Mountain Hopping 2016:
Mayer
Mayer is where we went wrong – 10 miles wrong.
We were following this Beaver County Times story from 2007 that reported James Paff was moving his Paff Custom Welding shop to the Mayer site in Beaver Falls. And as you will read, it described the thousands of pieces of china – both broken and intact – that he would have to deal with during renovations.
In anticipation of our trip, we had Googled Paff Custom Welding and found it in Ellwood City– 10 miles from Beaver Falls, where Mayer was supposed to be located. But because a lot of these companies used post office boxes as their addresses, we rationalized that it was the same with Mayer and that the plant had actually been located out of town.
When we found the building housing the welding shop, we didn't want to disturb them, and it was an old brick building. So we started to take photos.
Luckily that's when Paff's son Bryan came out and asked if he could help us, and introduced us to his dad.
The Mayer plant had been burdened with liens and other financial entanglements, Paff said, so he backed out and found the Ellwood City location. He had forgotten Mayer's street address but was able to give us directions to the general area, dependent upon us being able to find a certain fruit stand in Beaver Falls.
We turned around and drove back to Beaver Falls. And there it was, at Sixth Street and Second Avenue, and with the name still over the door.
The most interesting thing about Beaver Falls, and the Mayer building, was the predominance of a lot of yellow in the clay body of the building bricks.
Digging in West Virginia, Pennsylvania & Ohio
|
TOP
|