T H E  G H O S T S  O F  Q U I G L E Y  H A L L 

by C. S. Franklyn Sr.                                                               

Prologue

Each one of us has two homelands! The first is our Nation, the country we love as Citizens and Believers in WHAT the United States of America is and what it stands for. The other is the Homeland in our Heart where memories of Parents and Childhood redisplay themselves over the years and fleeting glimpses of our personal interaction with other Humans come and go. It is the last -- the Homeland of My Heart that I now turn to as my Time here comes to a close.

I have never had the courage to tell about this part of my Life -- not to the degree that now follows! Yet I have pondered these vignettes many times, remembering my Father and Mother enjoying their busy lives, mainly trying to raise the stubborn, ill-tempered child -- a boy -- me, of course -- who they summoned to take the place of a platinum haired angel named Loretta who had slipped away from them in the winter of 1919.

The year before -- 1918 -- was the peak of the First World War in Europe, That year was the worst pandemic for influenza throughout the World. Millions of Americans died of that flu strain called the Spanish Flu! Families had to treat themselves as doctors were helpless and few in numbers. My sister had been weakened the worst by the flu and when diphtheria struck her in the Spring of 1919, she passed away suddenly!  Her death was a trauma felt throughout our extended family.

Health department laws regarding the contagion of diphtheria were strict and everything -- toys, clothes, etc -- had to be fumigated, sealed in crates and not opened for ten years. Those crates were stored on the third floor of Quigley Hall and I would see them almost every day as a stark reminder of the problems of growing up in those days when pneumonia and tetanus were deadly killers, also!

First, I would like to digress from my personal story of Quigley Hall to make a point about something we human beings fail to understand about our lives. It relates to the fact that most of us never are encouraged or forced to learn what was happening the year they were born.

Trust me, it is important! In fact, one of the greatest human foibles is our failure to know what is important to our lives at the moment those events occur. Having lived a long Life, I now believe that in the year we are born we become an integral part of God's mysterious plan for that period and the years that follow. No matter what you or your parents plan for you, your Life will be inexorably tied to the year you were born and, of course, tied also to God's Unbending Will!

 Let me show you how this works in my case.

In 1920, on a very cold January morning, according to official records in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, my Mother gave birth to a male child. When Dr. Kelly smacked my behind he did not know that he had not only awakened a new life but he had started the engine of one who would become the most cynical and critical human being to ever live. I was not born that way, however!

The circumstances of my Life, beginning when I was six created much of what I became. You might say that another way, like: I was a child who  arrived here programmed to question everything and to find fault with what was left! I had an innate impatience for what some call The Conventional Wisdom of the Day! I learned that people are anything but Perfect, and they are seldom ever Fair and Charitable to other people! Above all these human emotions is that of Envy and Jealousy! And, in the USA, our Beloved Homeland, a misunderstanding of FREEDOM has made us a very hypocritical and Envious people! Sadly. that kind of hurt seems to thrive most of all in Gentile-Christian families!

Yes, I have been guilty of considerable criticism as well. But not all of it has been mean-spirited and without some validity! I have not failed in my mission, one might say.

There was much in my Community and My World of which to be ashamed! For fifteen years, since retirement, I have written nearly 2,000 articles on what we have failed to resist and stop in our Personal Lives and this country! Instead of exercising our Stewardship over this magnificent Physical World, we have taken far too much from it as The Kept rather than as The Keeper and Caretaker of it! Twenty thousand readers a month return to this website which suggests that my 'take' on public issues makes sense to many others, here and, especially, abroad. 

I was a "replacement child" brought into the world to restore the peace and happiness of two fine human beings who still grieved the loss of their first child, my beautiful and bright sister, Loretta Jayne. Whereas Loretta was a darling, her replacement was in no way similar, except over time, I developed hauntingly wistful blue eyes! But I was neither handsome nor smart as she was beautiful and bright. But I came equipped to resist a long Life of disappointment, with a Will to grapple with the worst challenges and disappointments that would descend upon my family!

What kind of world had I been delivered into? What was happening somewhere foreign and remote that would somehow rise up and alter my Life? Much awaited me in a place that was as remote from the real world as James Hilton's Shangri-La!

The year 1920 was a pivotal year for the United States of America. The Old World - Europe - had just completed an ignominious Peace Treaty in Paris and international politicians had condemned a vanquished Germany to not only a severe punishment, it had condemned the German people to virtual starvation thanks to a mad Frenchman named Georges Clemenceau. He was the chief negotiator for the French government and was elected President of the Peace Conference that convened in January of 1919 -- precisely one year before I was born!

Out of these complex discussions and diplomatic maneuvers came the reasons and motivations for the Second World War, a conflict that had to wait until I and my contemporaries grew up and were ready to die again for this unique Republic!

