Old Homestead Week

Sunday in Burlington, VT and Thursday in Jessup, PA. I think my car is haunted and the ghost is nicknamed Joseph. I had an excuse to go to Burlington (wedding anniversary), but Jessup is never on the road to anywhere. You can find it easily enough on Google Maps, but look at an old Rand McNally atlas and it's a straight line between Carbondale and Scranton - no Jessup.

I found my way to Jessup after a business meeting in Harleysville; same state but hardly next door. Jessup is where my Dad (aka Joseph) grew up. He'd be happy I stopped in to visit Uncle Bob's family living there now. Uncle Bob would be happy I stopped in as well. Both he and my Dad died some years ago.

As if on queue, Aunt Eleanor was sitting on the side porch when I pulled into the driveway. Some things never change. My grandmother, Nana was always sitting on the side porch waiting when we drove in 8 to the car in the 1960s. The house, other than the grey siding, was as I remembered it from my childhood.

Plenty has changed, as you'd expect, in a community built around coal mining from the 1850s to the 1930s. The evidence of coal has been paved over and swept away. Rexall Drug and the penny candy stand are gone. Two of the four Catholic churches have been consolidated into one - that's still three! Valley View Regional HS now plays football where the legendary Blakely Bears ran roughshod over the competition. And the town no longer sounds the 9 PM curfew siren to pull all the children off the streets.

Eleanor says all the old neighbors are gone - no Kushmericks, no Lawlors, no Freschetti. Tony the skinny Italian kid is nowhere to be seen. But Church Street is still home to the Mullen Family. Some things never change.