Scrubgrass Creek Valley

Oil Country

In the valley of Scrubgrass Creek, deep in the oil country of Venango County. There are three abandoned town sites in this valley, as well as the ruins of the old ironworks. The oil field is still active, and seepage is killing many hemlocks along the banks of the stream.

A Place Apart

Falling apart, to be exact.

Gray's Elegy

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,
Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre:

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page,
Rich with the spoils of time, did ne'er unroll;
Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,
And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood.

Oh those village Cromwells, though I'm of the minority opinion that Lord Protector Cromwell rocked. I wonder who is still putting plastic flowers on Henry Chess's grave 143 years after his death?

Greene County

March is an awful month in so many ways. The snow goes away, revealing all the litter that the long winter has deposited along the roadways. Trees are bare; skies are gray. The world looks ragged and threadbare. To make matters worse, it's typically the busiest month of the year in my line of work. March is an indeterminate time when winter's no longer convinced of itself, and spring just keeps hitting the snooze button.

But it had been so long since I'd done a real trek, the kind I used to do in the old days, when I lived up North. And so I couldn't resist the urge to make the long drive down to Greene County to tramp among the hills at Ryerson Station State Park.

Greene County is the poorest in the state. It's been a coalfield for centuries, with all the attendant bleakness. And yet, it does have charms. Some magazine connected to Martha Stewart claims that Greene County is one of the ten best places in the country to view autumn colors. And when you're not passing along the edge of a vast strip mine, or in the shadow of a ghostly industrial complex, the countryside is beautiful: undulating, hilly, interspersed with scenic farms, and churches, covered bridges, and an uncanny number of old one-room schoolhouses.

Ryerson Station State Park had been off my radar screen because it's just a little further than I like to drive for a trek. Also, it's a lot smaller than the nearby Raccoon Creek. And yet, there's some great back country to discover down there. I hiked the ominously named "Pine Box Trail" which led--appropriately enough--to an old cemetery.

Long-time followers of my shadowy career know that my favorite cemeteries have headstones from the 1790s or earlier. The oldest markers in this otherwise very cool graveyard were from the 1830s. It's known as "The Chess Cemetery," although there were also a goodly number of markers bearing the surnames Grim and Parsons. A quieter, more pensive spot you will not find.

Unfortunately, the lake at Ryerson Station has been destroyed by its irresponsible neighbor, Consol Energy--a huge mining corporation that insists on paying ungodly amounts to name sports arenas after themselves but cannot afford to repair a lovely-if-little-used body of water whose dam was wrecked by literal undermining. That's another reason I hesitated to go to Greene County for a trek; it's just so corruptly ruled by the mineral extraction industries. I expected to find gas wells, and oil derricks, and loud trucks all over the place. (I begrudgingly admit that I did not find those things everywhere, though they were common enough.)

And yet, I must say, this was the most restorative excursion I've had since moving to the Pittsburgh area. I'll take abandoned buildings if that's all life offers, but I much prefer trees and cemeteries. Old ones.

Monument to the Unknown Sailor

At first I thought it was a Navy-issue headstone for a sailor buried at sea. And honestly, though it might turn out to be something far less dramatic, that's still my best guess. Click on the photos to enlarge them.

An anchor is engraved near the dead center of the slab, but it sits a little crookedly, as if it was stamped into the cement by some primitive machine.

Also, the wording seems to be stenciled onto the slab almost haphazardly. It runs downhill, and all I can make out is "Bridgeville, PA," which is a town nearby. The characters seem distinctly military. Most of the words are long gone, which causes me to think that this stone has spent much of its life outdoors.

It's very hard to make out, but there seems to be some sort of serial number running along the left edge of the slab. Like the anchor, this number is "engraved" or stamped into the cement.

I've done a little research online and can't find a clear answer as to whether the military even issues--or ever issued--headstones for sea burials.

Alas, some long-forgotten great uncle of the Hickman clan perished in the Pacific Theater, or got exploded in his submarine during WWII. The dead sailor's brother inherited the stone eventually, along with the farmhouse. His wife didn't like the gloomy cement slab out among her flowerbeds, so when her own husband died, she packed it off to the attic. All earthly memory of one man's life, relegated to a corner of the attic, there to be shat upon by bats for a few decades. The widow-sister-in-law eventually sells the farm and moves into a nursing home. The farm is divided up and resold a few times. Who's going to take that stone out of the attic now?

Or maybe the Bridgeville Garden Club used to give these weird slabs to its members? Any thoughts?