Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

A couple of weeks ago, Chris Miller and I traded Christmas presents. Emily Wright sat us down and persuaded us to do something nice, instead of constantly trying to one-up each other. “It’s Christmas, you twits,” she said.

I got Chris a multi-tool pen, which has a level, two rulers, and two screwdrivers included in it. He’s going to use it to work on his house, I’m sure, and probably write about the project with notes taken with this same pen. He got me a new Henry Shoemaker book—New to me, anyway; it was published in 1914. As Shoemaker died in 1958, he’s not putting out so much new material lately.

Henry Wharton Shoemaker was a McElhattan writer and folklorist, and he put out a couple of trainloads of books about local legends and old stories. There’s been some doubt as to his accuracy, but I’ve written about all that before and really don’t feel like rehashing it. I believe his stories to be largely accurate, to the extent that he didn’t embellish them as much as people think he did. Let’s let it go with that.

The book is “Black Forest Souvenirs,” and I love it. Shoemaker lived in Clinton County, and a lot of his stories were gathered from around the area—Clinton and surrounding counties. This book is no exception; it contains old legends from the Black Forest area, which is in Potter County, northern Clinton, and some of Lycoming. I love the old legends of the Black Forest—This is not the only book that compiles them—And if the tales are even half accurate, we live on the southern edge of one very weird place.

In Shoemaker’s books, the table of contents is always either in the front or the back. I’ve learned to check both places. In this book, it’s in the back, and in an odd deviation for Shoemaker, he not only lists the stories, but the sources and the locations.

The legends are mainly in the Potter County area, but there are four from Clinton, a handful that delve into Lycoming, and even a few from McKean County. Clearfield and Tioga Counties makes appearances, and even a mention of Schuylkill County (or however the hell you spell it.) This gives me quite a bit of range to work from, and I’m already planning out which stories I want to write about in the upcoming year.

If you took a map and charted all these stories out, it would create something like the early seasons of Lost. Also you’d have no life. I actually did this; I myself have no life, a fact of which Miller is well aware. The book contains the legend of Young Woman’s Creek, up in the North Bend area, where a woman was drowned and now haunts the area, which is how the creek is said to have gotten its name.

The Screaming Skull is an interesting one, where the skull of a hanged murderer was buried, dug up by dogs, discovered, and then hung on the door of a cabin. The skull is said to scream in the night, suggesting that nobody north of Swissdale really needs to buy an alarm clock.

The Cursed Woods is another story in a Potter County location, where a Native American cursed the local forest by using blasphemies against the local religion. It’s convoluted; I’m cutting some of these stories down for space. But I love the idea of cursed woods within driving distance, because I never really outgrew a childlike desire for adventure.

The whole book is pretty awesome, and I’m going to read through it and figure out how many columns I can get out of it. An excellent gift. Thanks, Chris. Enjoy your multi-tool pen.