TERRY MOSHER
Life has a way of moving on down the road if you want it to or not. I was listening to Charlie Pride’s “In the Middle of Nowhere”, thanks to former South Kitsap athlete Cully Ecklund’s Facebook post ‑ whose Ecklund branch has an annual Pig Roast in which music and fun mix to great heights even if, as Pride would say, its in the middle of nowhere, ‑ and it itched my own memories of life that started out in the middle of nowhere.
I can’t believe that so much of life has passed since I was a young boy in the middle of nowhere, most specially in the southwest corner of New YorkState that hardly anybody knows exists and even fewer have accidently stumbled across it after getting lost.
The place were I was born is Olean, New York, and the place where I was semi-raised was six miles south, a mile from the North Central Pennsylvania border in the quaint little village of Portville, New York.
Looking from Bear Cave above Portville Central School over Portville toward Olean, New York
There has been no growth in that area since at least 1950. In fact, population has dipped over those years. I know Wal-Mart arrived some years ago in Olean, and Portville has a Subway, but it’s traffic light on Main still changes from red to green alone and it’s only three side streets ‑ Maple, Temple, Brooklyn ‑ that intersect and dead end at Main, which is actually Rte 417, have not changed at all. Same houses, same paint jobs, same windows that were cracked sometime in the past 60 years.
The population of Olean was just over 15,000 in 1954 when the remains of the Mosher family picked up and left when the SCONY refinery where my father, L.H. Mosher, worked closed down. We, and most of the other refinery workers and their families, were paid to move to Ferndale, WA where the new Mobile Refinery opened in 1954 on Cherry Pt.
That began my dark years that lasted until I graduated from Western Washington and headed out to find my way in the world.
The population of Olean is now 14,220. Portville’s population when we left was 1,151 and it is now 1,001. I can account for four of drop in Portville population. Me, Dick, Amos and Dave were getting a buzz on at Portville’s OldRoseInn (now also gone) in late 1959 and discussing our limited future in the town when the bright idea hit us. We would go to California. We four were playing Euchre and when Dick said we could go to California, Amos jumped up from his chair, spilling his gin and tonic and with a big (bleep) grin on his face said, “Let’s go.”
So away we went and 55 years later I’m the only one of the four – the four amigos – that is left. Life moved on down the road without Dick, the first to go, Amos, second to leave, and Dave, and I’m sadder for a journey that seems like it happened yesterday.
Leaving Portville – I was going to college at Alfred at the time, preparing to be an accountant (Whew! How I managed to escape that, I don’t know) – wasn’t difficult, but you need to know there isn’t a place more peaceful, more beautiful than Portville, New York. But peace and beauty was not enough to buy me a beer in those youthful carousing times (just so you know, I haven’t drank in about 20 years) so I was ready to move on to another adventure.
Portville, though, has drawn me back many times. My childhood right up until my mother died on May 21, 1953 was idyllic. Even brutal winters had beauty to it. You could ski in the foothills of the Alleganies, which surround Portville, play hockey on ice ponds, have snowball fights, play football in the snow, all kinds of wonderful, and sometimes dumb things. We also played basketball in the barns, sometimes in the lofts and sometimes on the main floors. The smell of hay while playing is something I still treasure in my addled mind.
And the springs and summers were exquisite. How can you not like all the wonders of the outdoors right at your fingertips (or footsteps)? We lived on the Allegheny River, which we kayaked, swam in, fished in, and when the ice was strong in enough in those brutal winters, walk on.
I used to ride my battered bike to places like Deer Creek and Wolf run and the Haskell. Or just ride to the nearby SteamValleyBridge and peer over its rails to watch the fish swim around the pillars.
There is no way I can imagine a better young life. I did what I wanted and was free, free as a bird. This was a time (1940s and 50s) when parents didn’t worry about their kids being outside. In fact, the encouraged us to experience the outdoors, and I took full advantage of that. The only rule my mother had was if you missed noon lunch or 5 p.m. dinner, you didn’t eat. So I had options, and sometimes I went hungry because I was having too much fun.
I miss that youthful exuberance I had. Life moved on down the road too fast for me. I still want to be at the Old Rose Inn playing Euchre and drinking an Iroquois beer with my three amigos, playing hid and seek or kick the can or racing bikes in the woods along the Allegheny, or fishing in our secret fishing hole, or playing basketball in the winter at Linn’s Barn, or walking barefoot through the foothills of the Allegheny’s (they now call them the Enchanted Mountains), sitting on top of Old Baldy with the whole county stretched out in front of me in a beautiful panorama.
And it’s always so peaceful, so quiet. It’s a wonderland you don’t have to pay to experience.
In my youth, World War II ended and patriotism was at an all-time high. Every little village – some without a traffic light – had drum and bugle corps marching bands. At night you would hear their practices echo throughout the valleys and on summer weekends they marched in some patriotic parade somewhere. My oldest brother Ray played trombone and marched in them. I used to love sitting on the curb and watching them play and march. I can still drum some of their music with my fingers on a table.
Somehow all of that has marched on its own through a life that has left me physically scarred with age but left me with a mind that is still young and hopeful. Where did it all go, and how?
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.