2012-05-22 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When you hear the term "rare earth metals," you probably think of China and the rising price of energy-efficient light bulbs.
That's because almost all rare earth metals are mined in China. Spiral fluorescent bulbs are one of the more common items that use such materials and more str......
2012-05-18 09:20:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The Cliosophic Society is no more.
The Lancaster organization dedicated......
2012-05-15 09:29:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
A proposed display of McCaskey High School sports memorabilia in a huge lobby c......
2012-05-08 08:49:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Everyone has noticed how early spring arrived and matured this year. The varied......
2012-05-04 08:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When they join in matrimony Saturday afternoon, Eric Conner and Karen Siddons a......
2012-05-01 09:24:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Americans who refer to themselves as Pennsylvania Dutch are increasing in numbe......
2012-04-24 10:38:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
One of Lancaster County's most unusual buildings is slowly falling apart. The miniature courthouse in Buchanan Park, originally designed to sell Liberty Bonds in Penn Square during World War I, probably was not constructed to last nearly a century. But it has survived, with a little hel......
2012-04-20 08:46:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When millions of Americans who grew up watching Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" learned that Clark died this week, many had a harsh thought.
If the world's oldest teenager is dead, a scratchy vinyl recording in their brains rasped to them, we, too, must be old.
The Scribble......
2012-04-13 09:00:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dr. David Abbott has delivered more than 6,000 babies over the past 33 years. Many of those deliveries have been in the Plain communities of northeastern Lancaster County. Many of them have been at home. A number of the births have occurred on a parent's birthday. But only one......
2012-04-06 08:54:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
As the most progressive and vindictive American of his generation, Thaddeus Stevens was both admired and despised.
Then he was all but forgotten.
Stevens, who died in 1868, could be called "the greatest unknown person in American history," ......
2012-04-03 08:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerclock:
I recently bought a postcard showing the floral clock at Conestoga Memorial Park in Lancaster Township.
The caption on the reverse says, "The World's Largest Floral Clock." The electric clock was 32 feet in diameter and surrounded by thousands of plan......
2012-03-30 08:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When Eric Smucker opened Smucker Farms of Lancaster County in our nation's capital a couple of months ago, Lee Brubaker greeted the organic food store's arrival with typical enthusiasm.
"Welcome to D.C., Mr. Smucker Farmer Dude," she wrote in an email to her father, who has been writ......
2012-03-27 08:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
At first Kay Moyer didn't fully understand the problem.
The Penn State Extension safety nurse educator was getting calls from parents asking her how their students should walk to a new Amish school.
The school stands on a hill, with no berm along the road leading to it. So pa......
2012-03-23 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Take 16 copies of the "Martyrs Mirror."
Open their pages before dozens of volunteers from the Ephrata Cloister History Class.
Catalog variations.
That's what Michael Showalter, the Cloister's museum curator, did Thursday morning.
The result of......
2012-03-20 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The early German residents of central Pennsylvania generally are considered a very special breed.
The first essay in "Architecture and Landscape of the Pennsylvania Germans, 1720-1920" (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011) does not disagree.
But it does suggest that 18th c......
2012-03-16 08:45:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Martin Shreiner Sr., a well-known local maker of clocks and fire engines, laid out a cemetery at Mulberry and Chestnut streets in 1836.
Thirty-two years later, U.S. Rep. Thaddeus Stevens was buried there because it was Lancaster's only cemetery that accepted both blacks and whites....
2012-03-13 08:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Rich Will asked an employee at an Ephrata-area grocery store to do something for him.
"We daresn't do that," answered the employee.
The reply surprised Will, who grew up in the Cocalico Valley. He had never heard that word.
He related the conversation to the print sho......
2012-03-09 09:14:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
A Feb. 7 column discussing the excavation of American Indian graves at a large Shenks Ferry village near Millersville has stirred some controversy.
The column reported that a group of local Indians is protesting the excavation at Southern Village, a development off Wabank Road near Q......
2012-03-06 09:17:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Kevin Weems lives in a Sears kit house at 1855 Lincoln Highway East. It was built in 1914.
Depending on your definition of "prefabricated," his house would be one of the oldest prefabricated houses in the county.
Jake Fehl Jr., of Manheim Township, wondered a few columns back......
2012-03-02 08:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The Lancaster Cremation and Reform Society, the first organization of its kind in the United States, built a crematorium in Lancaster's Greenwood Cemetery in 1884.
It has long been identified as the first public crematorium in the country.
So, the Scribbler was at first surpr......
2012-02-28 09:16:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
For the past two years, staff writer Jane Holahan has received emails from a reader who wants her to correct her spelling of Fat Tuesday doughnuts.
This reader claims the spelling is "fastnacht."
Jane spells the word "fasnacht," which is newspaper style.
"I assume you......
2012-02-24 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dr. Scribblerquery receives some questions that he can answer and some that he cannot.
Here are some questions that he cannot answer. Maybe someone else can.
Early pre-fab homes
Jake Fehl Jr., of Manheim Township, believes the first two pre-fab homes ......
2012-02-21 08:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Don McCann says he has recycled his new Verizon directory because Yellowbook still provides residential listings.
"That's unfortunate for all those advertisers who wasted money on Verizon," the Millersville resident observes.
That's one of several comments the Scribbler has r......
2012-02-17 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Older Lancastrians remember the taste and smell of peanuts roasted at the Manhattan Peanut Stand on West King Street decades ago.
The Scribbler doesn't have to remember. He has a bag of freshly roasted peanuts on his desk. Or, more accurately, a few peanuts left in a bag.
The......
2012-02-14 08:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The Scribbler vaguely understood that the telephone book (that is, the Verizon book) would not contain residential numbers this time around.
But he had not really focused on that change until the skinnier books arrived in the newspaper office late last week. The 2012 Verizon books ar......
2012-02-10 09:18:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblernut:
Who was the peanut man who used to sell roasted peanuts in the first block of West King Street, in that tiny building next to Jason's?
When did he close his store?
Jean Eggert
Lancaster...
2012-02-07 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Let's say you wake up one morning and read something like this on the front page:
"State archaeologists have uncovered dozens of graves, many with skeletons intact, while excavating Lancaster Cemetery. They plan to transport the bones to Harrisburg for further examination and eventua......
2012-02-03 08:54:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Aconites and snowdrops — floral harbingers of spring in this region — popped up early this warm week.
Also, stray dandelions.
Fred Daum, whose mother, Ida, planted the first winter aconites on his New Holland Avenue property decades ago, says t......
