Grace Methodist Church, Harrisburg, Dauphin County

April feels (to me at least) like it's been about three months long. Then again, ever since the pandemic I'm pretty sure time has lost a lot of its meaning. In any case, I've got one more blog post for you before we head into the month of May, so let's take a trek to Dauphin County and learn about a building that served one very unusual purpose: saving Harrisburg's role as capital of the commonwealth.

Troxell-Steckel House, Whitehall, Lehigh County

I had hoped to be starting this post with the announcement that I've got a new podcast episode ready to roll. As it happens, however, I'm still waiting on YouTube's account verification and a couple other details. (I'm trying to clean up the audio quality.) So instead we're just getting straight into the blogging.

This will be a slightly odd blog post, at least by my own standards. I have two markers for the location, because the wording is just a little different on each, but I won't be sharing pictures of the actual farmhouse. That's not to say that I don't have pictures - I do. Quite a few, in fact, and I would love to share them. But it's a peculiar quirk of the Lehigh County Historical Society that you can't publish photographs of either the Troxell-Steckel House in Whitehall or Trout Hall in Allentown without their explicit written permission, and I just never got around to requesting the permission. Maybe they wouldn't mind, but then again, maybe they would, and I don't feel like dealing with any possible legal fallout. I'd rather play by the rules. Eventually I'll remember to write and ask for permission at a time when I'm actually able to do it, and I'll come back and add my photos to the post.

The Banana Split, Latrobe, Westmoreland County

My apologies to anyone who missed a post last week. We had two and a half days of rain around here, and as my longtime readers know, my body does not take kindly to that sort of thing. I was hurting pretty badly and I just couldn't focus. But I'm back this week!

Pennsylvania, among its many claims to fame, is known as the snack food capital of the United States. It's not hard to see why, either. We're the home of Hershey, Tastykake, Middleswarth chips, Sturgis pretzels (both Julius and Tom), and a whole bunch of other companies that make many of our favorite snackies. This includes ice cream products, from outfits like Yuengling. 

There's apparently something of a mild debate about the origin of the banana split. It seems that a number of communities across the country like to claim to be where the famous sundae was invented. However, our own Latrobe has the earliest claim, and has been certified as the birthplace of the banana split by the National Ice Cream Retailers Association. My sister Liza and I visited Latrobe last autumn to pay homage to Mister Rogers, and the marker for the banana split isn't far from his.