Robert Pence

I wish I could join you, but I must RSVP my regrets. Once again, I must choose being responsible over having a life. Perhaps by the time warm weather returns next Spring/Summer, I will have been absolved of some of my duties and can start having spur-of-the-moment fun. I hope that with the return of warm weather next Spring/Summer the tradition of forum meets can resume; I always enjoyed meeting other forumers and seeing places that I might have missed if touring on my own. I have fond memories of MayDay's all-encompassing and informative downtown Cleveland tours and ColDay's superb Cincinnati and Dayton walking excursions and 2006 Columbus Death March.

It's better to have birds in your attic than to have bats in the belfry. :-D

Thanks for sharing these. Philadelphia must be one of America's most photogenic cities; forumers have posted many photo sets from there. Each photographer has a different take on the city, and they all turn out interesting. As a self-professed rail transit geek, I appreciate your coverage of that aspect of urban life in America's Northeast.

I posted photos from my 2006 visit to Brookville in 2006, but they must have gone to post heaven (or hell) because I couldn't find them with a search. I've appended photos from last week's visit and brought the whole thing back for your unbounded enjoyment. :-D Brookville, Pennsylvania All Photographs Copyright © 2006 - 2011 by Robert E. Pence Exit 78 on I-80 may be typically unsightly, but take time to drive a mile or two down 322/36 and check out the town. While visiting the Coolspring Power Museum's Fall Swap Meet in 2006 I spent some time looking around Historic Brookville. I'm glad I did. In 2011 I returned and went into parts of the town that I hadn't visited the last time. Both visits were encumbered with wet weather, and there's still more to see. Jefferson County Courthouse, built 1867 Elegance impeccably cared for Wonderful ornate iron work Appropriate infill If this were mine, I might be nervous about ... ... these. I guess the couple of sharp turns coming into town have already slowed them down, though. They sure do rattle windows with their engine brakes. This is steeper than it looks in the photo. I'll bet those bricks are treacherous with a light coat of snow or ice. Steps! Not quite as steep or long as some in Cincinnati or Pittsburgh, but still a pretty good climb. Vertical board-and-batten siding is one of my favorite historic architectural features. I haven't been down this street yet, but I'm out of time. I'll check it out on my next visit/ I'm back again in October, 2011 for the Fall Expo and Swap Meet at Coolspring Power Museum, and it's been cold, rainy, and windy for two days with another week of the same in the forecast. This afternoon there's a brief window of no rain and possibly a little sun. Let's pick up where we left off on the last visit and go down the hill. Here's Brookville Park, site of the 1915 Brookville Park Auditorium. It must have been impressive once. Now, it has had some industrial buildings attached and it looks like it's being used as a warehouse. A considerable inventory of steel was piled along one side. Across the street a handsomely restored nineteenth-century home now functions as a law office. Across Red Bank Creek sits downtown Brookville. The North Fork on the left and Sandy Lick Creek on the right join to form Red Bank Creek. Brookville Equipment Corporation manufactures and rebuilds railroad locomotives, streetcars and light rail vehicles, and haulage equipment used in mining and tunnelling. Their web site is concise and impressive. The Brookville Borough Complex is anchored by a gorgeous Italianate mansion and houses offices of local government and law enforcement. Roaming around the area The gable-roofed building in back with the vertical board-and-batten siding clearly is a railroad freight house, but the tracks don't go there any more. Brookville is served by the Pittsburg & Shawmut railroad, a name with a long history. An effort to decipher the role of now-defunct branch lines in the area left me completely confused. This glorious creation had a vacant appearance about it. It has suffered some unseemly modifications, but overall it's remarkably intact, at least on the exterior. That looks like an old mill building ... ... and it is. Going across the creek to look around downtown and the historic district some more. "Hey, buddy! Take my picture!" I'll bet somebody's been to the swap meet at Coolspring. Clouds are coming back and light is fading fast. I remember this house from last time. It's had a sprucing up, some masonry repair, vines removed from the porch, and a coat of paint. They removed or sided over the lattice that I liked on the bottom of the porch, but overall the property looks a lot better. This one has been fixed up, too. Last time, it was tired and dingy-looking and the yard was full of plastic playground toys. A wonderful concept. This is the only gap in the otherwise-perfect Main Street streetscape. I'll leave you to savor the chocolate-covered strawberries, while I go back to the motel to get a good night's sleep and prepare for the long drive home. If you haven't had enough, you can visit my 2006 photo set from the Coolspring Power Museum, just down Highway 36.

Wind farms already are in production in Paulding County and spilling over into Van Wert County, right up against the Indiana state line. I first saw the turbines last week, and they're significantly larger even than the ones in operation in White and and Benton Counties in western Indiana. They're rated about 1.8 megawatts each, with hubs 328 feet above the base and three blades each 148 feet long. That puts the top of the arc at 476 feet. Article at http://www.ohio.com/news/wind-turbines-rise-above-flatlands-of-western-ohio-1.239271

And here's another, from three years ago:

I'm guessing he'd think it was a hoot. Most of the guys who do that, in my experience, are good-natured. I came to feel like I was being something of a snob when I tried to ignore them. I'm sure they'd be more fun to be around than some suit in a black Benz or Beemer with the dark-tinted windows rolled up.

Possibly all the floodlighting. Lights attract insects, and spiders come for the easy buffet. I learned not to set my Coleman lantern on the ground when camping because big spiders stake out the area around it to wait for dinner.

"Hey buddy! Take my picture!" I used to ignore the guys who yelled that, but any more, I accomodate them. Maybe it'll make an interesting collection someday.

