We All Wrote on the Same Outhouse Walls

By Larry M. Farrar

A delightfully funny book written by a “Modern Day Will Rogers” about the consequence of growing up during the 1940s and 1950s, in an unassuming small town hidden in the Appalachian foothills. The Wall Street Journal described the author’s hometown as; “Intact but decaying: Pure 19th Century”.

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Mar 8, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643454252

Larry M. Farrar

Larry M Farrar was retired from Kimberly Clark Corp. as a Senior Vice President. Larry and his wife Roberta (Bertie) now live in Columbia, TN close to their two sons and three grandchildren. Mr Farrar's professional career included certified public accountant and officer with managerial responsibility within four major international corporations. Hobbies included motorcycle touring and car racing in Sports Car Club of America sanctioned races.

Book preview

The Day the School Burned

Was this great or what? It was the last week of the school year. Jubilant kids had amazingly vaulted out of bed earlier than usual without the customary pleading, then threats, from hassled parents. The anticipation of summer, no homework, and sleeping in late had been the therapeutic elixir for the mysterious early morning demeanor. Not only that, but a few hours later the schoolhouse was burning to the ground.

Was this a once-in-a-lifetime dream come true, or would we all be scarred for life unable to compete intellectually with others? My adolescent, five-year-old brain was challenged by mixed feelings. Should I bid an elated good riddance to the old barn of a prison in which I was to be incarcerated in first grade come next fall, or should I be distressed that my future was going up in smoke? My never-to-be-great contribution to southwestern Pennsylvania culture was being wasted in soon to be cold ashes. Regardless of the long-term despair to me and to mankind, with any luck, the mysterious episode of the first day of school, which everyone was assuring me would be just fine, would at least be postponed.

Didn’t have kindergarten back when I was a kid, least not in West Middletown. I was lucky. For to be snatched from an inquisitive childhood at an age hardly tall enough to reach an imposing urinal without standing on tiptoes would have been frightening at most and embarrassing at the least.

I had dodged the bullet thus far without any interference to a normal childhood. It was my suspicion that kindergarten was a conspiracy by mothers to opt for a few hours of peace and quiet. Let someone else put up with the little snots while the mothers drown their guilt in gossip and coffee for having done so. The gossip left over from last week’s garden club meeting and the coffee from breakfast both reheated and savored for the second time.

As you can imagine, the schoolhouse burning was one of the most talked about events of the summer. Right up there with the most recent conception out of wedlock. Nothing is said, but the months are counted and mental calendars marked. That nostalgic day started like any other day in any small, unassuming village in southwestern Pennsylvania. The country was at peace. Oh sure, there was some talk at my father’s country store and at the post office about what was being broadcast over the radio and suggested in the evening paper. But Europe and Asia were far away. Most had never heard of Pearl Harbor. It was a faraway place that, in just a few months, would become an event that would not only be known but never forgotten.

Farmers were working on the first and second cutting of hay. Gardens had been planted in neat rows. Each row was distinguished by the empty seed pack showing a picture of the vegetable soon to be either forced on well-nourished but reluctant children or to be encased in Ball Band canning jars and shrouded in cellars to be ceremoniously served during those infertile winter months. Corn on the cob, each with its even number of rows, would soon disrupt the usual menu of meat and potatoes.

Skunks, possums, and raccoons would soon be enjoying fine dining in closely guarded gardens, as well as going to that great forest in the sky as recently squashed roadkill. The smears on the road could be avoided, but the obnoxious smell of those unwelcome, adorable little black-and-white cornstock climbers would infest the gentle summer breeze for days.

Dad had put the screen doors, which had been hidden in the basement for the winter, back on the entrance to the store. Screen doors and window screens had emerged from attics, basements, and garages all over town. The weeds had overtaken the flowers, and those who were so inclined had already cured their first dose of poison ivy with Fels-Naptha soap. The older boys had already been swimming down at the covered bridge. All boys had discarded their shoes when not in school. Mother had converted me from knickers or long pants to short pants. Both unacceptable attire, which Mother considered to be in vogue, were an embarrassment that I would be forced to endure for, what seemed like, the unforeseeable future.

The school, as did the Grove United Presbyterian Church, not only occupied a lofty spot in townsfolks’ memories, but a lofty spot in the town’s geography. The school was planted like a castle on high ground. It was up the Lane next to the ball field. The Lane was later named College Avenue. I guess I know why, but it was no avenue, and back then no one ever went to college. It wasn’t the thing to do and would only get in the way. You were born, maybe were graduated from high school, maybe not, married your high school sweetheart, and went to work in the coal mines or in the steel mills or stayed on the farm. The girls stayed home and had kids. This cycle was broken only by World War II, football scholarships, and beautician school.

