Bella Fontana

Christmas disasters often come back to charm us

2005-12-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

(The Bellefonte supplement to the Centre Daily TImes has ceased publication as of Dec. 21, 2005, so this is my final column for that venue.)

The Christmases I remember most vividly are not the joyous ones but the ones when something went wrong. The year the Christmas tree fell forward with a swish and a tinkle of broken glass just as the last ornament was put in place. The time a domestic squabble erupted into a kitchen war with much slamming of pots and pans. The cookies that burned.

I don't remember the pretty gifts over the years as much as the shabby ones, like the doll I got when I was about 6. She was very small with a cloth body and a molded head and even a molded hair ribbon. She had no feet, just black stumps under her dress. The shame I felt was palpable. I did not play with this doll. I did not even want to look at her.

In my first Christmas entertainment, I was to be a skater in a short, red taffeta dress. Awkward at doing the leg extensions to "The Skater's Waltz," I made only a halfhearted attempt at the steps. When Sister assigned a third-grader to move my feet in time to the music, I resisted. The older girl told Sister I kicked her; I say she deserved it.

For our high school Nativity play, my two best friends and I were cast as vestal virgins. We giggled our way through practice, but the night of the performance we lost it completely. I entered and delivered my line, "Veronica, hast thou kept the watch?" and the three of us broke up. We could not control our hysteria even with priests, parents and nuns staring in stony silence.

Over the years, there was always at least one disaster of the season. When I was teaching, a new administrator required all faculty to participate in a door-decorating contest. As I was stringing up lights, I noticed I was standing in water that was pouring out of the boys' lavatory across the hall. When no janitor arrived, I learned that another administrative edict had just taken effect: No repairs could be done until a work order was issued from "downtown."

This year, the stress began early. I listened to Christmas carols over the phone for 25 minutes waiting for another party to pick up. I called my long-distance provider for the third time to complain about a suspension of service notice for a bill already paid. A telemarketer would not get off the line, insisting that I press "1" now. Some people, it seems, just don't have any Christmas spirit.

Opening chapters of local history reduced to team mascots

2005-12-15T11:19:00.000-08:00

An eager group awaited the presenter of "An Anecdotal History of Early Bellefonte" at the splendid new home of the American Philatelic Society at Match Factory Place on Nov. 12.

In due time, a proper Victorian lady swept into the Herman and Alice Lembersky Room and explained the difficulty of dressing when a corset is a prescribed part of the costume.

Launching into her illustrated lecture, the lady identified herself as Bonny Farmer, associate editor of "The American Philatelist." High points of Bellefonte's early history were recounted, then the talk shifted to an even earlier time, when white settlers encountered the American Indians already living here.

Chief Bald Eagle, of the Muncie Indians, a division of the Delaware tribe, made his "nest" along Bald Eagle Creek near Milesburg. Because the Delawares were allies of the French during the French and Indian War, his relationships here were uneasy. According to one account, he was murdered on Snow Shoe Mountain by Sam Brady in retaliation for chief killing Sam's brother.

Chief Logan, memorialized by Thomas Jefferson in a speech labeled "Logan's Lament," was another important figure in local history. His camp was near the Blue Spring at the present site of a Pennsylvania Fish Commission Hatchery on state Route 144 north of Pleasant Gap. Logan Branch of Spring Creek, Logan Fire Company and Logan Street ensure that his name will not be forgotten.

By 1785, Native Americans in the area were rare. By 1800, they had disappeared. Place names like Shikellamy and Kishacoquillas remind us of the original inhabitants, as do animal names like skunk and raccoon. The end of the lecture, though, was not the end of the story.

In the early part of the 20th century, schools and colleges started naming their teams and mascots after Native Americans. When a proposal was presented to the local school board to change the name Red Raiders to one more politically correct, the uproar could be heard from one valley to the next. In the end, the name prevailed, but the mascot -- a figure in buckskin wearing a cartoonish rubber mask with a huge hooked nose -- was retired.

Choosing a team mascot is like choosing your battle. When the Penn State Lions play the Florida Seminoles in next month's Orange Bowl, Chief Osceola, the great leader of the Seminoles, will ride again. His face paint and flaming spear may have nothing to do with Seminole history, but at least he is a heroic figure, not a comic one like their former mascot, Chief Fullabull.

Toys are quick to capture attention, regardless of your age

2005-12-08T09:44:00.000-08:00

The colorful downtown block of West High Street from South Spring to Water has so many attractions for kids it forms a little community of its own.

Despite the window display of smiling children and teens, Kennedy Dance Centre is not just for kids. I should know, having taken a jazz dance class there some years ago. When the instructor started talking recital, I made a quick exit.

Up the street is Steppin' Out, a shop specializing in dancewear and accessories. Among the leotards in the window are cute stuffed animals in toe shoes and porcelain dolls in ballet costume. They are not toys, the clerk informed me; they are gifts for kids who are interested in anything related to dance.

The owner of Go-Velo-City says his imported diecast vehicles are not toys either -- they are collectibles. He still has some wooden pull toys and puzzles from a line he is closing out.

Pure Imagination carries traditional books, toys and games. Grandparents like shopping there because they see the things they grew up with, such as Golden Books and metal wind-up toys.

Alphabet blocks are also a popular item. My grandson loves making towers and then laughing when they crash. He is not nicknamed "Godzilla" for nothing.

Around the corner on Spring Street, Dollar General has bulldozers, loaders, dump trucks and all kinds of big action toys in their window. There are dart blasters and punching balls, a light-up tour bus with sound and Flavas, cool couples on cycles.

At this point on my walk, I had to go to Subway to take a break. But there was no escape. Over my tuna special, I saw a sign announcing "Fun Toy with Kids' Pak."

After all the shiny new stuff, a trip to "Toyland," the current exhibit at the Bellefonte Museum for Centre County, seemed in order. Here were the soft-bodied baby dolls I remember playing with and the Barbie dolls my granddaughters played with, dolls that exist now only as a bin of body parts. A display of military vehicles and books from the World War II era recalled our days of plane spotting. Why kids were expected to know a Stuka from a Spitfire, I am not sure.

When I took some middle school students from State College through the Centre County Historical Museum in September, they were more interested in sabers and carved dragons and secret desk compartments than a cupboard full of antique toys. Fantasy, it seems, is the new reality.

Town is never short on special occasions -- or cake recipes

2005-12-01T17:10:00.000-08:00

Because there are so many occasions for cakes around here -- celebration, competition, seduction, sympathy -- it stands to reason there should also be lots of cake recipes. Some can be found on batter-stained pages in standard recipe books; some were clipped from newspapers or copied onto faded scraps of paper. But the most interesting and authentic to me are the ones in those spiral bound cookbooks put out by local organizations as fundraisers.

The newest one is "Raider Recipes," published by the Bellefonte Area High School class of 2008 and on sale at Plumbs Drug Store for $15. Here you can find Sarah Neff's Chocolate Mayonnaise Cake, Mildred Boone's Funny Cake and Barbara Milton's Hawaiian Wedding Cake. Because these recipes have been passed around for a long time, no one expects that the name attached to the recipe is the creator. The name means the baker has tried the recipe, probably many times over.

Besides mayonnaise cakes, recipes in other books call for strange ingredients, such as tomato soup in a spice cake, 7Up in a lemon cake or Coca-Cola in a chocolate cake. There's even a cake made with sauerkraut. Wacky cakes are like funny cakes and call for vinegar but no eggs. When box cakes began to replace scratch cakes, mixes were "doctored" with salad oil, instant pudding and pie filling.

