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Day 5: Pottstown
We had breakfast at the hotel. A typical free breakfast area with cereal, eggs and such. We noticed a couple pull up out front and come in for breakfast. They were reasonably well dressed. But were they guests or did they just steal breakfast? It was hard to say.
We were meeting my friend Barry from the old days (middle school!) at the Hill School around lunch time so we spent the morning driving around checking out the old haunts. We cruised down High St and checked out where our store used to be. Then up past the Hill School where we checked to see what the situation was around the ball field to see if we could sneak in and spread the ashes, but everyone was showing up for graduation so it wasn’t a good time. We continued on up past the Synagogue which looks exactly the same and up towards our old neighborhood.
We made a slight detour to look at my old middle school which is now apparently an elementary school. The high school football team was holding a car wash and the team members were doing their best to attract customers, dancing around, pulling up their shirts, and wildly swinging their arms pointing into the parking lot. It was hilarious. We should have gone in just for the show, even if it was a rental car.
We headed up the hill towards our old neighborhood. The road into Ringing Rocks Park is smaller than I remember and I almost missed it. But it all looked familiar once I made the turn. The fire station/roller rink is still there and the old (old when we lived there) picnic shelter and the bigger pavilion they built for the bicentennial are still there. We drove by the old house which looks pretty nice although the hedge is gone and all the beautiful planting along the driveway too. I can’t believe they would have pulled it all out so I assume it died off. But it was glorious in the spring when the azaleas and dogwoods bloomed. The field where we used to play softball looked very small. The Kosman’s “hill” that we used to roll down was about 3 feet high if that.
We headed back towards town and the North End Shopping Center where the new store was. But first a swing by Ringing Rocks Elementary and Pottsgrove High School. The elementary school has gotten much larger and looks very different from what I remember. It’s expanded into where the playground was in back so no slides or swings (which are probably too dangerous for today’s youth anyway). I don’t know where (or if) they get to play during recess. But the baseball field is still there and looks exactly the same.
The High School still looks pretty much the same too except for a new gym and performing arts center on one side. The ball fields were under construction. That was quite a mess. All in all though, the schools looked to be in really good shape, and considering the state of the town overall, that’s pretty impressive.
We drove on to the shopping center. The store building is gone and is now a CVS pharmacy. And the movie theater building is gone too. There’s still a pizza place there but it isn’t the place it was 40 years ago and the slices certainly aren’t 65 cents anymore.
As we walked out of the CVS (after getting something to drink), I got a call from my sister telling me that Mom was in the hospital! She had thrown up blood the night before. They were running tests. That was a bit scary. But there wasn’t much we could do from 3000 miles away so we asked for regular updates and continued on.
We found a nice pizza place on Charlotte St and had a slice. Afterwards we thought it might be a good time, with graduation in full swing, to spread Dad’s ashes and that turned out to be the case. There was no one around. Well, that’s not quite true. I was starting to walk out onto the field when a car pulled up. Uh oh, we’re busted, I thought. But the woman was just lost and looking for graduation. But it did get my heart pumping a bit.
Dad had wanted his ashes spread in the outfield. But it didn’t feel right. One, because I’d be very exposed standing out there when I wasn’t supposed to be out there, but also because people would be running over him all the time. And even if I got away unnoticed, there would be a big blotch of grey colored ash on the dark green field. Not too subtle.
As I stood there thinking about it, I looked up and saw a tree and a bench on a hillside looking over the third base line. It just totally felt right. A shady spot, a nice place to sit if we ever came back, and a great view of the field. So despite some concerns that I was failing in a task to my father (not for the first time, believe me, but hopefully the last) that’s where I put him. I think he’ll be happy there.
We had a little time before we were to meet Barry and Linda so we headed up into the hills of Upper Pottstown. I was attempting to go one way and managed to go another and lo and behold I accidentally discovered the spot where I played Little League one year and we used to go swimming. I wouldn’t have even thought to look for it, let alone been able to find it. So it was nice of the gods to lead us to it. It looked exactly the same. And one thing I noticed, the little league field had dugouts! We don’t get that in Oregon.
It was time for our Hill School tour so we headed back into town. Luckily the phone knew how to get there because I was pretty lost by this time. Graduation was over but there were still plenty of people milling about. We found Barry and Linda at the Performing Arts Center. Luckily there is Facebook, both to have connected us back up in the first place, and so we knew what each other looked like!
They gave us a great tour of the school which is very much like a small college campus. The Performing Arts Center was very nice. We passed the old ice rink where we used to skate. The ice has been removed (and moved indoors into another facility) but the cover is still there and they used it for graduation. It was quite hot and I’m sure the shade was appreciated.
Grandmom worked at the Hill and employees and their immediate families were allowed to use the rink during non-public hours. I’m pretty sure Grandmom was a temp or something and we weren’t immediate family either. It always seemed a bit dicey but we never got called on it and it was fun to go when only a few people were there vs the ‘open to the public’ times when it was quite crowded.
We saw the chapel which is quite pretty, faculty housing, and the dining hall, which was mobbed with a post-graduation buffet, and where we got a drink and a dessert while we walked by. It looked like something out of Harry Potter with dark wood, long tables and banners hanging from the ceiling.
