Mountain Home, December 2019

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The Town That Saved Christmas (Again) A New Festival Celebrates How Wellsboro Kept America’s Christmas Trees Shining During World War II

By Carrie Hagen

Ithaca Guitar Works at 50 Avis’s Liberty Book Shop Turns 20 Oregon Hill Winery Comes to Wellsboro

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Volume 14 Issue 12

14 A Very Fine Line

The Town That Saved Christmas (Again)

By Cindy Davis Meixel

Memories, like the line for Bucky’s trees, go on forever.

16 Wine on Main Street

By Carrie Hagen

A new festival celebrates how Wellsboro kept America’s Christmas trees shining during World War II.

By Beth Williams

Oregon Hill comes to Wellsboro.

22 Santa Has to Go to

School!?

By B. Mark Schmerling

Yes, and Pete “Coudy Santa” Wyatt has never looked back.

6 Books and a Bed

28 Sharing the Harvest

By Gayle Morrow

By Roger Kingsley

Pennsylvania deer hunters help feed those in need.

At 20, Avis’s Liberty Book Shop adds an Airbnb.

30 The Chef’s Table

By Cornelius O’Donnell

Our classy columnist shares some holiday classics.

32 Who Is George

Washing Machine?

By Karey Solomon

Our writer chronicles a colorful life with his Italian-American family.

26 Finding Your Musical Partner

38 Rockin’ the Wedges

By Ann Duckett

By Dave Milano

For the holidays, build a cheese board and pair the perfect wines.

Fifty years of Ithaca Guitar Works.

42 Back of the Mountain

By Linda Stager Dickens dawning.

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Cover by Gwen Button. Cover photo of Emme Reifer, by Bernadette Chiaramonte. This page (top) Grant "Skip" Cavanaugh worked in the factory and plays a monumental role in preserving and sharing the memories (and memorabilia) made there. by Caleb Williams, (second) courtesy Linda Roller; (bottom) courtesy Ithaca Guitar Works.

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w w w. m o u n ta i n h o m e m ag . co m Editors & Publishers Teresa Banik Capuzzo Michael Capuzzo Associate Publisher George Bochetto, Esq. D i r e c t o r o f O pe r a t i o n s Gwen Button Managing Editor Gayle Morrow S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Joseph Campbell, Robin Ingerick, Richard Trotta Circulation Director Michael Banik Accounting Amy Packard Design Gwen Button, Cover Design Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Mike Cutillo, Dave DeGolyer, Ann E. Duckett, Melissa Farenish, Elaine Farkas, Carrie Hagen, Paul Heimel, Lisa Howeler, Don Knaus, Nicole Landers, Janet McCue, Dave Milano, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Peter Petokas, Peter Joffre Nye, Linda Roller, B. Mark Schmerling, Karey Solomon, Beth Williams C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Bernadette Chiaramonte, Diane Cobourn, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Stu Gallagher, Lisa Howeler, Jan Keck, Nigel P. Kent, Roger Kingsley, Jonathan Mack, Tim McBride, Tess Moran, Beate Mumper, Peter Rutt, Mark Schmerling, Linda Stager, Mary Sweely, Sue Vogler, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Caleb Williams, Ardath Wolcott, Gillian Tulk-Yartym

Our reputation is

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D i s t r i b u t i o n T eam Layne Conrad, Grapevine Distribution, Duane Meixel, Linda Roller, Phil Waber T h e B ea g l e Nano Cosmo (1996-2014) • Yogi (2004-2018)

ABOUT US: Mountain Home is the award-winning regional magazine of PA and NY with more than 100,000 readers. The magazine has been published monthly, since 2005, by Beagle Media, LLC, 39 Water Street, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2019 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

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Linda Stager

The Town That Saved Christmas (Again) A New Festival Celebrates How Wellsboro Kept America’s Christmas Trees Shining During World War II

By Carrie Hagen

A

s a girl growing up in Wellsboro, Patricia Brown Davis shared a favorite holiday tradition with her father, an engineer at Corning Glass Works. Ellsworth C. Brown would bring home plain Christmas ornaments from work, and, together with his daughter, paint designs on the bulbs and other shapes. Sometimes he taught her fancier decorating techniques.

“Dad showed me how to make glitter by crushing Christmas ornaments quite fine, and gluing the small pieces onto another ornament with a clear glue,” Pat remembers today.

It wasn’t until adulthood that she learned the extent of her father’s role in

preserving rituals like the one they shared.

As head of Mechanical Engineering, Ellsworth Brown served on a team that rescued the Christmas ornament industry during World War II. Pat chronicled her father’s work as part of a larger story on the history of Christmas ornaments, Wellsboro, and Corning Glass Works in a 2008 Mountain Home piece entitled “The Town that Saved Christmas.” In the article, she detailed how a Germanborn businessman named Max Eckhardt anticipated the impact of an ornament shortage in 1939, when a British blockade halted German exports. At the time, 95 percent of the 250 million handmade ornaments shipped to America came

from Germany. Eckhardt, fearing for his ornament business, approached Corning with a proposal. Should the factory design ornament molds for the ribbon machine that manufactured light bulbs, Corning could mass-produce clear glass round balls for wholesalers to decorate and distribute. Eckhardt could promise a large order already from the F.W. Woolworth Company. The idea, as Pat wrote, was “an unprecedented challenge that would change our community for generations to come.” Within one year, the Wellsboro plant of Corning Glass Works generated forty million Christmas ornaments, and Wellsboro became the town that produced 90 percent of the world’s ornaments.

See Saved on page 8 7

Caleb Williams Saved continued from page 7

Since Pat’s 2008 publication, the factory responsible for this transformative production closed without fanfare after 101 years (purchased by Corning in 1916, it was sold twice after that). Its sudden silence could have very well quieted its history, still largely unknown in Tioga County. But in an ironic twist, the very year the plant shuttered (2016), the town that it had helped save along with Christmas began to showcase its history, saving it right back. Now approaching its fourth season, Christmas on Main Street celebrates the storied place of the Wellsboro plant in Americana with over thirty living history exhibits located inside of businesses along Main Street. The three-day festival runs during the second weekend of December, and this year’s theme—“Shaping Our Traditions”—studies the ornaments that shaped the town’s industrial legacy.

Held one week after the popular Dickens of a Christmas transforms Main Street into a Victorian marketplace, Christmas on Main Street is a festival intended to capitalize on shoppers’ nostalgia while bringing business inside the brick and mortar shops on Main. Business owners say that the Dunham sisters—Ellen Dunham Bryant, president of the Penn Wells Corporation, and Ann Dunham Rawson, buyer and operator of Dunham’s Department Store—came up with the idea for Christmas on Main Street, but Ellen points to her husband, Shawn Bryant.

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“Since moving to Wellsboro in 2009, Shawn has always maintained that it is a quintessential Christmas village,” she reflects. In the fall of 2016, Ellen and Ann “decided we just needed to move forward with a weekend event.” The sisters met with local artist Heather Mee, who designed a poster that they printed and took around to local business owners, drumming up interest in the event. Around twenty-five local business owners and managers attended a planning meeting. Wellsboro Area Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Julie VanNess suggested showcasing Wellsboro’s history with ornament displays, says Ellen, and Mountain Home editor and publisher Teresa Banik Capuzzo came up with the idea of having business owners display them in their shops, where visitors would encounter them on an ornament tour guiding them down and up Main Street.

“We really didn’t know what businesses would do with the displays, but many of them have been very creative and artistic,” says Ellen. “Some are just a simple ornament on display, but all make an impression.”

A brochure, the team decided, would narrate the town’s history and incorporate the location of the ornament displays in its storytelling. The first year, Jennie Borneman Lusk, owner of Wild Asaph Outfitters, researched the brochure’s content and envisioned each year’s publication concentrating on one piece of the story behind “The Town that Saved Christmas.”

For 2019, the researcher and writer of the Christmas on Main Street brochure is Anja Stam, who owns and operates Pop’s Culture Shoppe with her husband, Julian.

The “Shaping Our Traditions” brochure’s reader-friendly essay guide considers how the shapes of Christmas ornaments have shaped holiday traditions. Anja’s research includes the roots of Christmas decorating in sixteenth century Eastern Europe, the development of ornament making as a cottage industry in the village of Lauscha in central Germany, and the advent of ornament production in Wellsboro.

• On Thursday, December 21, 1939, the Wellsboro Gazette reported that over the past two months seventy employees at Corning Glass Works had produced one million ornaments for shipment.

“The achievement of a successful Christmas tree ball at a low price is a triumph of American industry,” read the article.

