Mount Carbon: today and yesterday

The relentless demands placed upon the mayor of Mount Carbon to release his birth certificate are placing the tiny hamlet of Mount Carbon in the spotlight this election season. This so-called birther movement insists that ‘his honor’ is not the youngest head of the tiny community as publicized; they believe that there were several former Mount Carbon mayors younger – one as young as seven.
So here is a quick look at the history of Mount Carbon – often confused with Mount Olympus, Mount Rushmore and Port Carbon.

Mount Carbon, the mystical, elven fishing village, is well-hidden in the moorlands and foothills of the Sharp Mountain, somewhere between Greater Pottsville and the steep-walled valley of Outer Pottsville (the so-called hill of the forests). It is situated on rising ground behind the hythe, or small landing, on the west bank of the Schuylkill River. It is sometimes referred to as a kingdom under the mountain.
At one time the village also encompassed the east bank of the river. The boggy nature of that land made for above-ground habitation rather than the traditional hobbit-holes commonly found elsewhere in Mount Carbon.

After the invasion of 473 by a horde of Winter Carnival Vulcans this eastern settlement was destroyed, conquered and replaced by the Greater Pottsville Sewer Authority. This area still remains a sewer spot today. In 510 a wall was then built around the village, with the help of the dwarves of the nearby glittering caves, preventing further pillage and looting. Remnants of the wall are still visible to passer-bys today, especially those frequenting Julian’s Café.

Mount Carbon has become synonymous with an earthly utopia – a happy land, isolated from most of the world, reachable primarily by canal boat - a place of peace and tranquility. It has a human population of approximately eighty, an undetermined number of Sindarin elves, hobbits and gnomes, fifteen dogs, eight cats, and two finches and one bog turtle.

It was founded as far back as the end of the First Age, sometime during the Years of the Trees when the Dwarf Fathers awoke from beneath Sharp Mountain. The origins of its inhabitants are obscure, but it believed they were pre-Númenóreans. The villagers maintain a long-lasting friendship with the trolls and the mountain people of North Manheim, a nearby township, or shire, ever since the peace treaty of 947.

Originally the head of state was the king who exercised power over the original inhabitants, with the assistance of a tribal council. Now the leader is to be elected by the populace, with the king remaining only a figurehead who officiates at the monthly firehouse’s 80-20 drawings. The royal standard of Mount Carbon still remains an image of a white tree in blossom upon sable field, surrounded by seven Bavarian beer caps and surmounted by a halibut.

Before the time that the girls gone wild invaded Goodfellas and before the war of the wrath, the village was rumored to be covered with the pearls, opals and East Penn bus tokens that the elves found in the flowing Schuylkill River, apparently tossed overboard by careless passengers on the canal boats travelling between Pottsville and Philadelphia that carried high rolling gamblers and floozies, not necessarily in that order.

On the site of the present day Pottsville Pizzeria was located a famed inn - The Prancing Pony - which was visited by travelers from all parts of the world and elsewhere. It was the chief edifice within the village, built along the great road, or Centre Turnpike. It had fine Bavarian Lord Salisbury Ale. It is where the art of smoking pipeweed began.

When the canal boats ceased to run, the shipbuilding stopped and the docks at its port fell into decay and the Prancing Pony was demolished. The village had been dependent upon the River for contact with the outside world. It was the major crossroad due to its location on a major travel route. With the canal not to reopen for at least another ten years, its major industries remain saloons, pizza, hoagies and fresh fish (halibut).

Springtime has come to Schuylkill County: a poetic blog

I am a devout reader of the Thunder and Lightning Column in the Pottsville paper which allows petty complaints of the readers to be aired daily. However the other day the one writer had me so steamed up that I could not sleep for two days. Apparently the writer had nothing better to do than complain about litter that hugs the hill alongside the Fairlane Village Mall on Route 61. Excuse me, but don’t these people have anything better to whine about? Don’t they realize that one man’s trash is another man’s treasure? This is my treasure so lay off buddy!

