While visiting my friend Vanessa's thrift shop
in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania I was invited to walk
into a secret hatchway basement that her husband
discovered under a small door in the back room.
The hatch leads to a series of old steps which
descend into a dark room with raw stone walls
and what appears to be a well in the dirt floor.
Upon further inspection, the well is actually
a tunnel which veers off in the direction of
the building next door. It is believed by some
to be a part of The Underground Railroad, which
did have a trail running through Stroudsburg.
The building the shop is in looks to be late 1800s
or early 1900s so there must have been another
building on site prior to 1865 if indeed this was a part
of the network through which people who were
enslaved in the South were making their way to Canada
for freedom. Vanessa told me that the building is being
investigated by a historical society. I would have loved to
have gone down into the tunnel but it hadn't been explored
yet and I wasn't prepared to be the first person to do so.
Above are a few more shots of other things
found in the basement of the shop. You'd
never know that all of this lingers beneath such
a bright, cheerful and colorful commercial space.
More thrift. More flea market moments.
More vinyl, both new and old...
Yet more vinyl, both new and old...
2018 or 1962, it all sounds great.
Nature continues to do its cyclical dance.
Amid moon moods, sky shifts and ever changing
energies, summer will be with us for a little bit longer.