If You Ask Me / By Martha Knight

A popular Facebook group forum given to nostalgia shows many photos of the community and surrounding area, and people view those and comment.

There are many generations and a good number of definable eras of past in the community’s history. Personal collections of photos may include tintypes, prints from plates, early film, Kodachrome, Polaroid, film cartridges, all the way to early digital photos and those from the ubiquitous gadgets.

Given the span of time covered by old photos on Port Allegany, Remember When, one would think there would be variety in the longings for “back then.” But I seem to detect a fixation on the 1960s, -70s, -80s.

Let a photo appear of a sunny day in downtown Port Allegany, with shoppers in summer attire strolling, window shopping, chatting, and you can count on a flood of posts declaring that Port Allegany used to be so wonderful, and it was great shopping here, and it was much prettier, and it’s too bad “they” haven’t taken better care of the place.

Most such comments seem to come from expats. They remember when it was like that, in those better times, and decry the changes they observe when they come back for a visit. What is wrong with us, who live here now, or who have lived here right along, that we allowed this deterioration to happen? We were left in charge; we have been bad caretakers.

We are given to understand that there is no excuse for it. Other small communities they have seen are enchanting, with busy stores and quaint shoppes, apparently prosperous in good times and bad.

What is wrong with us, that we have failed to maintain this community as a perpetual museum or park, a Williamsville or Sturbridge Village tourist attraction where people can return and step right back into how it used to be?

I tend to think of a whole lot of questions that I want to ask, in response to those querulous queries, questions I think are reasonable in response to some of the assertions by the critics. Some are rhetorical.

Why that particular period (in the photo that is under discussion at the moment)? Is it because the person commenting at the time was in a happy, carefree phase of life, and that downtown scene triggers memories of when there were better prospects or more fun for that individual?

We notice similar responses in people of a certain age, at concerts that feature music of those decades—memories of good times and friendships and romances and better health.

Another rhetorical question: What bygone era did the people of THAT time long for? When the readers of then spotted a bygone days photo in the paper, did they exclaim, “If only things were like that again!”? Did they wish back the businesses that had disappeared in a calamitous fire? Did they long for the shopping district as it had been, when the Sullivan sisters sold hats and Mr. Bernstein was the tailor, and Zwald and Pop Pfeil were the druggists, and Dr. Cromwell was the dentist, and the doggerel ran “I B Bernstein, U B Church”? It should be Johnston’s bakery, not Elliott’s? And there was an A&P store, and Cooper’s was the place for meats?

Did the people of the 1940s long for the timbering era? Would they have liked to go back to when there were still horses with riders and horses pulling buggies and wagons and mail vans?

And I wonder, when there are streetscape plans, and there are efforts to “return” a key portion of a community to the look and feel of an earlier time, how do they decide which earlier time?

From what I know of the history of this community, there is no one period that truly typifies the community. Never was it consistently Victorian. There is no one building style that bespeaks THE past represented even in the Central Commercial area. There’s a collection of styles and of eras represented there. It’s eclectic. And shouldn’t it be? Doesn’t some change happen in various parts of a community at any given time, some parts being more modern?  

Take a close look at that photo of the wonderful downtown we used to have, and notice that drainage was less available, there were parking meters, little in the way of floral décor, and no noticeable provision for those with limited mobility to traverse our sidewalks and curbs and enter businesses and offices with steps.

When we consider the age, or youth, of the sewage treatment plant, do we suppose that people in the 1960s or –70s, when they wished for a remembered better day, must have included the time when they did not have a sewer bill to pay, but just took care of their own sanitation somehow?

And remember back when garbage was picked up by a pig farmer, probably for free? ::sigh:: No garbage bills to pay. The borough had a pretty good system for a while, until some newfangled nonsense came along to make them close the open dump we used to have up Birch Run. A lot of the garbage and trash was burned. The smoke could be seen as you approached the community from the north, just this side of Eldred.

We probably all agree that we don’t want to go back to 1899 when a catastrophic fire wiped out nearly all of a square block bounded by North Main Street, Arnold Avenue, Willow Street and Maple Street. The bank and one house remained standing.

Fire chief Bert E. Roys had been asking the private water company, managed by William E. Smith, to quit shutting off part of the outflow at night to build up the supply for the following day.

So that nighttime fire found the fire company and its three or four two-wheeled hose carts struggling to maintain water pressure to reach to or above second stories. Auxiliary water supplies from American Extract and Penn Tannery burst the quickly improvised hose arrangements.

Not an era we seriously want to recreate here? I doubt any generation since then has wished that one back.

We could not recreate that downtown scene if we wanted to. And if we consider what that replication would include, we would find so many drawbacks, we wouldn’t want to.

Peace.