Who Says You Can Never Go Home Again?

The question above references a familiar old saying

 traced back to author Thomas Wolfe who draws

that conclusion in You Can't Go Home Again,

a novel published posthumously in 1940. 

Toni Deroche begs to differ.

Our old friend, blog reporter,

photojournalist and former

owner of the Shady Dell,

did go home again, to

meet the nice folks

who live at the Dell

now. They welcomed

Toni into the house,

showed her around

and invited her

to take pictures.

She did!

After touring the house and property, Toni raced back

to Shady's Place headquarters with the first new pictures

of the Dell interior since the house was renovated by the

Deroche family and sold in 2012. I am proud to have

Toni back as my guest to file this special report. 

Shady, I'm excited to show you

these brand new pictures of the

Dell. Recently I drove by and

and saw the family that lives

there out in the side yard.

I figured this is finally my

opportunity to stop by, so I

pulled down the driveway

and they recognized me!

Such a sweet young couple

and so happy to show me

around... inside and out!

So now I’ll give you a little tour. I wish I would have

taken more pictures but I didn’t want to impose.

Below is a shot of the family room

with a view of the kitchen. 

 SHADY DEL KNIGHT: Pardon me for interrupting, Toni, but I can't

contain my excitement. Hey, all you original Dell rats, can you believe

you are looking at the same space where, in the 1950s, 60s and 70s,

the Dell restaurant was located... where thousands of teenagers

gathered to shoot the bull as Helen Ettline stood behind her

 snack bar making burgers, fries, subs, shakes, sundaes

and my personal favorite, cherry cokes? Can you see

yourself in that room playing the pinball machine

while Helen's jukebox played doo-wop oldies? 

Above is a picture of their dining room.

SHADY DEL KNIGHT: I wanna remind you rats that this room

was once the main seating area of the Dell restaurant. As you

recall, there was a row of diner style booths on each side

with an aisle running down the middle. 

The husband made that huge dining room table!

At the top of Shady's post, you saw a magical photo

that actually looks more like an oil painting. It shows

Margaret Schneider's great grandchildren gazing

through the windows of the Dell's third floor

attic prior to the sale in 2012. The picture

below shows you what the attic

looks like today.

SHADY DEL KNIGHT: Toni, this might be a good time for me

to remind older followers and inform newer ones that for years

the Dell's attic held a secret, a story I first reported in 2008 on

 my old blog. Dell rats of the 50s and 60s remember that John

 Ettline routinely carried a nightstick as he made his rounds

of the Dell. The logical explanation would be that John

armed himself with a club in case a scuffle broke out

in the dance hall or parking lot and he needed to

subdue unruly guests. A spokesperson for the

Ettline family told me there was a another reason.

2011 image

According to the spokesperson, John armed himself with a billy club

because he and Helen were secretly operating a safe house, a shelter

for battered and abused women in the attic of their Shady Dell! 

2012 image

Helen herself was a fugitive from an abusive marriage when she

married John. The Ettlines allowed battered women to stay up

there in the attic until they could find permanent shelter elsewhere. 

2012 image

Imagine, Dell rats, while the rest of us partied two floors below,

women in crisis were hunkered down in the attic, trying to stay

out of harm's way. It's mind-boggling! If you think about it, the

Ettlines provided the same services to female abuse victims that

 Access-York and other women’s help organizations offer today. 

2012 image

Only a few members of the Ettline clan knew that the Dell doubled

as a secret shelter for women. It was feared that if too many people

knew about it, word would inevitably leak out and abusive males

would show up at the Dell, confront John and try to drag

their women home. To prepare for a worst case

scenario, John kept his trusty baton handy.

Toni, back to you. 

See how beautiful the Dell exterior looks today

with foundation beds, plants and flowers?

SHADY DEL KNIGHT: I swear, Toni, this is uncanny. it looks

as if a flying saucer beamed up the Dell, gave it a makeover

and set it back down on a completely different property!

The family replaced the old columns.

No more chipped paint!

The next three pictures are views of the side yard,

the area that was once the Dell's parking lot. 

 

Many trees were cut down to create that long

flat area. As you can see, it's as big as a

football field- beautiful! 

SHADY DEL KNIGHT: Good heavens, Toni, it looks like the lawn

at Downton Abbey!  Anyone for polo or croquet?  These pictures are

incredible!  I can hardly believe I am looking at the same section of

the property that used to be a rough, dirt, gravel and loose stone

parking lot with bumps and ruts that murdered a Dell rat's car. 

SHADY DEL KNIGHT:  I'm sure every original Dell rat remembers the

area shown above.  You pulled into the Dell's lot from Starcross Road,

drove down past the house there on the right, and parked your car

wherever you could find a space. (On Friday and Saturday nights

you needed a shoehorn.) Many times you had to continue down

to the end of the line (left side of the screen), round the bend

 and head back toward the road as you continued to search

 the jammed lot for a place to leave your heap. 

If you couldn't find a space in the second row, you needed to go out

to the annex parking lot next to a steep cliff and walk a considerable

distance back to the Dell house.  If you still couldn't find a spot,

you wound up in the dreaded No Man's Land, the remote

auxiliary parking lot a quarter mile down the road.

Since there was no shuttle service, you needed

to make the trek back up the road to reach

the entrance to the Magic Kingdom.

Sorry, Toni-- go ahead.

Finally I walked back behind the Dell's garage

which was built by the family that purchased the

estate in 2012. As longtime followers of Shady's

blogs might recall, The Shady Dell dance hall

and the original garage were torn down in

the fall of 2012, and the new garage

was built upon the foundation. 

It amazed me that the original foundation is

still there... and so is the area beneath the original

garage where horse stables were once located. 

SHADY DEL KNIGHT: I owe each and every one of those horses an

apology. It must have been nerve racking for them to have to listen

to 100+ teenagers carrying on in the dance hall 7 nights a week

while they were down below trying to get some sleep.

Even the old horse gates are still there. The Dell's

 horses passed through them on their way to

the corral and hillside grazing land.

Shady, the current owners

of the Dell were so happy

to see me and so gracious

the day I dropped in on

them. They told me about

a man wearing a veterans

hat, no doubt a former

Dell rat, who recently

stopped by to see the

Dell. They let him in

and he was amazed

by all the changes.

They told me a lot

of cars drive by the

property very slowly

as Dell rats of old

gaze at the place

that was once their

"home away from

home," the scene

of so many good

times in their youth. 

Thank you very

much, dear friend

and honorary Dell

rat Toni Deroche,

for bringing us this

report and sharing

these great new pics

of our Alma Mater

The Shady Dell!