Porch sittin'

porch swing, originally uploaded by yvonnejeanne.

By Lorys Crisafulli

Every year we mark our calendar when we have our first meal on the back porch.

This year it was February.

My granddaughter, age 4, who lives in San Francisco, was so thrilled with all the snow in the backyard that she was eating the dry bread I had given her to feed the birds. When I realized she was that hungry, I suggested we go inside for lunch.

She had on so many clothes and big boots to remove that we both thought, "Why don't we eat out here?"

In no time I had the old standards ready - PBJs and tomato soup. Caroline enjoyed that meal as much as the birds enjoyed theirs.

Who said a picnic could only be held in the summer?

My porch has seen all kinds of parties, sales and just good conversation: this in addition to the fact that we have eaten most of our meals there from April to October.

Why does ordinary food taste better when eaten outdoors?

Of course there have been many card games, watermelon seed spitting contests and just rocking in the mismatched chairs out there.

Neighbors seem to enjoy showing up there from around the corner of the house. After something cold to drink, or a cup of coffee and a half hour or so of catching up with neighborhood news, we all go back to what we were doing.

Birdwatching is another pastime - the variety of feathered friends is endless and it seems as if every year we get visitors that were never there before. This year it was a family of pileated woodpeckers. Papa was so enormous and so ungainly that he was fascinating to watch.

We don't have a birdbath, but instead a plastic 3-inch-deep cake pan that all the critters drink from - rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks and even the groundhogs get thirsty.

The best thing of all was to watch a robin flapping around in the freshly-filled pan. That bird was in robin heaven.

The porch is not always a calm, restful place. We have had a "Pink Panther Party" with everyone dressed in PINK - even underwear. The Hawaiian Luau was a hit and so was the "Dress as a Tourist Party."

One of our best times was when our friend, Louisa, entertained us with her belly dancing routine. She was as funny as she was sexy, and when her snake, Houdini, got into the act we all got involved. The men enjoyed learning how to "shake their booties." Some of them even let Houdini sit on their heads.

If you have a porch there should never be an excuse to be bored. Just say "Hi" from there to a passerby and you will have a half-hour of pleasure.

The next event there will be to celebrate the completion of a calendar called the "Lads and Ladies of the Mon." It features 24 well-known men and women from the Monongahela, Pa., area whom have posed and laughed their ways through 12 months of hilarity.

For the 2008 calendar, "The Ladies of the Mon," we were photographed and interviewed by the Inside Edition TV show, KDKA, WPXI, WTAE and WQED on the now-famous back porch. We were even forever preserved in a segment that won an Emmy for WQED producer David Solomon.

The porch has not coordinated with the latest in well-designed furniture. There's a wicker sofa, a 1920s wooden rocker, redwood furniture painted white, other rockers of indistinct vintage and a kitchen table. But who cares?

We are ready to enjoy another evening on the porch.

Lorys Crisafulli is an entrepreneur and retired schoolteacher from Monongahela. She is known around the globe as Miss January, producer of a 2008 calendar featuring older women posing semi-nude for portraits to raise money for charity. Another calendar is in the works for 2011.

A Sunday afternoon

 

Ebenezer Covered Bridge at Mingo Creek County Park, Nottingham Township, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)


By Lorys Crisafulli

Mingo Indians? Mingo Creek? Mingo Park?

Each of these terms brings back different memories to me, but Mingo Creek means the most.

As a child in the 1930s Mingo Creek was the destination my dad chose to unload a 1933 Chevy full of kids so they could play in the "crick." One wide spot in the creek was near Ebenezer Covered Bridge in Nottingham Township, Pa.

It was deeper and more interesting than it is now, and that was our goal.


We could sit on a stone ledge and the water would flow over us. It was probably only one foot high, but sitting on that ledge and feeling the water was so great that we had to take turns.


The pool of water was large enough to float a couple of kids in an inner tube. Of course in those days tires on cars had inner tubes. We took the tubes out of tires, pumped them up with a hand pump and voila! - a child or grownup could fit in the middle with head, shoulder and arms above water with feet and legs dangling below. What heaven! 


Sometimes other families would come along - and yes - with food. A picnic. Myrtle Caldwell, my best friend's mother, always brought the best homemade pies, cakes and even cupcakes. My mother always had fresh baked buns. (We never had Town Talk Bread or store-bought rolls. Her ham that she had baked the day before was to die for.