The following September, Corning executives and members of the Wellsboro Chamber of Commerce and service clubs gathered for a “Christmas” dinner at the Penn Wells hotel. Various speakers thanked Corning Glass Works for starting an ornament department, a move that more than doubled the number of employees of the company’s Wellsboro division.

The superintendent of Wellsboro Electric Company also thanked Corning for allowing him to expand its plant in order to increase power supply. One spokesperson for the Chamber of Commerce called Corning Glass Works “Santa Claus” and likened the factory to the elves’ workshop.

“Fourteen years ago, when I came to Wellsboro, I found hundreds of people walking the streets, with no work, and wondering what they would do when Christmas time came,” he said. “Now, 1,000 people are working for Santa Claus, making Christmas ornaments. Everybody has a job, and the town is booming.”

That fall, a Wellsboro Agitator reporter watched the machine move ornaments along the ribbon (about three inches wide and 13,000 miles long). “The process is pretty,” the writer observed, “like soap bubbles on a frosted stream.”

• Ellsworth C. Brown, Pat Davis’s father, was one of two men who had been given See Saved on page 10

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Group effort: Skip Cavanaugh (second from left) stands with members of the Christmas on Main Street committee: (left to right) Sara Vogt, Skip, Danelle Fuller, Julian Stam, Anja Stam, and Marsha Chesko.

Saved continued from page 8

the task of designing the first ornaments to run on the machine: molds had to provide for the particular size, thickness, and neck length of a spherical shape.

Ornaments in 1939 were mostly round.

Don Wilcox, the equipment engineering specialist at Corning Glass Works from 1952-1986, remembers Ellsworth Brown as “quite an artist.” As ornament styles evolved, Don says, each needed to have its own separate mold without “any sharp corners and turns.”

Not all of Ellsworth Brown’s ideas took.

Pat recalls her father bringing home prototypes that Corning Glass Works considered too modern-looking, such as a series of small vases that had a bulbous middle or bottom.

“They never went into a full production for the public,” she says.

“These are collector items today if you find one.”

In 1940, one year after producing one million ornaments for wholesale, the Wellsboro factory produced forty million.

Ornament shapes now included bells, acorns, reflectors, and pinecones. That year, the factory also bought S&L (silver and lacquering) machines to aid in an inhouse decorating procedure. Ornaments could now be covered on the inside with a silver solution, and then coated in colored lacquer and fired. Ornament

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Caleb Williams

manufacturing became a year-round production.

Grant “Skip” Cavanaugh came to the factory in August of 1965, starting as an hourly employee and eventually working his way into management, where he served as the technical general manager. As soon as he arrived, Cavanaugh worked with the S&L machines. Teams, he remembers, worked six-day weeks and ten-hour days. Every other week, teams of thirty-five rotated between morning shifts from 5 a.m. to 3 p.m. and late shifts from 3 p.m. to 1 a.m. The ribbon machine, Cavanaugh says, had three shifts operating around the clock five days a week. On average, one ribbon machine could put out 400,000 ornaments per shift.

After being tested and “cleared,” ornaments would go to the S&L team, which would package clear ones to certain companies, silvered-only ornaments to others, and silvered and lacquered ornaments to a third group of wholesalers.

The faster the production, the fewer the people needed.

When Don Wilcox started at the plant in 1952, there were 800 employees. Upon Skip Cavanaugh’s arrival in 1965, he estimates there were around 350 workers.

“It was a very happy place to work,” Skip remembers. With thirty-five people together in a crew, the team became close, often hosting baby showers and birthday celebrations in the cafeteria.

• Both Don and Skip point to the 1970s as the beginning of the end. Corning executives decided the company should function as a retailer, marketing and selling ornaments itself instead of at wholesale. It was a poor business decision that didn’t complement a significant decorating change: shrink film machines now allowed decorators to add modern graphic designs to ornaments. By 1980, the S&L machines were sold. General Telephone Electronics—GTE—purchased the factory from Corning in 1981, and sold it in turn to Osram Sylvania in 1993.

It ran operations until closing the plant in 2016.

See Saved on page 12

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Skip Cavanaugh says people—including state representatives— had no idea what went on at the factory that took up over seven acres at 1 Jackson Street.

“Thousands of employees worked there, and nobody knew the importance of that plant. All of its history, and very few people in town knew it.”

News of the factory’s 2016 closure came several years after Skip had retired, but he still had two brothers and many friends who worked there. He assumed there would be a commemorative party to celebrate the century of labor and production at the plant.

“I remember thinking, ‘This is going to be a big deal.’”

But it wasn’t. The announcement, says Skip, “sucked the air right out of the room.” No party. No remembrance. “That was it.”

And then he heard about Christmas on Main Street, the effort of local business owners to capture shoppers’ attention by celebrating the history of “The Town That Saved Christmas.”

The work and workers of the Wellsboro plant would not only be remembered but also put on display.

• Julie VanNess says Christmas on Main Street’s success is evident because people don’t realize how much work goes into it.

“Any event has a lot of moving parts. If done well, people don’t notice. Committees work hand in hand to put that event together and to get historical information.”

Marsha Chesko, who until recently owned the Sherwood Motel with her husband, Bob, says that various committees meet once a month throughout the year to review and improve event details: they consider business participation, sponsorships, the number of events offered, even the route that the red trolley takes through town.

She says visitors have often asked about how the town survives when others around it seem to be struggling more and more.

“We work well together,” she answers. “A major thing for me is how all of the businesses are pulling [Christmas on Main Street] together and making it.” And for an event that wanted to attract shoppers back into town after the Dickens of a Christmas outdoor extravaganza, it has been wildly successful.

“Many of us [including] Highland Chocolates, the Santa Brunch at the Penn Wells, photos with Santa at the Deane Center, saw an increased participation in those events that very first year,” says Ellen Dunham Bryant. “The second year, after we had a year of planning and more organized promotion, businesses saw between a 10 percent and a 300 percent increase in same day sales. The third year, many businesses saw over 100 percent increase in sales over the second year.”

The planning committee works to bring new events to each festival. This season, they added a Victorian house tour to a list of activities that includes carol singing, holiday cocktails, chocolate fountains, a public lecture, a kids’ carnival, family game night, storytelling, and a live nativity.

“One constant joke that we have among the committee members is our many failed attempts to bring a live camel to the event for the live nativity,” says Ellen.

Anja Stam has participated in Christmas on Main Street since its inception, but her historical research for this year’s brochure has deepened her love and appreciation for the intersection of See Saved on page 40

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Alyssa Hars

Friends, family, and remembrance: a devoted fan, the late Susan Sweet Hars stands with Bucky Green.

A Very Fine Line

Memories, Like the Line for Bucky’s Trees, Go on Forever

By Cindy Davis Meixel

“I

f you get there by 4 a.m., you’ll probably be seventh or eighth in line,” I was advised. That turned out to be true.

Last year, for the first time, I decided to wait in line to buy a fabled “Bucky Tree” at Dickens of a Christmas in Wellsboro.

Crafted by Stephen “Bucky” Buckner Green, the carved wooden trees are a coveted collectible from the annual celebration.

Early that Saturday morning, Wellsboro’s Main Street was quiet except for a small gathering of hardy folks at the corner of Main and Crafton streets in front of Northwest Savings Bank—the traditional spot for Bucky’s sales. Like the others, I arrived with a lawn chair, comforter, and blanket, bundled up as best as possible for the thirty-degree weather (a milder forecast than some Dickens mornings). We looked like a line-up for hot concert tickets.

14

One lady, hailing from the Allentown area, was smartly dressed in an orange snowmobile suit. She had lined her bulky boots with insole foot warmers and her large gloves with hand warmers. Except for the fact that she resembled (and moved like) the snowsuited boy in A Christmas Story, I was a bit envious of her ensemble.

The glow of the gaslights, Christmas trees and wreaths on the boulevards, and the storefront lights of the town’s closed shops, illuminated the scene, as did the radiance emanating from the Penn Wells Hotel across the street.

As a newbie to this Victorian vigil, I had to learn the ropes. Most of the others waiting in line in front of me and those who queued after seemed to know what they were doing. I was happy when I realized “the rules” of this encampment allowed for trips to the Penn Wells’ bathroom and

fireplace, as well as dashes down the street to Dunkin’—without losing your spot in line. As we huddled in conversation, the veterans shared stories of their sleepless tradition and wild admiration for Bucky’s craftsmanship. They referred to themselves as “Bucky friends” and “a Bucky family.”

At the front of the line was an empty chair. Next to it was a young woman in her early thirties, cuddled up under a sleeping bag. Her smile was as bright as all the lights on Main Street. This was Alyssa Hars, and she was “holding space” for her mother, Susan Sweet Hars, a native of Wellsboro who was quite possibly Bucky’s longest, most devoted fan. Battling breast cancer, Sue was resting at her brother’s home nearby.

