Jesse Reno

Mike Dittman at Venangago-go a few weeks back posted a reference to local war hero Jesse Reno, which reminded me of this piece that saw print ten years ago. It[‘s reprint time!
(News-Herald, May 1999) My friend Richard brought to my attention the book Remembering Reno by William F. McConnell, recounting Jesse Reno’s life and military career. Reno was born in 1823 and raised in Franklin. His West Point graduating class (1846) included George McClellan and Stonewall Jackson.
24-year-old Lieutenant Reno was part of Winfield Scott’s force attacking Vera Cruz, Mexico, in March of 1847. The war with Mexico trained many young officers; Captain Robert E. Lee and Lieutenant Ulysses S. Grant distinguished themselves against Santa Anna.
In 1853, Reno surveyed a road to run roughly 280 miles from Sioux City, Iowa, to the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Upon completion of the nearly three-month trip, Reno submitted his report to U. S. Secretary of War Jefferson Davis.
Reno was thirty before he was able to marry. He and his wife settled into a fairly cushy posting at a Philadelphia arsenal for a few years, but then Reno was called up when Pennsylvania’s own President Buchanan decided to sic the US army on the Mormons.
The tension had been building since the 1846 settlement by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Utah; the Saints were determined to maintain control of their territory, while some other portions of the country were unwilling to admit a polygamous state to the union.
President Buchanan attempted to remove Brigham Young as governor of Utah; Mormon fanatic John Lee reportedly incited a band of Native Americans to kill 120 settlers bound for California.
Reno was part of the federal force sent to get matters back under control. The whole business might have turned ugly (or uglier, at any rate) except that commanding officer Colonel Alexander dithered until the troops were forced to dig in for the winter and devote all their energy to staying alive, far away from any remotely grumpy Mormons. By the spring thaw a peace had been brokered, and Reno could return to his family after nearly two years.
When the Civil War broke out, Reno was jumped from captain to brigadier general in order to serve under old friend Ambrose Burnside, who was serving under Reno’s old classmate McClellan. Reno’s first work under Burnside was successful; unfortunately, he next served under Pope in the Union’s disastrous defeat at Bull Run.
I can’t look at the Civil War without being struck by how many men faced familiar opponents. Reno found himself battling Stonewall Jackson, former classmate and good friend, three separate times in his last months in battle. They would cross paths one more time. John Greenleaf Whittier immortalized Barbara Fritchie, a 90-year-old Union supporter in Frederick, Virginia, who waved her flag at Jackson’s troops. When one raised his musket to shoot, the poet gave her the line, “Shoot if you must this old grey head but spare your country’s flag.” Two days later, Reno passed Fritchie’s home and was invited in for a glass of homemade currant wine. Upon departure, the widow presented him with the large bunting flag from her window. It was that flag which would cover his casket at his funeral.
Shortly before the Battle of South Mountain, Reno met future President Colonel Rutherford B. Hayes. It was not a particularly pleasant meeting; the terms “sons of bitches” and “court martial” both came up.
A week later, while traveling up a line of troops, Reno was shot. At the rear he was greeted by old friend and classmate Brigadier general Sam Sturgis. “Hello, Sam, I’m dead,” said Reno.
Reno was thirty-nine years old when he died.
His wife never remarried; she died in 1880. Of their five children, only two lived to adulthood. Conrad was a prominent Boston lawyer. His brother Jesse was an engineer who perfected a plan for the construction of subways in New York City and invented the escalator. The brothers also supposedly introduced Dwight F. Davis to the game of tennis; you may have heard of a small cup named after him.
Reno, Nevada, was named after Jesse in 1868. Reno, Pennsylvania, was dedicated to his memory in 1865. According to Hildegarde Dolson, the Pithole to Reno railroad hired as its head engineer Reno’s old classmate and commander, Ambrose Burnside.
Reno is a good reminder of how much soldiers sacrificed. Not just the premature death in battle, but all they gave up before then: the opportunity for a home, a stable family life, the emotional cost of being pitted against old friends in battle. I think that all deserves at least a moment of silence before we light the charcoal on Memorial Day.

The Whiskey Rebellion

(News-Herald, June 2004) It is unfortunate that we Americans are not big on history. It contains many good stories, and provides an enormous amount of insight into who we are as a people. But there are many chapters that we have simply lost. If you want an example close to home, take the Whiskey Rebellion.

Our country is rooted in a great deal of schizoid behavior. Colonists wanted to establish religious freedom, but executed and banished people who worshipped differently. The Declaration of Independence proclaimed that all men were created equal, but was rewritten so that it wouldn’t criticize slavery.

Since day one, we have tried to balance opposing impulses and contradictory principles. Some days it can seem discouraging that Americans disagree so much about what is right and what we should do, but the fact is, most of our history is about such arguments.

The Whiskey Rebellion came out of another one of our old arguments—how strong should the federal government be. The Founding Fathers couldn’t even agree on this one.

We have a tendency to view the framers of the Constitution as a unified group, a pack of wise men who divined the best and brightest way to form a government and captured it in a perfect document.

But the Constitution was a work of massive compromise. It was not obvious that a democracy was the best choice (said one of the framers, “The people should have as little to do as may be possible about government”). Balancing the states was contentious; some states favored one vote per state, while others favored votes weighted by population. It’s not hard to guess which was which.

But the biggest issue was states rights vs. federalism. Would the state or federal government be sovereign?

The Constitution was a patchwork quilt of compromises, and I think it’s valuable to remember that this document did not come about because the framers all shared a common view of one bright and shining Truth. It was, in fact, a document that many, if not most, of the founding fathers considered flawed by the compromise of important principles.

Once the Constitution was adopted, the founding fathers wasted no time in trying to steer the US government in one direction or another to “correct” the compromises that created it. In 1790, Quaker delegations from New York and Pennsylvania presented petitions to the House demanding an end to slave trade. And in that same year, Alexander Hamilton proposed the federal assumption of all war debt from the Revolution. The feds, not the states, would take charge of USA IOUs.

Many resisted what they took as an attempt to give the feds financial power and primacy over the states. But a deal was struck that appeared to trade assumption for a new capital located by the Potomac River.

Once the federal government assumed the debts, they had to raise money to pay them. Hamilton placed a 25% tax on liquor sold in the US. Farmers in states south of New York protested this oppressive move by the federal government.

In western Pennsylvania, this protest took the form of tarring and feathering tax collectors. In 1794, officials ordered the arrest of the rabble; a militia commander was shot and killed by federal troops who were protecting a tax official. The anti-tax settlers went berserk, and President Washington raised a military force from the tri-state area. When negotiations failed, George put on his war uniform and personally led the troops into Western Pennsylvania (now there’s a commander-in-chief for you).

The rebellion was put down. Two rebels were convicted of treason, but pardoned by the President. Thomas Jefferson resigned as Secretary of State and formed the Democratic-Republican Party, which supported states’ rights against the Federalists. When he was elected President, some Federalists began plotting for New England to secede. Aaron Burr, who ran as Jefferson’s VP and almost won the Presidency, waged a political war against Federalist Hamilton so bitter that he ended up killing Hamilton in a duel.

America’s political life has always been cantankerous. And our greatest documents represent solutions to thorny conflicts of principle, not the triumph of one single point of view. The different views weren’t merge, one side didn’t win, and one side did not give up. The American Way is not, historically, that the people who are Right win; the American Way is that everybody gives up a piece of what they want and believe in for the greater good.

A violin string lying on a table makes no music. It’s only when you grab the two ends and pull it in opposite directions that you can make it sing.

Frank Evans

(News-Herald, April 24) Amazing sometimes how one family’s story can stretch over so much time and distance. Here’s where a simple thread with just one local name took me.

The First Baptist Church started up in Franklin in 1867 with 23 members. By 1874 they were ready to build a full-sized church to seat 450 members (with Charles Miller footing a good chunk of the bill). That year the church hired the Rev. Frederick Evans, a minister in his early thirties, born in Wales and immigrated to the US (probably New York City) in 1866; it’s likely that this was one of the many times that Miller used his considerable financial resources to recruit and hire top notch people to fill positions in his favorite organizations.

Evans (Ednyfed, to his Welsh family) never lost his connection to Wales; the Baptists of Franklin granted him a leave to return there where he delivered lectures in Salem Chapel, Glamorgan. Afterwards, he returned to Franklin and a newly-built parsonage, where he lived with his family. In print (not local) he was called one of the most moving preachers in all of Wales and America, and under his leadership, the First Baptist Church increased membership from 80 to nearly 300.

His son Frank was born here in 1876. The Reverend retired and returned to Wales, where he passed away in 1897. The next year, Frank served as an infantryman in the Spanish-American War right after graduating from Princeton. Apparently the military life agreed with him because he was commissioned to the marines in 1900.

By 1909 Frank Evans was a retired marine captain serving as secretary to US Senator Briggs of New Jersey. In October of that year he married Esther Caldwell Townsend of New York City, niece of Lawrence Townsend, former US ambassador to Portugal and Belgium. The couple’s wedding announcement ran in the New York Times.