2012-01-31 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Don Martin has many fond memories of growing up in Lancaster City in the 1940s.
Neighborhood men sitting on their front steps on hot Friday nights, listening to the fights on the radio and drinking Ballantine Ale.
Gorgeous George and Argentine Rocco ......
2012-01-27 09:21:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
As four rambunctious Republicans vie for their party's presidential nomination, Lancaster attorney Will Campbell's thoughts turn to past campaigns.
Six people with Lancaster County associations have been nominated for president or vice ......
2012-01-24 09:14:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Over a snowy weekend spent lugging stuff from place to place in a remodeled and overcrowded house, the Scribbler dipped into Tom Smith's new book, "Drumore Echoes."
The "echoes" the Scribbler particularly appreciate resound from a chapter entitled "The Party Line."
Yes, children, ......
2012-01-20 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The worst fashion trend for men since leisure suits — sagging male trousers — finally may have met its match.
Urban Outfitters, a Philadelphia-based company with a major warehouse at Gap, is selling "Amish-inspired suspenders" to hold up droopy drawers.
They look like ......
2012-01-17 08:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Rumors are raging that pop singer Lady Gaga has purchased a home in Lancaster C......
2012-01-13 09:37:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
James Buchanan is alphabetically sandwiched between two accomplished people in ......
2012-01-10 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When flamenco dancer Jose Greco died on New Year's Ev......
2012-01-06 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Following the December holidays in the late 1930s and early '40s, young men in ......
2011-12-30 08:55:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
In the spring of 1985, Stephen Swartz was playing in a treehouse when a nearby ......
2011-12-23 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When Jack Neiss was a young boy living on Cabbage Hill in Lancaster, a relative......
2011-12-20 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Chances are this Christmas you will receive at least one gift that will require several tools to open.
It might be packaged in molded plastic that a scissors or knife cannot easily penetrate.
Or it might be he......
2011-12-16 09:16:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Cemeteries in the 19th century served a social function that might seem odd to many people today. Families regularly visited cemeteries to pay their respects to departed relatives. They scrubbed stones, trimmed shrubs and arranged flowers. And then they enjoyed picnics among and sometim......
2011-12-13 11:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerdancer:
During the late 1920s and early '30s, marathon dancing was held at Maple Grove Fieldhouse. My parents took me with them to sit in......
2011-12-09 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The worst Christmas gifts the Scribbler received as a cub reporter toiling for the Danville, Va., Register in the early 1970s were gift-wrapped bricks of fruitcake. Funeral-home fruitcake was a holiday tradition in Danville. Three funeral homes had been giving fruitcakes to reporters for yea......
2011-12-06 09:26:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
You probably have read news stories and letters to the editor concerning Hempfield's controversial new field-trip policy. Last week, Vince Slaugh wrote about this brouhaha on his "Lancaster at War" website, one of the more informative and entertaining Civil War blogs. Slaugh is most con......
2011-12-02 10:34:00
Jack Brubaker, The Scribbler
Following the earthquake and tsunami that battered Japan last March, survivors found ancient stone tablets uncovered by coastal erosion. The tablets designated the high-water points of previous tsunamis. Inscriptions indicated that future generations faced deadly flooding if they built close......
2011-11-29 07:58:00
Jack Brubaker, The Scribbler
Caroline Peart was one of the most prominent American female artists of the early 20th century. She also was the most eccentric person Don Sherick has ever known. "To my knowledge, I'm the only living person who actually had a relationship with her," says Sherick, who was 22 years old ......
2011-11-22 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerboneorchard:The old Tschantz Graveyard, on the west side of Pequea Lane, south of Penn Grant Road, used to have a sign designating it as the oldest cemetery in Lancaster County. That sign has been removed. A new sign reads simply: "Tschantz Gravey......
2011-11-18 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerbarren:When I was a small child, my father worked on the Stubb's Mill Farm near Pleasant Grove in Fulton Township. We lived in the tenant house. My father and mother took my sister and brothers and I to Black Barren Park to play on the swings and ......
2011-11-15 08:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The state historical marker designating the site of Conestoga Indian Town and the massacre of six Conestogas in Manor Township disappeared more than two decades ago. John Henry Harnish lives along Route 999 at Central Manor. The marker was erected along his property in 1967. "On June 15......
2011-11-11 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Christopher Good married Sandra Comfort on Nov. 11, 2000, at Hinkletown Mennonite Church. Everyone referred to the union as the Good-Comfort wedding. Eleven years later, according to Sandra, the marriage remains good and comfortable. So today, the two celebrate their 11th Good-Comf......
2011-11-08 08:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
In the late 1950s, when the Scribbler was transitioning from camper to counselor at the Lancaster YMCA's Camp Shand, a male camp director was found sleeping with a young boy. In the 1930s, according to longtime Lancaster YMCA supporter Stan Buch, another male director at Shand spent time in ......
2011-11-04 09:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
"Freakish" weather disasters, such as October's snowstorm in the Northeast and record flooding in Thailand, are occurring more often, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Global warming will spawn even more of the same in the future, says a draft summary, release......
2011-11-01 09:10:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
In December 1763, Scots-Irish militants from northern Lancaster County ruthlessly wiped out the Conestoga Indians at two sites. A group of American Indian sympathizers believes these massacres should be commemorated, as they once were, by state historic markers. A historical marker comm......
2011-10-28 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Long-time readers may recall The Scribbler's Index, a feature that ran in this column during the 1990s. Some people still miss the Index, but the Scribbler does not. Collecting all of those numbers on a regular basis made his head hurt. In any case, the Scribbler recently bumped into......
2011-10-25 08:57:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblersop:I have a strange question. What do you call it, in Pennsylvania Dutch, when you eat a plate of food and then sop up what's left with a piece of bread? What is that?Andy Esbenshade
Manor Township
......
2011-10-21 09:27:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Imagine 5,000 children sitting in the woods at Mount Gretna on an August morning. The thermometer is rising toward 93 degrees. The kids are listening to a United Brethren in Christ bishop preach on and on and on and on. You can just see those cherubs, sitting quite still there in the heat, s......
2011-10-18 09:09:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerdeer:Howzcum that the Elks display a life-sized statue of a deer in front of their lodge on North Duke Street in Lancaster. Why isn't it an elk?Bull Moose
The Buck
Dear Bull (aka Jim McMullin):...
2011-10-14 08:57:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerscales:
Recently, I took some photographs from the top of the parking garage adjacent to the Marriott Hotel/Convention Center. It wasn't until I came to look at them on my computer that I discovered a serious problem with Justice in La......
