The Historic Egg Hill Church

After more than 30 years, I finally found the historic Egg Hill Church and photographed it.

The story begins in the late 1970s when it appeared the church was going to be torn down. The CDT was filled with stories and photographs about the church and I set out with my first single lens reflex camera (a Minolta) to record the church before it disappeared.

Mind you, the best photographs had already been done by Dick Brown, then the lead photographer for the CDT, who is still an active  photographer and whose work is exhibited at, among other places, the Central Pennsylvania Festival of the Arts. One of Brown's most dramatic photographs looks up the road to the church.

Lo those many years ago, I never found the church. Fortunately for me, the church was saved and is now on the National Register of Historic Places. Inspired by some Facebook friends, I decided to try again. This time, though, I had Google maps and a GPS to guide me and it was an easy find, even though the church is on a dirt road named Egg Hill Road off Skunk Road off Sinking Creek Road.

Now I know why Dick's most dramatic shot looks up the road. The church is on the crest of a hill and backs onto woods and leaves you little room to photograph from the high angle. Besides, on the low side there's a cemetery and capturing a tombstone or two in your photographs makes for a better shot.

The church is not as elegant as I remember it from Dick's photographs. It needs paint  and the property is now surrounded by an inelegant chain link fence. There are gates to let you inside the perimeter, although I took one of my better shots from the low end outside the fence and managed to keep the fence out of the frame. When I processed my photos, I converted them to black and white, which seemed to fit the mood of the foggy day.

I'm going to return when autumn's colors dominate and shoot again. Two of my current photos are in my online gallery.

The State's Oldest Barn

The state’s oldest barn can be found in Chester County. It has been there, according to research, since 1753.  There is a gable stone that says 1724, but the owner believes that comes from a barn that previously occupied the site and was incorporated into the new barn. The date stone in the brick farm house says 1724.

Unlike most barns that survive today in Pennsylvania, this one is a one-level barn or a ground barn. And unlike most barns in Pennsylvania, this one is of English ancestry rather than German. And the owners, Wynne and John Milner, keep Sicilian donkeys as pets.

A tornado heavily damaged one side wall and the roof and that required major repair. The owner managed to salvage some of the original rafters and shows them to visitors. The rebuilt wall faces the road and contains a single door. Its opposite side has two single doors while the wide sides of the barn have double doors, which are built to accommodate wagons. The inside has lofts on both sides which are accessible by portable ladders. Typically, in the German barns, ladders were built in as part of the internal structure.

Primary ventilation is provided on all sides by slits in the stone walls that are narrow on the outside and wider inside, reminiscent of a design found in military forts and castles.

According to Gregory D. Huber, a barn historian, remnants of older barns exist around the state, but not in the condition of this one. Huber determined the date of the current barn by testing one of the original rafters, using a process called dendro-dating. Think tree rings.

The Updike Barn

Many readers of John Updike know that Updike used pieces of his life in his fiction. One particular short story that interests me is "Pigeon Feathers," which was inspired in part by a barn on the Updike farm in Berks County.

Updike lived for years in Shillington just outside of Reading. But at some point his mother wanted to move to the farm near Morgantown, south of Reading. She had grown up there. And so Updike spent about four years there before graduating from high school and going to Harvard.

Mrs. Updike continued to live there until her death in her 90s at which time Updike sold the farm. It was purchased by Emerson and Marlene Gundy. Emerson is Updike's second cousin; their grandmothers were sisters. Gundy and Updike were school mates and Gundy recalls the boys being driven to school by Updike's father.

The short story deals with a young person's questions about death. In the story, he, with his Remington .22 rifle, is sent into the barn to shoot pigeons. "A barn, in day, is a small night," Updike wrote. Of course, he had to wait for his eyes to adjust to the darkness before he could begin shooting the pigeons, who would gather at one of the two round gable vents "about as big as basketballs."

The barn was built in 1840. I'll save the rest for the book Pennsylvania Barn Stories, which is proceeding slowly.

The Middle of Nowhere

I rise to defend “the middle of nowhere” comment made by British Prime Minister David Cameron in response to some awkward comments about the current Olympics by a guy who staged  the 2002 Winter Olympics in the middle of nowhere. That would be Mitt Romney, the Republican’s presumptive nominee for president and a guy who has a habit of saying the wrong thing. (This is not to defend President Obama, who himself has stepped in a quagmire a few times.)

The middle of nowhere, for those who might be geographically challenged, is Utah. It is in the middle of nowhere, but it’s obvious to me that in making that comment Cameron doesn’t appreciate Utah. It is a staggeringly beautiful state. 

When we lived in New Mexico, we would drive to Elko, Nevada, (another beautiful nowhere) and stay in Moab, Utah, which is about halfway. Moab is about three hours south of Salt Lake City, the major city associated with the Winter Olympics. I couldn’t wait to get to Moab, not just to stay in the Gonzo Inn, but to drive through Arches National Park. (That's Delicate Arch above.)

