On a recent trip to Cedar Hollow, the town I grew up in, I happened upon some curious underground ruins of a structure that would have been right across the street from our old farmhouse. The house was demolished in the 60s by Warner Company, the limestone quarrying operation that owned the land, and there is now little trace that a house ever stood at that corner of St. Peters and Church roads. All that remains is the stone wall along Church Road where my father used to have his rock garden and a bit further up are the crumbling walls in front of the old bullpen.

The land is now a nature preserve owned, I believe, by East Whiteland Township, and the area where our house stood is a vast jungle of dense brush and monkey vines. Even so, I was amazed and pleased to find the forsythia bushes and daffodils, planted so long ago by my father, in full bloom along the road and under the old buttonball (sycamore) tree. Since I had my camera with me, I decided to hike up to the top of the hill on the other side of the road to see if the chimney of the old Boy Scout cabin was still standing.

While making my way through the downed trees to find the best path I happened to see a gaping hole between several rocks and stopped to peek inside. Thinking it was a cave of some sort and certainly worth further investigating, I stuck my camera in the hole with the flash on full power and started taking pictures. It took quite a while to get a rough focus because the hole was pitch black and I couldn't see anything at all inside. Perserverance pays off, though, and as you will see from these photos, the ruins appear to be an enclosed room with stone walls on four sides and two brick partition walls about three feet high in the middle. There are three metal pipes coming into the structure. 

We lived in that house in the 1950s and 60s and I don't remember any one of us ever coming across this place before. As kids, we played in those woods and probably knew every inch of ground around our house for a quarter mile in any direction so if this structure was there, it's pretty odd that we didn't know about it. It is absolutely invisible above ground; there are no foundation stones or markings or anything that would seem to indicate a house or a building once stood there. It's located about twenty feet from the rainwater culvert. This room doesn't appear to be the basement of a house—why would there be two brick partitions in the center?

I am hoping that someone out there might know what this structure once was. Maybe cousin Pearl can shed some light on this. She used to live up the hill near St. Peter's Church before my family moved down to the big house at the corner. One idea is that this was an ice house because of the partitions and the pipes but where is the foundation for the building? It would have had to have been built much earlier than when we moved in in the 50s to be completely undetectible by seven avid child explorers.

Here you can see the pipe coming into the room at the center of the far wall.

This is all that is visible from above ground, just a hole in the rocks.

These are the ruins of one of the three houses that once stood at the top of the hill on St. Peters Road (also owned by Warner Co. and also torn down in the 60s). The culvert is the same one that runs past the mysterious ruins at the bottom of this hill next to Church Road. My cousin Pearl Beckner would have lived in one of these houses.

This is a shot of the barn that once stood on our property. It was taken from an old 8mm movie that my father shot (thus the fuzzy reception).

Here you can see the chimney of the Boy Scout cabin. You can clearly see the foundation stones around the perimeter.

This structure is the old bullpen on Church Road which would have marked the northern edge of our property. That's a black walnut tree to the left. My younger brother and I used to sit on the roof of the bullpen and throw walnuts at passing cars (no, we never got caught!). The drivers probably thought it was just a nut falling from the tree.

I found these photos of my maternal grandmother Katie Frank and her family while going through old family documents. They were probably taken between 1910 and 1925 judging from the clothes and the car (a Model "T," I presume). Some have the names marked on the back but some do not, like this photo of a cute little girl to the right, so I'm hoping someone in the family (Pearl?) can identify them for me.

As you can see, the photos are deteriorating with time so I thought it best to get them scanned into the computer for posterity. Hope you enjoy this look back in time!

This is my grandmother Katie Frank on the left and her mother, Mary Annetta (Hicks) Frank.

That's Katie Frank on the right and her sister Ella on the left holding an unidentified baby.

That's Louise and Katie Frank in the back seat with George Frank at the wheel.

This one is not identified. It looks like Uncle George Frank but can't be sure.

A cute but unidentified baby.

Again, this looks like Uncle George Frank or maybe Uncle Earl standing next to the house on Diamond Rock Hill.

Coming Soon!

Summers were the best of times at the old house, not only for the warm weather and no school but because there would be plenty of people around pretty much all the time to take my mother’s eye and mind off of me for a while.  We had our very own swimming hole just down the road at the Darlings’ house where the boys had dammed up a section of Valley Creek and created a deep pool with a sandy beach and a wooden bench nailed between two trees to sit on.  There was fishing to do, and berry picking, exploring the woods or listening in secret to my mother and Janie Thompson gossiping about everybody they knew or hearing my dad cursing like a trucker as he wrenched his finger working under the hood of a ’56 Chevy wagon.  I learned my best cuss words from him.

But the hands down happiest summer memories for me were the big family picnics.  It seemed like almost every Saturday all the aunts, uncles and cousins would align and converge on our farm. Aunt Jeannie, who worked for a beverage distributor, would bring the beer and soda, Aunt Doris would bring macaroni salad, and so on.  Whoever had would bring it along.

            It wasn’t so much the food I remember—although my mother’s potato salad has since attained legendary status—as it was the sheer spectacle of it all.  It was like being plopped down splat in the middle of a colorful circus, and one where I felt pretty safe to have a good time in. 

More...

The world that once surrounded Warner Company's Cedar Hollow limestone mine is long gone now.  The 145-foot-deep quarry has been filled in with water.  A smoked-glass office building stands where the Warner offices used to be, right across from Solitario's Kennel, now deserted and set for demolition in a turnpike expansion.  If you turn around and look in the opposite direction, you can see the belltower of St. Peter's Episcopal Church of the Great Valley, built in 1744, perched on the very edge of the quarry's southern rock precipice.  We used to live just down the road.

More...

In 1958, two notable events happened. My brother Bob was born in August and three months later we moved down to the big house on Church Road. That farm is where all of my memories crystallize, both the good and the bad.

At our little twin house in Cedar Hollow, we had no indoor plumbing—running water, yes, but no bathroom. Each home had its own outhouse in the back yard. There’s no nice way to say that, but our next door neighbor, Josephine, had the prettiest outhouse on the block, painted white and all grown over with twisty wisteria vines. When that vine bloomed in April you could not imagine any finer place to take a pee. For the most part, though, having to go to the outhouse was just a step above changing a baby’s diaper.