2011-10-07 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Lancaster County Prison has problems: chronic overcrowding, cluster suicides, multiple lawsuits, intractable mold. But the trouble that hit the old jail on the night of Oct. 10, 1883 &tstr; 128 years ago on Monday &tstr; was a huge shot of mayhem all at once. Twelve convicts esc......
2011-09-30 08:41:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Greenwood Cemetery, which sprawls along Highland Avenue in the city's southeast, has seen better days. It has potholes in some roads, dead trees among its gravesites and the overall seedy look that really old burial grounds often get. Tom Goodhart has been concerned about this for some ......
2011-09-23 08:55:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Last week, Congress briefly suspended itsnever-ending efforts to complicate the federal tax code in order to recognize the 150th anniversary of organized camping in the United States. The American Camping Association says Frederick and Abigail Gunn opened The Gunnery Camp for young boys in W......
2011-09-20 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerville: Sometime could you give us the history of Abbeville? I toured the house many years ago after Dr. Farmer resided there. I know there have been wonderful upgrades to the home since that time. Tom Englert [Historic Lancaster Walking Tour] says he thinks the house w......
2011-09-16 09:15:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The primary focus of this column is magnetic declination and its effect on the geographic orientation of old buildings. Magnetic declination is not a concept that the Scribbler deals with on a regular basis. And being directionally dyslexic, he has sufficient trouble telling north from ......
2011-09-16 09:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
The primary focus of this column is magnetic declination and its effect on the geographic orientation of old buildings. Magnetic declination is not a concept that the Scribbler deals with on a regular basis. And being directionally dyslexic, he has sufficient trouble telling north from ......
2011-09-13 08:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
While researching a book on the Susquehanna River two decades ago, the Scribbler encountered an observant farmer named Faber Farabaugh. Farabaugh had roots in Lancaster County. He visited relatives here many times before his death in the mid-1990s. But he lived all of his life on a farm......
2011-09-09 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Tuesday's Scribbler column linked an old corn cutter with the killing of a slave owner during the Christiana Riot. Several readers have commented that the Lancaster County Historical Society also owns a corn cutter used during the incident 160 years ago. Now, Brig. Gen. George Walls Jr.......
2011-09-06 08:34:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Sept. 11 will mark the anniversary of two significant events in American history &tstr; the terrorist attacks of 2001 and the Christiana Riot, or rebellion, of 1851. The Scribbler recently heard an interesting story related to the latter. On Sept. 11, 1851, Edward Gorsuch and five o......
2011-09-02 08:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerbridge:In your July 22 column, you said Lancaster has 28 red covered bridges and one white one. That's not right. Twenty-seven are red and one is white. The 29th bridge, the Hunsecker's Mill Covered Bridge, that crosses the Conestoga between Manhe......
2011-08-30 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Would a map showing the location of early structures still standing in Lancaster County be useful to residents and tourists? Do architectural historians scream for ice cream? Lancaster attorney John Metzger has spent the past several years restoring the county's oldest continuously occu......
2011-08-26 08:54:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Music makes the world go round. Not so often this column. Today is an exception. The Scribbler and Mrs. Scribbler recently returned from a Massachusetts vacation. Musical themes accompanied leaving here and leaving there. On Friday, Aug. 12, as the Scribbler hurried to complete wor......
2011-08-19 09:22:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
After reading the Aug. 2 column, Jack Neiss has decided that "the fictitious town of Noodledoosey apparently was located all over Lancaster County." Noodledoosey is not one place, he suggests, it's a destination. The Strasburg resident says his grandmother used to say she was "off to No......
2011-08-12 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Hobos and hitchhikers, once common on America's highways, are gone with the wind, hobos perhaps more blown away than hitchhikers. Two of the writers of Millersville's 250th anniversary history, just published by the Millersville Area Historical Society, remember the heyday of hobos. Hob......
2011-08-09 08:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Hello, is this the National Oddly-Placed Telephone Hotline? I'm calling about a pay phone at 5190 Lincoln Highway East. The phone sits in a box on a pod in a cornfield just east of Gap, on the south side of the road, across from Apple Auto Sales. Hello. Hello. I'm trying to call from th......
2011-08-05 08:46:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
When Zachariah Walker screamed, people heard him nearly a mile away. Walker was burning to death as thousands of Coatesville residents watched on the night of Aug. 13, 1911. "No one came to Walker's defense, either during or after his ordeal," say the authors of a new book about the lyn......
2011-07-29 08:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerhigh: I visited a home along Log Cabin Road, south of Rothsville, Warwick Township. The owner believes his home sits on the third highest point in Lancaster County. From his deck, looking south, you can see the Griest Building and the Lancaster Marriott Hotel on Pen......
2011-07-26 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Lancastrian Cynthia Roth was sitting on a bench reading the newspaper in the cemetery behind St. James Episcopal Church. A tour guide passed by on Cherry Street. The guide pointed to a shuttered window on the west side of the old brick building at 127 E. Orange St. A child had fallen ou......
2011-07-19 08:19:00
Jack Brubaker, The Scribbler
An antique artillery piece fired and recoiled. The blast struck a dummy soldier lying "dead" on the field. The dummy burst into flames. The fire spread to parched grass. Battlefield re-enactors briefly stopping "fighting" to stomp out the mini-conflagration. That was a highlight of the ......
2011-07-05 08:44:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Henry Brubaker grew up in the "Brubaker Valley" north of Lititz. On Sundays, his family traveled by horse and buggy to the Rohrerstown area to visit relatives. Turnpike tollbooths did not always have attendants on duty on Sundays, Brubaker recalls. "Many travelers would go through tollb......
2011-07-01 08:31:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Lancaster County once operated an "insane asylum" in the County Hospital on East King Street, a building on the property of what is now Conestoga View nursing home. In the summer of 1929, the county's district attorney banned firecrackers in the vicinity of the asylum. "Any persons repo......
2011-06-28 09:30:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
While visiting Washington, D.C., the Scribbler remarked to the Little Scribbler that electric advertising on some streets is beginning to mimic the riot of presentations in and near New York's Times Square. The Little Scribbler isn't particularly disturbed by the signs. Maybe it's a generati......
2011-06-24 08:37:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblershunpiker:The mention of toll roads in your June 14 column prompted a question. Since these roads could scarcely be "limited access," like today's toll roads, what was there to prevent people from accessing them from any of the many crossroads?...