Dad always sharpened the butcher knife with a long stone called a "honer." He would slice the ham so thin you could almost see through it. Mom piled each bun high with ham, wrapped it in waxed paper and put it in a basket lined with a fresh tea towel. We also had water in half gallon milk jugs. That was our picnic.

We were never allowed to go in the water after eating because "WE WOULD DROWN TO DEATH." Instead, we explored.


In those days Mingo Creek County Park was just several farms.


Mr. Barr had told my dad we could use that part of the creek anytime - just avoid the animals.


Of course there was no parking lot, only a huge swamp with cattails and frogs.


We loved it. We also collected "minnies" (minnows) in jars and the crayfish that snapped at our toes.


The best sport was skipping stones across the water.

We spent a lot of time looking for the perfect flat skipping stones. We also hunted round, white stones, which were considered to be lucky stones.  We would carry them in our pockets for days. They were small, maybe a half inch wide at most, and probably took centuries to get that way. Lucky us. 


If we had a big picnic it included relatives from Hazelwood and Bridgeville. We would have ball games in the big sheep pasture, using "roundies" or dried sheep droppings for bases. Aunt Molly always made sure she took home Uncle Ray's handkerchiefs full of that sheep manure to fertilize her house plants.


This was the era of the Great Depression.

Even into the 1960s and 1970s it was still a rustic area that was ideal place for a child to spend an afternoon with grandma and pap. We - my parents and son Dan - would excitedly put together a picnic basket and head for Mingo.


Pap and Dan would look for stones and minnows, toss a ball and wade across the creek. After an hour or two we would head home - a 15 minute drive - for an afternoon nap while I thought about the chores I should have done.


Now Mingo Park with its rest rooms, picnic tables and bike trails is as restorative and delightful as it ever was, even though the frogs and cattails are gone. 


It is still the best place to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Lorys Crisafulli is an entrepreneur and retired schoolteacher from Monongahela, Pa. She is known around the globe as Miss January, producer of a 2008 calendar featuring older women posing semi-nude for portraits to raise money for charity.

My dad, the Maytag Man

Maytag Man Inflatable, originally uploaded by arbyreed.

By Lorys Crisafulli

My dad was a Maytag Man, but he never was loneseome.

He made house calls. There was no repair shop that I knew of so six days a week, he would drive to the offices in Charleroi, Canonsburg and Washington, Pa., to pick up information on the calls to be made that day.

He fixed Maytags all over Washington County and knew all the farmers, many of whom we later would visit as friends.

I can still see the chickens and pigs being shooed out of kitchens so he could get inside to work.

He knew every village and back roads, whether they were were paved in mud or red dog. He also traveled further south into Greene County, where he would joke about the steep hillsides where the sheep's legs where shorter on the upside of the hills.

Many farms had no electricity so he kept the gasoline motors running on the washer. He even found a lady who made butter in her washing machine because it made the perfect churn. The Maytag company even marketed a meat grinder that attached to the upright arm of its washing machines and also held the wringer.

Dad bought half a hog every year and we ground it into sausage on that powerful grinder.

We shaped it into patties, browned them on the old gas stove (grease everywhere) and layered them with lard in heavy crocks. Mmm. I must admit is sounds as though we should have all died of salmonella, but they lasted all winter and we ate them with pancakes and maple syrup.

Breakfast was never cereal or just toast. It was always bacon and eggs or sausage and pancakes - all with homemade bread. Our grandma live with us and baked bread and biscuits several times a week.

We probably needed all that energy as we always walked everywhere. We never were driven anywhere unless visiting relatives on Sunday.

We were outdoors summer and winter unless it was raining, maybe. Even when it was raining we stomped around mud puddles while carrying an umbrella.

The first sign of snow was greeted with a scramble for the sleds. Otherwise we slid down the hills on anything we could find, from a license plate to curtain rods for skis. Our Maytag Man once made us a bobsled that was so heavy it took two of us to pull it back up a hill for another ride.


He put so many miles on his Chevy - always a maroon Chevy - that he needed a new one every two years. The one he bought in the mid-1930s cost him $395. It had a wool-felt interior, which scratched but was great to fall asleep on when returning from those Sunday visits.

I remember dad carrying us into the house and tucking us into bed after a long day. His car had window blinds, but it didn't have windshield defrosters. In freezing weather he had to drive with his head out his window to see. Then along came a wonderful invention - two suction cups one foot apart with connecting wires fastened to a heater on the floor between the seats - to help clear the windshield of ice and snow.

