Stories from St. Metz

(warm music) - So, we are at the St. Metz Church in Baileyville.

The church is quite old.

It was built during the 1860s, and it was a Presbyterian church for many years, for about a hundred years.

(warm music) A great bit of our family history is here, and that's why I love it so much.

So, our grandparents were married here.

My brother and his wife were married here.

I was married here.

Both my nephews were married here.

So we just have such great history in this place.

- The church came into our possession in 1964.

The congregation had dwindled down to about five or seven participants, and then eventually they decided to put it up for auction.

So, our grandparents bought it in 1964 for about $4,500.

Lo and behold, my parents were going through a divorce in 1968, and my dad needed a place to live, and his parents agreed to let him buy the church.

- And then the decision was made that we were gonna move in with our dad into this place.

(mellow music) My first memories are coming down here and going, "What is my dad doing?

Why are we taking this project on?"

I mean, I think it was a complete mistake.

The place was in disrepair.

These pictures really, to me, is what I remember when I first walked in when I was a little kid.

- Yeah.

- Obviously it's in disrepair, looks like the church pews have been removed.

But you can see the ceiling, you can't see the beams.

This is before dad tore the ceiling out.

But it was very dusty and the carpet's ripped up.

- We would work on the weekends with our father pulling nails out of the floor.

So it looked like a church, but made for some good ghost stories.

The actual bell from the original church we have, it's a solid brass bell, and it's absolutely gorgeous.

If Dad said like, "You guys said you were gonna be up at 7:30, and we're gonna work."

He'd ring the bell... Man, we're going to work.

This picture probably does it the best justice of what it was like in the late sixties and seventies.

That means a lot to me, 'cause that's what it looked like when we lived here.

- [Lee] Mhm.

- That's pretty cool.

The rebuilding of this church was very cathartic, and I think with every nail that was pulled, and new nails that were put in this building, the three of us really bonded together.

That's why this place is so special to us.

We literally rebuilt all of our lives right in this building.

- When we moved back here in the seventies, we came in through the summer months.

So, the place would get stifling, it would.

But the wintertime was much worse.

- This main area was unheated in the Pennsylvania winters.

So you would run from your bedroom to the kitchen, and then back.

I remember that about it, Lee.

- Yeah, this was called the "No Man's Land" in here in the wintertime, because you would.

Like I said, you'd see your breath pretty well.

- Yikes, the wintertime was brutal.

- [Fred] My brother and I are a year and a half age difference.

- Fred and I are very reliant upon each other, and we always have been.

- He and I are bonded, through this structure more than anything.

It was the three of us really kind of depending on each other.

Obviously, our dad was bringing the money in, but we were responsible to do the work.

I ended up being the defacto chef, so we ate TV dinners every night.

And Leroy did the laundry.

All colors were together, and then the dryer, we dressed ourselves out of the dryer.

- In the wintertime, that's pretty nice, let me tell you.

(Fred laughs) They're not a bad thing, you know?

- Our dad was a World War II veteran.

He was in the Army Air Corps.

So these guys came out of a war, back to State College.

These guys were like mid 20s, coming outta World War II.

What did they have to lose?

(upbeat music) Their attitude was, "I'm gonna take chances, and I'm gonna be a little bit crazy.

What are you gonna do to me?

I'm gonna have fun."

(upbeat music) - [Lee] The way he kind of rolled, he could have run with the Rat Pack, my dad.

He could have run with Sinatra and those guys.

He would've fit right in.

- He just lived larger than life.

They called him St. Metz of Baileyville.

"St. Metz of Baileyville" was really our dad's nickname.

He had sweatshirts made up.

So I think it was more like, if people were going to a bar, you have to have a logo, and that was really the logo, and that's what he was called.

(upbeat music) - I think that kind of became our family crest.

It was tongue-in-cheek, of course.

- Yes - Yes, yes.

There was not a lot of sainthood going on here, I don't think.

(Fred laughs) A, it was the 70s...

Which was a great decade, by the way.

And B, we just had a real unorthodox parent.

- He was this crazy, fun guy that everybody knew, and they had parties out here.

- It was like "Cheers".

You got all walks of life- - Yeah, it really was.

- That would show up.

