...all photos by Elaine A. Russell.
I slept late again today. Between the drive, the time change, and still being in a Lupus flare... my body is just tapped. So too... are my emotions. It's an odd thing... being in my parent's house with them not here. This is not the home I grew up in though.
Between birth and about 4yrs old... I lived in the town of Bradford PA. My mother's sister; and her family, still live there as well. When I was 4; my family moved to Coudersport. We lived in a fairly old farm style house on a hill. We had a double lot of land, right next to the woods... and the woods was my playground. Trees were my friends.
When I was a little over 13, we moved to live beside my grandparents in a double-wide trailer. It was more in the middle of town.... but about as far from idyllic as you could get. Up until I went to college at age 19 ( I worked for a year to save up tuition money)... it was a living hell. The bright spot being when I went to Germany as an exchange student in 1981.
My parents continued to live in that trailer for another 10yrs or so ( my grandparents now being gone)... and then they bought the house they live in now. It is still right in town... but at least does not hold any of the bad memories that the other house did. In an ironic twist of fate... the entire neighborhood where I had spent my teen years is now under about 10 layers of asphalt.... and it is now a massive parking lot... formerly owned by Adelphia Communications.
This "new" house is pretty normal I guess. It is a one story modular home with a good sized deck out front, and a fairly good sized patio in theback. It backs up to the channel... where the mighty Alleghany river runs through the center of the town. Every wall in this house is off-white. .. save the weird flowered blue wallpaper in the bathroom. The ceilings have some sort of sparkle to them, which I can only assume is glitter that was mixed in with the ceiling paint. All the carpets are beige. All the furniture is shades of brown. It is immaculate. My mother is more than a little OCD... so, as you can imagine.... everything has a place... and is in it.
It is not the kind of home I would choose to live in; nor my lifestyle at all.... but it suits my parents just fine... and they are happy here.
The town has had it's ups and downs. Having years when John Rigas had Adelphia Communications here (Link: Adephia)... it was majorly booming... home were restored... parks built...businesses started and flourished. Since the company's demise (or at least most of it) in 2002... Coudersport has gone back to a sleepy little town.... but with expensive homes and huge buildings, now mostly empty. It's rather odd. Some townsfolk prefer it this way... others miss the hustle and bustle of a slightly bigger town.
As for me... either way; it's still my hometown.
To see more about Coudersport: link