"Home"

 

 

This is the edge of town.  What town?  Bakers Summit, deep in the mountains of southern Pennsylvania.  My grandfather and his brother left this area when they were young men.  To my knowledge they never came back.  My grandfather went to Kansas first to work as a hired man.  Then he moved to central Illinois, met my grandmother and settled down, working as a carpenter and then in the local foundry.  His brother married a local girl also and farmed the rich, fertile Illinois land. 
You may wonder why I made a detour in my trip back from the East coast a few days ago....a short distance to visit a place I had never seen before.
My great-grandfather was Jeremiah Myers.  He was married to Catherine Holsinger.  I know very little about them, only what my dad told me and what I have found in searching the records in that area.
A few years ago I came very close to making a visit to Bakers Summit.  We were  traveling the same road...back to Missouri.  But I looked at the busy interstate ahead of me, saw the tract houses that had been built there and thought that I couldn't bear to see my grandfather's hometown made over into a suburb of Altoona, or worse yet, fallen down and shabby, full of empty stores and windows.  A ghost town..memories crowding the lanes and corners where my ancestors lived and died.
We drove through the little town....it is just one street with houses and an old school, several places that could have been stores.  I was so happy to see new paint, no broken windows, flowers in roadside gardens, a peaceful scene set in an idyllic place.
Down a country road I had Andy pull over and park.  Wonders of wonders I saw the sign on the church.  Holsinger Church of the Brethren.  The door was open and I could hear the congregation singing....For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies....my heart sang right along with them.  This was my family's home church.  I walked through the graveyard but I knew I wouldn't find my people here.  There were Myers and Holsingers.  Probably distant cousins.  My great-grandparents are buried somewhere out in the country...away from the little village.  But I walked among the stones and read the faded names...each one probably knew my family, my grandfather, his brother.  I wonder, did they ever wonder what happened to them?
I may never get a chance to  visit this place again.  But I am glad that I took the time to stop just this once.
Home is home.  And where you are from still draws you back.  Connecting with family places and scenes makes life seem right somehow. 
With a smile on my face and joy in my heart, I climbed into the car, ready to go on now that I had visited 'home'.