Our 1928 Willys-Knight had been climbing for at least ten miles, one hairpin turn after another, under a threatening sky. Though it was early September, the temperature was close to ninety degrees. There was a stillness in the air and a steady buildup of dark, lowering cloud banks to the east.

"Kenneth, the car's overheated!" Mother's voice was anxious.

"I'm aware of it," Father replied. Rivulets of perspiration were streaming down the back of his neck.

"Shouldn't we stop and let the radiator cool off?"

"I will, Louise, as soon as I can find a place to pull over." There had been increasing irritation between my parents ever since Mother, custodian of the map, had suggested some sixty miles back that the most direct road to Alderton was west on Route 30. Dad did not agree and had chosen Route 143, which approached Alderton from the northeast. A mistake. Route 143 was poorly paved and endlessly curving.

We were all on edge this late summer day of 1934. Four consecutive days on the road, seven-hundred-odd miles, four blowouts, five people jostled all the way from Timmeton, Alabama, to western Pennsylvania. Mother had driven most of those miles because I had yet to obtain my driver's license and my father was still having those attacks of malaria.

For most of the trip I had been shut up in the back seat with the animal energy of Tim, eleven, and Anne-Marie, nine. Every waking moment my younger brother and sister had wriggled and fidgeted, poked one another, and me, and chattered incessantly. I felt bruised and battered, my clothes a mess.

In an effort to ease the tension, Mother began giving us a running commentary on what we would see on Dad's alternative route into Alderton. "We'll be going down Seven Mile Mountain now. The map shows a little village not too far ahead. Yancyville, it's called. Oh, and here's something interesting," she added. "A lake." She held the map to get a closer look. "It's called Lake Kissawha. Indian name, I suppose."

As she spoke, dark clouds suddenly blanketed the landscape. Then the sky emptied. There were no separate raindrops; rather it seemed as if giant hands had overturned cloud-buckets. Lightning and thunderclaps followed — eerie, terrifying. And at that moment white steam began to rise from the car radiator.

Anne-Marie started to cry softly. Hunched over the wheel, Dad searched through the downpour for a place to pull off. There was a bump; we skidded off the road and began sliding to the right. Frantically Dad twisted the wheel, fighting the slide. No use. We ended up with the two rear wheels in a water-filled ditch.

As Dad turned off the ignition, his hands were shaking.

"Now let's all stay calm," Mother said crisply. "Nobody's hurt. We'll be all right."

After about five minutes the deluge stopped and the sky lightened. Gratefully we rolled down the windows; the closed car had been like a steam oven. Dad started the engine but the back wheels only spun crazily, churning mud. Gunning the motor merely sank the heavy old Willys deeper into the ditch.

Then we heard a heart-stopping sound — a roaring, crashing noise from the steep slope just above us. Startled, we looked up to our right and saw a river of water pouring down the side of the mountain. It crashed onto and over the car, water gushing through the open windows, soaking us. Then it surged across the road, tore off a route marker, and churned down the asphalt surface for fifty feet before plunging over the side of the mountain to our left, sweeping along rocks and small trees in its path.

We sat silently in the car, paralyzed by our narrow escape. Then dazedly, almost like a film in slow motion, my parents began mopping up the water in the front seat. Suddenly Dad's body slumped forward against the steering wheel. I could see a vein throbbing in his neck.

In a panic I clambered over Tim and opened the car door. "I'll go for help," I said, catching Mother's distressed eyes.

High school tennis had strengthened my legs. I ran back along the road we had traveled, avoiding the debris and the worst puddles. My eyes were searching the downhill side of the road, now to my right, for the building I thought I had glimpsed through the trees.

Yes, there it was, some kind of rustic lodge or inn near the shore of the lake. The side road I turned into was steep, slippery underfoot. As I ran, I spied in the distance the figure of a man in a green sports shirt emerging from the building.

At that instant my foot caught in a fallen branch. Down I went, sprawled on all fours — mud all over the front of my skirt, spattered on my blouse and face.

"I say, what a nasty tumble —"

The man was now standing over me, hand outstretched. He was younger than I had thought.

"My family needs help," I stammered, spurning his hand and scrambling to my feet. I pointed toward the road. "Up there."

"Was there an accident?"

"Yes, our car slid into the ditch. I think my father's hurt."

"Should I call an ambulance?"

"I don't know."

"Let's have a look." He set off at a rapid pace, with me trotting to keep up, trying to get my tangled hair out of my eyes and wiping furiously at the mud.

"Beastly day for motoring. Tell me what happened," he tossed over his shoulder at me.

A clipped English accent, reddish-blond hair. He seems nice, I thought. "We were driving up from Alabama. My father's Kenneth Wallace, the new publisher of the Alderton Sentinel."

