Montoursville 2018 (One Last Thing)

OK, it's time for the last roundup for the Montoursville 2018 series, which began on August 5. I'm sure I'll have more to write about Montoursville in the future, barring a meteorite hitting my shikibuton in the middle of the night, but we'll bring this particular thread to a conclusion today.

And we're going to finish with one final penny for my thoughts...

In one of the early posts in this series, I wrote a little about Montoursville's history. I highlighted the September 1975 festivities surrounding the 125th anniversary of the borough's incorporation. Among the offerings at that event, according to The Otstonwakin, were "Lincoln-Kennedy pennies," which were to be sold for just a nickel.

The Lincoln-Kennedy pennies were novelty coins created by stamping a small version of John F. Kennedy's head next to the image of Abraham Lincoln on the standard penny. These counter-stamped (defaced, to be honest) coins were sometimes mounted on "Astonishing Coincidence" cards, which could be branded for businesses or big events.

They're fun for some folks to collect, but not at all valuable. (There are a bundle of them selling right now on eBay for $1.00 apiece, plus 50 cents shipping. Go crazy and get them for your kids' Christmas stockings.)

So, as you can see here, I was able to get my hands on one that was originally distributed at Montoursville's 125th anniversary event in 1975! Pretty nifty, eh? It features a 1975 penny, and the ASTONISHING COINCIDENCES card measures 2¾ inches by 7½ inches.

The Astonishing Coincidences centered around the lives and deaths-by-assassination of United States presidents Kennedy and Lincoln. Stuff like — as you can see on this card — "There are seven letters in each name" and, my favorite, "Oswald shot Kennedy from a warehouse and hid in a theater, [while] Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and hid in a warehouse." That kind of poppycock. According to Wikipedia, these kind of lists began circulating less than a year after JFK's assassination, were immortalized in a 1966 Buddy Starcher song, and were de rigueur conversation topics for proponents of conspiracy theories and/or the supernatural by the 1970s.

I mean, you can find coincidences anywhere you want, if you look hard enough. For example, this post was written and published on the 55th anniversary of JFK's assassination on November 22, 1963. And the Dallas professional football team is playing against Washington today. And it's Thanksgiving, which was made into a federal holiday by President Lincoln in 1863. Those are just facts, and not anything that requires the services of Rod Serling.

I will leave you with this to chew on, though, courtesy of Steven Wright: "If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny."

Montoursville 2018: A glimpse into the past via postcards

Montoursville isn't big or notable enough for there to be large numbers of postcards featuring the borough over the past century or so. I suspect the total number (not including one-shot real photo postcards) is so modest (200?) that an enterprising historian or collector could put together a near-complete checklist. I'm not a "completeist" – not even with Ruth Manning-Sanders material; that's just too much pressure and attention to detail. So I won't be making any Montoursville postcard checklists. For this series' penultimate post, I just wanted to present a handful of postcards of the area that I've picked up over time.

"Loyalsock Creek, Near Williamsport, Pa." Loyalsock Creek forms Montoursville's northern and western municipal borders. The "Haystacks," not far from Montoursville in Sullivan County, are an area of Loyalsock Creek that we visited at least once on a Webelos or Boy Scout field trip in the early 1980s. This postcard was mailed in 1908 and the rambling written message discusses making a coat, working too hard, going to the doctor and heart pains.

"Birdseye View of Montoursville, Pa." This shows a bridge over the Loyalsock Creek into Montoursville. But it's not the one that today is known as both the Broad Street Bridge and the Green Bridge. This postcard is from the 1910s, and the Green Bridge was built in 1931. According to an excellent history of Montoursville by Don King, "Montoursville was one of the earliest towns in this area to have a bridge crossing a major stream. A possible reason for the erection of our first structure was to provide an efficient means to move troops in the event of an invasion of Canada during the War of 1812. For a brief time there were two bridges spanning the creek." This card was postmarked in Montoursville and mailed to Endicott, New York, with the following note: "We are having a nice visit. Leave for Jersey Shore this P.M. Expect to come home Sunday."