Sue began collecting Bucky trees more than twenty-five years ago, and was often first in line on Dickens morning. Alyssa

Alyssa Hars

A native of Wellsboro, writer Cindy Davis Meixel resides near Williamsport.

(2) Cindy Meixel

joined her mother in the tradition in the early 2000s. The Hars women have collected over 100 Bucky trees for the “Bucky forest” in their New Jersey home.

“Growing up in Tioga County, she always loved the woods,” Alyssa says of her mother’s tree obsession. “And she loved Wellsboro. She was very proud of where she came from.”

A star athlete for Wellsboro, Sue graduated in 1976 and earned a phys ed degree from Lock Haven University in 1980. In June that year she met Michael Hars, a young history teacher and football coach in Wellsboro. The couple later moved to New Jersey to teach and coach, but returned regularly with their daughters.

“We didn’t do vacations as kids,” Alyssa says. “We didn’t go to the Caribbean or to Disney, we’d always go to Wellsboro. To us, Wellsboro was every Hallmark movie you’ve ever watched and every Norman Rockwell painting you’ve ever seen…It just feels like home. It’s like in The Wizard of Oz: ‘There’s no place like home.’ And there’s no place like Wellsboro.”

Alyssa says her parents, married for thirty-five years, wanted to retire in Wellsboro, but Mike passed away in March 2017 following a heart attack, and Sue lost her battle with cancer about one month after Dickens last year. They were both sixty. Sue’s gravestone in the Wellsboro Cemetery is engraved with two Bucky trees—an ode to her favorite collectible and to her two daughters.

“It touches my heart that people love the trees,” says Bucky.

“I’ve met so many wonderful people, like Alyssa and her mother, and developed so many friendships through selling this product. The camaraderie and reunion of Woods of Wellsboro: friends every year at Dickens really amazes me, and (top) Bucky's trees...

I’m so thankful.” what the buzz is all The camaraderie in the “Bucky family” helped about; (middle) Alyssa Hars attends the establish a certain etiquette in the sales line in the Victorian vigil while early 2000s. holding a seat for her With hopes of squashing any Black Friday-type ill mother; (bottom) chaos, Alyssa says she and her mother talked to Alyssa shops for the the other devoted Bucky fans, including borough perfect tree. residents Cindy and Steve Frost, and everyone agreed on a plan: If you’re first in line, you select your trees while the others wait, then motion to the next person in line that it’s their turn and so on.

“Since about 2003 or 2004, we’ve been very regimented that way and on top of it,” Alyssa says. “I don’t know what happens further on down the line, it might get dicey, but for the people who’ve waited all morning, you get your turn.”

This procedure is what impressed me the most last year when sales began at 9 a.m.

Although I intended to only buy one tree, the others had laughed and warned I’d “get Bucky fever” and want more. Indeed, I bought four. They also chuckled when I said I was only waiting in line one time. “Oh, we all said that, but we came back. And you’ll be back, too,” they replied.

I think I will return this year. If not for myself, I’d like to support Alyssa.

“Even though Mom won’t be there, I still have plans to go,” she says. “It’ll be like nothing has changed. It’s our true tradition.”

15

Beth Williams

Wine on Main Street Oregon Hill Comes to Wellsboro

By Beth Williams

W

hen Mountain Home magazine moved out of their digs on Main Street in Wellsboro this past July, a realtor contacted Karon Swendrowski, owner of Oregon Hill Winery, and told her the perfect space had become available. Karon had been wanting to open up a retail presence in Wellsboro for some time, but finding the right space had proved to be an elusive hunt.

She had, in fact, put it on a back burner and opened up a space in McElhattan in June. It was the first expansion for Oregon Hill Winery since her late husband, Eric, started it in Morris in 1983 at age seventeen. “He was the youngest person to ever get a permit to make wine in this 16

country, and I think that record still holds,” Karon says. When Eric died in 2017, Karon was left alone at the winery.

“Eric was the winemaker, bottler, bookkeeper, and managed the business end.

I helped with the bottling, but my main job was raising our two daughters,” Karon says. In what she describes as the most challenging two years of her life, Karon was faced with either selling everything and walking away from the winery and starting fresh, or hiring people who could do all the work Eric had done.

She chose to continue the winery her husband had started over thirty years ago. She hired a winemaker and other staff, persevered, and is now expanding

the business. Which brings us back to Wellsboro and the former location of Mountain Home magazine and art gallery.

The winery had a presence at a few of the Wellsboro festivals in 2018 and received a very positive response from the community. Since last Christmas, Karon had been trying to find the right space in the borough.

“I really wanted to open a store in Wellsboro. It had to be Wellsboro, and on Main Street in Wellsboro, not Mansfield or anywhere else. Eric graduated from Wellsboro High School. We were members of the Chamber of Commerce in Wellsboro, and my two daughters attend Wellsboro See Oregon on page 18

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Oregon continued from page 16

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High School,” Karon continues. “When I got the call from the realtor about the space on Main Street that had just become available, I was leaving on vacation the next day. I hurriedly made plans to go see it before I went out of town and fell in love with the space immediately. But I wasn’t going to sign a lease until I received approval from the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board. I took my computer with me on what became a working vacation.”

There were lots of phone calls and e-mails back and forth while she was on vacation. Three days after she returned, Karon had a meeting at the Main Street location with a representative from the PLCB, and that individual subsequently gave approval for Oregon Hill Winery to open at 87½ Main Street. “I got the approval in one week! I was expecting it to take at least a month. I wasn’t prepared,” Karon says. But that didn’t stop her from opening the place just one month after signing the lease, on August 28, just before Labor Day. “We were able to get a number of furnishings from Fifth Season when they closed their storefront on Main Street and had a going out of business sale. It was really fortunate for us because we wanted to maintain a Victorian theme and we were able to get some great things from Fifth Season to go with that theme,” Karon says.

The space on Main Street that is now Oregon Hill’s wine shop also came with a small art gallery, and getting PLCB approval for selling things beyond the wine products is proving to be not nearly as fast as the initial nod to open the store. “I have approval to sell a few things, as long as a separate cash register is used. But I am not pushing it at this time until we receive official approval for everything,” she says.

In addition to selling Oregon Hill Winery’s award-winning wines at the shop, Karon has plans for many fun, special events throughout the year. “I am going to look at calendars to find days that have been designated something—like Medical Assistants Day, Executive Assistants Day, Restaurant Employees Day, and things like that,” Karon says.

The first such event was October 28, with a special Teacher Night to honor all school personnel who made it through the first nine weeks of the new school year. “Many people attended and everyone seemed to really enjoy it and appreciate it. We had door prizes and definitely plan on doing it again,” Karon says.

Besides buying wine or doing a tasting, you can also sit and enjoy a glass of wine and relax in the cozy atmosphere Karon has created. The store is currently open Monday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. and on Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

“After the holidays the hours will change for the winter—we will be closed Monday through Wednesday, and open from 11 to 6 Thursday through Sunday,” says Karon.

You can contact the Wellsboro store using the same phone number as the original winery in Morris at (570) 353-2711. You can also find out about all of the events happening at all three locations on Facebook.

Beth Williams lives in the wilds of Steuben County, New York, works in the wonders of the library at Mansfield University, and is perpetually writing a novel.

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th Dickens Christmas

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 6

All Day Merchant Sales & Discounts

7:15 pm “The Man Who Invented Christmas” Special Movie Arcadia Theatre $

All Day Department 56 Dickens Village Display Deane Center

7:30 pm Dickens of a Concert St. Peter’s Catholic Church $

10:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Book Sale Green Free Library 3:00 pm – 8:00 pm Indoor Craft Show United Methodist Church

20

of a

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7

All Day Area Merchants Sales & Discounts All Day Department 56 Dickens Village Display Deane Center

9:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show United Methodist Church

9:30 am Wellsboro High School Dickens Choir, Arcadia Theatre

9:00 am – 4:00 pm Model Train Show St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

10:00 am – 12:00pm Best Dressed Contest Registration Deane Center Lobby

9:00 am – 4:00 pm Street Vendors, Street Musicians, Street Performers Main Street

10:00 am Victorian Stroll Deane Center

9:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show Firemen’s Annex

3:00 pm – 8:00 pm Indoor Craft Show Wellsboro Senior Center

8:00 am – 4:00 pm Indoor Craft Show Wellsboro Senior Center

9:00 am – 5:00 pm Professional Dickens Portraitures October Rain Photography Studio, 19 Crafton Street $

4:30 pm – 7:00 pm Dickens of a Dinner Trinity Lutheran Church $

9:00 am — 3:00 p.m.

