Category: Water Under the Bridge

My dear friend Kevin Abt treated me to another memorable adventure last month. This time our destination was at my suggestion. I have been aware of the historical significance of Hanna’s Town for many years but had never visited the actual site. Currently owned by the Westmoreland County Parks and Recreation Department and operated by the Westmoreland County Historical Society, it is an impressive recreation of a frontier village. The original Hanna’s Town had a significant amount of history crammed into the nine years during which it prospered. Located on Forbes Road, halfway between Fort Ligonier and Fort Pitt, it…

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This year’s Public Art Bridgeville display of outdoor sculptures is now complete. It is an appealing combination of new pieces and welcome carryovers, spanning the spectrum from realistic to abstract in a variety of forms. The easiest way for us to review them is by taking a tour through “downtown Bridgeville” with an unsophisticated art critic as a guide. He will meet you at La Bella Bean for coffee and a midday snack before initiating the tour. Our first stop is at the bench in the adjacent parking lot facing Washington Avenue. There we find “Crossing Paths”, an extremely popular…

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In general, I have mixed feelings about the celebration of ethnic holidays; part of me wants to focus solely on the serving of Mulligan Stew that our nation’s melting pot has produced and another part is eager to emphasize retaining and enhancing the heritage of each of its ingredients. When I first heard about Juneteenth being considered a national holiday, my initial reaction was negative. This opinion changed dramatically last year when I went to Woodville and observed the way the folks there treated this opportunity. A return trip this year reinforced my opinion. Slavery was not a significant part…

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Two weeks ago my daughter and I were at Chautauqua on a lovely Saturday morning and she asked me if there was anything special that I wanted to do that afternoon. For once I had an immediate answer – “Let’s ride the ferry to Bemus Point and have lunch there!”. The result was yet another enjoyable experience. Chautauqua Lake is about eighteen miles long and two miles wide at its widest point, running in a general northwest to southeast direction. About halfway down its length, it narrows down to about one thousand feet, at a spot known, appropriately, as the…

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Two weeks ago, I published a column on an extremely memorable (for me) trip across our state on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It ended at the appropriately named Midway rest stop. This week we will pick up the trip at that point and head on east. Back on the road we negotiate the lovely gap in Tussey Mountain cut by the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River and then cross the valley between Tussey and Wray’s Hill. We go through the Clear Ridge Cut, so deep that it has a pair of benches on each side to intercept falling rock. Passing…

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Last month the Bridgeville Area Historical Society diverged from its traditional program format by staging a dramatic reading of an original play based on a key event during the Whiskey Rebellion. Entitled “Interrogation”, the play examines in detail Alexander Hamilton’s attempt to indict Pittsburgh’s most prominent citizen, Attorney Hugh Henry Brackenridge, for treason. Production of this play is the Society’s contribution to “USA250”, our nation’s celebration of the semiquincentennial (two hundred and fiftieth) anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The dramatic reading version of the play is designed to facilitate its presentation by cultural institutions without extensive…

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I suspect most people forced to drive across Pennsylvania on the Turnpike consider that to be a boring, unpleasant chore. I am not in that category and the opportunity for me to ride, as a passenger, the 270 miles east from Monroeville to King of Prussia on the ‘Pike’ on Friday, and to retrace the trip west on Sunday was a great thrill. The purpose of the trip was for us to attend my granddaughter Rachael’s graduation from Bryn Mawr, and to retrieve her belongings. Consequently, Beth and Mike chose to borrow my van, a request I honored in return…

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Last weekend featured an exciting event in our family, my granddaughter Rachael’s graduation from Bryn Mawr. I was thrilled four years ago when I learned she had been admitted to such a prestigious school, a thrill that was reinforced when we visited its lovely campus that Fall. It turned out to be a perfect fit for her at this stage in her life, as is evidenced by the way she has matured while a student there. I have been involved in many college graduation ceremonies, in many different roles – student, parent, faculty mentor, and grandparent – and am impressed…

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It is hard to believe my mother has been gone for three and a half decades; the impact she had on my life is still frequently evident. Every time I retrace my steps to retrieve something I have forgotten, I can hear her saying “If you don’t have it in your head, you better have in your feet!” Margaret Mary Klees was born near the end of the nineteenth century and lived well into the final decade of the twentieth. Her birthplace was Emporium, the county seat of Cameron County, the least populated county in Pennsylvania. Shoe-horned in at the…

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The April program for the Bridgeville Area Historical Society was a lively presentation on the history of the Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department by its current Fire Chief, Ray Costain. Chief Costain was as comfortable speaking before a public audience as he is directing firefighting activities at a major conflagration. Bridgeville has a history of fires fromits earliest days — the Shaffer fulling mill in 1876, A. J. Schulte’s coal tipple in 1890, and C. P. Mayer’s store and lumber yard in 1898. In 1904 Dr. Fife’s home was burned to the ground; neighbors saved the next-door Presbyterian parsonage using garden…

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