2011-06-21 09:39:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Patricia O'Hara teaches English at Franklin & Marshall College. She concentrates on Victorian lit. She is a published poet. But last Thursday night she discussed an even more specialized topic &tstr; baseball literature &tstr; at the Lancaster Museum of Art. Her talk covered......
2011-06-17 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
Dear Dr. Scribblerdoll: Can you please devote some space in your column to George F. Erisman, of the Doll Hospital fame? I'm sure many a little girl, like I was, held him in great esteem for his efforts to make dollies better, but I certainly didn't know anything else about this man....
2011-06-14 08:51:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
In downtown Reading last week, the Scribbler spotted a sculpted water fountain with troughs on two sides. The fountain is different from anything ever created in Lancaster. Constructed at 5th and Penn streets in 1904, the fountain at first watered horses. In the late 20th century, ......
2011-06-10 08:39:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
One of the earliest religious societies founded in North America and still in business will be recognized with a state historical marker sometime next year. The River Brethren, which eventually became the Brethren in Christ, began in 1780 or earlier. One of its founders, Jacob Engle, lived b......
2011-06-07 08:53:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler (New Era)
A remarkable number of men have claimed credit for fatally shooting John Fulton Reynolds, Lancaster's most famous military officer, on July 1, 1863, the first day of the battle at Gettysburg. The Scribbler read about these men while preparing for last weekend's tour of the honeysuckle-scente......
2011-06-03 08:51:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
If you know anything at all about Johnny Appleseed, you know that he spent his life spreading apples and apple seeds about the country for the health and welfare of all. One of the things you probably don't know about Appleseed, whose real name was John Chapman, is that he didn't care much a......
2011-05-31 08:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
She is one of the least attractive mermaids you will ever see. But she also is one of the most intriguing sycamore carvings. The mermaid's origin dates back about 40 years. Tree trimmers knocked off a few limbs from the three-century-old sycamore on Plane Tree Drive in East Hempfie......
2011-05-27 09:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Shawnee Daisies were cold and slippery concoctions served in a ball of wax paper in 1920s and '30s Columbia. Numerous Columbians called to inform Dr. Scribblerdaisy about these treats following a query in the May 17 column. The Shawnee Fire Co. inadvertantly created Shawnee Daisies in t......
2011-05-27 09:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Shawnee Daisies were cold and slippery concoctions served in a ball of wax paper in 1920s and '30s Columbia. Numerous Columbians called to inform Dr. Scribblerdaisy about these treats following a query in the May 17 column. The Shawnee Fire Co. inadvertantly created Shawnee Daisies in t......
2011-05-24 08:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Harold Camping, the California radio preacher who had predicted Judgment Day would arrive last Saturday night, was said to be "flabbergasted" when it did not. William Miller, a western New York farmer and Baptist who predicted that the world would end more than 160 years ago, also was mystif......
2011-05-20 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
When Serena Ehrhart Riedel was a little girl growing up in Landisville, she loved driving with her parents past Porter Furniture in Lancaster. She would gawk at one of the grand medieval suits of armor displayed on the sidewalk outside the store. "I always wanted to buy one of tho......
2011-05-17 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerswamp: Early accounts say that the original way to Lancaster was through Hazel's swamp, a dark and dismal place full of wolves and other horrible creatures. I have looked and looked but can't find any dismal place, let alone any wolves. Can you tell me where it is?...
2011-05-13 08:51:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
It's happening again. Corporations intent on drawing energy resources from the ground are drilling before they assess the long-term consequences to water quality. And Pennsylvania's government, once again, is doing next to nothing to regulate the process. Back then it was coal in mines ......
2011-05-10 08:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerban:
In 2008 I purchased a house at 632 N Franklin St. in Lancaster. I was interested in the history of the house (built in 1927) and using the online real estate resources I was able to access a copy of the original deed. This property was part of the......
2011-05-06 08:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
For many years before her death in 2002, Intelligencer Journal reporter Barbara Little wrote a story about Amish weddings each October. She described the weddings and said most were held in November and occasionally during the last week of October and first week of December. But that pa......
2011-05-03 08:57:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Some people prefer to focus exclusively on Lancaster's positive aspects. They praise the county's stable economy, productive farmland and kindly residents. It's true that Lancaster is a great place to live. That's why most people who are born here stick around. That's why thousands move here......
2011-04-29 08:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The British prince who is marrying Kate Middleton today is related to Lancastrian Edward Hand. If Prince William of Wales one day becomes King of England, Lancaster County will have a distant genealogical connection to the English throne. The late Lancaster historian John W.W. Loose ......
2011-04-22 08:38:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Now we know the name of the pilot. In answer to a question about the late 1930s-early '40s airmail route between Columbia and Lancaster, Martin Fidler reported in the April 1 column that he was the man who drove the mail from the Columbia Post Office to the plane. Now we know who drove ......
2011-04-15 08:55:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
At the beginning of the 1900 academic year, 16 young Franklin & Marshall College men sat down to dinner in a boarding house at 442 N. Mary St. They named their group the Harbaugh Club. Last Saturday night, 40 young and older men and women sat down to dinner at 637 College Ave. as memb......
2011-04-12 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
As the centennial commemoration of the American Civil War began 50 years ago, the members of Lancaster's first Civil War Round Table asked an essential question: "What Really Caused the Civil War?" Sub-questions considered during that round table discussion included, "How much did 'Uncl......
2011-04-05 08:35:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancastrian Paul Ripple says he treated "the only casualty of TMI." The recent 32nd anniversary of the near-meltdown of a nuclear reactor at Three Mile Island, as well as the ongoing crisis at nuclear reactors in Japan, have prompted the retired ophthalmologist's recollection. Eight Nuc......
2011-03-18 08:42:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerdirty: Several years ago, a group of runner friends and I did a run from, and back to, the Dirty Ol' Tavern at Engleside. After the run, we headed inside for drinks and dinner. A picture hangs on the wall of men and women dressed up -- women wearing long dresse......
2011-03-15 10:11:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Recent columns have provoked considerable feedback. Here is some of it. Can you top this nickname? Readers have provided hundreds of nicknames from Lancaster, Lititz, Columbia and other parts of Lancaster County in reaction to a March 4 column about Columbia nicknames. If this h......
2011-03-11 08:42:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The U.S. Census Bureau's 2010 population figures, released this week, show West Cocalico Township growing by 313 residents during the past decade. The Scribbler is wondering how many of those new residents were wearing clothes when the census was taken. Here's why. John Wentling, o......
