Montoursville 2018: Photos from elsewhere around town

Photo time! Here are some snapshots from my July 13 walk around Montoursville that don't really fit anywhere else in the narrative I've put together but are certainly worth sharing. Some of these are the edited Instagram versions.

TWA Flight 800 Memorial
When TWA Flight 800 exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 1996, the 230 souls that were lost included 16 students and five adult chaperones from the Montoursville Area High School French club. The 21 of them were on a class trip to France as part of a student exchange program. The beautiful and peaceful memorial area features a statue of an angel within a grove of 21 trees.

Random cool houses
These are some other houses that I found interesting while wandering through the neighborhoods on that sunny afternoon. One novel thing about the street layout is that some homes are positioned diagonally on corners. Many of these houses are also wonderfully modest in their size. Who needs big houses?

Bonus from the past: Montoursville's pool
Montoursville's Indian Park featured a community pool that was a big part of my childhood when we lived on Willow Street in the early 1980s. That's where I learned to tread water, swim (one of my instructors was named Marty, I recall), and even dive a little bit. Adriane and I, along with our friends, spent many summer days there. It was easy for Mom to just drop us off and then swing back at a prearranged time to pick us up.

To the best of my understanding, the pool officially closed in 2009. It was already completely filled in when I made a visit to Montoursville in July 2012. Here are a couple of (dreary) photos I snapped then.

The second photograph shows the pool's snack bar, which was always hopping in the summertime. Adriane wrote: "Wow. Such a nostalgic picture for me! I can't count how many times I was at that window buying an ice cream!" ... My snack-bar memories veer more toward french fries with the accompanying smell of vinegar and Whatchamacallit candy bars, which were fairly new to the scene in the early 1980s. Mostly, though, I remember the soundtrack of those summers. The local Top 40 radio station played over the pool's PA system, so we were listening to Rick Springfield, Steve Miller, Kim Carnes, Juice Newton, Journey, Survivor, Toto, Asia, John Mellencamp and the like. Great times.