Frank soon returned to military service first in the Philippines, and then in France during World War I, where he won a citation for meritorious conduct and a promotion to Lieutenant Colonel. Other post war service included duty in Haiti as Chief of the Gender merle d’Haiti. He retired to Hawaii, where he died in 1941.

But the Evans name had not yet finished its long travels from home in Venangoland.

In 1944, the Bethlehem Steel Company manufactured an Allen N. Sumner class destroyer. She was launched in October of 1944, sponsored by Frank Evans’s widow, and commissioned in February of 1945 as the USS Frank E. Evans.

After arriving in Pearl Harbor, the Evans performed radar picket and escort duty, until after the war. She was placed on reserve in 1949, but reactivated in less than a year to serve with the Seventh Fleet in the Korean War. She served two tours of duty there, including the siege of Wonsan. After the war the Evans remained on patrol duty in the Far East, but there was one more chapter left.

In 1969 the Evans was near Saigon in company with the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne. They were part of SEATO exercise called “Sea Spirit.” A Time magazine report of the event described a dinner with the Melbourne’s captain, John P. Stevenson, reflecting on the horror five years earlier when the Melbourne had collided with a destroyer, sliced it open, and killed 82 hands. Australia could not stand another such disaster.

But four days later, the Melbourne cut the Evans in half. In just five minutes, the bow sank and took 74 men to their deaths (including three brothers from Nebraska).

The Australians made heroic rescue efforts. The Evans’s captain was reported asleep, a less-experienced officer responsible for a wrong turn that put the Evans in harm’s way. It didn’t matter; Stevenson was quickly hung out to dry for the disaster.

Stevenson’s wife Jo flew to be with him at the inquiry and on her own took page upon page of notes, which she later used in writing the book In the Wake as an attempt to cleanse the record. In 1999 Australia marked the anniversary of the collision, one of the worst maritime disasters ever for their nation, and Jo Stevenson was still trying to clear her husband’s name.

Her desire to clear his name is understandable; a name can travel long and far. The Evans name, even with its small roots in Venangoland, managed to spend a century criss-crossing the entire globe.

Monarch Park

(News-Herald, February 21) The dead of winter may be the perfect time to remember our own little oft-forgotten Venangoland garden spot. Once upon a time, Monarch Park, our own little amusement park, existed out near what is now Deep Hollow Road, along the back half of the giant trolley loop that connected Franklin and Oil City.

The park was opened in 1896 by Mr. Smithman, who had many large plans, including the development of a small lake. In 1901 the whole business was turned over to the Citizen’s Traction Company and Smithman Park became Monarch Park (operated by a corporation named the Monarch Park Hotel Company).

The park became the major draw of the area. On major holidays, both Franklin and Oil City were virtually empty—everyone was at Monarch Park. It was a location that was designed to serve the entire family.

A large open-air playground kept small children entertained, while nearby there were flowing brooks and large gardens and wandering paths for the more sedate grown-ups to stroll. There was a bowling alley for those who wanted some mild exercise. An auditorium hosted many renowned speakers and performers, and a dance pavilion, complete with spacious open porches, featured both local and nationally known bands.

The park was prodigious employer of Oil City and Franklin’s top musicians. In some years the house band would provide four or five concerts over the weekend, plus a three-hour dance on Saturday night.

Looking back, it’s hard to grasp just how modern the place was in its day. In 1902 the park premiered its electric tower, a 120-foot structure covered inside and out with electrical lights (the first Presidential Christmas tree with electrical lighting had only just appeared in 1895). The outside lights shone throughout the park, while the inside ones illuminated windows of colored glass.

In 1913 the park added the Whirlpool, a typical fling-the-capsule-around-the-circle ride, except that at rest the capsules rested on the water in a pond. The other big addition of the season was the Thriller, a roller coaster that would seem tame by today’s standards, but which represented an impressive level of excitement and thrill for the time. A café provided foods of wide varieties, and the White Way featured an ever-changing assortment of booths filled with treats and games.

People loved the place. It’s hard to imagine folks heading out to simply hang around the park for a day, taking picnic food, and strolling about the grounds, a small valley oasis in the middle of the Pennsylvanian woods.

I’ve always been intrigued by that isolation—there were eventually roads that ran to the park, but by all accounts they were awful. The only real acess was by streetcar. Once you were there, you were there. More than the gardens and ponds and carousel and light-up buildings, that says something about the pace of those days. Imagine any situation today where hundreds of families would put themselves in a situation where they could not leave at any moment.

In Franklin, the death of the park is often associated with the destruction of the Big Rock Bridge in 1926, but by then, the park was already in trouble. 1924 was a slow season, bad enough that the park was leased to another management company in an attempt to make it work. A few changes in entertainments were tried, but even an outdoor movie theater in the old band shell was not enough of a draw.

Perhaps it was the rise of the automobile that made it easier for people to pick and choose their destinations, to come and go as they pleased. Perhaps it was simply that the 1920’s, even in Venangoland, were a whole new and different and faster world from the pre-Great War era.

By 1926 the trolley company announced discontinuation of the Oil City-Franklin route. In April, the Citizens Traction Company put many of the park buildings up for sale. It was picked apart bit by bit. The dance hall became lumber to build three houses. The bowling alley was dismantled and sold. The Thriller became lumber for building a warehouse. I’ve heard from many old timers that the carousel animals were purchased moved to Conneaut Lake Park, though I’ve never seen any corroboration.

In the 1930’s the Izaak Walton League bought the land and still owns it today. I’ve been out there to poke around, and traces of the park are still visible—stones marking a foundation, the whirlpool pond, some concrete pillars and bits of the old brook. It had lasted barely thirty years, and perhaps that was long enough. Something may not last forever, but that makes it no less beautiful and gracious while it lives.

So Long, Conneaut Lake Park

My apologies to my regular on-line readers (both of you), but after resurrecting the old column about the park, I couldn't resist revisiting the topic for the newspaper column. A bit redundant, I know, but the completist in me requires that the new column be included here.

(News-Herald, February 7) When the Dreamland Ballroom at Conneaut Lake Park burned down last week, stored in the maintenance department underneath it were most of the major mechanicals for the remaining rides. The park has perched for years on the brink of oblivion, and I suppose one more miraculous escape is possible. But it seems more likely that this is the final kiss of ignominious death for the park.

The ballroom itself was actually the second in the park’s history; the first ballroom burned down in 1908 and the Dreamland Ballroom was opened in the 1909 season. The park, like Cedar Point, Waldameer, and Venangoland’s own Monarch Park, was built as a destination park, set up by a transit company as a way to sell train tickets.

Like most grown-ups in the region, I have fond memories of the park. In the eighties, I played in a Dixieland band that performed on the midway every summer Saturday night. The park paid us a modest stipend supplemented by free food during our supper break. (Management eventually wised up—Bob and Fred Frye were in the band and for what the Frye boys could eat in an hour, the park could have hired the entire Philadelphia Symphony for a week.) It was a great job; I don’t think any other job allows you to see so many people, particularly little tiny people, dance around just because they feel happy.

The food was fairly decent park food, with better than average fries. The rides weren’t eye-poppingly enormous, but made up for it with a certain dangerous edge. Was there ever a time when riders did not suspect that the Blue Streak or the Wild Mouse might actually collapse at any moment?

My ex-wife’s family used to take a yearly vacation by renting a cottage at the lake. Some of my best CLP memories are from those times; in the evening we would just stroll up to the park and wander about (eat some fries), play some games (eat some fries), and just watch people (and eat some fries). The park, at its best, was like a fireman’s fair that stayed open all summer.

I didn’t see the inside of the ballroom often—it wasn’t in use a great deal, and in some ways I think that saved it from being “modernized” too much.

For those of you still trying to remember where it was, here are the directions. As you walked up the midway, toward the lake, you eventually got to the last big intersection before the lakefront street itself. On your right, the fun house, and ahead on the right, the mini golf course. Ahead on your left, some sort of store or game on the corner, and on your near left, in the corner of the building, the entrance to the ballroom.

The ballroom was the entire upstairs of that building. In its prime it was advertised as the “largest uninterrupted ballroom between New York City and Chicago.” It was a big space with lots of arches, wrapped all around with porch space. In the thirties virtually every band that mattered played there.

The Park was eventually sold by its longtime owners. Big name parks were supersizing, adding new massive rides every year. New owners made the ludicrous choice to join the wave; they put up fences around the park and made everyone pay to come inside. They ripped out the cheesy old rides and replaced them with fewer cheesy new ones. It didn’t help.

For a while there were rumors that some Big Time Amusement Park People were buying the place. It also took a swing at becoming a great outdoor concert venue, booking acts like Steppenwolf and Bob Dylan, but there is an inherent problem with any NW PA business plan that uses the phrase “outdoor concert.” The park passed through a series of ownership deals involving some people who really loved the park and some people with, well, allegedly very colorful financial backgrounds.