Open House Tioga County Historical Society

9:15 am – 4:15 am (every 45 min.)

Trolley Tours to Highland Chocolates $ First Citizens Community Bank

10:00 am- 2:00 pm Alternative Christmas Fair First Presbyterian Church 10:00 am – 2:00 pm Open House w/Refreshments Tussey-Mosher Funeral Home 10:00 am – 3:00 pm Live Music & Refreshments United Methodist Church

11:00 am – 5:00 pm Art Exhibit Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center

3:40 pm Combined Chorus Sing-a-long Arcadia Theater

12:30 pm “The Man Who Invented Christmas” Special Movie Arcadia Theatre $

4:00 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Warehouse Theatre $

1:00 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Warehouse Theatre $

10:00am – 4:00pm Indoor Book Sale Green Free Library 10:30 am HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Coolidge Theatre, Deane Center $ 10:30 am “The Man Who Invented Christmas” Special Movie Arcadia Theatre $ 11:00 am HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Warehouse Theatre, $ 11:00 am – 2:00 pm Friends of the Library Open House w/Refreshments & Basket Raffle drawing at 2pm.

Green Free Library

4:00 pm Choral Evensong Service St. Paul’s Episcopal Church

1:00pm Best Dressed Contest Judging Deane Center Outdoor Stage

5:00 pm Candlelight Walk for Peace Packer Park to the Green

1:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Coolidge Theatre, $ Deane Center

5:30 pm Tree Lighting Ceremony The Green

2:00 pm Victorian Stroll Deane Center 2:30 pm “The Man Who Invented Christmas” Special Movie Arcadia Theatre $ 3:00 pm Wellsboro Men’s Chorus Arcadia Theatre 3:20 pm Wellsboro Women’s Chorus Arcadia Theater 3:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Coolidge Theatre, $ Deane Center

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SUNDAY, DECEMBER 8

All Day Department 56 Dickens Village Display Deane Center 11 am – 5:00 pm Regional Art Exhibit Gmeiner Art & Cultural Center 2:15 pm “The Man Who Invented Christmas” Special Movie Arcadia Theatre $ 2:30 pm HG Productions, “A Christmas Carol,” Warehouse Theatre, $ Deane Center

21

By Mark Schmerling

Santa Has to Go to School !?

Yes, And Pete “Coudy Santa” Wyatt Has Never Looked Back

By B. Mark Schmerling

“I

’ve been around a long time—since the 600s,” offers Pete “Coudy Santa” Wyatt recently. The Coudersport resident and bona fide Santa Claus traces his gift-giving and generous nature back to Saint Nicholas of Myra, after whom the spirit of Santa, and the accompanying spirit of generosity, stem. And, regardless of how long he’s really been around, Coudy Santa is kindly and appears ageless.

The original Saint Nicholas is known as Nicholas the Wonderworker. Because of his good works, especially to the benefit of certain groups, Saint Nicholas is known as the patron saint of an eclectic mix of people—sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, prostitutes, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, and students. One story surrounding Saint Nicholas tells that he dropped three sacks of gold coins

22

through the window of a home in which three sisters lived, so their father could pay a wedding dowry for each daughter.

Though known locally as Coudy Santa, Pete has performed as the Jolly Old Elf in many locations, including North Pole, New York (near Lake Placid), and at various Six Flags Great Adventure locations, including those in Bradford and Kane, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and in New England.

Everyone begins somewhere. Coudy Santa is no exception, having followed the advice of his wife, who suggested that he become Saint Nick, this after a youngster had approached him (he was wearing a ball cap at the time) and “asked if I was Santa.”

Pete then attended a comprehensive Santa school in Torrington, Connecticut, where he and other aspirants were taught how to dress, where to purchase authentic

outfits (Marcia Bunnell, a seamstress who lived across the street from him, provided Coudy Santa’s first suit), and how to find Santa gigs. Plus, as Pete explains, the 2,000 or so members of ClausNet, to which he belongs, are vetted. Part of that process is certification that those members pose no danger to the young folks who visit Saint Nick. It’s also here that serious Santas and Santa wannabes can offer each other Santa critiques—in a jolly way, of course.

In 2011, Coudy Santa made his first professional appearance at, appropriately, Santa’s Workshop in North Pole, New York. That came about after Pete read in ClausNet that a Santa was needed there, as the previous Santa had suffered a stroke.

For five days a week, Pete worked that event for five years.

See Santa on page 24

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Santa continued from page 22

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“I interviewed, and they hired me on the spot,” Pete remembers of his Santa’s Workshop job. New York’s North Pole is the oldest theme park in the U.S., built in 1948 and opened in 1949. Pete’s authentic performance paved the way for numerous return visits in his chosen role. And it was at that storied location that he realized he needed a team, one that included a publicist and photographer. Coudersport’s Curt Weinhold has served in that role admirably, and is the photographer Pete called to take his initial, professional head shot.

“Before I was set up [with Curt], I was ‘Redneck Santa,’” Pete notes.

Through Joe Barney, a promoter for Six Flags, Pete found himself playing the Santa role at the Winter Festival at Six Flags’ Great Adventure location near Trenton, New Jersey. After that, Pete recalls, “I started picking up gigs—lots of gigs.” One was in Bradford, Pennsylvania, where the Main Street Committee found him.

“They fell in love with me,” Pete says, noting he was Santa in the town’s Christmas parade. During his first appearance in that festivity, he rode in a bucket attached to a hook and ladder truck.

In Kane, recalls Pete, their Santa Committee members spoke as one, saying, ‘You gotta get “Coudy Santa.”’

“He is so good with the children,” Curt observes. Part of that might be Pete’s unique Santa spiel.

“Kids ask me how I get to all the houses in one night,” Pete says. “It’s not really one night. Every time I cross a time zone, I pick up time. Then, I cross the International Date Line, and pick up another day.”

He throws in a bit of physics, too, noting that according to Einstein’s theory of relativity, the faster one goes, the slower the time goes.

“And,” he notes, “my reindeer are really fast.”

He adds that at North Pole, New York, when he stood up quickly, his cap appeared to achieve zero gravity, and kept rising.

He figured that if he got his reindeer to jump higher, they’d accomplish the same. He did, and they did.

According to Pete, many aging Baby Boomers have dreams of being Santa, “but not all are suited.” (A little inside Santa joke.)

However, “I tell people I’m better than most (Santas), but not as good as a few. But, I’m really good about getting kids who are reticent about Santa, and turn[ing] them around.”

One way to do that is via Santa suit authenticy. He says kids typically check “the three Bs—boots, beard, and belt—to determine whether Santa is real.”

An Amish craftsman made a great belt for Coudy Santa.

“All of my boots are real boots,” he notes. “I don’t have those plastic shoe-toppers.”

And the beard? Well, maybe you’ll have to check that one out for yourself.

B. Mark Schmerling, a Pennsylvanian by birth and upbringing, and a Coudersport resident from 1987 through 1998 (when he wrote and photographed for the Potter Leader-Enterprise), is a photographer/ writer with numerous newspaper and magazine credits who lives in northwest Tioga County. He maintains an avid interest in the outdoors.

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25

(2) Courtesy Linda Roller

Don't judge a book by its cover: Still looking like a church, the Liberty Book Shop holds more than just books. Owner Linda Roller (right) loves sharing her "toy."

Books and a Bed

At 20, Avis’s Liberty Book Shop Adds an Airbnb

By Gayle Morrow

I

t was a church in a former life, most recently the Avis Church of Christ, to be specific. It still looks like a church on the outside, and the resemblance is there inside as well, but its incarnation at this point, says owner Linda Roller, is as “the biggest best toy I could ever own.”

She might add that it is also the biggest best toy she could ever own and let others play with, because that’s really what it’s all about—this 100-plus-year-old building is part book store, part Airbnb, part home, all Linda, and is hers to share.

And she does.

“At its heart, this is a traditional used and out-of-print book shop,” Linda says.

“I buy and sell good and unusual books

26

at many price points and in a variety of subject matter. There are some best sellers here [Lee Child’s Jack Reacher has shelf space], but this should be a deep dive. I want things of historical significance and for people to be able to come in and find something that speaks to them.”

Dive deep at Liberty Book Shop and you’ll find a 1945 first edition of John Steinbeck’s The Red Pony, with illustrations by Wesley Dennis, wellknown for his artistic collaborations with author Marguerite Henry (dig out your old copy of Misty of Chincoteague and you’ll recognize Wesley Dennis right away).