Hello from the Super 8 Motel in Brookville, PA. This place is tired but not quite beat-up. I willingly would have paid more for something better, but there aren't a lot of options here besiides the truck-plaza motels. I checked for evidence of bedbugs before I brought my stuff in, and the room appears to be OK in that respect.

Gorgeous photographs.

Yep, the Blade was certainly does deserve a ton of credit. If Seneca County were in the coverage area of another major newspaper that did not push for the renovation (including surveys and lawsuits), you may have seen a different outcome. The next county courthouse to watch is Defiance. Voters turned down an issue a couple years back to rebuild the courthouse and now the county is now enlarging the annex at the back of the property to move several departments out of courthouse. Perhaps there will be an opportunity to restore the old courthouse then, one of the altered J.C. Johnson courthouses Rob referenced. Recently I read something about construction under way at Winchester, Indiana (Randolph County) to restore the tower on the 1875 J.C. Johnson courthouse there. That one lost its tower in 1955 and was slated for demolition and replacement, but an uprising among the citizens succeeded in getting the commissioners to reverse their decision; the original will be restored, and an appropriate annex will be built on the abundant land of the square. I took photos when it was under a demolition order, and should go back and see what's going on.

For a long time I hadn't made any serious effort to conceal my orientation, just going about my life, going out in public with my boyfriend and even taking him to an off-premises company-sponsored event. My offical public coming-out was in 1981, when I was interviewed by a reporter from the Fort Wayne Joural-Gazette along with five other people in my living room on a fall Sunday afternoon. The following Sunday morning the article about living gay in Fort Wayne was the front-page, above-the-fold feature in the newspaper. On Monday morning I was apprehensive as I went to work, but only a few people, including my homophibic, racist, mysogynistic Southern Redneck boss, tried to put me on the defensive. I responded to them non-confrontationally but directly, and that put an end to it. Only one person in the office became evasive and visibly uncomfortable in my presence, a married man whom I had always suspected was a big closet queen. A plain-spoken female co-worker confided to me, "We all kind of thought so, and now we just know for sure." The overall effects of coming out formally and publicly were far more positive than negative. I received a lot of affirmation and encouragement from people from factory workers to executives for standing up, and I completely defused the efforts by my boss to get rid of me. He had come to the accounting department after I had been there several years, and I found out that soon after his arrival he had told another manager that he intended to have me out of there within six months. His homophobia was part of it, but also he resented that I knew the company's General Accounting Principles better than he did and I refused to go along with things he wanted me to do to cover for his incompetence and mistakes. After I came out, he would have had to prove that his reason for firing me was not based in homophobia, because strictly-enforced company policy forbid discrimination based on sexual orientation. Given his previous comments to people who would have stood up for me, he would have lost that battle and probably his job. Coming out enabled me to deal with homophobic people from a position of strength. The feeling was exhilarating.

A very livable-looking city, with some great vintage buildings in addition to all the later residential construction. The station building is very attractive, and everything in your photos is tidy and well kept.

Looks quite nice. The residences with garages beneath the living space always make me apprehensive, though. None of my cars ever caught fire while unattended (other than one case of arson long ago), but I know people who have had that experience. I think local building codes may prohibit that type of construction; at least, I can't think of any that I've seen around here.

I don't think there's a formal ex-pat network of former residents of Johnstown, Pennsylvania, as they seem to be widely dispersed. There's a lot of communication among them, though. A few weeks after I posted photos from Johnstown on my web site in 2006, page views shot up and I started receiving emails from across the U.S. and even a few from Europe. I think the one-day peak was about 1,200, and over the space of a couple of weeks there were a total of about 4,000. Five years later, I still receive an occasional email from someone reminiscing about their childhood years there and thanking me for sharing the photos.

Yes! Excellent photography, but be careful lest you give away a well-kept secret; Cleveland loves to party. The ethnic communities there really embrace their festivals.

Wonderful views! You were there at the perfect time, on the picture-perfect evening.

Sprucing up the courthouse made the top-storey travesty less conspicuous. I'm guessing where that was added once was a Mansard roof with a central tower. That cable-stayed bridge was the first of its type that I saw, when it was fairly new. I had stayed overnight in Steubenville in route to Lancaster, PA, and saw the bridge with its cables glistening in morning sun. Quite a sight!

Good shots. Chicago's railroad infrastructure is imposing, and the view from trains sometimes shows that once there was even more of it -- a lot more! There's evidence of old right of way and torn up or abandoned interchange track all over the place, especially in outlying areas.

I think you've relocated to Bicycle Heaven, with good bike shops and places to ride. I worked in Minneapolis for a couple of weeks fifteen years ago, and even then they were years ahead of where most of the Midwest is now. I had my bike with me and spent my off time exploring and had a great time.

Wow. Nice. I remember a dusty gravel parking lot where we boarded an assortment of mangy-looking rolling stock. Back then they still advertised steam and then had excuses every day why the steam locomotive was being repaired and would be back soon, when everyone in the know was fully aware that that steam locomotive would not run again soon, if ever, at least on that line. They've gone from a rag-tag operation whose survival was a daily miracle to a fully-professional railroad that outperforms most other tourist trains and some public and private intercity lines.

Excellent, and perfect timing. I'm going to Coolspring Power Museum (Between Brookville and Punxsutawney) this coming weekend and haven't been in Bellefonte in about fifteen years, which was before I fully recognized the photographic potential of small cities and towns. I plan to be in Pennsylvania for a few days, so maybe I'll make it back there.

My last visit there was long ago, but even then it was dirty, dark, and grimy. It wasn't always so nasty. Before it was chopped up and shared with intercity buses, some of whose customers would benefit from close supervision but don't get it from station agents, it looked like this:

Excellent photos. I love the small details you've captured.