The TREE HOUSE

Since so many of you have asked about the house in the Poconos, I decided to repost this from 2006.

Wednesday, July 12, 2006

THE TREE HOUSE

The Tree House
Do the words Tree House conjure up some image from your childhood, a place where you could go and hide out, hang out, do pretty much what you wanted with no thoughts about the rest of the world? Most people associate tree houses with carefree little boys, messy places, usually, I mean, who “cleans” up a tree house? Most tree houses are in trees but I remember a friend who built one high on the rocks back behind his “real” house in the mountains overlooking the trees below, accessible by a torturous little path up the cliff face. It looked out into and over the tree tops.
Well, some years ago, Anna named the apartment we have in White Haven the Tree House, partially because it is on tree level in the front but mostly because when we went up there, we would have to spend several days cleaning up after my father and brother who had spent time up there the previous fall. Well, my brother used to come up more often when his aunt lived next door. With the aunt gone, he no longer seems to have any interest in going there. And, my father just turned 89 in May, so his visits are fewer and fewer. Pennsylvania is a long way from Florida, especially when you are 89 years old and driving all alone. I live 300 miles away and dread the drive up!
Four generations of our family have lived in this house and my great-grandparents were not the first owners of the house. I remember coming here to visit my father’s parents as a very little child. My grandfather and I used to sit in a big old swing on the front porch during thunderstorms. It was on this porch that he taught me how to tell how far away the lightning was by counting the seconds from the light to the thunder. He taught me distances and directions this way, also. “Now that one hit over near Freeland. That is 8 miles away,” he’d say. And he’d point and tell me the compass directions for Freeland.
The house is divided in to the Big House and a small 2 room apartment. Well, it isn’t all that small, really, but it is 2 rooms and a bath, an entry way and the “cave,” a small storage room in the hillside where we keep the garden tools, snow shovels, coolers, camping equipment, etc. The temperature in the cave stays in the 50-60º range year round. The living room doubles as a bedroom. The kitchen has a modern electric stove and an old wood or coal cooking stove that used to bake the best cookies! Years ago, Gram used to rent out the little apartment, then she moved into it in her old age when my step mother and brother were evacuated from Vietnam and they lived in the big house. That side has a lot of rooms. When my dad was young, it had 6 bedrooms. Now most of the bedrooms are storage rooms or empty. Dad took two of the rooms and made them into one very large master bedroom. We rent out the big side of the house – well, sorta. E is a tenant but also the caretaker. She keeps the grass cut in the summer and the snow shoveled or plowed in the winter and lets my brother know when something isn’t working right.
You can enter the house from different levels as it is built into the mountainside. From the road, there are 6 steps up to the front yard where there is a porch with a door leading into the cellar. Personally, I would love to turn that into a little apartment – stone walls, etc. The cellar is divided into four rooms, one completely underground, one partly in the side of the hill. There is a set of steps up the side to the first floor level, the front porch, a flower garden, the patio, a sun porch and around back to the entrance to the apartment.
We have a driveway at what amounts to a block away (as measured by the block across the street, but we don’t have any streets crossing on our side) and it goes up to a parking area level with the second floor. Therefore one has to go up or down a flight of steps to get in or out of the house no matter where you park. In my old age, this sucks! The old stone steps are narrow and steep. The property then continues on up the mountain where Bill cuts little paths up to the old stone walls and some great old boulders where I used to climb up and have my morning coffee and watch the sun come up over the mountain and the morning fog burn off the river which is probably about 500 feet away if measured in a straight line. However, in the mountains, there is no such thing as a straight line. There is a very steep bank leading down to the river owned by the state now and is part of the Lehigh Gorge State Park. I used to climb up and down that bank like a little mountain goat when I was a kid. It has its own tiny waterfalls, two of them, actually, from the creek that runs thru my lot across the street. The Lehigh River, even on the hottest day of the year is cold. Seriously cold. But, we used to swim in it as kids.
There used to be a house down there, a great little place, and the people had kids my age and they used to let us run all over their place. Their yard was our “beach!” Then the state wanted it for their Park. The people would not sell. This went on for a couple of years. The state tried to take the place by condemning it. The owners fought back. Then one night, it mysteriously burned to the ground. The fire Marshall could not determine the cause of the fire. Right. But I digress, again. So, of course, the people sold it – the land, that is, since the house was gone – even the garage somehow burned down, too. Amazing, huh? And now it is all weeds and rock as part of the naturalized park.
Anyway, here are some pictures of the house, the mountain side (if you live in the Rockies, please don’t laugh at my use of the word mountain here – that is what it is called) the steps, the view from up back. The plants that line the road for a few hundred feet are peonies my grandfather planted eons ago. Grandpop died in 1954. The trees around the house make it impossible to get a picture of the house in a way to show its size, etc. I will do my best to put the pictures on so you can tell what is what, but I haven’t figured out quite how to arrange things on blogger yet. 