"The Bellefonte Kitchen Sampler," published by the Bellefonte Junior Women's Club in 1977 includes classics such as oatmeal cake and sour cream coffee cake. Then there is carrot cake, which people seemed to think of as a health food. Nancy Miller, though, sets us straight: "Very rich. A little goes a long way."

The same could probably be said for Martha Nastase's Cheesecake for a Crowd. The first ingredient listed is nine pounds of cream cheese.

Many local recipe books include regional-sounding favorites such as Texas Sheet Cake, Mississippi Mud Cake and German Chocolate Cake.

A cake known variously as Poor Man's Cake, Depression Cake or War Cake shows the ingenuity of homemakers during hard times. One version has no eggs, no milk and only two tablespoons of lard for shortening.

Friendship Cake did not live up to its name. It began when someone gave you a plastic bag of fermented dough with mimeographed care and feeding instructions attached. Soon the stuff took over the fridge, billowing like the Blob. You had to keep baking cakes, like the one that called for a can of fruit cocktail, or giving away bags of dough. When my batch finally died of neglect, I shed no tears.

Local grant helps bring the sweet sounds of Talleyrand Park to life

2005-11-25T09:05:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving is a good time to express gratitude, not just for turkey and trimmings, but also for some of the things we take for "granite," as my imaginative students used to spell it.

Under a Local Government Grant, the Nov. 12 premiere of local musician and composer Rick Hirsch's jazz composition, "Village Green in Blue: A Musical Portrait of Talleyrand Park," at the Garman Opera House, presented new perceptions of a place that some of us might indeed have taken for granted.

Until he started researching the history of Talleyrand Park, Hirsch assumed that the park had been around forever. But it was only in 1964 that plans for the park were first proposed by Borough Council. The site was leveled in 1971, and in 1974 the real work began with the formation of the Talleyrand Park Citizens Committee.

Sculptor Rob Fisher, a Bellefonte resident and an original member of the committee, introduced "Village Green in Blue" by defining Talleyrand Park as "the quintessence of what the American Dream can produce." Then, the Valley Jazz Orchestra, comprised of seasoned players, as well as a young Krupa on drums and a budding Brubeck on keyboards, delivered a gift that will reap returns for years to come.

The composition in five parts was more free-flowing than structured, more pictures in sound than improvised jazz riffs on a theme. Spring Creek rippled along in the first movement, "Lifeblood," gained momentum as it reached the falls, then coming to a quiet close with a repeated figure on keyboard.

The second movement captured the graceful architecture of the suspension bridge in a tranquil scene where wood and steel sway in the breeze. Movement III is dedicated to the true owners of the park: the ducks. Hirsch gave them a calypso beat, while with just their mouthpieces, the trumpet section quacked convincingly.

"Placid" is a mood piece introduced by the keyboard, then picked up by the sax in a melodic passage with gravelly accompaniment on trombone. "Aspire" brought the work to a close, centering on the gazebo as a symbol of persistence and vision.

Sometimes we take grants for granted, forgetting that projects such as "Village Green in Blue" don't just happen. They start with the borough of Bellefonte and the Local Government Grant program with funding also from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts and Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts, administered in this region by the Pennsylvania Rural Arts Alliance. The results, as another of my students might have spelled it, are "ah-some."

Growing old has its advantages, though they are often hidden

2005-11-16T18:56:00.000-08:00

What began as an ordinary trip to the drugstore for moisturizer turned into an education. Besides standbys such as Nivea and Neutrogena, the shelves were stacked with a bewildering variety of anti-aging products -- wrinkle removers, skin lifts, peels, masks, even a microdermabrasion kit that seems to operate on the system of sandblasting.

I left the store without buying anything because I was too confused, not just about the products, but about the aging process as well.

In his new book "Healthy Aging," integrative medicine practitioner Andrew Weil says we should embrace what is good about aging. In the CDT on Oct. 30, Arthur S. Rotstein quotes Weil as saying that "aging brings its own rewards."

Well, it brings senior discounts, but the first time the checkout clerk at Pizza Hut gave me a discount without my asking for it, I felt kind of betrayed. Then after the same thing happened at the Garman Opera House movie theater, I got used to it.

I received a reduction on my car insurance after I took a safe-driving course for older drivers. And recently, I applied for a senior pass at the new Centre Area Transportation Authority bus station at Schlow library. When the clerk, a lady of a certain age herself, asked if I didn't also want to get a pass for Centre Ride, the van that takes seniors to their appointments, I didn't flinch.

I may be riding that van for a long time. My beautiful aunt and godmother Gertrude Torsell lived to be 103. But no van for her; she was still driving in her 90s, always smartly dressed and blessed with perfect skin. I asked her once what she used on her face and she said Pond's Vanishing Cream. I think her real beauty secret was in never talking about her age.

The other day a tree trimmer was cutting dead wood out of one of the silver maples down the street. "These trees are all dying," I said.

He fixed me with a penetrating stare and said, "So are we." The arborist was also a philosopher.

This time of the year, the rich colors of the leaves remind me of my favorite Crayola crayons. But there are changes there too. Burnt and raw sienna are still in the box of 48, but golden ochre and burnt umber have vanished, like Aunt Gertrude's face cream.

In the autumn of my own life, the leaves this year seem more brilliant than ever. Maybe Andrew Weil is onto something.

Banned Books

2005-11-16T17:33:00.000-08:00

(Belated post--this ran in the 11/2/05 issue of the Centre Daily Times)

Every September the American Library Association observes Banned Book Week. This year's display at Centre County Library did not shock because of its racy titles. In fact, according to librarian D. J. Lilly, many patrons expressed shock at seeing one of their favorite books tied up with yellow tape. "What's wrong with it?" they would ask. A handout prepared from the ALA website (www.ala.org) offered various reasons, most often "offensive language."

Looking down the list of banned and challenged books was like looking at a copy of the 10th grade curriculum guide from my years of teaching literature at the high school. There was Mark Twain's "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," Anne Frank's "Diary of a Young Girl," Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451."

"Huck Finn" has been controversial since its publication in 1884 when it was banned by the Concord, Massachusetts Public Library, not for its language but for its depiction of a way of life the library board considered "rough, coarse, and inelegant." Twain, whose satire on civilization is narrated by nature-loving Huck, could not have said it better himself. More recently the book has been challenged because of its use of the n-word (over 200 times in the book, mostly by Huck).

My eventual decision to substitute another coming-of-age novel for "Huck Finn" was based on putting myself in the place of a minority student in the classroom and hearing repeated racial slurs. I felt like Huck in the middle of the Mississippi, trying to make up his mind whether to turn Jim over to the slave hunters or follow his conscience and protect his friend. "Huck Finn" will always be one of my favorite books, but how and when or even whether to teach the book remains a sensitive issue.

"The Diary of a Young Girl," Anne Frank's story about hiding out with other Jews in Holland during the Holocaust documents a time in history we are still trying to come to terms with. It makes the ALA list because it is "too depressing." The subject of "Fahrenheit 451" is book burning, an irony in itself. Even dictionaries don't escape the "offensive language" charge.

In the long run, according to ALA, it is "parents and only parents who have the right and the responsibility to restrict the access of their children to library resources." In the classroom an alternate title can always be substituted for one a parent might object to. The freedom to read comes with an option: the freedom sometimes not to read.

