My town

Our town has a Facebook page called I GREW UP IN BRADFORD PA. The last time I checked it had over six thousand (just checked again...almost seven thousand) members. It seems that people who have left the community are still interested in their hometown. Locals post pictures along with current events and history. 

 One great photographer who posts a lot of pictures taken from a drone is Nate Bottorf.  I really love this one that shows how out town is situated in all the valleys of the hills.  

When I was a kid we lived in the far upper center of this picture. We had a small “gang” led by the oldest girl (tomboy) in the neighborhood.  One of our occasional adventures was to climb to the very top of the hill behind our house.  Way at the top was a clearing and a small apple orchard. We would eat and gather apples to take home.  I always said that Johnny Appleseed planted that small orchard. 

But Johnny did sell lots of apple trees, from Pennsylvania to Indiana. "He started nurseries at the edge of the frontier -- actually started them before civilization got there," said Means. 

"The land companies would sell you, say, 100 acres on the condition that you planted an orchard.  And so you had a guy sitting there, waiting to sell you these seedlings."

The fruits borne by those seedlings, though, weren't exactly appetizing -- and those apples weren't for eating. They were used for hard cider. Yes, alcohol.

An illustration from the Saturday Evening Post showing American folk hero Johnny Appleseed.

 MIKE MUNDEN/AP

"There was a lot of alcohol drunk on the frontier because it was a safe drink," Means said. "Pure water was impossible to find for the most part."

So, Johnny was pushing more than West. 

At the Goeglein Mill in Fort Wayne, the the alcoholic apple juice is flowing. Don Goeglein's grandfather started his cider press in 1929.

During Prohibition?  "It was," Goeglein said. "I told these guys when they started the hard cider business, they said, 'Here's the first taste.' And I said, 'Well, that's not the first -- that's the first legal batch to come out!'"

In fact, it was the prohibition of alcohol that made the apple respectable.

"The apple-a-day for health was an effort by apple growers, after Prohibition came along, to find a new use for their product," Means said.

Johnny