The last time I set foot in the park was 2000. By then the place was just a sad shadow of its former self, and I’ve never been able to bring myself to go back. I suspect there are many folks who aren’t even sure they know how many of the last few summers the park has actually been open. But still—as long as the pieces and the real estate were still there, there was a lingering chance that somehow the park might be resurrected.

But like many slices of yesterday, the park had already surrendered a big chunk of its heart and soul. Sometimes you can go through a rough patch and come out the other side. Unfortunately, you can also just run out of time and money and luck.

From the files-- Remembering Conneaut

I wrote the following in the summer of 2000 after a return visit to Conneaut Lake Park. I have many fond memories of the place--an early iteration of the Bully Hill Brass used to have a regular Saturday night gig at the park (if you have a copy of the park history, you'll find a picture of my brother in a candystripe vest and plastic boater crouched down and playing trumpet for some small tyke). But by the turn of the millennium, things were looking pretty bad for the park. The recent fire that took the ballroom and the maintenance shed, where most of the machinery from the functioning rides had been stored-- well, that conflagration probably marks the end of things for good. It's too bad.

(News-Herald, July 2000) I love a good amusement park. Heck, I even love a bad amusement park. Amusement parks never pretended to any lofty purpose. The great parks from the turn of the century share the same pedigree with our own Monarch Park in Venango County. Monarch Park was started by the trolley company as a way to increase business-- if you give people a destination, they'll use your transit system.

Conneaut Lake, Waldameer, Cedar Point-- most all of the pre-Disney biggies were started the same way by a trolley or train company. They were full family parks, parks that served as a gathering spot for the surrounding communities. In the early 1900s, most picnics, reunions, and gatherings were held at Monarch Park. On holidays such as the Fourth of July, Franklin and oil City were empty, all of the citizens at the park, enjoying concerts, bowling, dancing, the carousel, the roller coaster, or at night the spectacle of the light-covered electric tower.

I'm partial to the old traditional parks. Waldameer is still a turn-of-the-century park at heart, with picnic pavilions and classic rides, but with a neat new water park on the side. Cedar Point has a beautiful setting and many, many great rides. A well-built ride is a work of art all its own. I know that seems like strong praise for a roller coaster, but heck, we ooh and ahh over structures like the ancient pyramids that are engineering marvels built to attest to the glory of individuals. Why shouldn't we be impressed by engineering marvels that exist to make thousands of people happy every day? That seems as worthwhile a purpose as any.

Cedar Point has always been my favorite, but I've always had a special affection for Conneat lake Park. A few of us used to play on the midway there every Saturday night for money and food. The park had a delightfully cheesy array of rides and the usual assortment of park eats including superior fries. It also offered uniqe period charm (including a ballroom once billed as "the largest uninterrupted dance floor between NYC and Chicago").

I was at Conneaut lake Park a few weeks ago, and it was painful, like finding an old friend wasted on Skid Row. I always felt Conneaut lake lost its way years ago when management put a fence around it and charged admission even to walk through. They removed many of the old rides and replaced them with "newer" rides, like their half-hearted attempt at a water park. They also tried to promote it as a concert venue (remember when Bob Dylan played there?), but rain got in the way. It all seemed wrong to me.

Part of the park's charm was that it was part park, part neighborhood. In the old days, the park blended into the cottages and homes around it. Now you can stroll for free again, but the damage seems done. The edges of the park seem empty, like the places where weeds have started to encroach on a flower garden. The grand old hotel and the beach club restaurant/lounge are still there, but rather empty and forlorn. Big chunks of buildings have been razed. The Wild Mouse has gone, and nothing has replaced it but a vacant lot.

The attendants have the relaxed attitudes of folks who spend a lot of time doing nothing. The bench seats have been refitted to make do with three slats instead of four, so you can't set your food down beside you. The park closes at 7.

I don't mean to be hard on management; I'm not sure there is a way to make money with a park like this in a small, modern market. Many parks folded in the '20s. Conventional wisdom says that Monarch Park was killed off by the destruction of the Franklin trolley bridge by ice, but the newspaper record shows that Monarch Park was already struggling by the time the bridge went down. But the automobile meant that families no longer traveled to the park toegther. Each family, and even each family member, could choose a separate destination and activity. Monarch Park was doomed.

So maybe it's just a miracle that Conneaut lake Park is still there at all. But it's still a beautiful setting, and I left thinking that it would be fun to stay a weekend at the hotel. And while I was ruminating about its faded glory, Junior Park Tester Caleb (age 7) was running excitedly from ride to ride, pleading with his mother for the opportunity to ride th Blue Streak just fifty times more.

It helps me remember that while a sense of history is nice, sometimes it's better to just hush and let folks enjoy what they find now and remain blissfully unaware fo what's been lost.

Harold Pixley Remembered

Hard to believe that it has only been seven years since Harold Pixley died. This is the column that ran in December of 2000. Like many of the old columns about people, I run this to give him a little bit of presence on the web. Who knows who might be looking for some little cyber-trace of him.

Harold Pixley died this week. I know I'm not the only person in Franklin who will miss him.

Pix came to Franklin in the summer of 1943 when the school district was looking to fill the gap left by the departure of Richard Stocker. Pix came originally from Centralia, Illinois. He graduated from Oberlin College and had played first chair clarinet with the New Philadelphia Ohio Symphony Orchestra. The school district selected him from a field of ten applicants; he was thirty-one years old.

Those of us who come to teaching with even a small amount of idealism dream of becoming the kind of teacher that Pix was. His influence in Venango County is beyond measuring.

He built up the Franklin High School Stage Band. This may not seem like a particularly radical notion, but it was the forties and a teacher who tried to bring swing music into the schools was viewed about as a teacher who wanted to start a school rap ensemble. That's they were called "stage" bands-- "swing" was too naughty.

With both the stage band and the full bands at Franklin, Pix was a master at selecting music that audiences would enjoy. Pix was not the kind of musician who believed in "pure" music, music that musicians and academics would love but which would give average audiences headaches. Pix never played the national anthem too slowly. One standard Pix saying was, "Give the audience a treat, not a treatment."

Pix could push students without insulting them. And he was not the stereotypical band director who required his students to make him proud, to make him look good. He wasn't all warm and mooshy and fuzzy, but he was always a gentleman. "Practice at home" was another standard Pix saying.

Pix set the regular format for the annual Musical Broadcast, the FHS variety/talent show. Pix's Broadcasts were legendary for their length-- Pix gave every performer an encore, whether they deserved it or not. And even in the last years of his teaching career, Pix never became hidebond and set in his ways. He really didn't get rock music, but he knew "the kids" did and that was okay.

Pix's influence went beyond the high school. He was the first director of the Franklin Silver Cornet Band to have actual formal musical training. In the years when the band nearly died for lack of members, Pix helped bring high school students into the fold, including students who broke the great gender barrier (women in town band---gasp!!)

Pix was for years the music director at the First United Methodist Church. It was Pix who conned Steve Anderson and me into singing in the youth choir there, with absolutely no reason to suspect that either one of us had a hint of vocal skill before he recruited us (and precious little afterwards, either), but it was Pix's way to keep building. "He may not be good for the band," he once said about a student. "But the band will be good for him."

It was Pix who handed over the reins at church to a new young guy, just back in the area, so that John McConnell could begin his many productive years of making that church into a musical leader in the community. And it was Pix who recruited Ed Frye for town band, where he began the longest tenure in band history as director. Pix was not one to jealously guard his turf.

I've never seen anybody who could work so hard and look so relaxed at the same time. I never saw Pix look harried or stressed or under the gun. I can remember him sitting next to me in board meetings for town band, hard of hearing and not quite catching what was said. He'd just smile and turn to me and say, "What's he talking about, Pietro?"

And I can remember the long hard years of his wife's illness, the medical prognoses that gave her a few months to live. Those months stretched to years, and caring for her became a full-time difficult task; we didn't see him out and about often.

He told me once in that time that he supposed he could put her in a home, but he didn't think that was right. She was his wife, and he had made a promise that he would always take care of her, and so he did, although he was not a young man. I wouldn't have thought any less of him if he had felt trapped, or regretted giving up so much of his own life to care for her, but he explained it all in the same simple way that a man explains why he eats and breathes.

I will always admire Pix. He was kind, gentle, dedicated, and quietly strong. He was a man who found a place for himself and filled that place without flinching or complaining. He made thousands of friends who always loved him, and touched thousands of lives for the better. All of us will miss him.

Remembering Grassy

(News-Herald, September 1998) For a quick lesson in how people took care of each other once upon a time in this country, there is no better subject than Alonzo Nichols.

Lonnie was born in 1865 in Williamstown, New York, and moved to Franklin when still young. At a fairly early age he became a bootblack, the profession he stayed with for most of his life.

It's doubtful that Lonnie was ever in school. Accounts from print and oral tradition indicate that he was at best, slow, and at most, what we used to call "retarded."