2011-03-08 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblernarvon: I cannot find Narvon. I am a guest at Zerbe Sisters home and my daughter and I drive around looking for Narvon. Is it a city, town, village or post office? We found a Narvon Road sign that leads to another road, but where is Narvon? Bea Copela......
2011-03-04 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblernick: I understand Lizzie for Elizabeth, Gene for Eugene, Pat for Patricia and even Dick for Richard. But how do you get GoGo for Thelma, Nook for Gordon and Chill for Charles? I refer to the affectionate nicknames listed for the recently deceased members of Columbia a......
2011-03-01 08:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
As snow was melting away in the Scribbler's woods last week, winter aconites &tstr; those pretty little buttercup-like harbingers of spring &tstr; budded and bloomed. Aconites ordinarily are the first flowers to bud, but snowdrops seemed to precede them this year. The snowdrops haven......
2011-02-25 08:28:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerjustice: I've heard it said that the statue representing justice on top of the Lancaster County Courthouse is unique in that it does not wear a blindfold. This seems appropriate given the judges' comments in "Too casual in the Courtroom," a recent story in your n......
2011-02-22 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Thomas Barton, the Anglican minister who closed Lancaster's St. James Episcopal Church rather than yield to Revolutionary demands, led a tortured life. Well before the Revolution wrecked his ministry, Barton was pressured into defending the Paxton Boys, killers of the Conestoga Indians....
2011-02-18 08:51:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
"Black Swan," a dark and daffy film about an obsessive ballerina gone berserk, introduced the Scribbler to birds of that feather. But, in fact, perfectly normal black swans are common in Australia. And, at one time, black swans graced ponds in Lancaster County. In the 1930s and '40......
2011-02-15 08:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Amish families sell produce to, shovel snow for and make friends with people who live in Landisville and the townships of East and West Hempfield. But the Hempfield Shopping Center doesn't welcome Amish as customers if they arrive in horse-drawn buggies. A sign by a tree in front of the......
2011-02-11 08:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancaster Mayor Rick Gray wants residents to remove a conglomeration of folding chairs, trash cans and broken dreams used to save parking spaces cleared of snow. Then the city can plow if it snows again. Then also, alas, anyone else can park in your space. But Meredith Rousseau, wh......
2011-02-08 09:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerking:
When James Hamilton planned the streets of Lancaster, they were named after British royalty, like King George Street. Who was the queen, the prince and duke? Paul Ripple Lancaster Dear Paul: "The Heritage of Lancaster," the......
2011-02-04 08:44:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The Jan. 18 Scribbler column on the Yellowbook's mislisting of the Umbrella Works apartment house as an umbrella sales and repair shop amused some readers. Others called with not-so-amusing additional errors. Nancy Swarr moved from Denver to Strasburg 10 years ago. But Yellowbook still ......
2011-02-01 13:14:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Fifty-three years ago this month, a group of teenage girls made what they consider to be the first whoopie pie. "A bunch of us were snowed in in the big snow of February 1958," recalls one of 10 girls who were there at the creation. "We had gone to a quilting at a home in Nickel Mines."...
2010-11-28 00:08:00
Jo-Ann Greene, Books Editor
Lancaster, in 1763, was a place where people got away with murder — specifically, the murder of 20 men, women and children, the last of the area's native Conestoga Indian tribe.
These peaceful residents were under the protection of Lancaster officials when hacked to death by vigilan......
2010-10-26 15:27:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dick Pontz did many different things during his long and active life, which ended a week ago at Brethren Village. He was a fund raiser, public relations agent, financial director, community volunteer, rose gardener and harmonica player. But, first among all, he was "Mr. YMCA." He had ......
2010-10-22 15:24:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblersunny:
Plans finally are moving forward for a 300-unit housing development on the Sunnyside peninsula. This might be a good time for the Scribbler to remind Lancastrians of Sunnyside's history.
Sunnyside was once a resort. Rich peopl......
2010-10-19 15:23:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Local church and government representatives recently met with American Indian groups and acknowledged on a grand scale "historic wrongs committed against native people." One of the main failings cited during this reconcilation service at Lancaster's First Presbyterian Church was that whi......
2010-10-15 15:22:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Church and government representatives made some extraordinary admissions last weekend during a reconciliation meeting with American Indians at Lancaster's First Presbyterian Church. They condemned broken treaties, the massacre of the peaceful Conestogas, forced re-education of Indian chi......
2010-10-12 15:20:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
This is a column of responses to items in previous columns.
Hank Williams, here and there
"We don't get nearer or further or closer than a country mile," Hank Williams Sr. sang in a song called "Why Don't You Love ......
2010-10-08 15:18:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
If you have lived in Lancaster County for any length of time, you have tasted a clear toy candy or two or three. Now, Nancy Fasolt, operator of the Cake and Kandy Emporium, in Lititz, has published a brief but colorfully illustrated book covering the cooking and manufacturing of clear toy......
2010-10-05 15:17:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
In the late 1920s and early '30s, before Lancaster's junior high schools organized their own bands, the Lancaster Newspapers Newsie Cadet Band flourished. Fred Kendall, who managed newspaper carriers, organized the band. Hundreds of young Lancastrians who delivered the Intelligencer Jour......
2010-10-01 01:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
You've heard of Potter's Field, the patch of ground down from Conestoga View nursing home where the county's poor and insane, infirm and executed were buried up through the middle of the 20th century. A marker for one of the men interred there, which apparently has disappeared, read, "Jus......
2010-09-28 01:58:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Kim Hostetter thought the plain anniversary sheet cake might have been more appropriately shaped like a miniature Pennsylvania Memorial. But the Columbia resident and other licensed battlefield guides who gathered Sunday to commemorate the centennial of the Pennsylvania monument at Getty......
2010-09-24 01:09:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Visitors to the Heritage Center Museum of Lancaster County often are impressed, if not astonished, to find an elaborate mural on the vaulted ceiling of the second-floor exhibit room. Philadelphia artists painted the ceiling in the 1930s, decorating it with celestial and allegorical figur......
2010-09-17 14:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
You may have noticed a story in Thursday's local news section about a Christiana-area farm that sold Monday for more than $2 million. Columbian Kerry Glenn says there's more to that story. William Padgett, a member of the infamous Gap Gang, worked on that farm at the time of the Chr......
2010-09-17 01:11:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
You may have noticed a story in Thursday's local news section about a Christiana-area farm that sold Monday for more than $2 million. Columbian Kerry Glenn says there's more to that story. William Padgett, a member of the infamous Gap Gang, worked on that farm at the time of the Chr......
2010-09-14 14:54:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerherder:
I am doing some research on cowboy cooks.
