Odds and Ends and Some Important Stuff, Too

Odds and Ends and Some Important Stuff, Too

I've been reading a book called Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry, and it has brought to mind many hometown memories of many years ago.

I remember a tall white billboard made up of individual small boards that stood at the edge of the playground at the Kantner school building. On it were the names of men, some I knew from seeing them around town, and some I didn't know because they had not returned from fighting in Europe or Asia during WWII. Those I didn't know had stars beside their names. The stars meant they had been killed in the line of duty. They died protecting freedom, and I am forever grateful to them and their families.

Even in a town as small as Kantner and surrounding Quemahoning Township, men had gone thousands of miles from home and fought to protect freedom for the rest of us. I was always in awe of the number of names on the billboard.

Since then, I've been to Washington, D.C., to find my cousin's name on the Vietnam War Memorial. He, too, gave his life protecting freedom, but the war he fought did not have the support of his countrymen as did WWII.

At high school graduation they told us that the world was waiting not only for us to get jobs, marry, and raise families, it was also waiting for us to make our contributions to society. We had a responsibility. I remember spending quite a bit of time that night—after midnight-- walking around the school grounds and wondering what contribution I would make. (We lived right across the street from the school, so it wasn't far from home to walk.) And now, I wonder, as most of us do, have I made any lasting contribution to this world?

We seemed to have had a camaraderie in Kantner that seems to me to be missing today. We played baseball, or rode bikes, or played hide and seek almost every day. I remember in later years, several times talking with high school friends about what we could do to improve the economy of our hometown area and for the rest of Somerset County. From what I can tell, the economy of Somerset County is better than it was when we were in high school, but I don't believe I've ever done anything to help. I hope and trust that some of my friends have.

I remember the one-lane bridge across Stonycreek just below the high school, and I remember the right-angle turns needed to both get on and get off the bridge. Some time after I had moved away, a tractor trailer driver did not quite negotiate the turn onto the bridge correctly. The trailer caught the edge of the bridge and pulled it off its moorings into the creek. I've often thought of that truck driver and imagined how he must have felt. I know there was quite a bit of inconvenience for the community. You couldn't get from Kantner to Turkeyfoot Hill by just going over the bridge. You had to either go through Stoystown to Hooversville and back up route 53 or out route 30 to find a road that cut back through the brush to the top of Turkeyfoot.

Old Route 30, the Lincoln Highway, went right through the heart of Kantner, but that was before my time. As I was growing up, the Lincoln Highway bypassed Kantner and Stoystown almost entirely. They couldn't bypass the hills, so truckers had to be careful as they descended the hill from Stoystown or Emerald Park and patient as they ascended the hill on the other side. The most serious thing my father ever told me about driving was NOT to turn off the Lincoln Highway onto route 53 into Kantner if a truck was coming down the hill behind me.

I remember passing a tractor trailer just before the top of the mountain coming from Bedford County. It wasn't far past the top of the mountain till he was on the bumper of my 1951 Chevy, pushing me to 60, 65, and 70 miles per hour. There was NO WAY I was turning off route 30 into Kantner that day. I was just pushing my little Chevy as fast as it would go. By the time we got part way up the hill to Stoystown, I had pulled ahead, so I could get off the Lincoln Highway safely.

When I worked for Lohr Feed and Implement, the company took care of the school buses for Forbes School Distirct. One year there had been difficulty getting one of the buses to start. As I remember it, a chain was hooked from a tractor to the front of the school bus. I was in the driver seat of the bus, and it was towed part-way up the hill toward Stoystown on the Lincoln Highway. The bus was pulled around so it was heading down hill toward Kantner. I believe, at this point, I was relieved of the seat in the bus and someone more experienced got behind the wheel while I was to drive the tractor back. The bus was allowed to coast part-way down the hill and the clutch was popped. As I recall it, the bus didn't start, it just slowly coasted to the bottom of the hill, the chain was rehooked, and the bus was returned to Lohr Feed and Implement with me once again at the wheel. I suppose the bus was repaired and started sometime, but not that day.

Another day at Lohr Feed and Implement one of the men in the shop looked at me with a sly grin on his face and said, “Back that wagon out there into the garage.” “That wagon” was one that had front wheels that turned, and the tractor was a narrow front-end Farmall. I got on the tractor seat and wondered why so many of the shop guys were standing near the garage door watching. As soon as I started to back the wagon, I realized why they were watching. I couldn't get the wagon to go where I wanted it to go. I needed to move it a little to the left, so I turned the tractor wheel to the right. The wagon didn't go left, so I turned the tractor wheel to the left, and the wagon still didn't go left. For a while, all I succeeded in doing was get the wagon and tractor at right angles to each other with the back wheel of the tractor almost touching the wagon. After experimenting for a while, I finally got the wagon in the door – the wagon almost against one side of the door and the tractor practically against the other side of the door. I guess I provided the entertainment that day because everyone had a big smile when I finally got off the tractor seat.