Any thoughts on Brookville, Punxsutawney, Dubois?

[dolphin97]

I was born and raised and went to Brookville High School until 1965. Brookville had absolutely nothing for us kids to do and its a million times worse now. Nice town, no jobs, no shopping stores except grocery stores. The people in my class who stayed............I can't figure out why. Most are gone. Nice place to visit but wouldn't want to live there again.

[Honest Bob]

Let's see,

I grew up 2 miles north of Punxsutawney and I moved to Punxsy for about 3 years. I then moved to Clearfield for a year and dated several women from Clearfield. I then moved to Brockway and I dated about half the town.

The mother of my child lives in Brockway.

Dubois is a place where we spent most of our free time and I had many employers in Dubois. I had many employers in Ridgeway and also St. Marys and also Kersey and Falls Creek and Brookville.

All that I will say about Brookville is that now that Tibrook left town and now that Beverage Air sold the company to someone else and the new company is talking jobs away from the Brookville area. Brookville Tank has laid most of it's people off also. Miller Welding and Machine acts like they own the town and Dad and Brad and Davey practically do. They have more money then Forest Gump!

Unless you work at the hospital - which Brookville and Clarion and Punxsy all have Band Aid stations, or unless you work at Millers Welding and Machine - there is about a 99% chance that you are going to have to drive 25 to 50 miles one way every day to get a job!

There is no place to go shopping in Brookville. My friend runs the meat dept at the Riverside Mkts and the Comet Market is the only other grocery store in town. The Comet market is mostly set up for old people, small cans of food and big isles and high prices and some generic products to save money such as potato chips.

Dubois is not a bad town. There is 3 bars in Dubois for every one church.
You have your polish hill - which does not have a lot of crime. You have Sandy Bridge area that has some bars and some crime, downtown that has some crime because mostly the poor white trash lives in town. You have the projects - one out on the Oklahoma Salem road - that seem's to be real quiet. There is most any store that you can think of in Dubois - other then a Home Depot. Many grocery stores and even the Save a lot - which is in the old Shop n Save. Several Dollar General Stores and also several Sheetz convience stores.

There are JOBS in Dubois. There is at least one house on every street for sale and you can buy houses out in the country for less then what the owners paid to build them. Dubois is the place to live!

Punxsutawney, I can name every street and every business and every business owner. The town is ran by the mafia, although John Miserock died last year. John played pro ball and his boy Sarge also played for the Houston Astro's. You have Jefferson Machine - which is hanging on by a thread, Speer Carbon - which is just about dead. Femco Machine which had a large layoff back in the spring and has since downsized. Acme Machine - which has several of their trucks for sale right next to the shop.
PAHS - the school which is the largest employer in Punxsutawney, the State Police Barracks, the Hospital - which never has anyone in it - because if you are sick, they life flight you someplace else.

You have Walmart and the County Market and Aldi's and the Comet Market for your food and one Sheetz and two Unimarts. Saterlee's for gasoline - which the price of fuel goes up when he wrecks his racecar.

No where to shop and nothing to do, especially if you are a kid except drink and do drugs. There is a drug bust in Punxsy about once a month and they have not even put a dent into the drug situation.

Clearfield is twice as bad and the drug situation is 3 times as bad as Punxsy.

St Mary's is really nice and they have a really nice hospital up there and not much for anyone to do other then look at the Elk - whoop dee doo.

I would find the job first and then find the place to live. Rent for a year or two until you find out if you like the place and if this is where you want to live. Life is really laid back and everyone owns guns and hunts. Most all businesses close down for the first day of deer - rifle - season here!

Most of the time, most of the people wears camo clothes and in deer season everyone wears Blaze Orange. Jacked up pick up trucks and four wheel drives is the norm here - because there is so much snow and bad weather in the wintertime that you just get used to having to make your own way to get to work.

Both Brookville and Clarion and Dubois is right next to the interstate.