"At Indian Amusement Park, Montoursville, Pa." I believe this card, published by C.A.R., is from 1910, but I can't be sure of the final number (0) on the postmark. If my guess is correct, though, it was postmarked on August 27, 1910, in Montoursville. The writer mentions a "very large crowd here." King writes extensively of Indian Park in his history. Electricity and, most importantly, a trolley line made it an extremely popular attraction in the first two decades of the 20th century. There was even a roller coaster. The theater had a capacity of 1,000 persons. Relatively speaking, though, Indian Park's heyday (in that iteration) was short-lived. When the trolley line was closed in 1924, it spelled doom.

"People's Bank, Montoursville, Pa." Here's a look at this Broad Street building before it became Dr. W.B. Konkle Memorial Library, which I wrote about in two earlier posts (1, 2). As I wrote, "in 1964, the old bank building at the corner of Broad and Washington was purchased following a $35,000 fund-raising campaign. This became the library's new home, and that is why the library building today resembles an early 20th century bank." This postcard, made by The Tecraft Company of Tenafly, New Jersey, was never mailed.

"High School, Montoursville, Pa." This postcard was never mailed, either, and has no date. It was published by J.B. Weaver of Montoursville, and it calls for a one-cent stamp. As I have said, we moved away before I would have attended Montoursville High School, so I was only in that building, as it was in the early 1980s, a couple times.

Moving into more modern times, this is a rare and unused photo showcasing the Wagon Wheel Motel, which also featured a bar and restaurant and was located at 1130 Broad Street. The back of the postcard states: "Four miles east of Williamsport, Penna., on U.S Route 220 ... all units with electric heat, air-conditioning, telephones, television and wall-to-wall carpeting ... Phone 368-2436 (717). Arnold and Amber Shook, Proprietors." Amber Shook died in 2007 at age 84. According to her obituary, she moved to Florida in 1971, so the Shooks were either out-of-state owners of the Wagon Wheel after 1971, or new owners came onto the scene. I have many memories of the Wagon Wheel restaurant. Our family went there often when we were living on Willow Street. Sometimes we'd have dinner there. I would get a Howdy Doody to drink and Adriane would get a Shirley Temple; they were both the same thing — 7 Up with grenadine, I believe. What I remember most are the arcade games and the jukebox. After we ate, Mom and Dad would hang out with friends at the bar and give my sister and I a supply of quarters for the small game room. I specifically remember a tabletop version of Missile Command and Battlezone, with its periscope viewfinder. I think there were a couple other arcade games, but can't recall specifically which ones. There was also a dart board and the aforementioned jukebox. Songs I played included "Upside Down" by Diana Ross and "The Gambler" by Kenny Rogers.

"Montoursville — 1963." And, to wrap up, here's an aerial view of the borough from 55 years ago. This one is compliments of First National Bank of Montoursville ("A good bank in a good town"). That's the airport at the bottom of the image. Moving north, you get to Broad Street and then the residential area of town, which I wandered back and forth across all day on July 13, racking up some serious Fitbit mileage.

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.

Montoursville 2018: Our third house

OK, it's time to get this series polished off. I'm at peace with (and actually a bit comforted by) the idea that I could not possibly fit all of my memories and stories about our house on Montoursville's Willow Street into one post. So I won't even try.

We lived at 912 Willow Street from late 1980 until the summer of 1983, so I was ages 10, 11 and 12 during that time — very robust years for childhood memories, much more so than when I was single digits in the hazy, trippy 1970s.

Quick recap

• First family house in Montoursville was on Mulberry Street (early 1970s).
• Second family house in Montoursville was on Spruce Street (mid 1970s until summer of 1978).
• Then we moved away and lived in Clayton, New Jersey, from summer 1978 until late 1980.
• Third family house in Montoursville was on Willow Street (late 1980 until summer 1983).
• Then we moved to Florida.

