DOWN HOMERS: More from readers:

Tom Shipman of Hampton, Va., writes: “Reading the story about
the down homers reminded me of my mother’s family moving to
Bradford at that time from Tionesta. She said when people referred
to her family as ‘down homers,’ my grandfather Frank Harriett would
respond that they were Clarion County horse thieves. I’m not sure
where that came from.”

Larry Stanburg tells us that when he was a kid, he had a paper
route in Derrick City. One of his customers was George Perkins, who
came from the Punxsutawney area. He remembered George telling him,
“It took the downhomers to come here to show people here how to
work.”

NO BEARS: Nope, definitely no bear lifts going on.

Jerry Feaser, press secretary to the Game Commission, writes,
“According to our folks in the Northcentral Region Office, the gas
companies are doing seismic surveys in the area, and they are using
helicopters to ferry equipment and wires into remote areas. We have
not been ‘airlifting’ any bears.

Matt Benson dropped us a line, too: “The helicopter described in
today’s RTS wasn’t toting a bear in the air. It’s part of an oil
and gas seismic survey being done in the Route 6/Route 291 area. My
guess is that what was dangling from the helicopter was a bundle of
wires used in the survey.”

“We watched the copter work all Sunday afternoon recently. A few
days later I came across a couple guys from the seismic company,
and they confirmed that the aircraft is part of their
operation.”

BLACK CAT: Pat Franco of Rew tells us he, too, saw the big black
cat we reported in recent weeks. “I wrote into the Era maybe five
years ago. I was hunting by the Rew ballfield and looked down over
the bank. This huge black cat took off with my beagle in pursuit.
Probably 3 or 4 feet long with a tail that long. Never saw it
again.”

On another subject, Pat fears we won’t be seeing too many
caterpillars this year because our weather may have killed them
right in their nests. “It stayed cold too long, and they won’t come
out of their nests. The webbing gets too hard after a while, and
they can’t get out. You’ll see them along the road as the nests are
dark with the worms still in them.”