Haunted Monterey house sold

Monterey's haunted house for 20 years was sold. Before its fame as haunted, the house was Furman funeral home from about 1954 to 1964. Before that is was Overly funeral home. Overly was bearded and a member of the Church of the Brethren. A neighbor has an invoice for his services i n the late 1940s--$70, exactly. He was known to flush his formaldehyde down his well. It overflowed sometimes and sickened the ducks across the road.

After 1964 Furman moved his undertaker operations to much better digs on Main Street, Leola. The owner made the house into three apartments which became abandoned about 1990. Children avoided it on Halloween. Weeds grew. Paint peeled. Windows cracked. Rodents invaded. Who knows, maybe ghosts hovered.
In the photo here the focus is on the building behind the house where the bodies were prepared for funerals.

The property sold at public auction on Tuesday for $157,000.

Last uncle dies

My Aunt Jane called today and told me Uncle Irvin died shortly before 10 p.m. last evening, apparently in his sleep, between routine nurse checks. He was born in 1915 and was 92 yrs old. George, his son, who lives in Harrisonburg, Va., wants to wait until son Peter gets back from a truck run in Wisconsin to make final plans. As soon as I find out when the funeral is, I’ll look at my schedule to see if I can fit it in.

My uncle was known as G. Irvin. The G was George, the name of his father, my grandfather. There were eight sons in that family. My father, Lester, was the next to oldest. Irvin was the last of the boys living, the fourth youngest. Of the family of twelve children, only two remain—Aunt Jane and Aunt Gladys, the next to youngest and third to youngest.

I always liked Uncle Irvin and when I was twelve or so, stayed at his house the first time I (with parents) visited Milton at EMU. I was proud to have an uncle with a Ph.D. and a professor position at EMU. His first wife, Edith (Eddie), died about 1970, and that loss was catastrophic for their four children. The oldest, George, graduated from EMHS that year. I was proud to have an aunt who could play the piano pretty well, and I remember her banging out “Ben Hur’s Chariot Race March” one time in the early 1960s when they had a meal with my folks at Monterey. I promised myself I’d learn that awesome piece sometime, and I did a few years later.

She was a nurse by profession, and I visited her at work the last time I figured I’d see her, when Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community was not much more than one brick building, the last one on the left as you leave campus on Virginia Ave. I think it is, the street than runs next to MapleWood.

In the hayday of my growing up, I had seven uncles on the Groff side (five by marriage) and ten on the Lehman side (four by marriage) for a total of seventeen uncles. Uncle Irvin is the last family uncle. I have one uncle by marriage on the Groff side, Earl, who was a classmate of Uncle Irvin's at Manheim township high school.

Rat in the cellar

I post this reluctantly...hopping many are out of town for an end of summer vacation. Several week ago I called our pest company and asked them to analyse a hole in the cellar, freshly dug, right next to the cnetures-old stone wall.

After two service calls, they determined that it was a rat hole and two deadly traps were set. It seems that the outside cellar doors had been left open overnight and a wandering rodent checked us out.

Now there are two possibilities--that our investigation, our plugging up the hole, our placing of traps at two places, has scared the rodent away; or, that the critter is lying low, waiting for the dust to settle. In either case, we've got it covered. Well, I'm not letting the dust settle. We're doing a full-court press. The outside door is being closed. And all manner of things will be well, as the saint said--not for the rat but for us.

That's organic peanut butter as bait on the trap.

dirt cellar woes

Here's a photo from about 1960 of our place. The original stone house was built after 1825. We know that because it never had a fireplace. The Franklin stove, which made the fireplace unnecessary, arrived in the Monterey area after 1825. So I like to think our 18 inch think stone walls were there since 1835.

It was probably built as a retirement house for the Eby family farm behind it. The addition to the house is a late 19th century wooden structure, circa 1890. The barn was built by my father in 1954, with a little help from me. Much of its timber frame was taken from the previous barn.

The house was also built over a spring. It has been dry since at least 1951 when my parents bought the property, the the hole was always there and serves as a french drain (a plain hole in the ground).

All this to say, that having a 19th century dirt floor in your cellar is very "green," but comes with a bit of a cost. This year we've been aware of two.

1. Is borderline level of radon in the house coming from the earth?

2. If we laid concrete would that solve our rodent problem in the cellar?

Details later.

Sub organist at Lititz Church of the Brethren 19 Aug. 2007

The past six months I've been a supply organist at perhaps 20 churches. Here are excerpts from the first hymn, "Brethren, we have meet to worship," which I played Aug. 19, 2007. It's written in A major, but I started in A-flat so I could kick the last verse up in pitch.

The organ is a local Lancaster-made organ--Gundling. The church has as good acoustics I have heard in any of the churches I've played the past half year.

sub Lititz COB 19 Ag 2007 hymn.mp3

Locust molts

Much is made of the butterfly and its emergence from the chrysalis. The lowly locust gets short shrift. But Saturday I saw one newly emerged from its old skin. See the twisted wings in the left photo? About one hour later (right photo) is is not ready for flight, but the wings are stretched out and it walks away.

Inspiration for this I got from neice Lois Maust, who has splendid photos of the butterfly.

Stuck in Kinzers

Friday noon promised an educational, fun get-away for my brother Milton and me. On the way to Kinzers I bought my first biofuel (5% ethanol). From there, on to the Rough and Tumble Reunion to see the steam engines.

