My week started early last week. In fact, it started before last week ended! Saturday night (a week ago now) found us around the Robinsons warm and homey kitchen table. Steph made a pot of her yummy chili, I made Kat's homemade bread recipe, a cheesecake, and we had dinner and game night.
Every since the Kipps introduced Mike and me to Rack-O I'd been looking for a game of my own — without much success, I might add. Then the Kipps had gone away and when they came back, they'd brought me a Rack-O game! Isn't that sweet! So Mike and I took our new game to game night. Jon and Steph liked Rack-O, it's easy to learn and play, and we played six rounds before moving on to Mexican Train Dominos and Rummikub. We hadn't had a game night in quite a while so it was good to get together with the Robinsons again.
Sunday (a week ago now) I finished Join the Club, last week's blog, then Monday we hit the ground running and have barely stopped since! What a busy week!
"Let's check out the Sam's Club in Scranton on Monday," Mike said late in the week. "And as long as we're in Scranton let's go see the train at the Trolley Museum."
I knew what train he was talking about. Last September a late night talk show host, John Oliver, did a segment about Scranton. It seems our local news broadcast had caught their attention. Channel 16 has a train that goes around a small track in the 'backyard' where the weather segment is broadcast from. The last few minutes of the nightly news are reserved for a segment they call TALKBACK 16. People can call in and voice their opinion on anything they want. Usually it's about the day's news but sometimes it's about the train. They either love it or they hate it. John Oliver's team collected some of the best comments and used them on his show. Then the people of Scranton, or at least some of the Scrantonians, felt like they were being made fun of.
John Oliver cleared the air. "My only criticism of your train set is I think you need a bigger one." Then, using the recourses of HBO, they built a train set 18 feet wide and 16 feet tall and gifted it to Channel 16.
Here's a link if you want to see the John Oliver broadcast yourself, but be forewarned, he drops the F bomb a couple of times.
http://www.phillyvoice.com/the-huge-train-set-john-oliver-gave-a-news-station-is-officially-on-display-at-a-pa-museum/
The train is much too big for the backyard of the TV station so it was given to the Trolley Museum and that's what Mike wanted to go see.
We left early, around 9 am. Going past our trash collector, it always amazes me at how far behind on compacting the recyclables Karen is.
"I'm just one person. I'll never catch up," she told us once when we dropped off our recycling. "And they won't give me any help.
They only have one compactor and every time we're in there she's compacting cardboard, which doesn't leave her time to compact anything else.
Going down the hill into Tunkhannock we had the good fortune — NOT — to be behind this trucker who smoked his brakes the whole way down the hill. Man-o-man does that ever stink. In my picture you can see the runaway truck ramp just to the right of the truck.
"Boy, Peg. You sure have some funny named towns there in Pennsylvania," you say.
I know, right! Most of them are Indian names. Tunkhannock was the name of a Delaware Indian village located at the mouth of the creek in the mid-18th century. Visited by Cammerhof in 1749. Hays and Tatemy found it deserted in 1758. The name means "small stream."
On the edge of Tunkhannock is that barbeque guy that gave me a hard time about my camera, do you remember? He said he didn't want me to take any pictures of his smoker and here it sits, right beside the road for anyone to take pictures of!
I got two shots of this shed and I like them both. In the second one you can see the beehives.
Again, two shots of the same thing, taken seconds apart and looking so different.
This old silo has been sitting here beside the road for a long time. One of these days we'll drive past and it'll be gone. Frankly, I don't know how it's still standing.
Look at all the pallets! I don't have a clue as to why some are tossed into a heap and others are stacked.
"Do they make them there?" you ask.
I don't know. I asked Mike the same question but he doesn't know either.
As we're driving along I remembered something I'd heard on the TV the night before. I was at my desk and half listening to the program Mike was watching. He was watching Demo Boss and it was an episode I'd seen before. Maybe you've seen it too? It's the one where they made a huge American Flag. They believe it's the world's largest free-standing flag and in this episode they hang it up.
"Are we going to see that flag?" I asked Mike. "We're on the Scranton Parkway aren't we?"
"Yeah, but I don't know if we'll see it or not."
We hadn't gone very far before I see it. "There it is!" I exclaimed and took pictures. "There's Shea Demolition."
No flag, but that's where it would have been.
And then the city stretched out before us.
Our first stop was to be the Trolley Museum. We'd put Steamtown in our GPS because the Trolley Museum shares a parking lot with the National Historic Site.
"Why didn't you Google it for an address?" you wonder.
I did but the only address I could find said Lackawanna Ave at Cliff Street but I wasn't worried about it because the GPS would get us there, right?
We're following the directions of our GPS through the city, totally trusting it to get us where we want to go. "Turn left," the GPS says.
"This left?" Mike asks.
I looked at the GPS screen. "No the next one."
Mike gets in the proper lane, but before he turns I see a sign. "Mike, that sign says to go straight."
Mike turned off his signal and went straight through that intersection, but the GPS told us to make the next left. Again there was a sign saying to go straight through this intersection too but we decided to follow the GPS.