Halloween

2005-11-16T17:27:00.000-08:00

(Belated posting--this ran in the 10/26/05 issue of the Centre Daily Times)

Trick or Treat night in Bellefonte can bring kids by the carload or a handful of stragglers, depending on where you live. Residents in the historic district, especially on Linn and Curtin Streets, have already started stockpiling supplies for the two-hour event. Last year the unofficial count on Curtin Street was between 250 and 300 kids. That adds up to a lot of lollipops.

Some people put up lights and elaborate displays to welcome the invasion of superheroes and Cinderellas, monsters and vampires. The adults have as much fun as the kids. But a few years ago I stopped turning on my porch lights. It could have been the year I was having my porch repaired, but it's more likely I had just stopped having fun.

Participating in Trick or Treat night means you are pretty much held captive in your own home, answering the door, handing out candy, trying to figure out the identities of the kids behind the masks. That's fine if they are from the neighborhood, but when I retired from teaching I could no longer recognize the kids from Pleasant Gap or Coleville or Zion.

When I leave now to attend evening services for the Feast of All Saints, I fight my way through a river of costumed kids followed by slowly moving vehicles. The scene is surreal, like a modern-day Children's Crusade. But by the time I get downtown the crowds have thinned. The action is all uptown.

I feel a little guilty at the end of the evening and try to justify my decision with excuses like, who needs all that candy anyway? But nagging thoughts swirl around me like so much ectoplasm. In my book, mean people are punished. Last year I did not have to wait long.

When I came in from getting the mail the next afternoon something dark hanging from a nail over the fireplace caught my eye. It was a bat, sound asleep, its plump velvety sides gently pulsing, a silent reprimand for my insensitivity.

The man from the exterminator service was understanding but warned, "This might not be pretty." Then he whipped out a piece of cardboard, ripped off a protective sheet and slapped the sticky side on the bat who went quietly without a squeal or a struggle. "I'll take it back to the office and release it," the exterminator said. "Brown bats are protected, you know."
No, I didn't know. But if it's a choice between bats or kids, maybe it's time to rethink my position.

A world of uncertainty has us looking for shelter from the storm

2005-11-15T15:59:00.000-08:00

Five days after the "light" snow that was predicted for Oct. 25, snowmen still stood in front yards, and downed branches in full leaf were waiting for the chipper and the chain saw.

Not only did the unseasonable storm transform the landscape, it changed the order of people's lives. If Shakespeare were around, he would have written a play about it.

Storms in Shakespeare were not just an excuse to try out a new thunder machine; they symbolized upheavals in society. So King Lear, driven from his home and deprived of his title, rages against the elements. And in the "Scottish Play" (I share the superstition about using the actual title), three witches meet on the heath in thunder, lightning and rain to predict the murder of the rightful heir to the throne.

In "The Tempest," a shipwreck leads to a shakeup in the political order. In "Twelfth Night," another shipwreck throws characters into hilarious scenes of mistaken identity.

By looking at things from a different perspective, new insights emerge. By linking cosmic disorder and political chaos, Shakespeare shed light on themes of corruption and human error. Hurricane Katrina, in his playbook, would be the lens through which mistakes are magnified.

Before Hurricane Wilma hit, I checked in with two friends in southern Florida. Betty was putting up her storm shutters, and Barbara was polishing off the ice cream in her freezer. Both seemed like good examples of the principle of living with nature, not against it.

A humor column by Jack Gustafson in the Rochester Senior Times makes a similar point. In his list of characteristics of true Pennsylvanians, he says, "If you have worn shorts and a parka at the same time, you might live in Pennsylvania."

Looking ahead to this winter, The Old Farmer's Almanac has issued its forecast for the Appalachian region. Temperatures will be lower than normal and snowfall will be above normal with a heavy snowstorm in early April.

"We believe that nothing in the universe happens haphazardly," the editors say, "that there is a cause-and-effect pattern to all phenomena."

Yes, but those words may be cold comfort to folks trying to figure out how to pay their fuel bills this winter.

Shakespeare's plays always ended with a restoration of order -- lovers were reunited, villains disposed of, peace reigned. Audiences could go home with the satisfaction of having everything back in its proper place. The need for stability in an uncertain world was as much a part of Elizabethan times as ours.

Beauty of a hill town can hide danger

2005-10-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

A driver parks on a hill and forgets to set the hand brake. The car slips out of park and rolls down the hill.

A homeowner mows the steep bank in back of his house and the mower tips over on him.

A 10-foot retaining wall on Stoney Batter collapses soon after it is installed.

Hills have their charm, but there are hazards that go with the territory.

When the founders of Bellefonte laid out the town, they followed the grid pattern of William Penn's Philadelphia, never mind that their neatly planned streets would be imposed on the uneven terrain of the Appalachian hills.

So today, if you try to go up Ridge Street in a heavy rain you might end up spinning your wheels. Or if you descend South Allegheny Street in a snowstorm, you may leave a series of S-shaped tire tracks behind you.

In Hugh Manchester's The Big Spring column that appeared in the Centre Daily Times on March 20, 1993, he documents another hazard encountered by earlier residents. He describes Bellefonte as a "combination Lake Placid, Sun Valley and St. Moritz" with a bobsled run unsurpassed by any winter Olympics. A great ride would start at the top of Reservoir Hill, turn left at the Diamond onto West High and continue to Half Moon Hill.

But over the years there were four major sledding accidents, the worst at Allegheny and Linn streets, where the cutter lost its guide rope, threw its occupants in all directions and then was hit by another sled.

Any hill town devises systems for walkers to negotiate its steep inclines. Pittsburgh, for instance, has 712 sets of steps, according to Bob Regan, author of "The Steps of Pittsburgh: Portrait of a City."

Bellefonte has steps in the sidewalk, one set going up East Lamb Street by the Hastings Mansion, another on South Allegheny heading up Reservoir Hill.

Another way the town accommodates itself to its topography is the building of retaining walls of stone, concrete or wood. But upkeep becomes a problem when a concrete wall buckles and leaves hunks of masonry on the ground or when stones fall out of alignment or mortar deteriorates.

"Something there is that doesn't love a wall," poet Robert Frost wrote in "Mending Wall," For him, it might be frozen ground swell, hunters or even elves that leave gaps in his boundary wall of boulders. Here it is more likely the force of gravity that makes maintaining walls, terraces and steps an uphill battle.

Mysteries surround left-behind belongings

2005-10-15T11:11:00.000-07:00

An orange traffic cone is a simple object signifying caution. It is not funny.

Nor is the statue of Andrew Gregg Curtin in front of the courthouse.

But put the traffic cone on the head of the statue, as someone did last summer, and the result is incongruity spiked with humor.

Sneakers thrown over a telephone wire may be a common urban sight, but recently I noticed what may be the first pair in this town. Some online sources say they are a gang symbol, but I haven't heard gangs mentioned in Bellefonte since the day I walked home from the gym wearing my red bandanna "do-rag" and a kid asked, "Are you in a gang?"

Some objects, like the torn flag and smashed pumpkin on cemetery ground, shock like a slap in the face. Others, like the human features curiously impressed onto a tree on Allegheny at Burrows, amuse.

Then there are the items dropped along the way, signaling their presence by the loss they imply: a hubcap propped on a lawn, a black glove stuck on an iron fence railing, a child's pink sneaker on the sidewalk.

Clothing has its own category. Last Christmas season, a young man and his girlfriend went into a shop downtown. He was wearing a skirt. On a cold winter morning, a woman in line at the post office wore a bare top and no jacket.

On a vacation stop at Saratoga Springs, N.Y., last month, the waitresses in a Thai restaurant wore brightly colored jackets and long, narrow skirts. Darting and hovering, they reminded me of dragonflies. I could not figure how they moved so fast until I noticed they were all wearing high-tech, black athletic shoes.

