter City, but that all fell off pretty fast. I lost touch with every person that I met there. My high school classmate who also attended Girls State was assigned to a different city, so we didn’t know any of the same people from this.

O.J. Simpson was charged with two accounts of first degree murder for the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He was acquitted on October 3, 1995. On that day, I was a freshman at St. Vincent College. The school had a six-week long freshman orientation process. The afternoon of October 3 was the freshman class’s mandatory assembly on drug and alcohol use. (Yes, I am aware that this was already more than a month into the semester.) A bunch of the freshmen skipped the drug and alcohol assembly in order to watch the verdict in the murder trial. I attended this assembly. We were in the question-and-answer portion of it. Some kid confused the Dean of Students by asking her a bunch of questions about the results of drug and alcohol usage while operating farm equipment. Then, this other kid raised his hand, stood up, and announced that the jury had just acquitted O.J. Simpson. This guy had worn headphones to the assembly so that he could listen to the verdict on a radio. The Dean of Students announced the verdict over her microphone at the podium. This pretty much ended our drug and alcohol assembly.

I hope that the citizen who got elected as Governor had a good experience at Girls Nation. I am sure that the citizen of Heeter City who didn’t get elected found success doing other things. To my knowledge, none of my fellow citizens from Keystone Girls State have become Presidents. Maybe our time just hasn’t arrived yet.

Snyder of Berlin and the “Joe’s House” Era

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.

Mackinac Island – Fresh off First Ferry of the Morning – Labor Day (Lake Huron)

On Labor Day, the Mackinac Bridge Authority in Michigan closes the bridge from 6:30 a.m. – noon. Brave pedestrians walk across the bridge. Jonathan participated the past few years. (A one-way walk, plus all of the extra walking involved for walking from one’s drop-off spot to one’s pick-up spot, ended up being 7 miles for Jonathan.) Last year he crossed the bridge and then crossed back! (I’m so proud of him.)

While Jonathan walked this year, I took the first ferry of the day to Mackinac Island. This is the earliest that I’ve ever been to the island.

Mackinac Island was a sacred spot to the local Native American tribes. It’s now a tourist attraction.

European settlers colonized it. An Astor traded furs here. (Same family as the guy who went down on the Titanic generations later.) The island now hosts two old forts, three cemeteries, many Victorian houses, and the Grand Hotel. (And a Starbucks!)

And horses. Lots and lots of horses. (“HORSE” is pretty much the entire theme of this island.) And bicycles.

Motorized vehicles are banned here except for emergency vehicles. That’s why folks pay the big bucks to come here. Tourists sightsee by bicycle, horse, or walking.

If you’re staying overnight on the island, you either schlep your luggage to your hotel or get it delivered by horse or bicycle. Same with any souvenirs that you buy. Same with the food that you eat. Same with the food that the horses eat. Same with the ingredients used to make the fudge that the tourists buy. (There are a lot of fudge shops on the island.) Same with the alcohol. It’s expensive to consume things and experiences on the island.

My in-laws used to visit as day-trippers every few years. (My husband’s parents used to live in St. Ignace, one of the towns on the mainland where one can park and catch a ferry to the island.) My father-in-law likes to joke around family and friends about the smells of the horse shit mixing with the smells of the fudge.

I’ve never spent the night “on island.” I first came here as a day-tripper 20 years ago this summer. However, this month’s Labor Day trip was my first since before 2020.

I personally find the island stressful when it’s crowded. The island is crowded every day that I ever visited, which are days with nice weather during tourist season. (Funny how that happens!) However, the crowds vary depending on the time of day and the day of the week. The only reason that I was able to take any photos of the “main drag” this year was because I got there as early as I possibly could. I arrived on the same ferry as about a dozen hotel employees. (I am under the impression that they were housekeeping staff who lived on the mainland.)

I wanted to show my blog readers what Mackinac Island looks like in the summer before “all of the rest of us day-tripper tourists” arrive on Labor Day.

