An awesome adventure to fancy-good burgers

The view from a gondola to the top of a Teton Mountain ridge overlooking Jackson Hole, Wyo. (Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

TETON VILLAGE, Wyo. – The cable cars to the top of a Teton Mountain ridge are mostly empty this late August afternoon during the off-season at Wyoming's rich skiing country.

Most American children are back to school now as summer vacation comes to an end and the crowds are beginning to thin at the nearby Grand Teton National Park.

"So what is there to do here now?" I ask the hotel clerk while checking into The Alpenhof, an older yet charming German-theme lodge where the flatland rises toward the steep ski slopes in Teton Village, Wyo.

She suggests taking advantage of a discount ticket to the top of the mountain or riding the free gondola to the restaurants there, one of which, the Couloir, offers of four-course meal starting at $85.

"Ride to the top and then come back down to eat somewhere else," she suggests after I say that mountainous meal plan is not in my budget.

So I take the free cable car up the steep rise to a height of 9,000 feet above the hotels, which already sit nearly 5,000 feet above sea level. The return ride to the village is not as scary since my mind is on food and the Cascade Restaurant is calling my name.

Located inside Teton Mountain Lodge and Spa, the Cascade is supposed to be among the best places to eat in this pricey, tightly-built village in the Jackson Hole section of western Wyoming.

While looking over the menu there, where a three-course meal costs nearly $40, my server is quick to suggest the buffalo sliders, or a plate of small burgers made with local dry-aged ground buffalo steak.

"Those are awesome," he says. "They are the number one seller year round."

To heck with the smoked pheasant raviolis in sage prosciutto sauce. I'm having the $15 buffalo burgers, which show up three on a rectangular white plate in what turns out to be a gourmet feast.

At first they taste a bit salty, much thanks to their being topped with thin slices of pancetta, or Italian bacon. A sweet taste also my my taste buds from the oven-dried tomatoes on these little sandwiches.

The best flavors, the server says, arrive in the truffle aioli condiment. It's a mayonnaise made with truffle oil and egg whites, he said.

It has been a long way around getting to this meal, but well worth the ride.

The wonderful buffalo sliders at the Cascade Restaurant in Teton Village, Wyo. (Beveridge photo)

Take six home to the wives

Polygamy Porter, originally uploaded by Rainer Ebert.

SALT LAKE CITY, Utah – Among the hottest-selling local beers in Utah is Polygamy Porter, so it seems tonight.


"People who don't even like porter will have just one so they can say, 'I had a Polygamy Porter,'" said the bartender tonight at a hotel where I am staying near the Salt Lake City Airport.

Those tourists often ask him if they can buy a six pack of this beer to take home.

"I tell them, that's between you and the airline," he says.

It's a brilliant and hilarious beer gimmick in this region. Enough said.

The brewer of the label, Wasatch of Park City, advertises it with the phrase, "Why have just one."

Meanwhile, this hotel sells T-shirts bearing the label in its gift shop. I want one of them.

A losing race for a clean needle

Close up of medical syringes against a black background, originally uploaded by chigmaroff.

The young man wearing slightly soiled clothes rounded a row of store shelves and then decided to race me to the head of the line to the Wal-Mart pharmacy yesterday.

Thinking he might be needing medicine for a sick child, I slowed, allowing him to overtake me.

A desperate exchange then played out between the customer, clerk and pharmacist until he left empty handed.

The clerk rolled her eyes while calling me to her register and she had something critical to say about the guy who  just left.

"I didn't hear what he was saying," I replied.

He wanted syringes, she said, and was denied them because he didn't know the size he needed. He claimed they were for his sick grandmother, the clerk said.

"It's always for a sick grandmother," she said. "He was jacking me." She said she never sells a needle to a customer unless he knows the type of drug it would be used to inject.

I responded: "Well I have never been in the market for needles. I imagine you would need a prescription for them."

"We can sell them over-the-counter now. It's legal, you know, to stop AIDS from spreading," she said before I left wondering why she was throwing up roadblocks for junkies who don't want to get deathly sick from using a dirty needle.

Later, thanks to Google, I learn that Pennsylvania became on of the last states in 2009 to allow pharmacies to sell syringes without a physician's permission. The thinking had been that drug addicts are not concerned about their health and don't concern themselves about having sterile needles.

Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race 2010

Bring Your Own Big Wheel Race 2009, originally uploaded by alexisgallisa.

CHARLEROI, Pa. – Ken Wiltz is lending his name as he retires as director of Mon Valley YMCA to a zany race where adults will wear silly costume and ride down a steep hill on tricycles built for children.

The first Ken Wiltz Big Wheel Race will take place at 4 p.m. Aug. 29 on the steep road leading down to the YMCA off Route 88 in Carroll Township.


"There is a lot of interest. We won't know how many people will show up until that day," said Lorys Crisafulli, who suggested the race after learning about a hugely popular race of this kind that takes place every year in San Francisco.