Apparently they were the highest paid guys on the range, worked hard and even took their sourdough starter to bed with them to keep it warm.
I am wondering if we had cow......
2010-09-10 14:57:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
One-hundred-and-fifty-nine years ago on Saturday, a number of Lancaster County residents killed a Maryland slaveholder who had come north to retrieve his property. The Christiana Resistance, or Christiana Riot, occurred in a county whose residents had mixed opinions about blacks and, to ......
2010-09-07 15:06:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Carl Smith, a member of Ludwig United Methodist in Bainbridge, says no one knows how the church got its name. "Local records indicate that the name 'Ludwig' was first used in 1896 when the church was reopened after a fire," Smith writes. "However, there is nothing in the church records as......
2010-09-03 11:03:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Henry K. Fisher documents a horrendous accident near his house in the August edition of The Diary, a monthly Amish publication. "In the midnight hours of July 8th two teenage boys went speeding east past our lane with a roar and a whoosh," he writes from the Bird-in-Hand area. "They......
2010-08-31 11:07:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Joe Flory's doctor's office scheduled him for an appointment Thursday morning. At first, he said he couldn't make it. "That's a holiday for me," he explains. Flory actually will go see his doctor Thursday, but it's still a special day for him and thousands of other Americans: Japan f......
2010-08-27 05:02:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
You have to wonder what those Chinese assembly-line laborers were thinking as they created 1,500 polyresin bobbleheads of James Buchanan.Were they thinking, "Why are we manufacturing figurines of one of America's worst leaders?''Or were they thinking, "How many......
2010-08-24 05:09:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
When Franklin & Marshall students return to campus next week, they will find sculpted images of the men for whom their college is named united for the first time. The sculptures of Ben Franklin and John Marshall had been separated for 14 years. This summer they got together. Col......
2010-08-20 05:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
If you google "Lancaster County Prison," the first listing you get will be for Lancaster County's very own secure penal facility. But shortly thereafter you will find the site of a Queens, N.Y., country band named "Lancaster County Prison." The group plays banjos with bagpipes and ot......
2010-08-13 14:47:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Reaves Goehring Jr., a retired Columbia High School history teacher, wonders how Manor Township's Anchor Road got its name. The road runs to the Susquehanna River, he says, but "there are no boats along there that would have needed an anchor." Reading C.A. Wesleger's book, "The Delawa......
2010-08-06 14:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancaster County hosts what once undoubtedly was Pennsylvania's largest sycamore tree. Even in its current state of ruin, the American Sycamore in East Hempfield Township's Old Sycamore Industrial Park is an exceptional tree. Joseph Illick called it "Pennsylvania's ......
2010-08-03 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
A freshly painted sign along Route 322 in Elizabeth Township has been turning heads. It's on the side of a barn. It reads: "Chew Mail Pouch Tobacco." There was a time, not so long ago, when such signs were fairly common in Lancaster County and throughout the United States. Now ......
2010-07-30 20:59:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Numismatists will converge on Lancaster Aug. 19 to celebrate the release of the James Buchanan Presidential Dollar at Wheatland, the 15th president's Lancaster home on Marietta Avenue. Hundreds of enthusiastic coin collectors are expected to purchase dollar coins and more costly colle......
2010-07-27 09:03:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Photographs of a couple who ran one of Lancaster County's 19th-century Underground Railroad stations have returned to where they originated. Thomas and Mary Hobson Whitson ran a station in southern Lancaster County from 1841 on. Their home still stands in Bart Township. Recently, ou......
2010-07-23 00:01:00
JACK BRUBAKER
John Hofmeister's new book, "Why We Hate the Oil Companies," is billed as "straight talk from an energy insider." That it is. Hofmeister, former president of Shell Oil and founder of Citizens for Affordable Energy, claims that just about everyone has mismanaged the en......
2010-07-20 08:29:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dr. Scribblerbury has received intriguing responses to a June 29 item about most husbands being buried on the right side of their wives in the East Petersburg Mennonite Cemetery. (No one has yet pointed out that many men have ample reasons to look for any way to get on the right side of t......
2010-07-16 11:02:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The mounted Trigger auctioned for a surprising $266,500 at Christie's in New York Wednesday never touched hoof in Lancaster County. But his mother did. So says Dr. Stephen Miller, a Lancaster dentist who spends much of his non-drilling life studying Roy Rogers and his horse, Tri......
2010-07-13 11:21:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
One of the world's great bibliographers spent time in Lancaster. Kathleen Spencer, retired college librarian at Franklin & Marshall, has discovered this fact by way of a librarian friend who happened upon a name in a local historical article. "A Class of Their Own: The ......
2010-07-09 11:29:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Twenty-five years ago today, Steve Benson killed his mother and brother and nearly killed his sister by blowing up their car in Naples, Fla. Peggie Miller, of Lancaster Township, wonders where Benson is spending this anniversary. She knows he is in a Florida prison, serving two conse......
2010-07-06 14:37:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblersteeple:My son and I took a Lancaster Walking Tour. The guide mentioned that the 195-foot steeple of Holy Trinity Lutheran Church was completed and dedicated in 1794, at which time the building became the second-tallest in North America, second onl......
2010-07-02 08:02:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
John Fulton Reynolds died on the battlefield at Gettysburg on July 1, 1863. That's as much as many people know about the general, who grew up in Lancaster and made the Army his career. Arlene Harris thinks that's a shame. "He set the stage for the victory of Gettysburg at the ......
2010-06-29 03:24:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerbury:
Recently I visited the East Petersburg Mennonite Church Cemetery and noticed that men are buried on the right and the women to their left. That's contrary to other cemeteries I'm familiar with where there is no established ......
2010-06-18 06:04:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The Barley Family Reunion began as a birthday party for Martin Barley nearly nine decades ago in Manor Township. That birthday-party-turned-reunion has evolved into a Father's Day event that draws as many as 160 people, all of them descendants of Martin Barley. "It began sometime i......
2010-06-11 09:49:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
When a team of biologists recently announced that they had found DNA evidence proving that humans and Neanderthals once mated and produced offspring, Karl Moyer thought of a more recent and local relationship. "Lancaster church folks have a curious, if slightly distant, identificati......
2010-06-08 10:22:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerdough:I am trying to get some info on the doughboy statue that stands in front of Stahr Armory. Do you know when it was put there and by whom? Is this one of a kind or are there others?
Eileen Gregg
......
