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<p>FOSTER TWP. &#8212; For 8-year-old Keerah Stahora, of Hazleton, coming to the Patch Town Days at Eckley Miners&#8217; Village on Sunday was special in more ways than one.</p><p>She was able to spend the day &#8220;fascinated&#8221; by the history of the patch town &#8212; a mile-long village, which once provided residences for miners and families near a coal mine &#8212; but she also spent the day with her Baba (grandmother) Diane and Pop Greg Stahora for her Pop&#8217;s birthday.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s amazing,&#8221; she said.</p><p>Keerah was surprised at how tiny the &#8220;pretty cool&#8221; houses during the coal mining days were.</p><p>&#8220;People lived there,&#8221; she said. &#8220;They&#8217;re small.&#8221;</p><p>Volunteers like Natalie Kost, of Freeland, dressed up in period attire and taught about &#8220;hardships, food, history.&#8221;</p><p>Kost was dressed with special items from her real-life neighbors, including a babushka and &#8220;never-opened&#8221; Russian shawl, as she sat in the 1940s home of a mining engineer.</p><p>&#8220;My neighbor said, &#8216;You may need this,&#8217;&#8221; Kost said about the shawl. &#8220;They were colorful people.&#8221;</p><p>Natalie said she changes her persona depending on where in the village she is assigned, but never her name. She enjoys listening to other people&#8217;s stories and sometimes she&#8217;ll incorporate them into her character.</p><p>On Sunday, she played the engineer&#8217;s wife, who tended to the home; she was keen to show off the refrigerator in the home.</p><p>&#8220;They kept fruits and some vegetables in there,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Did you know they used to can even back in the 1940s?&#8221; She explained to a family walking through that basements in patch town homes were dark, drafty and perfect for keeping canned items. &#8220;They used to keep a family eating until the summer.&#8221;</p><p>Being volunteers at Eckley is an important part of life for Kost, her husband, Joe, and son, Garret.</p><p>&#8220;History and passing it down is important,&#8221; Kost said. &#8220;I tell kids, if you have grandparents, listen to them.&#8221;</p><p>She and Joe, who plays a farmer tending to the land, have two older children who aren&#8217;t involved, but her youngest son, Garret, portrays a preacher at the Immaculate Conception Church museum.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s near and dear to us,&#8221; Natalie said of Eckley, noting they are also Civil War reenactors.</p><p>Barbara Tulanowski, president of the Eckley Miner&#8217;s Volunteer Association, said it takes a year of planning to put on Patch Town Days.</p><p>And, she added, to give the event a new twist each year, the association has started featuring different ethnicities. This year, it was Slavic, including some other Eastern European touches. They had traditional Slovak pastries from Nanticoke&#8217;s Sanitary Bakery and also had a &#8220;pierogie toss&#8221; that entailed flinging pierogie-styled bean bags into a pot.</p><p>The best part of the day for Keerah, however, was seeing the windows on St. James&#8217; Episcopal Church. They reminded her of her own parish&#8217;s church windows, she said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Mike Castellani, of Sweet Valley, carves a face into a walking stick during Patchtown Days on Sunday at Eckley Miners&#8217; Village in Foster Township. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown01.jpg</photo0><caption0>Mike Castellani, of Sweet Valley, carves a face into a walking stick during Patchtown Days on Sunday at Eckley Miners&#8217; Village in Foster Township. </caption0><photoCredit0>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown02.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Bobby Maso, second from right, introduces other reenactors during a play about immigrants settling in Eckley in the 1800s at the height of the coal mining era during Sunday&#8217;s Patch Town Days event. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown02.jpg</photo1><caption1>Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Bobby Maso, second from right, introduces other reenactors during a play about immigrants settling in Eckley in the 1800s at the height of the coal mining era during Sunday&#8217;s Patch Town Days event. </caption1><photoCredit1>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown03.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Gina Gibbon, of Wilkes-Barre, describes what a miner&#8217;s home might be like in the 1880s. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown03.jpg</photo2><caption2>Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Gina Gibbon, of Wilkes-Barre, describes what a miner&#8217;s home might be like in the 1880s. </caption2><photoCredit2>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown04.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Reenactors walk along Main Street in Eckley past an old replica of a coal breaker built for the movie &#8216;The Molly Maguires&#8217; that was filmed in Eckley in the late 1960s and released in 1970. The Eckley Miners Village &#8216;Patch Town Days&#8217; festival on Saturday and Sunday focused on the rich culture and ethnic heritages of the anthracite region. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown04.jpg</photo3><caption3>Reenactors walk along Main Street in Eckley past an old replica of a coal breaker built for the movie &#8216;The Molly Maguires&#8217; that was filmed in Eckley in the late 1960s and released in 1970. The Eckley Miners Village &#8216;Patch Town Days&#8217; festival on Saturday and Sunday focused on the rich culture and ethnic heritages of the anthracite region. </caption3><photoCredit3>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown01-cmyk.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Mike Castellani, of Sweet Valley, carves a face into a walking stick during Patchtown Days on Sunday at Eckley Miners&#8217; Village in Foster Township. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo4>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown01-cmyk.jpg</photo4><caption4>Mike Castellani, of Sweet Valley, carves a face into a walking stick during Patchtown Days on Sunday at Eckley Miners&#8217; Village in Foster Township. </caption4><photoCredit4>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit4></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown02-cmyk.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Bobby Maso, second from right, introduces other reenactors during a play about immigrants settling in Eckley in the 1800s at the height of the coal mining era during Sunday&#8217;s Patch Town Days event. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo5>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown02-cmyk.jpg</photo5><caption5>Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Bobby Maso, second from right, introduces other reenactors during a play about immigrants settling in Eckley in the 1800s at the height of the coal mining era during Sunday&#8217;s Patch Town Days event. </caption5><photoCredit5>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit5></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown03-cmyk.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Gina Gibbon, of Wilkes-Barre, describes what a miner&#8217;s home might be like in the 1880s. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo6>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown03-cmyk.jpg</photo6><caption6>Eckley Miners&#8217; Village reenactor Gina Gibbon, of Wilkes-Barre, describes what a miner&#8217;s home might be like in the 1880s. </caption6><photoCredit6>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit6></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown04-cmyk.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Reenactors walk along Main Street in Eckley past an old replica of a coal breaker built for the movie &#8216;The Molly Maguires&#8217; that was filmed in Eckley in the late 1960s and released in 1970. The Eckley Miners Village &#8216;Patch Town Days&#8217; festival on Saturday and Sunday focused on the rich culture and ethnic heritages of the anthracite region. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo7>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/web1_patchtown04-cmyk.jpg</photo7><caption7>Reenactors walk along Main Street in Eckley past an old replica of a coal breaker built for the movie &#8216;The Molly Maguires&#8217; that was filmed in Eckley in the late 1960s and released in 1970. The Eckley Miners Village &#8216;Patch Town Days&#8217; festival on Saturday and Sunday focused on the rich culture and ethnic heritages of the anthracite region. </caption7><photoCredit7>Pete G. Wilcox | Times Leader </photoCredit7></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Melanie Mizenko</p><p>mmizenko@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>IF YOU GO</strong></p><p>Eckley Miners&#8217; Village, located 3 miles south of Freeland on Highland Road off Foster Avenue/Route 940, is open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Call 570-636-2070 or visit <a href="http://www.eckleyminersvillage.com" target="_blank">www.eckleyminersvillage.com</a> for more information.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Melanie Mizenko at 570-991-6116 or on Twitter @TL_MMizenko.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Eckley Miner’s Village celebrates Slovak heritage during Patch Town Days