Civilian Conservation Corps Memories

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Civilian Conservation Corps Memories On Sunday, October 29, 1933, three years after graduating from McKeesport High School, I found myself on a B&O train heading from Pittsburgh to Fort Meade, Maryland, with several hundred others my age. We as a group had been sworn into the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) at the North Side Post Office in Pittsburgh. We were given a thirty-five-cent meal ticket for our evening meal, which...
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My Memories of Harrisburg and the Flood of ’36

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on My Memories of Harrisburg and the Flood of ’36 In 1923, I was four years old when my family moved from Philadelphia to Harrisburg. My father, Einar Barfod, had been appointed chief investigator in the securities department of Pennsylvania’s ban.king department by Governor Gifford Pinchot. My earliest memory of Harrisburg was a summer when my mother hired a farmer to plow the field next to our house, then having all the neighborhood...
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Remembering the Steam Days

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Remembering the Steam Days 1953 brought on a lot of changes for the Monongahela Railway Company, a small but busy coal-hauling railroad in southwestern Pennsylvania, which operated from South Brownsville, Fayette County, to Fairmont, West Virginia, a distance of about seventy-three miles. Twenty-seven brand new Baldwin diesel electric road­-switching locomotives arrived at the South Brownsville shops in 1953. They...
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Jr. High Quiz

Posted by on Nov 26, 2013 in | Comments Off on Jr. High Quiz “Spell ‘millennium.'” It’s Sunday afternoon, one o’clock, when my family and I gather in front of our television for our favorite show. The picture fades in and out, snowy at times, for these were the days before cable – but we couldn’t miss this show. The poor reception was due to the distance as this special program was only shown only on Channel...
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Down the Main Line

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Down the Main Line For forty years I ran both freight and passenger trains down the Main Line of the Reading Railroad (later Conrail), from Pottsville, in Schuylkill County, to Philadelphia. I was hired as a fireman in 1941 and shoveled my share of coal to keep those old steamers rolling. After my stint in the Army in World War II, I returned to my job and was ultimately promoted to engineman, running steam...
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Memories of a Crisis

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Memories of a Crisis Living and working in Hummelstown, only five miles from Middletown, the home of Three Mile Island (TMI) and it nuclear power plant, I listened anxiously as the radio announcer warned of a radiation emission or leak from the plant (see “From Chaos to Calm: Remembering the Three Mile Island Crisis, An Interview with Harold Denton” by Kenneth C. Wolensky, Spring 2000). Windows were to...
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A Child’s World War II Era Impressions

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on A Child’s World War II Era Impressions When war rages across the ocean, the secure world of a young rural child is little affected, although a few highlights remain in memory. I treasured that little lapel button that proclaimed me a “Lieutenant” in the war effort’s scrap drive. It was exciting to collect and deposit my pickings in the school yard of my one-room school in Harrity, Carbon County. It was scary to be...
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Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll It’s strange how you can be in on the ground floor of a cultural revolution and not know it at the time. But that’s how it was with me and the birth of rock and roll – in Lebanon and West Chester. Admittedly, I was an observer; a chronicler, if you will. The story begins just after the end of World War II when a new radio station, WLBR, was opening in Lebanon. WLBR was a...
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My Day at the Bargaining Table

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on My Day at the Bargaining Table Our family consisted of seven children, my mother, who had emigrated from Italy in 1908, and my father, who was born in Carbondale, Lackawanna County. We lived in a small anthracite (or hard coal) mining town, Old Forge, also in Lackawanna County. Dad began working as a breaker boy in the coal industry when he was fifteen years old. After years of such hard labor, Dad began to try to rectify the...
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Paradise Found: Summers in Hershey, Pa.

Posted by on Nov 25, 2013 in | Comments Off on Paradise Found: Summers in Hershey, Pa. Some of my most precious childhood memories are of Hershey Park and, especially, the beautiful swimming pool complex that was adjacent to the Hershey Park Ballroom. We enjoyed them during the 1930s, the era of the big bands. We would swim in the afternoon and remain until the band began to play in the evening. We would dance on the grass to the music of Woody Herman, Glenn Miller, and Harry...
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