From the time I built my first small radio when I was eleven years old and I tuned into Germany's official radio station in Berlin, I listened intently to the voice of a man called Adolph Hitler! Instinctively, while my Grandmother Kennedy would scold me for listening to foreigners, I knew this world was troubled by not only poverty, famine, disease and Ignorance, I was sure that a new science involving nuclear energy and a new destructive force far more terrible than Nobel's dynamite would soon haunt human existence. In high school, my thesis in Science discussed what I visualized would be the next weapon that would dwarf dynamite! 

A few months after I graduated from Jersey Shore High School, President Roosevelt received a letter signed by Dr. Albert Einstein urging him to begin the development of  a new deadly device called The Atomic Bomb!

But there was another more hidden result of the Paris Peace Conference that I did not comprehend until many years later: the intrigues and maneuvers of the ZIONIST FEDERATION, a movement organized by a good, sincere Jew named Theodor Herzl. Herzl was deeply concerned about the problems of his race and his people, the Hebrews, who today we call Jews. Throughout the 1919-1922 period, the Zionists used that hectic period in History to coerce Great Britain and Prime Minister David Lloyd George to open the way for Jews to return to their ancient homeland -- Israel. Although other religions like Christianity and Islam have similar claims on the same land -- the Holy Land -- Jews had no desire to share it with anyone else!

Efforts to make Jerusalem an international city under the authority of a world body like United Nations were rejected many years ago which has led to nearly a hundred years of War in the middle East -- a war that has now created Global Terrorism  and growing danger into the streets of the United States! 

That was not precisely what the British Government intended or agreed to in 1917! But with Jew Professors in Harvard and an Associate Justice on the U.S. Supreme Court crafting much of a letter, known today as The Balfour Declaration, the Zionist's laid the groundwork for the hijacking of an entire region, ultimately claiming it as their own. Never mind that they conducted this cunning coup with terrorism, murder, illegal immigration and oppression that now stands as the worst crime in Human History, even eclipsing The German Holocaust!  

The Palestinians had established their homes and institutions there for over 1800 years. This part of history has been well-documented based upon actual records of the League of Nations and the United Nations Organization. This is the history that has caused the People of the United States to become the main target of Global Terrorism -- a fact that has been denied the American Citizen by every branch of our central government -- and especially censored by The MEDIA which is controlled today by pro-Israel and Zionists, both Jews and Gentiles who believe that Israel must control Jerusalem or the Coming of the Messiah will not occur! While the hard core Zionists do not believe that story, they have used it to join First Testament Christians (Baptists & Evangelicals) and Zionists so as to capture and dominate the Democratic Party in the USA!

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The above thumbnail sketch is the background that circumscribes my Life. But my grandchildren will pay dearly for our generation's turning a blind eye to these shameful events played out in Washington beginning in 1948 thanks to President Harry Truman, our first pro-Israel President! 

I now return to the personal story of Quigley Hall, a historic building in a historic hamlet originally named New Liberty. It was located in north central Pennsylvania! It came to Life soon after the American Republic was formed and began to draw its first breath when Thomas Jefferson was President! 

THORNHILL SCHOOL

Although I faintly remember Thornhill School, a reformatory in Allegheny County where my Father served as Business Agent, when my parents realized that they could not raise me among three hundred Negro boys, ages five to eighteen, they moved back to Lock Haven to begin a new Life. Lock Haven was his hometown and Jersey Shore, eleven miles east, was my Mother's hometown. I never really had a "hometown" except for that tiny hamlet named New Liberty, Pennsylvania.

As will be true of my Life, New Liberty does not exist anymore! It appears on no map! Likewise, Quigley Hall no longer stands at the corner of Fargus Island Road and Old Route 220. It was torn down by the State Highway department, a wrongful act that destroyed a building that was the dream of two sisters who wanted to prove that women were just as capable of operating a business enterprise as men.

When my Father bought Quigley Hall in 1925, it became his Dream and then -- too soon -- it became the nightmare of my mother's and mine for forty years!

You might say that I came from 'a place that was in-between'! It was that early period of my Life where I experienced the first taste of the Life I would live, here and in Europe, a wandering spirit who lived and traveled in the interstices of the business and scientific worlds! I was always alone. I do not regret to admit that I was never really a part of this or any World! That possibility seemed clear to me very early in Life. 

It is a fact that I I tend always to see Life through the prism of Reality! Reality equates with Truth! It seems  that  I was born to be the Enemy of Deceit and Obfuscation and the enemy of Conventional, Superficial Thinking! One of the most vicious and dishonest employers who had been told that I was a troublemaker informed me that what was wrong with me was that "YOU THINK TOO MUCH!" Another more benevolent boss offered a different view, saying that:" You are too Thorough and Too Methodical!" Both men were absolutely correct!

