Meanwhile ...

Remember the Cat & Fiddle?

It's had a bit of resurgence in my inbox the past few weeks, so I thought I'd share.

Carol Norwood, as always, is amazing.

Hey Rayna,

This evening I have been scanning photos of a 1940s trip to Florida.  In the middle of all of them, I found this: the Cat & Fiddle in the winter.  A new perspective!

Carol


And, a bit later:
Look! A new sign for the Cat Fiddle - sometime in the 1940s!



She's so amazing, isn't she?

My posts attracted some informative comments as well.

A couple of people knew perfectly well who the mystery woman in the YouTube video was. Jay, of Design2Share writes:

Susan Taylor is executive director of Friends of the Delaware Canal (which has a website with contact information), and she has so much great information about all the history, homes, and lore up and down the canal. Good luck to you!

Mike Hoppes wrote:

I worked at the Mule Barge in New Hope back in 1997 when I was on summer break from college. That is when I met  Susan Taylor, Executive Director of the Friends of the Delaware Canal.  I haven't seen her since then but I'd bet she is the woman in the video.

And they were right! By an odd piece of serendipity, while working on a completely unrelated project that same week, an acquaintance came to visit me at The Intelligencer. Guess who he brought with him?

Susan Taylor!

Crazy, right?

Then, just today, I received this email (I took the writer's name out, since I don't know if she'd be alright with me posting it or not):

Hi Rayna!
Just saw your article about the pictures of the Cat and Fiddle in Point Pleasant. My good friend grew up in that place and worked there along with her parents. The family name was Peter. Perhaps if you want to pursue more info on the place she would tell you some stories or maybe she has more pictures. She did tell me about the teapot on the chimney.

Indeed, a Peter family did live there, I believe for quite a long time. Deed records indicate they bought the place around 1956. I found this wedding announcement in a 1963 Intelligencer:




Miss Sharon Virginia Peter, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Theodore Peter, Smithtown, became the bride of Mr. Barry John Unruh, son of Mr. and Mrs. Paul Unruh, Point Pleasant, recently. The wedding took place in Christ Lutheran Church, Tinicum, at 11 o'clock Saturday, Sept. 1 with the Rev. Oswald Elbert performing the double ring ceremony.

And, finally, I noticed this comment posted to the phillyBurbs blog today:

Aug 30, 2011

The Cat and the Fiddle is now owned by my cousin. I was just there today. It was hit by a tree during Hurricane Irene but is still standing strong. He lives there and has been in the process for the past several years of slowly remodeling it . I know he would apreciate anything you can find out about it. He found an old guest book and Doris Day had signed it as a guest at one time.
Hooray!

I did find out a bit more about the place. The whole Diavolo mystery is still ... well, mysterious.

There's this article — the text is transcribed in the post I linked above — that lets us know that, yes, Joseph Aaron, the Cat & Fiddle's original proprietor, was indeed a circus daredevil. It seems there was another fellow who also went by that name, who lived out in  Ohio and later went on to be fairly active in politics. But he's not our man.

The last little tidbit I'll share is this (grainy - sorry) real estate listing for the place, from Oct. 2002.



So there's where I'll leave you ... for now.