So, keep in mind that I took all of these photos within an hour of stepping off of the morning’s first ferry on Labor Day. Don’t expect downtown Mackinac Island to be this empty when you arrive midday for your visit.

Also, the irony is not lost on me that I (as a tourist) witnessed a lot of service and tourism industry employees up bright and early at work on Labor Day.

After I took all of these photos, I booked a rather expensive carriage tour around the island on the first tour of the day. To make a long story short, the carriage ride was in two parts. For the first part, I had a Romanian carriage driver / tour guide. I learned that he was a university student and he was in a program that permitted him to work in the United States for three months each year, and then travel for a fourth month. He is only eligible for this program while he is a student. Next year, he will graduate and he will no longer be eligible for this program. He drove us past the traditional tourist trap staples such as the Grand Hotel and the Grand Hotel’s golf course. Some poor little girl wiped out on her bicycle in front of our carriage while we were at the Grand Hotel. (The roadway there is a steep hill.) She cried. Her parents were there and she got back on her bike. I saw the same little girl walking around on a different part of the island several hours later, so I like to believe that she was fine. It must have been mortifying for her to fall like that in front of a full carriage, though.

Then our Romanian driver / tour guide drove us past the dormitories where many of the service industry employees reside and past the stable where the horses reside.

I learned a lot about horses on both the first and second parts of the carriage tour. I forgot most of it already. I do remember that the Romanian driver / tour guide finds it necessary to rest his horses behind trees and shrubs when he is on the section of roadway that borders the Grand Hotel’s golf course. This is to prevent golf balls from hitting the horses, causing them to bolt. I learned several details about the Romanian guide’s personal life. I learned absolutely nothing about the personal life of the driver / guide that we had for the second part of the tour.

The tour company had a “moderator” who managed our transfer from the first carriage and the first part of the tour, through a building that had a souvenir shop and concession stand, and onto a second carriage for the second part of the tour. I learned that this man lived in St. Ignace. He told us that if he did not go to work on Labor Day, he would otherwise be stuck at home all day due to the traffic backups that result from the closing of the Mackinac Bridge.

After Jonathan walked across the Mackinac Bridge from St. Ignace to Mackinaw City, he took a ferry from the Mackinaw City side to the island. (The two ferry companies offer service from both sides of the bridge.) The ferry that Jonathan rode to the island almost wiped out two small power boats that stopped directly in front of that ferry. Also, a freighter passed in the shipping channel on one side of this whole scene, so the ferry couldn’t swerve in that direction to avoid the power boats. Then Jonathan watched sailboats and other small watercraft leave the island’s marina until I finished my carriage tour. (Jonathan is a boat nerd.)

By then, downtown Mackinac Island had a lot more people out and about. We had lunch at the Pink Pony. We waited almost an hour for our table, but it was okay because we haven’t eaten there since before 2020. Also, we overheard the hostess tell patrons who came in after us that the wait was now one and a half hours. The Pink Pony is one of those places where you have to put your name on a list even to be seated at the bar. Jonathan watched the bartender confiscate bar chairs from “patrons” who stole them from the bar in order to join their friends at a table. (“Fine, I guess we’ll just stand then!” said the now chair-less guests.) A bunch of other patrons wore tee shirts announcing that they completed the bridge walk.

The Pink Pony is the restaurant on the ground floor of the Chippewa Hotel, seen in the background of this photo, on the right side of Main Street.

I shopped for overpriced souvenirs. (The souvenirs arrived on the island by ferry. Then I purchased the souvenirs and took them off of the island by ferry.) We returned to St. Ignace on the ferry. By then I had reached my limit with crowds and the smell of horses.

