June 2015

E E R F he wind

as t

For 169Years, Got Milk!

Tioga County Farmer & Politician Erick Coolidge and His Family Keep Dairy Farming Alive

By Brendan O’Meara

Remembering D-Day Pajama Party in Billtown A Peaceable Kingdom

www.mountainhomemag.com

JUNE 20151

Volume 10 Issue 6

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For 169 Years, Got Milk!

Lady Liberty

By Roger Kingsley

By Brendan O’Meara Tioga county farmer & politician Erick Coolidge and his family keep dairy farming alive.

Tales of a star-crossed home delivery.

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A Peaceable Kingdom

By Maggie Barnes

Or at least it would be if wildlife would just respect our boundaries.

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6

Beaches

Dream It. See It. Do It.

By Don Knaus

The shores of Normandy, the shores of Keuka, a world of gratitude.

By Linda Roller Mark and Suzanne Winkelman’s artistic vision thrives in Williamsport’s Pajama Factory.

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No Place Like Home

By Ashley Mosher Marcin

Love it or hate it, home is where the heart is.

50

Back of the Mountain

14 Happy Birthday, Pyrex!

Thomas F. Vroman 1924-2015

By Cornelius O’Donnell “Cornelius for Corning” dishes on America’s favorite cookware, now 100 years old.

Cover by Tucker Worthington; cover photo by Mitch Wojnarowicz. This page (from top):Mitch Wojnarowicz; Nancy Anne Roller; and courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass.

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Contributing Writers Maggie Barnes, Patricia Brown Davis, Alison Fromme, Holly Howell, Roger Kingsley, Don Knaus, Cindy Davis Meixel, Fred Metarko, David Milano, Gayle Morrow, Cornelius O’Donnell, Brendan O’Meara, Roger Neumann, Gregg Rinkus, Linda Roller, Kathleen Thompson, Joyce M. Tice C o n t r i b u t i n g P h o t o g r ap h e r s Mia Lisa Anderson, Bernadette Chiaramonte-Brown, Bill Crowell, Bruce Dart, Ann Kamzelski, Nigel P. Kent, Ken Meyer, Tina Tolins, Sarah Wagaman, Curt Weinhold, Terry Wild S a l e s R ep r e s e n t a t i v e s Brian Earle Michael Banik Linda Roller Administrative Assistant Amy Packard T h e B ea g l e Cosmo (1996-2014) Yogi (Assistant) 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, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, 16901, and online at www.mountainhomemag.com. Copyright © 2010 Beagle Media, LLC. All rights reserved. E-mail story ideas to editorial@mountainhomemag. com, or call (570) 724-3838.

TO ADVERTISE: E-mail info@mountainhomemag.com, or call us at (570) 724-3838.

AWARDS: Mountain Home has won 66 international and statewide journalism awards from the International Regional Magazine Association and the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association for excellence in writing, photography, and design.

DISTRIBUTION: Mountain Home is available “Free as the Wind” at hundreds of locations in Tioga, Potter, Bradford, Lycoming, Union, and Clinton counties in PA and Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Yates, Seneca, Tioga, and Ontario counties in NY. SUBSCRIPTIONS: For a one-year subscription (12 issues), send $24.95, payable to Beagle Media LLC, 25 Main St., 2nd Floor, Wellsboro, PA 16901 or visit www.mountainhomego.com.

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Bridget Reed Photography

Mitch Wojnarowicz Looking to the future: Erick, Dixie, and Derick Coolidge (above, left to right); Derick Coolidge (above), with wife Brianne and children (left to right) Brooke, Rylee, and Colton, represents the fifth generation to work his family’s land in Coolidge Hollow.

For 169 Years, Got Milk!

Tioga County Farmer & Politician Erick Coolidge and His Family Keep Dairy Farming Alive

By Brendan O’Meara

T

he coffee goes on at 3:45 in the morning, every morning, rain, sleet, snow, or clear. It’s always dark.

For breakfast it’s eggs and toast, maybe Frosted Flakes.

The winter battered Le-Ma-Re Farms down in Coolidge Hollow, a name that gives way to images of mysterious, foggy mornings along Route 287. When the snow melted, only then was winter’s pounding revealed.

Just another season down on a dairy farm founded in 1846, the same year President James Polk declared war on Mexico and seventeen years before the Gettysburg Address. Nearly every day since, someone has milked a cow on this plot of land.

Mitch Wojnarowicz

See Got Milk on page 8

7

Mitch Wojnarowicz

Le-Ma-Re Farm: “As long as I can get up and go to work in the morning I’m a pretty wealthy man,” said dairy farmer Lynn Coolidge, and his descendants concur.

Got Milk continued from page 7

Spring arrived late this year, and the farm wasn’t up to the Coolidge’s standards. When Erick Coolidge, his wife Dixie, and son Derick look out over the fields in the Hollow, they see the immense amount of work ahead of them. That’s the nature of agriculture and one of the many reasons they, and others, love it so much.

The winter aftermath, like a rock band trashing a hotel room, mattered little, because it would be pristine in time, ready for nature’s next wave.

Aesthetics are a human construct, and the 240 head of cattle cared little for it.

Their kind have stood here honorably waiting for feed, waiting to be milked at the hand of a dairy farmer, for 169 years—and hopefully will be for 100 more to come.

That’s always the hope: that the farm will pass down and not lay forever fallow. Driving past a long-dormant farm, a farm with no heir, Erick

says, “These are farms no longer in production. That’s discouraging. The next generation is not there.”

Maybe not there, but it is here, as in a fifth generation of dairyman down in Coolidge Hollow. Erick and Dixie’s son Derick spends most of his time on the farm “working too hard,” says Erick, reflecting upon the work Derick does to make the farm succeed.

Erick, sixty-one, followed in his father’s line of work and Derick, thirtytwo, has followed suit.

“As long as that’s what he wants to do,” Erick says. “I want it for him and his family. When we did it, it was OK because it’s what we wanted to do. If that’s what they want to do let’s embrace it and afford them that opportunity.”

Lynn, Erick’s father, always told Erick, “As long as I can get up and go to work in the morning I’m a pretty wealthy man.”

Erick carries that with him. So,

too, does Dixie. A successful day for her elicits that very quote from Lynn.

It keeps Erick grounded when the cows need milking, or when he needs to step over to the courthouse where he has served as county commissioner since 1995, twenty years and (hopefully) counting.

