Franklin

Flying to Cleveland Friday to drive to Franklin with Al, to join up with six brothers and sisters for a bit of a drive down memory lane in western Pennsylvania -- Paige's childhood home, grandparents, Barkeyville, Tidal, Creighton and more of the family roots on Paige's side.

I remember that drive from Eden: Thruway to state line. pick up 89 to Wattsburg, then 8 to Union City and Titusville, before picking up 417 at Cherrytree and through Dempseytown into Franklin. I probably made the drive solo, or at least as the driver, more than once in my life.

Compared to Eden, Franklin seemed like a city. It had a now shuttered commercial airport, with flights to Pittsburgh and Buffalo. Vivian Heath's home was full of bric brac, a few wooden and masonry toys for kids, and a grape arbor trellis in back for summer outdoor dining. Pop Heath's grocery store -- it has been a pizza shop for some time now -- was directly across the street. As a child, I loved when he'd come home from work with one of those pints of the local ice cream.

In some respects, the Liberty Street house was creepy. Part of this was in the overgrown side yard, with what was left of a tiny in-ground pool, perhaps three feet by three feet and a foot deep, that eventually filled with dirt and growth. That plus the three main streets of Franklin at this southeast side of town were squeezed between the Allegheny river to the north and uninhabited, mountainous forests to the south.

One of the quirks was that Route 62 -- a long-established rural highway -- provided Main Street both in Franklin and in Eden. I am sure that there were times that dad made the drive to Franklin down from Buffalo, as the route came out of South Buffalo, on the Eden, through Gowanda, skirted Jamestown, passed through Frewsburg, crossed the state line and on into Warren, before heading southwest along the state forest and into Franklin via the aptly named Oil City.

In the late nineteenth century, there was more wealth to northwest Pennsylvania than in most parts of the United States. Bradford, Oil City and Titusville -- basically the birthplace of the American oil industry -- were thriving if rural cities, pumping the first crude oil seen by most Americans. By the middle of the twentieth century, the "oil boom" was pretty much finished, having shifted to much larger, cheaper fields in Texas, Oklahoma and states outside the Northeast. Only later, with fracking, did Pennsylvania re-gain some of its role in the American oil industry. It made the man, Terry Pergola, who eventually purchased both the Buffalo Bills and the hockey Sabres with the proceeds of his fracking fields deals.

It's probably time to talk retirement and other elder matters, as six of the surviving eight sibs are retired, with Mark and Ted not far behind. Mark turns sixty next year; Al will turn 74 next month. We are spread across Florida, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Ohio and New York. The next generation lives in Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland and New York.