I know there was a party one time that I wasn't here, but I heard of about a guy riding a motorcycle around the living room.

(motorcycle revs) So, I've heard from a lot of people that have had fun out here.

(upbeat music) - [Fred] Our dad had many legendary parties here, but one day he just decided, it's time to grow up, I gotta be a dad to these guys.

(mellow music) - [Lee] One of the first things he did was, he put a swimming pool in, where the parking lot sits today on the west side of the building.

- He got the great idea... "I wonder if we could put fish in the swimming pool."

So, we went to Spruce Creek Hatchery with a trash can, we put water and trout in there.

So we brought the trout up, we put 'em in the pool, we had an aerator, and the fish lived, and then we're like, "I wonder if we could go fishing."

- We did the fishing in the swimming pool.

That was fun.

You know, you own a pond down below.

Do you really need to fish in the swimming pool?

No.

- And we fished for probably five or six years.

Every spring, the neighborhood kids would look forward to it.

We'd put a couple hundred fish in our swimming pool, we'd fish out of the pool.

- I mean, I don't know if the "The Beverly Hillbillies" got some of their ideas from us or whether we got 'em from them, I really don't know.

(whimsical music) - The sword is from...

I believe that's from dad's old bar, Lee, right?

- My father did a number of businesses going.

One of them was a bar in State College.

He had a bar, the Sword and Shield restaurant down on Sour Street.

I think Sharkey's is there today.

- Where Sharkey's is now.

- And usually the beer distributors would come in about August, and they would show up with all their promotional stuff.

So, when we went back to school in the fall, we didn't go shopping like other kids did for clothing.

We wore whatever the distributors were handing off for bar garb.

- I love my Schlitz malt liquor jacket, I think you did too.

Probably can't wear that stuff now.

But we were the hit of the school, how about it, Lee?

- We were.

I got stopped by a teacher saying, "Do your parents know what you're wearing to school?"

And it's like, this is what I got for back to school shopping, you know?

- I mean, I'm 15, so.

At the time, it was cool.

(whimsical music) We had a Saint Bernard that we loved, a dog named Brandy.

We were very attached.

Brandy died.

- We were discussing getting another pet, and my dad said, 'What are you thinking?"

- I suggested a Labrador retriever.

That would be a reasonable, wonderful pet.

My brother and dad decided, "Well, let's do something exotic."

- He knew a local wildlife specialist, and he contacted them, and they knew where we could get a mountain lion kitten.

- I begged them, "Don't get a big cat."

- They had a female that was pregnant.

And about three months later, it had a litter of four males.

- I came home one day from one of my classes, and they had a cougar kitten that was about eight weeks old.

It was about that big.

And I'm like, "What did you guys do?"

(whimsical music) So, we had a cougar.

- This cat was good though.

This cat was good.

We called him "Metz".

- He roamed the beams right behind me.

We'd ring a bell, he'd jet down from the beams, and eat his dinner or breakfast.

This was the first home of the mountain lion.

The kitten kind of lived in here.

This room's had a lot going on.

You had to climb up to go ring the bell, and you had a cougar living here.

- I doubt the original congregation had that in mind, but that's the way it played out, you know?

- Yeah.

- I got some old eight millimeter film.

Fred's in the cage, and it's wintertime, and he's playing with the cat, and the cat's grabbing him around the head and stuff.

(whimsical music) - He was actually very nice.

We had him pretty well trained, but he's still a wild animal that could kill you.

Which didn't happen, luckily.

- And eventually, he got to be about 140 pounds.

We had a cage for him that we had in the back of our truck, that was built-in that we could take him into town and walk him around if we wanted to.

- You know, my kids are like, "Can we get one?"

No, kids.

You should never have an exotic pet.

And then of course, they go... "But you guys had one!"

Mixed signals there from a parent.

But, you know, you don't wanna do that.

- But, he survived.

Everybody survived.

The door is original.

This is the original door.

These are original doors.

Other than that, and the beams, a lot of it has been modified.

Yeah, a hundred and something years take their toll.

- About 15 years ago, my brother went and said, "Hey, we gotta sell this place or fix it up.

It's falling apart again."

- He said, "Listen, let's keep it in the family, and let's make it as good as we can."