Erick’s fondest memories come from working with his father on the farm. His mother, May, wouldn’t let Erick walk by without a hug or a kiss.

Erick spent long nights with his father and earlier mornings at the farm, named Le-Ma-Re Farm since the late 1960s: L for Lynn, e for Erick, Ma for May, Re for Erick’s sister Reba, Le-Ma-Re. “There were a couple of times we made some maple syrup,” Erick says.

“In the sugar bush with my dad we boiled sap all night. From where we were we could look down on the farm.

That next morning we had eggs and walked down from the sugar bush to See Got Milk on page 10

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Got Milk continued from page 8

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do chores. Stayed up all night, a fond memory.”

Years later, in 1983, Lynn suffered a serious heart attack that shelved him for June, July, and August. As if that couldn’t get any worse, just when he was getting back on his feet, in November of that year, the barn burned down when Le-Ma-Re Farm was just three months away from being debt free.

• As Erick remembers it, the rain came pouring down, but the fire grew stronger in spite of it. All the cows were hustled out of the barn. One calf ran back in and couldn’t be rescued.

Phones rang and cattle trucks pulled up to the farm ready to ferry them to vacant barns. The cows cared little for the flames. They still needed to be milked.

“That’s typical of the industry,” Dixie says. “It required neighbors.

When something happens to someone, somehow people show up.”

When the rain stopped and the fire burned out Willis Martin Sr. salvaged the steel.

After he put the final load on his truck, Martin said, “This will be it. I think we’ve got you turned around.”

Erick helped him down off the truck and asked, “What do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Martin replied. “Just pass it on.”

Nobody in the Coolidge family forgets that kindness and the kindness shared among the entire agricultural community.

• Lynn would never be quite the same. The heart attack was one thing, the barn something altogether worse.

“What am I losing?” Erick rhetorically asked. “My father’s lifetime went up in smoke. He was going to buy a new pickup. He’d never had one.

The one we had you could see the road go underneath it. We thought maybe it was time to get a new pickup.”

See Got Milk on page 12

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Got Milk continued from page 10

But instead they built a new barn.

“The only question was ‘Do you want a parlor or free stall?’” Erick recalls.

“He said, ‘Well, Erick, if you want to work in a cold, wet environment you build a parlor. If you want to be next to your cow and understand her health, [build] a tie stall barn.’ So we built a 100-stall barn and thought we could bring it under one roof.”

And that’s what they use to this day.

• Derick Coolidge was barely two years old when the barn burned down.

These days, alongside his mother and some hired help, he manages Le-Ma-Re Farm and keeps the machine well-oiled while Erick spends most of his days in the Tioga County courthouse as the county commissioner.

What has befallen so many dormant farms across the county and the country is that the next generation isn’t there to pick up the mantle. That, or it’s simply too expensive to farm and not worth

the toll it takes on the body.

“I just enjoy it,” Derick says, who has three young children. “I’m fifth generation. I’d be glad to hand it down to a sixth generation. We’re lacking for agriculture. People don’t respect it.”

People have been too far removed from their food and, in this case, their milk for far too long. There are people all over doing it on a local scale.

“The only reason people farm is they enjoy it,” Derick says. “There’s pride for it. It’s what we do and have always done.”

Derick studied diesel technology at Alfred State with the idea of bringing back that knowledge to the farm. He knew from a young age that staying on the farm was what he wanted to do.

“He split three tractors and probably saved the farm $30,000 the first year out of school by doing the work in there,” Erick says. “What made me happy was when he put them back together they worked! I tease him about that.”

“Derick saves the farm a lot of money, especially with tractors,” Dixie says. “The cost to split a tractor is about $5,000.”

Dixie grew up on a farm as well.

The ag business is in her bones, and when she gets that rare opportunity to look over the vast beauty of the farm and Coolidge Hollow, she says, “I love this place. Sometimes we’re so busy we don’t take time to look around.”

And knowing the farm is in good hands for the next thirty or forty years is a welcome thought down in the Hollow.

“It will definitely be his some day,” Dixie says. “I’m very proud, and I’m also proud I get to work side-by-side with my son.”

“My mom is the backbone to this operation,” Derick says. “She keeps us all in check. I have great respect for her and all women in ag from those on the farm to the ones home putting up long days and crazy schedules.”

The future, for the time, feels secure.

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Mitch Wojnarowicz Doing what comes naturally: Dixie Coolidge tends to her Holsteins.

• Across Route 287, up a long, windy, and narrow road, lies a moonscape and at its center, surrounded by four concrete dividers, sits Shell’s branding: a giant faucet-like well, capped off, dormant.

According to a Washington Post article, signing the lease with the oil company netted about $17,000 to the Coolidges, far less than what others in the county received for similar drilling rights. And the worst part: after permitting the company to drill on several acres of farmable soil, the company tapped the keg and left with the pump.

“We thought signing the lease

would be a benefit for our farm, if nothing more than a fertilizer payment or gasoline for our tractors,” says Erick.

“Between the road and the well pad,” Dixie says, “we lost sixteen to eighteen acres of farm land. The road is a mile long back there and it broke up the fields. When they called us to put a stake out on the lot we said, ‘Where is that?’ They came and drilled a hole and left to lock up the lease.”

Erick sometimes drives his fourwheeler up to this well pad. One time he saw a small herd of deer and cut the engine. A turkey snuck out of the woods.

He comes up here to relax and to reflect. It’s quiet and removed from the

hustle of politics as he is running for re-election. He’ll drive up and cut the engine and take in the beauty of the landscape. He carries Le-Ma-Re Farm with him everywhere.

“This is where I come sometimes,” Erick says. “I don’t see them. They don’t see me. It takes a little bit of a clearing of head, conversations are more constructive. Just appreciate the solitude. I’ll walk out around the hill, see a deer, what a privilege that is.”

The well pad could be bountiful, then again it could be nothing more than a useless spigot, unwilling to let flow the hydrocarbons cloistered within the shale.

“We got something, but really the See Got Milk on page 48 13

Nancy Anne Roller

Pajama Party: Mark and Suzanne Winkelman have turned 300,000 square feet of largely abandoned industrial space in Williamsport into a haven for the arts and crafts.

Dream It. See It. Do It.