The circumstances of my Life beginning when we returned to Lock Haven, PA were never ordinary. As my Father began to work on his dreams of an America with millions of cars on the roads, with airplanes carrying thousands of people each day, he started a radio retail and service business.  He then bought a neglected building, located east of town at the exit of the Second Island Bridge. It was located on the main east-west state road, Route 220, where Fargus Island Road goes north into historic Dunnstown. The building would soon become a Five Star restaurant, fully restored with the first enclosed Bar-B-Q cookery in that part of the state. My Mother was an innovator of such items including the High-Back Booth. 

Surprisingly, many locals believed that a Bar-B-Q tasted better if it had dust on it from the road. Yes, I began to learn how strange people were and still are today! They abhor CHANGE and feel threatened by anyone who is DIFFERENT in the way they speak, the way they dress or have different eating and Thinking habits!!   

Immediately after my parents bought the old, three-story, pre-Civil War , 'seventeen room mansion', my Father began to rehabilitate it. A new roof was the first project. The structure needed inside plumbing. Nothing had been improved since it was completed in 1853! The kitchen was in an "out-building" at the back, much like the homes you see in Restored Williamsburg, Virginia! In fact, the architecture was pure Colonial with many elements of the Federal style. It was finished with considerable care and finesse! Need I say that it more than deserved to be protected and preserved! As it turned out that was my father's last and only mission in Life.

A short (5'7") but energetic man, he had three Dreams about his country. In one dream, he saw it full of automobiles moving about on modern highways, where people would drive out into the countryside on Sundays to find a pleasant tea room that served good coffee and a seven course chicken dinner. Another Dream included airplanes as another mode of transportation. He owned one share of stock in an airplane company called Bancroft Air.  The final Dream was his real Love: Broadcast Radio, a new form of entertainment, instant news and information sharing that propagated  through a wireless medium called  "ether waves". 

 A founding member of the Lock Haven Radio Club, Charles Scheid Sr, negotiated the construction of the first AM broadcast transmitter for Lock Haven with RCA in Camden, NJ in 1925. 

My Father, a smart, personable, very likable and respected man, saw America as clearly as an artist sees his handiwork, although, in the beginning, it is little more than a mental image!

One day, he took me to the pioneer radio broadcasting station called KDKA in Pittsburgh.  I was four years old.  I met a Mr. Conrad and the engineers who  had built and operated that station. They were rather famous people, those engineers, because they were creating the things that would grow America and make it the most powerful country in the World. My Father was part of that wonderful adventure!

Always remember when you read any of my work, I give Dreamers great credit for what we have today in this Universe! Most of them had no college education but they had Imagination and Vision and the Drive/Work Ethic to pursue those ideas in spite of the naysayers of the day! There was a positive spirit in those halcyon days! We were moving from the farms to the cities which would change America for the better! Or worse, perhaps!

Like all great Societies, ours had to begin with Dreams, followed by hard-headed engineering and good business management. My Father was a leader in that awakening and he shared much of this activity as he could with me. He was also very interested in new concepts for improving schools and teaching which led to my enrollment in a new Kindergarten experiment in 1925 at the local teachers college campus Model School. The new teacher's name was Miss Himes. The Supervising  Teachers -- from Kindergarten through ninth grade were actually my surrogate parents! 

When -- in 1964-65  -- as a member of the Clinton County School Board, I spoke to the Board about the problems in our school system I did so on behalf of my Father who would have been on that school board had he lived. Unfortunately, I was promoted to the Home Office in New York City and I never heard anymore about the ideas for improving the report card system in the Lock Haven schools! I am sure it was dropped as soon as I left town! For reasons I never fully understood, I never achieved the same status in that community as my Father did.   

While working as the Accountant for Casselberry Motorcar dealership (1924), Dad and a classmate, Tim Hanna, discussed the 'big brick building' at the Second Island Bridge. The man who had finally bought the house from the Trustees for the property, was a Mr. Probst who tried to sell ice cream to folks who would pass by in their wagons and an occasional automobile.

Probst was a Dreamer, also. "Someday," he insisted, "people will love ice cream!"   He gave away many cones of ice cream to promote the product. The local German farmers sniffed suspiciously at the cold stuff and consumed it as long as it was free! 

In 1925, borrowing the last $500.00 from his Mother to buy the old house (for $3,500.00), Charles Sr. put every penny to his name -- plus more -- into that much-neglected mansion. It was well-known by locals as a "White Elephant"! What he did not know was that the Miller family who were related to the original builder and half-owner of that building, had been waiting for Probst to fail at which time the tobacco farmer would buy the building for $500.00!

