Growing Up In PA
Think Snow! Yes, rural Pennsylvania. Let’s see, what can I say about that? My hometown, when I was a kid, was an okay place to raise kids. It was a poor town but relatively safe. Probably similar to where many others grew up. With only about 3000-4000 residents, it was a farming town. Outside of town were corn fields, potato fields, strawberry farms and many other sorts. I remember as a kid going with my parents to pick bushels of apples, baskets of elderberries and blackberries in nearby patches. We canned everything. I HATED it! But I guess that is how we survived. Let me tell you, shucking elderberries is a pain in the butt. The jelly my mom made with them was freaking awesome though.
Anyway, we always rented. My dad worked as a machinist, totally blue-collar and mom worked at the local hospital as a nurses aide. My father would come home covered in fiberglass from the boating company he worked at and then, later as a machinist, metal filaments. I think we moved five times in about a 12 year span. The last house was the only one my parents purchased. They used a special loan and paid a whopping $17K for it. My poor youngest brothers’ room really was a closet. We didn’t have much but we survived it.
Everybody knows everybody in a small town like that. No ones business is ever truly private. We walked to school and I made supper after school for the family when I was old enough . Summers were sketchy, I’m sure, for my mother since we got into all kinds of things. She tells us how she would get calls all the time from us saying what one of others were doing. Apparently, she came home one day to see us on the roof chasing each other. I was the oldest which, of course, my closest brother hated. He is only two and a half years younger than I and that was a whole world of issue. I got to do things he wasn’t allowed to do, yada yada!! Love you, bro! Then my youngest brother is 8 years younger. He and I didn’t have as many issues I think, although he didn’t appreciate me babysitting him. Especially when I was making chocolate chip cookies….NAP time! Let’s see what else–there was the time my middle brother and I were jumping off our grandmothers’ porch by taking one of the long, loose boards off the porch deck. One of us, would stand on the end of it on the deck and the other would jump off it onto the ground like a diving board. I did my job, I stood strong for him to jump off but when it was time for me to jump, he let the board go. It flew up, flipped and hit the back of my head—with long rusty nail sticking out of it. Yeah, that hurt and earned me a trip to the ER to have stitches. Then, my youngest brother says I pushed him off the coach and broke his collar bone. NOT! We had pushed the couch against a wall and were rolling from the top back of it down onto seats and bouncing off. Could I help it if he bounced wrong? I thought not. I guess we were pretty energetic.
I recently made the trip back home for the first time in four years. Nothing has changed. The area has lost some major employment companies and there is an exodus of people leaving to find better opportunity. What I discovered was that you can’t go home, not without a time machine. Things change and evolve and not always for the better.
So what things do I think of fondly from growing up in Northwest Pa:
Snow days!! (even though we had to make them up), Presque Isle State Park, picking strawberries right from the farm (and eating them right there, pesticides and all), drive-in movies, walking home along the railroad track, seeing the Amish buggies all over the countryside, Canadohta Lake Park, the Tastee Freeze (my first job), then later–being involved in the different Erie theaters, and everyone knowing who you were.
What things don’t I miss?
SNOW, cold, dreary, no sun (60 days of sunny weather a year), potholes, one way streets (ridiculous, Erie), and of course—EVERYBODY knowing who you were.
Contact me at: taketimetolivelife@outlook.com