Jonathan confessed that the ferry rides to and from the island contribute significantly to his enjoyment of these trips. I agree. For several years, we brought our bicycles and pedaled around the island’s perimeter. We toured Fort Mackinac once. One year, I toured the Grand Hotel. (The Grand Hotel charges non-guests $10 per adult and $5 per child to walk up on the porch and enter the hotel in order to keep out the “unwashed masses.”) Other years were more low key. Jonathan likes to look at the boats in the marina. For several summers, we visited the island during the Race to Mackinac. This is an annual sailboat race (in July) from Chicago (sponsored by the Chicago Yacht Club) to the Round Island Lighthouse / Channel at Mackinac Island. So, Jonathan sat on the beach at Windermere Point to watch boats cross the finish line for several hours. (I think that Jonathan watched the race while I toured the Grand.)

I read a lot of beach reads about the island of Nantucket off of the coast of Massachusetts by Elin Hilderbrand. I like to think of Mackinac Island as a sort of “Nantucket of the Midwest.” Except with no automobiles. And probably with more horses.

Postscript: Here are some photos that I took of the Mackinac Island Area (Round Island Light House, Mackinac Bridge at Sunset, etc.) several years ago.

My Great-Grandfather Left His Immigrant Family to Serve in World War I, Become a POW, and Lose the Use of His Arm

I will occasionally blog about stuff that my sisters and I found when we cleaned out our late parents’ house.

For instance, here are two books that we found. They belonged to our paternal great-grandfather, Leonard Robert Gaffron. (My uncle Leonard and my father Robert were both named after him.)

Leonard Gaffron was a veteran of World War I.

The book above says on the cover:

80th

DIVISION

SUMMARY OF OPERATIONS

IN THE

WORLD WAR

PREPARED BY THE

AMERICAN BATTLE MONUMENTS

COMMISSION

The inside page says the same thing, with this added:

United States Government

Printing Office

1944

So, while my grandfather Carl was away serving in World War II in 1944, his own father, Leonard, received a book from the US government about a summary of operations in World War I.

The second book says the following on the cover:

WAR DIARY

COMPANY “E”

320TH INFANTRY

Compiled upon the occasion of the Eighth Annual Reunion, commemorating the Tenth Anniversary of the Company’s organization at Camp Lee, Virginia

September Nineteen Seventeen

June Nineteen Nineteen

The inside page says:

DEDICATED to all the men of Company “E”, 320th Infantry [80th Division], who made the supreme sacrifice.

According to family lore, Leonard Gaffron was a tremendous athlete. Before the War, he pitched a no hitter in a local baseball game. During the War, the Germans wounded him in the arm that he used to pitch the no-hitter. The Germans also took him prisoner. The Germans released him, but he lost the use of that arm due to his injury. At some point after the War, he went back to playing baseball- with his other arm. He pitched another no-hitter.

According to my dad, his Grandfather Gaffron earned a living by farming with one arm and two mules. He named one of the mules Kaiser Bill. (This was a reference to Kaiser Willhelm II, the German emperor during World War I.)

Years after World War I, a local newspaper interviewed my great-grandfather about his experience as a POW. My dad’s cousin brought a copy of this article to last year’s family reunion. He put the article up on a big screen so that we could all read it.

The article left out stuff that we Gaffrons had heard in the family lore. For instance, the article downplayed my great-grandfather’s ability to communicate with his German captors. My great-grandfather spoke German fluently. His parents were German immigrants.

My family concluded last fall that the article differed from the family lore because the article writer – or my great-grandfather, or both of them – didn’t want to draw attention to his German immigrant background. Somebody was apparently worried about the optics of his experience as a POW.

I never met Leonard Gaffron because he died before I was born. I have no idea if the Gaffrons who immigrated from Germany were a bunch of jerks. This doesn’t matter. Leonard had to farm and play baseball with one arm after he was captured as a POW in the War. From the family lore, the household struggled between World War I and World War II. The Great Depression happened, everyone struggled, but Leonard had to struggle with one arm.

Leonard’s son Carl went off to serve the U.S. in World War II. Then Carl came home and eventually married into another German immigrant family.