All summer and fall we never knew what dad would take out of the car trunk when he arrived home. A bushel of tomatoes or beets, two chickens? A basket of grapes or peaches? Whatever they were, we  had to do something with them that evening after supper. We sterilized canning jars and peeled fruit because we knew how great it would be to have next winter.

Then came World War II with such a shortage of gas that the Maytag Man couldn't travel anymore. So he opened up a small repair shop in Monongahela. There were no more Sunday trips to see airplanes take off from the Allegheny County Airport or the Isaly's plant for a 5-cent ice cream cone. Its cones were called a skyscraper and dad, on those occasions, always wore a straw boater hat and "ice cream (seersucker) pants."

Dad has been gone 36 years now, but folks in town still remember that he could fix anything from a gas engine to those washers, which gently laundered the first lingerie ever sold. Yep. He really was the Maytag Man.

Lorys Crisafulli is an entrepreneur and retired schoolteacher from Monongahela. She is known around the globe as Miss January, producer of a 2008 calendar featuring older women posing semi-nude for portraits to raise money for charity. Another calendar is in the works for 2011.

How to bare the soul with a smile

Lorys Crisafulli acting silly on a recent photo shoot for her upcoming charity calendar featuring scantily-clad old people.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – The zany Lorys Crisafulli sums up her many successes with a common sense positive attitude.

“It comes back to how you treat people,” said Crisafulli, 83, of Carroll Township, Pa., who has had at least two great careers and a busy retirement that sent her name around the world.

The retired schoolteacher and antiques dealer is best known for taking off some of her clothes, and convincing 11 of her old female friends to do the same, and posing for a 2008 charity calendar that caught the attention of news organizations from Japan to Washington, Pa.

She’s at it again, in production for a mildly naughty 2011 calendar, one that also will feature a dozen male senior citizens in photographs with the ladies known as the “Vixens of the Valley.”

The first calendar sold 3,000 copies, earning $15,000 for the money-strapped Monongahela Area Historical Society. It also drew sneers from younger people who think old people are ugly.

Here is one example:

“I may be branded a shallow bitch for saying this … but there are certain types of folks who should never pose nude… old people,” a much younger Pittsburgh blogger, Virginia Montanez, stated on her blog, That’s Church, about these models.

Well Montanez branded her personality with that statement, so I won’t use this platform to do the same, although she missed the point in a big way.

These women did something good for their financially strapped community, while also having some oddball fun to make a statement that old people can feel sexy, too. At the same time, they brought themselves a lot of happiness through a vehicle that made them global role models for seniors who want to stay active and give back to the community.

Crisafulli has it right when she says success is best earned by treating people with kindness, generosity and spunk. You won’t hear her snark rudely, or, tell an unattractive person to hide in a closet from the pretty people. That kind of attitude turns to gold.

Click here to read more about her new calendar project. (The link will not last forever)

New age "pinup girls"

Lorys Crisafulli of Monongahela at her photo shoot for a 2008 calendar featuring a dozen women, the youngest of whom is 68 years old. (photo by Chris Grilli of Grilli’s Studios, New Eagle, Pa.)

MONONGAHELA – As Miss January, Lorys Crisafulli is bearing “some of it all” inside a black convertible GT, dripping pearls with a bottle of champagne.
Miss October, Kathleen Bordini, is seated in a coffin beside a black cat and pumpkin in the risqué 2008 calendar featuring a dozen different “pinup girls” from the Monongahela area, the youngest of whom is 69.
“Every one of them was intimidated at first,” said Crisafulli, 80, who is hoping to put her home area on the map with the idea. “There is a lot more giggling going on.”
She was inspired to do the project after seeing the 2003 movie “Calendar Girls.”The film starring Helen Mirren revolves around the true story of a group of Liverpool women who became a media sensation after posing nude in a calendar for a charity.
Crisafulli, a retired owner of a New Eagle antiques shop, first approached the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce to sponsor the calendar. But its board politely declined, thinking the project didn’t stand a chance to raise money, she said.
“The initial response is, ‘Oh, no,’” said Claudia Williams, a local furniture store owner who volunteered to sell advertisements to pay the printing costs.
“My sons kind of laughed, really. I don’t think they’re overly surprised by the things I do,” said Bordini, 74, a nutrition supervisor for Southwestern Pennsylvania Human Services/Aging Services in Charleroi. The photograph of her in the casket appears beside the caption, “Get the best for the rest of your life.”
“At least I got out on my own,” said Bordini, who cast a ghostly smile in the shot. “It’s better than going in there and staying.”
None of the women took off all of their clothes, but gave the appearance that they might be nude. Such props as a car door or a vase of flowers are strategically placed to hide certain body parts that, if shown, could give the calendar an R rating.