But newspaper accounts of the day never apply so much as "simple" to his name. In 1901, the Evening News said, "he developed an elastic imagination that has been constantly stretched until today its extension is unlimited..."

Early on in life, he developed his own dance, which he called the grasshopper; consequently, he was known through most of his life as "Grassy."

He knew everyone in town, and proclaimed himself at various times the mayor, police chief, and fire chief. He attached himself closely to the Franklin Band; his only residence for much of his life was the band room in City Hall. That address is duly noted in several town directories.

Grassy was not a perfectly picturesque town character; he was not sentimental Hollywood cute. He was pushy about asserting his "rank," frequently insisting on delivering speeches at public events, and often made life a bit difficult for others. Band lore includes tales of various times that Grassy had to be moved out so that the band room could be fumigated; hygiene was not one of his virtues.

At one point, irritated city fathers gave him the option of going to Erie to live with relatives or undergoing evaluation for a room at the institute in North Warren. Grassy did go to Erie occasionally, but his heart never left Franklin.

His loyalty was legendary. When the band left on a trip to Buffalo without him, he was seen doggedly trudging up the railroad tracks after them.

He was devoted to the Elks and their minstrel show, and was often featured as a "character comedian" or as "Blondin, King of the Tightrope."

Grassy's father died in the poorhouse; his mother in Erie did not seem interested in him. The city of Franklin was his family.

There is no hint that any of his public appearances were greeted with mockery, or that he was ever viewed as an object of ridicule. The band included him in at least one group photo. The newspaper regularly published accounts of events in the life of "the Chief."

When he became upset over the state of his resting place in the band room, the mayor and police chief bought him a new cot. The Elks let him carry the purple banner for them in an important parade in Erie, with no apparent fear that he might somehow embarrass them.

In 1910, the city sent out postcards to invite folks back for Old Home Week. The cards featured drawings of favorite landmarks such as the courthouse. One featured a picture of Grassy wielding a gigantic key to the city and inviting folks home.

Nor did the city treat him as incompetent. Newspaper accounts suggest that folks did keep an eye on his comings and goings and even his bank balance. When he would leave town for a "vacation" and end up arrested for vagrancy (while claiming to be the mayor of Franklin), someone would go fetch him back. But it appears that no one ever tried to control his activities or finances, or steer him to an "appropriate" life.

There was never an attempt to take away any of his freedom, not even "for his own good."

Eighty years ago, in September of 1918, Grassy hopped onto the running board of a fire truck headed for the Third Ward. On the way, the solid rubber tire broke and struck Grassy and one of the firemen. Shortly thereafter he died.

The Mayor and City Controller agreed that Grassy should have a first class funeral at the city's expense. Hundreds called to pay final tribute; the funeral procession, led by the mayor's car and including the Elks and the Franklin Band, was viewed by hundreds who stood in the rain to pay their respects. Grassy' pallbearers included Elks, city councilmen, and the fire and police chiefs.

Wrote the News: "While the going of Grassy was greatly regretted, all of the circumstances of his death and burial seemed fitting. He met his death in what he considered his line of duty, and the show on the occasion of his burial was in keeping with his whole career."

What, one wonders, would happen to Grassy today? Perhaps we would all turn our backs on him, secure in the knowledge that professionals would take care of him. He would be their problem, not ours. Social services would find him an "appropriate job" and train him to "properly" handle his money.

Perhaps with the aid of people who could help him find his "proper place" in (or out of the way and to one side of) society, he would even have a life today more satisfying and fulfilling than the one he enjoyed so long ago, but somehow I doubt it.

The summer after this column ran, the Franklin Silver Cornet Band corrected a longstanding oversight and placed a marker on Grassy's grave.

JAMES BORLAND

(News-Herald, October 2003) In these modern times, there’s a thriving world built around what are known as zines, magazines published, printed and distributed on a personal amateur level. Some of these are very slick and stylish, some very personal, some with exceptionally good content and writing. But zines are not new, exactly.

In the late 1870’s, amateur newspapers were in vogue. Anyone who lay hands on the basic printing equipment could create their own local newspaper. In 1878, seventeen-year-old James Borland and a few friends started The Evening News in Franklin. The first issue was four pages long: “An amateur daily paper published by three boys should be read by all. ‘Spicy and newsy’ is our motto.”

I picked up Borland’s memoir Fifty Years in the Newspaper Game, an interesting record of a man who was an integral part of life in Franklin for decades.

Borland’s father was a doctor; he contributed the occasional article and the boys created the newspaper in a back room of his offices. For James it was apparently the discovery of a passion. He worked on the paper before school, during lunch, and after school. The boys quickly ran out of money and only a timely loan from Joseph Sibley kept the paper afloat; it was the beginning of a lifelong bond between the two.

Borland’s path was still uncertain; a school teacher helped him decide. Stumped by algebra, Borland was confronted by Prof. John W. Cannon, who refused to explain the lessons to young James, instead advising him to give up the newspaper business and study lessons in the evening so he could get them without Cannon’s help. Borland decided that he was learning more from the newspaper business than from school, and quit school to pursue journalism.

Borland found himself a partner for years with General Miller; the picture that emerges in his book of that gentleman is less than flattering. In 1917, the two had a major falling out. Miller opposed Judge Criswell, an active Prohibition man in the county. The Judge had crossed Miller when Miller had attempted to divorce his wife, and Miller wanted the paper to oppose the Judge’s campaign. For Borland, it was a conflict between a wealthy man of power and a working class man of principle; the editor resigned and walked away from the business that he had created.

Borland immediately went to work for the Daily Herald, which two years later merged with his old paper to form the News-Herald. Borland was back at the helm again. In his account of events, Miller, never really interested in the newspaper business, wandered off to other pursuits.

Despite his conflicts with Miller, Borland’s loyalty to Joe Sibley remained undaunted over the years. His book includes numerous accounts of Sibley’s generosity and warmth. Sibley had his share of controversy in his career—an election scandal, charges that he was a tool of Standard Oil, a flap over campaign spending (imagine—people were outraged that he had allegedly spent forty grand on an election campaign). But no criticism of Sibley appears in Borland’s book unless it is accompanied by an exoneration.

Borland saw a lot of history: everything from national conventions featuring the era’s famous names to the beginnings of Conneaut Lake Park. In days when you only saw it if you were there in the flesh, Borland saw a lot.

And yet much of his best writing was in the two decades he wrote a column in the paper that most often focused on birds and wildlife and the sweet pleasure of life out along French Creek. And the biggest events in his life were the ones he helped stage here, most notably the series of Old Home Weeks at the opening of the last century. It is abundantly clear in his book that he took pride in those gatherings of folks to the old home town of which he was such a proud booster.

Old Home Week fans honored Borland for his dedication. Near the sidewalk in front of the county courthouse stands a small birdbath and a bench, nestled in a semi-circle of shrubs. Not as big as the fountain or as majestic as the war monument, but a nice reminder nevertheless of a man who managed to create something lasting out of his love and dedication. For Borland, serve was the operative word:

“The fascination of newspaper publishing is beyond compare. It is life itself—changing, moody, exhilarating, all-conquering, submissive, impulsive, wonderfully interesting. Such experiences are the only reward the true newspaper man receives. Few achieve riches, a handful achieve fame, but the great multitude of newspaper men serve—and serve—and serve!”

A bit hokey, perhaps, but a nice sentiment none the less.

PEEKING AT THE LATONIA

(News-Herald, July 24)I’m barely old enough to remember when the Latonia Theater was a real, live operating theater (at least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it). But I’m old enough to appreciate the place today.

I missed the Oil Heritage tour, but I took a trip over Tuesday night and got the super-deluxe tour of this work-in-progress.

The Latonia went into operation in 1929, just in time for the death of silent cinema and the stock market crash. It operated for many years as a Warner theater and was, in its prime, a great piece of art deco architecture.

Like many local theaters, it didn’t make it to the 1970’s. The problem with theaters is that they’re really cool spaces that aren’t good for much of anything else. So when they’re bought, they suffer through a great deal of renovating, and sometimes the original charm is hopelessly lost.

The Latonia certainly suffered from its transition to business space. Most famously, a concrete floor was inserted halfway between the original floor and ceiling, and shops and offices were shoehorned into the bottom half.

But what is left is exceptional. Walk up the sweeping staircase and you are looking at a circular mezzanine balcony above the lobby, ringed by a railing that represents some of the last iron-work that Wendell August Forge ever created. Across from that rail is an art deco fountain; facing it from the other corner is a fireplace. Both are in fine shape. Past the fireplace is the original office for the theater, with a conveniently located window that allowed the boss to look down over the house.

That’s all pretty cool, but the revelation is on the other side of the rail. Pass through a door and you are looking across that giant concrete slab, obviously out of place.

Originally you would have been entering here at balcony level, and the upper balcony is behind you, stretching up a reeeeeeeeally long way eventually to the projection room (located so far from everything else in the building that it has its own little rest room.

