Ahh...nostalgia

I was following a thread on the local newspaper's forums this evening, and it caused me to feel nostalgic. Here is some of what I wrote there, with some editing.

I grew up in Western Massachusetts, amongst the foothills of the Berkshire Mountains. Russell and Westfield to be exact. To be even more exact, though I was born in Springfield, we moved to Woronoco (a village within Russell, MA), when I was one year old, so my dad could teach in a seminary that used the old community building there (right next door to our house), which was torn down when I was eight or nine years old.

Directly accross the street from where the community building once stood, stands Strathmore Paper company's Woronoco Mill #2. Mill #1 is on the other side of the Westfield river across an old stone and cement bridge which has been condemned since I was ten years old. Both mills are closed at this point though I think Mill #1 is used for storage. At one time, there was some talk of turning the #1 mill into apartments. It is an old brick building with a lot of character.

Across the street from the house where I spent 12 of my first 13 years, there now sits an old abandoned parking lot, overrun with weeds and sumach trees (the lovely poison kind), beyond which runs the old Conrail east/west line from Boston, MA to Albany, NY. Beyond the tracks Mount Tekoa rises from the Westfield River valley. Wikipedia gives one history of the mountain, but there's more to it than that. What my dad told me is that the original name in the Woronoak Indian language was Tko, not Tekoa, and tko was Woronoak for rattlesnake. A rather appropriate name for the mountain as it is infested with timber rattlers. I saw several growing up. Most likely, the Puritan settlers missunderstood the name and used the word Tekoa instead thinking it more appropriate at the time.

Those mountains are beautiful and I miss them terribly. Next year I plan to fulfill my goal of traveling to Massachusetts on my scooter, at which time I will take special care to travel through the area in which I spent much of my childhood. I want to hike up Mount Tekoa once again, as I did with my father and sister when I was a child. I'll just need to watch out for those rattlesnakes.

Here you can see a picture of the Westfield River Valley, as seen from the back yard of my childhood home.