Once you leave the main roads, daa daa dumm dumm dumm dum dum die dum. It's not uncommon to see people living in trailers that are no better off then the dog coop beside the trailer. One guys porch fell off and 3 dogs died. You see people cutting fire wood all over the place. Out of town, most people have a burning barrel for their garbage and they use outdoor furnaces to heat their homes. They hang deer from their front porch and they eat what they kill. Very rural.


Find the job and then find the place to live. Heck - I will even sell you my house!

[North Beach Person]

Internet Superman is somewhat dramatic but generally accurate. DuBois, Brookville and Punxsy all have drug problems but really not much out of the norm. DuBois' is probably the worst and has been for at least 25 or 30 years.
Miller Welding in Brookville is not as powerful as he says and when I was last in Brookville in Oct. they had laid off much of their workforce. Bev-Aire was laying off and Trail King (Ti-Brook) had just announced the closure of the Brookville plant. Rexam (used to be Owens-Brockway and before that Owens-Illinois) plastic closure plant is still operating and in fact had just hired some people but really doesn't have more people working there than they had 30+ years ago when I worked there. The whole area hasn't recovered from the recession in the 1980's and in fact has contracted. The railroads have left, Shawmut has pulled their tracks as has CSX (used to be Conrail) and the LEF&C in Clarion closed down in bankruptcy back in the mid-80's.
One half of my graduating class from the early 70's has left the area for work, and I don't think that is much different from the succeeding classes, although some of my classmates have moved back to retire. The entire area is geriatric in demographics. The Brookville Hospital (just taken over by the DuBois Regional Medical Center) closed it's maternity ward a few years ago and made it into an Alzheimer's ward.
The local entities offering assisted living all seem to have waiting lists and the local semi-public nursing home generally has over 90% occupancy.
The Brookville Area School District is probably the highest taxed, I know Mrs. NBP and I are looking for a seasonal house and the Brookville district is out of consideration because of that and a couple other reasons.

The best advice you already got-find the job first.

[tinkerbell12506]

I am just wondering why Honest Bob seems to think Speer Carbon, which is actually NAC Carbon Products, is just holding on by a thread?? Just an FYI...Not only are they holding on by a thread they are one of the only large companies in Punxsutawney that did NOT lay anyone off during the most recent economic downturn. As a matter of fact their employees have been working 60 plus hours per week for the last year and a half. Out of the past ten years, they have recorded the highest profits within the last two years. They still provide decent benefits to their employees including decent Health Insurance, paid vacation time, 401k options, as well as semiannual bonuses and pay increases. They have not laid a single person off in the last two years, they have actually hired additional workers as production has been at its peek for the last 18 months. Yep...I think they're hanging on by a lot more than a thread.

[Honest Bob]

Why is people still posting on a topic that has been dead for a year.
The person said they found their dream house in Brookville and that was where they were moving.
I would have to laugh because when the Bi Lo went out of town, the only place to shop was Mikes Comet Market.
Now a Giant Eagle or something has come back in and a friend of mine that was the butcher there for 16 years was no rehired. Probably because he was paid too much money.

Brookville is a nice place to die, but I wouldn't want to live there.

Brookville, Punxsutawney, DuBois, were all developed by the railroad and built on the sweat, blood and tears of the coal miners, as was most of the small towns in central Pennsylvania that was owned by the coal companies. I'm not saying that Brookville, Punxsutawney or DuBois were coal mining towns or that they were built by the coal companies - but the fact that they are strategically placed about 20 miles - more or less tells me that it was a strategic point along the rail lines.

You need to realize that back in the day all freight trains were steam powered locomotives and that a steam locomotive could realistically run about 28 miles on a boiler full of steam.
You could carry as much coal for the tender for the boiler as you wished, but you had to stop for water every 20 miles or so. That was the reason why these towns were developed by the coal companies and by the railroads - which the BR&P owned and operated.
You would then realize that the coal companies / railroads also built the dams such as Cloe Lake and Kyle Lake and North Fork - for the sole purpose of being able to draw water for their trains. Most of them you were not allowed to trespass or fish until after the days of the steam powered locomotives were long past.

There is drugs in every small community in Pennsylvania, you don't have to look very far to find them.