bellefonte

we're there. glenn gets one of the secret weapons out of the trunk.

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the bush arcade, catacornered from the penn belle hotel.

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glenn checks out the view across the street...

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talleyrand park, which glenn had never heard of because it was covered by buildings when he lived here.

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into the penn belle; here's the lobby, which looks and smells like it hasn't changed since glenn last saw it. it has the same decayed smell that i remember from the old buildings in mannington.

we wanted to see the penn belle because glenn spent a lot of time there growing up. when he was ten years old, his best friend frank was the son of the hotel's owner, and they spent their summers eating lunch in the hotel dining room and playing monopoly in one of the unoccupied rooms upstairs.

when glenn went through some old stuff recently, he found a business card with a 1930s photo of the hotel on one side (i'll scan it when i can) and some words about it on the other, including "rooms $1.50 to $3.00 single, $2.50 to $5.00 double". we were going to show it to the current proprietors and ask them to honor their advertised rate, but there was no one at the desk. we went down to the restaurant in the basement (remarkably dangerous steps), but the waitresses didn't know how to get ahold of anyone who worked upstairs. they didn't seem to know anything at all about it, except that they thought rooms were rented by the month only. we talked to the cooks in the notkitchen, but they weren't any more help. they all enjoyed the card, though.

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here's the patio of the overpriced german restaurant. the waitress thought we were going to eat there, but we snuck around the side of the building into the back parking lot.

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glenn pointed out this fire escape...

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he and frank used to lasso it and sneak girls up to the third floor, which was empty even then (only the first two were rented; the first floor is now a liquor store). one of the cooks said it's now rotted through.

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the mill race. train tracks used to run across those supports. glenn claims he once smoked a cigar, got dizzy, and fell in here.

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looking across the street at the train station, now the visitors center and chamber of commerce.

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we went back in to knock on the manager's door, but no one was around.

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the stairs leading up to the rooms.

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the old switchboard.

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looking down at the restaurant from the bridge.

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we walked up the main street. here's one of the historical markers. glenn used to get his hair cut in the mills barber shop.

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the courthouse at the top of the hill.

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glenn was talking to one of the waitresses about the g.c. murphy store, and she had no idea what he meant.

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brockerhoff house, bellefonte's other hotel.

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one of the sled riding streets.

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the post office.

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across the street, linn house, now the "bellefonte museum for centre county". glenn had a good chat with them about all the people and places he remembers (like in mannington, a lot of the same family names are still around), and gave them the hotel card (they gave me a photocopy of it).

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on the next block, a house glenn spent time in when he was young, now a library and historical museum.

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back up to the courthouse. glenn and a friend used to skip school and go here to listen to court cases (early symptoms of a later obsession?). because they had their books and seemed to be taking notes, no one bothered them.

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garman opera house, once a vaudeville stage, now a movie theater. i'm not convinced that replacing burns & allen with scooby doo can be considered progress.

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back to the bottom of the hill and a long view of the hotel. it's a pity about this place; it looks like it might fall into the creek at any time. with all the tourism money starting to come into bellefonte, someone should be able to restore it and make it into something worthwhile.

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looking across at the park.

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looking down at the creek (pronounced "crick"). it has a fast current, and glenn says it never freezes.

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a closer view of the penn belle, which someone decided to rename "bush house" (which seems to have been its original name).

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the "big spring" after which bellefonte is named. you used to be able to walk around it, but the county health commission has covered it and put a fence around it.

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this is how it used to look.

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another view.

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ooh, an even better one!

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walking back through talleyrand park. they've put this together very nicely. it turns out that talleyrand was the name of the frenchman who gave the town its name.

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back at the train station. they run excursion trips from here, and the train was leaving just as we got there.

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frank had keys to the hotel notkitchen. he and glenn used to buy ice cream cones at this little store, then sneak into the nk, unlock the freezer, and fill them with ice cream. don't tell anyone.

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the train station again. i've repeatedly asked glenn why so many people wanted to stop in bellefont that it required such a large hotel. he still hasn't come up with an answer.

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we went upcreek to fisherman's paradise.

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it's a fish hatchery; these tanks are filled with thousands of fish.

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when anyone walks by the tanks, the fish think they're coming to feed them, and thrash all over, pushing each other out of the water.

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more tanks and more tanks.

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the caretaker's home, i believe. a good job; a beautiful home in a remote, quiet setting.

from here, we went on to state college and met up with one of glenn's high school friends. i learned that people up there have names like peters, leamer, hugg, kirk, and winkleblech. we drove back through a countryside filled with amish homes. quite a fun weekend.

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this is a scan of a photocopy of the back of the business card, showing how the penn belle looked in glenn's day.

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the front of the card. i wonder what the difference between a $1.50 room and a $3.00 one is.

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