Hello! Everyone! This is Central PA Jay. I would like to take a moment to introduce myself and also give you a little glimpse of what this blog is going to be about. I am a recently retired school Principal who grew up in Central PA…hence the name. I am going to tell you some stories about my small hometown, some of my relatives, a few college stories (not all of them) and some Pitt football news. I think my stories will keep you entertained and will hopefully put a smile on your face. The one thing you need to remember is the stories are real because you’re going to have a hard time believing some of them, trust me. As I stated above, the town I grew up in was a small coal mining town. There wasn’t much to do back in the day so we had to create our own entertainment. One of the things we used to like to do was to play in the sulfur creek. This creek flowed near a strip mine (we called them Strippins). Back in the early 1970’s, the coal mines were operating at full capacity so most of the streams had a large amount of sulfur in them. We were young and didn’t care and things were a lot different back then than they are now, so we would play in the creek for hours and hours at a time. Whenever we would finally get out of the creek and start walking home, our arms were orange all the way up to our elbows and our feet and legs were orange up to our knees. The stench that was coming off of us was repulsive but we didn’t know any better so we didn’t care. Sticking with the coal mining theme, let’s talk about playing war or cowboys and indians. My brother, cousin and friend would get our play guns and go out in the woods and play war. Well, when you’re in war, you need to have foxholes right? Well, our foxholes were areas where mine shafts had sunken in a few feet. Again, we didn’t know this was dangerous jumping in these sinkholes, but we did it all the time. OK, that’s all for now, just remember, payday doesn’t always come on Fridays. Central PA Jay
Playing in the Strippins As I stated in my first blog, the small coal mining town I grew up in didn’t have much to do so we had to find things to do on our own. I mentioned that we played in the sulfur creek all the time. Well, we (my brother and cousin and I) spent a lot of days in the Strippins (the strip mines). The Strippins was our own personal playground. We would sled ride there in the winter and pick blueberries and blackberries there in the summer. We would play on the railroad tracks for hours at a time. One of the things we would do is have a contest to see how far we could walk on the rails before falling off. I usually lost because I was the youngest but it was still competitive. The only times it would get a little sketchy is when we would get to the bridge that went over the Red Moshannon River and a train would be coming. We were just checking ourselves to see how good we could perform under pressure, right? We also liked to put coins on the rails when we would hear a train coming, then go get the coin after it got squished. I also heard a rumor about one time when somebody allegedly put a deer hide on the rail to see if the train would cut the hide in half. Well, apparently, when the train ran over the hide it almost jumped the tracks. Of course, this is a rumor I heard. There were other days that we would ride our bikes in the Strippins. We had our very own BMX tracks to ride on before we even knew what BMX was! Haha. We would also play on the old, broken-down, mining equipment. That was completely safe. I mean just because everything was rusted and there were probably snakes and rats inside the same equipment we were inside of, there was absolutely nothing to worry about, right? And, if it was a really hot day, on the way home, we would jump in the mudhole and swim for a little bit to cool off. Well, I could go on for a long time about playing in the Strippins but I think I’ll stop and save that for another day. That’s all for now and remember, payday doesn’t always come on Fridays. Central PA Jay