JOHN B. PENNEPACKER
On his own lines, John is knowing. With the certainty of experience equal to instinct, he will go straight to the points of a horse or a bit of land or a corner clock. He informed me:
“Dat gradle vat you pought at Weishe's vandue is not a gradle for vheat.”
It had a hickory handle and four hickory blades, and a broad steel blade six inches in width which the dengel-stuck a long while ago sharpened, but its day had departed and it cost me ten cents. “Dat gradle vas for puckvheat. Did you efer gradle?”
“No, John, I never did."
“Vell, my fadder vas a goot von to gradle. Many vas de day I gradled and I could gradle pretty goot too, but not like my fadder. He vould dake de gradle and cut de crain right quick and lay it all down on the cround chust so, and den he says to me, ‘Dat is de vay you must alvays gradle too’ — but I nefer could, " he added with a sigh.
“Do you know dem vite oak and chestnut voods ofer on de Schtay-Barrick (Stein Berg) vere you and I vent von day wiss de buggy?"
I knew them very well; they grew over the top of the rough hill amid masses of gneiss, smoothed by the floods of eons ago. They were not far from the Wolf's Den, a vast natural cavern constructed by the earthquake with immense blocks of upheaved granite. I so told John.
“Vell, dem voods pelonged to olt Sam Pannuhbacker (the nearest approximate to the pronunciation) and den dey pelonged to Truckenmiller. Dat name is so long dat ve chust calls em T—— Miller and ven dey gets puried up in Keeley's craveyard dat is vat goes on to de cravestones. Diese olt T—— Miller, he hes up dere now. And den dey pelonged to Puhl and now dey pelongs to me. I vill nefer cut dem voods down so long as I lif. Dey can chust stay. Eferypody cuts down all de voods and after a vile dere von't
