Slides 79, 91 and 50

The Slide: My mother , Sally, Johnny, Ingrid and Me on Old Baldy

The Date: October, 1965

The Photographer: My Father

When people ask me where I come from I tell them I’m from a little place in north centrallish Pennsylvania. If they say, “Oh really, what’s it’s near?” I tell them it’s near south westernish, NY.  I do so because, really, it’s not near anywhere. The nearest big city (Buffalo) is about a hundred miles away but I never knew anyone who had actually been there and I knew I never wanted to go.  The only three TV stations we received in my little town were broadcast from Buffalo, so I had watched the local news enough to know I was better off staying right where I was.  Every night I’d hear about the killer fires in suburban Cheektowaga or the four-alarm blazes in lower Lackawanna.  When, as a junior in high school, I finally did drive with my family to the city for the Ice Capades, I was surprised there were any buildings left. 

We were pretty isolated in my little town, but we liked it that way.  On the radio dial all I could get during the day was WFRM (The Farm and Home Broadcasting Company).  But on cold, clear nights, if I tuned my Sears Silvertone very carefully—I can still smell the hot tubes—I might pick up ABC in New York, CKLW in Detroit and my favorite WLS in Chicago.

          “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii,” the weatherman’s choir sang in four-part harmony. “Radar weather, eye-eeeee-iiiii-eeeee-iiiii.”

“Hey Chicago, It’s cold out there,” the announcer would say. “Radar weather has forty-one in Des Plaines, thirty-nine on the North Shore and it’s a chilly thirty-seven in the loop.”

Tucked in my bed, I lay in the dark night after night and wondered what the heck a Loop was.  I thought it was probably something like the circular drive at our high school though maybe even longer. We didn’t have the bright lights, subways, fancy restaurants, or a Loop, but what we had was beautiful.  Nestled in the rolling Allegheny Mountains, everywhere you looked it was just so beautiful. All the little towns around were nice too but none more so than mine because we had Old Baldy.

Old Baldy was a big piece of hillside, stripped clean of trees, jutting out into the center of town. I asked my grandfather how it got so bald.  He told me that it was originally clear cut by turn of the century lumber barons.  The forest would have grown back like it did on the surrounding hills but, for several generations, it became a common pasture where town folks grazed their milk cows. The cows kept it bald. 

From my house I could run out the back door, across the creek, and up through the pine grove at the base of the hill. Fifteen minutes later, I’d be standing at the most magnificent spot in my world.  From here the town looked exactly like the postcards at the Five and Dime, but you didn’t have to pay even a nickel for the view.  From here tiny cars drove slowly on rolling country roads.  From here the Pennsylvania Railroad, like a Lionell model, snaked its’ path along the river to unload at the glass factory.  From here on hot summer afternoons, barely discernible from so high, you could spot kids on their bikes weaving their way to the pool.

It was a magical place and from the age of five I climbed there often. On summer nights I’d go up there with a whole pack of buddies.  We carried our sleeping bags and little blue boxes of Camp Fire Marshmallows.  As the sun dropped over the far hill, we’d watch the street lamps blinking on below, only to be outdone an hour later by the blazing stars above.

In the winter we tobogganed down Old Baldy’s icy face, six little blue-lipped buddies, laced together holding on to one another’s frozen buckled boots, screaming at the top of our lungs. In the late summer lying on sleds of flattened cardboard boxes we careened down it’s grassy front.

Old Baldy was just a big piece of hillside in the center of my little town, but it played an important part in my growing up.  I took my first solo hike there as a five year old.  I had my first campout there at eight—pretty big deal.   I met my first girlfriend up there once when we were thirteen. I’ll call her Denise because…well… that was her name. I recall it was exciting but a bit awkward.  We sat up there, side by side, on a log and looked at the town for a few minutes.

I said, “Pretty huh?”

She said, “Yup”.  And that was about it. 

Then she stood up, smiled and kind of waved. She went down her side and I went down mine. Okay it wasn’t a hot date but it was better than having my dad drive us somewhere. 

When I was twenty, I took another girl up there. She was very impressed. For years, every time we visited “home” we climbed there with our kids. 

But the most special times on Old Baldy were the times I spent with my dad—many of them when I was very young.  Dad always pulled on black artics over his shining dress shoes. Then he'd  pull on a scratchy school letter jacket, and a wool hat.  My mother would help me put on every imaginable piece of warm winter clothing that a child could legally be required to wear and off we'd go.

As hard as the climb was, stumbling over my own feet, sliding on the nearly frozen ground, sweating through several sweaters and a winter coat, I plodded upward, I wanted to get to the top.  To me, the whole idea of climbing Old Baldy was to get to the top.  But apparently my dad knew better. He’d stop and say, “Shhhh Listen,” We’d be by the creek or by a stand of pines or under a rusty old oak still clinging to its dry leaves.  “Listen!” he’d whisper so softly I could hardly hear.

I was never sure what I was supposed to be listening for. Then, very faintly at first, I would hear it.  The complaint of a maple gently moving in a breeze. The flourish of a black squirrel running a tightrope from tree to tree.  Maybe the mournful chorus of a thousand geese flying far too high to be seen. And once, I remember, it was the plinking burble sound of trickling water flowing between layers of melting ice.  To my dad it was all beautiful music.  Eventually we would reach the top where we’d rest a while and enjoy the beauty. Then all too soon we’d have to head back down. My dad taught me to experience the climb and I grew to love it.  As a young man though, it became increasingly difficult to be quiet—to be still. I still struggle with the urge to just get to the top. Then I hear my father’s voice, “Shhh. Listen!”

         Old Baldy is gone now.   The hill is still there but it’s no longer bald.  Each year, the pine grove and the leafy seedlings crept higher and higher toward the top.  Sadly, the last time I climbed Old Baldy I stood, surrounded by a deep forest, unable to see the town below.

 

         It’s a beautiful Saturday afternoon in mid October.  The leaves are just beyond peak.  My cousin Johnny went with my father and me to the football game.  We returned home, to find my mother packing a picnic basket. “Thought we might take a hike up Old Baldy,” she said.  “It’s just so beautiful this evening.”  My sister Sally helped little Ingrid into her sweater. “Don’t forget her hat,” my mother said,

         Sally rolled her eyes. “Mom,” she said, “it’s hot out there.”

         “But it might get breezy on top,” my mother said, “and who knows, maybe we’ll want to stay a little while.”

         My father grabbed the camera. 

         An hour later, as the sun was setting, we gathered around a campfire and roasted our hot dogs. My father said, “Hey Johnny, do me a favor and snap a family picture for us. Will you?”

         Johnny grabbed the camera, looked through the view finder and said, “Ingrid! Hey! Hey!  Hey Ingrid! Look this way!” Ingrid, a perfectionist even then, was intently focusing on her hot dog and the job at hand. She never heard his voice. The rest of us looked toward the camera and Johnny snapped a picture forever preserving the memory of a beautiful place.