2010-06-04 14:37:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Monday night's deluge provides an opportunity to mention some big water in the city a century ago. Water Street, as many readers know, is so named because a stream formerly followed its course to the Conestoga River. Lancastrians first called the stream Prison Run because it flo......
2010-06-01 01:03:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Some historians have determinedly linked the mid-18th-century rampage of the Paxton Boys to the American Revolution. One of the first linkers was Dauphin County historian and physician William Henry Egle. Writing in the late 19th century, he praised the Paxton Boys as early rebels demand......
2010-05-28 01:05:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Thirty-six seniors are scheduled to graduate from Linden Hall this morning. Twenty are Chinese. How did that happen? "We've had great success in China," explains Linden Hall headmaster Vincent Stumpo. "The word has just spread around China that Linden Hall is the......
2010-05-25 09:11:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
There's bad news and good news about the Route 322 mile marker near Blue Ball that the Scribbler mentioned in the April 30 column. At that time, the marker was lying by the roadside. It had been disturbed when the highway was resurfaced last summer. But now the marker is gone. That'......
2010-05-21 01:16:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
You may have noticed a cluster of older gentlemen wearing black Derbies gathered on the front lawn of the Lancaster County Historical Society on the afternoon of May 13. They were solemnly celebrating the 25th anniversary of the deadly Philadelphia Police helicopter bombing of the headqu......
2010-05-18 10:55:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The inscription on Dan Esh's market apron is not something you see every day. It reads "Hump Daudy." "Hump" is Esh's Amish nickname. It distinguishes him from dozens of other Dan Eshes. "Daudy" means grandfather in Pennsylvania German. Esh has 21 grandchildren. Three years ago, ......
2010-05-14 10:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Man of generous spirit inspires weekly acts of kindness Gerald S. Lestz is remembered as much for his kindness toward humanity as for his leadership in Lancaster's cultural community. And he is being recognized for that kindness in kind. Phyllis Morgan Rupert honors Lestz by g......
2010-05-07 11:00:00
JACK BRUBAKER, Staff
Here's an oddity from the latest Fisher Book, published last autumn. The Fisher Book is the most complete genealogical record of the Old Order Amish. On Jan. 10, 1946, Samuel B. Lapp Sr., of Leacock Township, was born. On Jan. 10, 1976, thirty years later, to the day, Samuel Sr. and......
2010-04-30 11:03:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
In their ongoing efforts to return Lancaster's east end park to its former glory, the Friends of Reservoir Park have restored one of the park's original glider swings. The swing has been installed on the Orange Street side of the park and will be available for rides during Reservoir Park......
2010-04-23 11:41:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Two Lancaster County natives who achieved national fame have died in recent weeks. David G. Simons guided a helium balloon 19 miles into the air in 1957. Robert J. Myers helped design the Social Security system in 1934. In August 1957, Simons soared higher than any human being had e......
2010-04-20 11:44:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Before the big dams ponded the lower Susquehanna River, the water was relatively shallow, filled with rocks, and wild and dangerous when the water began to rush. In other words, it was a natural river. You can see a number of fascinating photographs of the undammed Susquehanna in t......
2010-04-16 14:31:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
When Janet Bastendorf was three years old and filled with good cheer, she went to the circus to see her great uncle, who happened to be the great cinema cowboy Tom Mix. Mix talked one of the circus vendors into giving the young Bastendorf all of his helium balloons. The balloons lifted t......
2010-04-13 14:34:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Are you smarter than a fifth grader in the School District of Lancaster? For most Lancastrians, this is merely a rhetorical question. But a few unfortunate adults soon will have a very specific answer. On the last day of this cruelest month, Mayor Rick Gray, former U.S. Rep.......
2010-04-09 00:01:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Those who have read "Half the Sky" or watched "Half the Sky Live," a film inspired by the book, know that the abuse of women is disturbingly pervasive in this world. But even they may be shocked by an article in the April 10 issue of Ladies' Home Journal. The story do......
2010-04-02 14:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
To spoof someone ordinarily involves playing a prank, usually in good humor. The Scribbler occasionally spoofs his readers by making up a little historical tale before telling the actual story. Some people may find such spoofing silly, or even annoying, but it's harmless. ......
2010-03-26 06:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblertaster:
What's the oldest restaurant in Lancaster City? The Stockyard Inn was here in 1948 when I moved to town. Are any restaurants older?
Diane Tighe
Lancaster...
2010-03-23 12:37:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancaster County's final flakes of unplowed snow have gone to greet the Great Snow Man in the sky. For the past week, Safe Harbor Water Power Corp. employee Dwight Brenner has been monitoring a sizable patch of snow in a gully off Observation Road. Unseasonably high temperatures ov......
2010-03-16 07:50:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Well, Dr. Scribblerstinky has opened another can of worms! Last Tuesday's column about the pungent smell wafting in the vicinity of Brubaker Run and Running Pump Road in East Hempfield Township has drawn multiple responses. There is no consensus on what the smell is, but there i......
2010-03-09 06:09:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerstinky:
For several months I have noticed a very pungent odor which seems to be concentrated at low-level areas on both Good Drive and Running Pump Road in East Hempfield Township. I'm not sure if it is coming from the creek which ru......
2010-03-05 06:16:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Following February's 37th and final snowstorm, Immo Sulyok hung out a roof shingle an artist painted for him many years ago. A huge hat on a snowman's head advertises "Snow Flakes for Sale." "It's my whimsical way of helping create a more positive attitude to being constrained to co......
2010-03-02 06:18:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Thousands of genealogists know Lancaster County as the first or second stop for the European ancestors of millions of American immigrants.Comedian Stephen Colbert now knows Lancaster County as the home of his sixth great-grandfather.If you were watching the "Faces of America''......
2010-02-26 06:25:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblergold:
Are Olympic medals really made of gold, silver and bronze? If they are, they would really be expensive to make these days.
Don Martin
Lititz
Dear Don:...
2010-02-23 14:38:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Stephen Smith, one of the richest black men in America before the Civil War, lived an exemplary life in Columbia and Philadelphia. His slavery-to-riches life is exceptional for the time. So is his portrait. Smith's and his wife's portraits are in the collection of the ......
2010-02-16 09:31:00
Jack Brubaker, The Scribbler
A number of readers have added old wives tales to the Feb. 2 list of Allte Weiba Glauben. When you take off your shoes, set them on the floor as you wore them, offers La Verne Brown Hyman, of Akron. Put the left shoe on the left and the right shoe on the right. Otherwise, the baby won't ......