Opposite the balcony is the top of the stage, eight or nine feet of proscenium sticking up above the slab (the rest of the stage is intact, a few artificial floors down). The whole room gives a bit of the impression of something from a disaster movie, a building that has been engulfed and filled by snow or lava.

What dominates this large room is the biggest art deco chandelier I have ever seen in my life. Weighing more than a couple of tons, operating on three separate circuits, and requiring half a billion light bulbs (maybe closer to 800—but, dang!), it hangs below a sweeping dome which is itself resting on the wings of a circle of golden eagles. It’s impossible to look at it and not think, “Wow! I need a picture of that.”

The room ends up looking more like a ballroom or Greco-Roman amphitheater than a conventional theater, though it would be a great place to play a small show in the round. The acoustics are striking, but in 1929 the best sound system a theater could have still only put out about 50 watts, so the acoustics in a big room still had to be good. This certainly sounds like it has a large bare concrete floor, but with some carpet to take the edge off, it will be a unique space.

The stage is pretty shallow with virtually no space in the wings, but then, performers could walk out of the wings into a labyrinth of dressing rooms, storage rooms, and even showers. Doors lead to doors and the backstage area is further honeycombed with ladders and staircases and trap doors. A group of twelve-year-old boys could be entertained for a week.

The owners, Linda Henderson and Roxanne Hitchcock, have ideas and plans and a grant, God bless them, and they‘re to be commended for taking on this monstrous project.

The timing is in many ways perfect; this is a facility that can pick up some of the slack created by the Franklin Club’s self-destruction. And while purists may bemoan the presence of other businesses in the building, a steady source of income for this kind of operation is a major bonus.

And I know some people just can’t help themselves—if someone in Franklin or Oil City sneezes, they have to look for someone in the other town to sneeze bigger or louder or snottier—but the Latonia isn’t competition for the Barrow. They’re two types of operations, offering different settings and services.

Right now, the Latonia is trying a Tuesday night jam session starting at 6:30. Come listen, or come gawk, or do both. You can contact the Latonia folks at 677-1260 or e-mail thelatonia@verizon.net.

VENANGOLAND MYSTERIES

(News-Herald, March 2003) As a student of local history, I have learned the answers to plenty of questions.

I know, for instance, where Coal Oil Johnny’s house stands. I have a rough idea of where the three forts stood in Franklin. I know where the bridge at the south end of Oil City used to cross the river to carry the trolley out to Monarch Park.

But there are certain local history answers that still elude me. Most of them are matters that are probably irresolvable, short of the development of time travel apparatus.

I keep thinking that some day, someone is going to come here with some serious high tech equipment and find the French plaque that Celeron planted down by Indian God Rock back in colonial times. In this day and age we ought to be able to beam some secret x-ray vision space satellite and spot where that little sucker has gotten to.

Some mysteries are just personal concerns. For instance, I don’t know the names of any of the original Franklin Silver Cornet Band members in 1856. I wish I did. Some of my other favorite mysteries are of more general concern.

Did George Washington fall into French Creek? Did he even have to cross it? I can believe that the young woodsman got his boots wet here on his colonial scouting mission, but fall in? I don’t know that anyone will ever be able to confirm whether or not George Washington slipped here.

Then there’s the carousel at Monarch Park. It’s widespread enough to count as oral tradition that the carousel was transported to Conneaut Lake Park when Monarch Park folded in the mid-twenties. It’s a cool story, and I’d love to believe it, but I’ve never come across anything that would corroborate it. I know lots of folks who have “always heard” it, but that comes a hair short of conclusive evidence.

I think there’s a lot of history still locked away in people’s heads in this area. For instance, I believe there still have to be many tales to be told about Monarch Park. The park thrived for almost thirty years at the beginning of the 20^th Century; that’s a lot of warm summer evenings and sunny Sunday afternoons.

I’ve been out to the site of the park; bits and pieces of it are still in evidence. You can tell where the dance hall stood, where the trolley tracks ran. I stand there and try to imagine what it was like when thousands of area residents strolled through the garden, listened to a band concert or enjoyed a family picnic. There must be so many stories still to tell, and I wish I could hear, or read, each one.

The same holds true of the Sugarcreek Pavilion. It was a skating rink, a dance hall, and a revival tabernacle. It was this dance hall, and others like it, that helped put the nails in the coffin of places like Monarch Park—why sit and be taken, family in tow, on the trolley when you can hop in your automobile and go dancing with just your friends. Some of the hottest, best bands of the day played at Sugarcreek: Isham Jones, Fletcher Handerson, Coon-Sanders Nighthawks, Vincent Lopez. I wish I could know what it was like to hear them shake the rafters. Even as a skating rink, it must have been a sight to see. And Kathryn Kuhlman—well, I’ve seen pictures of her and while I’m sure her preaching skills deserve to be legendary, I’m guessing that it didn’t hurt that she was a major babe.

Then there’s Glenfern Park, apparently located on the lower end of Franklin, with some springs attached. I’ve encountered passing references to it but never heard any good stories, though I know they must be out there.

I’ve also come across indirect references in newspaper stories to a skating rink in Franklin, but never come across a direct mention of it. Where was it? What was it? Or was the writer making some sort of sly in-joke that has not aged well across seven or eight decades?

I bring this up now because it’s the mucky part of spring, not quite nice to be always out and about yet. This would be a good time to collect up some of these tales and set them down on paper, before they vanish into the dim past. You can lock them up in the family vault, send them to the Historical Society, or mail them to me here at the newspaper. The important thing is to hold onto these little bits of history.

BEN HOGAN: THE WICKEDEST MAN IN THE WORLD

(News-Herald, February 2003) Today we revisit Ben Hogan, one of oildoms more colorful figures.

According to The Golden Flood by Herbert Asbury (author of Gangs of New York on which the Martin Scorsese movie is loosely based, and actually an interesting story in his own right), Ben was born Benedict Hagan in Wurttemberg province, Germany, in 1841. His parents, a cabinet maker and an acrobat, brought him to the East Side of New York City in 1852; the family’s first lesson in new world economics came when a shopkeeper promised to change their life savings ($800 in gold) but instead stole it. 11-year-old Ben returned with a cohort and asked for the money. When the shopkeeper refused, they beat him to death. According to Ben, they took only the $800 they were due.

At age 17, already an experienced thief, Ben went to sea. It was during this time that he learned boxing. In New Orleans when the Civil War broke out, Ben became a spy and blockade runner for both sides, doing steady trade smuggling drugs and alcohol. He also joined a band of bounty jumpers—men who enlisted for the few hundred dollars bounty and then deserted, cash in hand.

By 1864, Ben was back in the job that brought him to Pithole—brothel bouncer. In Pithole he started out at Emma Fenton’s house, where he met up with French Kate. According to some sources, Kate had been a notorious spy, part of the Surrat circle in DC, and a friend of John Wilkes Booth. No evidence of this has ever turned up, but then, anti-government spy conspiracies are notoriously bad at record-keeping.

Ben and Kate left the Fenton establishment and went into business for themselves (a difficult separation, eventually requiring Ben to beat up Emma). Hogan’s Lager Beer Hall was successful, employing fifteen ladies. Over the door, Ben hung the sign “Ben Hogan, The Wickedest man in the World.”

The bull-necked Hogan could neither read nor write, but apparently could summon up charm when needed. When temperance ladies who attacked his bar were abused by the patrons, Ben said he wouldn’t allow rudeness to ladies in his presence. According to Hildegarde Dolson’s Great Oildorado he said, “Men, remember you too had a mother. Let’s drink to the health of these good ladies.”

In another oft-cited story, Ben, at a court appearance, explained that he was only running a “gymnasium where members of both sexes may enjoy wholesome exercise using the different parts of the body in such a way as to bring all the muscles into play.”

He worked in oil country with a traveling brothel, then in 1870 went that one better in Clarion County with Ben Hogan’s Floating Palace of Pleasure on an old river steamer, which traveled in and out of Clarion, Armstrong and Allegheny counties, depending on which county’s officers were trying to catch him at the time.

Through these years, he supplemented his income with the occasional prize fight and scam. When his brothel at Parker’s Landing burned down, Ben pursued a theatrical career, but became bored. He returned to Elk City in 1876 to set up a brothel, but was double-crossed by his mistress.

In 1877, while in New York City, Ben met and fell in love with a mission worker on Broadway. They married in the spring of ’78. But according to Asbury, Ben remained troubled. He had told her only part of his unsavory past (the part that didn’t involve pimping). Walking on Broadway on August 22, 1878, trying to decide how to unburden himself, Ben heard music coming from the Park Theater. He took a seat, hoping to see a show, and found himself instead in a revival meeting run by Charles Sawyer, famous as “the converted soak.”

According to Hogan’s own book (wonderfully reprinted by Margo Mong and available in fine local historical outlets) Hogan attended revivals for the next two evenings, spent a long troubled night asking his wife to read scripture to him, and emerged a newly converted man.

