My very early years were growing up in a little town in NWPA known as Eldred.
Not big – about 800 to 1000 in a good year!
My youth was spent roller skating – playing Kick the Can with neighborhood kids.
Throwing apples at the train cars as they sped past.
Smoking corn silk in a corncob pipe.
Playing in the sawdust hill up the street and sleeping out on the front porch in an old army bag of my brothers-in-law.
I had to walk from our home on North Main Street all the way across town to South Main Street and the High School – grades 1 through 12!
Often I would walk the tracks until the creek and then along the sidewalk.
One day – I was wearing my Davy Crockett Coon Skin hat – I stopped and put it on the bridge railing and then stuck my head through to look down at the water.
And there I was stuck!
My ears popped out and I could not pull my head back through.
Needless to say, the fire department came to the rescue – embarrassing my older brother by ten years who was in H.S. then.
Pictured here is the OLD HIGH SCHOOL where I attended until the end of grade four!
They built a brand new Elementary school for grades K thru 6 –
And combined three communities – Eldred – Duke Center and Rixford and Eldred Township.
The front windows were first grade – taught by Mrs. Shields.
It was a grand old building – I think built in the late 1800s.
In the winter we would sled ride down the hill to the right which also was a large cemetery.
Eldred, Pa. was before the movie “STAND BY ME”!
What you saw in that movie was exactly as it was in our little town where everyone knew your name –
and if you did anything wrong – your parents knew all about it before you got home!
Today – we live in the South – near the border of N.C. and S.C. – by the beaches!
My childhood memories have followed me here along with contact with friends I grew up with.
I do not get back there often – staying in touch with the few relatives I have left.
My family I grew up with are all gone and are in the cemetery up in Barden Brook.
We are 12 to 15 hours away – a long drive and no close airport other than Buffalo which still requires over a two-hour drive and a rental car.
Sherry – Papa – Pam – wife of my childhood buddy – grade school until graduation – Bobby!
We had many adventures that I can not put on here and today see each other about once a year.
We played sports together all those years – and now we have memories we talk about!
We are seniors in our sunset years yet living life to the plus – they RVing and us living our dream of the Salt Life.
My other best buddy along with Bobby – Jimmy – played years and years of softball and now golf!
Staying in touch – sharing good times in the NOW of my life!
Jimmy is also from that same little town!
Thanks for reading PAPA’S WORLD – my site: livinglifedoingitmyway.blog
The “THEN” of the start of our life together – 6-25-1982!
The “NOW” of our life together – on the ICW off OIB in N.C. living life to the plus one day at a time!
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