Greene County is like Vermont's poorer cousin. You can see the family resemblance, and they're both easy to look at, but you have to wonder what went wrong here.
Once again, these pics were taken "drive-by" from through the car windows, usually rolling at about 30 MPH.
Greene County's is a heartbreaking beauty. The tragedy of the place is its poverty and long years of tyrannical rule by coal-diggers and now the frackers.
But its bucolic loveliness lives right alongside all the heavy industry and ecological crisis.
Frack trucks and coal trucks go barreling down these little country lanes like trains on a track.
But the old farms make it worth the drive.
Some are occupied and lovingly maintained.
Others stare out at the road through vacant eyes, outbuildings in ruin, and windows curtainless.
There are so many back lanes and minor roads, and all of them lined with 19th century farms. Actually, many of the farms probably date back to the 18th century, though the buildings do not.
I've always been curious about this old place.
I have reason to believe that this may be the farmhouse where the unfortunate Grim Family lived. The old Chess Cemetery disclosed clues about the tragic fate of so many of the Grim children.
This is very close to Ryerson Station State Park. Park literature says that seven members of a family named Davis were murdered by Indians somewhere near here in the late 1700s. I doubt that this was their cabin.
It was truly "Indian Summer," a warm, sunny day after the first freeze of the season.
Riggs Road: a single gravel lane no wider than a driveway.
This spooky old farm has surely sat derelict for years.
An old clapboard farmhouse festers behind overgrown shrubs.
I wish I'd gotten a better shot of this interesting place on Riggs Road.
Same farm...
Here's an ugly frack site, just to remind you that you're still in PA. "The horror, the horror."
Ah, but it's beautiful, truly beautiful despite the horror.
Like Vermont, Greene County is overwhelmingly Democrat--despite a tendency toward social conservatism and an annoyingly patriotic streak.
I even saw a few Confederate flags hanging here and there on houses. Ignoramuses. I think some people even in the North equate Confederate flags with country living. Besides, this is almost as far south as the North gets.
Democrats in places like this are mostly just interested in labor issues. They're not especially progressive.
Ah, but it was a pretty drive.
There were a lot of red steel roofs down there.
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