Mark and Suzanne Winkelman’s Artistic Vision Thrives In Williamsport’s Pajama Factory

By Linda Roller

I

t’s a landmark in Williamsport— an old factory complex that takes up a city block, with a tall brick smokestack that still says “Raytown,” after a former owner. Just walking around, it has the “gently shabby” look of industry that has disappeared, reminding us of the work our grandparents and great-grandparents did in these mountains. But, beneath

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the exterior of this 100-plus-year-old factory, a major new development in the area has taken root and flourished.

For this crusty old building, which was once home to the world’s largest pajama factory, now houses some of the most innovative artists and craftsmen the area has ever seen, and has incubated many fledging businesses with a new vision for this city.

It was seven years ago that Mark Winkelman, New York City architect and co-founder of Downtown Design Group, “went to the dark side,” as he puts it, “of becoming a developer.” He turned the whole idea of development into an artistic vision.

“The first rule of developing is to pick a simple project,” he explains.

And, in choosing to develop the

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WILLIAMSPORT

Pajama Factory, he broke that first rule.

But the building simply spoke to Mark, and to the work he had done in Manhattan. “I spent a good part of my career restoring old buildings in Soho/Tribecca.”

And the design and layout of the eight buildings that comprise the complex contained nineteenth century ideas of how a building should work that lend themselves to a twenty-first century interpretation.

The buildings were all built fifty to sixty feet wide, which let in natural light and ventilation in all parts of the buildings. There were a few tenants that he inherited: a Cobbler Shoe Outlet that has been the retail mainstay in the building for over thirty years; Equinox Limited, an outdoor gear design and sewing factory that specializes in lightweight travel gear and eco-friendly bags that has manufactured in the building for over twenty years; and Trebecca Designs, home to two goldsmiths, which features gold and silver jewelry. In the rest of the nearly 300,000 square feet, he envisioned a holistic building, with art studios, startup businesses, living spaces—all in one building. So, instead of simple, and instead of simply looking for a monetary return on an investment of time and resources, Mark was envisioning a community looking for creative ways to live and work.

In essence, he was creating an architectural performance art “installation.”

Initially, Mark thought this project would attract artisans and other creative people from larger cities, like New York and Philadelphia. “We didn’t know anything about Williamsport,” he said.

Instead, the first tenants came—for short stays— from the local area, only to be replaced over time by local small businesses, non-profit groups, and artisans who began to stay and grow. The first new tenant to “stick” was Erik Guthrie, of White Knight Gaming and Erik’s Edibles. He’s been at PJF for three years, and is expanding his area to create a safe, monitored gaming space for kids. There’s Way Cool Beans, a coffee shop where the beans are roasted and you can get real drip coffee in an inviting atmosphere. The community radio station WPXI has their offices on the main floor. The Williamsport Community Woodshop anchors the southeast corner of the complex, offering classes and a complete workshop available by the week, month, or year. The upper floors are filled with studios of all sizes. And, as word in the artistic community has spread about the Pajama Factory, people in the cities that Mark thought would be the first to work in the community growing here are joining the “founding locals” of north central Pennsylvania.

The logo of the Pajama Factory, coined by New York advertising executive Suzanne Winkelman, See Dream It on page 16 15

Nancy Anne Roller

Always art: Once scouted as a model for the Broadway musical The Pajama Game, the Williamsport factory building is home to artists, craftsmen, businesses, and performance events.

Dream It continued from page 15

is “Dream It. See It. Do It.” Suzanne, Mark’s wife, does the marketing for the complex, and helps get the word out to people looking for a place to create.

As for both Mark and Suzanne, what once started as a project has become a second home, as they discover Williamsport and enjoy the charms of a small city, where everything needed for urban living is available, and, due to the smaller size, always convenient.

New York is still home, but they look to spend more time here.

Currently, forty percent of the complex is occupied. The remainder of the building will be divided into more work spaces/studios and live/ work spaces. One of the exciting developments at the Pajama Factory 16

is the apartments, with two already rented and over sixty more planned.

T h e d re a m i n c l u d e s b o t h l o f t apartments as well as smaller, more economical apartment/studios. This simply continues the vision of an organic economic development. Barb Andreassen, co-manager of PJF for almost three years, and a studio tenant specializing in graphic arts, design, and writing, says that the process is slower than a traditional development plan. But the goal is to create a community, a platform, and support for the artisans and small businesses that join the Pajama Factory. This type of development takes time to flourish, but it is precisely this blend that “humanizes” the building. In the

future, Barb, Mark, and Suzanne look ahead to growing this type of living and working beyond the confines of the complex, into the neighborhood itself.

It sounds utopian. But Mark Winkelman is a practical architect/ developer, not a starry-eyed idealist.

He sees this entire project as simply good business.

“It’s the only way [the Pajama Factory] is sustainable. Otherwise, it turns back into an old building, filled with pigeons.”

Mountain Home contributor Linda Roller is a bookseller, appraiser, and writer in Avis, Pennsylvania.

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Roger Kingsley

O U T D O O R S

Apple blossom time: Whatever the varietal, feel free to sit under our apple tree.

Lady Liberty

Tales of a Star-Crossed Home Delivery

By Roger Kingsley

T

he other day I received a catalog in the mail from Stark Bro’s Nurseries & Orchards Co., located in Missouri, and their partner Miller Nurseries of Canandaigua, New York. Leafing through the pages reminded me of the time I was browsing through their choice apple varieties and noticed that they were offering a halfprice sale. Since I had ordered plants from their nursery in the past, and was impressed with the quality, I placed an order for some disease-resistant apple trees called Freedom.

Several days later, when my wife and I returned home from visiting some family, I found the package of four-foot-tall trees where UPS had left them. With the sun going down, and

rain in the next day’s forecast, I grabbed the package and my planting tools and headed for the field.

I was setting the fourth tree in the hole when a name on the yellow label attached to the trunk caught my eye: Lady.

Lady?? What the heck?? I dropped my shovel and went back to the previously planted trees and inspected their labels, which, to my surprise, also said Lady. “What’s going on here?”

I thought. “I ordered the Freedom variety, not Lady!”

Disgusted and confused, I finished planting the trees just before dark, then headed home.