SOME THOUGHTS, SOME GRATITUDE

It has been a crazy couple of weeks, but that is not a complaint… not even really an excuse for not staying in touch, but time has been short for blogging with so many other things to worry about. I have tried to keep up with some of you in private emails as blogger is being uncooperative again. Once again, storms have changed people’s lives. My cousin lost their cabin on the Susquehanna River up near Wilkes Barre, PA. But, that could have been their primary residence, so while a serious loss, they still have their home and all their belongings. And no one lost their lives – most important of all. Check off that little box on your gratitude list!

Normally this is a hectic time of year anyway, tons of things to do as summer winds down, a dozen events going on before it gets too cold, sometimes having to run from one event in the morning to another in the afternoon or evening. I feel like my friend, Ralph, bless his heart, who is running for Senate again and is trying to be in 5 places at once and still maintain a practice at Children’s Hospital. As I listened to his schedule yesterday, I just shook my head wondering how he does it all. But, he is much younger and in better health and has a team making all his arrangements. I am feeling my age! But keeping going keeps me going. Does that make any sense to you? I know if I quit and put my feet up, I won’t be getting back up.

My auntie up in the Wilkes Barre area had to be evacuated. This was not an easy thing to do as she was one of the hard heads who stayed in her house back during Hurricane Agnes (39 years ago) and had folks coming by boat bringing food and water to her thru the 2^nd floor window. But, for some folks, Lee brought more flooding and destruction than Agnes. The river went up to 43 feet. It was a shallow muddy puddle when I crossed it this summer to see her. But, as of last night, she is back in her apartment in her senior apartment building, full of praise for her son and DIL for treating her like royalty (which she is, of course!) My only regret is I was not up there to do anything for her – BUT, my house (up there) is on the other side of 2 rivers with lots of flooding creeks in-between Wilkes Barre and White Haven.

Here on the shore, actually, up in Delaware, one little town received 14 inches of rain in about 6 hours. I have been in the Seaford area when it was under water, drove home from PA in 9 inches of water on Route 13 just before they closed it. Talk about timing! That was June, 2006. We saw cars with water up to their roofs in parking lots, drove past houses with water up to the front doors. So sad!

Anyway, it is very busy here taking care of my own commitments and worrying about family and friends. So, if I neglect you a little bit, forgive me. I will catch up maybe sometime in November!

I hope you have made out all right in the storms!

HORSE’S PATOOTIES AND HISTORY

Last week, my neighbor and co-author of http://www.thefrogandpenguinn.blogspot.com/, asked if anyone knew why the distance between the rails was whatever it was. He also said possums were not allowed to answer. Sigh. Maybe because this possum told him this bit of “information” some time ago, and he remembered it. Now whether it is right or wrong, or just a bit of truth or absolute fact doesn’t matter in the telling of a good story. What matters is if people REMEMBER it. Right?

The story I passed along to my neighbor was this one:

The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an
exceedingly odd number.

Why was that gauge used?

Because that's the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads.

Why did the English build them like that?

Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.

Why did "they" use that gauge then?

Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.

Okay! Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing?

Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old,
long distance roads in England, because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.

So who built those old rutted roads?

Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England) for their legions. The
roads have been used ever since.

And the ruts in the roads?

Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of
destroying their wagon wheels. Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome, they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.

The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original
specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever. So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman war chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses. Now the twist to the story...

When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets
attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.

So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. ... and you thought being a HORSE'S ASS wasn't important!

Now there are more facts than this story mentions, and they can get very tedious, so I won’t bore you with them. But I will say this. The first time I heard any explanation about the ruts in old Roman roads was from an archeologist friend, somewhere in Italy, (or was it in Ephesus?) but she gave the credit to a team of oxen pulling carts for the wagon wheel distance – then the Roman chariot wheel spacing followed. Somehow the horse’s ass has a funnier ring than the ass of an ox. Actually, that sounds confusing, but I won’t go there, either.

Then another friend challenged me with the ‘narrow gauge’ tracks used in this country. That answer is simple, too. The smaller carts were used in mining and were pulled by a single animal, usually a mule. If you wade thru some of the histories of the early coal mines in PA, particularly the biography of Josiah White, you can learn a lot of amazing things – like the very first tracks carrying anthracite to the Lehigh River where it was then carried by barge to the southern cities- were made of wood! It took me a whole summer to wade thru that book, but it really had some fascinating information about the very early destruction of the land, as the Europeans “tamed” the wilderness in Pennsylvania, deforested miles and miles of forest, and began mining anthracite along the Lehigh and Susquehanna rivers. Interesting, but not as entertaining. The wooden rails had to be replaced constantly as the weight of the coal quickly shattered even the hardest wood.

