TERRY MOSHER
I didn’t know whether to smile or to be sarcastic when I discovered that homes in my hometown village of Portville had names. That information came to me via Sharon Hill McLarney when she told me that her and Joe’s home on North Main was the Hooper House. I don’t know whether I got the house name right here or not. But just the fact it had a name set me back. I didn’t inquire how that name came to be, or when it got the name. And maybe we all should label our houses for future generations. Maybe the house I grew up near the Steam Valley Bridge should be called the Mosher Home. I hope not. But it was a place where four athletic Mosher boys played a lot of games. It is out of the village of Portville, though, so it shouldn’t be counted as a named home. I know that Mary and I purchased the house we live in Bremerton, WA from Al Dornfeld, a downtown Bremerton business owner who was the main sponsor of the semi-pro baseball team that I was the unofficial general manager for, as well as the main reporter covering the team. So I guess we live in the Dornfield house, although it was originally built by a Navy officer back in the late 1930s. Naming houses after people is probably a way to pay some sort of honor and give relevance to the place, I suppose. Maybe it’s even an historical house. It might even make one feel important to say to a friend, “Yes, we live in the Hooper House.” Are there other houses in Portville that have names? I can remember the Phillips Home on North Main. But it might be that it was just a place where the Phillips lived and was not really the official Phillips House. How about the Dusenbury House? That has to be listed by the Historical Society as a historical House, doesn’t it? John Edgar Dusenbury was a successful businessman that established the First National Bank in Olean. It was Edgar Dusenbury that turned the Smith Parrish home into the Portville Free Library. The Hilltop Restaurant in Bolivar was also part of the Dusenbury family. But I digress. I didn’t mean to talk about the history of the Dusenburys. All I really knew when I was a kid back in Portville that the house on the Hill was the Dusenbury home. It was surrounded by a black iron fence and stood looking over the village and next to the Chestnut Hill Cemetery, which to me was a negative, but turned positive when I figured out it also stood next to the grave of young John Morgan who was buried near the top of the cemetery. A group of us boys once scaled over the black iron fence and managed to get close enough to the Dusenbury house to see what it was like. It was a marvel, making our homes seem like sheds on the wrong side of the tracks. The Dusenburys always seemed like a mystery to me, but I know what people talked about when they said, “The Dusenbury Home.” I knew where to go when people said, “The Carr House” and the houses of Dr. Bing Hackett and Dr. Wormer. But I didn’t know that these houses actually carried their names down through history. Or do they? Now I know what it is when people say “The Colonial.” It’s a crying shame that it’s gone, torn down after a fire there. It was important to us kids as a place where you could sip a cherry coke while listening to Buddy Holly’s Peggy Sue on the jukebox. I use to sit on The Colonial steps on a lazy Sunday and slow-watch the occasional car go by or get stopped by the village’s lone red light. We kids used to converse there with Pa Fischer, the original cop for the village who every so often would ask one of us kids to ride along with him when he stopped a traffic violator. Thom Torrey, who I consider the unofficial historian of Portville, messed me up when he tore down one of the Torrey houses that sat side-by-side on Brooklyn St. Now there is only the one Torrey House. Or is it a Torrey House? Is the old Portville Firehouse still there? I wonder because it used to have a one-lane bowling alley, and I remember setting some pins there. What I didn’t know was the Firehouse had an upstairs where kids used to go and play pool, among other things. I only was up there once, and it’s where I had a spiritual jolt happen to me. I was being led to a blind date by a couple friends and I backed out once we got to the top of the stairs. As I started back down the stairs, I was called out to get back up and as I turned a very peaceful calm came over me. I could feel it coming over me, starting from the top of my head and slowly flowing down to my feet. As that was happening, I suddenly pointed to a girl that seemed to magically appear between my two friends at the top of the stairs. I blurted out almost involuntarily, “I want to go out with her.” I was told I couldn’t, and like Feb. 3 1959 when the music stopped for Holly in an Iowa cornfield, everything stopped for me there and I don’t recall what happened next. I don’t know how I got from names of homes to spirituality, but I have had more than one spiritual thing happen to me over the course of my long life. I was nine years old when I was telepathy told while sitting in a fifth-grade class at Portville’s old Main Street School that I would marry Mary. We now have been married for 51 years. I was 49 years old when my dead granddaughter talked to me telepathy. She said, “Don’t worry about me, I walk with the grace of god.” To confuse me, I was telepathy told one day while sitting at Longacres Race Track in Renton, WA, that the winner of the seventh race would be Summer Sunshine. I looked down on my racing form and there he was – Summer Sunshine. I looked at the tote board and Summer Sunshine was at 17-1 to win the race. I raced to the ticket window and purchased a $2 ticket on Summer Sunshine. It paid me $36. Years and years later, I asked myself, “Mosher, why didn’t you bet $10?” The answer is probably I didn’t have $10 or I was too dumb. I was sitting at home when the 2009 Belmont Stakes was run. The talking heads were set to name their picks when I was telepathy told Summer Bird would win. I started yelling at the talking heads that Summer Bird was going to win. None picked him. It ruined my day because before the race started I knew who was going to win. Summer Bird went off at 11-1 odds, and, yes, he won. So somebody with more knowledge than me should tell me what is going on with me being a conduit for messages from beyond the pale. Why would somebody on the other side want to let me know who was going to win horse races? I can understand, I think, being told who I would marry. And when Mary first appeared to me, I knew who she was without having ever met her. So what is going on with that? And what is going on with houses having names in Portville? Maybe it’s an East Coast thing. Although, Mary’s parents owned a 13,000 sq ft. mansion in Longview, WA that was named Rutherglen and was built on Mt. Solo for John D. Tennant, vice president of Long-Bell Lumber Company. Mary’s parents bought it and for 18 years ran it as a nursing home. To this day, the place is still called Rutherglen. Enough of this. I have rambled on for too long. I know the McLarney’s enjoy their Hooper house (if indeed I have the name right) and I hope if you have one, too, that you also enjoy it. Me? I’m just happy to have a roof over my head. You can call my house anything you want. Just don’t call it the Mosher Home. Be well. Be careful out there. Have a great day. You are loved.