Probst had purchased the property in 1919 for $1,050! In its best days, the building that housed a General Store, a residence above the store and much more, was valued at about $8,700.00! Not bad for a home valued at about $5,000 in 1866! It contained 6,000 square feet of living space, with large rooms and beautiful woodwork and unique moldings and trim!

That purchase actually turned out to be a major tragic development in my Life as you will soon see!

Actually, the building was never a mansion, as described in the original deed. It was a commercial enterprise, a General Store on the riverside or west wing with the east wing being a Farmers Grange meeting Hall, a tobacco auction area and hotel rooms for loggers who would get some "liberty" or time off on the weekends. Loggers were a rough bunch of men and many hotels in town turned away the rowdy ones. Loggers with time off would ride the Friday log raft down to Liberty, jump off and spend time in town.  Miller's half of the building was very busy on weekends with ten big galoots sleeping to a room for a dollar a piece! Forty men could occupy the third floor!

DETAILS OF THE BUILDING & SITE

The little hamlet of 8-10 houses surrounding the venerable brick building was named New Liberty! Most of the exciting history that unfolded there between 1840 and 1920 has disappeared. Some books written by Colonel Armstrong of McElhattan may contain references to that unusual building at the east exit of the Great Island. Some of those books were available at the Annie-Halenbake Library in Lock Haven when I was a youngster.

After our move to Alexander, VA in 2006, to finally establish all the historical facts about Liberty and Quigley Hall, I retained a professional Public Records Research Specialist in 2007 and her findings will be made a part of this series! A list of all those who once owned or leased the building will be included.

My parents placed great importance on naming things and after researching who built the big house, my father officially designated it as: Quigley Hall, a name given by others many years before. Quigley was the last name of the two maiden sisters who were half-owners. It was their Vision and Dream as women entrepreneurs that created that house and its many businesses. They were pioneers in business in that frontier region! It is unfortunate that their experience owning a General Store at that time was not better documented! It would prove that some women of that time had Vision and were very successful in business! Unfortunately, the German families who owned most of the land, had no respect for History, a trait that accounts for so much of the Past having disappeared.

About ten years before Quigley Hall was built, Clinton County, originally the western half of Lycoming County, became a new county (1839). Lumber from upriver forests was its first major marketable product. Coal was the second. As dynamite was used up in the forests and mine areas, the river became polluted with acid that killed the fish. Only the Bald Eagle Creek remained clean enough to delay the exodus of the Bald Eagle flocks from the nearby Bald Eagle Mountain.

The Quigley name was rather famous in those parts. As I recall, there was a State Senator named Quigley even in 1926-32 period. The two women -- Ann and Margaret -- who did business as A & M Quigley, operated the General Store. Their partner was a man named Robert C. Miller, a merchant, who was the General Contractor for the structure. Before he died (circa 1865), he had  transferred ownership of his half of the building  to a number of family members. The Quigley sisters then bought the other half, making them sole owners of Quigley Hall after 1866.   

The bricks, made at the site, were sun dried bricks. The building measured fifty feet across the front and forty feet in depth. Directly opposite the rear entrance was a water well and an kitchen where all meals were prepared and cooked. The outside kitchen was also brick. It measured 26x18 feet, with a huge fireplace typical of those you see at restored Colonial Williamsburg, VA.

The building was situated on the original State Route 220 where the Fargus Island Road, running northward into Dunnstown, connected. I have concluded that the Great Island, therefore, was originally called Fargus Island!  The township was Dunnstable, named for an early settler who founded one of the first permanent settlements in that part of the state. The region is best known as the Susquehanna Valley where the west branch of the river turns east at Lock Haven and flows toward Jersey Shore and Williamsport, PA. The area was prime deer hunting and fishing territory! The area around Lock Haven could have been restored and made into a lucrative vacation and historic site, however, thanks to farmers who owned most of the land, no such entrepreneural projects ever developed. When I ran for Congress in 1958, if elected I was prepared to open a major project to develop Clinton County as a historic site full of Indian lore and many other projects including a ski resort! My first move was to return the Bald Eagles to the south mountain slopes! I had hope to rekindle my father's dreams for developing the area that was slipping into serious Economic doldrums.

 Like my efforts to inspire interest in improving the education system in that area, very likely no one would ever respond favorably to my ideas! When the Sylvania Vacuum Tube plant closed in 1960, if I could have been confident that local leaders would support my efforts, I would have retained enough of the Sylvania equipment so our workers and process engineers could begin to build transmitting tubes  that could never be repleced by transistors. Today all that tube production is made in China and Russia. Lock Haven remains virtually a ghost town compared to those earlier days when Piper and Sylvania were busy!  