- So, he with a couple other guys rebuilt this place.

- I'm a builder.

A builder-designer without the degrees, without the letters.

- And he built this place to last another hundred years.

I mean, he really did an amazing job.

- The beams above the ceiling line are all original.

The only thing they were were stained.

- [Fred] How old would they be, Lee?

The originals?

- I'm sure some of the timber that was growing would've probably been when the country was founded, you know?

At the end of the 1700s.

And you know, they're still straight and true.

They're all solid.

I don't think he knew it was gonna take years of off and on work.

He just said, "Well, when you get it done, I guess you get it done."

So, good partner to have.

- I like to get things done, move on.

He's much more deliberate and wants it done correctly, and that's why we work well together.

'Cause we always say, you know, he's the break, I'm the gas.

You know?

And you need both of 'em.

- You want to do some changes, but you don't wanna strip out all the integrity that was in the place originally.

And you don't just wreck it all and go in another direction.

- Dad put his mark on this place, and then really you did too, which is really cool.

- The problem is, he wasn't very patient.

So when he would paint a piece of lumber, he would not wait for it to dry.

He'd have you put it up with fingerprints on it.

So, a lot of the old stuff in here as I got to work on it was cool, because I'd come back across things with his fingerprints on it, and he left his marks all over the place.

- My brother really did an amazing job, and I think that was very cathartic for him.

He and my dad were very close.

It's not just a building, it's a project that will probably never be completed.

(soft music) - Our dad developed lung cancer in 1995, and it took him quick, in six months.

- Obviously, that was a big blow to us, but we're like, we have to do something kind of bold and crazy that he would like.

(whimsical music) My dad drank Seagram's.

Not even the good Seagram's, he drank straight Seagram's.

His big quote is, "When I die, I want Seagram's.

I want it written that Seagram's can now go back to a five day work week."

- [Lee] So, what we decided to do was build a stone monument that mimicked the steeple in this building, with a bell chamber.

- He got cremated, then we put the ashes in the Seagram's bottle and put it up in the bell, the one he used to ring, that would wake us up in the morning.

So we put the Seagram's up in the bell, and now it sits down in the meadow in the monument that we have for him.

- It's about an 18 foot granite steeple with a solid block base on it of four by four feet.

And on his panel, it has all of his information, but it has a lot of his quips.

His sayings that he used to give us.

My name's on the other panel, and then Fred's name is on the other panel.

I guess for whom the bell tolls, that'll be us.

and that's where we're gonna be.

And we divide the expenses three ways, come on, that's not a bad deal for anybody.

That's a bargain in anybody's book, right?

So, why not?

Unless anybody goes on the back panel, nobody's discussed that yet.

- No.

It is for rent though, if anybody's interested.

(Lee and Fred chuckling) In our family, you always end up in the bell.

(lighthearted soft music) My dad had a lot of fun, and they had a lot of parties.

But around when I was in eighth or ninth grade, he made the decision that those days were over for him, and he was gonna be a dad.

- I think because we were so reliant on each other, it made it work so well.

It's like three wolves being raised in here.

We're the pups, and he's the dominant alpha male, and that's what we did.

And it was a great, great upbringing.

- [Fred] We were very independent, but we all depended on each other, and we knew we had each other's backs.

- He was a very unorthodox man, no question about it.

You know, you don't know it at the time of course.

You know, you just assume other people are stocking their swimming pool with fish too, when you're 14, 15 years old.

Not till you get down the road that you're going like... "Oh, that was unusual."

- I have kids now, and although I wouldn't really want them to grow up as crazy as we did, I would want them to learn a lot of the stories that we learned in this building, like hard work, family, you depend on your family, you take care of your family.

And if you can have that impact on your kids, everybody would take that.

I know that for a fact.

- I think the building and we are inseparable.

I really do.

I think we're pretty much ingrained into the dowels and the mortise and tenons of the building at this point.

I think we're part of it.

And what'll happen down the road, I have no idea here.

I just hope someone cares about it.

- This old building is not done.

And I think there aren't many places like this anymore.

And you know, that's our story to tell.

I think there's a lot more stories in this building.

(lighthearted soft music) (no audio) (text whooshes) (no audio)