The Codori Barn, Gettysburg

I was in Gettysburg yesterday. (That is the awesomeness of living just 30 minutes over the mountain.) I was on limited time and was taking some old postcard redo pictures (Check back next Sunday, I'll explain) and was nearing the end of my time and remembered Barn Charm. So I stopped at the Angle and took a couple of this barn. The Angle is known as the High Point of the Confederacy, this was where the Union soldiers stopped the advance of General Picket's Charge on July 3rd, 1863. Turns out this barn is more famous than I realized. The Codori family have their own website featuring this barn. The original barn the the Confederates would have passed by on that hot July afternoon was torn down in the 1870's and this barn is a replacement. The farmhouse, though, is the original. You may actually have a picture of this barn already. It is featured on the 2011 U.S. quarter honoring Gettysburg National Park.

East End Fire Company, Tamaqua

East End Fire Company is one of five or six firehouses in Tamaqua, Schuylkill County. Not much is out there on the internets about them, they have no website to call their own. The firehouse sits at 553 East Broad Street at Columbia Street and is the last Tamaqua station before Coaldale.

Fun with the Sun/Bird on a Wire

Saturday night's sunset was pretty awesome. Sitting around a campfire. Waiting for the coals to get just right for mountain pies. And for it to get dark enough for sparklers. And trying to catch the birds with the camera as they flew by.

Daylilies I Have Grown

I have shown to you my variety of columbine early this spring. Today I share my daylilies. Some, if not most, of my lilies are of the roadside orange variety. these are what I have planted along the neighbor's garage and the far side of my house. But here and there I have others. As it turns out I have a bunch of those double orange ones. The peach beauty is planted by the shed and the red one is out front by the corner of the house. I also planted a purple one out there but I bought and planted it late so you all will see it next spring.

Light Up the Night

We enjoyed last night's fireworks from the middle school for a change. Usually we just sit up on the hill behind the house and watch Shippensburg's fireworks from 2 miles away. It was definitely better for shooting some pyrotechnic pictures but impossible to leave with any haste. Short but sweet is how you describe fireworks around here. 15 minutes tops. This sure ain't Disneyland.

Fun with Sparklers

Happy 4th of July!

I spent most of the weekend getting nothing accomplished. Cook out here, campfire and sparklers there. Too many nights in a row of seeing midnight. The hard part will be explaining to the boss tomorrow that I work a lot harder if I take a 2 o'clock nap. Hey, it's worth a try. We did burn a few sparklers this weekend. Here are some of the highlights. The stars are from last weekend and are some of the young'uns that stopped by. The rest were this past Saturday night and include my daughter, my nephew, my cousin's two boys and the head cook at the local Italian restaurant.

Coaldale Fire and EMS

I'm gonna end ThemeWeek: PA Coal County with the Fire and EMS stations in Coaldale.. The first is their current station in the 100 block of West High Street. Coaldale Volunteer Fire Company No. 1 was formed in 1906 and moved into the Borough Hall building when it was built just a year later. I found it interesting on their website's history page that they purchased a Howe motor driven pumper in 1908 but in 1916 they replaced it with a horse drawn Hahn. And then they returned to modern apparatus in 1923 with a REO chemical engine. Anyway, they built their new station in 1977 and did most of the inside work by themselves. The ladder truck on the left is retired FDNY Ladder 84. L84 runs out of OZ on Staten Island along with Engine 164. The middle building is the old firehouse located in the Borough Hall. Note that those aren't real doors, they are some sort of stucco made to look like doors. I think they also ran some units out of the side rear of the building. I can remember as a kid they would block off this section of Third Street for block parties. Last building is EMS, of course. Sorry I couldn't find any information about the Coaldale EMS. Mom and my uncle remember them running with the fire department out of Borough Hall but don't remember when they built this building down on Water Street. They have a myFace page but it doesn't give any information.