Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

I have my own little Christmas tradition each year, specifically for the Record. Every year around the holiday season, I go through the old archives from a hundred years ago, and find out what was happening that particular Christmas. I like looking at the holidays a century in the past. This year, it seems to be another, much shorter anniversary: As best I can figure, I’ve been doing this for ten years now.

I first started writing for the Record in the summer of 2011. By December of 2012, I’d come up somehow with the idea of going back a hundred years into the past, which led to the column “The Year Santa Wore Purple,” about a party at the Elks Club in which a very generous Santa was decked out in a purple outfit. Ever since then, I’ve looked at the old archives from a century ago. I’ve been doing it ten years now, which is pretty impressive as I have no attention span at all—There’s a reason I write 600-word columns instead of novels.

So this week, I delve into the Christmas of 1922, and I pulled a lot of the Clinton County Times, always a hotbed of the weird and unusual occurrences. At the time, they were reporting on the Second Annual Poultry Show.

This being the Second Annual, I’d love to know how I managed to miss it last year. The Lock Haven Poultry And Pet Stock Association, which was apparently a thing, held this in the Opera House on Main Street at the low, low price of fifty cents an entry. Local farmers entered their birds to show off, mostly for other local farmers, but the general public was invited, too.

1922 was groundbreaking in that way because they’d added a new egg exhibit. Prizes were awarded based on amount of eggs, uniformity, color, shape, size, etc. It’s a bit hard to imagine anyone getting all passionate over eggs and winning a prize, but then I’ve been writing about century-old holidays for a decade, so what do I know?

In other news, Lock Haven’s municipal Christmas tree was going up in late December, by the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument, which stood at the time in present-day Triangle Park. (In other words, not too far from where it goes now.) The Queen’s Run Refractories Company had donated the tree, and the newly-formed Lock Haven Electric Light And Power Company had agreed to light it up at night, a novelty in those days.

A giant star, made by the high school students, was placed at the top, and several local organizations helped decorate the tree. The Choral Club provided music for the event, under the direction of Elizabeth McCloskey.
But for the wildest of the Christmas stories, we have to turn to Wayne Township.

On December 21st, two fires happened on opposite sides of the township. The first one was in Youngdale, where Blaine Young was awakened by the constant whistler of the train to find his grocery store burning. He rounded up his neighbors, who mostly could just throw water on neighboring buildings to prevent them from catching, too. Hope Hose came from Lock Haven and extinguished it after an hour.

The same morning, across the township in Pine Station, Robert Piney and his wife awakened to find their home on fire. They ran from the house, losing everything they owned but saving their lives.

So, to recap. On 12-21-22, two buildings burned to the ground. The one in Youngdale was owned by a man named Young. The one in Pine Station was owned by a man named Piney.

Weird, huh? Just try getting that out of your head. Happy holidays, everyone.