Buckwheat Pillows

tranquil reminiscence

I had a great July 4th weekend. My wife and I and our buckwheat pillows left for the mountains of Bradford Co., Northern Pennsylvania, Friday afternoon, July 3rd. Lest you think I’m silly to mention our buckwheat pillows, may I remind you this is a buckwheat pillow blog?

We returned last evening, July 7th. While there we watched a flock of wild turkeys peck their way by about 35 feet from the back door. We took pictures of hail covering the ground during a brief but noisy thunder storm. Had a picnic dinner atop Lamb’s Lookout, where you must be able to see at least a hundred miles. I won’t even attempt to describe the grandeur and beauty of the sky, clouds, and panorama below us.

We drove the backwoods mountain roads past beaver dams, abandoned grave yards and old orchards with their stone fences and old remnants of barn and house foundations in the middle of forests that had been farms back before the great depression.

Between that mountain air and our buckwheat pillows we slept in pure bliss in spite of those old hunting camp bunks with their springs that look like a section of woven wire cattle fence. I’m pretty sure I gained at least 5 pounds eating eggs fried in the bacon grease along with the bacon, pancakes, sausage, lebanon balogna gravy over homemade whole wheat toast, home fries, snap peas in the pod, grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, venison steaks, scalloped potatos, home made chilli, tossed salad with blue cheese dressing, homemade macoroni salad, cheese, cottage cheese, potato chips, pretzels, home made strawberry jelly, homemade raspberry custard, homemade cherry pudding drowned in milk, cereal, water mellon, cantalope, and even ice cream, along with the usual ketchup, mustard, tomatoes, onions, potato chips, pretzels, Tasty Cakes, Nutty Bars, Swiss Rolls, Reeses Peanut Butter Cups, apple juice, orange juice, soda, coffee, and the stuff I can’t recall off hand.

On sunday morning we attended the little white mountain church where the walls are paneled with the local wild black cherry boards and the wainscoating and other woodwork is of the old native American Chestnut, now nearly extinct from the chestnut blight. I can’t imagine where all the people came from to pack that church up there in the mountain. The pianist was playing old familiar hymns, drifting effortlessly from one hymn to another, needing no music, and somewhat reminiscent of Floyd Cramer’s drop note style. The flames were a flickering in the little cast iron stove in the middle of the sanctuary (It was in the high 40’s in the morning, getting up into the low 70’s during the day). Absolutely gorgeous weather for July.

I don’t guess this post will do much to inform or promote buckwheat pillows, but some experiences are just worth sharing. If you want to just get away from it all, just head for Armenia Mountain, a few miles north of Canton, Bradford Co., Pa.