Vintage House from the 1980s

This charming-if-slightly-spooky little bungalow sits in the countryside of Venango County.  I had this place to myself for the week of Halloween and absolutely loved it.

The best thing about this place is that it hasn't been remodeled since at least the 1980s, maybe earlier.  From the layout of the house to the decor, it felt like stepping back into my Generation X childhood.

We often lived in ghostly, nondescript ranch houses with three bedrooms and wood-paneled walls that backed up onto the woods--just like this place.  When I was staying here, I hung a sheet over this sliding glass door at night.  It just made me feel less exposed...

See the pond out the window, with a late maple tree all abloom on the opposite bank.  And here, inside this kitchen, which also serves as the dining room, there's an old coffee mug tree with vintage cups, and a small built-in hutch with Norman Rockwell plates on display, not to mention the cupboards and chairs.

Also, the kitchen is the front room.  I spent Tuesday through Friday here last week, trying to catch up on some writing.  The place belongs to a friend of my wife who rents it out on airbnb.

The glass doors off the living room look into these dark woods, already bare.  I was here over a very rainy, windy Halloween night, when a large tree split and came crashing down while I was sleeping.

Oh, and before I forget, this is the pattern in the Formica kitchen counters!  So innocent, so whimsical, playful and sweet, like a snapshot into the imagination of a former age.

Here's the wallpaper in the entry hall.  I think they were going for that colonial revival look of the 1970s and 80s.  I remember it well.

The living room has a working fireplace.  It was the perfect place to spend a rainy fall day, working on my computer.  I discovered that little instant fire-logs can be purchased at the Family Dollar in nearby Clintonville for $3 apiece.

The bathroom is a gem of 20th century styling.  Check out the floral design around the bowl of the sink and the faux-marble pattern in the counter top.  

The dark wood paneling, the louvered doors, the old shaded lamp protruding from the wall like a sconce--it's all so nostalgic.

Eagles?  Yes, we decorate with eagles!

This place belonged to the postmaster in town, who ran a print shop out of an outbuilding after he retired.  He grew old and moved in with his daughter, allowing most of the furniture and dishes and trinkets to be sold with the house.

Like I said, eagles are our thing.

You can actually rent this place on airbnb.  At $79 a night for the whole house, it's a steal.  

The Allegheny River, Venango County

This is the great Allegheny, seen from the Kennerdell Overlook.  The fall is well advanced up there, softened by gray skies and pungent with the scent of fallen leaves.  The bright maple trees are all bare, though the oaks and their allies still hold out in less vibrant--but still lovely--earth tones.  I spent the better part of a very nice week up here, working on a writing project.

McNay Ridge and Ryerson Campgrounds

This post is mainly a reminder to my future self.  Others will not be interested.  But, as I've said before, I keep the blog entirely for my own purposes.  Hey Self: The McNay Ridge group tenting area at Ryerson would be perfect for that camping experience that you've always kind of dreamed of creating.  This is the grassy parking lot, looking down toward the pavilion in the pines.

Past the pine grove where the pavilion stands, there's another broad clearing that could be used for tents and large gatherings--seen better from the next pic.

Here, we're standing in the large clearing looking back toward the pavilion.  It's a big meadow, perfect for what I have in mind...

A little lane separates this group tenting area from the main campground and the rest of the park.  It feels remote.

The pavilion and restrooms are in a smaller clearing near the parking area.

The campground auditorium is perfect for my purposes!  And it's on McNay Ridge, just adjacent to the group tenting area.  It seats about 70, but could seat more if people brought lawn chairs.  It's totally reminiscent of the "brush arbors" of olden times.

It's even got an old church bell that could be rung with a hammer to call people to meetings.

And a stone pulpit...

The auditorium and bell as seen from the lane toward the tenting area.  The group I'd like to create could come back here every summer.  It'd take a lot of planning, but not too much money.  I'll have to give it more thought, but wanted to document my findings for future reference.

Annual Greene County Fall Trip

I wanted to test myself, to see if I still knew how to take all the winding, narrow back roads from Pittsburgh down to Ryerson Station State Park in Greene County.  And I did!  It's such a pretty drive in the fall--despite the pervasive rural poverty and all the ruination that years of coal mining and now fracking have wreaked upon this lovely and lonely literal-corner of the state.

