Living in Johnstown for parts of eight decades can tend to give one a sense of being a purge target of sorts.
We’re not talking the classic purges of Stalinist Russia, in which millions were killed and/or deleted from history through clever use of retouched photos and rewritten accounts.
The Johnstown example to which I refer also is not part of our current national and worldwide purge attempt as the Woke crowd operates in censorship of social media, Lamestream media, and government accountings to cancel opposition. We’re not yet sure how many, if any, have been killed in this left-wing push. Perhaps that is coming.
What is happening in the Johnstown area is more the tale of a once-vibrant small industrial town going the dust-to-dust, ashes-to-ashes route in its transition into a welfare community, with all the attending decline.
Beyond the obvious general examples of closed business and industry, all of the schools I attended in the Greater Johnstown School District are gone, save the example of the current high school’s auditorium being the former Cochran Junior High facility.
Even that is a shell of its former self. The last time I was there, for a dance recital, the balcony was closed. The main floor also has been modified and not for the better.
The recent hillside slide along the Easy Grade brings up another reminder of my personal purge. Many of the houses that once were home to me or members of my family, also are gone, for various reasons.
Although I never lived in it, my mother and her second husband, along with my brother, once lived along Barnett Street. It was the second house from the top on the left side if you headed toward the Easy Grade.
Even as they lived in the house, there was evidence of hillside instability and an attempt was made to address that by rebuilding the garage that sat under the house. It cost a lot and didn’t work, almost as if it had been a government project.
My family moved on from Barnett Street before the previous slide that wrecked several houses and forced the 2018 repair attempt that turned the hillside into a pile of rocks visible clear across the valley.
In an ironic bit of timing, I took granddaughter No. 2 along to pick up my brother for the family’s Easter meal and made sure to use Barnett Street both going and coming.
The first leg was designed to allow her a peek at the eagle’s nest along the Easy Grade – she insists she saw the bird.
Coming back, my brother and I pointed out where he and her great grandmother once had lived along Barnett Street. We told the child the tale of the hillside giving way and the rocks being put where houses once had stood attempting to stabilize things and prevent a repeat.
But Mother Nature cannot be fooled – heavy rains come periodically to this area. And gravity never rests, eventually winning the battle.
Both of these conspired to send more of the hillside toward Barnett Street, coming perilously close to undermining a section of the Easy Grade at mid-week.
If I lived along Barnett Street, I’d be nervous, just on general principles.
Also, if I lived in any of the remaining houses our family once called home – and there still are a few standing – I might be a tad nervous, too, lest that purge continue.
Sam Ross Jr's site 