MORE FROM THE MOUNTAINS – STAINED GLASS

THERE IS A GREAT little place up in a village called Bear Creek about 10 miles from our house in White Haven (PA) where I love to go for breakfast or lunch. It is called the Bear Creek Cafe. All I can say is, I have never been disappointed by their food.

They do a lot of great container gardening – a nice way to keep people from parking in the real convenient spots. They have NO handicapped spots that I could find, and dropping someone off out in the street is risky at best.  

The Cafe also has a nice little gift shop where, over the years, we have spent considerable amounts of money. This year, however, we found the prices were just a bit too steep and the selection too limited to spend much. Plus the music got on our nerves, so we cut the shopping short this summer.

Part of the fun of eating here is, besides the excellent food, the scenery is also terrific. If you are lucky enough to get a window seat in the back, you get to look out on a great little creek splashing by as well as some nice trees and wildflowers. But, we got stuck in the lower part of the cafe this year, so I took pictures of their stained glass windows instead. Enjoy!

The furniture is also interesting… not overly comfortable, but interesting. Then again, I don’t think they want you too comfortable as there is often a waiting line to get seated. Of course, that is good for shopping… as I said, it is also a gift shop.

Then, the good thing about it being so crowded is it drowns out the music which we have always found to be most irritating. If it were not for the excellent food and view, I don’t think I could sit thru it. It was the same CD playing over and over this year as last year, and the kind of music that is not to everybody’s taste. Next year, we might see if we can eat in the gazebo. Hopefully they don’t have speakers out there. We usually go there several times and take friends with us, but, one visit was it for us this year.

I guess I am getting old and crotchety, and obviously there are enough people who can tune out the music, but it is a serious distraction from an otherwise great place to eat. We left this year with  contented tummies but splitting headaches. 

A BUDDHA IN THE BUSH

A BUDDHA IN THE BUSH - and other news from PA...
As I have said before, this blog is a very personal thing. I don’t worry about how many comments I get, etc. Many folks read it who do not have blogger accounts or choose not to use them but let me know they are checking in anyway in my private email. In one sense, it is a personal record of where I’ve been or what is going on, what things look like. As I have also said, I try to keep religion and politics out of it, though sometimes some things just kind of sneak in. I am not on here to preach or push my religious views on anyone, but, if you have looked at my blog for a while, you will notice the occasional Buddha sitting here or there. I like having Buddha around… he is not there for me to worship, that is not what I do, he is there to remind me that, even though I am just human as he was, if I take the time to sit and think or sit and maybe NOT think, just be quiet, maybe I will be a better person, and maybe I will be of benefit to others in the process. So there you have my religious and political views. As the Dalai Lama says, "My religion is kindness." My daily prayer is to do no harm. That is my political view also.

At our house in PA, there have been 2 Buddha's sitting on the mountain side for many, many years. The one sitting closest to the house is in bad shape,

but, he still sits there over looking the house, there to remind one to be peaceful and loving, compassionate and caring. See him at the base of the tree? He was hidden in weeds last year. The other Buddha kind of disappeared some years ago. He was on a big rock behind the house my Uncle now owns next door, the house where I stayed this summer so I did not have to climb up and down those wicked stone steps to get in and out of the big house. But, one morning, as I was talking to a friend on the phone, I went up back a ways and sat on a rock just inside the edge of the woods. As I looked around, what did I see but a head sticking up above some weeds? I did a little weed removal, mostly goldenrod, and there he was. Apparently he had been keeping an eye on my bedroom window all along! It was like finding an old friend. I don’t know who moved him or why, but it doesn’t matter… there he is. Maybe next year I can repair the one by the steps to the Big house…

Last year I had a problem with our caretaker not being much of a caretaker and the back yard was over grown with poison sumac that was over 6 feet tall and wisteria that was growing out of a wall into the grassy area.

I bought a hedge trimmer, weed whacker and, I am sad to admit, a big container of Round-up. I guess it did the job as it was all cut over this year. This is an area big enough to park my big van in and still have space for loading and unloading. It eliminated one set of steps for me when I stayed at the Big house.