The next day I phoned the nursery to explain the situation. “I ordered the

Freedom variety but the labels say Lady,” I told the sales person. Apologizing for the blunder, she told me she would promptly send the correct variety, no charge, plus I could keep the ones that I’d already planted. Apparently, workers in the packing and shipping department put my trees in someone else’s package, and their trees got stuck in mine.

I’m still wondering who got the better deal...the other customer for taking my Freedoms, or me for taking their Ladies!

A hunter and photographer, awardwinning writer Roger Kingsley’s articles and photos have appeared in Deer & Deer Hunting, and Pennsylvania Game News, among others.

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WELCOME TO

22

WELLSBORO

flickr.com/anoldent

A Peaceable Kingdom

Or At Least It Would Be If Wildlife Would Just Respect Our Boundaries

By Maggie Barnes

“D

avid, let me call you back.

We have company.”

It was Super Bowl Sunday, the highest of holy days for football fans, and I was ensconced in the recliner in our family room. Adult beverage on one side table, wonderfully unhealthy fried food on the other, and me, wrapped in total bliss, in the deep center of the chair. A slate gray day blew at the porch windows

in the late afternoon gloom. The fireplace danced orange light around the room while my husband chatted on the phone with our youngest.

I had been in heavy contemplation over the unlikelihood of Seattle having any hope of shutting down Tom Brady, when Bob’s sign-off on the phone call snapped me back to the moment. Company? I hadn’t heard the doorbell or the distinctive

sound of tires chewing on the gravel in our sloped driveway.

“We have visitors? Who’s here?”

Bob, a man you could not rattle if you hit him with a tire iron, pointed to a spot on the far side of the carpet and calmly said, “Snake.”

In my humble opinion, nothing s u r ro u n d i n g t h e e x i s t e n c e o f snakes should ever be approached calmly. I am an ardent proponent See A Peaceable Kingdom on page 27

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A Peaceable Kingdom continued from page 23

of screaming, flailing arms, excessive cursing, and pleas to the Almighty for intervention. And speed.

All of this must be conducted in a blur of color, indistinguishable to the human eye. Height is good, too, meaning elevation of any sort, by any means.

I once hovered above the ground for a solid two minutes while my hiking partner dispatched a reptile.

Think it can’t be done? Watch me.

In this particular instance, I had gone from my backside to my feet in one motion and in the next moment was standing, balanced on the now oscillating recliner. (I’ve tripped over lint on the floor, but when a snake is introduced into the picture, I am a flippin’ Wallenda.) From this position, I had a clear view of the snake.

It—no, I didn’t know the gender and you can bet your epinephrine auto-injector I was not about to find out—was lying on the artificial turf of our carpet.

To my eyes, it was nine feet long, as big around as a municipal drainage pipe, with fangs that looked like Dracula’s dentist had branched into veterinary work.

Bob stood a scant couple of feet away from it and lazily questioned, “Now, how did he get in here?”

How? Who cares how? If you encounter a homicidal maniac twirling an axe you don’t waste time wondering which exit off of I-86 he took to get here! Just do something to remove yourself from the situation!

Bob knew without looking that I was doing my high-wire act on the La-Z-Boy. He moved to the linen closet and returned with a large bath towel. He peered closer at the creature and smiled. “Mags, look how pretty he is.”

I had yet to breathe and when I inhaled it sounded like a choking vacuum cleaner.

“Get it out of here.”

Bob removed the snake without incident. It was another in the seemingly endless encounters we have with the creatures that called this hill home long before we got here.

Some of the episodes are gentle and mutually beneficial, like watching from inside while the deer graze or the birds practice landings on the feeder platform like pilots returning to the aircraft carrier.

Other times, though, the introduction of a critter into our world is a bit more intrusive.

Thanksgiving night, some of our family braved the cold, the crowds, and the cynicism of “Black Thursday” shopping. It was near midnight when our See A Peaceable Kingdom on page 29 27

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A Peaceable Kingdom continued from page 27

daughter Angie, family friend Brent, and I returned home and began assembling turkey sandwiches.

(Which are the whole reason behind Thanksgiving, can I get an Amen?) Brent announced that one of the cats had cornered a mouse in the kitchen. Said cat toted said mouse right down the hallway, intent on presenting her find to her favorite human, my husband. He, having no appetite for crazed shopping sprees, was already asleep.

Brent gave chase, but the mouse had escaped into the closet in the bedroom.

So, at approximately midnight on Thanksgiving night, I nudged my better half awake with the news that there was a mouse on the rampage in the room.

By the way, I added, your daughter and Brent are also here, so don’t go flinging those covers off unless you want to foot the bill for extensive therapy in the years to come. It is a credit to Robert’s ability to adapt and overcome that he said nothing, merely rolled over.

A chase ensued that involved both of the young people, both cats, and the frantic mouse. At one point, the rodent sought refuge under a dresser and Brent dropped to his knees before it. I assumed he was triangulating a path of escape and was about to enquire when the mouse, for reasons that remain unknown to this day, rocketed out from the dresser and directly into Brent’s…uh….nether regions.

I now present the second case study that a human being can take flight when properly motivated. Well done, Brent.

The images that followed are a bit graphic for such a fine publication, so let’s leave it with the crowd of us trooping back out of the room with Brent carrying the unconscious creature and a firm conviction to wear an athletic cup when dining late with the Barneses.

All of which brings us to the bear.

Many of the residents of our hill had spoken of seeing a large bear roam the woods. He had been found grocery shopping in some of the finer garage refrigerators and, in one memorable visit, decimated a 50-count box of pudding cups. But he hadn’t been near enough to us to be sighted. Then Scott, resident of the last house on our tiny four-house road, brought down video from the night before. The birdfeeder on their deck stands seven feet tall and the bear was snacking from it like he was leaning on a table in the bar waiting for the hostess to seat his party. Scott had whispered to his wife Peggy, “I’m gonna open the slider so I can get better video of him.” To which

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Peggy replied, “No, you’re not because I look lousy in black.”

Bob pouted. “Everyone has seen the bear but us!” I, on the other hand, planned to live a long, fabulously fulfilled life minus any bear visits.

So, a week later, while working on our home office, I truly had no idea what I was hearing outside.

The bottom half of our house is built into a hillside, so the side windows are at ground level. I had to put both hands to the glass to bring the picture into view. The thought formed, “Why am I looking at the bottom of the recycling bin?”

Because the bear had tipped it over.

