Peggie Groves, my neighbor and best childhood friend.

Swinging on monkey vines in the woods at the end of the street. Damming up the little spring fed stream then watching the destruction as we let go the waters of our tiny lake.  Hours and hours playing our new Monopoly game on the dining room table. I stepped back in time into the today. I spent the day with my childhood friend Peggie Groves who recently moved to Ellenton, Florida.

Once I went away to college I did not often go back to Crucible, Pennsylvania where I grew up. Last year I went to the 50th anniversary of my graduating from Carmichaels Area High School. I realized then how much I had forgotten in the last 50 years. I tried to waken my memory by writing about the things I did remember. I talked with my siblings. I got out taped recordings of interviews with siblings who have, to use the Southern expression, "passed on." The more I look back, the more I remember.

Talking with Peggie today I heard again the music of the names of the families who lived in Crucible: Descutner, Patterson, Miller, Grimes, Sergiovani, Kawalski. So many of the names ended with ski that I felt like my plain ole Huntley name was boring, unimportant. My favorite Italian was the grammar school bus driver, Romeo Palone who expected a kiss on his cheek as we boarded the bus each morning. Nothing like that is possible today, but he was wonderful and made us all safe. Those were the good ole days when a child could ride the school bus and not worry about being beaten up or threatened with a knife.

I love the sounds of those names. Serbian, Italian, Irish, Polish, Slovakian, Dutch. These men came to work in the coal mines. A good day's wages for a good day's work. It was a tiny town, but its diversity of ethnic groups was amazing. There was unity of purpose in the workday, but there was also separation. The company built houses for workers to rent called The Patch and each nationality had its own section. The groups hung on to their native language, but they learned English, too. The influence of many cultures on the area is amazing. Germans in Pittsburgh gave us Heinz catsup and dill pickles. Wives shared recipes hullopkis (cabbage rolls), nut rolls, and all kinds of ways to make jello. Most of the wives made bread at home without the aid of a bread machine. Irish soda bread, yeast bread, biscuits, and for breakfast, buckwheat pancakes dripping with butter and sweet syrup.

I've probably spelled heaps of things wrong in this post. I don't remember how to spell all those lovely immigrant names, but I love what they brought to my little coal mining town of Crucible, Pennsylvania.