by Lois Kulp
My childhood was spent on the corner of North Main Street and Ridge Avenue in Telford. But back in those days, Ridge Ave. was just an alley where I learned to bat a ball. I am told that before the houses were built on our block, it was a baseball diamond. I have a feeling that our house sat on home plate. Kuhn’s Flower Shop was across the street from us and Ada Kuhn and her daughter Christine lived on the other side of the duplex we rented. Ada’s husband Henry died when I was just five, so I have very vague memories of him, but I can still smell the wonderful aroma of the flower shop when we got a preview of the open house on Palm Sunday. It was a fragrant blend of soil and hyacinths, lilies and many other flowers.
I remember another smell of Telford that was not so fragrant. The garbage truck. That was a real experience. It smelled terrible. I remember it as being a flat bed truck with low sides and one by one, the garbage cans on our street got emptied onto the truck. We were friends with a man who was a garbage collector in another town and he brought us a supply of spoons one time that he collected from the garbage which in those days was fed to pigs.
I remember the sounds of Telford as well. The sound of Henry Halteman’s cows mooing in the pasture behind our house. The pasture filled in all the land behind Main St. homes and much of the Broad Street homes. At the lower end of the section close to us was a big tree that gave the cows much needed shade from the hot sun. Every afternoon they would gather there. When corn was in season, we children fed the cows corn husks. They loved them. Now the meadow and corn field is full of houses and no more “moos” are to be heard. I also remember the sound of some farm equipment when Henry put silage up in his silo. It was a sort of tired, boring sound and fifty years later, I heard a similar sound on an orange juice machine at Landis’ store and suddenly I was a little girl taking a nap on a hot summer afternoon and hearing Henry putting silage in his silo.
There was also the sound of the train whistle day and night and the chug chug chu chu chu chu chu of the wheels skidding on wet rails, trying to get going with a heavy load. Then after a bit of a pause, it would start again. In those days there was a shack at the tracks and when a train would approach, the man in the shack would manually let down the long wooden poles that came down to block traffic.
There was also a car with a big loudspeaker on the roof that would drive by slowly every so often to make special announcements of events in town. And then there was the “lingle-langle lingle-langel” of the steam roller coming down the street. Most annoying was the clang of broken tire chains hitting the car fender when snow covered the streets. And long ago we even heard the sound and felt the vibrations of the dynamite being used at Derstine’s quarry, out the State Road.
I also remember….
…farmer John Souder driving his tractor down Main Street.
…grocer Frank Landis, walking down the middle of Main street after a heavy snow to open up his store down by the railroad tracks. His family lived in the white farmhouse close to the present store.
…the view from my bedroom window of the Christmas lights in the “park” which is now a parking lot and place for the farmer’s market. There was a sizable evergreen tree -perhaps a clump of trees that had red lights and another clump with green lights.
…walking with my mother to Penn Ave. the morning after the J.S. Kulp and Co. lumber yard burned. The rest of the family saw the flames from the bedroom windows, but I slept through it.
…going to Noble Stover’s store on the corner of Main and Broad across from the hotel, with an empty pint jar for molasses. I had to stand on a large upended can to see over the counter.
…going into Landis’ store with roller skates on! That was when the entrance was by two screen doors off of Main St. We entered on the right and exited the one on the left.
…Vogel’s Feed Store stood behind the Post Office (the present Town Restaurant). I remember my brother David and I walking to the feed store with his wooden wagon to bring back sand for our sandbox. The sand was in piles out by the train tracks.
…going into Hattie and Howard Godshall’s store (next to the hotel parking lot) for penny candy and going to Heffentrager’s store (across Main St. from Noble’s store) for ice cream. My father would order wonderful banana ice cream and it would be scooped into a thick paper “bowl” and weighed. Then Mr. Heffentrager put a thin paper on top and we would hurry home with our treasure before it could melt.
Ah, yes. The days that were so ordinary then, are no more. But our days were not quite so hectic. There was time for neighbors to chat while hanging out the wash. And if neighbor Mae Nyce came over to borrow a cup of sugar, it was given. And we knew we were always welcome to the delicious grapes that her husband Henry grew.
That was my Telford. And although the days of playing dolls with Lucy Moyer in her wonderful life-sized playhouse and riding bike down Henry Halteman’s barn bridge are gone, I thank God for the happy experiences and the kind neighbors that blessed my childhood.
