A tribute to my hometown: Lloydell - Cambria County, PA
submitted by George "Sonny" Stupi
My hometown is a small village in Cambria County, Pennsylvania nestled in the Laurel Highlands. A typical coal mining town with it’s Company Stores and Company Houses. A place where almost everyone knows your name and your parents. A quite place nestled in the mountains surrounded by forests with mountain creeks and flowing springs. I was born in Punky Hollow. We moved to this village when I was about three years old. This village is Lloydell where I grew up from the mid nineteen thirties through the early nineteen sixties. Alas, I fear that it is losing it’s identity. Losing it’s identity because it is conjoined with another village.
This other village had most of the business places, a US Post Office that NOW serves both villages, (at one time there was a Lloydell post office), and the high school that residents from both villages had to attend. These villages have no space separating them. The boundary is a street, Stewart Street. They are so closely related that most residents do not know in which village they reside. Most of the Lloydell residents and former residents almost always say they are from that other village. I am guilty of this myself but I intend to change. I want Lloydell to live on.
LLOYDELL
I will always remember the friendly people and loyal friends. What made this town a great place was the endless activities available for the children. Not organized activities
but those that enabled us to use imagination and co-operation and keep us in good physical condition. Activities that kept us going from morning into the night.
Games such as:
Pickup ball games; baseball, football, basketball. Remember Mitchell’s field, second hill, the billboard and empty lot across the street from the Lloydell post office?
Alley and street games; tag, marbles, caddy(1), hopscotch, jump rope, hide and seek, red light stop, hickety bickety(1) buck, kick the can and many more.
Many hours were spent running through the woods and over the hills, rolling old car tires, pushing a hoop with stiff clothes line wire, riding bikes, searching for family cows to bring home for milking.
Building whistles from whistle wood and peach seeds, building go carts.
Hunting and fishing within walking distance, swimming in the creek, ice skating on the old swimming pool, sledding down the street and bobsledding down Brown’s hill.
Potato and weenie roasts.
Walks up the tracks to the “Y” then on to the Big Dam (Five Mile Dam).
And many more activities. Lloydell was a great place to grow up.