The Willow Street house is in the northeast corner of town, where the elevation begins to rise. It's located at the triangular corner of Willow Street and Fairview Drive, as you can see from this map I used in an earlier post about C.E. McCall Middle School. The backyard, where the driveway is located, is very sloped, making for unpleasant shoveling times in the winter (to which Dad and his back surgery can definitely attest). When we moved in, there was a huge willow tree in the far corner of the backyard, but it was cut down during our time there. We also had a burn barrel for paper trash in the backyard, because it was a much different time then — long before there was much momentum for the notions of recycling or air quality.

Even with the slope, the backyard was a great place for running around with the hose or sprinkler. There were all sorts of nooks and crannies to play with Star Wars figures or Matchbox cars. I remember coming across a walking stick insect once in the bushes. The tree in the corner of the front yard was just starting to be strong enough for a young boy to climb; it's huge and middle-aged now. Best of all, I remember laying in the backyard during dark summer nights to gaze at sky and watch for shooting stars. We were spoiled by those night skies, so relatively unpolluted by man-made light.

To the side of the house, along Fairview Drive, there is a concrete-slab covered porch. We spent much time out there throughout the year — relaxing, conversing with friends and neighbors, bug-hunting or listening to John Williams soundtrack albums on the record player we would haul out there and plug in.

Here are some then-and-now photos of the Willow Street house's exterior...

Front

Side porch

Backyard

Some thoughts after looking at those photos:

• I'm glad it wasn't until our next house, in flat Florida, that I began taking on lawnmowing duties.
• That's not our station wagon in the early 1980s photo of the driveway.
• I love the front-yard landscaping now.
• I have no recollection of the huge tree that now dominates the backyard, not even as a sapling (though my memory might be faulty on that count). The tree is also located almost exactly where we used to lay on the ground for stargazing.
• Fences kind of suck, from an aesthetic standpoint, though I do understand you need them if you have a dog (or small children), so close to the road.

* * *
The first floor of the Willow Street house, when we lived there, contained a formal living room as you came in the front door, followed by a small dining room. From the dining room, there were three bedrooms (sharing just one bathroom) to the right and the kitchen to the left. (I wrote about the kitchen during a "Snapshot & Memories" post in January, so I won't touch on it much today.)

The finished basement was where we spent much of our time. There was a TV room, a rec area that served as both a bar and an area for playing board games or cards, a laundry room, and a large play area just inside the garage door where Adriane and I played with blocks or other toys and then cleared them all away during the holidays so that the live Christmas tree could go up. The basement was fairly dark and it could get damp, too. Probably the biggest Traumatic House Event during our time there involved a damaged drainpipe at the bottom of the sloped driveway; it forced water into much of the basement.

The coolest part of the house was the fully finished attic. The staircase was located off the dining room. The main part of the attic was a long hallway, wide enough to allow storage (books, boxes, etc.) on both sides and still have plenty of room to navigate. Flanking the hallway, on both sides, were storage passages that went the length of the attic. Adriane and I called them the cubby holes, and we played in them all the time. Both cubby holes had terminus points in the small guest bedroom located at the far end of the attic. (That's me in the attic bedroom in the photograph at the top of this post.) The guest bedroom was also a great place to play with friends or to seek out some solitude for reading. The Willow Street attic was great.

In retrospect, the worst part about the house is that it had just one full bathroom on the first floor and a toilet closet in the basement. For a four-bedroom house, it was definitely lacking in that respect. And the kitchen was fairly small. I wonder if it's been retrofitted over the decades. (Hmmm, it appears the answer is no.)

* * *
Ephemera & memories & being a kid

As I said, I won't even attempt to share all of my memories of my time at this house. To keep things simpler, and far more appropriate for the nature of this blog, I'll limit it to some memories related to books and ephemera. Many of this is also tied in with sports, which I was very enthusiastic about at the time. Here we go...