There’s The Practical Book of Chinaware, published in 1925; Mrs. Wiggs of the

Cabbage Patch, by Alice Caldwell Hegan, published in 1901; and something titled the Poodle Clipping Book by someone who calls herself Miss Cameo. There is a large volume, dated 1869, that is a Congressional accounting/investigation of the treatment of Union prisoners in Confederate prison camps. There are a couple of Victorian-era editions of John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, a book which plays large in another classic, Little Women, which I didn’t happen to see but which I bet is there.

There are thousands more. Linda estimates she has 45,000 titles here on the shelves, and more waiting in the wings.

“I do national searches,” she continues.

“Sometimes I’m the middle person for a college or a think tank, but sometimes I’m the person who helps someone find that special book they once had and can’t find anymore.”

Ah, the life of a bibliophile.

In the late 1990s, Linda recalls, she was all set to take a trip—she describes it as a pilgrimage. But she got sick and her plans fell through. In 1998, “after the dust of that had settled,” she was at a friend’s house. The conversation wound around to “what do you want to do now?” Linda says the words came out almost unbidden. She wanted to have a church, with a parsonage, and she wanted it to be a book shop.

“This,” she says, matter-of-factly, gesturing around her, “was the pilgrimage,” and, a year and a half later, “I owned it.” The last church service here was November 7, 1999, the real estate closing was Christmas Eve, 1999, and she opened the following April. She had been living in Williamsport during this time, and had been selling books via the internet. Amazon did not exist then, and she says she “rode the first wave of internet book sales.” With the purchase of the former church in Avis—the building started its life in 1876 as the Woolrich Methodist Church and was moved to Avis in 1907; the parsonage was built on in 1925—she moved to Avis and began filling shelves, all the while continuing her internet sales business.

“Packing and shipping books was something I knew how to do,” she says.

And still does. She sends books all over the world, and, with the development two years ago of a section of the former parsonage (See—she got what she wanted!) into overnight lodging through Airbnb, she’s welcoming guests from all over the world as well.

“They’re here for all kinds of reasons,” Linda muses. They come for work, for conferences, to visit, and they come because of the bookshop. One couple spent their honeymoon here, immersed in not only each other but in 45,000 books.

All of which is not to say that this pilgrimage has been without challenges, a few of them structural.

“This has been quite an adventure,” says Linda. She recalls with a laugh that when she first bought the building, “a lot of people in town had a key to the church.” The rooms, except for the sanctuary, were all very small—none bigger than twelve by twelve, she says—so she “tore out a lot of walls.” As is often the case in old buildings, one construction project leads, by necessity and serendipity, to another. The creation of the Airbnb section was a direct result of having to fix the roof. Exposing rafters seemed an opportune time to add another floor of family living space, which left a portion of the parsonage available for those visitors from all over the world.

Still, Linda acknowledges, though there may be opportunities for other adventures and pilgrimages, “there are things I’m not going to get done, and that’s OK.” In the interim, the walk-in traffic at Liberty Book Shop is, in her words, “enough.”

“I’m here because of it, and I love my walk-in trade,” she says.

You can walk into the Liberty Book Shop Thursdays and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and other times by appointment. Call (570) 753-5201, or visit thelibertybookshop.com. If you opt to stay through Airbnb, you get twenty-four-hour access to the book store and those thousands and thousands of books.

L i LE M R’s SToRE BLACKWELL

This holiday season come to Miller’s Store and fill a gift box with Pennsylvania products.

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u

Morris, PA

u

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njoy the views from our deck overlooking Pine Creek and relax with a drink in our bar.

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570-753-8414 www.hotel-manor.com 27

Courtesy Roger Kingsley

Healthy harvest: Roger Kingsley kneels at the doe harvested for HSH.

Sharing the Harvest

Pennsylvania Deer Hunters Help Feed Those in Need

By Roger Kingsley

O

ne by one the five antlerless deer filtered through the hedgerow that serves as a boundary line between our farm and the neighbor’s.

Pausing momentarily to scan the fourteenacre field, the five then made a hasty dash across the southwest corner where they entered a brushy woodlot. Unbeknownst to them on this cold December morning, a hunter was sitting in a ladder stand just off their path of travel. It was me. A carpet of new snow revealed their movements despite the thick cover, where their trotting had now been reduced to a mosey. But once again they halted, all ears cupped forward, listening closely for anything that might turn them off. I froze!

Satisfied, they continued their passage, steering single file toward a shooting lane that stretched thirty yards below my stand.

When the second doe stepped clear of the brush, her mature stature put me in motion.

Centering the crosshairs square on the neck after my whistle stopped her, I pressed the

28

trigger on the 50-caliber muzzleloader, and a cloud of ignited powder filled the air.

Four deer fled the scene. The doe that hit the ground was entered in my notes that evening—December 8—as deer number thirty-three that our family and other hunters had taken so far on our property since the archery opener. That may sound impossible to some, but the truth is, thirtythree was actually just slightly over half of the preseason harvest goal that we had set for that particular hunting season.

The doe that fell to my muzzleloader was tagged with a property-specific Deer Management Assistance Program tag.

Being enrolled in the program obviously illustrates that there is an overpopulation of deer presently on our farm, and the severity of our crop damage justifies the need for such enrollment. Pennsylvania hunters may possess up to two DMAP permits per enrolled property. That’s in addition to the regular antlerless licenses that are applied for through the county treasurer’s

offices. What that means is—besides their buck tag—today’s hunters have access to multiple antlerless tags, but having a need or freezer space for that much venison often deters hunters from filling them all. The solution? Pennsylvania’s venison donation program: Hunters Sharing the Harvest, which is where my muzzleloader doe ended up.

For nearly thirty years, HSH has been supplying food banks across the state with hunter-harvested venison donations.

The current goal for HSH is to process and distribute at least 100,000 pounds of venison from each hunting season. This outreach program channels the wholesome venison through a network of approved deer processors and food banks, ultimately ending up at thousands of hunger-relief charities in urban and rural communities.

Former Majority Policy Chairman for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, and a lifelong resident of Lancaster County, the late Kenneth Brandt has been credited

welcome to as the founder of Hunters Sharing the Harvest. In the late 1980s, Ken approached John Plowman, the Director of Legislative Affairs for the Pennsylvania Game Commission, with an idea—the concept of sharing excess deer taken by Commonwealth hunters with those in need of food assistance. Deer populations at that time were on the rise, seasons were being stretched out, and doe license allocations had enabled some hunters to obtain additional tags. Since the need and requests for food assistance was growing, hunters could be credited for doing a positive and compassionate gesture by donating the meat to those in need.

With the support of the statewide food bank system, the Department of Agriculture, Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, and a number of sportsmen’s groups, Ken Brandt and John Plowman’s collaborative efforts launched the program in 1991. Back then, with very little revenue, hunters who donated a deer were asked to contribute a copay to help with processing costs. But in recent years that fee has been eliminated, thanks to the many individuals, businesses, clubs, and corporations who have contributed crucial funds. During the 2018/2019 statewide hunting season, HSH set an all-time record of coordinating the processing and distribution of 149,137 pounds of venison from 4,093 donated deer. Comparatively speaking, a total of 3,840 HSH deer were donated from 1991-2003.

Today’s hunters now have access to multiple tags because of the continual increases in doe license allocations and a spike in DMAP enrollments. Most hunters can’t utilize all the deer that they can legally harvest, but they like to hunt. And when deer populations in certain areas warrant lowering their numbers, that’s where HSH can assist the hunter.

Here’s how it works. A hunter kills a deer, but doesn’t want the meat. He or she takes it to the nearest participating HSH deer processor, where all or just a portion of the carcass can be donated.

The hunter then fills out a simple donor receipt form, which records hunting license information for donation acknowledgement, food safety, and tracking purposes. The processor then grinds all the meat into burger; it’s then packaged and frozen. Periodically, that venison is collected by the state’s seventy-six county and regional food banks, then eventually redistributed to churches, homeless shelters, food pantries, and soup kitchens, facilities whose mission involves helping the 1.6 million people in Pennsylvania in need of food assistance.

An integral side of the operation of HSH lies in its team of sixty-three volunteers currently serving as county coordinators.

These individuals were appointed to help locate new processors, link hunters to those processors, and coordinate the deliveries of the processed venison to the food distribution centers.

HSH is a 501c3 non-profit organization founded as the signature mechanism for Pennsylvania hunters to maximize the best utilization of a valuable wildlife resource. Unsurprisingly, it has developed into a nationally-recognized model that many other states have replicated. For more details about donating a deer in your neck of the woods, or if you’d like to support or join this unique social service program, visit sharedeer.org.

Award winning writer, Roger Kingsley is Bradford County’s HSH Coordinator. His articles and photographs have been published in several nationally-known publications.

