Small town America
At daybreak, Harold Work rises, pulls on his coveralls and trudges out to his barn. He and his son Tim along with Work’s cousin, Keith King, flick the lights on in the freezing barn, pour feed down the grain shoots and fire-up the milking system.
For the next two hours, the family will work to get the 80 cows milked, and then, around 8 a.m. head back to their houses for breakfast.
This routine has become engrained into Harold, after working his family dairy farm for more than 50 years.
“This is a tough business,” Work said, as he ushered in a new batch of cows to be hooked up for milking.
The 58-year-old, with a graying-chinstrap beard and potbelly said he is starting to wear down after decades of hard farming life.
No matter the day, Harold is on the job, working all holidays, including Christmas. The cows are always there. You can’t call in sick, he said.
“I’m getting tired,” Work said. “I loved it at one time, but now I’m winding down. The way I see it, I might not have much to do, but I have about all I can do anymore.”
The Works typify the Mill Run community: hardworking, quiet, down-to-earth, reserved.
The small community was originally called Biggham Town in the 1800’s.
Then, around the turn of the century, the town was renamed Mill Run. The village is situated along the stream, Mill Run, which snakes through the cluster of homes, where mills once lined the babbling waters, churning wheat and corn into flower.
Now, not much is left of the many mills that dotted the area landscape – just one rickety graying building remains – but the memories remain.
Memories are what Wally Colborn, the unofficial town benefactor, knows are being lost, buried beneath the soil with the aging town, just out of reach like a dusty book on the top shelf.
Memories like the giant mural on the side of the old train station; an old man who used to let kids ride his bicycle, with a giant front wheel and a tiny back one; the man who invented airbrakes for trains, but had the invention stolen by a train owner or the memory of old A.C. Stickl, who borrowed $75,000 when $75,000 was unheard of and then promptly invented a steam jenny pressure washer, which he sold the rights to for $1 million. The same model is still in use in pressure washers today.
Colborn, his head cradled within a bomber-style leather, earflapped wool cap, chatted on the telephone in his busy garage in downtown Mill Run.
Colborn Garage and Bus Lines has more than 100 vehicles on the road, supplying the Connellsville Area School District with transportation and area residents with work.
He said the town has treated him well. He started with three buses in 1965 and has built an armada of 107 vehicles over the years.
In addition to his garage and bus line, Colborn also owns the post office, numerous houses along Route 381, as well as the current building for Dull’s Market, the only store left in town.
Employing 87 people in a town where work is as sacred as church on Sunday, Colborn spent just short of $1 million in payroll last year, something he is considerably proud of.
“That’s pretty good for a little, small community like this.”
And, just up the road, the Works have been doing pretty well financially, too, making a living off the Mill Run land.
The family has been working the farm along Route 381 for nearly a century, supplying the Farmer’s Union with hundreds of gallons of milk everyday.
Inside the dim Work barn, lumbering bovines – Holsteins and Guernsey’s – fat and content, line the old building, as Tim and Harold, assesse a pregnant cow that was close to giving birth.
“I think she is ready to go,” Tim said, pulling the engorged brown and white cow from the heard and “stalling” it with a newborn calf.
According to Work, the average cow produces about 40 pounds of milk each day, with those who have recently given birth reaching close to 100 pounds daily. The Works’ heard of 80 cows pumps out about 880 gallons of milk every two days, enough milk to keep the men busy from dawn till dusk.
Even Work’s grandson, Keith, who is busy with football for the Connellsville Falcons, finds time in the evenings to help with the nightly milk.
Work said he can remember when his grandfather would milk the cows by hand, and then drink the cream skimmed from the top in the evenings.
Before he underwent open-heart surgery a few years ago, Work said he enjoyed milk straight from the farm with its rich creamy texture, but now, under doctor’s orders, he is on 2 percent store bought milk.
Work also went through another hospital stay recently, having double knee surgery resulting from an injury caused by a bull about 10 years ago. Work said he just feels blessed to be alive.
The Works have battled a barrage of hardships in recent months.
On top of his double knee surgery, Work and his family have been trying to deal with the passing of Work’s wife, Diane, the only way they know, by working through it.
Diane died in October of last year from Pancreatic cancer, the disease robbing her children and grandchildren of her presence just five weeks after being diagnosed.
Outside the old, white barn, Tim painted, “We Love You Mom” down the side of a giant silage bag – strange to some people maybe, but not so strange in this town where the family is the center of each and every day.
“She was a good wife,” Work said, sitting at his “desk” in
the middle of the cold barn, his shadowed eyes misting. “She was a good mother. She loved farm living.”
Down the road at Dull’s market, Richard and Patty Broadwater could not agree more.
“She was a great lady,” Patty said, as she talked about the Work family and the town she has always called home.
The Broadwaters have been running Dull’s for more than 45 years. As one of the last vestiges in the old town, the market stands on its own, with nearly all local residents relying on the small mom and pop store for basic necessities – bread, milk, batteries, Tylenol.
“I have been working here for 46 years,” Richard said with a smile, pushing his glasses up his forehead. “When I married her, I married the job, too.”
Patty’s father opened the market in 1934 and now his grandchildren work behind the counter, his grandson does the bookkeeping.
Just like Work, Dull is a family name and the store remains family run.
Patty’s father purchased the market for a mere $200 investment, and competed with the other stores such as F.D. Livingston and J.C. Mays. And the convenience and grocery store hasn’t changed much since then, pretty much like the Mill itself.
“This is a fine community,” Broadwater said. “We have a lot of fine people, church people. I like living here.”
And as if a microcosm of the town, the store is open only until 7:30 p.m. through the week, and, of course, it is closed on Sundays.
According to Colborn, Sunday is a special day in this “church” town, and people meet and greet the old-fashioned way, spending time with friends and family over a home-cooked meal.
The 71-year-old man, with a trim, muscular frame from years of hard work, leaned back in his tight, corner office in the dingy garage, talking about his business and the town, panoramic pictures of the townspeople from years past in faded black and white, framing his whitish-gray hair.
His dad opened the garage 84 years ago, where Colburn has worked since 1951, beginning in the early days selling cars that have long been forgotten: the Star, the Hub Mobile and even the original Model T’s from Ford.
Colborn’s grandfather owned the first car in the town, a basic model delivered by horses, pulling the “new machine” through the muddy roads.
Colborn said he can remember when his garage sat a little higher along Route 281, before the years of paving and repaving built up the pavement up to level with the only official inspection station in the community.
“Most of the people here have stayed, except the younger generation had to leave to find work,” Colborn said.
“But this is a community where everyone likes to try and help others in need, good people. It is a good place.”
The Works think Mill Run is pretty good, too, staking their claim in the town so many decades ago, but Work said the coming years might hold something different for his family.
The future for the Works is similar to the future of the town itself, kind of up in the air, Harold said.
“I won’t be doing this too much longer and I don’t expect Timmy to continue to bust it every day without me. I told him if I die tomorrow, I want him to hang it up.”
And while Tim has dedicated his whole life to the farm, he doesn’t think when his dad goes he will continue.
Colborn also knows things are changing in his small town, with small shops right downtown and neighborhood fun being replaced by discount store chains 15 miles away and video games.
And although change is inevitable, Colborn doesn’t want the community to forget what it once was.
“I have been here a long time,” Colborn said, reminiscing about the attempts by his father and himself to try and preserve the community’s history.
“He kept a running record of all the fires, accidents and deaths in the community. Of course, that was back when people would view at the houses. We didn’t have funeral homes. Then for a while, I was taking pictures of the houses in town and trying to keep a record of who lived in them, but I didn’t keep up with it.”
Colborn worries these memories – the mental snapshots of the old blacksmith’s shop in downtown Mill Run or the one-room school house, coming down to the garage at night and watching the traffic pass by, bobsledding down the streets in winter – like so much of the town’s history, will just fade to black over time, slipping from the grasp of coming generations.
“When we are gone, it is all going to be lost,” Colborn said.
Despite the town’s disappearing past, Colborn said he wouldn’t have wanted to raise a family, build a home and work for a living anywhere but Mill Run.
“I have lived here, in Mill Run, all my life. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.”