Lester Sipe

Mr. Raphael Hays,

I read the book that you published for the 250^th Anniversary of Cumberland County about your grandfather and from what I read, he did the town of Carlisle a lot of good in the positions that he had as a soldier, lawyer and businessman. I used to work at your plant but I never knew the background of the man that owned it.

I wanted to tell you that I read your part in the book about the time that you grew up. I think we are around the same age, 75 years old. When I was young, we moved from Lower Frankfurt Township into Carlisle to an area called Blossertown. It is right on the eastern side of the Frog Switch, Louther St. extended, and we were about 6 houses away from the Frog Switch. I was about 6 years old in 1939. We used to play all around the Frog Switch. We used to get very dirty playing in the dump that had sand from the scrap pile after the molding. My mother would give us a lickin' and tell us never to go back there, but in 10 minutes we would be back to playing in the scrap pile. They used to have a man there that lived in a house and barn at the back end of the Frog Switch. His name was Blosser. They named the area on the other side of Louther St. Extended Blossertown. He was a foreman or superintendent at the foundry for many years. He lived in the house and barn that was probably owned by the foundry. It may have been the place where they used to keep the horses and mules that moved the steel from the foundry to the Frog Switch or here or there. This man would get soft drinks from Blosser Beer Distributors, about 15 or 20 cases of old fashioned root beer, orange, birch beer or ginger ale. One of the young Blosser boys would put it on a cart and pull it through the foundry and the frog shop for the men to buy at 5 cents a bottle.

I went to the Penn School. It was on Louther St. They let us take a short cut through the frog shop onto east Louther St. to go to school. Otherwise, we would have had to walk clear around the foundry and we would have lost about a block. We went to school like that for about a year and a half. I was in first or second grade. I remember a man named Natcher that worked there. There was a crane behind the frog shop called a “dinky,” it was steam operated. They burned coal for the steam that generated the power and Natcher ran the crane. That was in 1939. When I came to work at the Frog Switch in 1973 that man was still running the dinky but now it was diesel powered. He worked there until about 1975.

I also read that you used to march in a parade in town. I did the same thing in 1939. The Frog Switch had a big flower garden along side the frog shop near the office. They had a gardener that took care of the flowers. On Memorial Day, the school children would march in the parade to the Old Graveyard and put flowers on the graves. Well, we didn’t have any flowers at home and I remembered the flower garden at Frog Switch, so I asked the gardener if he would give me flowers to take to the graveyard. He said he would if I came down to the garden. So that’s how I got my flowers for the parade. I also remember a Civil War soldier that was in the parade. I thought he must have been a hundred years old. They would put him in a caisson and pull him down to the Old Graveyard. I thought the old man lived at the jailhouse. He just lived there; he wasn’t an inmate. They looked after him and took care of him. I don’t remember his name, but I remember he was a little guy and really old.

I lived around the Frog Switch the early part of my life up until about 14 years old. We moved out of Blossertown to 3 North East St. This was right beside a stone house that was a bar room. Now we were about a block and a half from the foundry. The guys would ride their bicycles to work. This was in 1939 so a lot of them didn’t have automobiles. The ones that lived out of town did, but the guys in town would ride their bikes to work and park their bikes by the Frog Switch. A lot would have on bib overalls and a hat and when they would come out pretty bad looking at 3 o’clock in the afternoon. A lot of them would go into the stone house to get a drink to wet their whistle and then they were on their way home. I knew a lot of good men that worked there hard and worked there a long time.

We used to have a ball field where Weis food market is. It ran from the LeTort Spring all the way down to North Spring Garden St. It must have been about 6 or 7 acres. We called it the John Hays ball field. At one time it had to belong to John Hays. We played ball, football and spent a lot of time there. All us kids from the east end. We went down there to play because it was close by. We would play at night and in the daytime. They would hold ball games there. I think it was the American Legion that would get teams from Mt. Holly, Mechanicsburg and all over the place to play ball. The American Legion used to take care of it. They kept the grounds clean and kept it mowed.

It was a nice piece of ground. The kids from East St. would spend a lot of hours there playing. We weren’t up down getting in trouble stealing little old ladies pocketbooks and automobiles.

Growing up around the Frog Switch I remember smoke and a lot of dirt. This was before they had the electric furnaces. These were coke-fired furnaces. They didn’t have dust collectors then. There were two big smoke stacks that went up in the air behind the foundry. They were about 3 ft. in diameter. The day they were casing iron, it was dirty down there in the air and rusty looking. All the houses down there had the dirt going over them. The people had to watch what day they washed clothes because they couldn’t put their clothes out on the day they were casing. But that was just the way it was then.

I didn’t have a lot of time at the Frog Switch when I worked there. I was without a job so I thought I would come down and apply for a job. I saw the personnel manager, Bob Adams. I was in there in the morning and he asked me if I could work that day. I said yeah and he said start that afternoon, so I started that afternoon. I only had about 22 years. I retired in 1995. A good friend of mine that lived on East St. worked for 40 years and his dad before him worked for 40 years. That takes us way, way back. There was 80 years of work. When men went there to work, they stayed there they didn’t quit. I knew men that were there 50 years. There weren’t many jobs around.

I lived around that area until I was about 14 years old. We used to go around the Frog Switch and play all the time. There were no fences up and nothing was locked. We didn’t go inside or do damage. It was a place to play or ride your bicycle around. The biggest game when I was a kid was a yo-yo and shooting marbles. The girls played jacks and hop scotch on the pavement. Most of the sidewalks were bricks. Girls wore dresses, not pants, and if they had pants we would call them Tom Boys. All us kids down there, we were bad but not that bad where we got in trouble, where you had to get the cops or anything. They used to call us wharf rats. It was a poor end of town. A lot of poor people were there, including my family. We didn’t have a lot.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences as a young boy living around the Frog Switch. All the best for continued success with the company.

Sincerely,

Lester Sipe

Mr. Sipe’s story was taken on 6 August 2007 at the Historical Society and was transcribed into this letter to Mr. Hays.

Mr. Sipe was also drafted into the Korean War and served in Germany and the south of France from January 1953 to January 1955.