Did Ben Hogan really see the light? Well, he certainly stayed in the mission business longer than any other line of work he had ever pursued. There is a certain practical sincerity in his book, issued in 1887. His instructions on how to run a mission make it clear that he used his own background to spot men who would try to play missions as a scam. Although he whitewashes his gangland past a bit, he is free of the self-congratulations and righteousness of many new converts.

Ben and the missus staged revivals in the oil region, even preaching at the Methodist church in Franklin, but crowds were sparse and skeptical. So instead they spread the word successfully elsewhere. Famed revivalist Dwight L. Moody helped set them up with a mission in Chicago slums. One of Moody’s great backers was John D. Rockefeller-- interesting to think of the Reverend as a link between two men who captured much of the worst and best of oil country.

SERIOUS BUILDING

(News-Herald, November 2002)I learned a few things on my recent jaunt to New York City.
First, I learned a relatively easy way to get there. I now recommend driving to the Newark Air Port and taking a bus (or other ground transportation) into Manhattan. It was quick and simple and not too expensive.
Unexpected though it may be, my trip also gave me lots to think about regarding Venango County.
There’s the speed thing. It’s common to talk about life in small towns being slower than the fast-paced urban life. But New Yorkers must have to develop a sort of mobile patience, because it takes comparatively forever to get anywhere. An hour in mid-town Manhattan traffic would have one of us praying for either a bazooka or a small tank.
Manhattan is foot-traffic territory. There are cabs everywhere, carefully observing whatever city ordinance requires that each cab horn be tested roughly every twelve seconds. I did not notice many overweight people in Manhattan.
Not that they don’t respect our way of life. I stumbled across the Amish Market in Manhattan. The Amish in Manhattan seem to be a bit different from our Pennsylvanian Amish; Manhattan Amish, for instance, speak a great deal of Arabic. The market did include many Amish staples—virgin olive oil, salsa, hot sauces, and votive candles.
And if you’re taking the foot tour, you can’t pass up Times Square. There are, of course, the nightly light displays sucking up enough gigawatts to power Venango County for a decade. But there are other treats there as well. The night we walked through, a man in front of MTV studios was attempting to sell information on 429 sex positions for $1.
There was also a six-piece group of street musicians of some native South American extraction (Peruvian, maybe?) playing with recorders, pipes, guitars, and drum. They played what sounded like traditional music, with the traditional open guitar case in front, while another walked through the crowd selling traditional CD’s. It was a bit odd to be looking at a canyon of neon and super-lit advertising set to a soundtrack from a National Geographic special.
But most impressive to me this trip was Grand Central Station. The sheer giant awesomeness of the main concourse, framed by columns and stone and chandeliers, is impressive in its own right. But spend some time in the station and what starts to impress is the attention to detail.
Loading platforms are framed with carefully detailed mosaic work. Air vents in alcoves are set in finely wrought sculptures. You cannot find a place in the whole building that has been simply slopped together.
What slowly begins to sink in is that this is a piece of public construction built by people who were serious about what they were doing. I think, sometimes, that we have somehow become a culture that is no longer serious about making things.
Being serious about building is not a matter of money. It is not serious to throw money indiscriminately at a project; neither is it serious to search single-mindedly for ways to avoid spending money.
What’s serious is to concentrate on doing the project right, which means making the project as if it counts, as if it is going to be a real and significant part of peoples’ lives. Grand Central Station reeks of that sort of seriousness, just as the Belmar Bridge does. These are structures that were built as if they would be important, as if they accomplished goals that were worth doing and therefore worth doing well.
Our most serious structures in Venango County are our churches. They’re built to matter. They were built with the purpose of worship in mind; no church brags about how cheaply or expensively it was built, but shows how well it was built to its purpose. The county is chock full of serious churches.
Sunday night I stood by the site of the World Trade Center. Years ago I stood atop one of the towers and felt as I did Sunday; that it was too large for my brain to grasp. New York is still struggling with the question of how to fill the site with a serious structure.
We are too rarely serious about our purpose. We allow ourselves to be defined by our limits instead of our vision. We slip into worrying about our wallets, our egos, our fears, or any number of things that are beside the point, as if the purpose will somehow take care of itself. But what we learn over and over again is that it won’t. Know your limits, but live by your vision.

THE FRANKLIN CLUB ON ITS LAST LEGS?

(News-Herald, January 3)I never really believed the Franklin Club could fold. Still, not everything that’s old and traditional manages to survive. Nor does it necessarily deserve to.
The club started out as The Nursery Club. Long ago, Franklin’s motto was “The Nursery of Great Men.” That phrase was apparently coined by Erie politician Morrow B. Lowry, who was not a fan; he intended it as ironic mockery, but Franklinites picked it up and ran with it. The town called itself the Nursery, and Franklin High School sports teams proudly called themselves the Fighting Nurserymen. Hard to imagine how that nickname could fall into disfavor. But it did. FHS became the Knights, the Nursery Club became the Franklin Club, and Morrow B. Lowry, according to the local paper, ended up in an insane asylum.
The Club was initially happy to have rooms in the old Hancock Building. Common enough practice—the band and the newspaper and many other such reputable groups rented rooms rather than owning entire buildings. But the college boys who founded the club in 1877 became men and made lots of money, and the club bought a nice house and started adding to it.
That the club approaches extinction is not exactly news. The prognosis on the street has been grim for several years now. That in itself has probably not helped; folks are reluctant to book a facility that may not open by the time Billy Bob and Eulah May are fixin’ to get hitched.
And of course the club has never really been for Billy Bob and Eulah May. Part of the point of the club for most of its 130 years has been to preserve a certain amount of snootiness. There are people right now who are not rooting for this symbol of privilege. Fairly or unfairly, people are dredging up tales of days when merchants and teachers and laborers were blackballed from The Club because they weren’t the right sort. I’ve already been reminded of the story that circulated decades ago about a club employee who embezzled a truckload of money, and the club’s supposed decision not to pursue the matter in order to save face.
But I don’t think The Club suffers from bad karma. It has hosted many fine events, provided touches of grace and beauty to the entire community. There are more than enough fond memories of the Club to go around.
Places like the Franklin Club require a fairly good supply of Rich Guys, and we’re running a little low on that breed. Can you remember when most of Joy’s upper management lived right in Venango County? If you can, well, sorry, but you are old. There are not a great number of well-to-do folks around, and many of the few are not very visible in community life.
For that matter, many of those who are visible are visible in organizations involved in more active pursuits than maintaining a big club house with a ready supply of good food and alcohol. And many of them are part of a younger generation that is famously impatient in matters personal and professional. Why join an organization or business and wait twenty years to be trusted with any position of importance when you can go out and start your own club today?
That, in fact, is where groups like the Franklin Club came from in the first place. In 1877, American’s thirst for starting clubs was blooming. Virtually every civic and semi-civic organization (Red Cross, NAACP, Rotary, Boy Scouts) that you’ve heard of was founded between 1870 and 1920. By the 1970’s, we’d virtually stopped creating groups.
Then we stopped participating in them. From 1975 to 1999, figures show that participation in clubs dwindled to less than half its former level.
So The Club’s problems are not unique. In early 2006, the Pittsburgh Business Times reported a big decline in country club membership throughout the region. Wanango Country Club’s reputation hasn’t been much more solid that The Club’s for a while, and they have a pool and a golf course. In many ways, the Franklin Club is just a country club with nothing to play but basement duckpins.
We face increasing problems with these white elephants. Franklin First Baptist Church, Galena Building, Transit Building—created by long-dead rich guys, these beautiful buildings provide rich heritage and gut-busting maintenance costs.
How to hang onto them? Government pork would be a poor solution. Besides, these buildings have doors and windows; some other business with doors and windows would sue.
Nope. If we want to keep them, we have to pony up. It’s nice to say you’d like the Franklin Club to survive. But what would you pay to keep it? Right now, that’s the only question that counts.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IN OIL COUNTRY

