Results tagged “Mike Argento” from York Town Square

For some, the Woodstock album brings back clear memories about the vaunted festival and its famous mud. Others have no recollection about those days in August 1969, when an estimated 400,000 people attended the rock festival on a dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y. Background posts from 1969: Timeline of 1969 race riots, court cases and 'Remember' series recalls moon landing and rocket scientist who helped make it so and 40 years ago, men walked on moon and race riot victims wheeled into York emergency room.

The Daily Record/Sunday News is looking for area residents who remember Woodstock, soon to observe its 40th anniversary.

And did anyone with York/Adams links attend?

These memories will be part of the newspaper's "Remember" oral history series, a growing collection of memories accessible by clicking here. If you want to share your memories, call 771-2008 and follow the instructions.

Incidentally, the rock festival did not resonate locally, at least not with the local paper... .

The whereabouts of this York County, Pa.-made statue has been unknown locally for years. But it recently became public, on eBay of all places. (See photo of the artist and statue below.) Background posts: Wago Club prez: 'You've gotta respect the (snapping) turtles' and Church's landmark: 'A man named Beech carving a beech tree, it seemed too perfect' and Why did JFK lose to Nixon in York County?.

The Craigslist ad read like this:

"Life-size basswood statue of John F. Kennedy, carved by local woodcarver Walter S. Langhine. Included with the statue are letters to and from Jacqueline Kennedy. Email to above address or phone calls accepted at 717-793-0650 or 717-235-2543. Best offer."

Langhine's hand-carved statue of JFK had been missing in plain view for years.

Most recently, it has been in the JFK memorabilia collector Clyde Smith's New Freedom basement, York Daily Record /Sunday News columnist Mike Argento discovered.

Smith is moving to smaller quarters, Argento wrote, so JFK has to go.

And hence the ad... .

The Modernaire Motel, built in 1949 to serve Lincoln Highway motorists before the Route 30 by-pass went in, sits at a prime spot on East Market Street at Mount Zion Road. Patrons used to enter the motel, according to Lincoln Highway expert Brian Butko, on the art deco building's rounded corner. But later, the entrance was moved to the side. Background posts: York County ... 'A smorgasbord of architectural styles' and Just try to resist studying this memory-tugging photograph and Coca-Cola out in Springetts... self-storage space is real thing and Change flattens Stony Brook's drive-in, humpback bridge.

Richard E. Zimmerman Sr. was a war hero and banker, well known around town.

And his recent death reminded York County folks of how he was best known - as longtime owner of the Modernaire Motel on East Market Street.

York Daily Record/Sunday News writer Mike Argento noted (4/10/09) that Zimmerman's stint in banking including time as manager of the Round Bank, now M & T's Queensgate branch.

Zimmerman left banking in 1966 to take over the round-sided Modernaire.

He thought it would be interesting, Argento wrote.

Argento told about one such interesting incident:

The Shady Dell was a south side hangout for decades before closing the early 1990s. The building is now privately owned on Starcross Road, south of York. Background posts: The Oaks: 'I often look up there ... and think about how nice it was', Stadium will be site of Oaks music reunion, The Four bloggers write.

The Shady Dell was Tom Anderson's home away from home when growing up in the York area in the 1960s.

The 1967 Dallastown Area High School grad now living in Lakeland, Fla., e-mailed some memories of that hangout.

Here are some excerpts from Tom's e-mail (shadell6667@msn.com):

This drawing gives an idea of the size and scope of Camp Stewartstown, the World War II German prisoner of war camp in southeastern York County, Pa. Now, the former camp is a park and baseball field next to the Presbyterian Church in Stewartstown. Background posts: 'Yesteryears' chock-full of southern York County, Pa., sites, York County has done its share of playing host to POWs and German prisoners from two wars came to York County.

The late Eugene Blevins, of Blevins Orchards, once recalled picking apples on his family's farm with a dozen German POWs from Stewartstown.

"They were ordinary guys," he said. "I liked them. But some of them cut swastikas in the apples. We just threw them away. No point in making a big deal about it."

That one story shows the ambivalence of those living in the area the POW camp filled with German prisoners in the summer of 1944-45.

Mike Argento told this story and others in capturing the Stewartstown scene those summers, in a well-written piece running in the York Sunday News April 14:

So, I made the point in a York Sunday News column that White Oak Park (The Oaks) was to the north side what Shady Dell (The Dell) was to the south side of York: The Dell.

Primo teen hangouts in the 1960s and later.

White Oak Park was in the vicinity of the Masonic Lodge, north of York. (Someone explained to me that Interstate 83 and its interchange caused major changes in the terrain around there.)

Where was The Dell? (For photo, see teen hangout.)

On the hill overlooking Violet Hill and South George Street near the intersection of Old Baltimore Pike and Shady Dell Road.

But I'll shut up and let the York Daily Record's Mike Argento describe The Dell, taken from his article at the time the hangout's furnishings were auctioned in 1993: