“The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir” is a new book by Alfred F. Borelli, a native of Conrad and graduate of Conrad and Austin, PA schools. The rural Potter County stories are played out against the wilderness backdrop of the Allegheny mountains. Born in 1925, Borelli just celebrated his 80th birthday, but the stories of his boyhood are as fresh as the bread his mother baked in their wood-fired oven, which with her handmade noodles, sustained the family. The tales are also full of delightful humor, e.g., as when the author describes what happens when he had to retrieve a squawking, flapping chicken from one of the holes in the family’s outhouse. Readers across the country first met Borelli in a chapter he wrote for “Growing Up Italian in God’s Country: Stories from the Wilds of Pennsylvania.” In it he painted a picture of rural life in Conrad in the Thirties. Borelli builds on those memories in his new book, describing what it was like to attend the one-room school in Conrad and to trudge through hip-deep snow to throw five buckets of coal into the huge stove to warm the building before the rest of the students arrived. There is also an entertaining chapter recounting the school’s Christmas play along with another in which one of his sisters bakes him a chocolate cake but mistakes the liniment bottle for vanilla extract. Railroads were an important legacy. His father, Patsy Borelli, emigrated to this country as a boy to work first on the legendary Buffalo and Susquehanna logging railway and then the Baltimore and Ohio. His mother, Anna Policastro Borelli,grew up at Hammersley Junction, the family home literally a stone’s throw away from the B&S logging depot north of Wharton. Railroad stories abounded and get-togethers with his father’s crew (The senior Borelli was a foreman on both the B&S and B&O maintaining tracks from Wharton to Galeton) were regular occurrences at their home in Conrad. “The talk was always of railroads,” the author recalls. Railroad buffs will appreciate his stirring adventure as a ten-year-old aboard the B&O when he meets Jenny’s Girls, “Ladies” who visited logging camps. Even more exciting is his tale about being entrusted by his father to take the motor car down the mountain only to lose control when his speeding results in the main drive belt. snapping. The story of the family having to move when the 1942 flood washed out the railroad tracks in the area details his father’s stoic farewell to the Conrad home and land he loved almost better than life. Readers will also share the hair-raising moments when a medical emergency hits the family, necessitating a Coudersport doctor to make a late night house call over snow-filled dirt roads to Cherry Springs and down the treacherous, twisting hill to treat Borelli’s ailing mother . His mother Anna is often a heroine as when wielding a broom she forces an air-borne hawk to relinquish one of the family’s fat hens. One of the most memorable stories in the book deals with the young Borelli’s reaction as he steals behind an outbuilding to watch his father and neighbor men butcher the family’s China Poland boar. Among the one-time Conrad residents who also appear are Blanche Greeley who helped save his life when the author swallowed part of a Jack Armstrong whistle; Harold Williams, son of the general store owners who remained Borelli’s good friend until the former’s death at age 86, and Florence Shields, the beloved school marm, who started the author on his piano career. Borelli’s sisters, Madeline Leonard of Rural Valley, Pa and Louise Gerardy of Port Allegany, both appear in the stories as does his older sister, the late Margaret Costa of Smethport.

The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir

Alfred Borelli

Stone Pine Books, Patri Publications

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Books by Alfred Borelli

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Alfred Borelli. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The East Fork Revisited: A Memoir