While we consider ourselves Americans now, some used to consider us outsiders. Interesting how a generation or two can affect our viewpoints.

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.

Telegraph Operators and Their Heartbreaking Tragedies

Jonathan and I live in a house built in the 1890’s.

The Alter family originally owned our home. This same family is now buried in a churchyard down the street.

Jonathan researched the Alter family.

Let’s start with the family patriarch, Frank Alter Sr.

Alter was born in 1871 in Pittsburgh.

Alter’s father fought in the Civil War. Alter’s father then maintained a long career with the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company.

Frank Alter Sr.’s own professional life began at age 17 with his own job at the Allegheny Valley Railroad Company as a telegraph operator. Four years later, he was appointed station agent at New Kensington.

Now, shortly after Alter assumed his first job with the railroad, the Johnstown Flood killed over 2,000 people, in May 1889. A privately-owned dam on a private lake upstream from Johnstown failed. The wall of water demolished the communities that sat between the lake and Johnstown, and then the water hit Johnstown and destroyed it as well.

The flood occurred upstream from New Kensington. It occurred on a tributary to a tributary of the Allegheny River. According to the book “The Johnstown Flood” by David McCullough, flood debris washed downstream from Johnstown, eventually into the Allegheny River, on to Pittsburgh and points beyond. McCullough wrote that somebody plucked a live baby out of the Allegheny River in Verona, which is downstream from New Kensington. McCullough wrote that onlookers stood on the banks of the Allegheny, watching the results of the flood flow past them. Some even plucked souvenirs from the river.

Did Alter first learn about the flood during his duties in the telegraph office? Did he join the crowds which lined the Allegheny River’s banks?

Now, I grew up an hour’s drive south of Johnstown, and my sixth grade class studied the Johnstown Flood. We read excerpts from McCullough’s book.

McCullough acknowledged at the beginning of his book that “most” of the dialogue in Chapters 3 and 4 of his book had been taken directly from a transcription of testimony taken by the Pennsylvania Railroad in the summer of 1889. The railroad’s tracks lined the tributaries hit hardest by the flood. The railroad’s telegraph system documented events leading to the moments before the flood wiped out the tracks and the telegraph lines.

McCullough’s book noted that in the moments before the Johnstown flood happened, a railroad telegraph agent communicated the impending dam failure to Hettie Ogle, who ran the “switchboard and Western Union office” in Johnstown.

McCullough identified Ogle as a Civil War widow who had worked for Western Union for 28 years. The book noted that she was with her daughter Minnie at the time. She passed the message on to her Pittsburgh office. McCullough noted that the two perished in the flood and their bodies were not recovered.

When I was in the sixth grade, I was told that Hettie Ogle faithfully stayed at her telegraph post and relayed river gauge data until at last she wrote:

THIS IS MY LAST MESSAGE

The story haunted me.

Based on how this story was presented to our class, I was under the impression that Hettie Ogle was trapped in the telegraph office with just her daughter. I assumed that Hettie Ogle and her daughter were “rare” because they were women who also worked outside the home at the telegraph office.

Now, here is something that McCullough’s book did NOT tell me, and that I learned instead from the website for the Johnstown Area Heritage Association (JAHA): Ogle was actually trapped in that office with her daughter Minnie, “four other young ladies” who were named by the JAHA website, and also two named men. When I read the website, I understood this to mean that all eight of the named women and men who were trapped in this telegraph office worked in the telegraph industry. They all perished.

I didn’t realize until I first read the JAHA website that Hettie Ogle actually managed an office full of staff. I also didn’t realize that many of the employees in Johnstown’s Western Union office in May 1889 were women.

I have since figured out that if Hettie Ogle worked for Western Union for 28 years until she died in 1889, that means that she started her Western Union career in 1861. The Civil War also started in 1861. As I noted above, she was identified as a war widow. Did she have to take a job with Western Union in order to support her children when her husband went off to war? Did she do it out of a sense of duty for the war effort, and then she stayed with it because she enjoyed the work? What circumstances led her to her “duty” operating the telegraph?