I particularly find that stretch of road appealing and often sit by the McDonald’s window just gazing as I savor my cheese mcmuffins, watching the ashened snow melt away after a long, hard winter; the anthracite earth now awakening from its long slumber and revealing gems of plastic bags, food wrappers and the like, crawling up through the ice, all flickering in the season’s newborn sunlight, calling out to me, waiting to be reborn, making me feel reunited with the past.

The past and the future now both entwined in the one eternal present under the spring equinox. I am in awe in what was once before. I say it again. I am in awe in what was once before. It brings me curiosity. Perhaps these are bags from Value City, Payless Shoes, the Fashion Bug, Coney Express, Orange Julius or Waldenbooks - the stores of old? Oh what treasures and treats they once held. Lustrous species of years gone by packaging, attracting me with their quivering lush colors of beige, black, grey, and off-white. Diamonds sparkling in the dirt, but when joined together resembling a smothering security blanket enveloping the hillside along our thoroughfare, and embracing me along the way.

I sometimes step outside from McDonald’s ambidexitously smoking a cigarette while holding a double bacon mccheeseburger, listening while the traffic slows for the light, listening above the sounds of the whirling engines, to that rustling dainty plastic as it endlessly dances alone in jigsaw puzzle formation, and waves to me, laughting in the diesel fuel-scented, errant breeze. Waving also to the passersby aimlessly traversing route 61; pick-up truck window now opened just a wee bit, enough to allow the Winston smoke to flow out and upwards towards the heavens, as if it were a europhic incense offering to swell the heart of Brigit, the Celtic goddess of spring in some sort of thanksgiving or praise for, once again, another successful Girardville parade.

I often wonder what those fallen bags could be saying to me with that sweet, faint sound of flapping plastic. It must be “Ahh, springtime has come to Schuylkill County.” Within a few weeks the plastic bags, pastic soft drink lids, and paper containers will be joined by the brightly colored display of political signs, forming one huge bouquet, but each crying out nonsensically to anyone who looks, “vote for me and your life will improve.” Each sign held high and aloft by a metal band, each sign competing against one another, vying for attention, knowing that only one candidate will win. “Please lord let it be me.” And so, it goes, year after year, another bouquet with names, some the same and some different, but in the end our lives not improving, but with each spring comes the resurrection of hope that this election time it will be different. Haleluliah! “Ahh, springtime has come to Schuylkill County.”

Soon the streets of our downtowns will be magically filled with out-of-shape, shirtless, strange looking men parading like proud peacocks, showing off some new expensive tattoo paid for probably by the taxpayer through somesort of subsidy, shuffling up and down the sidewalks in rhythm with hairy backs, holding a cell phone (with unlimited minutes) in one hand up to a pierced ear as if each was listening to some distant seductive siren whispering teasingly, whispering above the roar of the ocean found within a conk shell, whispering what powerball numbers to pick and what topping should be on the pizza that will be brought home for dinner that night and where bath salts can still be purchased legally. Bed, Bath Salts and Beyond?

Yes, it is a primeval mating ritual, with the men responding without words to those forlorn, haltered-top women now passing by. Glistening navel rings, like the brass rings found at the Flying Horses at Knoebels' Grove, perched in the middle of the revealing flabby white little bellies, reminding the men that the new year baby contest is only nine months away and time is a-wasting…springtime is the time of rebirth, springtime is the time to hook-up with someone, anyone. "Please lord, let it be me" echoes down the lonely coridors once called business districts.

“Ahh, springtime has come to Schuylkill County.” Yes, as I sit there in McDonald’s eating the last of my Mcnuggets, I find it more exhilarating looking at that littered bank, far below the abandoned Value City, than you who dare criticize and think you are better than the rest of us with your crocuses (crocii?), daffodils, tulips, pussy willow, and/or robin eggs. Not necessarily in that order.

What I see makes me feel alive while those other things that you hold dear to you are just downright boring. I then get up and throw away my losing powerball tickets as if to make a sacrifice to Brigit, that Celtic goddess of spring. I watch them flutter across the highway and land amidst the bed of discarded dreams.