A Walk Around the Block!

Most of the walks Sammy and I have taken over the past three weeks or more have been pretty much concentrated on walking down to Peale (the ghost town) or out along Cooper Two where there has been a very large mine reclamation job finally finishing up out there.

Today however, I decided we would walk around town -leaving my house and going up a little way past our postal cluster boxes and then turning down Clearfield Street to walk through the section of the village always called "Dobry Town."

This particular section of the village was populated mainly for many years by people of the Slovak ethnicity and as such, from early on until probably the late 60s and even into the early 70s, there was not much in the way of cross-cultural communication with people in that end of town and those who lived atop the hill or down in the gully along the street where I live and where I grew up. The section where I live is referred to as "West Clymer" although why they called it that and still do is beyond me since it is actually in the eastern end of the village. Go figure, huh? But this section as well as the hill top has always been considered to be for the Swedish families and their descendants and they and the Slovaks rarely intermingled for many, many years. Silly, isn't it, to think of such prejudices that existed here then but they did and boy, you didn't usually break those cultural barriers back when I was a kid!

But anyway, to walk around the village on this route comes out to be almost exactly a two mile walk from start to finish and the two hills involved are not really steep therefore I don't mind this walk, provided I head UP the road from my house and not by going down the road cause then, the hill between the bridge below my street that goes up into Dobry Town is long and a hard pull for me then till I reach the top! (Certainly I am going to take the easiest route to walk ya know. Hope you didn't think I'd gone completely over the deep end with my walking, now did you?)

But anyway, these pictures are nothing fantastic -just a few simple sights I saw and that I liked too.

This is the first thing I saw that caught my eye.
These pictures -of raspberries ripening -were taken just before the house in Dobry Town that used to belong to the Palush family but it has been vacant for many, many years now. I saw some ripening raspberries at two other spots along my walk today too -one bush being under a big old hemlock tree just up the street from my house in front of the home that used to belong to Andy (Benny) and Florence Nadzom. Really amazed me to see those berries growing there right under the hemlock's branches!

Just up and around the curve a little piece -just past Irene Danko's family home and slightly beyond where former residents in this spot -Tessa Schuller and Babe Terry -lived a long time ago, I saw these flowers. I can't say what they are because I have no clue as to the identity of the tiny purple blossoms in the upper photo nor do I have a clue as to what the white flower is on the big bush in the backdrop of the lower picture either! A botanist or horticulturalist I am not, that's for darned sure. But I don't recall ever having seen either of these blossoms before and thought they were both very pretty. The one in the lower photo only had a couple of bloomers right now but the bush was just loaded with all kinds of bud that looked like they are ready to explode any day now. I'll have to remember to venture back over there perhaps at the end of this week to see if the whole bush is abloom by then perhaps.

Doesn't this sight above kind of make you think you are out in farming territory -just driving along a little side lane or something? This was taken just beyond the flower pictures above and is of some miniature horses or ponies -not sure which exactly -grazing in the field beside the house that used to belong to Joe and Pauline Petrof Bosak. Yeah - this is sort of a mini-farmette right smack in the middle of the village!

Because I happen to love roses -virtually any kind, any color -although I love the yellow roses or the white ones the best -I snapped this picture of this rose bush -I think these are rambling roses or wild roses -not sure what they are really called. But anyway, this bush was in bloom alongside of the garage that had been part of the property where John (Crocky) and Evelyn Johnson Prokop had lived when I was a kid. Just hit me as so pretty a sight is all this was.









And finally, on my little two-mile tour today, Sammy and I encountered this cat across the street in front of Bosak's old garage. I was quite surprised by the demeanor of this cat who didn't make any attempt whatsoever to take off running when it saw Sam and I walking nearer to it! Sam even got really up close and personal with the cat too as he sniffed it several times before crouching down in front of it and barking a bit. Truthfully, since he is accustomed to our cats here -mainly to Fluff-Nuts being his playmate and sometimes even his sleeping partner too -I think Sam's gesture in barking at the cat the way he did was to try to entice the cat to play with him -which of course was a complete failure in that respect.

When we walked away, the cat was still sitting there though in the same position, not having moved at all with Sam's intrusions there!

So there you have it -not that much to see around here most of the time -which probably makes a lot of folks wonder what the heck I see about this tiny town that entices me.

Maybe it is simply that it is this small, for openers and that I knew so many of the former residents and still do know a lot of the residents here today -although not near as many as I knew when I was a kid. Why is that I wonder that people move in here now, even close by me, and for some reason, it is not near as likely that people will get acquainted quickly or easily and become good neighbors and even friends such as life was back when I was a kid?

Probably I stay on here simply because it is that thing called "HOME!"

My oldest uncle lived for many, many years down in and around Pittsburgh and built a beautiful two-story brick home too in Monroeville, but yet, he never referred to that house as "home" using that term when he was talking about this town, this house where I live, which was always "HOME" to him too. Even though he lived more years around Pittsburgh/Monroeville than he ever did here.

Yeah, go figure, huh?