Barry and Linda’s daughter went to the school and they’re still very much involved. Because of that they kept running into people they knew. When we passed the library, which was locked, the librarian was just coming out. They were friends with him and he let us go in and have a look. His name is Lou Jeffries and he’s a very interesting guy. He knows ‘everything’ (and not in a know-it-all kind of way). He told us a lot about the school and in particular the memorial room off to one side of the library which was built to honor the WWI dead who had attended the school. The school was built in the mid 1800’s so it’s been around awhile.
There were a number of famous people on the wall, or people related to famous people. Just outside was the Lincoln Hallway with photos and other memorabilia of Lincoln. It wasn’t clear to me if they were originals. But it wouldn’t surprise me if they were.
One of the highlights was going to the gym because the hallways are lined with pictures of all the sports teams over the years. We went looking for Dad’s picture and found him in a number of spots – 3 or 4 years of varsity baseball and a couple years of soccer. I had some of them from yearbook pictures (including a large one of the 1951 team) but there were a couple of others I hadn’t seen before. It’s just nice to know he’s hanging on the wall there.
We had a late lunch at the Sly Fox, a brewpub out by the airport. I didn’t know Pottstown had an airport (it’s a small one for general aviation). Or a brewpub for that matter. Apparently it’s quite an operation and per Barry, they make a lot of beer for European beer companies. I guess you never know.
We started a ‘tab’ when we ordered, despite Marion’s attempts to pay up front. And after eating and talking a good long while, we got up and left without realizing we hadn’t closed it out. A fact we would realize later at dinner.
It had been a long hot day and Marion was ready for a nap. But I wanted to see Barry’s car collection. So I dropped her off at the hotel and Barry and I went on a car tour.
Barry buys, sells, restores and collects vintage cars. He got involved early in life working on cars and managed to hook up with some local collectors who took him under their wing and it’s turned into a lifelong passion.
As you can imagine, cars (and all the pieces and parts that go into restoring them) take up a lot of space. So he’s got them in different spots around town. And they are expensive and left unattended a lot of the time so they aren’t in obvious places with big neon signs that say ‘classic cars here’. So I got tour of the area as well as of the cars.
Luckily for Barry I couldn’t find any of the places again if I tried. So his cars are safe. And he’s got some real beauties. An old Caddy or three, a very rare Mercedes (one of less than 50 made), a Jaguar and the piece de resistance, an original unrestored Stutz Bearcat. Being incredibly non-mechanical myself, the whole thing seems incredibly daunting to me, but Barry clearly loves working on and having these cars.
But therein lies the rub since much like other works of art, they take a very large amount of money to purchase and provide no actual income while you have them. They are only worth what someone will pay for them and can only be used to buy, say food or medical care, if you sell them. But if you want to keep them, well it puts you in a bit of a pickle. Unless you are independently wealthy which is why most car collectors are.
While we were driving from location to location, Barry was pointing out the houses of people we went to school (elementary school!) with. Some of them I actually recognized and remembered. He had been a paper boy back in the day (including delivering our paper) so he knew where lots of people lived. As we drove by one house he said “that’s Mrs. Toothacher’s house”. She was a high school teacher. Since we left town after 9th grade I had never had her but he had. There was a woman out gardening and he said “oh, I think that’s her” and a second later pulled into her driveway! Now, I’m the type of person who wouldn’t pull unannounced into someone’s driveway that I knew, let alone a teacher I hadn’t seen in 30+ years. But Barry’s not that kind of person. He pulled up and said “do you remember me?” She didn’t. But she did recognize his name when he told her. And she even recognized Audrey (my sister’s name). We had a very nice chat with her. Chalk one up for being bold. As you can imagine, with a name like Toothacher (not sure of the spelling but it’s pronounced like tooth-ache-er) she took a lot of abuse from immature high school students. Plus she has this little quirk that when she laughs she sticks her tongue out a little bit. Which Barry said caused some mocking as well.
We joined up with our wives again for dinner at Red Lobster where Barry regaled us (or at least me) with stories of people I used to know and 40 years of missed Pottstown history. Actually Marion found it interesting and entertaining as well despite not knowing any of these people. But it could have been an episode of Law and Order: Pottstown. He told us about how the mob bombed the Little Italy restaurant for not playing ball (I guess buying the right stuff from the right people), not once, not twice, but three times. Yet they’re still in business. That reminds me of the Swamp Castle bit in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. (They told me I was daft to build my castle in the swamp. But I built it anyway. And… it sank into the swamp. So I built another. And *it* sank into the swamp. So I built a third. It caught on fire, fell over and sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up!)
Or the story of David Swinehart, a big real estate guy who was murdered by his wife in what the Pottstown Mercury described as a “tale of greed, sex and conspiracy that ended with Swinehart being smashed over the head with a baseball bat and stabbed 14 times”. His estranged wife was having an affair and killed her husband to try to collect his life insurance. And oh yeah, her lover was her nephew by marriage (so that’s her husband’s brother’s son?). Strange doings.
Anyway, it was a lot of fun and a great day of catching up. When we originally left Pottstown I couldn’t imagine even *being* 40, let alone catching up with someone I hadn’t seen for 40 years.
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