The Lane dead-ended into the paved main road that went through town. There was no traffic light there, or anywhere else, but it was the main intersection. The intersection was at the top of a hill and might be considered the dividing point between the east and the west part of town, each extending about three quarters of a mile each way. Dad’s store was located on the other side of the main road. The Lane was part blacktop and part gravel. In places it was a puzzle to tell which.

The school building was on the left up the Lane about a quarter of a mile. There were six houses between the main road and the school. The school shared the high ground with the ball field. The school was to the front on the north side. The ball field was on the south side. At one time, there was a wooden fence around the outfield of the ball diamond, but it had long been torn down. Rumor had it that one or more of the families in the three houses across the Lane from right field had used the fence for firewood.

The building had one floor with two rooms. First through fourth grades and one teacher were in one room. Fifth through eighth grades and another teacher were in the other room. Drinking water was coaxed from the iron pump outside the front door by the front steps. Restrooms were outside in the back. Heat, what there was of it, was coaxed out of a potbelly stove in the center of each room. The coal cellar door was on the north side.

How did the fire start? Cleanliness is next to godliness. In the summer of l94l, as related to my future cathedral of forced learning, cleanliness was hellish, fire and all. The anxious students and teachers were cramming paper into the potbelly stoves in order to get rid of junk and the worthless memories of B-minus to failing homework papers and exams.

There are several stories, but the one most quoted was that the first indication of the fire, which started in the chimney, was noticed by the driver of one of the few cars that happened by. Upon seeing the flames around the outside of the chimney, the eager gentleman rushed into the building and quickly told the first to fourth grade teacher about the fire. She in turn quickly went into the other room and in a quiet voice, so as not to alarm the students, told the other teacher. The second teacher, suppressing all kinds of emotions, calmly walked over to my older brother’s desk. Again, quietly so as not to cause a panic, she whispered to David that since she thought he was the fastest runner in school (which by the way was not true; Weenie was), he was to calmly leave the room and then run down to the store and tell Dad to call the fire department, which was in a town four miles away. By the time David leaped down the steps and shot past the pump out front, it was already too late. The rest is history.

As the news spread through town like, well, like wildfire, everyone rushed to the school. The only ones missing from the stampede were the fathers and brothers who had left that morning to go to work in the steel mills, glass factories, and coal mines in neighboring towns. Some of the men who had been on nightshift were forcefully roused out of a barely conscious daytime sleep by excited wives or mothers. Farmers working in their fields saw the smoke, rushed back to the barn, jumped into the old pickup, and joined the mad dash.

The impromptu assembly was a come as you are gathering. Many of the women were still wearing their aprons. A few were carrying or dragging half-clothed children. If the gathering had been at church, or even the post office, you can be sure a quick change of clothing would have been in order.

By the time the volunteer fire department arrived from the nearby town, it was obvious even to the nonprofessional eye, she was a goner. The main concern now was to save the two homes close to the school by keeping them well soaked with the dwindling supply of water from the tank in the old fire truck. Miss Bemis’s house was separated from the school by a narrow strip of the schoolyard, a hedge, and a gravel driveway. The other house was on the other side of College Avenue.

The road, the sidewalk, part of the schoolyard, and the ball field were now stuffed with the total population of West Middletown and an assortment of cars and pickup trucks ranging from a l932 Ford coupe to a l94l DeSoto four-door sedan. The l932 coupe had the rust and character. The l94l sedan had the latest in automotive innovations and that new car smell.

The younger students, all of which were now out of the burning building, were frightened, stunned, and looking for their parents. Soon, most were holding hands with other students or with comforting parents. Some may have needed to take what at times seemed like a long walk to the outhouse because of the excitement of the fire, but dared not because they didn’t want to miss this historical event. Some of the older students were confronted with an eerie feeling of both disappointment and remorseful guilt for being relieved, if not downright joyful, that she was going down! They tried to show neither. The single women and mothers with the smaller children stood in awe, slowly backing away from the spreading heat.

