gettin old and thinking back

[davest]

if anyone is in the area of Reading PA, I grew up there and about and lately have been thinking about the places I walked, saw, worked at and enjoyed during the first 20 years of my life. Those years included the 50s & 60s but more to the point.

In the late 50s there was a thing called the Duryea Drive Hillclimb where drivers from the SCCA competed in a race to the top. Between the years of 1960 to 1972 I'd go and watch. The sides of the road were jammed with concessionaires




and observers from top to bottom. There has to be some relics/coins/etc along that area. I realize the rivers got beat in the hurricane of 72 but I don't think it affected the mountain sides.

Anywy, Just tossing that out there cause I'm never going back to my old school (thank you SteelyDan)

I have other places only a kid would know about them being there back in the 50s. I'll try to work up some, like the sides of the back roads at the airport. That was an even larger race with even larger crowds.,

 

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[Mackaydon]

I hear you. With my pre-teen friends, from a large rock we could play 'King of the Hill" on, we would bang out garnets from that rock and put them in Mason jars. Wonder if that rock is still there. Current aerials show the area is still wooded. That was in New York; I'm now in Ca.
Don...

 

[davest]

nudder one. As I said, was born and raised in and around Reading PA but my folks bought a house at the southend of the Reading Airport runway in 1951 in a development named Greenfields. The Schuylkill river and the Tulpehocken Creek were the east/west boundaries with the Berkshire Country Club and the Airport being our north/south lines.
Anyway.
If you leave Reading headed north on 183, you'll pass thru Glenside before entering Greenfields. A view of Google Sattelite will show Barlow Ave, turn right there,, go to Cullum Drive. Where Cullum Drive turns into Frontier Avenue (that avenue did not exist at my time) and Frontier makes a right turn, there's a patch of still existent woods that had a stable dating to the early 1800s or maybe even the very late 1780s. I found a damascus barrel double gauge shotgun there about 60 years ago. Gaud only knows what is still in and around the woods. When I was living in the area no one really laid claim to the section of land.I don't know what it's gone thru since then.

Sheesh, 65 years ago almost makes me feel like a relic.

I will be posting school bus stop locations as I remember them.

 

[caretaker]

I have places like that in my memory too, back in the 50's and 60's, but I moved away and when I go back, I don't have the time or places have changed so much, wished time slowed down a little when you retired

 

[davest]

Swimming pools. My folks belonged to the Wodenshiere Country Club that no longer exists and the land is part of a church. If anyone can get a permission to detect there the address is 411 Oak Grove Drive off of route 183 in Greenfields.

Google does not show the pool but the area behind the existing church was used for picnics, and movies with concessions, and just a place to hang out after an exhausting day of swimming. It was built and used as far as i can recall from 1960 to 2008. It's at least 20 acres mown grass.

 

[pulltabfelix]

that is a good idea. Anyone else that does not live in an area any more or not going to hunt an area, please share with others on this forum I know we tend to keep our current hunting sites pretty private for obvious reasons. But ones we know about and will not hunt again, no reason not to share.

A guy on the forum living now in Ohio told me about several Civil War sites I should hunt that were located on public land.

 

[davest]

the places I'll list could be called "still live". Ya don't know it but with the pace of modern development 60 years ago is a long time. It ain't the longest, but think....people hunt for glass bottles.....they were common place in 1960, Silver no comment needed.

I won't post a location that I didn't walk to, into, and around.