before you even knew I was gone

I have been away for a few days, traveling to the wilds of Northern Pennsylvania to take care of some family matters. We drove up Thursday, back to the area where I spent my childhood years. It is always a mixed bag of emotions going back to this area, with all of the family history. This is where I lived off and on for all of my school-age years, except when my dad took a position as superintendent of schools in Scottdale (outside of Pittsburgh, for a few years). Our family name is still well known in these parts, nestled in the mountains and rural farming country that is Northern Pennsylvania.

Virginia and I made a brief stopover in Troy and I walked the grounds of one of my old family homes on Elmira Street with the current homeowner and we shared some stories and information about this place she and her husband bought from my folks more than 30 years ago. It was very interesting to learn that she avoids the same part of the house that I always avoided because it gave me a supreme feeling of disquiet, and apparently disturbs her as well. Very curious.

She wanted to know the history of the garden folly that my parents built from existing pillars that they found piled beside one of the barns when they moved in.... and I no longer saw the large square-carved carriage stones on the property that helped ladies alight from carriages long ago. We walked through the back barn that is now their pool enclosure and I learned that they had left the old work bench intact where my dad used to putter while a cast iron stove heated the place.

It is always a mixed bag of emotions to see the two houses where my family resided in Troy as they are also the sites of abuse perpetrated, and knowing that I was going back stirs up all kinds of ghosts. The house and two barns were all smaller than I remembered, but everything was well tended and well-loved by this nice couple. Hopefully happy family memories have overlayed the shadowed parts of my memories there.

Still to come.... a hike on the Loyalsock Trail, one of my old favorite places, and the other town I lived in about 20 miles away (and where I met Virginia at the end of 8th grade).