(News-Herald, June 2002)Of all the notable historical figures to pass through Venango County, none may be more difficult to unravel than John D. Rockefeller. I’ve recently finished Ron Chernow’s biography of him, Titan.
The advent of the oil industry shows how a variety of threads can converge in one critical moment. If medical charlatans had not packaged the obnoxious black goo as medicine, then George Bissell might not have been tempted to explore its worth as an illuminant. If the rise of industrial and urban America had not created a greater demand for artificial light, few might have cared about his idea. It took a laboratory chemist (Professor Benjamin Silliman of Yale) to prove Bissell’s idea had merit, and a batch of capitalist investors to dispatch Edwin Drake to Pennsylvania. And Drake needed the assistance of laborer Uncle Billy Smith to figure out how to get the whole thing accomplished.
And when all tarnation broke loose, it took someone to take the many far-flung pieces of the puzzle and tie them together.
We think of the oil boom as a sort of uninterrupted explosion of money, but it didn’t work that way. People smelled money; they drilled wells. Oil was suddenly as plentiful as raspberries, and the price plummeted. Men’s holdings were suddenly worth nothing, and they went out of business. Then there were fewer producers, so oil was rare, and the price went up. So more people went into the business, and oil was as plentiful as raspberries. Rinse and repeat.
It’s no wonder that there are empty fields that were once cities in our area.
Rockefeller saw that a free market can be an ugly, brutal, wasteful thing. But with that volatility comes an opportunity to bring control and order.
What Rockefeller did was simple; he bought every oil-related business he could get his hands on. He knew the business; he visited our area, traveling through the oil fields. He was not afraid to get his hands dirty as he learned. One of the first acquisitions of the new Standard Oil Company was Miller and Sibley’s Galena Oil Company. And just over a decade after Drake’s triumph, Rockefeller controlled the refining and the transportation of oil.
Rockefeller was himself the product of a deeply religious mother and a charming con-man father. Some of Rockefeller’s techniques were brutal, but not illegal. At the bottom of the business cycle there were plenty of businesses for sale cheap; Rockefeller bought them. This did not make him many friends; it’s easy to feel bitter toward a man who profits from your own business mistakes.
Some of his techniques were not so ethical. Most notorious was the system whereby Standard Oil not only was paid a kickback from the railroad for the oil they shipped, but for the oil shipped by their competitors.
Rockefeller’s company was not much-loved in these parts. When word of the South Improvement Company conspiracy leaked out , Captain J. B. Barbour threw an SIP official through the big plate glass window of the Exchange Hotel.
Odd to think of Venango County as hot-bed of turmoil, intrigue, and controversy, but there it was. Local drillers tried to organize boycotts to hurt Standard Oil by cutting off its supply of oil. There were even processions, led by the band, out to wells for symbolic shutdowns. Three thousand angry people gathered at the Titusville Opera House to denounce the “great anaconda.” But the small operators could never keep their ranks closed. Ironically, one of the speakers at the Titusville rally was John Archbold, destined to become Rockefeller’s successor at Standard Oil. Titusville also produced Rockfeller’s great journalistic adversary, Ida Tarbell.
Rockefeller spent decades avoiding the law. His life as a fugitive began in 1879 when a Clarion County grand jury indicted him and eight other Standard Oil officials. To the best of my knowledge, they never got a piece of him.
Rockefeller was a devout Baptist who considered oil country a moral cesspool of loose women and indecent men. Once, while staying at the Exchange, he refused to go to help save his oil barrels from flooding because it was Sunday.
He pumped millions into philanthropy, setting the stage for numerous modern medical advances. He was one of the great supporters of higher education for African-Americans.
Many look at his brutal business techniques and his Christianity and wonder how much of a hypocrite he had to be. Chernow thinks the two sides were not in that much conflict, that Rockefeller felt that his business triumph was his own mission from God. But in Venango County we’re still reluctant to lay claim to him, to say we knew him when.

GRAFFITI & INDIAN GOD ROCK

(August 2002)I was watching the various works of art which had been rendered on each and every car or a passing train, and it got me thinking about graffiti.
It seems humans have always had an urge to leave their mark on things. The first known graffito (that’s the singular form) was left at the Sakkara pyramid in Egypt about 3500 years ago. It says, roughly, “I am very impressed with Pharaoh Djosers’ pyramid.”
The Vikings left graffiti all over the place. By the 1800’s scholars were actually studying the stuff. The word “graffiti” was first coined by archaeologists studying Pompeii. In the late forties, there were actual scholarly studies of Kilroy
Graffiti was used by urban gangs to mark their territory. So-called modern graffiti traces its origins to the late sixties, and took off in the seventies with artists like Taki183, a NYC courier who left his name all over the city.
Around these parts we don’t have anything that approaches the spray-paint artists of major cities. I went looking for local graffiti and didn’t have much luck. There are a few names under several bridges. On the bike trail, someone faithfully maintains a few scratchings on the giant pole that carries electric lines across the river. The word “knites” is regularly reworked onto the metal surface. I don’t know if that’s some sort of clever satire, a secret code word, or the name of a roving band of FHS dropouts who can’t spell.
Of course, the granddaddy of Venango County graffiti locations is the Indian God Rock. The rock (for those of you not already in the know) can be found a bit past the eight mile mark on the bike trail going south from Franklin. Explorers in pre-colonial times used it as a landmark because it’s big and it had, at one time, Indian markings on the exposed side.
A Captain Eastman copied the markings down. There were cougars and panthers, severed heads, a female and various bows and arrows. A Mr. Schoolcraft interpreted those as symbols of triumph in hunting and war, but it’s hard not to wonder if they translate as “Cornplanter Rox!!” or “Senecas Rule!”
Plenty of people have traveled to the IGR over the years, in part because when the French explorer Celeron claimed this territory for France, he left his own marks in the form of lead plates (pre-manufactured graffiti), one of which was supposedly buried near the IGR. No one has ever found that plate, but not for lack of trying.
The IGR is fully out of the water now; when the river rises, it can claim the bottom feet or two of the enormous chunk of stone. There’s a large face, steeply angled, facing upriver. The 1890 history of Venango County notes “Like all other works of man, this monument is fading and perishing.”
Well, yes. It was fading and perishing because everybody and his brother were carving their OWN names into the thing.
Travel to gape at IGR (and its surrounding subsidiary rocks) today and you won’t see a trace of Native American hieroglyphics, but you can peruse a century and a half’s worth of graffiti.
There is some stone-carved artwork. A hand pointing downriver. A donkey’s head. A large rooster. Something that wants to be a fish, I think, and another symbol that may be a peace sign or a Mercedes-Benz symbol. There is even a Masonic symbol, which I suppose indicates that IGR is a possible staging area for when the Catholic church and the Illuminati create the New World Order by helping space aliens dominate the UN, or something.
Mostly, though, the rocks are covered with names. Some, like F. Adsit and C. Sidlauska, are carved deep into the stone. Some are barely scratches; CH or CS, from this year, will probably not survive till October.
Many have dates attached: D. R. Shaw, 1908; Seth Randolph, 1875; R. I. Hagan, August 1, 1893; C. E. Barnes, 1869; Tony, 1988. Some of the names are good local names: RJH Johnston (1860), J. H. Mitchell (August 13, 1885), C. H. Cole, J. C. Duffield, A. Witherup (1881). A few signers made their mark for some larger group. Someone in 1959 carved some Greek frat letters. Oil City and Alleghany City are both on the rock, as is someone called the T.A.T. Crew.
Some are simply mysterious. RYE ’41 could be initials, or the name of a town, or even a last name. Many have been worn down by time and the elements. Someone recorded a name and the date April 22, 1883—only the date remains legible. NK and CH recorded their initials in a heart. As near as I can tell, Kilroy has not been there. At least not yet.

JOHN E. BUTLER-- A LITTLE DRUMMER BOY

(July, 2002) I’ve been working for years on a history of the Franklin Silver Cornet Band. We turn 150 in 2006 and it would be nice to have a reasonably large chunk of our story assembled by then.
In the process of working on the history, I meet lots of interesting people from our community’s past. This week let me introduce you to John E. Butler.
It appears that John was born in the 1850’s. The first trace of him appears in records of the pre-war orphan trains.
The orphan trains are an interesting little footnote in American history. Big eastern cities (primarily NYC) would take their excess orphan and homeless child population and ship it by the trainload to the Midwest, hoping that there would be more families willing to take in these foundlings.
John was born in Galway, Ireland, where his father died. His mother brought him to this country in 1854 and delivered him to an asylum for homeless children. He was loaded onto one of the orphan trains, and it would appear that he never saw his mother again.
John settled in Princeton, Indiana, either in 1857 or 1859. When the Civil War broke out, he was only eleven, too young to enlist as a soldier, so Colonel John T. Wilder recruited John as a drummer boy. His foster father in Princeton had taught him to play the drum.
John served with the 17th Indiana Regiment, which became part of Wilder’s famous “Lightning Brigade.” (As an odd side note, one company of the 17th was the first military group formed in Franklin, Indiana.) They pioneered the use of Spencer rifles in the war; the 17th fought at Shilo, Chattanooga and Chickamauga.
After the war, John eventually settled in Franklin, where he lived for years on the 1100 block of Chestnut Street. In 1897 he founded Marvin Manufacturing Company, and he was the president and general manager of that concern for many years. He also worked on occasion as an oil scout for Standard Oil.
He joined the Franklin Band when he was in his early twenties, probably in 1870. When the band was first officially chartered in 1873, John’s was one of the names on the articles or incorporation.
John was married twice (not uncommon back in the days when people frequently died young). He had a son from his first marriage, John E. Butler, Jr., who moved to Liverpool, Ohio, where his own wife had grown up.
John’s second wife was Cora Rodgers. The same year John started Marvin Manufacturing, they had a son named Willis, who enjoyed a brief career in baseball. Willis played under the name Kid Butler for the St. Louis Browns (who would one day be the Baltimore Orioles). His one professional season was 1907; he played seventeen games out of 155. His batting average was a mere 220, but he played short stop, second base, and third base and had just three errors in his short career.
Willis continued to play minor league ball for several years (he had to take a break while playing for Memphis to recover from malaria); it was during that period that he met a grandson of Confederate General Forrest. Forrest’s grandson, upon learning about Willis’s father, gave Willis a medal to pass on to John. John was proud of that, as he was proud of a photo taken of Willis and pitching phenom Rube Waddell together.
The local paper called John a self-effacing man who preferred to keep his good deeds and honors secret, but against his wishes they published a full account of his return to Princeton in 1916. John was welcomed back to town with a parade and a banquet, and school children turned out in force to see Princeton’s own little drummer boy. The local Sons of Veterans camp changed their name to Camp John E. Butler, and at a reunion of old soldiers, John met a man whom he had taught to play drums while in the army.
In 1917, John’s old commanding officer, John T. Wilder died. That same year Willis enlisted in a unit of athletes and cowboys known as the “Grizzly Bears.” Willis survived the war and lived in California until his death in the 1960’s.
John died in Franklin in May of 1927. He was remembered as a band member, a soldier, and a man who had quietly given much to his community. His is not the sort of life that is celebrated in books, but I have to believe that one could certainly do worse than to live a life like that of John E. Butler.
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A PS to this column from a few years back-- while completing the book about the band, I heard from a lady in Princeton who was in the process of writing a children's book about John. Turns out that they still have his drum out there, with a note from him saying that it was the drum he used to play wih the Franklin Silver Cornet Band, "the best band in all of Pennsylvania."

