My dad’s parents came to this country from Poland. He was born in the little cluster of properties outside Windber known as Ashtola.
He used to quiz us kids: “Do you know the difference between New Ashtola and Old Ashtola?” We’d scratch our heads and pretend not to know. Then he’d say, with great amusement, “About half a mile.”
At some point, my dad’s dad (Gaga) moved the family to a farm between Jerome and Boswell, just off Route 601.
When I was a kid, that was my grandparents’ farm.
Everyone should have a grandparents’ farm to go to when they’re growing up. Some of my best lessons were learned there.
And that’s how we always referred to it – going to our grandparents’ farm. And we went there a lot!
We lived in Johnstown, so we drove out Somerset Pike to Thomas Mills, took a left to the top of the hill, a right at the dairy and a left onto the road marked at the turn for Hopewell United Methodist Church.
I know every inch of that road more intimately than any other place in America. We’d ride in my dad’s Chevy pickup to the farm to work on the land – cutting brush, picking rocks, mowing fields, stringing barbed-wire fence and baling hay.
On Sundays, we’d cook on a huge grill we had built out of rocks picked from the fields.
The burgers and steaks were sometimes from the cows we had raised.
We’d go to the bathroom in the outhouse in the woods – an outhouse with a crescent moon on the door that Uncle Cal had built. We’d ride minibikes on the trails we had cut through the woods, and we’d climb on the bales of hay that we’d put in the barn that week.
In short, we would enjoy the fruits of our labor.
Going south on Somerset Pike, halfway between Fender Lane and Thomas Mills, on the right-hand side of the road is an old sign. It’s been there as long as I can remember. I just saw it the other day.
It has never been rebuilt or repainted, to the best of my knowledge. Now it is outlined in overgrowth that obstructs its borders, making its message appear to be floating in the underbrush.
That sign reads, “Jesus said, I am the way, the truth and the life.”
It reminds me of my grandparents, the farm and riding with my dad in his Chevy pickup.
I love that old sign.
Andy Lasky and his wife, Katie, own and operate City View Bar & Grill and Westwood Plaza Theatre, both in Westmont. You can reach him through The Tribune-Democrat at tribdem@tribdem.com.
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ANDY LASKY | That old sign takes me back
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