"Turn right on Washington Ave," the GPS directed.
We get to our destination only to be confronted with a sign that says, in big letters, AUTHORIZED VEHICLES ONLY. Underneath that, in smaller letters, it says Main Entrance Located at Lackawanna and Cliff Avenues.
"Okay. How do we get there?" Mike asked.
"I don't know," I told him, "but it looks to me like we're on the wrong side. I guess we have to go around the block."
Mike turned the Jeep around and I busily clicked away with my camera. We may not have been in the right place but there were definitely some interesting buildings in this area of town.
There was a huge building with restricted signs hanging on all the tall fences. "What is that place?" I asked.
"I don't know," Mike said
I read the sign over the door. "Scranton Army Ammunition Plant." This place is huge!
I Googled it.
The SCAAP is housed on 15.3 acres with seven buildings and storage capacity of 509,000 square feet. I read a little more. Scranton has a government staff of eight Department of the Army civilians to provide installation management contract oversight. The government staff has a payroll budget of $.9 million. Contractor statistics are considered proprietary and therefore are unavailable.
Does that mean those eight people share $.9 million? I wonder, Why say $.9 million and not $900,000?
Right across the road is the Gas House. I don't know what it is or was but it looks like a cool old building.
"Peg, would you put that camera down and help me?" Mike pleads.
I put the camera down. We took the next left and ended up in the police station parking lot. As we drove through the lot of marked police cars I didn't think I should take any pictures. It's better to be prudent. Back out on the street and Mike picks another road to try to circle around to the front of the National Historic Site but this road went off in a weird direction and we knew it wasn't right. Then up ahead of us we see a patrol car pulled to the side. Mike rolled to a stop and asked for directions, which the officer politely gave us. We had to do some back-tracking.
Check this out. A gym across the road. You could watch the traffic as you plodded away on the treadmill.
"Peg, your picture is crooked," you observe.
I know, right!
It wasn't long until we were pulling into the Steamtown National Historic Site.
Mike drove around the parking lot looking for the Big Boy that sits outside.
"There it is. Look at that," he said with awe in his voice as he slowed to look at it. "It's a shame it's just sitting here going to rust. You'd think they'd want to fix it up."
"I think it's just a matter of money, dear."
At the other end of the parking lot is what we came to see. The Trolley Museum. We parked, went in, and paid a small fee for me; Mike was free — one of the perks of being old, don't ya know.
We had a lot to do this day so we didn't spend a great amount of time looking at things. We did an express tour through the rooms until we spotted it.
"There it is," Mike said.
Walking into this last room of the Trolley Museum we see the huge train set donated by HBO. Someone replaced the picture on the mouth of the tunnel from Scranton's famous coach P.J. Carlesimo to none other than John Oliver. The train wasn't running on that track but there were plenty of other trains running.
"What are all these guys doing here with their trains?" Mike asked.
And since he asked no one other than me, he only got my best guess. "Maybe it's like a train club that pays the museum a fee to be able to come here and run their trains," I told him.
I was taken with this old conductor as he limped around the track keeping a close eye on his train. I couldn't decide if he'd be a grumpy old curmudgeon or a sweet old grandfather, but one thing's for sure. I bet he could tell some stories! I'd have loved to sit down and talk with him for half an hour or so. But it couldn't be today. We had too much to do.
I looked to my left and there sat a group of women in their camp chairs. With their books and crocheting I knew who they were. They're the wives who came along while their husbands played with trains for a few hours.
I wandered over to where more trains were running on tracks.
"That one's the party train," a guy with a boatload of camera equipment said to me. He was either a professional photographer or he took his hobby very seriously.
The engine was steaming toward us. "Oh. Yep. And I see they brought their own beer with'em." Only it wasn't beer. As the train came around I saw the sides of the barrels had signs on them saying Jack Daniel's Old No. 7.
"And the conductor is sitting on the back getting drunk," the photographer said.
I doubt he was a conductor, he looked more like a hitchhiker to me, but I laughed as he went past and I saw his little bottom was hanging out.
I was intent on capturing a non-blurry photo of Pedro as he sped past and not paying any attention to this conductor as he walked around the track keeping an eye on his train.
I barely noticed him...
...but he saw me.
I wonder what he was thinking.
"You ready?" Mike asked. He was tired of waiting for me to get my shot.
We started to head out when Mike sees this conductor with his train. "Is that a Big Boy?" he asked.
"No. This is a 4-8-4," he said in his train lingo.
"4-8-4?" I asked.
He stopped his train on the track and pointed at the wheels. "It's the wheel configuration. It's got 4, 8, and 4. If it was a Big Boy it would have 4-16-4."
Wikipedia calls it a 4-8-8-4 but maybe it's the same thing.
The Big Boy fleet of twenty-five locomotives were used primarily in the Wyoming Division to haul freight over the Wasatch mountains between Green River, Wyoming, and Ogden, Utah. They were the only locomotives to use a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement consisting of a four-wheel leading truck for stability entering curves, two sets of eight driving wheels and a four-wheel trailing truck to support the large firebox.
According to a Union Pacific executive, the 4-8-8-4 series originally was to have been called "Wasatch". One day while one of the engines was being built an unknown worker scrawled "Big Boy" in chalk on its front. With that, the legendary name was born and has stuck ever since.[2]
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We shopped at Wal Mart, Home Depot, and had chicken strips at KFC. By the time we were headed for home the rain had started.
Here's that old silo from the other direction.
By the time we got home, got things unloaded and put away, the day was pretty well shot. I finished Monday out by going to my ladies exercise class.
Mike decided to finish the ceiling in the living room and Tuesday we would go for the materials.
"You ready?" Mike asked me right after breakfast.
"It's too early," I cried. "And it's foggy! I won't get any pictures. Can't we wait for the fog to burn off?"
"The sooner we go, the sooner we get back," was his logic.
So we went.
Here are the pictures I took on the way out to the middle of nowhere, which is where the lumber company, C.C. Allis is located.
We started to climb up a hill and the fog cleared.
Then we were there. We were at the lumber company. You can see Big Red reflected in the windows.
We went in and paid for our tongue and groove knotty pine, took our ticket and went to the barn where the lumber is located.
It was dark inside, the light at the end shinning bright.
If you could see out the door, this is what you would see.
Ginger and I waited in the truck while Mike and a yard guy loaded the lumber.
I took more pictures on the way home.
A tractor tucked under the pines and a very muddy driveway.
An old wagon beside the road.
A broken fence.
Then we headed down the hill and you could see the fog in the valley below.
"Dagnabbit!" Mike says. Okay, that's my version of his words.
"What?" I asked.
"Our load must have shifted and the strap came undone. I'm going to pull over down here."
He pulled off the road and a very nice lady stopped as she came abreast of us. "Your strap is undone," she mouthed through the closed windows and frantically pointed to the rear of the truck.
"We know," I mumbled under my breath, put on a big smile on my face, waved, and said, "Thank you!"
She nodded her welcome and drove on.
While we were stopped Mike cleaned the fog from his side mirror, then he came around and did my window and mirror too. He's a good husband.
More road pictures.
Crossing the creek at Camptown.
Old school house?
I spent the rest of Tuesday making goodies for a box to send to Momma in Arizona. I wanted to get it in the mail first thing Wednesday morning.
Wednesday dawned warm and foggy.
"Peg!" Mike yelled from his recliner in the living room. I'd just climbed out of bed and was getting dressed.
"What?" I yelled back.
"You outta come and see the sunrise."
I finished dressing quickly and went to look.
"It's pretty," I told him as I grabbed my camera and went out to take a picture.
Even after the reds were gone from the sky, it was still pretty.
We hit 71 degrees on Wednesday. It was a perfect day to cut the knotty pine on the patio and carry it in to do our ceiling.
We worked for several hours then, when we needed a break, made the trip to town to mail Momma's goodie box. We no sooner get home and I'm putting water in the microwave for coffee, turn around, and there on the counter sat the Dream Bars. I never picked them up, and I never missed them.
Sigh.
I didn't have a Flat Rate box here at home. My plan was to take all of everything that I'd made, fill the box at the post office, and bring home whatever didn't fit. Her box was full and everything but four Turtle Bars fit. I left those with the gals that work at the post office. And now I know why I got so much more in the box than I thought I would.
Wednesday was such a warm and beautiful day. Mike backed the truck up to the patio and we pulled the lumber off as we needed it.
After a while I got to hearing a buzz, then I realized the honey bees were out and swarming in the cap of the truck.
There's no food for them, I thought. "Mike when we take a break I'm going to make some sugar water for the bees."
I could've saved myself the trouble. They never touched it, instead preferring to feed at the sap spots on our lumber.
They must have gone home when it cooled off or the sun went down, I don't know, but most of them were gone the next morning. A few of them stayed, hiding in the groove of the knotty pine, and died.
Thursday was cooler and rainy and we had to run to Wysox on an errand. We were early for our appointment so as we came down the hill into Wysox, Mike took a right and we went up over the hill on a road I'd never been on before. There was a pull-off at the top that oversaw the power plant and the Susquehanna River.
This is with a little zoom on my camera....
This is with a lot.
I clicked away at the new sights.
We headed back down the hill...
And on into Towanda.
Later, at home, we worked on our ceiling for a while. After we knocked off for the day we let Smudge come in the house. We couldn't let him in before that because he would get in our way.
Mike and I had dinner and sat at the table playing a card game when we heard some weird sounds coming from the ceiling.
"What was that?" Mike asked but I didn't know.
After our game, Mike got up and headed for the living room TV and his recliner.
"Peg, look at this," he called. "And bring your camera."
Smudge had climbed the ladder and gotten on the ceiling. He must have been exploring up there and that was the cause of the weird noises.
Mike climbed the ladder. "Smudge! Come here Smudge," he called. Smudge came.
After this we were careful not to leave the ladder where Smudge could get on the ceiling.
Let's call this one done!