• I remember finishing an English research paper about lions, complete with every fact I found on a separate index card (for the mandatory footnotes), while watching the Philadelphia 76ers win the NBA championship over the Los Angeles Lakers.
• I had a small metal box in which I put clippings and other ephemera related to the Philadelphia Phillies. I had boxscores and other tidbits that were cut from the Williamsport Sun-Gazette. I think I also made my own Phillies baseball cards, as a project.
• My favorite magazines were the Street and Smith's baseball yearbooks that were issued late each winter. I absolutely poured over the articles, team-by-team previews, rosters, statistics and schedules. I was also enamored of the Topps baseball sticker albums during this time.
• 
  When I played Major League Baseball on the Intellivision that was set up in the basement, I would sometimes write out actual lineups for the game, filled with my favorite contemporary players, and then keep the boxscore and subsequently track my players' statistics over several games. (It was good math practice!)
• I kept notes and statistics about the first season of the United States Football League. I loved that league!
• Dad would often go get The Philadelphia Inquirer and a box of doughnuts on Sunday mornings. I definitely read the comics, and probably Sports. I'm not sure what else I was reading in the newspaper at that point.
• Pivoting to something other than sports, I discovered the world of Dungeons & Dragons during this time (which should not be a surprise to regular readers of this blog), though I didn't really play in any groups or know anyone who did. I had the 1981 Basic Set and the other things that came with it in the box. I probably had an issue or two of Dragon magazine, and I was an avid reader of the Endless Quest series. Mostly, I liked to create maps and histories for fantasy worlds. I remember having a small, light-blue-covered notebook filled with maps and ideas, and what fun it would be to still have that to look through. I'm sure I'm the one who decided to get rid of it at some later point, but I can't fathom why. Dad would make photocopies of D&D character sheets for me, but I'm not sure what I used those for, since I didn't play the game. I just remember how cool and special it felt to have Dad bring home photocopies from work.
• 
  On my bedroom bookshelf, I had a couple dozen of those National Geographic hardcover "Young Explorers" books, courtesy of a gift subscription from Beembom (my grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham). I also remember reading a lot of Garfield, Family Circus and The Three Investigators books during this time. Plus, of course, the discovery of Ruth Manning-Sanders at Konkle Memorial Library.
• We had The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics, a huge hardcover volume, on the bookshelf in the formal living room. I would often pull it from the shelf and browse for hours. The book is on a bookshelf in my bedroom today.
• My record albums were an odd and definitely unhip mixture for someone my age. I had the aforementioned John Williams movie scores (Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark); Hooked on Classics; Star Trek tales on vinyl; Mickey Mouse Disco; a half-remembered record that had covers (not originals) of popular movie songs such as "Makin' It" from Meatballs; and another collection featuring covers of classic movie themes such as The Pink Panther and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Those are the ones I can remember (and admit to), anyway. I was not yet into buying pop music on any medium. (And it's crazy to think how much I grew, learned and changed from this kid in early 1983 to the college graduate who bought August and Everything After on cassette in the autumn of 1993.)
• Mom's college art books were in that bedroom in the attic, along with some of her other forgotten artistic endeavors. I wonder, in retrospect, if she just didn't care for them at that point. Or maybe they reminded her of things that could have been. She definitely wanted to keep them, but never seemed very interested in revisiting them. The bulk of her reading then consisted of Hans Holzer, Susy Smith, Stephen King, etc. This was still a few years, I believe, before she got back to adding historical fiction into her regular reading rotation.
• And I had a Christopher Reeve/Superman poster on my bedroom wall. Here's proof!

* * *Wrapping up, I envision three more Montoursville 2018 posts, all of which should come before Thanksgiving and none of which should require the time and effort of this one. We can see the finish line!

Montoursville 2018: Hurr's

Advertisement for the Hurr's Dairy Store in Lock Haven from the August 1, 1964, edition of The (Lock Haven) Express.

When my family lived on Montoursville's Spruce Street in the mid 1970s, we were just a short walk away from our own neighborhood ice-cream shop, the Hurr's Dairy Store on Arch Street. Specifically, I have memories of getting milkshakes and Tastykakes, walking home and enjoying our treats while sitting on the front stoop.