The mountain range on the south side of the valley is called Bald Eagle Mountain, a part of the Appalachian Range that is briefly interrupted at South Williamsport, where the Susquehanna takes a sharp turn and heads south toward Harrisburg and the Chesapeake Bay.

For architectural buffs who may be curious about Quigley Hall, the building, the first floor had eleven foot ceilings, the second floor was 10' 6" high ceilings and the third floor was slightly greater than seven feet high. In all, the building had 6,000 square feet of living space. The walls tapered from 20 inches at the base to 14 inches at the top. The outer walls were solid brick, using an interwoven scheme to promote dimensional stability and strength! Four chimneys built within the brick walls served the building whose rooms were 24ft X 20ft and 17ft X 20ft. The Quigley sisters had a private stairway to a large apartment just above their store.

The most notable piece of Colonial Period architecture was a spiral staircase that permitted me to make the trip from the third floor to the first in ten seconds! Riding the shiny waxed mahogany banister, of course!     

The most exquisite part of this building was its woodwork that covered the interior of almost all the outer walls. There were 28 large windows. The windows measured 10 feet high. The windows, with heavy cast iron counter weights, were 36 inches wide; the window panes measured 18x24 inches, eight panes to a full window! My Father repaired all the ropes and weights himself, working 18 hour days, after working in his radio shop all day. Working on nervous energy, he was a chain smoker, addicted to Camel cigarettes!

It has always been difficult for me to understand how a man who was a top scholar in his class, could not recognize the stupidity of using tobacco in any form. Apparently, young men had to prove their manhood and smoking was a way to do it. The same tradition existed when I was a boy but my first encounter with tobacco when I was nine years old was my last! I was an anti-smoking activist  throughout my Life! Similarly, I shunned any form of alcohol!  

As already noted, Quigley Hall was not the only business venture my Father had started. His first venture -- consistent with his Dream of Radio Broadcasting -- was the Radiola Sales Company located next to Tim Hanna's Insurance office on Water Street -- just across from the YMCA today! He had acquired franchises for all the major brands of top quality radio receivers. Later, after my Father's passing, D.K. Shadle obtained the Crosley franchise, a late comer to that market! The Orphans Court forced my Mother to accept a low bid by a former salesman of $2,000.00. That price did not even cover the value of the inventory still on-display in the store when my Father died!

Radios, built into beautiful cabinets of inlaid woods, were the pride and joy of those who could afford them. Simpler receivers were available but the average price started around $400.00 -- a lot of money in those days! Top of the line units sold for double that amount. A wire aerial atop your house was a sure indicator that you were among the well-to-do folks -- like having a Mercedes parked in your driveway today!

The only radio signal you could receive reliably was KDKA, Pittsburgh, PA. Since each stage of the three or four tube receiver had to be tuned separately, it was an art to know how to tune in a station! When installing a new radio, my Dad would set every control for optimum reception, telling the wide-eyed owners not to detune it as they would receive nothing but static. Many did not listen to his warning!

One of the problems with early radio receivers was that the filaments in the tubes had to be lit up (i.e. heated) with Direct Current (d.c.). The electrical source was an acid storage battery such as you use in your car today. That meant that sulphuric acid had to be carried to make a service call -- a rather dangerous cargo! At the age of four, I stood with my Father at the threshold to the Age of Radio! Now, you know why I was intensely interested in amateur radio throughout my Life. It was a way for me to be close to my Father!

On one occasion, while I was in the back of our Ford, a gallon of sulphuric acid upset when my Dad turned a corner too sharply. The acid spilled all over my pants and legs! In an instant, he stopped at the side door at the Prieson Drugstore and he and Dr. Stewart covered everything with baking soda which neutralized the acid and saved my legs. It was concentrated sulphuric acid, which, should you be interested, is NOT QUITE as dangerous as acid diluted with water! 

A few days before Memorial Day, 1925, my Father took me to a local farm where we caught fifteen chickens, took them home and he lopped their heads off with a small hatchet. That week our chicken dinner business began. I had to chase the headless critters, grab them and dip them in boiling hot water.  Wet chicken feathers smell very bad! It is an experience that stays with you, forever!

But the lesson of that day was something else: I learned what is meant by "acting like a chicken with its head cut off!" The closest thing to it today is to watch the Socialist-Democrats run the U.S. Congress! The only difference is that today Congress has turkeys who act like chickens! 

Thanks to my Dad's advertising genius, posting large white arrows along every road leading to our place with QUIGLEY HALL 2-4-6-10 MILES, we had a very nice turn out that first weekend. Traffic was heavy, sales of gasoline, ice cream, Mother's Lemon Meringue pie and Spice cake at the roadside stand were great! It was a very successful beginning! The cash register at the stand showed a total daily business of $132.00. To get any meaning out of that number, you must remember that in that day a loaf of bread cost  10 cents and a quart of milk cost about the same!

