In 2004, my wife & I were on our way back to Brooklyn from visiting our oldest daughter at Gettysburg College when we came through Eldred and we fell in love with it.  We bought the broken down Granville Haney house on Church Road - less than an acre of land, chimney about to topple over, clapboard rotting out, beautiful slate roof at the end of its life, 20 amp fused electric supply, no heating system, 16 windows that couldn't open or close, porch rotted out, porch roof leaking and only a summer well for water.  What a dream!

 

But after a snack on ring baloney from Smiley's General Store (only later did we find he was adding venison to the "baloney" to give it that great taste) we knew this town was where we wanted to retire to.

 

But we had a lot to learn.  Like it ain't a street, its a road, and not hero but a hoagie, not neighborhood but town, not intersection but 4-way, not cop but State Police, not forest but woods, not car but "pick-up" or truck, and not creek but "crick".   We were learning.  But the best thing we learned was how nice the folks were out here.

 

Most folks are more than neighbors, they treat you like family.  From the very first day we wondered about the old building up Church Road and we were told that it was an old one-room school house dating back to 1855.

 

About ten years later, we were on our way home up Church Road when we saw almost a mile of For Sale signs stretching from the cornfields, to the old school house and on to the woods.  We were so worried that a developer would buy the beautiful flat farmland with the spectacular view of the hills and hollows to the east.   And with that loss would go the old school house and the woods.  The entire nature of our little town was about to change.

 

to be continued....