He was 450 pounds if he was an ounce, with a head the size of a hubcap and black as night.

I have to say, I was impressed with my own composure. I walked into the family room and simply said, “Robert. You asked about the bear? He’s here.”

We watched the woodland creature sit upright and, with surprising gentleness, pull each of the bags out of the bin and slice them open. He must have thought he’d found a candy store when he came on the tray liner from our recent painting. He was probably anticipating more of that sweet pudding, but when he lifted the liner, he was not impressed with the beige paint that dripped down his nose.

He tried to catch some of it on his tongue until his taste buds kicked in. The tray was noisily discarded and I was sure our TripAdvisor rating had just been downgraded. But the next discovery was the bucket of fried chicken remnants and our four-star dining status was restored.

After a brief stay at the toppled bin, he rolled to his feet and ambled up the driveway. I’m sure he saw us at the window and I’m equally confident that he knew there was nothing to fear. If he talked to the local snakes at all, he knew I was a non-issue.

I was ready to check off another on the list of our country adventures and Bob was beaming. Then a cloud passed over his face.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“He didn’t stay long. We need to throw out a better grade of garbage.”

Somebody hand me a tire iron.

Maggie Barnes works in health care marketing and is a resident of Waverly, New York. She is a 2015 recipient of the Keystone Press Award for her columns in Mountain Home.

31

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publicdomainpictures.net / Liv G The eyes of the world are upon you: on a bluff that overlooks Omaha Beach, in the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, lie the remains of 9,387 American military men and women, most of whom died in the D-Day invasions and the military operations that followed it.

Beaches

The Shores of Normandy, the Shores of Keuka, A World of Gratitude

By Don Knaus

S

ummer, Keuka Lake. I’m sitting in the afternoon sun, reading. I left the dock and the dunking of worms at the call, “Lunch….” I had assaulted panfish from the dock last evening and again this morning. I don’t usually keep count but, for some reason, during those last two angling sessions, I did. At the expense of a couple of dozen worms, I had tallied five perch, four smallmouth bass, three rock bass, five bluegills, and eleven pumpkin seed sunfish. All the fish were released back to the water. The pleasure was in the lake, the casting, the hooking, and the landing.

My hosts are napping, and my bride is curled up in a chair, glued to her Kindle. But I want to savor the sun and solitude of the deck. It’s a weekday. The churning speedboats and water skis of the lake weekends are docked. The lake is calm, the water smooth and sleek as polished marble. The serenity is broken by a lone boat etching the glossy glass surface. The vessel vanishes and silence settles back over the lake. Traces of the boat’s presence linger long after it fades from sight and sound. Its wake has

dwindled to small, gentle waves brushing the shore with a steady, soothing lap… lap…lap against the gravel beach.

Alone on the deck while others nap, I prop up my feet, relax in the warm rays, and read. I love military histories and I’m reading Balkoski’s chronicle, Omaha Beach, his highly acclaimed 410-page tome about just one troop landing area on D-Day, June 6, 1944. Just one. USA Today has touted Balkoski as the top living D-Day historian. The reading is riveting, and events of that momentous, massive World War II invasion of Nazioccupied France are detailed almost to the minute. D-Day, code named Operation Overlord, included the largest naval armada, the largest beach invasion force, the largest airborne combat drop in human history. And in his history, Balkoski follows each unit assigned duty on that one bloody beach in chilling detail. Omaha Beach.

The hairs on my legs and arms glisten in the sun. I bask in the beauty of the day and of the tranquil, relaxing waters. It seems strange, almost out of place, to be reading of clouds obstructing aerial bombardment, negating any

advantage the bombs might have given beach assault teams. A lone fisherman in a small boat trolls down the glasssmooth lake, noting landmarks along the way. On D-Day, high surf swamped struggling tanks and landing craft aimed far off mark at a treacherous shore obscured by fog. The silence, save for the soft lap…lap…lap of the water at shore’s edge is sharp contrast to the din of artillery, grenade, mine, and machine gun mixed with the screams and groans of dying young men. Here, the young swim waters for the joy of it. On Omaha, young men swam into devastating enemy fire. I counted my fish just for fun but, seventy years ago, on just this one beachhead, there were nearly 8,000 casualties and almost 1,000 dead boys who would never again tan in the sun or catch a fish or swim in a quiet lake.

The men attacking Omaha landed under heavy fire from gun emplacements overlooking the beaches, and the shore was mined and covered with obstacles and barbed wire, making the work of the beach-clearing teams difficult and dangerous. Casualties were heaviest at Omaha, with its high cliffs.

See Beaches on page 35

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Beaches continued from page 33

That day hits close to home. My host’s father hit Bloody Omaha among the first troops, assigned to blow up German tetrahedrons erected by “The Desert Fox,” Irwin Rommel, to puncture, impede, and swamp Allied landing craft.

He was wounded but returned to combat until the Germans surrendered. My Uncle Rims tried to land his Sherman tank on Omaha only to have it swamp, forcing the crew to swim ashore amid murderous machine gun and artillery fire. While the largest armada ever assembled disgorged the thousands of troops who forged the greatest amphibious landing on the beaches of Normandy, more than 15,000 other troops were already aground, having jumped behind German lines. My Uncle Tim was with the 82nd Airborne, six miles from his drop zone and holed up in a canal surrounded by Germans. Later my father would cross France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany to link with Russian troops on the Elbe River.

I note the irony of my reading choice. I hadn’t really thought about it, but today is June 6, the anniversary of that day, that magnificent yet awful day when tens of thousands of boys faced death and destruction. The sea had been rough in the morning, but the waters calmed late in the day. The waves of Omaha at dusk brushing the shore with a steady, soothing lap…lap…lap pushing bodies slowly toward the gravel beach.

It is good, I think, that we remember…at least some of us…the bravery of scared soldiers sacrificing themselves and their friends on a beach in Normandy so that now, seventy years later, I can relax on a tranquil lake, soak up the sun, and sip fine wine. At dusk, after dinner, I will again hit the dock with rod and reel. But it won’t be important to count anymore.

Retired teacher, principal, coach, and lifelong sportsman Don Knaus is an awardwinning outdoor writer and author of Of Woods and Wild Things, a collection of short stories on hunting, fishing, and the outdoors.

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&

DRINK Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass

FOOD

A clear improvement: Corning Glass Works employee Catherine Huber Weickgenant was the model for the first Pyrex advertisement. National Geographic published the ad (left) in 1916.

