How can we make this blog more interesting? Guest Bloggers!

Things should get interesting now!

I just sent out invitations asking my daughters Abby and Kate, and sisters Kelly, Morgan, and Taylor to be guest bloggers.

I'll add some photos and bios to this post soon!

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The Elephant Barn in Scenery Hill, PA (The Real Story!)

This barn adorned with a painting of an elephant sits along Route 40 between Scenery Hill and Washington and I pass it every day on my way to work. I have never stopped to take a photo of it, never asked anyone about it, or ever heard anyone discuss it. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t wondered about it as I whizzed past. Why an elephant? Usually, the barns around here have a “Mail Pouch” ad emblazoned on the side, but not an elephant. Recently, I was looking in a book Westward of ye Laurall Hill when I stumbled upon a picture of the barn. The author Helen Vogt drew the photo in the book, w hich focuses on Washington, Greene, and Fayette counties during the period of 1750-1850. There it was on page 327, in a chapter titled “Horse Racing - Red Fox Chasers - Picture Barns - Horses.” She maintains it was painted for the Triangle Oil Company, ca. 1940. “Another weathered grey barn at the side of the National Road west of Scenery Hill has the rather startling painting of an elephant

Would you like some Nescafe’ with your cake?

I love photos like this - a little slice of life, a random moment frozen in time. I’m not sure why it was taken, but the people sitting around my grandmother’s Formica table are very familiar to me: my aunt Janet Ross, Jerry Kowalczyk, my grandmother Ruth Ross, my grandfather Vance Ross, me, my uncle Ken Ross, and my grandmother’s friend Ada Shumaker. It looks like we are celebrating something because there is a cake on the table, along with some Nescafe’ Instant Coffee, and an empty punch bowl. The photo says February 1972, but it looks like there is a Christmas wreath in the window. Maybe it was Janet’s birthday, which is at the end of December, or New Years Eve. I’m thinking the photo was taken in 1971 and the film was developed in February of 1972. This photo leaves me with so many questions. Like, why did Nana have summery paper plates on the table if it was winter? Why didn’t she make a real pot of coffee or was instant coffee all the rage? Did we drink the punch or was she ge

The Forgotten Mitchell Cemetery of Bentleyville, PA

It’s not every day that you discover an unknown and uncared-for cemetery, but I did and it only took me about 30 years. In the mid-1990s, I found a copy of Caldwell’s Atlas from 1876 which had a map of Bentleyville that listed a cemetery near the Methodist Church in Bentleyville. Interestingly, there wasn’t a cemetery there. I asked around, but no one seemed to know anything about a cemetery in the middle of town. Finally, I talked to someone who knew about it, but they dismissed it by saying that it was probably for "paupers.” I thought it had been paved over or something had been built on it and this was upsetting, to say the least. I didn’t really know how to figure out what had happened to the cemetery and to be honest, after a while, I kind of forgot about it. Then, last summer my daughter Abby and I were at an antique fair and I found a copy of the Caldwell’s Atlas map of Bentleyville. I bought it and when I took it home, I saw that cemetery again. Last month, I was t

Mountain Laurel & Coal

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