Jul 24, 2025 By Garrett Neese 4 min read

Though he left Uniontown for Maryland after high school, Jim Burger has never stopped visiting or thinking about the town where he grew up.

The Baltimore-based photographer and writer has turned those reflections into a new book, “Long Journey Home — Tales Of Growing Up in Uniontown, Pennsylvania.” He’ll be selling and signing copies from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday at Darby’s Pub & Restaurant, 145 Morgantown St.

Burger went on to become a professional photographer, working for the City Paper and Baltimore Sun before becoming a freelance photographer in 1999, gathering clients like AARP and BlueCross BlueShield.

He’d already written a book about Baltimore a few years ago. For his latest book, he’d set out to write about the concept of home, planning to weave between stories of Baltimore and Uniontown that would tie in to each other.

“I started gathering together all the Uniontown stories, and I thought, ‘You know what? I have enough here that I could just write a Uniontown book.'”

Plenty of landmarks from Burger’s childhood make appearances in the book, from stories about going to the Uniontown Jewish Community Center to working at his father’s bar, Lenny Burger’s Hillside Inn. He started out washing dishes and cleaning, eventually becoming a bartender when he was old enough. His parents had made a deal with him: They’d pay for his college education at the Maryland Institute College of Art; in return, he’d come back and work for any college break longer than a weekend.

“I could do nothing but some bar stories if I wanted to,” he said.

Most of the book covers the period before Burger graduated Uniontown Senior High School in 1978. But it ends with a walk he took around Uniontown a couple of months ago, retracing his steps and thinking about the many former sights that aren’t there anymore.

“The book is about the passage of time and friendship and loss, things that have changed,” he said. “But it’s a very loving look at Uniontown.”

Some of the photos Berger took as a fledgling photographer became catalysts for stories.

Shortly after he got his first camera, Ronald McDonald made a promotional visit to the McDonald’s in Uniontown. Burger was part of the crowd that flocked to see McDonald drive around the parking lot of the Uniontown Shopping Center in a motorized hamburger.

“Hundreds of people came out to see Ronald McDonald, and that’s one of the first photos I ever shot, and it’s one of the photos that’s in the book,” he said.

That, in turn, led to a chapter on the shopping center, and how much influence it had on his neighborhood and the people who lived nearby.

One of those things that have changed is his father’s bar, now Darby’s Pub & Restaurant, which is hosting Saturday’s book signing.

Many of his friends, some of whom make appearances in the book, are getting together for Saturday’s reception.

“It takes something like this to get a group of people to come back to Uniontown,” he said. It’s often a life event, either a wedding or a funeral.”

Burger’s seen a few other books on Uniontown, recalling one particularly dense tome he tried to make his way through as a child.

Readers won’t have that struggle connecting with Burger’s book, which he likes to think of as “entertaining and a good read.”

For locals, it’ll remind them of places they’ve forgotten about, or give them another perspective on places they remember.

But it also hits on universal themes — childhood mischief, missing your friends, or seeing the way your hometown has changed — that could hook any reader, Burger said.

“It’s set in Uniontown, but other people can read it,” he said. “Uniontown just happens to be the catalyst for it. I’d be very surprised if anybody could read this book and at the end of it say, ‘You know what? I felt nothing.'”