Happy Birthday, Pyrex

“Cornelius for Corning” Dishes on America’s Favorite Cookware, Now 100 Years Old

By Cornelius O'Donnell

I

magine what pre-1915 kitchens looked and sounded like. You can get the effect by watching the goings on and the racket in Mrs. Patmore’s kitchen in Downton Abbey’s cavernous “downstairs.” Tin pans, aluminum and ceramic bowls, the blackness of cast-iron muffin pans and cookware clinking and clanging. Throw in the noise of metal spoons and ladles against the metal cookware—not to mention something less obvious—the interaction of acidic food with some metals. Phew!

All that changed in 1915 with the arrival of the first glass cookware— oven-safe Pyrex pie plates which were sold to America’s cooks with the help of advertising that showed an attractive young woman—with the piled-up hairdo so popular then—holding a Pyrex pie plate in front of her. Below it were the words “Look right through.”

That woman worked in the local Corning office.

Those first pie plates were an instant hit and were followed by cake pans, all manner and sizes of mixing bowls,

measuring cups, custard cups, and the like. Company archives have a photo of a railroad car filled with Pyrex products bound for Boston and the Jordan Marsh department store there.

From Science to Stove Pyrex ware was initially developed for use in scientific lab ware, a market largely supplied by German glass companies. When World War I interrupted the supply of German lab ware it was “Corning to the rescue” to See Happy Birthday on page 39

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Trail-Wide

provide American-made heat-resistant lab ware: test tubes, flasks, beakers, piping, and (well, those of you who took chemistry in school will know what I mean) all the heat-resistant glass items that all labs needed… including bell jars.

Perhaps you’ve heard how the gifted Corning scientist, Jesse T. Littleton, looked at the shape of a newly formed battery jar and saw how the lower two inches had a shape like the metal cake pans in the kitchen at home. He had the bottom of a bell jar cut off, took it home, and asked his wife if she could bake a cake in it. She could, she did, and the experiment had excellent results. Corning’s Consumer Products were born.

It’s a wonderful tale and one I believe. On my tours of the city of Corning neighborhood for visiting friends I’d drive slowly by what in 1915 was the Littleton’s house and I’d point out the kitchen windows. I could almost smell the scent of sugar, butter, flour, and perhaps vanilla wafting into the air.

Visit during June & July with this ad $10.00 off two bottles of bubble Riesling

A Whole New Corning Department I can understand how the lineup of Corning’s heat-resistant prep and cookware caused a sensation. It was new, clean-looking, and had a smooth easy-to-clean surface and was lighter than the heavy metal stuff that cooks were used to.

To develop recipes and cooking directions for this new cookware, Corning developed a Home Economics department—the first ever (I’m told) for a cookware company.

When World War II made metals hard to get for non-military use, Corning set about fiddling with the glass formula and developed Pyrex cookware that could be used (with care) on the range-top. Perhaps you’ve seen the saucepans with covers, the skillets (with detachable handles), See Happy Birthday on page 40

39

MH Bloss AD_Layout 1 4/20/13 1:55 PM Page 1 Happy Birthday continued from page 39

the beloved coffee and tea pots, and the double boilers in antique shops. In order to make these pieces work on electric stoves, the Pyrex product was set on a triangular metal “spider” to spread the heat across the bottom.

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I’ve been involved with Pyrex glass for virtually my entire working life in Corning, and last year was thrilled to receive a pin for fifty years of active and retired service.

I started out in advertising and promotion for Corning’s laboratory products. After five years, I had a reputation for good cooking (thanks, Mom) and moved over to consumer products.

During the early lab ware days (’63 to ’68) my office was in the original main plant office building circa 1915 that was part of a string of Corning manufacturing plants along the banks of the Chemung River. Early on, one of my co-workers took me on a tour of what we called “B and C Factory” where extremely round-cheeked artisans (called gaffers) blew into tubes to turn gobs of molten glass into products specially designed to customers’ needs. The blown glass ranged from small globes to huge blueprint cylinders literally swung by the gaffer on a raised platform.

It was a show I’ll never forget—the heat of the glory hole, the noise, and the camaraderie and teamwork of the workers.

Neither will I forget the periodic noise of glass breaking just outside my window. My office abutted a chute where glass “cullet” was sent down two stories into large dumpsters to be added back into future batches of the same glass. Like most folks, the sound of breaking glass provoked memories of childhood disasters: the softball that shattered our living room window was a clear memory. It took me months, and a move to the other side of the building, to get over the “shakes.”

How Do You Spell That?

Another “Pyrex memory” was the time a couple of us drove to a Rochester printer to do a final check on the printing of a Pyrex lab ware catalog. After thoroughly checking even the small type to assure sizes and prices were correct, we were about to give the “go” to start the presses to run off thousands of copies when I noticed something was not right about the cover.

The graphic designer had opted to put a giant PYREX across the cover with a much smaller “Lab Ware” below it. All of the company’s brand names are used only as adjectives and always with a superscript circle R. For once I could honestly yell, “STOP DA PRESSES!” That was about as close to a heart attack as I’ve ever come.

See Happy Birthday on page 43

40

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41

Courtesy of The Corning Museum of Glass 100 years in the kitchen: (Clockwise from top left) Pyrex advertising from 1924, 1947, 1955, and 1969.

42

Happy Birthday continued from page 40

And since I’m talking lab ware, Pyrex pipe was put to a new consumer use in the ’80s when a brilliant marketer thought a section of it could make a dandy bread baker. Voilà! The Pyrex “Bake-Around” was born. It came with a metal cradle to facilitate handling, the bread had a crust on all sides, and the round shape was perfect for a salami and sliced tomato sandwich. Enjoy!

A TV Guide My consumer products day job came under the broad heading of Public Relations. This involved making recipes using Corning cookware on local TV stations all over America (and abroad as well, to promote my appearances at stores later in the week). I’d wear an agreed-upon “look”: plaid shirt, knit tie, and an apron printed with my name, “Cornelius.” When I appeared in department stores I wore an apron that said “Cornelius for Corning.”