Coincidentally, the Williamsport Sun-Gazette — Williamsport being a few miles west of Montoursville — published an article this past June by Wendy Chestnut titled "Fond memories of neighborhood ice cream shops." The article begins: "The wonderful idea of using cream to make ice cream in the late 1920s and ’30s didn’t go unnoticed locally. Some businessmen, such as John Hurr, rose to the top, just like the cream from which he spun his sweet confection."

The article goes on to say that Hurr's Dairy began in 1921, had its base of operations in South Williamsport, had its name on a dozen stores in the area (including in Montoursville) and spread its footprint across 11 counties. It concludes with this quote, about Hurr's, from George Holmes of Montoursville:

"It was a hang-out after school before we were of driving age. It was the 1950s so there was not a lot of spare money. We could get a one- or two-dip ice cream cone for 10 cents or a milkshake for 25 cents. The basic flavors were vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, teaberry or butter pecan."

While there was more than one Hurr's location in Montoursville, Holmes might be referring to the same Arch Street location that my family walked to in the 1970s. That Arch Street site was also just a stone's throw from Montoursville High School and was likely inundated with hungry students at the end of the school day.

I could not, however, find much else online specifically about the Arch Street Hurr's. So I turned to the "You know you're from Montoursville PA if..." Facebook group for help. Here are some of the great responses I received to my July 21 query:

• Doug Boyles confirms that it was Hurr's ice cream on the corner of 4th Street and North Arch Street, on the east side of Arch. This jibes 100 percent with my memory.
• Crystal Miller said: "It was owned by my husband's family, along with more than a dozen other locations, started by my husband's great grandfather and John Hurr."
• Lou Ann Tom said: "That was Hurr's Dairy Store. My Dad Bill Miller owned the whole business and there were about 30 stores total in the area. He has the whole story about it written but doesn’t know who to give it to to print/publish it."
• Denny Derr said: "328 Arch Street. It was first run as Murray's (my grandmother), then by my dad (Derr's — following WWII). When my dad moved our store to the Golden Strip, Hurr's occupied the Arch Street store. Gary Williams bought the property when my grandmother sold it mid to late 60's. Since then it’s been only a residence."
• Eileen Vernarec Craig said: "Monday nights in summer was Dime Night — ice cream cones for a dime."
• Vicki S. Miller said: "Anyone remember 'dime night' at the Hurr's store? People would line up down Arch Street to get an ice cream cone for a dime. I remember working there one of those nights when someone came in and ordered 20 cones and wanted them wrapped in wax paper and placed in a paper bag. Crazy night!"
• Linda Taylor Fitzgerald said: "Hurr's had the best peanut butter fudge sundaes. I've spent my life trying to duplicate that recipe."

The Facebook thread raised many memories of Hurr's and other Montoursville family stores — including Eder's and a penny-candy shop. And there were so many mentions of peanut butter fudge. Someone should put together a book with photos and recollections, perhaps one of those Images of America volumes, before it's too late!

* * *As this mini-series heads toward the finish line — and, yes, I'm definitely starting to run out of steam now that July 13 is so far back in the rearview mirror — here's an updated look at what I envision for the final posts:

• Our house on Willow Street
• Other sites around the borough (TWA Flight 800 Memorial, Cellini's, the community pool, etc.)
• Old postcards
• Final thoughts

Montoursville 2018: Our second house

This is what I looked like around Thanksgiving 1977, when I was nearly 7 years old and we were living in our second house in Montoursville, on Spruce Street. We moved there from Mulberry Street sometime in the mid-1970s, and we remained on Spruce Street until the summer of 1978, when we moved to Clayton, New Jersey. I believe we were on Spruce Street for a little less than three years.

It was a cozy little neighborhood, not that I knew anything otherwise at that time. There was a church on the corner (still is), plenty of kids my age running around, and an ice-cream shop right around the corner (more on that in a future post). The house was just a few blocks from Lyter Elementary School, so I often walked there in the mornings during first grade.