Sally Stephenson, 84, shown above, second from right, appears in the calendar beside the Monongahela River wearing what appears to be only a Navy collar and saluting behind a lectern.
“If anyone asks if I was nude, I’m going to say that only the riverboat pilots know,” said Stephenson, a retired California University of Pennsylvania social studies professor.
She also was among 1,000 females in the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Services during World War II who taught instrument flying to male pilots.
The profits from the sale of the calendars will go to the Monongahela Area Historical Society, which found the project to be a “daring idea,” said its president, Sue Bowers.
“It had been done before, but not around here,” Bowers said. “It was a wonderful surprise that this spunky ladies were willing to do this ...”
In its first printing, 500 calendars will be sold for $10 apiece.
“I anticipate selling 2,500,” Williams said. “I have classmates out of state who can’t wait.”

The calendars will be published in mid-July 2007, and sold in local stores, as well on the City of Monongahela’s Web site.

Published with permission of the Observer-Reporter

Ready, set, laugh until you roll

This jumping on a kid's plastic Big Wheel as an adult dressed foolishly and racing one down a steep hill actually sounds like a lot of fun. Go figure it would take an 80-something Monongahela, Pa., woman, who likes to take off some of her clothes for charity, and the Mon Valley YMCA to get in on this party. Her name is Lorys Crisafulli, and I will bet anything she is decorating her three-wheeled mini-cruiser for this August 29 event as we speak.

 

Don't Mess Around Monongahela Sal

The following excerpt from an article in the Observer-Reporter helps to explain the purpose of the silly skit in the video captured at the Noble J. Dick Aqautorium in Monongahela, Pa.:

The four-day celebration, sponsored by the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce, will include a rededication of the 40-year-old riverfront park featuring Susan Withers’ performance in “Monongahela Sal.”

“This takes nerve,” said Lorys Crisafulli, who owned a consignment shop in neighboring New Eagle.

The folk song, whose composer is unknown, is about a Sal, a “typical” Monongahela woman who was born in an old alley. One night she happened to notice a handsome riverboat captain, Mote Stanley, piloting the Jason down the Monongahela River. Crisafulli’s nephew, Doug Wible of Monongahela, will portray Stanley.

He pulled ashore, Sal stepped aboard and the two made passionate love. Mote promised his enduring love and marriage, but ended up pushing Sal overboard near Emsworth Dam. Sal later meets up with him after swimming to safety and shoots him to death.

The lyrics end with this line, “So let all you pilots take warnin’, don’t mess around Monongahela Sal.”

(NOTE: "Monongahela Sal" was written and recorded in 1947 by Robert Schmertz)

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.)

Those silly Mon "Calendar Girls" to appear on Japan TV

TV producer Chie Berkley monitors filming of the Mon "Calendar Girls" Friday for a travel show to be televised this month in Japan.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – My friend Lorys Crisafulli calls two weeks ago and can barely stop laughing.

She’s giggling because a Japanese television program heard she posed semi-nude for a charity calendar in 2008 and is soon coming to her home in Monongahela, Pa., to film her story for a travel piece.

“I can't wait to hear the voice that pretends she's me when it comes out in Japanese,” Crisafulli, 82, said Saturday, a day after the two-day shoot wrapped up.

The retired schoolteacher and antiques dealer came up with idea for the calendar after watching the 2003 movie, “Calendar Girls,” starring Helen Mirren. It’s a British comedy about older women who showed it all for a calendar to benefit a friend with leukemia.

Crisfulli and 11 of her friends kept on most of their clothing and only flashed their bare shoulders in their photos. She posed as Miss January in a black convertible appearing to just be wearing pearls while sipping champagne.

“I thought we’d sell a couple (calendars) to our relatives,” she said.

But the women ended up printing 3,000 of them because of the demand and raising nearly $15,000 for the struggling Monongahela Area Historical Society. Along the way, they became somewhat of local celebrities and also captured national headlines over the project.