Doing those TV shows, I was sometimes pulled aside by a producer prior to the segment and warned not to say “Corning Ware” as it would be “too commercial.” Thank goodness our products were so distinctive that wasn’t a problem; besides, I’d stress the product’s “freeze—cook—serve” aspects. Funny, though, over the years I discovered that even on TV I could refer to the cover of the pans as “Pyrex.” Ditto the bowls for mixing the ingredients.

And that brings me to Julia Child.

When her The French Chef show first appeared on WGBH-TV in Boston, the program was then-typical PBS-style: non-commercial and so much so that when Julia measured a cup of liquid, the word Pyrex on the side of those cups was covered with a strip of masking tape.

Lord knows, Corning provided every piece of glassware and glass-ceramic cookware used on the show gratis. It warms my heart to see the TV cooks today, such as the Barefoot Contessa, blithely adding ingredients in clearly marked Pyrex measuring cups. You know,

the ones with the open handles. A bit of bragging: I was the one who suggested this improvement to the glass engineers who made it happen.

The 13 X 9 That Pyrex cookware has become beloved by most cooks is easy to prove.

Get on the Amazon “books” site and type in “13 x 9 Cookbooks” and you’ll come up with three examples. One of these is by no less than the folks at Better Homes and Gardens. Many cooks simply call that shape “my lasagna pan,” though it is used for such disparate dishes as coffee cake, stuffed bell peppers, stuffed cabbage, and baked fish. Not content to rest on the pan’s laurels, the product designers have made some dandy improvements to this classic…nice wider hand grips that accommodate oven mitts many chefs swear by.

Happy Birthday to a Good Cook’s Companion Did you happen to catch the fairly recent segment of the Cook’s Country TV show in which they rated nine-inch pie plates? This was a repeat test because there were a few new designs in the category. Despite that, “old faithful” Pyrex pie plates were again named number one—and the price is still right.

For 100 years Pyrex products have meant a great deal not only to cooks but to the Twin Tiers. The brand has spelled good fortune in the economic sense, but, when we use these products in our everyday lives, we can appreciate how grim our time in the kitchen would be without these sparkling, clear helpers.

Just remember as you float through life: always read the small print and the large print. Happy cooking to you from Cornelius, still for Corning.

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

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Josh Wooten

No Place Like Home

Love It Or Hate It, Home Is Where the Heart Is

By Ashley Mosher Marcin

A

s the thunder echoed in the mountains outside town, I ran barefoot to the side yard, sliding on wet blades of grass. I took great care climbing our aluminum swing set to perch atop the monkey bars. By now, the corroded metal was precariously fused together but still sufficiently bore my prepubescent body. Another boom.

I stared up at the darkening clouds, blinking away the raindrops and waiting for that first bolt of lightning to flash across the sky.

“What a bore,” I remember thinking to myself. It was the summer before seventh grade, and I was stuck at home with this storm as my sole source of entertainment. This was the age before cellphones, after all. And the Internet was only fledgling dialup with spotty service. It didn’t matter anyway. On our edge of town, the power was always failing at the first sign of inclement weather.

“Stony Fork circuit,” my dad, who attended lower grades at the small schoolhouse out that way, would speak to the flickering lights. The firehouse’s siren sounded as the wind picked up speed—it’s an eerie chorus I still hear 44

on occasion in my head all these years later. The slowly ascending dissonance reached a peak with a falling resolution on repeat, though I forget how many times exactly.

My mother frantically ran around the house slamming windows swollen with humidity and called to me from the living room. I pretended not to hear her while deep in my classic teen angst. Other girls were out at malls or hanging wherever looking for boys and clothes, I mused. Here I was stuck in the wilds of Nowhere, Pennsylvania, where everything seemed to close at five p.m. sharp.

When I’d go to sleep-away summer camps and try to explain my hometown’s location, I’d give up when the usual landmarks didn’t suffice, resulting in the ever-difficult question: “Is it closer to Philadelphia or Pittsburgh?”

Nope. And on the first day I escaped my cursed geographical isolation—the highly anticipated college exodus of 2001—I found myself trying to explain Wellsboro’s location to a group of urban transplants. By then, I had learned the hand trick, which, for those of you who are unfamiliar, is performed by raising

your left hand, tilting it ninety degrees horizontally (see the shape of PA?), and pointing somewhere in the northcentral region—or—second fold of your index finger.

“Right here. By the Grand Canyon,” I’d say, which was a comment usually met by many confused, uninterested expressions. “South of Corning, New York. North of Williamsport. Anyone?”

I’d give up.

For these girls, Ithaca, New York, was the backward place. Chief of all complaints? The mall was too small.

Highway access to “The City” was far off, too. I tried containing my glee at not having to drive forty-five minutes on winding back roads, fighting my uniquely robust breed of carsickness, for the most basic shopping trips. To write I didn’t jibe with my floor mates is an understatement. But, eventually, I found my people, and college was a relatively enjoyable, enlightening experience.

I h a d t h e “m i s f o r t u n e” o f returning home to Wellsboro after college graduation when my shiny new bachelor’s degree didn’t turn any heads on the job hunt. I lived for eight long,

REAL ESTATE hideous months in half the huge yellow house on the corner of Walnut Street and Central Avenue. It was the darkest period in my admittedly short life, but felt no less dramatic. It was a slow eclipse to the light I’d found; more obscured was my existence the longer it lasted. I had failed at flying away from the proverbial nest. I did everything in my power to leave, eventually securing a spot in a software company’s marketing department back across the border.

Years after I left Wellsboro for the second time, my parents sold the family home on Grant Street.

I didn’t see gas-lit boulevards or traverse the famed 10K footpath for years upon years. I had forgotten the names and directions of back roads and shortcuts that had previously been mapped in my memory like my very veins. And it was then that my homesickness presented its first symptoms. It was certainly a delayed onset, but unmistakable in nature.

After the birth of my daughter in 2011, my husband and I travelled to town for a quick visit, and I found myself uncomfortably displaced. There was no driveway in which to park my car. No bedroom closet in which to place my suitcase. We plunked a few dimes in the meter at the Green and walked aimlessly down Main Street. Wellsboro was that best friend who, for better or worse, I had known since birth, grew up with, and took entirely too much for granted. All along, I was in love, but I didn’t realize until it was woefully too late.

The necessities for my life aren’t found in the big box stores or sprawling shopping plazas of my current digs. And I never really need anything out past five p.m., as was my previous understanding of acceptable.