The first time we visited the park, I kept stopping to take photos where there was no place to stop and finally turned the driving over to my wife, opened the car’s sunroof and poked my head (and camera) through the opening and photographed to my eye’s content while my wife drove around the park.

We also visited a nearby state park, Dead Horse Point (don’t ask), which provides a spectacular view of the Colorado River on its way to the Grand Canyon and another park named Canyonlands. (We’ve also been to the Grand Canyon, but that’s in Arizona and it’s also in the middle of nowhere.)

We’ve been to Moab several times, even spending a Thanksgiving there with our extended family. On another occasion, we spent a Memorial Day weekend in Park City and visited Olympic sites. 

Some of the most beautiful sites I’ve seen in my life were in the middle of nowhere. If they weren’t, they probably wouldn’t be beautiful anymore. 

The next time somebody says something is located in the middle of nowhere, think of it as a good thing.

Another Barn Story

We’re enjoying a visit of one of our daughters and, more important, two grandchildren. Our grandson likes baseball (he used to like trains, but not anymore) and so we went to a game between the State College Spikes and the Batavia (New York) Muckdogs. (Who names these teams?)

Don’t ask me what level of baseball we were watching. I stopped following baseball when Mickey Mantle retired. I’m clueless. If it’s not the Steelers, it’s not. 

One of the players for the home team was a guy named Barrett Barnes, which led to a series of jokes from my daughter Amy. She knows I’m working on a photo project called Pennsylvania Barn Stories and her series of jokes played off Barrett’s surname. 

The jokes got old faster than the game as the home team fell behind quickly. I was ready to go home if anyone else was, but they hung in there. The grandchildren and their father spent a couple of innings at the playground before returning late in the game to our seats behind home plate (5th row, no less). Our grandson fist bumped with Ike, the team mascot. (Aren’t you impressed that I know what a fist bump is?)

Lo and behold, the home team came from behind and eventually tied the game, not once, but twice. At 8-8, it struck me as more of a low-scoring football game than a high-scoring baseball game. 

And so we arrived at the bottom of the 9^th, two out, tie game and Barrett Barnes is the batter with a man on second. The barn story comments begin anew, with my daughter predicting there would be a barn story that night. 

Hardly had she said that and hardly had I groaned than Barnes slammed a single into far right and the runner on the second came all the way around to score and end the game. 

Jubilation on the field and in the stands and I got my barn story.

Thanks, Amy. And Barrett.

A Moment To Remember

A year ago my wife and I sat with my mother for one last lunch at her nursing home in Albuquerque before moving from New Mexico to Pennsylvania. Sometimes she knew who we were, but lately that had not been the case. 

As we chatted, she asked us where we lived. Santa Fe, we told her. Oh, she said, do you know that other couple from there?

Of course, she meant us.

We told her that we knew them very well and that seemed to satisfy her. 

No one enjoys seeing an elderly parent slip into a state of not knowing. My mother, who raised my three sisters and me when our father left in 1949, always had a quick wit about her. The one I remember best occurred when I reported to her that the state police officer giving me a test for my driver’s license would not let me fill out the form as R. Thomas Berner. The officer insisted on Ralph Thomas Berner, but because Ralph was my father’s name, I never used it in full so it was disconcerting when the officer insisted on it.

The government doesn’t allow people to do that, he said.

Tell it to J. Edgar Hoover, my mother quipped when I told her.

My sisters, who have sat with my now 97-year-old mother through more than a decade of lunches and dinners, have reported that even as her mind seemed to deteriorate, she still had those moments of lucidity and she could get around in a wheelchair. She might not know who you were, but she could still come up with a good rejoinder.

Because she did not know us at that final luncheon, I did not feel guilty about returning to our native Pennsylvania. But about 10 months after settling in, I heard from one of my sisters that my mother wanted to know where I was. Traveling, my sister told her, which was more or less true.

Nevertheless, I decided to visit my mother. When we stopped by coming from the airport and my older sister told her who I was, she opened her arms welcome wide. It was the only time she indicated she knew who I was. When I sat with her for lunch day after day, she gave no sign that she knew me, even though I made it point—as I always had—to call her “Mother” or “Ethel.”

So I was surprised one day when the lucid mother spoke up. I forget the circumstance that made me ask her if she was OK, but I do remember her reply. In fact, I immediately typed it into my smart phone so I wouldn’t forget.

“Are you OK?” I asked.

 

She looked at me and replied: “I don’t know what that means anymore.” 

I was stunned at how profound her answer was, that despite her fading mental condition, she could verbalize her condition in one short sentence.

And then she went back to being herself.

Building Interruptus

Notice that this barn is part stone and part lumber. Most people wouldn't give it a second thought because there are barns that might have stone ends but filled out with lumber in between.

That's not the case with this barn. If you look from left to right, you'll see that the barn becomes lumber to the end. That's because the man who started the barn was killed in accident and his son finished the barn with lumber.


The details are sketchy. They were handed down through the family, but those who might remember the oral history are now deceased.

Just another Pennsylvania barn story.