I've driven and walked past the Spruce Street house several times over the past 15 years. Unlike my false start finding the Mulberry Street house this past summer, the Spruce Street house is always easy to find, with its distinctive front and with the church on the corner serving as a landmark.

Spruce Street, mid 1970s
Here is a trio of photos, from the family snapshots, of the house in the mid 1970s. At one point there were faux shutters. Maybe they've come on and off over the years. I'm not sure what the chronological order is for these shots, though the first one is marked as being from 1976.

Spruce Street, 2018
And here are my photos from July 13, 2018...

In no particular order, here are some of my recollections of living on Spruce Street with Mom, Dad and my younger sister, Adriane, who was born in 1974, while we were still on Mulberry Street.

• I spent a lot of time playing in the basement, with various Fisher-Price toys, including their famous record player and, to the best of my recollection, the circus train and the jet airplane. The furnace glowed orange through its grill, but I don't recall being particularly scared of it.
• The house had an enclosed side porch, on the left side if you're looking at the house from the front. I recall sitting out there during storms and learning to count after each lightning strike, to gauge the proximity of the thunderbumper.
• To my knowledge, there are no family photos of my bedroom. I recall that I had a 45-rpm record player and probably a radio. I remember listening to Shaun Cassidy's "Da Doo Ron Ron" and I recall composing a song titled "One Day I Picked Up a Rabbit."
• Dad writes: "Both of you had your own bedroom. Adriane in a crib, Chris in a twin bed. Sang to Adriane each night with Grover on my hand. I still chuckle. That was when things were good."
• One day, however, I almost turned myself into a Darwin Award recipient. I was going around the house trying to find uses for a skeleton key, and I stuck it straight into an electric outlet. I got shocked. Dad got mad (justifiably so).
• There was a small breakfast nook in the back of the kitchen. I remember decorating Christmas cookies there.
• Somehow, there grew a legend that one blizzard brought snow to the very top of the light pole in the front yard. I suspect the only way that's true is if shoveled or plowed snow piled up next to the pole.
• Our neighbors across the street were the Goodspeeds, and they had two daughters. We played together often.
• 
  Once, Dad brought home an amazing piece of technology called a tape recorder. It provided hours of amusement.
• I remember the Easter egg hunts at this house. And I remember there was a smell when one of the hard-boiled eggs went undiscovered for a few weeks. (Always count your eggs, parents.)
• Adriane and I had the chicken pox in this house.
• I was an absolute brat at one of my birthday parties, stomping upstairs (or perhaps being sent to my room) when things didn't go my way and I threw a mini-tantrum.
• We had the game Mouse Trap, and I swallowed one of those metal balls. I'm assuming it's not still inside me, but who knows?
• While we were living at this house, Dad taught me to ride a bicycle. We used the church parking lot for practice.
• This is the house where a door-to-door salesman sold us the plastic Whirley mugs that I wrote about extensively in 2012. (Post #1, Post #2)
• I remember exploring in the backyard and Mom teaching us about honeysuckle, clover, peppermint and a tiny leaf that tasted like pickle if you chewed it.
• But if Mom got mad, there was a wooden spoon in the kitchen. She had only to mention it to end any disobedience. It was never actually deployed.

Inside Spruce Street house, mid-1970s
To close out this post, here are some old snapshots from inside the house...

This one is marked "Christmas 1976." I still have the little white rocking chair.

This is a repeat of the photo I wrote about last December.

This one is stamped May 1978, so it's probably from Christmas 1977. There's so much in this photo! I ended up inheriting all those old photos on the wall. I might still have one or two of the Christmas decorations, including the stocking hanging toward the right. I LOVED playing with sets of wooden blocks; that was my go-to activity for years. The cobbler's bench and clock atop the television are still in the family. That's one of the weights from a cuckoo clock hanging on the wall, to the right. I mentioned in this post the things that I remember watching on TV when we lived on Spruce Street.