I speculate that since Frank Alter Sr. got his start in the railroad industry as a telegraph operator, the tragedies of the Johnstown Flood would have impacted him personally. Perhaps he even knew some of the telegraph and / or railroad employees who died that day in 1889.

The telegraph industry of the 1800’s fascinates me because I think a great deal about my own dependence on technology.

I first realized how much I – or at least my sense of well-being – depended on being able to keep contact with others and with information on September 11, 2001. I lived in the family home in Somerset County. I worked in downtown Johnstown. Flight 93 crashed between these two points while I was at work that day.

After I and my co-workers watched the twin towers burn live on television, our employer’s co-owner told us to “go back to work.”

However, a few minutes later, this same co-owner’s daughter rushed through the office to announce that a plane had crashed in Somerset County. (This plane, we later learned, was Flight 93.) We learned that we – along with every other worker in downtown Johnstown at that time – were being evacuated because a federal court building existed in downtown Johnstown. I couldn’t reach my family who lived with me in Somerset County on the phone. I attempted, and I had no connection. I then learned that we were being asked to stay off of our phones in order to leave the lines available for emergency crews. I also learned that a portion of Route 219 – the main highway that I used to drive to my family home in Somerset County – was closed due to the morning’s events. I was being forced to leave downtown Johnstown due to the mandatory evacuation, but I had no information about whether I would be able to get back to my home in Somerset County.

I made it home to Somerset County without incident. However, this was the first time that I remember feeling confused because all of my decision making instincts depended on information that I couldn’t access.

More recently, I thought that I was so slick because I specifically curated my Twitter feed to follow the feeds for Pittsburgh’s transit agency, the National Weather Service, and several other emergency management agencies. I worked in downtown Pittsburgh by then, and I commuted home each weeknight – usually by bus – to New Kensington. I reasoned that with my specially curated Twitter feed, I would have available all of the information that I needed to make informed decisions about my commute home if I were to be in Pittsburgh and a natural disaster – or another terrorist attack – happened.

However, on the day that Pittsburgh and its surrounding region had a major flash flooding event, Twitter broke. I had based my entire theoretical emergency plan on having up-to-the date tweets from all of the sources that I listed above. I had access to no updated information from any of these sources.

Once again, I felt completely betrayed by technology at the moment when I felt its need the most.

Now, for another story that I have about being dependent on technology:

I read part of “The Personal Memoirs of Julia Dent Grant (Mrs. Ulysses S. Grant).” Julia Dent Grant (JDG) was born in 1826. In 1844, Samuel Morse sent the United State’s first telegram over a wire from Washington to Baltimore. (Congress partially funded this.) In 1845, JDG’s father, Frederick Dent, travelled from their home in St. Louis to Washington for business. He sent a telegram to Baltimore. JDG wrote that her father received an answer within an hour and that “it savored of magic.” The event was such a big deal that Frederick Dent brought the telegraph repeater tape back home to St. Louis to show the family.

Now I’m going to skip ahead in the memoirs to 1851. At this point in the memoirs, JDG is married to Ulysses S. Grant and they have an infant son. Julia visited family in St. Louis while her husband was stationed at Sackets Harbor, near Watertown, in New York State. JDG planned to telegraph her husband from St. Louis, and then travel with her nurse to Detroit. Then, she would release her nurse and meet her husband in Detroit. Finally, she would travel with her husband from Detroit to Sackets Harbor. I am under the impression that the trip from St. Louis to Detroit to Watertown was all by train.

Well, JDG telegraphed her husband in St. Louis per the plan. She left St. Louis and travelled with her nurse to Detroit. She dismissed her nurse and waited for her husband in Detroit. Her husband never showed up. JDG eventually travelled alone with her baby to Buffalo, hoping to meet her husband there. Her husband wasn’t in Buffalo, so she continued on the train to Watertown. From Watertown, she had to hire a carriage (the Uber of the 1800’s), and travel to Madison Barracks, the military installation at Sackets Harbor. The entrance to Madison Barracks was closed, so she had to yell to get a sentry’s attention.