And, for the record, the front porch has been repaired, also. I guess they didn't like those ugly pieces of plywood I put over the hole last year. But, they tore the porch up when they dropped a stove they were moving out... so I guess they fixed it. I am too old to do those things anymore. Getting the plywood down there was a big enough chore - and, even tho it looked mighty bad, it beat a law suit by someone falling thru the hole!

Sometimes I wish I could live up there again. But I have gotten spoiled by the flat land down here in VA, minimum snow fall, temps that almost never go below zero - a temperature in the teens is news! But, it is nice having a house where one doesn't need an air conditioner. On a day like today, it is hard to imagine... but it is in the low 70s up there right now, mid 80s here - cooler than expected because of the heavy cloud cover (but no rain, sigh.) The humidity is 98%.

I will miss the old house if we sell it. But my brother has absolutely no interest in it. It has been in our family for 3 generations. And it is more than I can take care of, especially if I am living 6 hours away. And, as I have mentioned many times before, those steps just do me in!

One of my fondest memories is sitting on this porch, way at the other end in an old swing with my grandfather (he died in 1954) and listening to the thunder. He taught me to count the seconds between the lightning and the thunder and to figure just where the storm was. I measured miles by landmarks. "Oh, that lightning was over in Freeland," or Blakeslee, or up in Mountaintop, or at Shorty's garage.

I bet Grandpa would have taken better care of the Buddhas if he'd been here... Yep, I'll have to mix some cement and do some patching next year...

SO WHY DO YOU GO UP THERE EACH YEAR?

So why do you go up there year after year?

Well, several reasons. First and foremost, it is the only chance I get to visit with my Aunt Kathryn, now age 89. She has been my rock in the storm of my life since I was a kid. She protected me from my mother and step-father – enough about that – and well, she just has always been there for me. She took us in when my step father lost yet another job, fed us, and gave me the love that I so missed after I was no longer living with my grandparents. She taught me to be strong, to be a survivor, and to come out of life’s garbage dump smiling. Her life was not always easy, either. She raised 8 kids, but I am here to say I was “her first" even though her sister gave birth to me. I preceded her family by 3 years, long enough to create a loving bond that has never diminished a bit over all these years. I still call her a couple times a week.
I also get to see my cousin Leigh and his wife Carol. Leigh has been more like a brother than my own actual brothers who, in today’s world, are related to me but not to each other. Ain’t divorce grand? They probably don’t even know each other’s names. Leigh is Aunt Kay’s oldest son.
For a few years now, I have stopped in Chadds Ford on my way up to the Pocono's… getting too old to make the trip up all in one day when the traffic is so bad. Plus, I get to make a quick visit to the Brandywine Museum (of which I am a member) probably better known as the Wyeth Museum (Andy, NC, and Jamie Wyeth) and to get in a quick visit with my brother, Shaw, and his wife.
And the other reason I love to go to the Pocono's, I get to visit my favorite places, namely Hickory Run State Park, and Rockport, which is part of the Lehigh Gorge state park which runs for miles along the Lehigh River some of which used to belong to me and my family. Ever hear of Eminent domain? “Hey folks, we are gonna make a park here, hope you don’t mind, but we are taking your river front property, but you can visit it any time you want to, after all, it is right across the street from your house!”

First, Hickory Run… confession, these shots were taken last year – much more rain… this year the water is down to a mere trickle in places as you can see in this year’s picture of my favorite road.... Yep, that is my van on the right. The road goes thru the creek (pronounced crick up there)... as you can see, last year is was a real tire washer, this year, not so much.
Rockport…
Frances Walter Dam… from up on top of the dam. See where the road goes into the water? Ya don't want to try to drive thru this one however... This is from the other side of the dam looking down the Lehigh River.

I won’t even mention the fact that it is usually a good 20 degrees cooler up here than down home, and this year that was a huge difference as it was in the low 100s while we were gone.

Hmmm, trying to figure out why the date is wrong - and the time!
It is Aug 1st, 8:20 AM... go figure...

AND THE NEW LIBRARY (in maybe 8 months time…)

I just posted pics of the White Haven (Pennsylvania) library as it is today, nestled in a coffee shop (Coffeeworks on Main St in the basement of the old hardware store that only we old timers apparently remember.)  See previous post. But this is where it will be this time next year when they finish renovating this building. The outside is quite impressive, isn’t it? This is called the Engine House Project and this is an effort to rehab a former Lehigh Valley Railroad engine repair shop into a multi-purpose library and Heritage visitor’s center.

It has been used for a few fund raising events and programs, but you can see the inside has a lot of work left to be done. check out the beautiful stone walls.