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When the Circus Comes to Town:

A Holiday Exhibit at the

Thomas T. Taber Museum of the Lycoming County Historical Society 858 West Fourth Street, Williamsport

Wed., Dec. 4, 2019—Sat., Jan. 18, 2020

Be sure and visit our Art Gallery, Lumber Gallery, Hall of Industry, and the Shempp Toy Train Collection

www.tabermuseum.org • 570.326.3326 29

The Chef ’s Table

Our Classy Columnist Shares Some Holiday Classics

By Cornelius O'Donnell

R

emember that old saying about the shoemaker’s shoes (or the carpenter’s house, or the plumber’s pipes)?

Along these same lines, how about the fascination with what professional chefs, cooks, and cookbook writers actually cook at home for their friends and families? I’m certainly fascinated with that idea, especially as the Christmas holidays roar toward me.

I’ve been trying to organize my cookbook collection (a Herculean job) for the past few months (actually, many months) and recently came across a book I’ve had since it was published in 1988 by Wings Books (the “used cookbook” section of Amazon still has lots of copies in stock).

It’s called Christmas Memories with Recipes.

In their preface, editors Maron Waxman and Delores Simons describe the book as “a mosaic of holiday recollections by twentyfive cooks and writers from all parts of the Americas and Europe. They share with us memories of their varied holidays.” Some of the names will still be familiar to readers: Jacques Pepin, Martha Stewart, Julia Child, and Marcella Hazan. Most of the others I know because I’ve been a foodie a long time.

I must have grabbed this book back in ’88, feeling with that list of contributors I’d be sure to find something to cook for my gang, as well as enjoy the nosy sensation of poking into others’ rituals. I know I made

30

several recipes from these pages because I found some penciled comments aside many of the dishes—well, at least ten—and, if I added asterisks to the check mark, that meant the dish went over with the revelers.

I thought you’d enjoy reading about—and cooking—these tried and true holiday favorites.

Lace Curtain Cookies Bert Greene was a dear friend—and Jewish. That didn’t matter in his growing-up years, as his family celebrated Christmas.

I found this recipe of his and used it to celebrate the final bauble to go on the tree and the finial’s placement on top. And the name he gave these struck a chord with me.

Well, “lace curtain” describes my family better than “shanty.” (Wikipedia explains it all for you, by the way.) Mom made similar cookies. These are always good to have on hand for holiday drop-ins and, depending on age, youngsters can help with the making. (Lord knows they’ll excel in the eating.)

1 egg ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract (not that

fake stuff) ½ c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted 1 c. light brown sugar, packed 2 c. uncooked rolled oats ½ c. walnuts, chopped

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Beat the egg with the vanilla in the medium bowl of an electric mixer. Slowly beat in the butter and sugar. On low speed, beat in the rolled oats. Stir in the chopped walnuts.

Lightly butter a foil-lined baking sheet.

Drop the batter by generous teaspoonfuls onto the foil; place far apart. There should be only six cookies on each baking sheet.

Pat the batter flat and bake until golden brown, about 8 minutes. Cool completely before peeling off the foil. Repeat procedure until all batter is used up. Makes about 2 dozen cookies.

Marion Cunningham’s Cranberry Relish I knew Marion well and she was responsible for the ’60s rewrite of the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. Like Fannie, her recipes are straightforward. Here’s a good example—no fuss, no added alcohol, you’ll love it. Here’s what Mrs. Cunningham had to say about this relish: “Tart and sweet…

Pure and simple, home-cooked cranberry relish, with no other distracting flavors, is the best of all.” (James Beard’s relish, not in this book, had a slug of Grand Marnier added, and that’s not a bad idea. Just a little, mind you.)

12 ounces fresh cranberries ¾ to 1 c. sugar

GAFFER

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Place the cranberries and ¾ cup sugar in a frying pan. Cook over moderate heat, stirring often to avoid scorching, until the sugar has melted, and the cranberries are cooked, about 6 minutes. Taste for sweetness and add the remaining ¼ cup of sugar, if too tart, stirring in sugar until completely dissolved. Remove from heat and cool. Makes about two cups.

More from Marion: “By December 15 our Christmas tree is in the living room. (Aside: Marion’s house was midcentury modern, located in Walnut Creek, California.) For a fleeting minute I always entertain the idea that I will defy tradition and leave the tree totally natural, but I never do. We fuss, trying to balance the lights on the tree…we also get caught up in rediscovering the favorite old ornaments and the stories they represent.”

Note: In the O’Donnell house, my favorite ornament was a pale lilac color glass with some tinsel poked into the interior. And, when I worked in a “Mad Men” sort of ad agency in Albany, I was put in charge of the Ben-Mont Papers account—one of their products included something called Saran Icicles. These wispy little super-light devils looked great on the tree but tended to flee to other branches when one walked by, thus losing the vertical aspect that icicles demand.

For what it’s worth, my tip for even electric lights placement is: get away from the tree so you can see the entire thing. And then, in a word, squint! And have a helper adjust the lights to get the overall, even, light placement you want. My brother Arthur will get a charge out of that memory.

Now back to food.

Julee Rosso’s Date-Nut Pudding I trust you cooks reading this will remember Julee’s best-selling Silver Palate cookbooks. This recipe is one I’ve made several times. It has my two favorite holiday ingredients—walnuts and dates—and it’s versatile. I like it for breakfast, a snack, or dessert. Wrapping presents or trimming the tree can be so exhausting. ½ c. (1 stick) butter, at room temperature, plus more for greasing 1 c. sugar 2 eggs, beaten 1 c. whole milk 1½ Tbsps. all-purpose flour 1½ tsps. baking powder 1 c. coarse-chopped pitted dates 1 c. coarse-chopped shelled walnuts 1 c. heavy cream, chilled Preheat oven to 325-degrees. Grease well a 9x13x2-inch glass or ceramic baking dish. In an electric mixer using the whisk attachment, cream the butter, gradually adding the sugar and beating until light.

Add the eggs, milk, flour, and baking powder; mix well. Fold in the dates and walnuts. Turn into the prepared baking dish and place on the middle rack of the oven. Bake for 50 to 60 minutes, or until set.

Serve slightly warm or at room temperature with a hefty teaspoon of the cream, whipped to soft peaks, on the side.

And Joyeaux Noel.

Chef, teacher, author, and award-winning columnist Cornelius O’Donnell lives in Horseheads, New York.

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Karey Solomon

Author, author!: Mike Cutillo’s new book celebrates love, language, and laughs in his Italian-American family.

Who Is George Washing Machine?

Our Writer Chronicles a Colorful Life with His Italian-American Family

By Karey Solomon

H

e gets his love of words from his mother and his optimism from his father. The executive editor of the Finger Lakes Times in Geneva, New York, frequent contributor to Mountain Home, and author of the just-published George Washing Machine, Portables, & Submarine Races, Mike Cutillo always wanted to write a book. He might be surprised to realize his non-fiction account of his Italian-American family is truly a love story.

It’s not just his parents’ love story, though the account of how his father and mother met and married is both epic and entertainingly narrated. Rather, it’s the abiding love of family and how the Cutillos, with Mike’s father at their center, draw together old friends and new, close family, distant cousins, and new acquaintances—who might be cousins if the family tree is examined far enough back—under the same joyful umbrella.

The title comes from Michele (it’s

32

Italian for Michael, pronounced Mi-KAYlay) Cutillo Sr.’s happy malapropisms. His self-taught English is filtered through his early years speaking only an obscure Italian dialect. Once explained to him, his colorful language-bending delights him as much as it does his audience. And it’s clear Michele does not suffer from stage fright.

Born in the small Italian village of San Salvatore Telesino, the elder Cutillo left school early to work on the family farm. He was a locally-famous soccer player, to the dismay of his parents, who were happier when he applied to and was accepted into the local police academy.

He planned to live his life in Italy until, in 1955, he unexpectedly met Pasqualina Sylvia Tucci, a young American woman who accompanied her grandmother to her birthplace in Italy. Despite the language barrier, romance flourished, fed by frequent letters the couple exchanged— each written in their own tongue and having to be translated—culminating a

few years later in a marriage proposal.

Getting to America was another difficulty, because the U.S. consulate frowned on potential emigrants who wanted to travel here to marry. Sylvia solved the problem by returning to Italy and marrying Michele there. He accompanied her back across the ocean to upstate New York, and in the course of their journey they celebrated their wedding three times. Michele taught himself English mostly by watching television, eventually settling in as a metalworker and machinist in Syracuse in the company of other Italy-born workers.

In his later years, Michele indulged his love of soccer by watching matches on cable’s international channels, and Mike has taken him to soccer games and tournaments in Italy and other European venues. In fact, the book’s cover features Michele in a soccer stadium in Dortmund, Germany, where the two watched the FIFA World Cup Semi-Finals in 2006. That See Cutillo on page 34

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Cutillo continued from page 32

cover puzzled Michele who asked, “Why are you putting me on the cover when it’s your book?” Mike tells his father that he’ll understand after he reads the book, which hasn’t happened yet.