The telegram that JDG sent to her husband from St. Louis arrived at Sackets Harbor IN THE NEXT DAY’S MAIL.

That’s right – at some point in the journey, the telegram failed to perform its basic function as a telegram. The telegram became snail mail.

After JDG’s husband was promoted during the Civil War, he travelled with his very own personal telegraph operator. (In fact, the Grants learned about President Lincoln’s assassination through a personal telegram received by the personal telegraph operator.)

By the end of the Civl War, the Grants had come a long way since their days of “snail-mail telegrams.”

Other people have actually written entire books about how telegraphs and semaphores affected the Civl War.

Here’s one of my favorite parts of JDG’s memoirs: At one point during the war, JDG asked her father, Frederick Dent, why the country didn’t “make a new Constitution since this is such an enigma – one to suit the times, you know. It is so different now. We have steamers, railroads, telegraphs, etc.“

I just find this so fascinating because JDG witnessed her country’s tremendous changes that resulted from Technology. She wondered how all of these Technology changes affected her country.

I, personally, spend a lot of time wondering about how Communication Technology in general – the telegraph, the internet, whatever – changed our national culture and also changed each of us as people.

“Hamilton” -Adjacent: Friendship Hill

Friendship Hill, Point Marion, Pennsylvania. Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek

I found an article titled “Who Was Alexander Hamilton’s Real Nemesis: Aaron Burr or Albert Gallatin and the Jeffersonians?” by Christopher N. Malagisi, dated August 30, 2018, on the Townhall website. This article referenced the book “Jefferson’s Treasure: How Albert Gallatin Saved the New Nation from Debt,” by Gregory May.

The idolized and fabled Alexander Hamilton served as our first Secretary of the Treasury. Hamilton rival Albert Gallatin served as our fourth Secretary of the Treasury.

Thomas Jefferson was the President of the United States who appointed Gallatin as Secretary of the Treasury. Aaron Burr was elected as Jefferson’s Vice President in the election of 1800. So, these guys all knew each other.

Now, my brain totally shut off about one paragraph into reading about the subject matter. Just as it did when I had to learn about the Federalists and the Whigs and the Jeffersonians in high school. So, I don’t have my own fully-formed opinion about whether Albert Gallatin was Hamilton’s real nemesis. I do think that if Lin-Manuel Miranda had rewritten the Hamilton musical so that it was just a bunch of guys arguing about whether Hamilton or Gallatin made a better Secretary of the Treasury, it would not still be on Broadway.

Albert Gallatin owned an estate in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Gallatin’s first wife, Sophia, is buried on the estate. The National Park Service now runs the estate as Friendship Hill National Historic Site. There is no admission fee to visit.

Part of me wishes that Miranda had at least written Gallatin into his “Hamilton” musical – even in a tiny role – so that Point Marion could use it to lure tourists there.

If you want to sight-see while also social distancing, you may want to check out Friendship Hill. Here is my prior blog post about Friendship Hill.

Soldiers’ Lot, Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh

Cannon. Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. — *Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. November 10, 2019. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)*

In 2018, I took a guided tour of Allegheny Cemetery. This cemetery is on the National Register of Historic places.

Allegheny Cemetery includes a National Cemetery Administration’s soldiers’ lot. The Allegheny Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot is located in Section 33 of Allegheny Cemetery. The majority of the 303 soldiers buried here were Civil War soldiers. Most of the burials were of Union soldiers; however, the lot also contains several Confederate soldiers.

I returned to the Soldiers’ Lot in 2019 in order to take some photos.

*Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. November 10, 2019. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)*

I didn’t have any prior knowledge of this following soldier, but I Googled his name when I returned home.

