Spain is an unincorporated area of Lykens Township, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania that was served by the Pillow Post Office, Dauphin County. It is located between the Mahantongo Creek (which is the boundary between Dauphin and Northumberland Counties) and the north face of the Mahantongo Mountain. John D. Troutman collected stories of Spain and some of them were published in the Klingerstown Bicentennial Album in 2007. This one is entitled “Boys Will Be Boys!”
Benjamin B. Leitzel‘s store was really a small shack made of two by fours which were covered with three inch wide weatherboards. Among other items, he had candy in glass jars which were lined up on a shelf along the wall. Local boys in the area, Stanley Romberger, Tom Romberger, and R. C. Romberger, Austin “Rob” Rothermel, and Edwin Rothermel, Bill Wiest, and the Zerby boys, who lived at the Klingerstown mill loved to pest an provoke this storekeeper. One day they drilled a small hole through the weather boards, pushed a number nine wire through the hole, and knocked a candy jar from the shelf inside the store. The boys then came around to the front, and offered to help pick up the candy some of which ended up in the boys’ pockets!
This store was also the meting place for the local men, who would gather there to play poker. The only light was from a kerosene lamp, and the store was a bit dark after the sun went down. The young boys from Klingerstown enjoyed pestering these fellows too. one evening after dark, the kids “fetched” a mule from a nearby livery stable, and sent him stumbling into the storeroom. That of course, was the end of the card game.
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Benjamin B. Leitzel‘s gravemarker indicates he was born on 26 February 1840 and died on 23 September 1916. He is buried at Zion (Klinger’s) Church Cemetery, Erdman, Lykens Township.
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