Crisafulli, 84, of Monongahela, seems to have few inhibitions as she is known around the globe for producing a 2009 calendar featuring photographs of her and 11 of her older female friends posing semi-nude. A follow-up calendar is in production for 2011. That one will will include photographs of the women posing naughty with older guys.

Meanwhile, Wiltz, 65, has always kept a low profile in his 40-plus years at the YMCA. That is until now. He, too, took off some of his clothing to pose for the calendar.

Ken Wiltz, executive director of Mon Valley YMCA, and Janet Ratchford, a retired Monongahela nurse, pose as Mr. and Miss November for a 2011 charity calendar featuring a dozen scantily clad older women from the Monongahela, Pa., area.

As for the race: "It's a neat concept. We're looking forward to it a lot," Wiltz said.

Participants in the race must be 18 years old. Registration is $5 and will be accepted the day of the race, or by calling the YMCA at 724-483-8077, or the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce, 724-258-5919.

Wiltz surely will be missed at the YMCA, which was little more than a near-vacant storefront when he began working there.

"It was just a Ping-Pong table and offices," said Wiltz, who began his career there as a janitor in 1968 following service in the military police in Vietnam.

Struggling for money in the 1970s, the Mon Valley YMCA planned to hold a ravioli dinner until someone accidentally pulled the plug to the freezer where the main course was stored.

The more than 100 dozen homemade ravioli had melted into "one big blob" by the day of the fundraiser, said Ken Wiltz, the Y's executive director.

"We went out and bought spaghetti and turned it into a spaghetti dinner," said Wiltz, while recalling one of his favorite memories after working at the nonprofit for four decades.

He became director in 1973 after achieving a four-year education degree at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.

The Mon Valley YMCA had earlier formed in a merger of the Charleroi and Monongahela chapters and had grown to include an outdoor swimming pool in a rural section of Carroll near Taylor Run Road and Route 88.

Under Wiltz's leadership, it has undergone two multimillion-dollar expansions. In 1986, the YMCA built an indoor, stainless-steel swimming pool, racquetball courts and a gymnasium. A new educational wing and wellness center opened six years ago.

(Portions of this story first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper, Washington, Pa.)

A mistake in clay

Sometimes people like me spent hours in art school fooling themselves into thinking they were creating masterpieces.

Then a reality check settled in when this ugly blob of clay walked back in my life after it spent three decades hidden away in the attic of mom's house.

It's no wonder she stashed away this art fail produced at California University of Pennsylvania.

Odd mourning art frames this house museum

By Scott Beveridge

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. – This story would probably be better told at Halloween because it involves an old portrait of a dead girl with creepy eyes.

Some claim those eyes follow them while they visit the children's room where the retouched photograph hangs at an historic mansion in State College, Pa.

"It's a death portrait," says Mary Osborn, a docent at Centre Furnace Mansion dating to 1792, when a nearby factory was constructed to forge pig iron ingots.

"If a child died before anyone had a photograph taken, they would have one done while the child was in the casket," Osborn explains. "It was a fashion at the time."

Such artists would retouch the photograph to make it appear as if the child's eyes were open.

Oddly, mourning art was a big fad in the late 1800s when Queen Victoria ruled Britain and spent three full years wearing black following the death of her husband, Prince Albert. The fashion of it having been more important how one wore their grief than the death itself spread wildly, especially among women.

No one knows the identity of the Centre Furnace child, whose morbid portrait is among an impressive collection of Victorian antiques in this mansion. The house museum owned by the Centre County Historical Society also is home to a colorful framed grouping of tiny flowers intricately handcrafted in wax and adorned with several locks of a young girl's blond hair.

Wax flowers with blond ringlets created by Laura Yearick Martin and adorned with the hair of her niece, Estella Artimitia Shaffer, after the girl received her first haircut. (Scott Beveridge photo)

There is wonderful piece of not-so-grim folksy miniature art under glass featuring bunny rabbits nibbling on carrots around a Christmas tree in the kid's room, as well.

"There are at least two holidays in there," Osborn said.

The early history is sketchy at best as to who built and lived in this house. It began as a one-story log structure and was remodeled into a four-story Georgian mansion with Victorian adornments as its owners made a fortune in the iron industry.

The museum is frozen in time to represent the era when the house was occupied by Moses Thompson, shown at left, who donated nearby property in 1855 to form the Farmers High School, which evolved into Pennsylvania State University. The school charter actually was signed during a formal dinner in this house.

The last occupant was Penn State physics professor Davie Bowles Garver, who died in 1975 and left the house to the historical society, which spent millions dollars to restore the place. The work included peeling off cheap paneling from the interior walls and replanting the grounds with a kitchen garden.

Its obvious upon walking through the doors of 1001 E. College Ave. this historical society works hard and lovingly to preserve its treasures, which fortunately include a large number of items that once belonged to the Thompson family.

Society members provide free tours highlighted with great stories, creating a fantastic tourist destination in this mountainous region of central Pennsylvania.

Centre Furnace Mansion, the birthplace of Pennsylvania State University and a gem of a house museum in State College, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)