Other readers, however, will surely fall in love with this man who’s delighted his family, and strangers who came to feel like family, by offering a meal or lifting his voice in song with his brother, Enzo, and a family friend in a three tenors-style rendition of Italian favorites at several village restaurants when father and son visited Italy together.

Does Michele have a good singing voice?

Mike hesitates.

“He’s got a loud one. He can probably carry a tune,” he says cautiously, adding, “Everyone who meets him loves him.

He just loves life and finds joy in a lot of things—including singing loudly.” Michele has returned to his homeland more than fifty times, Mike more than twenty, often taking groups of friends as well as his father on tour with him, discovering off-thebeaten-path food artisans, long lost family members, and unforgettable eateries.

On one of those trips, the now-late Zio

Enzo—Michele’s only brother, who stayed in Italy and became a general—took Mike aside to ask whether Michele was a smart man. “He speaks three languages,” Mike replied. Zio Enzo spoke only one. “Is he a good father?” Zio Enzo wanted to know.

Mike assured him that Michele was one of the best. “He’s a sweetheart, very kind,” he told his uncle.

The pleasure of good meals— sumptuously described—is an appetizing motif throughout the book. It was the senior Cutillo, who missed the flavors of his youth and wanted to recreate and share them with friends and family, who cooked many of those meals. In fact, for more than a decade before Sylvia’s death in 2008, he was the family meal-planner and chef.

Mike and his wife, Jan, now share their home with Michele, a living arrangement that definitely has its gastronomic perks.

When Mike and Jan work late, they often come home to find Michele has cooked something lovely for them for supper.

And the day’s last meal nearly always includes homemade red wine. After serving an apprenticeship with his father, Mike became the family winemaker,

crafting Cabernet, Barbera, Zinfandel, and Sangiovese juice from California into semi-dry reds that complement his father’s cooking style. On occasion, they’ll make a white wine for a family member who prefers something lighter. Wine makes its first appearance in the book as cut-up, wine-soaked peaches add their flavor to a glass and to the enjoyment of a leisurely summer afternoon. Wine is mentioned at every description of a mouth-watering meal, perhaps prompting readers to work up a thirst. And at the end of the afternoon—as well as at the end of the book—the reader is urged to try those peaches!

As the years have passed, Michele has become more of a homebody, so, these days, the best way to meet him and fall in love might be through Mike’s written tribute to his father and his family. George Washing Machine, Portables, & Submarine Races is available from Barnes and Noble and Amazon for $15.95.

Karey Solomon is a freelance writer and admirer of waterfalls and the natural scenery of the Finger Lakes.

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Dave Milano

Positive feedback: Chris Broadwell, owner of Ithaca Guitar Works, creates long-standing musical relationships with his customers.

Finding Your Musical Partner Fifty Years of Ithaca Guitar Works

By Dave Milano

W

ithin seconds of the first time I stepped into Ithaca Guitar Works, I was smitten. The object of my attention, my personal objet d’amour, was a Gibson L4, shimmering like a Hollywood starlet among the rows and rows of neatly displayed guitars, beckoning, flirting, propositioning. I gazed lovingly at its brilliant polished red top, golden humbucker pickups, iconic Gibson slanted fret markers. Floating nearer as if by magnetism, I raised a hand to touch its fabulous deco tailpiece, and then, on the very edge of the clinch, came a familiar tug at my elbow—my wife, wearing her seenit-all-before expression, this time tinged with a hint of not-again.

So it goes in a real nice guitar shop like Ithaca Guitar Works. There’s invariably something special there, for just about any player—bare beginner to seasoned pro,

36

traditional folkie to heavy metal banger.

I know. Each of my trips to the store has recalled that first infatuation, generally by dint of another new beloved. Ithaca Guitar Works makes it easy to fall in love.

Because of its inherent charisma, Ithaca Guitar Works might have become a dangerous joint, a place where pretty faces take unwitting customers for a ride while the true blue companions sit quietly unnoticed in the background. It didn’t, and the reasons why are the inside story of Ithaca Guitar Works.

Chris Broadwell, Ithaca Guitar Works owner for thirty-eight of the shop’s fiftyyear existence, specializes in creating happy musical relationships. He is clearly more interested in the long and happy sort of liaison than the fleeting fiery sort.

Undoubtedly that’s one of the reasons the shop has been able to stay hale and hearty

amid challenging economic conditions and burgeoning big-box-store competition.

How does Chris do it? In discussing the store’s operations, he says he “curates,” which at first I take to mean agreeable stock management—proper, effective merchandise selection and presentation.

He does mean that, but that’s not all, not even half. Chris curates his clientele also, by listening and learning, and then doing his best to make sure every customer leaves the store with what they need and want, rather than just want. A retail rendition of advice and consent. Handy in a guitar shop where stormy affairs with comely but ill-fitting or impudent instruments could be routine.

(True story: Two of Chris’ sons, Ash and Rylan, work full time in the store. Ash once talked me out of a rather expensive DI Box—a small act of charity forever endearing Ash and the store to me.) You

can visit secure in the knowledge that the staff will see you as more than an opportunity to rack up another sale. And whether you make a purchase or not, you will likely leave better educated, and less a stranger, than when you arrived.

Guitar shopping can be positively overwhelming. It’s an ever shifting market, endlessly diverse, always evolving, and the component parts, especially the electronics, can be maddeningly complicated. Chris notes “you can’t be everything to everyone.”

An understatement. Manufactured and custom, foreign and domestic, acoustic, electric, acoustic-electric, vintage, used and new, guitars, basses, ukuleles, mandolins, resonators, banjos, amplifiers, effects boxes, strings, accessories…beyond counting.

The venerable Fender Stratocaster stands as a prime example. The Strat has been tweaked relentlessly since its introduction in 1954 to the point where there is no reliable record of all its iterations. As of this writing, Fender offers fifty-six different Stratocaster models brand new. The wise shopper will be grateful for unbiased, expert help. Count on the Broadwells for that. They know their way around the business, and more important, they understand that musical instruments are, at best, not mere tools, but partners and collaborators in imagination, inspiration, and growth. Worthy of careful thought and consideration.

After you and the Broadwells have completed that due diligence, maybe you will be lucky enough to exit Ithaca Guitar Works with both a happy and acquiescent wife and, say, for the sake of delineation, a Gibson L4 CES with mahogany back and sides, in wine, with classic ’57 pickups and a rosewood fretboard.

If so, you are in for many satisfying, productive, even joyous hours. Just what Chris Broadwell and his sons hope for.

Location, Location, Location Ithaca Guitar Works is tucked neatly into the corner of the Dewitt Mall, on the east side of Cayuga Street between Buffalo and Seneca, in downtown Ithaca, a stone’s throw from The Commons. Chris couldn’t be happier with the location—in fact, he considers the building one of the cornerstones of his success.

Chris says that the Mall enterprises are diverse and popular, and the continual walk-through traffic for dining, shopping, offices, studios, and apartments strengthens everyone’s customer base. A fine ending for a building that almost wasn’t.

The Dewitt Mall (thedewittmall.com) began its long life in 1915 as Ithaca High School, built after the original 1885 high school burned in 1912. Forty-five years of graduates later, its use shifted to junior high, and then, in 1970, the school district deemed the building outmoded, and abandoned it in favor of more modern fare. The pattern of urban renewal of the time was to raze the old and build new; suddenly the grand brick stronghold was facing the wrecking ball. That is until architect William Downing offered to buy the old building (at the bargain price of $20,000) to convert into retail, office, and apartment spaces. The school board agreed, Downing followed through, and with a new name and new purposes the Ithaca landmark was saved. The Dewitt Mall remains today a model of economically successful adaptive reuse.

Start your musical relationship with Ithaca Guitar Works at 215 N. Cayuga Street, call (607) 272-2602, or visit guitarworks. com.

Keystone and IRMA Award-winning writer David Milano is a frequent contributor to Mountain Home..

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Rockin’ the Wedges

For the Holidays, Build a Cheese Board and Pair the Perfect Wines

By Ann Duckett

W

e’ve all been there. The holiday season is in full swing and friends, family, or co-workers are gathering at your place. You love to entertain, but feel a little unsure about planning and executing the perfect party without overdoing and stressing out.

A cheese and wine pairing is a wonderful way to ensure you will have as good a time as your guests do.

Perhaps you’re a cheese novice who wants to learn more about wheels and wedges, or a connoisseur at heart who wants to explore the art of pairing cheese and wine.

