A giant hoax lives on in Cooperstown

COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. – An older woman at the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum ticket counter was not interested Friday in discussing power hitters or the records they broke.

Instead, she delivered a hard sell to spend extra cash to see a “petrified body” that convinced me to purchase a second ticket to a farming museum where this oddity is displayed in Cooperstown, N.Y.

“It was a big fraud all along,” she added, while I handed over $22, the cost to enter both tourist attractions.

So after making my way through the history of professional baseball, I drove about a mile down the road to take a look at this mysterious creature, as well as restored barns, period buildings and a collection of agrarian tools at The Farmers’ Museum.

But, I arrived 10 minutes before closing time and was allowed to step inside just long enough to snap a few photos of the Great Cardiff Giant that rests there on a bed of stones, surrounded by bunting and a white picket fence.

It turns out George Hull, a poor tobacco farmer, had this 10-foot-tall, 2,990-pound beast sculpted and buried on his cousin’s farm in Cardiff in 1869. The cousin, William C. “Stub” Newell, waited a year before asking a couple of guys to help him drill a well on the same spot to give birth to the tale.

The chicanery followed an argument Hull, who was an atheist, had with a fundamentalist minister over the literal interpretation of the Bible. The debated centered over a passage in Genesis about giants once roaming the Earth.

Hull later made a fortune after throngs of people paid admission to see his giant. He eventually sold the statue to a Syracuse entrepreneur for $37,500, and it continued to draw huge crowds long after a Yale professor exposed the charade. Some people apparently still viewed it as verification of the Bible, while others were certain it was an ancient statue.

Count me among the suckers who are always willing to hand over money to see these old fake freak shows.

The Breakers, a symbol of the filthy rich

By Scott Beveridge

NEWPORT, R.I. – The fabulous summer “cottage’ known as The Breakers has more than enough opulence to turn stomachs during this recession.

But it didn’t take a century for critics to refer to the Vanderbilt family retreat as a white elephant furnished with tasteless vulgarity. They did that a few short years after railroad magnet Cornelius Vanderbilt II built the 70-room mansion in 1895 on a bluff overlooking the Rhode Island Sound.

Mark Twain was even among those who expressed disgust over this mansion, and others like it, about the time he coined the term Gilded Age as a reference to extravagant expressions of wealth and the social injustices they represented.

The Vanderbilts eventually said goodbye to their Italian Renaissance getaway after it opened to the public in 1948 to raise money for the preservation of Newport’s row of millionaires’ palaces. Today, it’s operated by the Preservation Society of Newport County and attracts 300,000 visitors a year.

New this season is an audio tour that walks guests through never-seen-before servants’ halls. The tour introduces everyone at the front door as guests of the family before they step inside the sprawling grand hall with a marble set of matching stairways and the finest furnishings that were meant to dazzle. They’re told children felt at home enough to ride their tricycles around the room and slide down the banisters on serving trays. All the while, adult guests and residents, in those days, put their feet up in the cool shade of the stairs while facing a marble, grotto-type water fountain, only to be pampered by their choice of 40 servants.

Eventually the tour warms me up to the family inside Gertrude Vanderbilt’s bedroom while I peer into a portrait of her with sad eyes. The recording draws lines from her memoirs about the day she realized she was an heiress and longed for people to like her for personality rather than her family’s money.

Later, somewhere about the time I step into a two-story china closet, the craggy voice of Rudolph B. Stanish begins to dish on the women he served in the 50-foot dining room with solid alabaster columns. He confesses to daydreaming about dropping their dinners in their laps for keeping him waiting. But, he also applauds the family for helping him to become the "king of omelets" after he moved on from being its domestic servant. The Vanderbilt money rubbed off on most of the staff, he says.

One adornment that piques my interest is a frieze or two cherubs above a door in the main hall. One is holding the switch of a locomotive while the other grasps a railroad spike and hammer. It’s designed to mold classic symbols of old technology with those representing new wealth during America’s Industrial Revolution.

Then, I wonder if any of the servants were revolted by this image, and reminded of their place while carting 15-pound serving trays through this door before retreating to their hot, stuffy quarters in the attic.

This nice restaurant is a Rhode Island thing

PROVIDENCE, R.I. – The sign outside Local 121 in this city on the mend is on the dull side.

But don’t let it fool you because the door below this Washington Street number opens to one of Providence, R.I.’s, trendiest restaurants, one with an intriguing menu featuring local foods, wines and beers.

“In the winter, it’s kind of rough,” a server explains after I ask her tonight where they come up with vegetables this early in the growing season to stock the kitchen. “We change the menu up with lots of root vegetables.”

It doesn’t matter if they cheat by substituting store-bought goods to the table before the fall harvest. The décor is much better than new stuff and Local 121's food is good enough to make this waterfront city in New England proud.

A local arts association, AS220, purchased the former Dreyfus Hotel four years ago for a reuse plan that turned the rooms into affordable live-in studios. State Sen. Josh Miller, a self-professed foodie who owns the Trinity Brewhouse around the corner, decided to take up space on the first floor and covert it into a restaurant that promotes sustainable farming. Kudos to these folks for their preservation work.

The dark mahogany-paneled bar and stained-glass windows are original to the hotel built in the 1890s, and it’s a perfect spot to enjoy a fine, mellow Trinity ISP drawn from the tap. For a time, this space doubled as a cafeteria while the building was used as a college dormitory.