The neighbors were not enthusiastic, however! Millers were visibly angry about my Father paying too much for the building! It was the beginning of a long one-sided feud against us! Ultimately, such evil doings became concentrated on my Mother, later on me and the animosity probably remains to this very hour after all these years! Even today, the Albert Miller family occupies the house next to Quigley Hall. A year after we bought the old building, Albert and his Dad, Bob Miller, scooped out the cellar and built a very fine two story home there. It was the closest house to the Hall which meant, in time, especially on weekends, they would be annoyed by the sounds from the dance hall. Was that our fault or their's?

After Ann Quigley's death, Bob Miller purchased every parcel of land surrounding Quigley Hall. A crafty gentleman, whom I liked, he wanted to own Quigley Hall by hook or crook! His great grand children now own everything in the area and they continue to wait for me to die so they can get the lot via tax default.  

By a strange twist of Fate, my wife's parents became the owners of the Quigley Hall lot after the State built the new bridge! Tearing down Quigley Hall was unnecessary! Albert Miller shared that opinion with me the last time I spoke with him. A more aggressive historical society could have stopped its destruction!

Although, my wife was in touch with her parents every week, no one informed us that The Hall was being torn down. My reading of the deed records recently received indicate that the State did not have to condemn that property, as was reported. Marks and Welch, no doubt induced by Wilbur McClelland to do so, willingly sold it to the State. The REAL price will never be known! 

THE EARLY PERIOD

Soon after we purchased the building (circa 1925-26), the building was wired by Carson Dietz and a Kohler Electric Light plant was installed. We had the most modern electric power system in the region! The neighbors were furious because we did not use the Delco 32 volt DC system that they did! When we turned on a light in the house, a two cylinder Kohler gasoline engine turned on and drove a generator. It was well-muffled. We were a commercial operation and the small Delco systems used by the neighbors could not handle our big house plus a gasoline station.

Facts, however, never seemed to mean much to the farmers who never purchased anything from us except matches and an occasional can of Prince Albert tobacco! Their animosity never changed over the forty years we owned the property. Whatever its motivation, bad mouthing my Mother and me became a preoccupation of many of the farmers and neighbors East of town! That atmosphere only intensified after I became the manager of the property! What, pray tell, motivated that kind of treatment? It began the first day I boarded the school bus and it only grew worse over the years!

Of course, in the early days, you hand-pumped the gasoline up into a glass container that held five gallons at a time. There was no such thing as Self-Service! Tell a customer he can pump his own gas in that day and he would never stop again! Windshield cleaning was expected, check the tires -- all for gasoline that cost 17 cents a gallon! There was no automatic calculator to figure out the cost of the fuel, so I had to do all that figuring in my head! Now, you know why my generation was so smart! The longer it took for me to figure out the total, the slower I filled the tank!  

With a married couple heading up the kitchen operation of five waitresses, a hostess and two cooks, the first summer was a great success! We had purchased all the equipment from the Pine Tree Inn located just west of Williamsport on Rte 220. We could seat 100 patrons at a time in three dining rooms! The Kiwanis Club and many other business organizations met at different times during the month making for a very busy place. My Father was right: people enjoyed driving out into the country where they could buy a good meal. It was the beginning of the liberation of women who had been forced to cook  big meals everyday at home!

All this activity occurred around me, then only six years old! This is the world in which I grew up! There was no television, baseball, football or golf! Maybe a little fishing in the old canal but I never caught a thing! Lots of swimming, doing things with my hands, building stuff and finally building my first two tube radio which opened the door to a world that I never dreamed I would someday see with my own eyes as I flew over foreign lands, jungles and many oceans during WW-II.

OPENING DAY ARRIVES!

The 1926 season began on Memorial Day which always meant heavy traffic headed toward the speedway in Altoona. More improvements occurred as the finest eating place in a seventy mile radius was finished. Unfortunately, both of our businesses were booming and my Father was getting very little rest. He promised his customers Satisfaction which meant he was kept very busy traveling to distant places to service a radio that the owner forgot how to turn on! Today's unskilled, impatient and dumb Consumer is not a new phenomenon -- trust me!

One night a farmer called from Loganton, actually it was after midnight! He was angry about his radio not working. I was awakened and the Model T was soon rolling up the mountain toward Loganton. Not  an easy climb, by the way. At four in the morning with the wind blowing briskly, my Dad climbed onto the roof of a tobacco barn and fixed a broken aerial!