The producers of Japan Broadcasting Corp.’s “World Traveler” surely chuckled, too, after catching wind of the story on the Internet. They will include a segment about the women otherwise known as the “Vixens of the Valley” in a show dedicated to extraordinary senior citizens around the globe, said the U.S. producer, Chie Berkley of Washington, D.C.

“Her personality, that’s what made it so interesting,” Berkley said, referring to Crisafulli. “She’s a magnet. She’s smart and funny. Everyone wants to be around her.”

To my surprise, she also turned the camera on me for an interview because I write for the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa., a newspaper that broke the zany story in 2007.

The hour-long program will air Sept. 20 on what is known in Japan as Nippon Hoso Kyokai, the small island nation's version of America's PBS. We will attempt to gain permission from Berkley to post Crisafulli’s segment in the show on this blog.

We can't get enough of these gals

The 2008 Monongahela "calendar girls" made a command appearance this month as bridesmaids in a hippie-themed marriage renewal ceremony to mark the 240th birthday of their city in southwestern Pennsylvania. The event also marked the 40th anniversary of the opening of an unusual riverfront park in the town otherwise known as Mon City.

The following is a story about the event published in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA – The bride wore an orange tie-dyed long dress Sunday to renew her marriage vows and her toenails were painted with flowers to match her hippie style.

Elissa Stein of Monongahela walked down the aisle as her daughter sprinkled white rose pedals to the white gazebo in Monongahela’s Chess Park where she meet her husband, Bill, for the ceremony.

“We loved it,” said Bill Stein, 62, after the event sponsored by the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce.

The organization wanted to have a hippie-themed, wedding-type event to mark the 40th birthday of the city’s landmark arena that rises from the banks of the Monongahela River in the nearby downtown.

Elissa Stein, 61, said she volunteered to participate after reading about the plan in the newspaper.

“I thought, ‘Wouldn’t that be fun?’” said Elissa Stein, a welfare supervisor.

Bill Stein, chief executive officer of CLI Corp., wore blue jeans and leather sandals to the affair.

Meanwhile, a group of older women who became local celebrities after posing semi-nude last year for a benefit calendar served as bridesmaids.

They arrived at the park to applause riding in either a 1972 pink Cadillac convertible, classic Volkswagen or 1932 white Model A Ford. One of the women who is in her 70s relied on a walker for the short stroll to the John Moreschi Gazebo.

Monongahela Mayor Bob Kepics carried out the service wearing a black wool tuxedo with tails under a humid sky and the temperature approaching 90 degrees.

A disc jockey then played Sonny & Cher’s signature song from 1965, “I Got You Babe,” as the couple left the gazebo.

“The city was just great,” said Lorys Crisafulli, who organized a number of events over the weekend in honor of the Noble J. Dick Aquatorium.

Built in 1969, it has wooden benches painted to appear like the U.S. Flag and seats more than 3,000 people. It’s about to close to undergo more than $1 million in rehabilitation work.

“This whole town came together for this,” said Crisafulli, one of the “calendar girls” who came to Sunday’s ceremony wearing a cowgirl skirt and colorful hippy beads around her neck.

Nearly 100 people witnessed the ceremony, she said.

Bill and Elissa cut a cake in the park before going to their Monongahela home with their four children and friends for a Champagne toast.

“These people put together a wonderful celebration,” he said.

Hot parade

Kathleen Bordini, 74, appears a bit ghostly as Miss October in the "Ladies of the Mon Calender." (Photo: Chris Grilli, Grilli's Studio)

MONONGAHELA – The dozen older women who are showing some skin in a fund-raising calendar are about to set their hometown on fire.
The “Ladies of the Mon” will ride in hot convertibles or period cars Wednesday and make their first local appearance at the Monongahela Fire Department parade.
“The girls might not be bare, but they’re gonna be cute,” said Lorys Crisafulli, 80, who organized the calendar for charity.
Taking a cue from the 2003 movie of the same nature, “Calendar Girls,” the Monongahela woman have produced a 2008 calendar containing pictures of them staged to look as if they are nude. The income from sales will benefit the Monongahela Area Historical Society.
Within days after their story broke in June, the women – the youngest of whom is 68 – became a media sensation. They are expected to appear soon on TV’s “Inside Edition” and “Good Morning America.”
They initially planned to print 500 calendars, but quickly had to order another 1,500 to keep up with the demand for them.
“They’re just counting the money,” said Crisafulli, a former schoolteacher and owner of an antiques store.
Esther Cox, 75, whose family runs a local market, will lead off the parade in a pink Cadillac convertible. She is Miss April in a photograph of her partially hidden behind a pink umbrella.
Lois Phillips, 80, will ride the parade route in a rumble seat in a reproduction of a 1920s white automobile.
“Lois used to date her husband in a rumble seat,” Crisafulli said. “She had her hip replaced, but she said, ‘I’m going to get in that rumble seat.’”
The parade will begin a 7 p.m. at Chess Park and continue south along Main Street.
Observer-Reporter