I peek into the restaurant. Its draperies, puffy seats and white ornamentation are a little over-the-top for my taste.

A few minutes later, I decide to look over the small plates, and opt for my server’s favorite: the bacon-wrapped grilled scallops. As far as I’m concerned, anything that comes with bacon is all good. In short order, she returns with a few slices of bread beside whipped butter that pops because it’s blended with a healthy pinch of sea salt.

Four plump scallops arrive in no time, and they are a happy marriage of salty smoked bacon and seafood garnished with shaved red onion, celery and parsley leaves tossed in sherry vinaigrette. That's a sweet deal for $12.

Further down on the menu are Local 121 jonnycakes, so I ask for an explanation.

“It’s a Rhode Island thing. I’ve never tried them,” the server replies, adding that they are made with cornmeal.

That’s odd because people who work in better restaurants should at least sample everything on their menus. By now, I have to have some of these jonnycakes, even though I hate polenta.

My mistake. They are bland, pasty beige discs that look like dog treats. The maple syrup on the plate does nothing to improve their taste. Rhode Island can keep this dish.

Stories of inspiration from Harrisburg

HARRISBURG, Pa., – Celia Reynolds and her adult student begin each tutoring session with a mantra, “Reading is power.”

“Once we have that power, we can do anything we want,” the chant continues between Reynolds, a volunteer, and a Mexico-born woman who turned to the Washington County Literacy Council to learn how to better read and speak English.

The power is working, as Elva Sanchez of Houston, Pa., is now studying for her GED, while Reynolds walked away tonight with Pennsylvania’s Outstanding Tutor of the Year Award.

“This is an honor that is too big for one person,” the demure Reynolds, a retired elementary schoolteacher from South Franklin Township, said when she accepted the award from Tutors of Literacy in the Commonwealth.

The group receives money from the state Department of Education to train tutors across Pennsylvania. It selected Reynolds from among 17 candidates for the nod because of her people skills and how she uses them to encourage Sanchez, said Kim Rossman, an administrator for Tutors of Literacy.

Reynolds said the honor is humbling after she heard the stories of nine adults from across Pennsylvania who also received awards Tuesday from the Department of Education for their outstanding achievements in tutoring programs.

“The people I worked with gave me back my self worth,” said Hilda Iris Hampton of Reading, who is pursuing an associate’s degree in business management now that she has a GED with help from one of these programs.

The statistics don’t lie during this recession; the unemployment rate among workers with a college education is half that of those who don’t, said Kathleen Shaw, a deputy secretary of the education department.

“It takes a lot of guts as an adult to stand up and say, ‘I need help,’” added Michael Westover, acting director of ABLE.

(Caption: Kim Rossman presents the award to Celia Reynolds, who is at the side of Amy Manko, executive director of Washington County Literacy Council)

Cool house moving video

Gary Sylvester's Building Movers and Excavators relocate this Victorian mansion in 2007 at Brown University, Providence, RI.

People are saying great things about this city and its revitalized riverfront.

The mysterious photographer of Donora steel

The town of Donora owes a debt of gratitude to Bruce Dreisbach, an early 20th century photographer who left behind a vast and impressive collection of local images.

But most of his story remains a mystery to the Pennsylvania borough, said Brian Charlton, curator of the Donora Historical Society that owns the Dreisbach collection.

American Steel & Wire Co. apparently brought him to town because it wanted him to create a visual record of a new steel mill in which it was investing millions of dollars in Donora. Dreisbach shot groundbreakings, gatherings of steelworkers, scenes of them toiling in the zinc works, steel products and thousands of other scenes of one of the most infamous mills in the world. He also worked for stretches in the mill as an engineer and safety inspector.

Donora went on to become forever associated with the smog of October 1948 that killed at least 20 residents and sickened thousands of others. Considered the worst air pollution disaster in the United States, the smog became the impetus for the country’s first clean air laws.

All the while, Dreisbach faded from memory until his wife, Lulu, died about two decades ago and many of his glass negatives were found in her apartment above the then-Mellon Bank Building in downtown Donora. He had a fancy for shooting hundreds of shots of her, too, and dressing his beloved model in the hats of the day or silly costumes.

Several other boxes of Dreisbach’s glass negatives turned up at a flea market in Virginia, only to be purchased and donated to the historical society, Charlton said.

It’s a wonder why the mill took such great measures to capture this history and then its executives decided to abandon the record when they closed the mill in stages, beginning in 1957.

The historical society also has acquired through donations a large collection of microfilm containing blueprints of mill buildings and others in downtown, steel sales records and flyers the company sent out to clients to advertise its wire products.

“It’s all very fascinating stuff,” said Charlton, who has viewed some of the film at California University of Pennsylvania.

Unfortunately, the historical society doesn’t own a microfilm reader to allow the public the opportunity to view this collection at its new Donora Smog Museum. Meanwhile, the local library’s microfilm reader is broken, rendering these records to the imagination.

But luckily, many of Dreisbach’s photos are on display at the museum at 595 McKean Ave., a destination that is gaining in popularity. Some of the collection also can be viewed at the digital archives of the University of Pittsburgh, where the photographer’s name is spelled incorrectly.


(Captions: That's Bruce Dreisbach, top, and his silly wife, Lulu, above. Photos courtesy of Donora Historical Society)