Sometimes, like the Monday after move-in day in State College, I feel as if I am somewhere in Africa tracking the spoor of wild game. Trying to remember where I parked my car, I mentally retrace my steps, beyond the alley of chicken bones and pizza boxes, along the trail of beer cans and paper plates, past the gold-metallic flip-flops in the street of broken glass.

Before she left Bellefonte to live with her daughter, Mrs. Lewis Harvey donated the pith helmet and bush jackets from her safari days to our theater group. As I follow the trail of red Swedish fish in front of Bi-Lo or speculate about who left an XXL blue Gap hoodie in the street in front of the library, I become for a moment another hunter like Mrs. Harvey, studying the landscape for clues.

A prophet saved Bellefonte, but couldn't protect New Orleans

2005-10-08T11:45:00.000-07:00

Peirce Lewis, Penn State professor of geography emeritus, is mostly known around Bellefonte for his longtime interest in our town. He has conducted countless local tours and published a detailed analysis, "Small Town in Pennsylvania," available in the Pennsylvania room of the Centre Country Library.

But it was not Professor Lewis' work on local geography that created a mild media flurry during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The New York Times, the Washington Post and Newsday quoted him as an expert on the history of New Orleans.

The 2003 edition of his book "New Orleans: The Making of an Urban Landscape" predicted the damages that would result when a major hurricane hit the city. His final chapter ends with the words, "What is known is that the city is in great danger, and that common sense would dictate extreme measures to avert it."

Cassandra, in Greek mythology, was granted the gift of prophecy, but no one believed her predictions. Even though she knew that disaster was approaching the Trojans, she could do nothing to prevent it.

Other writers have written about the vulnerability of New Orleans, but Lewis included in his description the crushing poverty that eventually hampered efforts to evacuate the city's stranded citizens.

In the same way that Lewis showed the dark side of New Orleans behind its glittery surface, "Small Town in Pennsylvania," published in 1972 by the Association of American Geographers, shows a Bellefonte struggling with economic and population decline against a historic setting almost as old as the Constitution.

Although he recognizes the resilience of its residents during hard times, Lewis also notes the "pessimism which overlies the town like a soggy blanket," and warns that if we cannot find room for small towns, "our nation will be the poorer for it."

Shortly after the publication of this work, preservation efforts started the town on a course of renewal that continues to this day. Some people thought the old brick building on Dunlap Street should be torn down, but the Gamble Mill, now a restaurant and art gallery, stands as a symbol of what a determined group can accomplish when they see their surroundings threatened.

Talleyrand Park, Bellefonte Museum for Centre County, Garman Opera House, the Match Factory and the Brockerhoff Hotel are among the restorations that have all come about after the publication of Lewis' loving but realistic look at the town.

Consequence or coincidence? Either way, this time the warnings of a prophet were heeded.

Directions often filled with town history

2005-09-12T12:12:00.000-07:00

For someone like me who gets disoriented in grocery stores, giving directions to strangers can be a challenge. Some questions, such as "Where's the courthouse?" are easy. Others, like "How do you get to Lower Coleville Road?" are harder.

I wisely stayed out of a recent discussion at the Diamond Deli when a motorist wanted to know how to pick up Interstate 80 without going back to Milesburg, where there were traffic delays. And I couldn't help the people who wanted to know how to get to Little Marsh Creek Road.

Sometimes, though, people want recommendations.

When a dad and his daughter asked where they could get a big breakfast, the Waffle Shop seemed like a good choice -- no one ever leaves there hungry. I was with a friend once who asked for pancakes, and when the tower-like structure arrived, she realized she should have ordered the "short stack."

Recently, a young couple asked if there was a dollar store in town. "Next light, turn left, straight ahead on your right."

But when another couple asked how to get to Sandy Ridge Furniture, I was stumped. I knew the place by family name, Roy and Martha Stoltzfus, but not by store name, so I hope those folks found it.

It's easy to confuse streets that have east and west versions or north and south ones. Newly located here, I once directed a friend up steep South Allegheny Street instead of North. By the time she arrived at my house, she was in a state of shock.

Watching a pizza delivery girl trying to maneuver down icy apartment steps on East Curtin Street last winter with her undelivered order, I realized she was looking for the same number on West Curtin.

Sometimes we use old businesses as landmarks. Bellefonte Hardware has been gone for many years, and Schaeffer Hardware not quite as many, but people still call these buildings by their former names. I've lived in my house for 20 years, but it is still Dr. Capers' home.

When I am out of town, I am often asked, "Where is Bellefonte?"

That's what Larry King wanted to know when he interviewed Police Chief Duane Dixon last month on "Larry King Live." The chief's answer was that we're about 10 miles from State College, giving Larry the chance he was probably waiting for, to bring up Joe Paterno and Penn State.

We may be living in reflected glory for now, but if Bellefonte keeps growing, people may some day ask, "Where is State College?"

Summer

2005-09-02T09:44:00.000-07:00

Writer and critic Henry James once said that the most beautiful words in the English language were "summer afternoon." To James and his aristocratic friends, the words must have called up an image of shaded lawns and sedate conversations. For me, growing up, the setting was different but the mood was the same. My summer afternoons existed in a kind of suspended torpor which I hoped would never end.

We didn't have the organized activities and tons of toys that kids have today, but we were never bored. We could catch minnies and crayfish in a nearby stream, make boats out of walnut shells, strip bark from birch branches to chew, blow choke cherries through pea shooters, make dolls out of hollyhocks and wreaths out of maple leaves. Nature was our playground.

And when it rained we could read comic books, which transported us from our small town surroundings to an urban underworld, a foreign country or a mythical kingdom. My favorites were Classic Comics with their artistic renderings of works like "The Count of Monte Cristo" and Wonder Woman, who, with her bullet-proof bracelets and magic lasso, represented a unique figure of female power.

When we had the cash, we could walk to the neighborhood store and deliberate over penny candy: spearmint leaves or Tootsie pops, sour balls or rootbeer barrels? For a nickel boys could get a baseball card in a Fleers Dubble Bubble gum pack, and for a little more girls could get a picture of a movie star on the back of a Dixie cup lid.

Since they are no longer on newsstands, where, I wondered, do kids buy comic books today? A search led me to Steven Tice on Valentine Hill Road who owns Calliope Comics. Here The Green Lantern, Spiderman, Superman, Batman, compete with each other in all their garish glory. But what used to sell for a dime starts now at $2.25. I was relieved to know that Wonder Woman is still going strong.

Do baseball cards still come in bubble gum packs? They do at Jake Tibbens' shop Sportscards Plus on West Water Street where Gheen's store used to be. Most of Jake's stock is in the form of loose cards, of which he must have thousands, but you can still get a pack of Topps with a baseball card for $4.00.

And for candy, there is Jabco's across from the park where some of the candy, sold from antique jars, is still actually a penny.

Cicadas' song an end to summer

2005-09-01T06:31:00.000-07:00

What began as a tentative scraping in July is now a full-fledged chorus. Entomologists call it the cicadas' song, but it is more noise than music.

As the summer wanes, the high-pitched whirring reaches a crescendo, followed by a tragic finale. The male cicada dies after mating, and when the female has finished laying her eggs, she dies also.

What we are hearing now are not the so-called 17-year locusts. A fact sheet from the Penn State Entomology Department identifies them as "dog day cicadas," which appear every year from mid-July through mid-September. They are "large, blackish insects, usually with greenish wing veins."