2010-02-12 09:34:00
Jack Brubaker, The Scribbler
Several weeks ago, this column discussed the famed Cattell family — the psychologists James McKeen Cattell and his daughter Psyche Cattell — and their associations with Lancaster. The Scribbler asked for further information about Science Press and the Cattell Press to pass al......
2010-02-09 06:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Thanks to many knowledgeable informants, Dr. Scribbleranswers can provide answers to questions posed in the Jan. 26 column. A nightclub called Greenshay The nightclub on the Columbia Pike near Mountville that became Fillings Cleaners was ei......
2010-02-05 11:33:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerhog:
What sex is Octoraro Orphie? Some people say it's male. Some people say it's androgynous. But I had an Aunt Orpha and so I always thought Orphie was a female.
Dan Marschka
......
2010-02-02 13:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
So, at last, it is Grundsau Tag — the only day of the year on which anyone cares about whistlepig shadows. This also is the first day of En Friehyaahr fer die Mudderschprooch, a new festival sponsored by the German-Pennsylvanian Association. En Friehyaahr fer die Mudderschproo......
2010-01-29 12:09:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
"It was a Wednesday. I had just finished my kazoo lesson at the Pennsylvania Academy of Music and was having trouble mastering Sousa's 'Rhapsody in Plaid.'" So begins the winning entry in the second annual Lancaster Liars Contest, sponsored by this column and Pinocchio of Tuscany. ......
2010-01-26 12:11:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerflood: What was the name of the covered bridge that crossed Little Chiques Creek on Drager Road? The bridge was washed downstream and smashed into the Route 23 bridge approximately 100 yards away during the flood of Agnes in June 1972....
2010-01-22 12:16:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
James McKeen Cattell, one of America's preeminent psychologists, spent his last few years — from about 1940 to 1944 — in Lancaster His daughter, Psyche Cattell, also a psychologist and a pioneer in child education, ran the famed Cattell School here from 1941 to 1974.......
2010-01-19 12:18:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Bob Horst, winner of last January's first Lancaster Liars Contest, wonders, as this January staggers toward an end, whether there will be a repeat. "Lie or truth?" he asks. "Has LNP downsizing eliminated the Liars Contest for 2010?" The truth is, Bob, you have just initiated the se......
2010-01-15 12:15:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancaster's Robert Fulton plays a bit part in Dan Brown's blockbuster, "The Lost Symbol." Reading the thriller last week, the Intell/New Era's Ad Crable was struck by a detailed description of The Apotheosis of Washington, the fresco that covers the conopy of the Ca......
2010-01-12 14:40:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
The U.S. Census Bureau defines Americans who spend more than 180 minutes a day commuting to and from work as "extreme commuters." Since 1990, the number of extreme commuters has nearly doubled to 3.5 million. We don't know how many of these commuters live in Lancaster Co......
2010-01-08 14:43:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerkraut:
Some of us were talking about why we eat sauerkraut and pork for New Year's. I can see why they used sauerkraut in the old days, because that was a preserved vegetable. But one man said they used pork because hogs root forward an......
2010-01-01 07:56:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Was early Lancaster infested with reptiles, savages? The talk of Lancaster a century ago was the first Mummers' Parade, staged Dec. 31, 1909, in severely cold weather on snow-covered streets. "People shivered, but they braved the cold, nevertheless, and from early evening until midnig......
2009-12-22 08:01:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerpedia:
It took me a while to track down Peter Gaillard's patent for the first horse-drawn mower in 1812, so I'm sorry if I missed your deadline (Dec. 18 column). What I was able to find out is that this was among the patents destroy......
2009-12-18 08:08:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerpedia:
A calendar from the December 2009 issue of the engineering publication, The Institute &tstr; IEEE, shows Dec. 4, 1812, as the patent date for an invention by Peter Gaillard of Lancaster. Pa. I suspect this was the first patent......
2009-12-15 12:45:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Gov. Ed Rendell wants to add table games at the state's casinos to help offset a projected deficit in this year's tax collections of more than $200 million. Lancaster's revenues are projected to fall short next year by over $5 million, but the city would never think of using gambling revenu......
2009-12-11 06:28:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerwhitewash:
I read your explanation for green shutters on the second floor and white on the first floor (Scribbler, Nov. 27). The explanation I was told years ago by a Lancaster tour guide was much simpler. The first-floor......
2009-12-08 14:31:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Alison Mallin, collections registrar at the North Museum, carried some of the museum's 122,000 archaeological objects to a talk at Lancaster County's Historical Society Friday afternoon. She did not bring a bag filled with the bones of a man who died in Lancaster in the 18th century......
2009-12-01 14:32:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Every Lancastrian knows about Robert Fulton, the native son who operated the first successful steamboat. But how about Michael Cryder, designer of one of the first successful Susquehanna River arks? Cryder, a German miller from Lancaster County, moved his family to what is today Hunti......
2009-11-27 14:55:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Dear Dr. Scribblerimmy:
TV's Emmy Awards were presented a couple of months ago. The Emmy was named after the "image orthicon tube" manufactured at the RCA Lancaster plant. There was an Emmy awarded to the plant for the 4 1/2-foot version of ......
2009-11-17 08:13:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Lancaster County each year raises just over 100,000 acres of corn for grain, more than any other county in the state. But corn takes second place to a crop you might not expect. It's something you can't salt and butter and crunch on row by row. Unless, maybe, you're a shee......
2009-11-13 08:12:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Mark Malkoff, a Hershey-born comedy writer and filmmaker, has spent the last month driving around the country hitting up mayors for keys to their cities. He is six shy of his 100-key goal. Malkoff received one of his first keys here in Lancaster from Mayor Rick Gray. But he didn't......
2009-11-10 08:52:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Three decades ago Wednesday — Veterans Day — Lancaster's Vietnam veterans installed a bronze plaque memorializing all Vietnam veterans on the Soldiers and Sailors monument in Penn Square. Gary Levinson, one of the original members of the Vietnam Era Veterans Association that......
2009-11-06 13:48:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
Marlin Groft, a Marine rifleman, and Francis Miller, a B-17 gunner, had radically different experiences in World War II. Groft fought his way through several horrendous battles with the Japanese. Miller was captured, imprisoned and underfed by Germans until the end of the war. These L......
2009-11-03 15:07:00
JACK BRUBAKER, The Scribbler
In the summer of 1905, when cars were uncommon and roads were rough, Thomas Edison took an automobile tour of central Pennsylvania. In Lancaster, he stayed overnight at the Stevens House. In Harrisburg, he blasted road conditions. "You have the finest farms and the worst ro......