What a glorious day for the men! This was one of those extraordinary destinies that come along for men to be real men. Testosterone was not mentioned in Fish, Field, and Stream or Boys’ Life magazines back then, but it was gushing that day. Men were racing everywhere. Sweaty men, half covered with dirt with smoke in their eyes, were running in and out and around the hazardous, unpredictable burning building hollering to no one or everyone. They wanted to be seen. They wanted to be heard. This was war! The very sad irony was that some of these men would soon know firsthand the sweat, the fear, and the wretched excitement of real war.

Another concern was to save as much of the memories and treasured contents of the dying landmark as possible. Books were tops on everyone’s list except—that is, the youngsters who had not yet learned the social value of displaying books on one’s coffee table. Such a display would connote that the permanent residents were into the arts. Along with the other books, a Bible was always displayed. Family pictures were protected under the glass on the coffee table. Pictures were updated periodically. Pictures other than immediate family were selected based on which relatives were about to visit.

In that smoke-filled afternoon with the unwanted but unmistaken smells, destructive crackling and popping, and the punishing heat, the first seam of the generation gap began to show. It was a classic confrontation that would warm the hearts of all C minus or less students as well as Bart Simpson. The second half of the generation gap, at least those who had maintained a C plus or better back when, or owned a coffee table now, were saving future generations by throwing books out of the side window, the one next to the coal cellar door.

But there was Weenie, an eighth grader uncoiling and recoiling like a giant spring, hurling the books back into the inferno—Weenie’s way of saying to hell with it. Some who were there say that there were three other boys assisting Weenie with his dementia effort to stoke the flames, to provide the fuel to destroy the written word and graceless architecture. There may have been other culprits, but Weenie was the one, the leader, the inspiration. His feverish pace was accelerated by the rhythmic chant of Weenie! Weenie! Not even the thwarting from the misguided aim of a barely sober fireman on the no. l hose, the only hose, could dampen Weenie’s enthusiasm. It seemed that most of Weenie’s effort was being spent on spellers, which zinged back through the charred opening like buzz saws. Friday’s spelling quizzes apparently were cheating Weenie from that coveted higher grade.

The onlookers, some shocked, some pleased to hysteria, soon took sides. Was this the act of a genius whose mind had been poisoned by trite, outdated textbooks bent on purging our educational system of this hogwash? Or was it merely revenge for learning that next fall would not be spent on the night shift at $4.50 an hour but in the eighth grade for the second time?

The outcome of the contest was never in doubt. Three grown men just off the night shift were no match for the youthful energy of a seventeen-year-old stricken with the very real fear and humiliation of once again being the last to be picked for the spelling bee and the first to sit down. Plus, Weenie always did have a fair arm from short to first. Rumor had it that he was being considered for a relief role in later innings.

When it was all over, Weenie had won his battle. The fire department had lost theirs. The only things which remained intact were the brick chimney and the memories that had been rekindled as flames engulfed a large part of most everyone’s childhood.

The chimney stood tall against the evening sky after the last physically and emotionally drained disbelievers finally went home. It was an eerie reminder standing in defiance like a tombstone. The part of the structure that started the fire was the only part of the wood, brick, and mortar standing. It was knocked down a few days later for safety reasons. For us kids, seeing the monument fall was not as exciting as the fire, but it was worth a trip up the Lane even if there wasn’t a ball game. When the bricks fell and pelted the rubble, they sent billows of smoke and dust into the air and churned the now familiar smell of water soaked ashes, some of which, I’m sure, were the ghosts of grade school spelling books that had changed their flight plan during the fire.

The memories lasted longer than the chimney, but they too, like the smell and warm ashes, faded and dimmed. Discussion about the fire dominated conversation at the store, the post office, and anywhere two or more people gathered. Before long, more familiar topics started creeping back: that year’s crop, the weather, gardens, new model cars, the Pittsburgh Pirates, and night baseball, which had started in Forbes Field the previous summer, along with other subjects, like church and politics. And, of course, where were the little darlings going to go to school come fall?

At five years of age, I wasn’t paying much attention, but if I had, I doubt if there were much said about the fire after December 7 of that year, l94l.

Fate had given a poor student a chance for immortality and us a burned building in which to play army during World War II. The town had also lost a little—no, a lot. In those days, it was school, church, and family. Maybe not in that order, but those were the three priorities.

School meant more back then. We had not been pulverized by wasted years of impressionable but worthless television. Nor were televisions there after school to rob us of our imagination, pinch-hit for our parents, or remind us of how much we didn’t have. No, we were the unlucky ones who had to use our imaginations, had to endure the love and attention of our mom and dad, and were stupid enough to be happy with what we had. The only question that remained was where the kids who were all above average would go to school. Lake Wobegon would be too far to commute.

