Sometimes we travel for vacation, for relaxation. Sometimes we travel for work. And sometimes we travel looking for ourselves. Like many people, I’ve spent some of my adulthood trying to piece my family together. It’s not that I was adopted or that I didn’t know who my relatives were. But my parents came from small families. The few aunts, uncles, and cousins I did have lived in other states. And I was a child when most of my grandparents died, so I didn’t know them either.
I’ve been fortunate as an adult to spend time with my mother’s cousins and with my father’s brother and sister. I can see the connection from them to me, in my face, my build, my mannerisms, and my sense of humor. But it still surprised me when my mother told me I had Grammy’s arms. That’s a compliment and yet not. “Not” because it means they’re not exactly delicate and shapely, but a compliment because they come from my great-grandmother, Martha Frances “Mattie” Miller Close.
I only have small pieces of Grammy. I look at pictures of her and I think I remember her but I can’t be sure. She smiles in only one picture—taken late in life, she is seated in a chair in a yard somewhere, her middle-aged sons standing behind her.
She was born February 17, 1875, in Longfellow, Pa., Mifflin County, south of Lewistown. She married William Hugh Close of Milroy in Little Valley Church of the Brethren in Oliver Township, Mifflin County, in 1892. They moved to Milroy and had five children. Their first, a son, died in infancy and their last child, their only daughter, died of whooping cough in childhood. She moved to Altoona to take care of my mother when she was still a little girl and her own mother had been hospitalized. Mattie never went back to Mifflin County and died April 13, 1964, in Altoona.
Her entire life was spent in a very small area—less than 100 miles across central Pennsylvania—but her influence has lasted over a century.
My mother and I spent a few years working on the family genealogy, trying to trace and record the family’s earliest ties to Central Pennsylvania. We would often pass billboards for Penn’s Cave and my mother would say, “That’s where Grammy spent her honeymoon. She talked about it for the rest of her life.”
A little background for the uninitiated: the first recorded discovery of Penn’s Cave, “America’s only all-water cavern,” was in 1796 by the Reverend James Martin. It opened for the tourist trade in 1885. Even though I went to Penn State, I’d never been there. Indian Caverns in Spruce Creek and Mammoth Cave in Kentucky were the extent of my underground experience. The ubiquitous “See It By Boat!” never seemed enough of an enticement.
But here I was, years later, still thinking about the family and the pieces that could be put into place. And I decided to go see that wonder Grammy talked about, and try to imagine what she thought when she saw it.
From my other cavern visits, I expected a gift shop and ticket-seller. When my friend Patty and I pulled into the parking lot, though, our first view was of a large Victorian-era building with “Penn’s Cave House” painted on the front stood between us and the cavern entrance. Of course, that was the hotel where Mattie would have stayed! (Now it’s a private residence.) We went into the gift shop to pay our admission and wait for our tour time. Ooh, every stamped cedar souvenir you ever dreamed of! (Not mocking here, I still have my little cedar chest from Horseshoe Curve!)
To get to the cave opening we had to walk down a steep incline where a narrow wooden boat waited. Unlike so many tours I’ve been on where everyone is chatting and laughing, this time the group filed into their seats rather quietly. The small children looked both really excited and really nervous. Our tour guide, Tom, asked us to “keep your hands and fingers off the ledges” and then we were off! As the boat glided into the darkness, I heard a little voice say, “I’m scared.” And then another one asked, “Are there any bears in there?"
No, no bears. Just 11 million gallons of water passing through the cavern every 24 hours. The air is 52 degrees and the water, a light emerald color, is 38 degrees year round. Tom also told us the cave is 13 feet high at the entry but inside it can be as low as 2-3 feet (not for the claustrophobic!). There must be a law that it’s not a cave tour unless we get to see stalactites and stalagmites with names--my favorite was the “Statue of Liberty” (pretty good likeness!).
I watched steam rising off the lights and Tom pointed out remnants of earlier tours--soot from their torches still marks the inside of the cave. My thoughts returned to Grammy and the reason I was here. What did she think, this 17-year-old new bride, in this strange place? She’d traveled so far from her home for this honeymoon, most likely by train from Lewistown and then a buggy from Centre Hall. Was she scared? Did she hang onto her new husband? Or was she fascinated, wishing the boat ride could go on forever? In her day there was no hole at the other end of the cave, out into the sunlight for a bit, so she got no break from the darkness. No wonder she talked about it the rest of her life. It must have felt like she had traveled to the ends of the earth.
When I left Penn’s Cave, I got in my car and drove to dinner in State College. When Mattie left Penn’s Cave, she went by buggy to her new home in Milroy and a new life. A world of difference. But somehow, for a little bit, lives shared.