From the Veterans Affairs / website for Allegheny Cemetery Soldiers’ Lot: Corporal John M. Kendig (Civil War). He received the Medal of Honor while serving in the U.S. Army, Company A, 63rd Pennsylvania Infantry, for actions at Spotsylvania, Virginia, May 12, 1864. His citation was awarded under the name of Kindig. He died in 1869 and is buried in Section 33, Lot 66, Site 32.

Here’s a grave for an unknown Union (United States) Civil War soldier:

Unknown U.S. Soldier grave. — *Allegheny Cemetery, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. November 10, 2019. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)*

Finally, here is a Confederate grave that I saw at the Soldiers’ Lot. Note how the headstone differs from that of a Union soldier.

Lock Him Up: An Election Story

I own a signed copy of Pittsburgh: The Story of An American City, written by Stefan Lorant with several contributors. I purchased it for $5 from a used bookstore. The book came apart in several places at the binding. The book contains almost seven hundred pages of Pittsburgh history and photos.

This book’s Chapter 3 The City Grows by Oscar Handlin includes a sidebar titled Pittsburgh in the News. This sidebar includes the following item:

“Joe Barker, a colorful street preacher, was arrested in 1849 when he was involved in a riot while delivering one of his many tirades against Catholicism. He was thrown into jail and while in prison he was elected as mayor of the city. After serving for one year he was defeated for re-election and sank into obscurity. He died in 1862 when run over by a train.“

(Wikipedia taught me that the train decapitated Mayor Joseph Barker. He is buried in Allegheny Cemetery.)

Horne’s Department Store

Pittsburgh had a department store chain called Joseph Horne’s, or Horne’s Department Store, or simply Horne’s.

An electric Christmas tree decorated the building’s corner each holiday shopping season.

Horne’s merged with another chain in 1994. Then, the building which housed Horne’s downtown flagship store became offices for an insurance company (Highmark).

However, this tree still graces the building each year from the week before Thanksgiving until New Year’s.

Here is a photo of the building and its tree.

*Horne’s Department Store. Pittsburgh, PA. December 18, 2014. (Photo: Jenny Gaffron Woytek)*

Everything that I know about Horne’s Department Store came from “American Elegy: A Family Memoir” by Jeffrey Simpson. This particular book detailed the author’s family’s experiences in Parnassus, a sort-of Pittsburgh suburb. In the Chapter titled “Parties (Quint and Ruby),” the author wrote the following about his step-grandmother Ruby’s affinity for shopping at the downtown Pittsburgh Horne’s:

When my mother and Ruby were young women in the late 1920s and 1930s, there was a lounge on Horne’s mezzanine where you could wait for friends. The lounge had a book in which you could leave messages for your chums if you had to leave early or had dashed up to Lingerie for a quick purchase while you were waiting; it was an amenity that seemed to belong to a period of orange minks and nose-tip veils, when girls fresh from college, eager with their first salaries, met “in town” for lunch on Saturday.

Simpson wrote that Ruby grew up “poor” and thus as soon as she received her first very own paycheck, she spent it at Horne’s. Ruby referred to Horne’s as the “good” store. She relished the chance to be seen shopping there. Simpson noted that the Parnassus community and Ruby herself thought that Ruby had married up (to a widower with a good family and a good job). That Ruby’s clothes, purchased from Horne’s, helped her to achieve this marriage.

Simpson concluded:

The Horne’s boxes, cream-colored pasteboard with Jos. Horne Co. in light, bright blue on the lid, represented for Ruby the life she had made for herself.

My own maternal great-grandma worked for Horne’s. However, I don’t have any stories about her retail career.

I myself work directly across the street from the old downtown Horne’s building. I never shopped for clothes there. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania. I started working in Pittsburgh years after Horne’s closed.

When I interviewed for my job, the building housed an Old Navy store.

By the time that I started my job, the Old Navy was a Rite Aid.