Intact but Decaying

I ntact But Decaying, Pennsylvania Town Resists Preservation—that was the perplexing title of an article squarely in the center of the front page of the January 11, l982, Wall Street Journal .

I was flabbergasted to the degree that I was rescued from pretending to be working at my fake walnut veneer desk at Kimberly-Clark Corporation in Neenah, Wisconsin. Kimberly-Clark is the blue-chip company that produces and sells worldwide such invaluable products as Kleenex facial tissue, Huggies diapers and wipes, Kotex, etc. Several years ago a leading business publication inferred that Kimberly-Clark covered all orifices of the body, and I suppose they do. I retired as a senior vice president of that fine company in 1998. Being a corporate officer meant that I got to park close to the building and could take a two- to three-hour lunch and not affect business at all.

My office at the time was located in the old Arctic Cat snowmobile distributorship building two miles out in the country, west of town across Larsen Road from the llama farm. Operational Audit, the department I had seemingly beguiled the chairman of the board into accepting that I was leading in somewhat the correct direction, seized possession of the office space in the front part of the building. The company garage was in the back portion of this one-story metal building. Windows were at a premium and selfishly cherished by the few who had been mysteriously blessed to have one nearby. Scott, one of my more inventive staff members, although not that close to one of the few portholes to the outside world, placed a mirror on a window ledge. With just a turn of the head, Scott would inform the others in the room of the pending outside weather.

This office arrangement was only temporary, so I was assured by the Building Facility Department. It was, however, an arrangement that I was able to continue for eighteen years. The staff and I loved it. We could hang anything on the walls we chose. We could thumb our collective noses at certain unconvincing, irritating company regulations. We could come and go as we pleased, and I live just two miles further west. An office two miles from home was heaven after four years of fighting thirty miles of Chicago rush hour traffic.

The company garage was managed by my buddy George. He is, to this day, an extremely hardworking, generous-to-a-fault gentleman who defies his age. He is so energetic, he runs when he walks.

George and I both have a passion for auto racing. When I was not in my office, but my car was still in its space, my secretaries, Peg and Sue, knew that I was back in George’s office discussing cars and the previous or upcoming Sports Car Club of America (SCCA) races. I’m sorry, Mr. Farrar will have to get back to you. He’s in a conference.

George is a better racecar driver than I. I fool myself into thinking that this is due to his many years in racing. The truth is that it’s due to skill and talent.

The reason that George and I got along so well at Kimberly-Clark, and still do, is because we were just genuine small town boys who didn’t take too seriously the politics and games played in multibillion-dollar corporations. We devoted our time and energy doing our job as opposed to trying to impress others. Although I never discussed it with George, we both were savvy enough to keep the paychecks coming by keeping our head down, keeping hid, keeping quiet, keeping the craving egos that run the company stoked, and keep working. George was somewhat better at the keep working part than I. I was much better at keeping hidden.

My office was typical except for the hideous, multigreen shag carpet that drooped on the floor. This early l960s’ home fashion testimony was marooned from the snowmobile distributorship. The fake walnut veneer desk had settled into the rug in front of a floor-to-ceiling shelf unit supporting seldom, if ever read, business books and some reminiscences. There was one executive chair between the desk and shelf unit. Three other chairs, which matched the desk, were deliberately placed in order to invite eye contact. There was a credenza supporting more books and hiding the somewhat useless files of a pack rat. Two framed pictures, which could be Wisconsin outdoor scenes, hung on opposite walls.

Peg, a gem of a secretary to whom I owe much, was conducting the midmorning ritual. She tossed The Journal, along with a handful of important looking, but not so important intercompany memos on my already cluttered desk. Following what I thought was the proper order of importance, I went first for The Journal. The memos could wait until after lunch. With any luck, sometime next week, after lunch.

Neenah, Wisconsin, a village of approximately twenty-five thousand Green Bay Packer fans, is a hundred miles north of Milwaukee and about six hundred miles northwest of the decaying Pennsylvania town, my hometown. That’s right, my little hometown, West Middletown, Pennsylvania, where I was born in the winter of l935, was on the front page of the famous Wall Street Journal. You know I had to be excited. I read the article even before checking the preceding day’s stock price for Kimberly-Clark stock. That was confirmation of my excitement, since my entire impending fortune was in company stock options. The stock options were just in case, for some unlikely reason, my recently purchased fifty million to one shot lottery ticket didn’t pay off. Didn’t get baby them shoes.