I have never seen one, but their sound has always signaled, along with other seasonal markers, the end of summer and the start of a new school year.

Stores have been rolling out their back-to-school displays since July. Target's main aisle is paved with fridges, futons and computer desks. The bulletin board at the YMCA posts a daily countdown of the number of days left before school starts. A sandwich board in front of The Hidden Salon advertises back-to-school haircuts. And the August lilies are blooming.

The rhythms of my life have nearly always been dictated by school calendars, first my own school years, then my children's, and then years of teaching.

The first September of retirement, I had to fight the feeling that I should be back in my classroom. In a recurring dream, I am trying to get to school against insurmountable obstacles. Old habits, like old songs, cannot easily be erased.

Besides the song of the cicadas, there's another song I can't get out of my head. At the recent arts and crafts fair, I wandered over to the bandstand to listen to the State College Senior Band playing great old tunes like "Blue Velvet" and "Tuxedo Junction." When band leader Joe Perez announced "Harbor Lights," and Ted Fuller took the mike, I was back at Hecla Park, sometime in the mid-50s, listening to Sammy Kaye's band.

This plaintive song about a couple's sad farewell reminds me that the dance hall is used for storage space now, and the amusement park which surrounded it is abandoned. But the memories, and the song, remain.

Love and loss take many forms, from the life cycle of the cicada to the break-up of a romance, but with sadness comes hope. The new school year will be the best yet. The cicadas will emerge another year for another grand performance. And big bands are coming back.

Auction attendees are filled with patience, passion

2005-08-23T08:52:00.000-07:00

All I need to hear as I approach a sale site is the amplified monotone of the auctioneer and my adrenaline level goes into overdrive. Auction fever is in my blood.

My mother started taking me to sales when I was quite small, and she would always stay 'til the end when the box lots were knocked down. I must have learned something about patience then, because I have sat through heat and hunger on uncomfortable chairs for hours waiting for a particular item to come up.

Some sales stand out for the record prices they bring in. One summer day in 1991, I watched as men from Roan's Auction Gallery in Cogan Station loaded their van in front of Dr. Paul Corman's house next to the library. Catching a glimpse of his collection of Americana, I knew this would be a great sale -- and it was. A painted blanket chest went for $22,000, a shield-back side chair for $14,000, and a decorated 1816 birth certificate for $3,100.

I bought an art deco clock that didn't work, testing the first rule of auctions: Everything is sold "as is."

A three-day sale at the Knorr estate in Stormstown in 1999 was so big it attracted a TV crew. I watched a suit of Japanese armor go for $10,000 and a ceramic frog go up to $3,000 until a bidder came out of nowhere and ran it up to $4,200 before disappearing into the crowd.

Another rule of the auction: Don't get into a bidding war.

I arrived at the Struble sale in Zion last summer intending to take a look at a Stickley corner-cupboard listed in the sale bill. After finding my way to Zion Back Road in the rain and walking down a muddy lane, I was too late for the furniture preview and, unfortunately, did not return the next day to see the cupboard go for $390,000, a figure that took even the auctioneers completely by surprise. Word traveled around town faster than speeders trying to beat the light at Allegheny and Linn.

Buyers are well educated these days. Online auctions, "Antiques Roadshow" and more books on collecting than you can shake an ivory-topped walking stick at have made experts out of everyone. They know their apple-butter stirrers from their butter paddles, their spongeware from their spatterware, their dough trays from their dry sinks.

Which brings up the third rule of auctions: Do your homework.

Garman's future may mirror its bright past

2005-08-12T08:45:00.000-07:00

News of a possible expansion of the Garman Opera House movie theater adds another facet to the architectural gem I first saw as a diamond in the rough during the summer of 1991.

Leigh Melander, a singer and actress from State College, had been given a grant from the Bellefonte Historical and Cultural Association to produce a one-woman show based on a fictional character's memories of performances at the Garman. I was part of a committee to look over the site.

The back wall of exposed brick was painted over in spots with an advertisement for a minstrel show. A 15-foot step ladder dominated the empty stage, lit only by a ghost light, the single light bulb that superstitious stage managers leave burning so the theater ghosts don't play around with the props. Unlike Schwab Auditorium on campus, which has three of them, I'd never heard of a ghost at the Garman.

I remember thinking the stage was perfect for site-specific theater, the newest thing off-Broadway. So why not in Bellefonte?

"Theatre of the Heart" would be performed in the actual abandoned theater where the original performances on which it was based had taken place.

From her entrance, wearing a filmy gown that looked as if it had been pulled from a costume trunk backstage, Leigh ran through a history of the opera house that would have made Daniel Garman proud.

Her character, referred to in the script as Spirit of Theatre, welcomed the audience with the words:

"Finally, you're here. ... I've sat in my beautiful, empty theater feeling myself decay along with it, with only old playbills and several generations of pigeons to keep me company, and I've been angry."

So there was a ghost of the Garman, after all.

Leigh's monologue referred to actors such as Frank Mayo, famous for playing Davy Crockett; the Lilliputian Comedy Company presided over by Gen. and Mrs. Tom Thumb; and local residents such as General Hastings, who presented a thrilling lecture, "Reminiscences of the Johnstown Flood."

Melodramas such as "Ten Nights in a Barroom" were popular, as well as historical dramas like "Shenandoah" and "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Musical numbers recalled the eclectic taste of Victorian-era audiences from the pathos of "An Hour Too Late" to the titillation of "You Naughty Naughty Men."

The words of Col. Jack Spangler, quoted from his opening night speech in the Democratic Watchman on Sept. 12, 1890, have a prophetic ring:

"Long after we are gone, this beautiful edifice will stand here, a source of pleasure to our posterity and a beautiful monument to its builder."

The time is ripe for farmers' markets

2005-08-04T09:58:00.000-07:00

The farmers' market on Allegheny and Howard streets is in full swing.

Last Saturday's stands held bushels of corn, quarts of blueberries, heaps of bell peppers, beans, beets, cucumbers and zucchini, onions and eggplants, potatoes and cabbage -- a whole cornucopia of fresh food everyone has been waiting for after the long dry spell.

We've gotten so used to our growing season that any departure seems like an imposition. The vendors at the market would just smile when people asked when they were going to dig potatoes or pick corn. When they're ready, seemed to be the stock answer.

These folks know all about the seasons and the uncertainty of having everything ripe according to a schedule.

Food writers for the past several years have been sprinkling their prose with words such as "seasonal," "fresh" and "local" like so much chopped cilantro. Their reference point is mostly California, where something is always in season. But there is not much that is seasonal in central Pennsylvania in the dead of winter, which is why summer's bounty seems that much more of a blessing.

Anyone who grew up during food rationing in the 1940s understands the struggle to produce food for a family from a home victory garden. I remember those times too well.

My mother would hire a team to plow up the whole back lot, rent out some of the space, then commandeer my sister and brothers into the work of planting, weeding, picking off beetles and, finally, lugging baskets of produce to the kitchen door for canning.

We had a coal-fired cookstove then, so the kitchen was an inferno. There was barely a breeze to stir the fly ribbons dangling from the ceiling. In this heat we would scald the tomatoes and skin them, or snip the beans and slice them before they were packed into jars and subjected to a boiling time that stretched to the supper hour, by which time no one even felt like eating.

I was disillusioned not long ago to find out that collecting all that tin foil and bacon fat during the war was just a way to make people feel useful. The lessons of the victory garden, however, will always be with me.

Until the self-anointed (with triple virgin olive oil) high priests and priestesses of food come down to Earth and get their hands dirty, their words are wasted on me.

