what about the plastic animals?

Snoopy in Pittsburgh

Busy as a bee today so let me just ask a question or two.  Why is Snoopy resting on his dog house in downtown Pittsburgh?  Furthermore, and rhetorically so you don't need to answer, why did I focus on the building with the many plate glass windows in the background rather than the subject of the photos?

Great Allegheny Passage

Yesterday's paper had a story about the Great Allegheny Passage bike trail that runs from McKeesport, PA to Cumberland, MD.  I was on that trail!  I had a very pleasant ride through Connellsville and up to Dawson and back one morning.  The arch greets riders as they head south into Connellsville.

Cyclone Fence

After eating lunch in Grove City I walked up and down the main street.  There were zillions of these pea-sized balls along the railroad tracks.  The balls have some iron in them but not all of them would stick to a magnet.  I would have picked up more to satisfy my pack rat tendencies, but I figured camera-carrying out-of-towner messing around on the tracks in a small town might attract law enforcement attention I wasn't seeking.

What to do now that I'm done with last fall's trip?  I never did finish writing about the trip to Milwaukee last summer, or the trip to Minnesota and Wisconsin the year before.  I've also got a bunch of photos from the southwest from a couple of months ago.  There's always New York, too, I suppose.  I need some time to sort this out.  Luckily there are two weeks of vacation days that need to be used by the end of June.  I'll be back next week or the week after.

The David Stroup Fountain

It's the David Stroup Fountain in Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania.  Stroup was a 19th century candy merchant in Bloomsburg who left money for a fountain.  The fountain was cast, probably not a mile from where I'm currently sitting, by the J. L. Mott Iron Works in the Bronx, and was erected in Bloomsburg in 1892.  The fountain began to deteriorate in the 1950s and was removed in 1966.  Two local residents began restoring the fountain as best they could in 1982.  In the early 2000s the original plans were found (links to pdf) and the fountain was completely rebuilt, except for a crane on top, in 2002.  In 2005 the crane was found and restored to its rightful place.  You can almost see it as the bird spits a line of water in the bottom photo.

I wasn't expecting an interesting back story.  I thought it was a pretty fountain that needed its picture taken.

Bloomsburg seems like an enjoyable little college town.  I had stopped there once before, but this time I walked around a bit to stretch my legs before driving the rest of the way back home.

Believe it or not there's only one more post from last fall's trip.  It will be out of order because I have yet to take a picture of what I collected back in Grove City.

Five Pillows and Four D's

Five Pillows

DeAngelis Delightfully Different Donuts (the donut rotates!)

Pumpkin Donut

The Clarion I stayed at in Monaca, Pennsylvania couldn't have been open more than a week or two.  It smelled of fresh carpet and paint and there was nary a scratch or scuff mark to be seen.  They also had a guest laundry room.  Even though I was only going to be on the road one more day it was nice to have a chance to wash my clothes.

DeAngelis Delightfully Different Donuts is just over the river in Rochester.  I don't know about "delightfully different" but the pumpkin donut was deliciously delightful.

Ending at the Point of Beginning

It's the Ohio-Pennsylvania state line where Ohio Rt 39 magically becomes Pennsylvania Rt 68.  The northern tip of West Virginia is across the Ohio River behind where I was standing.  The pothole is on the Ohio side.  This is the end of the Ohio portion of the trip.

Ever notice on a map how the townships and counties of the Northeast are irregularly shaped, but rectangular from the Midwest all the way out to the Pacific?  The change in shape is because of the Land Ordinance of 1785, which called for the surveying of land into square townships six miles on a side.  Each square mile was a section of 640 acres.  One of the 36 sections was set aside for a public school, four were given to Revolutionary War veterans as land bounties for their service.  The remaining sections were then subdivided or sold whole to settlers and speculators.  The starting point for all those squares, the Point of Beginning, was right here. 

More precisely, on September 30th, 1785, Thomas Hutchins, first Geographer of the United States, started laying out the townships from a point 1112 feet south of here.

See?  That geography degree gets used every once in a while.

Absolutely No Trespassing

What is the story with Pennsylvania?  Philadelphia seems normal but several of the small towns I've been in the past couple of years have been quirky to say the least.  Luckily I enjoy the quirky.

Where in Washington, Pa. would you expect to see this fine construction paper sign? 

Before I answer that question let me mention that Washington, Pa. is off I-70 south of Pittsburgh.  As you drive west on the interstate the exit signs for Washington, Pa. are clearly marked "Washington, Pa" and not "Washington" so, I suppose, the weary traveler doesn't confuse Washington, Pa. with Washington, DC some 250 miles away.

Anyway, Washington, Pa. was the town I had in mind last month when I wondered why some places are more cranky than others.  Many storefronts downtown had some sort of "no hanging out" sign in their windows.  This particular storefront, a closed jewelry store, had several construction paper signs.  As I was hanging out, admiring the signs I noticed that they were in three adjacent storefronts.  The only active-looking store was that for an attorney's office.  Yes, if you live in Washington, Pa. you could be represented by a lawyer who spends much time making signs with construction paper, scissors and glue sticks.

Hope

Steubenville, Ohio

Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania

I hope everyone votes tomorrow.  Election day is a Columbia holiday.  The weather looks good so I will do my usual election day routine:  Vote early and go for a long walk around town.

Harmony Society Cemetery

On the way back last week I drove through the town of Harmony, Pennsylvania.  I had a fleeting thought  that Harmony was somehow related to New Harmony, Indiana.  On the outskirts of town there was a yard surrounded by a weathered old stone fence.  That intrigued me so I stopped for a look.

The yard is the cemetery for the Harmony Society, which was a communal sect from Germany that settled Harmony in 1804.  George Washington passed through, and was shot at, the site of the town in 1753, when it was a Lenni Lenape village called Murdering Town.  Anyway, the Harmonists lasted until 1815 when they sold the town to Mennonites and moved to Indiana to found New Harmony.  The Harmonists then returned to found nearby Economy in 1824. 

Harmonists covered their graves with rocks and did not erect tombstones.  They paid the Mennonites to put up the stone fence in 1869.  The gate pivots on a central axis.  It was a little scary but I did not get trapped inside.

I know what you're thinking.  If the Harmonists did not use tombstones, what's the deal with Johannes Rapp?  Johannes was the son of Harmony Society founder Johann Georg Rapp.  Junior died in an industrial accident.  The gravestone was donated by non-Harmonists, which a nearby sign explained "the society accepted reluctantly". 

In English the epitaph reads "Here lies and rests the body of Johannes Rapp... This stone made of clay will stand here until decay breaks down the salt of the earth to a new body (which) happy of live will arise".

Zane Grey's House

By coincidence, as far as I could tell, the western writer Zane Grey lived in this house just upstream from the Delaware Aqueduct near where the Lackawaxen and Delaware meet.  It was in this house that Grey wrote his most well-known work Riders of the Purple Sage.  Today the house is home to the Zane Grey Museum which is administered by the National Park Service.  The museum was closed when I visited.  According to one of the park brochures I picked up, Grey enlarged this house twice in an attempt to get further away from his growing family while he was writing.