Then lunch. Then a downpour forced everyone into shelter. After probably 45 minutes and maybe an inch and a half of rain, the shuttles to the field parking didn't run right away, so we walked. We were totally stuck and a tractor pulled the Mazda out.

My father first introduced me to this event 40 or so years ago.

Reprieve on the lambs

In case you've been afraid that Meeny, Miney, and Moe might lose their citizenship papers at 34 West Eby Road, you can relax for the moment. They may act a little illogical at times, but I'm no longer into the illegal thing about them.

Steps were taken, and things are better.

Background: they are getting larger, needing more food and the pasture is getting drier as August heat keeps pounding and rains are few.

It was decided to add hay to their menu. It hadn't worked before. In past years I had the experience of piles of hay in their pen going untouched, being confused with straw. This year, in desperation, I thought of putting the hay up in a manger--one of those things you see horses eating out of at about eye level. It seems to work. Joel reported he saw all three eating ouf of it at once.

The bad news is that they have been banned from the orchard pasture. Saturday I had taken them on their daily excursion. While I was guarding the low section of the fence over which they escaped in the past, they found another spot, pulled it down with their neck, and quickly jumped over into Glick's alfafa. That's a factor of Meeny and Miney being taller and older. I was nonplused, frustrated, plain mad, and shoo-ed Moe across too, thinking it would be easier to keep them together for the round-up and rescue.

With a little help from Dorcas, we soon had them back.

Meeny, Miney, and Moe at the crossroads

As innocent as our scruffy-kneed small bovines may look, they have been pushing the limits recently and pushing the buttons of us living at 34 W. Eby. Not to cast aspersions on them--but they have been baa-ing at inappropiate times and much too frequently and loudly. We have provided them with fresh water, lots of molassus-tinged grain, ocassional excursions to the orchard pasture extension. Gratitude and shutting up never seems to be a result of this care. Therefore we had to take some decisive measures. No more trips to the orchard until they stop jumping the fence into the Glick's alfafa field. No more extra helpings of grain until they stop baa-ing after being fed. And, we've added, just yesterday, a little manger, custom-made at the back of their shed. Benuel and Junior Smoker, two Monterey boys, brought them a fresh bale of hay. So far Dorcas and Joel have claimed some success at getting them to transfer their voracious appetites from sweetened grain to hay--but so far it requires human time of standing there and soliciting the eating of hay. I hate to say this, but the thought of the Beiler cattle truck has popped into my head more than once. But we are taking all possible measures for forestall this eventuality. I am frustrated because I am by nature very forgiving of the friendly beasts of the field. But the happiness of people (family and neighbors) comes first, after all. So, for all of you who have petted Meeny, Miney, and Moe and who helped name them, I just wanted to update you. We will take no drastic actions without consulting with you. You did name them. Incidentally, their ceremonial names are: Casper, Melchior, and Balshazar.

Accident sobers Monterey

Tuesday, the last day of July, a motorcyclist was killed in Monterey when a car driving in the lane beside him changed lanes and collided with the motorcycle. In minutes traffic was shut down, the people of the village assembled at a respectful distance from the accident and the emergency responders. We passed around information: who was killed, who knew him, why did the car turn, was anyone hurt in the car which swerved in front of the cycle in order to cross the road and stop at the roadside stand where a young girl was selling sweet corn.

The pic is small, but on the sign at the left is "Monterey harness shop" and one can see cows dumbly grazing while humans do the hard work of absorbing the information, accepting the tragedy, caring for the wounded, and taking away the corpse.

Joel and I rode our bikes to the scene after he heard about it on the scanner. He shot a few pics.

July Get-away to Westhampton, NY

Besides one week in Kentucky, we took four days off and went to Westhampton, NY. There Dorcas visits a college friend and her husband. Often another Hood College classmate shows up. This time it was the standard--Paulette and her husband Tom, and Candy. Here's the scene.
I'll get the photos up asap.

Kentucky Vacation

Let's go way back to June 27 and the beginning of Dorcas and me vacationing in Kentucky. Joel drove with us to Columbus, Ohio, where we were the guests of Lois Maust, enjoying a meal at Hoggies, with a tractor hanging from the ceiling, and the best little ice cream place east of the Mississippi. Lois treated us to an exclusive screening of her Monarch butterfly documentary.

From that great hospitality, Joel went to the airport for his flight, and we headed for New Haven, Kentucky. There we found the little house we had reserved for four days.

From our base house, we launched out to Trappist (a type of monk) worship services based on singing the psalms, to a local excursion train ride, to me getting my 63rd birthday and the attendant gifts, particularly the camera which took these pics, and just loafing and reading: "working hard to make sure we didn't care about anything too much," as I heard someone say this summer.

We also attended a performance of "Stephen Foster: the musical," a show at the "My Old Kentucky Home State Park."

We went to Lexington, Kentucky, on Sunday and enjoyed a visit with Laban Miller and family and Jim Miller and family. Besides giving us lunch, the youth were launching out to Ohio for several days of a service project. Before they left some of them posed for this photo with their Aunt Dorcas on a sofa.

On our way to the next stop we drove through the Daniel Boone National Forest and saw some of the features of the Red River Gorge.

Then at the end of a roller coaster hills-of-Kentucky road we arrived at Snug Hollow, a bed and breakfast. What can I say:

Then, on the way home, a stop at Grantsville, where Ruth had breakfast and costumes. Very satisfying, the whole week.