Lou’s View: SHOEMAKER’S WORLD
By Lou Bernard
I just wanted to wish Henry Wharton Shoemaker a happy birthday, even though he’s been dead for over half a century now. Shoemaker was born on February 24, 1880, and is one of my big heroes. If you’ve never heard of Henry Shoemaker before, thanks for reading my column for the first time!
I do tend to write about Shoemaker a lot. This Wayne Township folklorist represents a lot of what makes Clinton County cool. He wrote down a lot of old legends and stories, publishing books about local ghosts, monsters, curses, and ancient artifacts. I’ve always loved this kind of thing, and Shoemaker has provided me with a lot of material. I’ve been studying the guy’s work for over a decade, and still I discover new things all the time.
I have some old favorites, too, though, some that I keep returning to over and over. My biggest favorite is “The Giantess,” from the book “Tales of the Bald Eagle Mountains,” but I’ve written about that one enough that even my dog is sick of it, and he can’t read. That one involves a local Susquehannock prince named Pipsisseway, who also appears in several other Shoemaker stories. Putting them together, you can make a sort of epic story arc of Pipsisseway’s life, which is exactly what I did in my book “A Township Called Wayne,” still available for thirty dollars if anyone is interested.
Another one of my favorites is called “The Fountain Of Youth,” from “Allegheny Episodes.” (I love these titles. When I compiled a booklet of my own legends, I called it “Midnight Scenes” because it sounded vaguely like something Shoemaker would have come up with.) It involves an ancient Indian named Wisamek, and his journey to the Fountain of Youth, somewhere down in Mifflin County on a mountain.
Wisamek was the chief of the tribe, and he’d been chief for a while. He was experienced and seasoned. He was old, is what I’m trying to say, not to put too fine a point on it. He fell in love with a younger woman from the tribe in a sort of pre-historic midlife crisis. He was madly in love with her, but she was only interested in the younger members of the tribe.
Wisamek consulted with a wise man of the tribe, which was maybe not a bad idea. The wise man had heard of a Fountain of Youth, far over the mountains. He told Wisamek how to get there, and what to expect when he arrived.
The fountain was an underground spring in the mountains, deep inside a cave, and it was guarded by a man named Gamunk. To enter, Wisamek had to present him with the tooth from a red bear. Gamunk let him in, and Wisamek He soaked in the waters for a day, and came out looking young.
He went home and married the young woman. But, as time went by, it turned out there was a problem: The waters had only affected his outward appearance. Inside, he was still old, and just wanted to sit around ordering kids off his lawn. He attributed this to maybe not soaking long enough.
So he decided to go back, accompanied by some of his warriors. Gamunk cautioned him that nobody had ever returned for a second dose, and it probably wasn’t a great idea. But Wisamek was insistent, and entered the cave and dived in.
The next day, he emerged from the cave, still looking young. But the waters had had a detrimental effect, and he fell and died outside the cave.
His warriors buried him where he lay, and went back to take the news of Wisamek’s death to the tribe.
Shoemaker wrote down a lot of stories like this, and I’ve had some fun with them. I wanted to take this moment to wish him a happy birthday, and maybe he knows this—If anyone’s still hanging around as a ghost, it’s Henry Shoemaker. And, though the Fountain of Youth didn’t work out for Wisamek, the story has worked for me—
These legends and discoveries have kept me feeling young all these years.
