Hitchhiking to Nanty Glo


By Jon Kennedy

During my 15th year I hitchhiked to Nanty Glo from the intersection of Red Mill Road and what is now Route 271 at least 300 times. I was an usher at the Capitol Theater part of that year, but when that ended I still kept going to Nanty Glo in order, as I told my Mom, to gather material for my teen column, but mostly to hang out with my new buddies like John Golias whom I met in the lobby of the Capitol when he came out after seeing a movie, and started talking. Also on one of those trips I met Bill Martin in Mitchells' Restaurant atop the hill on Lloyd Street, and he and his mother Kitty became my close friends and I spent a lot of time at their place. Bill had once been on a track to become a priest and I might have been on a pre-ministry track, so we had a lot in common despite the age difference. He was already out of high school and I was just a sophomore.


Shortly after getting my first car early in my sixteenth year I met Dick Millward and his "gang," and could be found most evenings from then until Dick graduated from Saint Francis College and moved to California, at Sparky's Garage, which Dick worked at, evenings, for his dad all through college. The gang regulars consisted of Dick and John Golias, Sam and Dave Campbell, Louis Scansarolli, and later Stewart Wertz, and myself. Others like Mike Shutak dropped in and out once in a while. Of course there were girls there frequently, too, but I won't mention any of their names, not that there was anything dishonorable but we've all been married since and none of us to any of them.

Those days are long gone, of course, but one of the reasons this Virtual Nanty Glo | Virtual Blacklick Valley exists is to enable any of us who ever lived and worked and played in the Valley to hitchhike to Nanty Glo any time we want. In the '50's there would be one or more hitchhikers at the corner of Chestnut and Second Street (see photo) constantly it seemed, and as often as anyone else, I was one of them. I haven't seen many hitchers there on recent visits; virtually none, in fact. Maybe it's gotten dangerous to hitchhike even there; maybe there's just no reason to hitchhike to Belsano, Twin Rocks, or Vintondale these days.
Much of cyber-reality is no reality at all, of course. But it's a great place to reconnect with old acquaintances and make new ones. In fact, since I became a regular hitchhiker on the Internet four years ago, I've met, through email, more people that I have more in common with than I had in all my previous years together. So, as Microsoft asks, "Where do you want to go today?" One place I want to visit again is Nanty Glo.

PHOTO: Nanty Glo's long-famous 'hitchhiker's
corner, at Fred Edwards' Store.

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© Jon Kennedy 1998