Chess Cemetery Discovery

Each fall, unless the world is entirely out of balance, I make my annual fall trek down at Ryerson Station State Park.  While I'm there, I pay my respects at the old Chess Family Cemetery.

Surely this was my 12th or 13th time on that hallowed ground.  And yet, it was the first time I'd ever noticed the little watertight plastic box beneath the headstone of a child's grave, one Freeman Jacobs.  Click on this photo to see it.

There are many children buried in this cemetery, each tiny headstone a monument to a life now long-forgotten.  O the lost tales of woe that these stones allude to...but never tell.  

Some years ago, I found that the Grimm Family lost, I believe, five children and then the mother.  The father does not appear to be buried here.  There is a Grimm Road nearby; it's probably where their farm was located.

The box beneath Freeman's headstone contained a pen and notebook so that visitors to the cemetery could write their names and the dates that they were here.  Many leave comments and, for some reason, little items like spare keys or cheap toys.

A heartbroken mother once stood at this stone and tried to restrain her tears.  Now, no matter how deep her anguish ran, there's nothing left here but a stone...and a tiny body underneath.  No one can tell us how he died, or what kind of child he was, or what his life was like while it lasted.

And another, this one with a foot stone.  

This is the front of Freeman Jacobs' grave.  The box with the notebook is under this headstone.  

And Time that Gave Doth Now His Gift Confound

Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore,

So do our minutes hasten to their end;

Each changing place with that which goes before,

In sequent toil all forwards do contend.

Nativity, once in the main of light,

Crawls to maturity, wherewith being crowned,

Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory fight,

And Time that gave doth now his gift confound.

Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth

And delves the parallels in beauty's brow,

Feeds on the rarities of nature's truth,

And nothing stands but for Time's scythe to mow.

And yet to times in hope my verse shall stand,

Praising thy worth, despite his cruel hand.

Sonnet 60, Wm. Shakespeare 

A Beautiful Fall Day in Pennsylvania

Late but lovely, October took its good old time visiting its splendor upon us.  But that's okay.  It means that November will be something more than a gray limbo between autumn and winter, as the fall colors spill over into next month.

My day off this week was a glorious Thursday.  It's such a rare gift these days to get three full hours to wander free amid the beauty of the season--whatever season it may be, but especially the fall.

As with all things beautiful, by the time it's upon you, it's almost over.  If, as I theorize, all times are happening simultaneously, and we're only experiencing them as a march of minutes and days in succession (yesterday, today, tomorrow), then I take comfort in the belief that the brilliant autumn day I just had lives on forever in the very mind of God.  It's still occurring and will forever.

Of course, when I say "God," I'm not referring to the Republican bully who passes for a Supreme Being in most people's imaginations.  I'm speaking only of the Mystery at the heart of all life, the Mystery and the Energy that is life itself, the Infinite, the Ineffable, the Numinous--perhaps the reality that we take for granted, not so much a "being" as the ground of all being.

And yet, as transcendent and distant as that "God" seems, I must admit that She draws quite near on a gorgeous autumn day--indeed maybe on wretched days, too, though we fail to know Her then.  It's hard to deny the Mystery of life and breath and seasons when the world is so lovely.  

Giddy as I was for the color and the beauty of it all, there's a melancholy about it, too.  Or maybe pensiveness is a better word, I don't know.  Shakespeare's Sonnet 60 always runs through my head in the woods in the fall.  In fact, I fitted it into a nondescript little tune that I sometimes sing to myself.

I don't know if we live too long or too short, but as long as I live, I can never tire of October.  The chill in the air, gold-tinted sunlight, the cold mornings when dad (me) is still holding out, trying not to turn on the furnace, the distinctive smell of burning dust when he finally gives in.  And of course the glorious colors in otherwise ordinary trees.  Besides, as I said above, it seems to me that maybe we live forever, that everything that ever was still is, along with everything that will ever be.  The question is, do we only get a single run; do we only get to taste it all just this once?