Pride and amazement escorted me through the article. My small hometown’s fifteen-minute and twenty paragraphs of fame. What would the folks back home say?

I immediately picked up the phone and called my mother, who still lived back home as she had for all eighty-two years of her life. As I waited for Mom to pick up the phone on her end, I could hear the dial tone. I remember her saying that when she was a young woman, before she married Dad, the switchboard for the phone lines in West Middletown was right there in the front room of the house. My bet would be that she would have to put down her cup of coffee before she made her way to the phone, which always sat on the small wooden inlaid table that Uncle Stanton Cunningham made. The table was in the dining room, the front room, just before the kitchen. The phone, at least in our home, would never be in the parlor, the living room. That sanctuary, with the good furniture, was unbolted only for company and, of course, when the minister came to call. When we finally got a TV, it was not even allowed in. It took the birth of Jesus Christ himself to open the room for any other occasion; the Christmas tree was always there. When the three of us kids came down the stairs on Christmas morning, we were allowed, with some caution, to turn right, not the customary left turn into the dining room. Mom did loosen up after we kids got older and a little more civilized.

Later on, the family spent a lot of time in that room. The hospital bed in which Dad spent months convalescing after he fell from a barn roof was in the parlor. It took Jesus, Dad, and an act of God to turn a room in a house into a room in a home.

I remember one other time during the lockdown period when an uninvited intruder breached the security—big time! After Mom parked our 1939 Chevy out front, she and I entered the front door as usual. This time, however, she was aware that we were not alone. Something was wrong. The first room she inspected was a good choice. There sprawled out on the sofa in her beloved room was the biggest, most God almighty, ugliest, smelly hound dog she had ever seen—and ever seen in her house, to be sure! Well, Mom let out with a holler that would have awakened the dinosaurs, if they had been extinct a few million less years. The old hound flopped off its relaxing, upholstered berth with a frightened but somehow contented look in its bloodshot eyes. It hit the coffee table and then made a panicked rush out of the parlor. It made a sharp left turn through the dining room, past the buffet, performed an impressive four-paw slide on the kitchen linoleum, a maneuver that I wish I could now duplicate in my racecar, and disappeared out through the back door from which it had entered. Mother ran close behind, but not nearly close enough. Had I been a little more attentive, my young ears may have picked up a hint of profanity as Mother bid the old hound an unkind farewell.

It didn’t take a genius in carnivorous, domesticated mammal physiology to understand why this particular romantic canine was relaxing in our parlor. Our verdict was confirmed several months later when Blackie, our pet water spaniel, started to show, putting it discreetly, in a family way. Then I knew the reason for the contented look. It is a wonder that when we discovered the old boy relaxing that he wasn’t smoking a cigarette.

Mother subjected each of us three kids, as well as Dad, to arduous cross-examination. No one would own up to leaving the back door open. Surely, a refined dog like our Blackie wouldn’t open the door herself just for a quick roll in the hay.

Mother about wore out both the sofa and the tank-style Hoover ridding the room of dog hairs and dog smells. The muddy paw tracks on the kitchen floor were disposed of much easier.

When Mother got to the phone, she would not be surprised to find that a half cup of coffee had preceded her. It was not unusual to find cups of cold coffee anywhere in the house—by the phone, on the outside window shelf on the front porch next to the swing, by the ironing board. They were everywhere.

She was, of course, always glad to hear from Larry Moore (Moore is my middle name to keep the Irish alive). But Mother was surprised that I had called during the day and not at night, the usual time. I’m sure it was big news that she expected. But when I told Mom about the article in the Wall Street Journal, she didn’t seem to give the impression of being as impressed as I. Her lack of enthusiasm was evident by her first question: "What’s the Wall Street Journal? Her second question was Why?" a question quite frankly, I was asking myself. It’s understandable that Mother would have preferred the crisp, factual reporting of the Grove United Presbyterian Church bulletin for news, as opposed to The Journal. What she needed were dispatches that could be debated at next week’s choir practice and were much closer to home.

Even after reading some of the article to Mom, she remained uninspired. None of the article was news to her, nor would it be to the other mostly elderly citizens. I told her I would send her a copy. That was fine with her, but she had her doubts that there would be anything in it that she didn’t already know. I hung up the phone after our usual chat. I then thought that Mom was right. There really wasn’t anything in the article that I didn’t already know.