Forget the heirloom and the organic, just give me a good, ripe tomato -- soon.

Too bad chapeaus are now old hat

2005-08-02T14:48:00.000-07:00

A video at the Historical Museum, "Bellefonte 1940," shows scenes of people entering and leaving different churches in town on a single Sunday morning. All the women and girls are wearing hats.

Times change. Scanning the packed pews of well-dressed worshippers at St. John's recently, I saw no hats at all.

It has been some years since the relaxation of the rule that women must cover their heads in church, but I can remember how strictly the nuns at our school observed it. In a pinch, I would have to bobby-pin a crumpled tissue to the top of my head.

Some authorities date the decline of hats to the lowering of automobile roofs, others to the beehive hairdo -- neither of which could accommodate a hat of any size. The informality of modern life is probably another factor, but whatever the cause, hats largely disappeared from the fashion scene by the end of the '60s.

A census report at the library from 1880 lists 10 milliners in the borough, when the population was just more than 3,000. Hatmaking was a respected business in this town.

Locals may recall Nelle Flack, who sold hats from the Katz Clothing Store on South Allegheny Street or Peg Sciabica, who ran a hat shop out of her home on East High Street.

When I helped set up a hat show at the Bellefonte Museum two summers ago, I thought of the women in town who were defined by their hats. Jean McGarvey, for instance, wore hats that had a certain defiant air, like Jean herself, from exclusive shops such as Mary Sachs in Harrisburg. Mrs. Covey wore flowered hats in a more romantic tradition. I never knew the lady from Logan Street who owned the blue cartwheel, but she had great style.

The specialty stores are gone, but FaithCentre Thrift Store has a few vintage hats on display. And the Plaza Centre has many more.

Victorian Rose has handmade Victorian hats from a company in California that has been making them for three generations. They look like confections, deliciously trimmed with feathers, ribbons and lace.

Carol Walker, owner of Victorian Rose, thinks hats are coming back. Recently, a bride sent out wedding invitations requesting that all female guests wear hats.

And there are now seven groups of the Red Hat Society in Bellefonte alone.

If the revolution arrives, I am ready. After selling more than 50 hats at my yard sale last summer and donating bags full to the thrift store, I still have about a 100 left.

Bikers ride past those silly labels

2005-07-22T13:32:00.000-07:00

Spring Street, in front of Wetzler's Funeral Home, was so packed one evening lately that I could hardly work my way through the crowd.

People moved slowly in a line that stretched up the street and around the corner before moving inside the funeral home. Then I saw the motorcycles lined up along the street and filling the parking lot of the Presbyterian Church -- and more were still arriving.

Later, scanning the obituaries, I found one with the line, "He was an avid motorcycle rider."

The crowd that evening had come to pay their respects to one of their own. There would be 75 bikers leading the procession to the burial ground in Benner Township, a testament to the man and to the popularity of the hobby in this area.

Most of the bikers I have known are teachers. None of them fits the scary stereotype of a tattooed menace.

First there was Hal, a soft-spoken guy who was one of the most popular substitutes at the high school when I was working there. He rode a Harley, the love of his life, next to his wife, Natalie.

One day, he asked me to take a look at how he had customized his bike. The tank was a work of airbrushed art, in magenta, purples and gold.

The June issue of Long Rider magazine devotes an entire feature to Hal and his favorite means of transportation.

Anne, a fellow English teacher with the beatific smile of a madonna, loved taking long trips, riding behind her husband to places such as the Great Smokies. Now they travel on a bright-red Harley-Davidson Electra-Glide Fireman's Special. They have been to Sedona, Ariz.; Austin, Texas; Pagosa Springs, Colo.; and Santa Fe and Taos, New Mexico.

Anne, as far as I know, does not have any tattoos.

Nor does Cheryl, who teaches kindergarten at Marion-Walker. Her powder-blue-and-cream Yamaha V-Star complements her delicate coloring. She has ridden her bike to church.

Her husband, Paul, rides a Harley-Davidson Road King "chromed to the hilt" with a Lone Ranger custom paint job on the back.

When Cheryl asks, "Do you ride?" I regretfully say no, though once, by mistake, I checked off "motorcycle" on my driver's license application. Paul says he will take me for a ride, but that's another story.

Today's cyclists are involved in more and more community events, most recently the rally at the high school to benefit the bookmobile. Though they may be moving into the mainstream, motorcycles will never lose their aura of risk and romance.

Borough is blooming with colors of summer

2005-07-14T16:38:00.000-07:00

The beginning of July looked like the end of August: Lawns were scorched. Ferns were wilting. My marigolds died.

Shakespeare, in "Sonnet 18," said, "And summer's lease hath all too short a date."

This year, it seems to be shorter than ever.

So why, I wonder, as I walk around town, are the wildflowers doing so well?

Bright orange day lilies burst out of the ground along Howard Street, replacing the purple phlox that bloomed last month. The side of Wilson Street near the cemetery is lined with blue-petalled chicory. Honeysuckle covers a bank on the opposite side of the street, and a patch of crown vetch has staked out a claim by the steps to Centre Crest.

Some environmental groups label crown vetch, along with purple loosestrife, invasive species. Imported for the purpose of ground cover, the plants soon ran out of control.

Along the Benner Pike, crown vetch has spread so profusely it threatens to leap the highway, or at least cover the carcass of a deer that has been lying by the side of the road for some weeks now. Acres of Rockview property are covered by the pink-flowered vine.

I asked a friend who is an expert gardener what the difference is between a wildflower and a weed. She said if something grows where you don't want it to, it's a weed.

I look at my front yard carpeted now with white and pink clover and remember spring, when there were violets and forget-me-nots. They remind me of a meadow, so I say they are wildflowers and they can stay.

Also on my guest list, because of their symmetry, are buttercups and daisies. The petals of these flowers represent fibonacci numbers, which are related to the Greek idea of the golden mean.

Pokeweed is another symmetrical plant I see on my walks, but its berries and roots are poisonous. The spikes of plantains are actually a flower, but I call them weeds.

Most people consider dandelions a pest, but we used to play games with them, holding them under our chins to see the reflection that meant we liked butter or splitting the stem with our tongues to make curls. We would open the pods of milkweed to find the silky-haired seeds inside and make bouquets of Queen Anne's lace, savoring their carroty smell.

I may have to replace the dead marigolds in my window boxes with artificial flowers, or if worse comes to worse, transplant some crown vetch. It should do well.

Bellefonte has a way of luring outsiders

2005-07-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

My parents' house in Lock Haven, which was also my grandparents' house, was sold in 1994, but I only recently got around to sorting through the boxes of odds and ends from "down home" that I had stored in my basement. Among the old ration books and prayer books, opera scores, letters, and photographs were yellowed newspaper clippings of major events in family members' lives.

The April 11, 1932, edition of the Lock Haven Express carries a front-page story and photograph with the headline "Mr. and Mrs. Rohe celebrate golden wedding at dinner." George W. and Mary Carroll Rohe were my maternal grandparents. Their last name is correctly pronounced as two syllables, but it always came out "Roy" in Lock Haven.

After their marriage in 1882, before they moved to Lock Haven, the article noted the couple "also lived for a time at Bellefonte."

Maybe that explains the almost visceral attraction I have for this town rather than for my actual hometown. Maybe some rogue strand of DNA has drawn me here to Spring Creek instead of the Susquehanna. Maybe, in my interior landscape, the hilly terrain of Bellefonte has replaced the flood plain of my childhood.