 "Someday," he said," all this will be yours, son! So I wanted you to know what has to be done!" At a very early age, I learned how stupid & unkind many people (i.e., customers) can be. I was not inclined to be that patient! Customers expected too much, I observed.

Since we had no central heating system, we always closed for the season before Thanksgiving and that year (1926) we went to my Mother's home (Kennedy's, 212 Oak Street, Jersey Shore, PA.). Uncle Stephan always won a large turkey at the Elks Club and Thanksgiving was the official closing of a busy year for most people.

Thanksgiving was a huge family affair, a day almost as Holy as Christmas. In those days it occurred a week later than it does today. Mr. Roosevelt changed that among many other things such as Daylight Savings Time and giving some people a taste for Socialism, BIG government and a Federal handout! We all loved him and I was a Democrat until Lyndon B. Johnson and Hubert H. Humphrey came on the national scene! LBJ and HHH made it clear that the Democratic Party would buy votes by redistributing wealth -- a violation of our Constitution! Philosophically, I am still a Jeffersonian Democrat but -- alas!, we are a disappearing breed!

I don't believe I ever knew anyone who hated President Roosevelt like people hate our Presidents today! The MEDIA can be blamed for that change. Come to think of it, my Grandmother Kennedy did not hold Roosevelt in high esteem because she claimed that if people planted their gardens like she did, they would not have their hands out to the government! "Help a lazy man once and you will be expected to feed him forever!" she would point out. She was the source of a lot of fundamental wisdom. Behind that facade, was a fine, compassionate woman who for many years always prepared supper for three elderly people who lived next door! When I lived there in 1935 to 1938, one of my chores was to take meals next door for Mr. and Mrs Jimmy Davison and a sister named Ella! While they had a large garden area, they had never learned to plant a garden. Nor did they intend to: they were city folks!

TRAGEDY STRIKES AGAIN!

As the Thanksgiving meal was served and everyone settled into discovering what new things my Grandmother had prepared for us, my Father grabbed his right shoulder and rubbed it. He was in pain and my uncles took him to the bedroom at the top of the back stairs. With family Doctor Sanford by his side for nearly three days, my dear Father did not survive double pneumonia. He had literally worked himself to death! Quigley Hall had been too much for him!

It was my second close experience with death and I could not understand it! His Father died just nine months before but in that instance I had not witnessed  the events of a death watch and the family members assembling.

My Grandmother Gertrude was devastated, having lost her husband, my paternal grandfather, less than a year before! In time, I would learn that there is something far more terrible than death, however! My Father and Reverend Parkhill, pastor of The Great Island Presbyterian Church, were close friends, sharing some of the same dreams like how radio would revolutionize politics, church affairs and business development! The entire community had turned out for a man who had grown up in Lock Haven and had earned so many friends and admirers. All of these events remain as vivid as if they all occurred yesterday!

My Dad, an energetic man, but not athletic like my uncles, was always susceptible to frequent head colds and respiratory complaints.  Smoking did not help him! After a brief admonishment that I should listen to my Mother and be a Good Boy, he died at 8:00 p.m. on December 2nd, 1926. We did not just lose my Father, however, the Dreams were handed off to my Mother and later, when I was ten and she was stricken with MS! Then all of those Dreams were placed in my hands, plus the expectations that went with them -- including a strange kind of treatment that haunted me until I finally could leave the Valley forever! 

On my thirteenth birthday, I became actively involved in running our service station with full responsibility for its records, ordering and its  profitability! My best customer was the elder Mr. Bob Miller who bought a penny box of matches everyday! He was an interesting gentleman and at times, he would dress up on Saturday and come down to  listen to our guest band and watch the square dancing. Not another neighbor ever stepped foot into Quigley Hall or, in fact, ever purchased anything from us! We purchased many things from the farmers, however.

My Father's death sent a shock through both families! My sister had died seven years before, his father had died just nine months before; now, he was gone! A serious scholar in school, and a much respected member of the business community, the world stopped for my Mother who believed when God had taken her little girl, that the rest of her Life would be happier. She was an up-beat, brown eyed beauty with a witty personality and a sense of humor as big as Life itself! She would need it! God was not done with her! Nor would he be done with me for a very long time! Even at this moment, He does not know yet what to do with me! I am still waiting to learn how so much hard work and striving to be worthy of some small credit for all my effort in school and at work. Regrettably, I seemed to never discover what He wanted me to become! 

Remarkably, I would be witness and actor in all these things! And, I still wonder why?! All these events seem like they happened yesterday. For me, it began a forty year nightmare being intimately involved with that venerable old building called Quigley Hall. We were inseparable until my Mother passed away in 1953, followed by eleven years of looking after that building and my stepfather, who lived there and received the minuscule income from it until he went to the Elks Home in New Bedford, VA in 1964. He passed away in 1965 at the age of 98! Throughout those years, my Mother insisted that Quigley Hall -- my father's first Dream -- eventually had to pass to me!

