Zola and dad went up to Harmony, PA on Tuesday to check it out.
Well, it's really called Oakland now. Harmony was absorbed into the
Oakland Township some time ago. [Can you find Zola?]
We're not really into the Mormon hajj tradition. It's great to visit important church history sites, but the over-commercialization of this part of LDS culture makes us a little uncomfortable. We live close enough to Harmony, though, to make it a day trip. It is actually pretty cool. Although it's not much more than a couple of grass fields, it's well maintained. There is no visitor center, nor were there any missionaries there to pressure us into giving them cheap referrals.
The place was empty. We had it all to ourselves - just the bronze Aaronic priesthood statue and the foundations of Joseph Smith's first home as a married man. Across the street is the site of the house where Emma grew up, and up the road 300 yards is the cemetery where Elizabeth and Isaac Hale are buried, all just a few yards from the river. It was nice to be able to walk around everywhere - very few fences.
In early 1828, Joseph and Emma Smith built a little house on this spot. Besides this one paver that Zola is playing on, only a bump of a foundation survives. In this spot - smaller than our one-car garage - Joseph translated a good portion of the Book of Mormon and received several revelations (notably D&C 4). Those events (among others) set in motion a lifetime of work that took him through several states and made him the leader of a large body of people and several cities. Whether or not you consider him to have been a prophet, I was impressed by the effort it must have taken to envision all that from this simple little homestead.
A few hundred yards away, behind this fence, is the foundation for the Isaac and Elizabeth Hale home - where Emma grew up and where she met Joseph while he was rooming with the family.
Emma's parents are buried nearby.
The Susquehanna River is only a few yards from the two homesteads and the cemetery.
Although the LDS sites were tranquil and we spent a great hour wandering around and enjoying our snacks, I was really affected by the absolute squalor of Oakland, PA. The place is white-trash hell. Directly adjacent to the cemetery is a large junk yard, and beyond that is the most pathetic trailer park I've seen in a long, long time. The place just oozed poverty and despair. It felt like a third world country - quite a difference from the manicured, Stepfordy atmosphere that normally greets a visitor to a LDS church site. I know Emma put up with a lot, but eloping with Joseph might be the smartest thing she ever did, just to get out of there.