Longing for an outhouse

Sandy Mansmann, a preservationist from Nottingham Township, Pa., sizes up a double outhouse behind the closed Mt. Zion Church near her farm.

By Scott Beveridge

Sandy Mansmann's restored 1870s farmstead includes many original outbuildings, from the old chicken coop to a spring house.

But, there is one building missing: the outhouse. And, she has been on a difficult journey to find a replacement to move to her farm in Nottingham Township, even though she has an indoor toilet.

"It was probably the first thing to go when they got indoor plumbing," said Mansmann, a preservationist and member of Washington County History and Landmarks Foundation.

Oddly, outhouses have become a hot, trendy landscaping decoration – maybe because so few of them have survived and people are longing for nostalgia, Mansmann said. They also make great conversation pieces, she added.

"They can be charming little buildings," she said.

To keep them was a sign that homeowners "were not modern enough," she added.

Retired antiques dealer Lorys Crisafulli said she knows a guy who wants an outhouse so bad he is willing to pay $500 for one.

"All of a sudden, everybody wants one," Crisafulli said.

The buildings are featured annually in outhouse calendars, and replicas come in all sizes and shapes, from Christmas ornaments to birdhouses.

"They are real popular. I have no idea why," said Stan Fidorek, manager of Over the Garden Gate greenhouse on a century-old farm complete with a sagging outhouse in Richeyville.

He found it amusing that a stranger stopped at the store one day inquiring about purchasing the outhouse, which has the traditional crescent moon carved out of its door.

"He never came back," Fidorek said.

The customer would have been out of luck, though, because the owner of the farm on Route 40 – Bunny Waleski – wants to keep her outhouse.

"She doesn't want to destroy anything," he said. "She wants to restore everything, even the chicken coop."

Preservationists who have old farms believe the outbuildings – including barns and summer kitchens – help to tell the story about how the property was originally used, Mansmann said.

"Placement was very important," she said.

The outhouse needed to be erected away from the spring so as not to contaminate the water supply, and downwind from the kitchen, she said.

Not everyone remembers them so fondly.

Bill Miller said he was "glad to see them go" when public sewerage arrived in 1990 in his hometown of Beallsville.

"If you had to go in the night, you had to run through the yard or find a stream," said Miller, 72. "You'd sit there at night with the door open and see the skunks run by."

"I hated using them at night. Sitting out there alone was scary," added Crisafulli, 84. "It made me think twice before I ate or drank much after dinner."

But, Fidorek believes an outhouse is a "good standby" in case something goes wrong with the modern plumbing.

"It's good forever," he said.

(This story first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.)

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These grandmas are hot property

(Miss March, Dot Krol, poses for a calendar featuring mature women from the Southwestern Pennsylvania. Photo by Chris Grilli/Grilli's Studio)

Grandmas in Monongahela, Pa., are becoming a media sensation after making local headlines two weeks ago for dropping some of their clothes for charity.

“Tonight Show” host Jay Leno poked fun at them last night during his monologue, suggesting that people might want to donate to the cause, rather than look at their slightly naughty 2008 calendar.

Comcast TV’s “Retirement Living” has offered the “pinup girls” an all-expense trip to Washington, D.C., for a taping. That will have to wait because the models promised an exclusive national debut to ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“Everyone wants us,” said Lorys Crisafulli, 80, who coerced 11 of her friends to pose and raise money for the financially strapped local historical society.

Even a Canadian pharmaceutical company has joined the fun, offering the girls a good price on Viagra.

“Everyone is laughing,” Crisafulli said.

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(Former nightclub owner Be Be Bell Barantovich at her photoshoot for a calender featuring the spunky ladies, the youngest of whom is 68. Photo by Chris Grilli of Grilli's Studio)