On November 6th, 2017 our neighbor and good friend Mike Froehlich joined us to share some memories.  Although Mike is far younger than most of the folks we have interviewed, it was great to get his perspective on Eldred's past.

 

Mike took us back to when he was about 6 weeks old in 1969.  His parents had just bought 10 acres of land off of Church Road (just south of Sam Smith Road, adjacent to the woods of the Frantz Schoolhouse to the east)

 

His parents were very similar to the German immigrants who came to Eldred two centuries earlier.  They too were from Germany, they too wanted a better life for their children and they too had a love for the rolling hills of Eldred.

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Mike's dad was named Horst and by trade was a house painter.  His mom was Charlotte but known to her friends as Lottie.  She was born in Munich and Horst in Bremen.

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They met here in the United States and after the birth of their 2nd son decided to move to this area.  They lived in a trailer while the foundation for their new home was poured.  Horst did much of the construction himself, with the help of friends.  Work that he couldn't do was done by Hawk Building.

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They bought another ten acres and Horst found steady work in Collins & Aikeman, a fabric company in Wind Gap.  He was a bookkeeper and kept the inventory.  On weekends, he made extra money painting houses.

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But as a young man he explored the world - signing onto ships and visiting ports around the globe.  He reckoned that he went around the world 7 times.

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I asked Mike if he was aware of the old Frantz Schoolhouse (which had already been closed for a couple of decades by the time he traveled about on his own).  He said he was aware that it was an old one-room school, but he mainly used it as a "landmark" when giving folks directions to his home.

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He also said that many streets lacked street names signs and that folks referred to their homes sometimes as "Rural Route" followed by a number.  These RR's were actually the mail carrier's route for delivering mail and the number was not unique to one road.  For example RR #3 may include Church Road and parts of Fiddletown Road and even Kunkletown Road.  St. Matthews Church's mailing address

was RR box #35. 

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It was only after the attack of 9/11 in 2001 that street signs went up throughout the area.

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Mike recalls that as a kid Church Road was paved from St. Matthews Church to Bollinger, but continued as a very dusty dirt road to Fiddletown Road.  It was merely a farmers trail between his fields.  Bollinger only had about 5 homes from Church to Silver Springs Blvd (which back then was known -like most roads - by the names of the two towns that it linked).  So Silver Springs was popularly the Kunkletown to Kresgeville Road.

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In the late 70's or early 80's, suddenly there was a boom in home building and almost all of today's buildings went up within a two-year period.

 

His parents spoke German and could communicate with neighbors in the local German dialect - Pennsylvania Dutch.  Pennsylvania Dutch (Deutsch) is possibly a slang language between English & German (similar to Yiddish) or maybe the isolation from the homeland allowed the traditional German to change (just like portions of the U.S. have dialects that are all English but differ in many words).  His parents found some of the words hard to distinguish.  Mike believes it might have been due to extreme "slurring" of sounds (unlike the very crisp modern German) and that it may have been folks "searching" for the right word as Pennsylvania Dutch was becoming a less used language (editor's comment, not Mike's).

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In Mike's era, Greensweig's General Store was already doing business in English, but he recalls a heavily oiled wood plank floor and the limited indoor lighting (mostly just a glow from the beverage coolers in the back).  He believes the rear of the store was more general merchandise or the remains of a hardware business, while the front was a food shop.  There were two cash registers - one in front and one in the back.

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During Mike's childhood, Greensweig's became Smiley's.  Smiley had previously worked in a butcher shop and brought along with him a great line of meats that locals would brag about both near and far.  At one point, Mike remembers a small shed being added to the general store and housing a few video arcade computer games.  It failed to catch on and after about two years was discontinued (the five mile round trip was a bit much for Mike & his brother).

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Mike recalls a time when there was no nearby "supermarket" and his parents would travel all the way to Palmerton to shop at Acme.  He also recalls Gower's Gas Station on Silver Springs Blvd where almost everyone went for repairs.

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Mike recalls that his pediatrician was located in Bowmanstown and later in Laury's Station.

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209 was basically a road with farm land on either side for miles and miles.  There was a business opposite the Pleasant Valley School called Bush's Orchard.  Mike feels that in the mid-80's a sudden surge of construction led to almost 200 stores being built and opened.

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In Germany, card playing was very popular, practically a national pastime.  And that was true here in Eldred too.  One very popular game was hoss - short for hossenfeffer.  It is similar to pinochle.  Other popular games were canasta and rummy and many variations on each.

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While technology was advancing rapidly in the "outside" world, Eldred retained its small town atmosphere.  When asked about "vacations" Mike chuckled saying "Sure there were vacations from your job.  And you used those vacations to either harvest the crops or do the planting for the coming year."