I remember, now, my mother telling me that Grandpa and Grandma worked at the Bush House -- he as night clerk, she as a maid -- until one day one of the cooks didn't show up and someone said, "Mary makes good pies." Those were the days when six passenger trains a day pulled into the station. Grandma would have been baking lots of pies.

My move to Bellefonte was preceded by one of those flashes of insight that come out of the blue. On a May evening in 1975, I attended "An Evening of Chamber Music," sponsored by the Talleyrand Park Committee. It was an elegant event, with a string quartet at the Reynolds Mansion and a woodwind quintet at another beautiful home across the street.

I stood on Allegheny Street and thought, "Someday I am going to live here." Five years later, I had an apartment on West Linn Street.

When I was teaching at the high school, we used to say there were two kinds of people in Bellefonte: the ones who were born here and everyone else. In this tightly knit community of families that go back generation after generation, I will always be something of an outsider.

But now I am in good company, as more and more outsiders are discovering the charm that drew me here in the first place.

Quarry is no place for spectators

2005-06-29T12:40:00.000-07:00

On warm, summer nights, I have heard through the open bedroom windows shouts and laughter coming from the region of the quarry. This would be the abandoned Bellefonte Quarry, owned by Graymont, the lime company with operations in Pleasant Gap and Coleville.

Curious about the site, I asked several people how to get there. No one said it was off-limits.

So when I set out with a friend on a sunny afternoon on a quest for the quarry, we thought this would be just a hike in the woods. The tragedy of another drowning in the quarry pond had not yet taken place.

Thinking about it now, with a police helicopter hovering over the area, the warnings should have been clear: This was an accident waiting to happen.

After a lot of walking along an ATV trail littered with odd bits of clothing, old car parts and even a junked car overturned in a ditch, we came to a "Danger: No Trespassing" sign facing the area we had just come through. We figured we must have missed the quarry and should head out in the opposite direction.

By this time we were surrounded by warning signs. It was time to leave.

An online search for "Bellefonte Quarry" came up with a number of sites that revealed the real reason, other than hanging out, for interest in the quarry. What may seem like a secret to outsiders is a rock climber's paradise. Web sites are filled with explicit descriptions and pictures of the different climbs. Each one has a name, such as El Crackitan and White Lightning, Blade Runner and Realm of the Senseless.

One site declines to give specific directions to the quarry. Others are more forthright, explaining where to park and how to proceed to the Upper Quarry and the Lower Quarry. Only a couple of sources mention that technically everyone who goes in is trespassing.

Many stories have been told about the quarry. Before the drowning, the one I recall most clearly was of the young man in 1996 who dived to his death, having struck his head on a rock ledge. The water's deep color deceives; the pond is treacherous.

Hugh Manchester recalled an earlier incident in a 1996 Big Spring column in the Centre Daily Times: A young man who was reported missing by swimming companions in 1942 showed up back in Bellefonte after the war.

The safest way to see the quarry is to look at pictures online. There, you can see climbers rappelling and belaying and whatever else they do in spite of snakes, the danger of falling and $300 fines.

Two guys sitting on their porch near where my friend and I came out told us, "They haven't started kicking people out yet."

Checking with the police department, I was told "Oh, yes, they have."

And now, one hopes, they will do so more than ever.

At Centre Crest's open house, one could really feel at home

2005-06-24T10:50:00.000-07:00

From the outside, Centre Crest, on East Howard Street, looks like any well-maintained apartment building. Only ramps, handrails and rocking chairs at the entrance give any clue that this is a residence for mostly elderly people who require nursing care.

I pass Centre Crest every day, glancing up past the terraces bordered by mountain stone to the red-brick roofline, often wondering what goes on inside. A recent Sunday afternoon, when the Centre Crest Auxiliary held an open house, seemed like a good time to find out.

The crowd around the refreshment table was about three deep and included folks in wheelchairs, a friendly dog and many of the members of the auxiliary, whose philosophy is "to provide a warm, comforting home environment for the residents."

Accepting an iced tea from Sharon Eminhizer, auxiliary president, I clipped on a "Visitor" tag and looked around, not quite sure what to expect, but thinking this would be a good time to look up friends for whom Centre Crest is home.

I passed a cage of exotic birds and a tank of tropical fish. I saw dining rooms where tables were covered with turquoise cloths and further brightened by flower arrangements.

In an upstairs hallway, I glanced into the room of a friend who was waiting to be taken down to dinner and saw what I thought was a stuffed cat on a chair. Taking a closer look, I saw it was a real cat, snow white, and as much at home at Centre Crest as any of the other residents.

The nightstand of one friend's room held her collection of dolls and stuffed animals. An entire wall in another friend's room was covered with family pictures, a gallery she could enjoy when going to sleep and waking up.

Years ago, when I was contemplating a move, a friend said to me, "Home is wherever you decide to make it."

I thought about this on my brief tour of Centre Crest, recognizing the efforts of staff and volunteers to provide not just the look of home but also the feeling of family and comfort that comes from encouraging residents to invest in their surroundings. Whether that means watering a plant or feeding the fish or just arranging their favorite items, the payoff comes in the form of increased alertness and less loneliness.

Unlike the pictures in home magazines that seem so designed and impersonal it's hard to imagine anyone actually living there, Centre Crest is a real home for real people.

Educators could use schooling

2005-06-16T10:53:00.000-07:00

The front parlor of the Bellefonte Museum is, for now, a one-room schoolhouse. With books lying open on the students' desks and an exercise on the blackboard, you might think the kids had just run outside for recess.

"School Days," an exhibit that runs until Sept. 3, is also a retrospective of teaching materials through the years, from old McGuffey readers up through "Dick and Jane."

On the teacher's desk are a globe, an apple and a handbell. There is no jar of M&Ms. There are no smiley-face stickers -- the self-esteem movement still was generations away.

I recall a teachers' in-service meeting when we were given handouts listing 100 ways to tell the kids how great they were. I never believed in telling students they had done a good job when they hadn't fooled anyone.

And I doubt that teachers in the old days worried a lot about students' self-esteem.

Most learning in the old schools was by rote, a method given a D-minus by modern educators. I still don't know a better way to teach multiplication tables, even though I can never remember 8x7 or 9x6.

And then there is the lost art of memorizing poetry, which seems to have disappeared along with metal lunchboxes and slide rules.

Because the logistics of instructing as many as 20 pupils at various grade levels had to be met by some means, the one-room school became innovative in techniques such as small group instruction, independent study and open learning. When one group went up front to recite, the others worked at their desks. When a lesson was introduced to one group, it could be previewed by another.

Old schools spent more time on penmanship than we do today, because in those days legibility and speed were assets that could lead to a job. Students were grouped by ability rather than interests and were not offered choices about what they wanted to learn. Discipline, especially self-discipline, was an unwritten but essential part of the curriculum.

At a retirement party for a fellow teacher recently, we started talking about the old days: the food fights, fist fights and disrespect -- what we called at the time "being in the trenches."

I understand things are better now. But I think we could have saved ourselves some time if we'd had smaller schools, smaller classes and more individualized instruction.

In other words, we could have taken a lesson from the old schoolmarms and schoolmasters ourselves.

Do pow-wows and dowsing still hold water?

2005-06-12T10:49:00.000-07:00

Can a psychic locate a missing district attorney?

Can a folk doctor stop a nosebleed or banish warts?

Where is the line between science and metaphysics, superstition and religion? Education and upbringing have a lot to do with where that line is drawn.

My great-grandmother could pow-wow, not in the American Indian sense, but in the German Christian tradition of healing that involved recitations from Scripture and sometimes massage.