The journal article went on to say:

WEST MIDDLETOWN, PA—The march of time long ago slowed to a shuffle in this southwestern Pennsylvania hamlet.

Main Street, the only one that is paved, is lined with cut-stone rain troughs, hand-operated water pumps and short steps from which to mount one’s horse. Frame-covered log cabins and brick houses built in the l820’s still stand, their frequent lack of 20th Century plumbing sometimes compensated for by the Victorian splendor of hand-carved banisters, marble mantles and solid-brass doorknockers. West Middletown, in short, is an American historian’s delight. The town is pure 19th Century…

By the turn of the century, West Middletown ceased to be a center for much of anything. The consolidation of farms in the area and the coming of the automobile eroded its economy. People moved away and businesses failed. The schoolhouse burned in l94l. It was never rebuilt. The general store closed in l967. Since then only an old blacksmith shop has operated here. West Middletown’s population of 2l5 is only two-thirds of what it was a hundred years ago.

The town’s lack of growth has its virtues. Having no economic activity to speak of, West Middletown never has been modernized. Just 11 buildings have been constructed since l900. Bypassed by modern highways, the town has no neon signs, no fast-food restaurants, and no buildings taller than two stories.

The biggest scheduled event is a biennial apple-pie festival.

Those residents who are employed tend to work in construction and in nearby steel mills. But at least half the population is retired and subsisting on low fixed incomes. The average annual income was $4,411 in l976, the latest year for which statistics are available.

People here place a premium on self-reliance—everyone maintains his own well and sewage system—and they take pride in keeping things as they always have been. Many houses are furnished in inherited antiques, and although most dwellings have electricity, one-third lack indoor bathrooms. And as one homeowner says ‘You don’t fix things unless they need fixing.

To arrest decay, historical preservationists in Pennsylvania’s Department of Community Affairs want the town declared a historical site, a designation that could bring with it government help for restoration projects and a ban on construction of modern eyesores…. It’s on the scale of Williamsburg (the restored Colonial capital of Virginia), but if it isn’t protected soon, it’s going to fall apart….

Trouble is, a number of West Middletown’s 2l5 remaining residents don’t want to be preserved, saved or otherwise bothered by outsiders, no matter how good their intentions.

Although people here take fierce pride in their town’s l9th-Century look and history, many folks shudder at the thought of ‘historical landmark’ plaques nailed to their houses…Others would rather see West Middletown die with them than to accept outside help or what they see as government interference. ‘I don’t think (historical-district status) would do anything for the town, and it would just take away people’s rights,’ says 62-year-old Wilma. ‘You’d still own your own home, but you wouldn’t really own it anymore because someone who didn’t even live here could tell you, you couldn’t change this window or use that color paint.’

Middletown was a thriving community at one time. There were enough businesses and travelers to support eight stores and as many inns. The first business was a blacksmith’s shop as early as 1795. Other businesses and trades followed: hatters, cabinetmakers, chair makers, wagon makers, tanners, cobblers, harness makers, weavers, tailors, etc. I’m sure there were a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker somewhere.

Regardless of what old pictures may infer, there was a barber. There was also an undertaker who kept a tombstone cutter busy. Those two probably didn’t worry about their business becoming outdated. I doubt that the undertaker worried a whole lot about disgruntled customers.

There were several machine shops. Middletown was the site where one of the first threshing machines was built. A number of these machines were used in the Midwest. A bad frost in l859 destroyed crops along with Middletown as a manufacturing center. There were no demands for threshers when the frost hit. A number of the machines rotted on the wharf at St. Louis. The last remaining machine is now in the Henry Ford Museum at Dearborn, Michigan. We can only image the excitement and pride when the real Henry Ford visited Middletown. All Chevys and Plymouths were probably hidden so as not to offend. All that remains of the factory is a historical marker.

The Ralston Oil Lantern, which was widely used, was also invented in Middletown and patented in 1848. The same person that invented the lantern patented a sheep-feeding device for which he sold the directions for construction. I have no idea what it was or how it worked. However, it might not have been all that bad of an idea. He would need only to get one sheep to use it and the rest would follow. Add a fence that was visible from a bedroom window and you would also have had a sleep inducing device.

As stated in The Journal article, by the turn of the nineteenth century, the town ceased to be a center for business and travel. The population started to decline. There were a number of reasons. The reason most often given was the routing of US Route 40, the National Pike, through Claysville and not West Middletown, thus planting the first seeds of the decay that was to follow.

Not much has changed since The Journal article was written in l982. As the article