White Haven has a lot of tourist potential as it is in the center of an area that includes 3 state parks (Hickory Run, Lehigh Gorge [which took some of my land] and Nescopeck, all within 6 miles, the Gorge being within feet of the bldg) and welcomes over 400,000 tourists annually. Interstate 80 runs thru one side of the town and 940 goes thru the middle. White Haven is 4 miles from the NE extension of the PA Turnpike and is on the Lehigh River which separates White Haven from East Side, where my house is, on the East Side of the river. East Side is in Carbon County and somewhere in the middle of the river is the county line, with White Haven in Luzerne County which is known as “the Gateway to the Poconos.” 

The library that will be housed inside these walls will meet the needs of children from Crestwood, Weatherly, and Hazleton school districts by providing hard copy resources, literacy programs and state of the art communications technology. But I bet people will miss the coffee! Think they will at least have an espresso machine???? a Starbucks vending machine????

Train and history buffs will appreciate the magnificent structure as it is believed to be the last railroad repair shop still intact in the Commonwealth of PA. I have known the building all my life and I am still impressed. It cleaned up good, as they say.

“Green” people will appreciate the fact that the building will be climate controlled with geothermal wells… a bit ironic (a double pun, that word) since the railroad was practically invented to move coal from the area and the coal was used to make iron that previously had been imported from England. Did you know the FIRST rails for the FIRST railroad were made out of WOOD? Funny, they didn’t last long. Did you know that people laughed when Josiah White tried to get people to burn those black rocks he found in these hills? They were very different from the coal found in England, big shiny black rocks that were slow to ignite, but burned much hotter than wood, hot enough to melt the ore to make iron. The railroad was first made to move the black rocks to the canal locks he built on the river. If you are interested, you might want to read a book that is both interesting and boring all at the same time on Josiah White, for whom the town was named. He was the founder of Lehigh Coal and Navigation and the Lehigh Valley Railroad – whose logo is on the building. 

The Project is a true community, grass roots effort, with the White Haven Borough council members voting to purchase the building in 2002 in response to hundreds of signatures (including mine) asking them to do so on the community’s behalf.

The library has been in existence, in one place or another, for 13 years, most recently in the coffee shop, so you can imagine how exciting it will be to have ALL the books unpacked and on shelves and available to the public. You can learn more at www.whitehavenlibrary. Years ago, my step mother (a librarian) used to drive 28 miles one way to Wilkes-Barre to check out a stack of books to last her a week or so, to help her survive “this god forsaken back woods place.” This was back when she had just recently been evacuated from Saigon with the rest of the American dependents and found herself in the old family home. I guess it was too quiet for her… no bombs going off day and night, that sort of thing… sigh. Anyway, she started back then to push for a local library, but nothing happened for many, many years. She gave up and moved to Bradenton, Fla. Fortunately, others kept up the fight, but it has been a struggle. That ride over the mountains to WB was a rough haul in the winter! Trust me.

Train buffs will recognize the brick pattern in the parking lot. Anybody want to guess why it is there? What it once was? (that is a clue). Both the circle and the straight section????? See the tracks currently in use just a few feet from the parking lot and building, like mid point in the picture?

A view from the entrance to the parking lot.

A VISIT TO THE LIBRARY

WHAT AN EXCITING TITLE! Not... But I have to say, this was the most unusual library I have been in in a long, long time. As some of you know, I have just been "up north" at my house in Pennsylvania, sort of. Actually, we stayed at my Uncle's house next door - a little cottage that is on the same level as the parking area, so I did not have to go up and down steps in order to just get in and out of the house. (You are looking at the second and 3rd floors of my house from our driveway which is right next to my Uncle's place.) However, my uncle does not have a working land line at the house, it is just a vacation place, not his main residence, so I could not get on line there. After a couple days without a computer, I began to go thru withdrawal, so I headed over to the Town's library which is currently housed in a coffee shop in the basement of what was once a hardware store which burned down years ago. A following post will show the "new" home for the library in an old almost restored Engine House on the rail line in White Haven. This is the entry way. You can buy a shirt with Josiah White's picture on it... I am just now finishing his biography which was written in 1946. It has been slow going, but, in spite of the writing style, it is interesting...

You can have a Latte while looking for a book or checking your email... Note the old stone walls. As I said, this was the basement of a hardware store when I was a kid. See how high the window is? That is level with the sidewalk where the front door used to be.

Along with your Latte, you can also order a deli sandwich, or any number of delicious things. I wasn't sure if these were the cooks, waitresses, or librarians! They seemed to do all 3 jobs!

I think this is the children's section... see their little table? Right next to the milk, water, and iced tea... What's your library like? Next year, I will have the NEW and improved version of the library on here. I wonder If I can have chips with that and a pickle?