Keeping things simple yet elegant—from what you’re putting on the cheese board to what you’re pouring—is easier than you think.

Cheese, Please!

In today’s market, myriad cheeses are beckoning due to a renaissance of artisanal cheesemaking, and we get to enjoy an incredible array, whether domestic or European. When deciding on what to plate, it’s best to limit your selection to three to

38

five different cheeses. More cheeses will overwhelm your guests and underwhelm the cheeses you want to taste and enjoy. With the addition of a couple of white or red wines, you’ll have plenty to sip and savor.

Include different textures, sizes, and shapes. Experimenting with styles made from cow, goat, and sheep milk, or a blend, promises unique flavors. Begin with a fresh, soft and spreadable like a plain or flavored chèvre (a light, tart and tangy goat’s milk cheese), or a soft-ripened (aka bloomy rind) cheese like a buttery triple crème, Brie, or Camembert. Add a semi-firm cheese like a rich Havarti or Gruyère, or venture into something bolder with a washed rind cheese like Taleggio or Epoisses (also referred to as Trappist-style). Complete your cheese offerings with an aged cheese like Gouda, sharp Cheddar, Manchego (a favorite sheep’s milk cheese from Spain), or that blue you love.

One of the most often asked questions is, “How much cheese should I buy?”

Portion sizes vary depending on what other small bites you’re offering, but plan on

between a half and an ounce and a half of each cheese per person. When it comes to serving, platters, trays, and boards can be used as a lovely backdrop or to help set the tone you’re looking for—elegant, holiday, or rustic? Depending on the setting (casual or formal) and time of service (before or after dinner, or the main event), a wooden or slate board, marble or granite piece, or your favorite heirloom plate will work nicely.

So, we’ve de-mystified what cheeses to purchase and how much of each you’ll need. Prep or cut your cheeses while they’re cold—they’re easier to handle. If you have a petite wheel of something soft and creamy, you can either leave it whole or start it for your guests by scoring it or removing the first piece. Pre-cut or slice others into twobite wedges or rectangles for neater, easier serving. Leave enough room on the board for your guests to cut from the wheel or wedge if you’re going that route. Be sure to identify the cheeses with handwritten tags, paper flags, or mini chalkboards. Note the name, animal milk type, and origin.

Most important, bring your cheeses to

room temperature for optimal enjoyment an hour before serving.

Your cheeses will open up and express their full aromas and flavors.

Stronger, more aromatic or pungent, or intensely-flavored cheeses like blues shouldn’t be placed next to delicately flavored cheeses.

Options are endless when considering what sweet and savory accompaniments to offer, but don’t overdo. Do have crusty bread, crisps, or plain crackers available in a basket for scooping up a runny cheese if you’ve got a deliciously ripe Brie or Camembert, and they help cleanse the palate. Sometimes, I opt for the simplicity of a yummy spreadable cheese topped with dried fruit or chutney on a separate plate surrounded by crackers.

Slices of fresh apples, peaches, or pears and small bunches of grapes add variety and color. I love using dried apricots, cherries, cranberries, and figs. Fill in with just of few of these: nuts or roasted seeds, preserves, compotes, cornichons, chutneys, charcuterie, local honeys, wine jellies, mustards, or olives.

Time to Pour a Glass Now that the majority of your preparation is done, it’s wine time. First, go confidently. Start with what you know and enjoy (in case you have leftovers)—after all you’re hosting this soiree.

Second, don’t complicate things with more than a couple of varieties—one white, one red will do. Third, there are no rules, only suggested ideas in the world of cheese and wine pairing.

Finally, don’t overlook great wines priced under ten dollars. Ask for guidance and suggestions when shopping.

Lighter wines in body, flavor, and texture (white) will pair perfectly with soft, mild cheeses. Consider Chardonnay, or Pinot Gris, or reach for a festive sparkling wine…Champagne, Prosecco, or Spumante (not too sweet) are especially nice. All those little bubbles love to counter the fat in these rich, creamy cheeses!

When I think of Riesling, Gewurztraminer, or my favorite Pinot Noir, my mind immediately goes to Swiss-style mountain cheeses like Emmentaler, Raclette, Comtè, or Beemster Gouda, rich with deep flavors. If you’re considering washed rind cheeses—those pungent cheeses with rosy rinds that are so misunderstood but incredibly delicious—again consider Riesling, Gewurztraminer, Pinot Noir, and Syrah or Chianti.

If you’re into big, expressive reds, think big expressive cheeses.

Italian cheeses like Asiago, Provolone, Piave, and Spanish cheeses like an aged Manchego are great paired with full-bodied reds.

English cheeses and Cheddars are flavorful and often complex, like the seven-year-aged Old Quebec Cheddar, Cotswold, Huntsman, or Double Gloucester, all complimented deliciously with Cabernet Sauvignon, Red Zinfandel, Bordeaux, or other dry reds.

Last but never least, there is a world of blue cheese out there waiting for you. From the classics like Stilton to Roquefort to some of my domestic favorites like Rouge Creamery Smoky Blue or Point Reyes Blue, these cheeses are perfect partners with port, sherry, ice wines, and Sauternes. It’s a beautiful way to punctuate the end of a great gathering—something that reflects you and your personal style. Cheers!

Ann Duckett, owner of Little Bleu Catering and Events, is a certified cheesemaker and recovering cheesemonger, who now devotes her time to educating and helping others find their cheese bliss through classes, presentations, and special events.

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Saved continued from page 12

Wellsboro’s history with those of Corning Glass Works and Christmas ornaments. (The owner or family connected to each ornament is listed in the brochure.)

“I am very grateful that Annette Geneski lets me borrow her Santa Clause ornament for display each year,” says Anja.

“In doing the research this year, I learned that it is among the earliest of the Corning ornaments and quite rare. We’ll have that displayed here at Pop’s Culture Shoppe along with a sample of a German St. Nikolaus ornament to show how Corning Glass workers Americanized this popular European figure.”

Among those collectors listed in the brochure is Skip Cavanaugh and his wife Carol. “[Skip] gets a real twinkle in his eye,” laughs Anja. Some of her favorite moments of preparing have included unexpected visits from Skip holding a rare package or two of ornaments for the displays.

“The package is just as important to me as the ornament,” Skip says. He is quite fond of Christmas on Main Street, an event that gives the old Corning Glass Works factory the due it deserves. “[Christmas on Main] is reminiscent of an older Christmas, not so commercial,” he says. “Dickens of a Christmas shuts down the whole of Main Street with street vendors and craft shows.

This slows things down. It lets store owners share stories.”

Skip and Carol have made it a traveling habit to stop at antique stores, yard sales, and secondhand shops in search of Corning Glass Works ornaments.

“We just purchased several boxes from an estate,” he relates. “They are about seventy years old with very good integrity.” Recent forays have included trips to Ohio, Virginia, and Gettysburg. They look for boxes marked “Shiny Brite,” the popular ornament company owned by Max Eckhardt when he approached Corning back in 1939. Other boxes include names of five and dimes where the ornaments would have sold—like a Ben Franklin or a J.J. Newberry store. A treasure for Skip is a series of shapes in a somewhat sturdy cardboard box. Dusty, faded, and maybe a little chipped, these ornaments are a tangible piece of Wellsboro’s legacy.

“It’s true. We were the town that saved Christmas,” reflects Pat Davis. “In the end you might say, ‘Christmas and Corning Glass Works saved our town.’”

• Ornaments from Skip and Carol Cavanaugh’s collection can be found on the ornament tour inside of Emerge Healing Arts, Penn Wells Hotel, Stained Glass Reflections, Native Bagel, Steak House, TPA Family, Inc., and the Wellsboro Mini Mall.

On Sunday, December 15, at 12:30 in the Penn Wells Hotel lobby, Skip Cavanaugh will participate in a lecture on the history of Shiny Brites with Regan Brumagen, Associate Librarian for Public Services at Rakow Research Library of the Corning Museum of Glass.

Inspired and haunted by true stories, IRMA and Keystone Awardwinning writer Carrie Hagen is the author of We Is Got Him: The Kidnapping that Changed America. She lives in Philadelphia.

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41

B A C K O F T H E M O U N TA I N

Dickens Dawning

M

By Linda Stager

y friends had settled in at the Bucky Tree line in the pre-dawn at Dickens of a Christmas. It was a tradition and they were there, as always, hoping to be first in line before the trees sold out. I stopped by to see them and we were chatting as Bucky came out of the Penn Wells and started across the street. The scene was magical. I raised my camera and snapped this photo, knowing that, without a tripod and in the dark, I wouldn't be able to capture a true rendition of Bucky. What I got instead was better—the essence of Bucky.

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10/24/19 11:06 AM