The Summit Hotel is 100 years old this year.

I've known it since it was a young squirt, barely 30.

When I think of my childhood, my growing pains, my love for swimming, a favorite yellow Jantzen swimsuit and friendships I will cherish forever, I think of this white sprawling structure atop Summit Mountain, high above Uniontown and a steady climb by car from the tiny hamlet of Hopwood.

	Post-Gazette columnist Barbara Cloud, right, and her sister B.J. at the Summit Hotel in the mid-1930s. Click photo for larger image.

There were many tragedies on that dangerous drive, which took us to afternoons of sheer delight at the Summit swimming pool.

We tend to forget, but old newspaper clippings would bear me out. Often, cars and trucks lost their brakes, and in the early years there was no run-off to slow down the truck or car. Many people didn't know how to maneuver such a long and winding road or use their gear shifts properly. A trip up the steep mountain on any given day usually caused our ears to pop.

The road has changed dramatically from what we knew as teenagers, with its bypasses and new entry-ways, but it's still a climb.

For residents of Uniontown, the Summit was one of our favorite places.

Punishment when we didn't do our homework or we stayed out too late or didn't clean our room was banishment from a day of swimming.

It was the worst thing we could think of, not to hit the pool, be with our friends, get our suntan (more like a burn, with our iodine-laced bottles of baby oil as protection), flirt with the boys.

It wasn't just summer at the Summit. In the wintertime, when we seemed to have far more snow than we do now, it was the place to learn to ski, toboggan or ice skate.

For a few seasons they would freeze the tennis courts for an ice skating rink. Only in later years did I appreciate my parents daring to drive up that snow-covered mountain road so that we could skate or ski and have hot chocolate in the Baron Munchausen Room, with its roaring fireplace.

There were accidents on the mountain hillsides as well as the winding highway. Some of my teenage friends came flying down the steep hill in front of the hotel on a sled and crashed into a tree, causing injuries two of the boys have carried for life.

But mostly the Summit was fun. On weekends the hotel supplied entertainment at the pool. I most vividly remember the greased poles on the diving boards, which people would try to navigate without falling into the water. Few managed to do it. Looking back, that was dangerous.

I learned to dive at the Summit, where just getting nerve enough to jump from the high board was a reason to cheer.

My sister and I started swimming there when we were about 7 and 9 years old.

On one side of the pool there were wooden cabanas, usually used by the hotel guests, and in front of them was sand, just like the beach. On the other side of the pool was a grassy hillside, and that's where most of us spread our towels to get our "tans." Most of us burned and peeled as a matter of pride those summers -- nobody had yet heard of SPF.

The coming-of-age years were the most memorable. Many of the cars in the parking lot of the hotel had license plates from Ohio and Canada, which impressed me as very far away at the time.

Except for an occasional Sunday dinner in its dining room or a reason to be in the lobby waiting to be picked up by my parents, I seldom was inside the Summit.

I found a picture of my parents and some of their friends celebrating my father's 46th birthday in the Munchausen Room. The first Fall Foliage Festival Dance was held there more than 50 years ago, with Uniontown dignitaries, a queen and her court. It was a celebration they hoped would bring tourists to the area to see the leaves.

The Summit is in the heart of the mountain's autumn beauty.

As years have gone by, many high school classes have had their reunions there, mine included, and the class photos show us posed on the front steps or the grounds surrounding the winding driveway.

And now this special place is 100.

Those of us who remember it well are catching up.

When I think about it, movies such as "Some Like It Hot" or "Dirty Dancing" could have been filmed at the Summit, with its scenery and old hotel atmosphere.

Post-Gazette staff writer Marylynne Pitz recently wrote a story describing the face-lift the hotel -- now called the Summit Inn Resort on Skyline Drive -- is undergoing in honor of its centennial.

So it needs some fine-tuning as it ages. But it's still there. I can identify. Can't you?