Even in the craziest weather, my home rarely loses power, but I also rarely take those quiet moments to observe rainstorms or trudge through muddy creeks and connect with my roots in such a physical way. It’s a life of convenience minus substance.

The definition of home is a place where one lives.

It’s four solidly constructed walls and a sturdy roof overhead. A physical foundation upon which entire generations lay their joys and burdens. However, like many native Wellsborians scattered across the country, I carry home in my heart. I’ve internalized the visions of rocky streams snaking through thick, colorful forest canopy; the sights of grand boulevards and countless familiar faces that I now miss in my relative anonymity; and the sound of sweet church bell melodies wafting through the breeze on warm summer afternoons. This home is a soulful kind of shelter.

And, like many, I hope to someday return.

www.pennoakrealty.com

(570) 724-8000

Offered by Linda McNeill

65 Main Street Wellsboro, PA

WATCH THE EAGLES SOAR over Hills Creek Lake from your back deck of this cozy Amish-built 4 BR modular and wood frame ranch across the road from the lake. Nice living areas and tons of potential for the huge, partially finished walk-out basement - excellent office space, daycare, home-based business - all on 4.45 sub-dividable acres. There is a nice mix of open and wooded space.

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$184,300

45

REAL ESTATE

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Stop and Visit our Showroom & Design Center.

Meet with our kitchen & bath designers Jessica Wilson & Kieth Austin, CKD, CBD. Offering computer designs and onsite visits.

HOOVER HARDWARE

816 Canton Street, Troy, PA • Hours: Mon.-Sat. 7-5 46

570-297-3445 • 1-800-251-2156

REAL ESTATE

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Commercial Sales & Leasing

FIRST

Chris Gilbert - Realtor chris.gilbert@remax.net direct: 570-404-1268 office: 570-662-2200 18 North Main St., Mansfield, PA

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Newly Constructed Professional Building on S. Main Street in Mansfield. Situated between Walmart and Lowes, and visible from Route 15/I99. Only one unit still available. Building offers public water & sewer, handicap access, central air, and plenty of paved parking. Perfect opportunity to start your own business! Call Chris Gilbert today to check out this magnificent new location!

Our Current Smart FREE Incentives:

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Mansfield: 570.662.7900 | Lycoming Mall: 570.546.5707 | Selinsgrove: 570.374.7900 47

A dairy heritage: Erick Coolidge and his son Derick are the fourth and fifth generations to work the land at Le-Ma-Re Farm.

Mitch Wojnarowicz

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES

Got Milk continued from page 13

return on that is when you start production,” Erick says. “It would’ve been an infusion of revenue. Derick— again I’m governed by my family’s thoughts, the way they feel about things—he said, ‘We didn’t get up in the morning to see how much money the well made, did we?’ ‘Nope.’

‘Okay.’ That’s kind of how that’s gone.

We didn’t get too overwhelmed by it.

There are some who did better. That was a decision we made.”

While driving out to his house, Erick pointed out toward the Grand Canyon. Out there among the hills was the greenish stick of a well, a Kubrickian monolith.

For the time, standing on his own well pad, he can sleep well knowing his 120 head of milkable cows are producing and that the farm is in the most capable hands of his wife and son.

48

That much is certain.

His family is lucky that way.

“Agriculture and those businesses associated with it have realized benefits as a result of the presence of the oil and gas industry in our county,” Erick points out. But farms go under in spite of that, without a new generation to carry them onward.

What keeps them all grounded are the chores that need doing and the cows in need of milking.

It’s 3:45 in the morning, and the coffee’s hot.

Aw a rd - w i n n i n g w r i t e r Bre n d a n O’Meara is the author of Six Weeks in Saratoga: How Three-Year-Old Filly Rachel Alexandra Beat the Boys and Became Horse of the Year.

Mountain Home

SERVICE DIRECTORY

Pick your primary today at arnothealth.org/primary or by calling 607-737-4499.

SHOPPING

Now you CAN find a primary doctor who’s the right fit.

Make us your primary.

We’ll make you ours.

Beneath The Veil, The Realm of Faery Awaits

SPORTING GOODS

Our Mission: Love. Light. Healing.

An Enchanting Gift Shoppe 6 East Avenue Est. 2000 Wellsboro, PA (570) 724-1155 www.enchanted-hollow.com

JOHN’S SPORTING GOODS Guns bought, sold, and traded!

Three museums featuring

Pioneers, Native Americans Victorian Era, Industry Steamboats 107 Chapel St, Penn Yan Open Tues-Fri. 9-4 July & Aug. Sat. 10 am-2 pm

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RESTAURANTS

ENTERTAINMENT

27 Whispering Pines Ln. Galeton, PA

See our new exclusive puzzles and games by local artists!

25 Main Street Wellsboro, PA 16901 570-723-4263 • www.popscultureshoppe.com 49

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

Thomas F. Vroman 1924-2015

T

homas Vroman, world-renowned artist​​and owner of a prominent graphic design and marketing firm in Watrous, Pennsylvania, died on February 7. This month, the seventy-first anniversary of D-Day, Mountain Home would like to remember Mr. Vroman, whose remarkable role—literally drawing D-Day for the allies—we profiled in a June 2007 cover story (above right) by John Fulmer. Above is an example of Mr. Vroman’s work, one of the many illustrations he drew for Collier’s magazine. In 1974 he r​ eceived an honor as one of America’s outstanding contemporary artists​, won by only twelve other artists, including Norman Rockwel​l. Draw in peace. ~ Michael Capuzzo 50

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Same day access available to patients.

Keeping you Susquehanna Health

Drs. Jill Burns, Christopher Domarew, Walter Laibinis, Anthony Nespola and Certified Registered Nurse Practitioners Olivia Mays and Amy Miller of Susquehanna Health Internal Medicine at Wellsboro provide patients with same day appointments for easy access to care. When you need a healthcare provider, we don’t want you to wait.

Same day access can be used for: • • • •

Sprains and minor fractures Bladder infection Cough, sore throat and fever Dehydration

• Earache • Eye infection • Flu symptoms

If you have symptoms such as chest pain, shortness of breath, severe or uncontrollable bleeding, symptoms of stroke or major trauma, call 911 or go to the closest emergency room.

Now accepting new patients!

We are located at 103 West Avenue, Wellsboro.

(570) 724-3744 | SusquehannaHealth.org