downtown

Papa’s World – Walking Lake Sumpter Landing!

/ Tom / Leave a comment

On a recent spring day –

We and friends – Pam and Bob –

Rented a golf cart for the day!

We were in THE VILLAGES and used it to travel to Brownwood and back –

To Lake Sumpter Landing!

We found a place to park on the main street-

And then started our walking tour.

The place where we rented the cart was just a couple of blocks away.

We had an app on the phone that gave directions to cart paths.

Sherry and I knew this area as we would spend winters –

With my brother Roger, who lived but a half mile away!

We would walk from his house and had a routine of where to walk every day!

We always would stop for coffee and iced tea!

Memories came flooding back.

We once met the mother and grandparents of Patrick Reed –

A professional PGA golfer in front of an Asian restaurant!

I once watched the Boston Red Sox team management on the town square.

We would sit and watch the line dancers and other folks at night –

When the live music would play across the town square.

On this day, right across from RED SAUCE ( my brother Rogers’ favorite hangout)-

And next to the radio station –

A man with two parrots sat and let people hold the birds!

A tip jar was there –

And they were quite colorful.

She once let a street vendor put a snake around her shoulders in Morocco!

She said she could feel the bird’s talons dig into her arm!

NOT ME – if it is going to happen –

It will happen to me –

Like a pigeon flying across the 100,000-seat stadium –

and it craps –

IT WOULD END UP ON ME! LOL

A wonderful golf cart-filled day was had by the four of us.

This was a BUCKET LIST event for me.

A way to bring back all those memories of days gone by.

Thanks for reading PAPA’S WORLD-

My site: livinglifedoingitmyway.blog

A dinner just outside of THE VILLAGES!

http://www.sfitzsimmons.juiceplus.com

Papa’s World – Raised in a little town – Eldred, Pa.

/ Tom / Leave a comment

In a valley with a river – The Alleghany – railroad tracks and a main road – sits a little town –

800 to 1000 souls. Been around for a couple hundred years.

The main street is perhaps a mile long – with side streets and one that goes away and through the hills

known as Barden Brook- you can go for miles on that road into the hills and countryside.

Situated maybe 4 or 5 miles to the NYS border and over the hill fourteen miles away in Bradford-

home to Pennsoil-Kendall and nearby Quakerstate.

Here the oil boom in the 1800s fueled the rich along with oil derricks.
To the NW beyond the NYS lines are Portville Olean and Alleghany.

Here below is an early picture of my hometown in the 1800s – ELDRED, PA.

Dirt street on the main street and up on the far left – many years after this picture was taken and the streets were paved – is where I was raised.

The house is not in this picture but many buildings here I remember and some are still there!

The trees up there were huge as I was growing up!

The wooden sidewalks were replaced with concrete and I would rollerskate on them.

Growing up on North Main Street – we had a lot of kids there back then and would play –

KICK THE CAN! I knew them all and we would walk to school at the other end of the main street.

We had a bowling alley – a Theater – a grocery store – a gas station – a ballpark with lights –

and tennis and basketball courts.

A barbershop – a tastee-freeze, A doctor and a dentist’s office as well as the Odd Fellows.

A fire department – a H.S. and elementary combined.

A furniture store and several other stores that sold clothes and other things.

A drugstore and bank and many bars and a diner!

You knew everyone and they knew you!

We had a ten o’clock curfew – I think it is still that way today!

We would sled ride on the hills in winter – and in summer pick blueberries.

Sleeping outside on porches – playing tackle football at the park –

watching the baseball teams play and the Town Team.

I think it was like Mayberry and Stand By Me all wrapped up in one!

Today – a lot of that way of life is gone along with the stores – bowling alleys – theaters –

There still is a bank – and an elementary school and the ballpark is still there.

What is now there is a WWII museum – a huge one that tour buses come to see!

This is but a small fraction of what it is today – a tank bursting out the wall of the original building-

Beyond this are multiple areas and buildings – all hosing WWII artifacts and history –

This little town is big in the eyes of this museum.

Worth a trip to just tour it!

This was “MY TOWN” growing up!

Small town – small population – but BIG in what is offered here in the WWII Museum!

Thanks for reading PAPA’S WORLD – my site: livinglifedoingitmyway.blog

Papa’s World – Taking lunch break in Charlotte!

/ Tom / Leave a comment

We had a busy schedule for the Conference at the Convention Center in Charlotte – so we walked –

as we have done all week – from our AIRBNB to and from the Convention Center through downtown Charlotte!

Walking across the street in this beautiful park – lots of shade and places to sit!

A church – blue sky – white clouds and a reflection on glass!

The ladies of TEAM GENERATIONS posing in the square!

Walking in the park with the change of colors of leaves on the trees!

Lunch break over – now back to the Convention Center for the afternoon session of the JP Conference.

Linda and Sherry – memory from lunchbreak – PAPA’S WORLD – my site: livinglifedoingitmyway.blog

TAKING A LUNCH BREAK FROM A CONFERENCE IN CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA!!!!