At the main road I pointed the way toward our disabled car. After rounding several curves we saw it. My father was still in the driver's seat, but I rejoiced to see that he was sitting upright.

The young man bounded forward. "I'm Randolph Wilkinson. Are you injured, sir? How can I help?" Insisting that he was all right, my father climbed slowly out of the Willys. By now Mother too was out on the road to greet us, with Tim and Anne-Marie tumbling after.

"Julie!" Mother cried. "What happened to you?"

To my relief the two men became absorbed in examining the car as I explained my fall to Mother while wringing out my sopping skirt. What a way to meet a stranger ... fall on my face in the mud practically at his feet.

Brushing aside Mother's protests, my father climbed back in behind the steering wheel, turned on the ignition, and began a gentle rocking motion — forward, back, forward. As the rocking pattern stepped up, the Englishman didn't hesitate to step into the water behind the car, flex his muscular arms, and at the right moment give a mighty shove. The heavy old Willys lurched forward from the ditch onto the road.

"By Jove, we did it!" Our rescuer shot one hand into the air while Tim and Anne-Marie whooped in triumph.

Dad set the hand brake and climbed from the car.

"How can we thank you!"

"No need to." Mr. Wilkinson was looking at me again.

"But I insist that you come back to the inn for a cleanup. Can't go on as you are."

"Thanks so much," Dad replied. "But I think we're all right now."

"Kenneth, please," Mother urged. "Let's accept the young man's offer."

"And Dad, don't forget the radiator," Tim put in.

My father grimaced. "I'd forgotten. Our water boiled over, Mr. Wilkinson."

This time the Englishman climbed behind the wheel. He drove several hundred yards down the mountain to what he called the back entrance to the inn. We wound through a woodland, then crossed over the top of a tall dam. To our right was an immense lake; below, on our left, water from the spillway formed a gurgling stream.

After we pulled up in front of a large building, the Englishman showed Mother, Anne-Marie and me to a powder room off the front entrance hall. One glance at myself in the mirror made me shudder: my wavy light brown hair was hanging in stringy ropes; mud spots on my face gave the effect of chicken pox. I stared down at my filthy saddle shoes, my rumpled skirt and blouse, and groaned. I looked more like a lumpy twelve-year-old than almost eighteen. After cleaning up as best I could, I fled outside.

Lake Kissawha was larger than I had first thought. When we drove in, the far banks had been lost in mist. Now they were just visible, perhaps half a mile away. As I strolled down to the shore, I noticed that the steep face of the dam was a wild aggregation of loose rocks and boulders, with saplings and scrub pines growing out of the crevices.

Odd way to construct a dam, I mused. Then I turned and walked back to our car.

When our family reassembled by the Willys, the handsome Englishman was there to see us off. As I started to climb into the back seat he took my hand and held it for a moment. "I'm glad we met, Julie," he said.

Startled, I looked up into his hazel eyes. They were warm, sparked by a mischievous twinkle. Then, very slowly, he winked!

My eyes must have shown my confusion. I reddened, murmured something unintelligible and stepped into the back seat, aware that my legs were strangely weak.

Mr. Wilkinson then strongly urged us to go back a mile or so, where he said we would find a scenic spot called Lookout Point, which had a breathtaking view of Alderton and the whole valley. Though road weary and eager to end our long journey, we decided that a good first look at our new hometown would be well worth retracing our route.

A few minutes later, with Mother now at the wheel, we pulled into an asphalt parking area and climbed out of the car again. The dark angry clouds were now vanishing to the east. Through breaks in the overcast we could see the narrow Schuylkill Valley spread out below, surrounded by the towering Alleghenies, with Alderton on the valley floor.

I stood there fighting disappointment. Before leaving the flatness of Timmeton I had tried to visualize what it would be like living in the mountains. All afternoon we had been driving through glorious scenery, misty-blue peaks soaring over undulating ridges, each horseshoe bend opening a new and breathtaking vista. I could scarcely wait to see Alderton.

But spread below us now was something very different. Alderton looked pinched, hemmed in by the mountains. In many places the hills were denuded, the slopes pocked with slag heaps. The peace I had sensed in these mountain heights was gone. A dissident note had entered in — as if men and nature were antagonists.

We stood there in a tightly huddled family group, our eyes sweeping the landscape below us. For a moment no one said anything. I was feeling let down, betrayed, but dared not voice it.

Still, there was beauty mixed in with the ugliness. Just below us in the twilight Lake Kissawha was like a multicolored mirror. A sparkling stream, like a glistening strand of pearls, wound down Seven Mile Mountain to Alderton. Consulting the map, Mother reported that this was the Sequanoto River, that it was joined by Brady Creek just north of Alderton, and that the combined streams flowed through the center of town.

