HERE
and
THERE
HERE
and
THERE
Reading Pennsylvania’s Working Landscapes
BILL CONLOGUE
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS
UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA
Chapter 2 was first published as “Merwin and Mining,” in Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 18.3 (Summer 2011): 594–614. Reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press. Part of chapter 5 first appeared as “Other Places,” in Black Earth and the Ivory Tower, editedby Z. M. Jack (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2005), 282–88. Reprinted by permission of University of South Carolina Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Conlogue, William, author.
Here and there : reading Pennsylvania’s working landscapes / Bill Conlogue.
p. cm
Summary: “A collection of essays exploring the social, economic, and environmental elements of the anthracite coal region of northeastern Pennsylvania”—Provided by publisher.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-271-06080-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Pennsylvania—Social conditions—History.
2. Anthracite coal mines and mining—Environmental aspects—Pennsylvania—History.
3. Anthracite coal mines and mining—Social aspects—Pennsylvania—History.
4. Pennsylvania—Economic conditions—History.
5. Land use—Pennsylvania—History.
6. Coal mines and mining in literature.
7. Conlogue, William.
I. Title.
F149.C765 2013
974.8—dc23
2013018986
Copyright © 2013 The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802–1003
The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.
This book is printed on paper that contains 30% post-consumer waste.
Frontispiece: Marvine colliery, 1922. Courtesy of the Lackawanna Historical Society.
For Bridget, who knows
here and there adv (14c) 1 : in one place and another 2 : from time to time
... our season: Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day.
As far as we knew them, we followed the formal rules of softball, but in a casual way, given our amateur status and the topography of the field, which was a side hill cut by a stony driveway, two ditches, a barbed wire fence, the house, and three barns. Each game surprised us with lessons in chance, improvisation, and judgment.
Sure of snagging a grounder, you could get a rude awakening when the ball popped up and smacked your chin. Catching a fly meant accounting for the ball’s trajectory and the height of its arc, but also the slope of the ground and the location of holes, pipes, and posts. Aunts and uncles, cousins and kids watched from the porch along third-base line, ribbing batters and pitchers, laughing at infield errors, and applauding spectacular plays, which often enough meant someone snaring a fly ball against the gas tanks in left field, stopping a pinball up the driveway, or beelining a strike from barn to home.
All the littlest kids batted at least once, each hitting a home run, of course, though it required repeated directions and dramatically dropped balls to get them around the bases. For the rest of us, making it home meant remembering that reaching second, uphill and from grass to gravel, required an instinctive understanding of different types of ground; that balls knocked into the pasture sometimes disappeared into wet spots, which required both teams to double as a search team; and that behind home plate stood a stone wall.
So that the cows could be milked, the first innings ended just before five; some of us tossed aside mitts and bats to pick up shovels and pails. Others ate, drank, talked.
The rest of the game ended in twilight, the ball a moth...
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