It's some kind of law of historical research-- after you go to press, some really cool lead or bit of information will surface.

S.C.T. DODD and THE ORIGINAL TRUST

(March 2002) Given all the furor over corporate finances and ethically impaired big businessmen, now seems a good time to revisit a man who, in many ways, may be the most important to ever come out of Venango County.
We all have a vague impression of a “trust” being some sort of Bad Thing, highly illegal, somehow related to monopolies. But the legal construct of a Trust was invented by Franklin native S C T Dodd.
His backwoodsman grandfather built his cabin 12 miles from the nearest neighbor; he didn’t want his garden disturbed by his neighbor’s chickens. SCT’s father was born in 1799 and eventually settled in Venango County, taking up carpentry. He served in the militia, was a school director, and helped found the Presbyterian Sunday School (with Rev. Timothy Alden, a founder of Allegheny College).
Samuel C. T. Dodd was born on February 20, 1836. He learned the printing trade early on, but also pursued formal education, graduating from Washington and Jefferson College with honors in 1857. He came back to Franklin, studied law with James K. Kerr, and joined the bar in 1859.
Dodd had a gift for writing; he was an amateur poet and participated in the framing of the Pennsylvania constitution in 1872, where he spoke against the collusion of oil and railroad companies.
When acting as lawyer for both sides in an 1878 dispute between refiners and the United Pipe Lines company, he learned that the pipeline company was secretly owned by Standard Oil. This led to his first meeting with John D. Rockefeller. “Do you often act for both sides in a case?” asked Rockefeller.
“Not often… but I am always ready to do so when both sides want an honest lawyer,” replied Dodd. Rockefeller hired him the following year.
Going to work for Standard Oil did not make Dodd any new friends in this county. But he made other new friends soon enough.
It was Dodd who figured out how to unite a wide web of businesses in a technically legal unit. The corporations themselves could not be combined. But if their stockholders handed their stocks over to trustees in return for trust shares, no law was broken. The Standard Oil trust agreement was set up January 2, 1882, creating a board of nine men who didn’t have the authority to sign contracts, hire or fire, but who in effect owned the complex of businesses worth $70 million dollars and controlling 90% of the entire oil business.
When this set-up was revealed six years later, Dodd was called on often to defend it, which he did in person and in print. The crux of his argument seems to have been that trusts were not bad because they did not squeeze the customers, but created a more efficient industry. He wrote that the men who possessed the great integrity and knowledge to be entrusted with great wealth of capital would be the first to realize “that the policy that succeeds is that which accords fair treatment to all.”
The Sherman Anti-trust Act passed in 1890 left Standard Oil shaken, but not hurt (and only made illegal trust-making a misdemeanor).
All of this would lead you to imagine SCT as a slick 19th century shark, but he was anything but. He’s described as “rotund,” “genial,” and “roly-poly.” In a memoir that he wrote for his descendants, he is charming and pleasant, and devotes considerable space to explaining his ideas about faith and God. In an 1874 address to the Presbyterian Sunday School, he shows flashes of humor, saying of his father, “He emigrated to Mercer County, Pa, some two months after [his birth]. It may be proper to state his parents accompanied him.”
After he moved to New York in 1881 (the same year Levi died) his neighbors presumed that he was rich. He was not. Despite Rockefeller’s insistence, he never accepted any Standard Oil stock or a seat on any Standard Oil board, saying that such a stake in the company might cloud his legal judgment. He reportedly made only around $25,000 annually for serving as chief counsel for the richest business in the country.
In his final months, Dodd suffered from “decay of the nerves”. He died in January of 1907. The Franklin newspaper spoke of his stainless character, unfailing generosity and pure and kind heart. Rockefeller later said, “A more just man never lived…He was a lovable, loyal man.” Dodd never lived to see the Supreme Court dismantle Standard Oil in 1911. In 1920, Standard Oil of California built a tanker named the SCT Dodd. All in all, not bad for a small town boy.

BAND ANNIVERSARY

(News-Herald, August 10) This evening, the Franklin Silver Cornet Band celebrates its 150th anniversary.
That’s a long time for an institution. In 1856, the country had only fought in two wars. Venango County had a population of roughly 25,000. There was one superintendent of schools for the whole county; his annual salary was $500.
In 1856, town bands were not all that common or widespread as they would be thirty years later. We’ll probably never know what prompted the creation of a band in a small community where farmers still grazed cattle in the city parks.
Old Stuff goes through four stages. Stage 1: Look at this cool new thing. Stage 2: We’ve grown comfortably accustomed to this old familiar thing. Stage 3: I think it’s time to throw out this old piece of junk. Stage 4: Look at this fine, valuable antique.
Lots of good stuff gets lost in Stage 3. Every family has a story about some object that they regret throwing in the trash. Franklin started the Stage 3 wholesale trashing of many great old buildings. Antique dealers make a living being smart enough to pick future valuables out of the trash.
An organization is much more fragile, much easier to lose. It’s an invisible bond that has to be passed on like a flame. Once it’s snuffed, it’s hard to bring back. So how does a group survive for the Really Long Haul?
Embrace your tradition, but don’t wear it around your neck like a giant half-ton medallion. The two worst reasons to do something are “We’ve always done it that way” and “We’ve never done it that way.” The people who came before you probably knew what they were doing, but you’re the one standing right here right now. For 100 years, it was traditional for the band not to include women. There may have been a time when that tradition made sense, but the time came when it made sense to get rid of it.
Compromise when you have to. There were times when the band was small and weak, barely able to squeak out a tune or two. It would have been easy to say, “Well, if we can’t do any better than this, we might as well call it quits.” But then all the good years of fine music that came later might never have happened. It’s nice to strive for excellence, but if you’re in it for the long haul, you have to expect some lean times and just push on through them.
Have good leaders, but rotate them. In 150 years, many good people have devoted a great deal of time and energy and passion to the band—more people than I could ever list here. But that core of leadership has been regularly rotated and replenished. In any organization, if you’ve had the same leadership for decades, you are headed for trouble.
Remember who and what you are. There are so-called town bands out there that are staffed entirely with paid professionals, and others that turn up their noses at teenaged musicians, and others that push older players aside to make room for the new young guns in town. I say “Phooey” to the lot of them.
A town band is about amateurs, about friends and neighbors volunteering to bring something special to the community, about generations of people from all across the community sitting down together to make music. It’s easy to get so caught up in the music part that you forget about the human element, but a town band is about so much more than music.
Have fun. One of the distinctive characteristics of the Franklin Band has always been that, while we take the music seriously, we don’t take ourselves very seriously at all. I have certainly known people who approach making music as if it were a painful chore, and others whose giant egos have become a straightjacket keeping them stiff and stodgy. If it’s not fun, why bother?
These principles work, I suspect, for any organization. I’ll bet they’re a big part of what has kept the Venango County Fair going for fifty years. The county fair folks are to be congratulated for that—in many ways the band and fair are similar in keeping alive a slice of traditional American life. Do enjoy some of the fair this weekend.
Tonight we are going to celebrate. The current band will be out in force, and a couple dozen former members will gather from near and far to join in. It’s like a reunion gathering for a very large, very extended family. We’ll play some cool music well, have some fun, and enjoy an occasion that’s rare in the whole country. We hope you’ll join us.