Father, pale and drawn, pointed out the two bridges spanning the river, including the railroad bridge built at the turn of the century. On his previous visit here, local citizens had described it as an architectural monstrosity because of its ponderous concrete arches. As our eyes searched the town, tongues of flame would leap from tall brick smokestacks, then die again. A thick sooty haze hovered above the scene.

"That's the Yoder Iron and Steel Works," Dad said, indicating the smokestacks. "Employs over twelve hundred men. Headed by Tom McKeever, a tough old man who runs this town, I'm told."

"Including the Sentinel?" Mother asked.

My father shrugged. "I don't think he'll pay much attention to us." He pointed again. "There's the Trantler Wireworks, a Yoder subsidiary. Makes barbed wire and such. Those and the Pennsylvania Railroad yards are the town's chief industries. See the yards on the east side of Railroad Bridge — apparently a major east-west transfer point." From where we stood we could see two roundhouses surrounded by glittering skeins of tracks.

"Just like a model train set!" Tim breathed excitedly.

"Sure looks that way from here, son."

Dad then indicated the residential areas, mostly tucked into the hills, and a section of drab gray houses east of town. "Workers' houses," Dad explained. "They're called the Lowlands." The name fit; they were certainly the ugliest part of this industrial center of over twenty thousand people. Alderton was a stark contrast to quiet Timmeton, where our family had lived for almost nine years.

With sudden nostalgia my mind drifted back to those last days of our uprooting ... packing boxes, crates and steamer trunks to be sent by rail, the last visits to my favorite places, the final good-byes.

Mary Beth. Sandra Lee. Merv, the boy down the street who was so sure I was to marry him someday. How could I start in, my last year of high school, to make all new friends?

There had been pain in leaving the setting, too: the huge century-old oak trees that arched over Macon Street like the green-vaulted roof of a cathedral. There are precious things that you can't pack and take with you, like the all-pervasive fragrance of the honeysuckle. Would there be honeysuckle in the North? I would miss the drapery of purple wisteria that all but smothered the old woodshed in our back yard.

I looked at my parents as they stared silently at the town below us. My father's tall frame was stooped, neck muscles still twitching, eyes clouded, hands clenched tightly together. In contrast were Mother's firm, patrician features, her determined manner. How did they handle a change like this? I had no clue and could not bring myself to ask. I had always had trouble talking about whatever meant most to me. Shyness? The fear of something important to me being belittled or made fun of? I didn't know — only that I had always kept my joys and doubts locked inside myself.

Like my fears now for my father. Could Kenneth Timothy Wallace, prematurely gray at forty-one, who had known nothing but the Christian ministry, really turn overnight into a newspaper publisher?

Certainly the decision to buy the Alderton Sentinel had not been made lightly. I had always known that journalism was Dad's second love, had sometimes suspected it was his first. Dad remembered with sentimental delight his two years of college newspaper work; he had written continually for church publications and local newspapers ever since. The Timmeton Times had printed his weekly column, built around the relevance for today of a selected verse of Scripture.

Then there had been all that trouble at my father's church, followed by his illness. Apparently he had contracted malaria during a summer preaching mission in rural Louisiana. It became so bad that he had to be hospitalized for almost a month. Soon after that, the letter had arrived from Paul Proctor, one of Father's college friends, who owned a weekly newspaper in western Pennsylvania. Would Ken like to buy it?

For weeks my parents discussed the offer, both openly and behind closed doors. It came out that we had the necessary money in a savings fund — which had providentially survived the recent bank closings — a $15,000 inheritance from the estate of Mother's Aunt Stella. The money had initially been set aside to provide a college education for myself, Tim, and Anne-Marie.

All of us agreed that Dad should take a week's trip to Alderton to go over the facilities. If it seemed right, he should look for a place to live. When he returned, the decision had been made. My father felt he "had a call" to publish and edit the Sentinel.

But questions had kept rising in me and would not be put down. How could someone who loved people as much as my father did leave the ministry? What had gone wrong at his church? Had Dad lost his faith? Why had God let so many bad things happen to such a good man? This depression year of 1934 seemed a poor time to start a new business venture. Inside me churned the suspicion that even in the best of times, my father's skills were not really attuned to the business world.

One thing was certain: the Wallace family was being plunged into unknown adventure in this unappealing town, Alderton.

I awoke the following Saturday morning in my still-strange bedroom in our new home to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. No matter. For over two years now I had enjoyed waking up early when there was no school, so that I could write down my thoughts.

Something about the hour of dawn intrigued me, drew me. In Timmeton it had been the quietness — silence so intense as to be almost palpable. Here in Alderton, the early morning calm was shattered by the distant clanging and screeching of engine whistles in the railroad yards.

My Timmeton classmates, all of whom slept late on Saturday, had made fun of my early morning rendezvous. This taught me that a person who is different can also be rejected. After considering this fact carefully, I decided that I liked being different and would accept the cost.