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February's Song
Elmer by Josh Finsel
Elmer is a legendary bootlegging mountain man, mason, quarryman from the woods along the Lehigh River near White Haven PA. This is a song about the stories I heard about Elmer and how I got to know him though we never met. Signs of Elmer's life are scattered throughout the woods of Springhill Mountain. His handy work survives in the stone masonry of White Haven, stone he quarried, loaded and hauled though the river with a steady throttle. The legend of Elmer lives in the memory of my family and in the memories of those old timers who knew him and sipped on a bottle of his Apple Jack.
"Across the Lehigh River up back on the Springhill Road, that's where the story of old Elmer is told. Around a campfire burning in a rim of steel, my uncle says that this old rim is from Elmer's old wagon wheel."