Montoursville 2018: Interlude

It's been an off-kilter week here at Papergreat HQ, as I've been adjusting to a new job and work schedule. I've moved from Sports Editor to Deputy Opinion Editor at LNP, which means daytime shifts and adjustments to my writing schedule for this hobby blog. So I don't have a new Montoursville 2018 entry at the moment. At this point, I'm suspecting — no surprise — that the series won't be polished off until Halloween or thereafter.

But to tide you over, here's a May 1974 snapshot of me posing beside our modern-day deity, The Television, in the house on Mulberry Street. One question I have:

What's most alarming about this photo?

• A. The wallpaper
• B. The curtains
• C. The carpet
• D. My shirt
• E. Yes

I don't have any memories of actually watching television at the Mulberry Street house. But I do have some memories of TV at our subsequent house. So, as a prelude to the next installment, here are some things I can recall watching at our house on Spruce Street, in the middle 1970s:

• Battle of the Network Stars
• Wonder Woman
• Star Trek (in syndication, obviously)
• The movie Silent Running, which was way too sad for young me, which is probably why it left such an impression

That's it. Either my memory has faded or I just didn't watch too much TV during those years, which is certainly not a bad thing. I do have many other memories of the Spruce Street house, though, which I will share in the next post.

* * *
Bonus Trivia

Nerd alert: I discovered a very cool Marvel canon fact this week. Mary Jane Watson, longtime love interest of Peter Parker and herself a strong figure in the Marvel-verse, hails from Montoursville (!!), according to her official fictional biography.

It would be very cool if MJ and Baron Von Papergreat could appear together some day in a rousing tale set in Montoursville. If I was running Marvel, I'd nominate Chelsea Cain to write it.

Montoursville 2018: Our first house

The house on Mulberry Street where we lived in the early 1970s, as photographed in July 2018.

Our family's first house in Montoursville was on Mulberry Street, as in the Dr. Seuss book. We lived there from 1971 until at least the summer of 1975 (but not much later than that, I believe). I was born in December 1970 and so, as you might imagine, this is the house that I have the fewest memories of. It's also the house that's the "toughest" for me to find when traveling back to Montoursville, because it doesn't have a level of familiarity or a sense of fixed geography that jumps out to me, like our other two houses.

In fact, as I mentioned earlier, I actually identified the wrong Mulberry Street house during my first walk through the streets this summer. But I checked in with Dad, and he set me straight. The house pictured at the top of this post was, indeed, our first house.

It's a modest home, once a parsonage, in the western half of town, where the houses are packed together more tightly than elsewhere. An alley — Montoursville is delightfully full of them — runs to the left of the house. Here's a closer look at the present-day front porch and the back of the house...

The backyard area has changed greatly, as will tend to happen over four-plus decades. That deck was not present during my childhood; we just had a big (to me) and long backyard, stretching down the alley. Here are some photographs of me in that 1970s version of the yard...

Mom and me

Me and my grandmother, Helen Chandler Adams Ingham (1919-2003)

I have already written about most of my memories of this house, in a post that appeared here on April 21 of this year, before I knew I was going to be writing this series. So rather than repeating or reinventing that material, I would direct you there to learn just a little about my bedroom, my shenanigans and backyard bats.

I don't really have other memories, except for a vague recollection of the trauma of having a splinter pulled from finger and a hazy episode involving a playmate across the street who was grounded because he/she tried to cross Mulberry Street without his/her parents' permission.

But I do have some more new-to-the-blog photos of the interior...

Me, in amazing pants, and my younger sister Adriane

Me with my grandmother Helen (aka "Beembom") again.
The fryer on the stove made amazing fried chicken.

That final photo also includes some very early "ephemera by Chris" on the walls. It's long gone now, but we have these photos! Isn't that a lovely paramecium I drew?

One final note and story. One day I wandered off with a playmate to the house next door, spending some time hanging out in the first-floor kitchen. I did not, apparently, tell my mother about this plan, which sent her into an extreme panic and certainly got me into a bit of trouble. I can remember being inside that airy next-door house. The memories probably remain because it was a rare "new place" for young me, and because the end result was a scolding. Here's what that (gorgeous) house next door looked like this summer...