For example, if a baby did not gain weight, a condition called the take-offs, she could cure it with an appropriate reading, possibly from John George Hohman's 1820 book "The Long Lost Friend."

If I believed in channeling, I could have consulted her about my first child, who weighed the same at six weeks as she did at birth.

I talked to two people lately who were pow-wowed as children -- one with a growth on her finger, which subsequently disappeared; the other with serious burns, which healed. I found out that the secrets of pow-wowing are passed from one family member to another, but only from man to woman or woman to man.

And, yes, I am told, there still are pow-wows in the area, and they can stop bleeding.

Another folk tradition, which has somewhat the same mystical qualities as pow-wowing, is dowsing, a way of locating underground water, and some say even lost bodies, by using divining rods.

You can make divining rods by straightening coat hangers and holding one in each hand while walking slowly over the ground. When the wires or rods cross, you are over the source of water.

Dowsing is still practiced around here by professionals, but some people tell me anyone can do it.

Carla Baron, the psychic consulted by the Bellefonte Police Department in their search for missing District Attorney Ray Gricar, was Carla Meyer when she lived in Lock Haven.

She and my daughter were on the same school trip to Paris, where Carla proved fluent in French. I remember her as a prodigy at the piano, and if she can help find a missing person, more power to her.

The scientific point of view accepts or rejects a theory depending on empirical evidence. Skeptics question everything; suckers believe anything.

Some people say if you want to sell your home, bury a statue of St. Joseph upside down in the back yard. Curious to see if the statues were available locally, I called three places and couldn't find any.

Real estate must be doing all right without them.

A peek inside M&T Bank building brings back sweet memories

2005-06-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

From the street, the interior renovation of the M&T Bank building grows more ominous every day.

Signs warning "Danger," "Hard Hat Area" and "No Trespassing" hang from chain-link and caution fences. Plywood covers one front window. A chute from the second floor spits trash into a Dumpster on High Street. From somewhere deep inside the lobby comes the angry sound of a jack hammer.

A few days ago, I glanced into the open front door. Besides the chandeliers, nothing visible remains of the opulent space that included, according to "Pierce's File: Commerce Bellefonte" of March 30, 1988, a counter "constructed of mahoganized cherry bearing a polish that brings out the richest color of the wood."

It is gone, along with the vaults and the brass tellers' cages.

The Centre County commissioners agreed a year ago to purchase the building from the parent company in Buffalo, N.Y., as a courthouse annex to provide much-needed space for a fourth county judge. The decision meant the building would be preserved, but changes would have to be made to the inside.

I remember being intimidated when I first opened an account about 25 years ago at what was then Mid-State Bank. First, there was the ceiling height, which seemed to soar to the stratosphere, diminishing everything at ground level, including me. Then there was the formal feeling of a bank that looked like a bank, not a gas station or a restaurant or a dentist's office.

But there also was a human side to the banking business, which I discovered when I wanted to take out a mortgage for a new home. The loan officer at Mid-State was not in; he had taken his son to a ballgame.

I tried the other banks. On that Friday afternoon in spring, there was no one in Bellefonte to lend me money. So on Monday, I went back to Mid-State.

Part of the mystique of the building was its rumored third-floor ballroom. When the commissioners ran a video tape of the building for an open house before the renovations began, there it was, in at least part of its former glory. Besides a ballroom, there also was a billiard room and lounge area for members of Mason Lodge, Bellefonte Chapter No. 241.

The exterior of the building is remarkably maintained, from its copper roof and weathervane-topped turret to its Palladian windows and pressed-brick walls.

Like any makeover, the process is painful. But the rewards, which we will see in November, should be worth it.

Riff-raffing is a trash tradition

2005-05-25T08:33:00.000-07:00

Donald Trump may think he has perfected the art of the deal, but I reserve that honor for riff-raffers, the folks who cruise the streets in their trucks and vans the night before the borough's bulk pickup.

They don't just get things at a good price; they get them for free.

As soon as residents start dragging their stuff out to the curb, the riff-raffers are there, sizing up other people's trash with a practiced eye. Some of them specialize in appliances or scrap metal or building materials. Others are generalists: They go for variety.

Last year, I had everything out by late afternoon -- the rickety office chair, the Selectric typewriter still in semi-working condition, the wicker porch furniture -- and the riff-raffers passed all of it up.

I felt rejected. My stuff was not good enough.

Long after dark, I could hear the trucks going past. By morning, some of my items had disappeared, but not the office chair or the typewriter. And along the way, I had gained a dust buster.

Twenty years ago, when I moved out of my apartment and bought a home, I heard the buzz on the street that the borough would be picking up riff-raff the next week. I had a different meaning of the word in mind then, more like the way I look hiking around town in sneakers and a hooded sweatshirt.

I discovered that riff-raffing is an honorable tradition in this town, maybe a cut above dumpster diving, though I have been tempted in that direction more than once myself. Call them salvagers or scavengers or even gleaners, riff-raffers are an important part of the recycling chain in our throwaway society.

The other day when I was in the Bellefonte Variety Store at the corner of Pike Alley and North Allegheny Street, I asked Mrs. May, owner and manager with her husband, how the shop cats, Riff and Raff, got their names.

She said the family was sitting around the campfire one night trying to think of names for the two strays they had just acquired. They played around with names of appliances, since that was the business they were in, but when her daughter-in-law came up with Riff and Raff, the names seemed just right. Some of the family members were riff-raffers themselves.

Like the cats who have found a new home, I am hoping that someone this year will have a home for a tiki light, a vintage TV set and almost all the parts of a gas barbecue grill.

Tiny things hit home in big ways

2005-05-22T09:57:00.000-07:00

A Saturday in town could be just an ordinary day or, if you add it all up, an extraordinary one filled with pleasures that defy the putdown implied in the word "feel-good."

May 7, was that kind of Saturday for me.

First thing in the morning, a boy in a baseball uniform came to the door collecting for Little League. His father smiled from the sidewalk as I asked, "Are there girls on the team? Do they get to play?"

When he answered "yes" to both questions, I stuffed a dollar in his canister, thinking of the old days when the game was strictly for boys.

At the market, the bakery lady ran after a customer who had asked for sticky rolls. She had found one last package in her van and was happy to sell it to him. The egg lady eyed my torn jeans, which she could use for a rug she is weaving out of old ones -- as soon as I find time to get a new pair.

Cutting through the cemetery, I wondered why the caretaker stopped his mower. He wanted to make sure that nothing got thrown out at me from the blade.

On Howard Street, I looked over items at a yard sale and found out from the homeowner how to identify good cast iron. I may make a fortune yet.

Back on my street, two little boys took turns with a bike. One was barefoot -- a sure sign of warmer weather after a bone-chilling spring.

At evening services, Deacon Tom read a letter to mothers everywhere, thanking them for all the little things they do. And little things are what this day was all about, at least until I got home at 6 p.m. to watch the Kentucky Derby.

Jeremy Rose, riding Afleet Alex, the sentimental favorite to win, fought his way to what looked like the lead. As everyone now knows, he came in third in a breathtaking finish.

When I had Jeremy in senior homeroom, I missed him one morning when I took attendance. He came up to me later and said, "Mrs. Bechdel, you marked me absent this morning. I was there."

It's true. I didn't see him in the back of the room that day, but I couldn't miss him in his green-and-gold jockey silks riding a gorgeous horse in the country's biggest race.

For one Saturday in May, it was great to look past the irony and suspicion of our times and enjoy life's simple pleasures without apology.