Frankly, I had no desire or interest in that kind of contact with the General Public.  My years at Quigley Hall had turned me against working directly with patrons! I was better prepared for a different relationship which finally came after I left Lock Haven and went to New York and Chicago. Much of that liberation occurred once I was no longer referred to snidely, as: "The kid from Quigley Hall!"  

Like a millstone, that stalwart structure became my personal White Elephant! Perhaps, "prison" would be a better name for it! But not all my memories are negative; regardless of the disappointing  and sorrowful days there, it was my childhood home, a business place, a unique laboratory where I learned about People, Business, God's Way, Religion and Politics! It and that tiny hamlet were my roots -- like it or not! Throughout all those years I remained on good terms with the Miller family, although John Harris Miller often told me how "his Daddy could have bought Quigley Hall for $500.00!" Had he only explained the family connection with Robert C. Miller, Ann and Margaret Quigley's partner, I would have understood the sentimental attachment held for that magnificent building! I understand sentimentality quite well! 

QUIGLEY HALL -- THE HAUNTING DREAM! 

With this lengthy prologue, I now take up the subject of Quigley Hall with some references to my Mother's effort to keep my Father's Dream alive! Among these memories, I shall treat the most controversial issue of what happened to the $2 million in Gold Certificates that disappeared and, as far as I know, are still buried in the rubble of Quigley Hall! I shall tell you everything about the Ghosts of Quigley Hall, their names and why so many people believed so many lies and rumors about that place and those of us who lived there.

The surprising thing about this story is that when we moved to Princeton, NJ in 1965, even though I sold Quigley Hall, after the new bridge was built and the building had been torn down by the state highway department, the land - now barely a  quarter acre - is still in our name! No matter how eager I was to get rid of that place of unhappy memories, my wife (and I) are still owners of the land! We pay taxes on it, although the Township, the County and the State will not let us build a small retirement home there! While we are barred from building on that land, we are privileged to pay Property and School taxes on it! We have done so for sentimental reasons! Soon, I will have to decide on what to do with the small space. None of our children live there, hence, the prospect that one or more of our children would keep paying taxes seems to be impractical: they never knew my Mother and know nothing of my Father! Why would any of them be interested in keeping the taxes paid, etc?

The problem is due to new regulations against disposal systems near rivers and streams! The red tape and periodic inspections required by local health officers is so involved there is little hope that I would not find old animosities still exist in that township and tiny hamlet now barely known as: Liberty!  I do not need any more of that kind of unpleasantness in my final days! Nor do I want any of my children to be exposed to such treatment!

Fortunately, I moved my family of five before they grew up and learned how it feels to be discriminated against, the recipients of ill-will, rumor and ill-tempered gossipers, many of whom were stalwart members of the local church! I could have been Black, or a Jew and not have been ill-treated more in a community that was mainly White, Gentile and allegedly Christian! When I returned from the Philippines in September 1945, though I was tempted to stay in California, I knew that my roots were so deep in north central Pennsylvania, that I would return there and continue my vigilance over my Mother and stepfather. She was totally helpless and he was nearly blind!  Believing that I had a right to a Life of my own, I had married a Lock Haven girl and we would face even more difficulties with two small children whose health was anything but normal.

In closing this Prologue on a lighter note, I want to explain why I am attached to this small piece of ground in north-central Pennsylvania. This is the only place where my parents and I began Life together as a real family -- a family that never forgot my beautiful and bright sister whose return to Heaven caused me to become what today is called a "replacement child".

Every afternoon, on a cold winter day, when the sun was beginning to set, my Mother would call me to the kitchen window and point up the river toward the setting sun. It was a solemn moment that meant something special to her in the days following my father's death. As the sun, dipped closer to the horizon, a strange thing happened: it looked as if it was literally dipping into the Susquehanna River!

Above all others on this Earth, she knew my intellect, my emotions and temperament. A sunset, she would say, is God's way of saying His Benediction! From those moments, years later, I wrote my 100th poem which opens as follows:-

                          Take me back to the land of my childhood,
                            Where the river flows east to the sea;
                          Where I learned of the beauty of Sunsets,
                            Where sad days once enveloped me.

                          Take me back to the mountains and eagles,
                            Where at night the whitetails run,
                          Yes, take me back to that special place
                            Where the River Swallows the Sun!
                                                                      

                           -- from    MY LONG JOURNEY TO SOMEWHERE

                               by C. S. Franklyn Sr.

                               (aka Charles Franklin Scheid Jr.)

                                               . . . . . . . . . . .

       Please go to  Chapter I