The summer of 2004: Golden Gloves and Dick Chaney

Back in the summer of 2004 the vice president came to Pottsville and there was an outdoor boxing exhibition on North Centre Street, and of course, Market Street was being resurfaced once again. It was also the year of the Bush-Kerry election.

I will tell you, whether or not you care, what I did on my summer vacation. I spent it in Pottsville. For the most part, I watched Market Street being resurfaced. However, in mid-August, after Cruise Night, the current Mrs. Trout and I were able to get ringside seats at the “Brawl at City Hall.” At first, we thought it involved a good old- fashioned scuffle over the City-Comcast contract renewal, with chairs flying in the air by the citizenry demanding their favorite channels be added. However, we were pleasantly surprised to see actual amateur Golden Gloves fight on North Centre Street. That was the night we ran into Mammy standing by the Peter J.McCloskey Post Office, holding a large ball of yarn in one hand and knitting needles in the other. She looked like a haggard Madame Defarge from Dickens’ Tale of Two Cities. Apparently she had the event confused and believed a quilting bee was to be held.
“I thought it was the shawl at City Hall,” she muttered.
While over a thousand people were in attendance, many holding large balls of yarn, the main attraction was the Jonathan Murphy fight just before midnight. He’s the young fighter from Minersville. By the time that fight started, Mammy had dropped her yarn, and forgot about the Comcast contract renewal. She was standing on her seat yelling, screaming and waving her flabby arms.
“Come on boys, we paid good money to see a fight, let’s get ready to rumble…”

By the stroke of midnight she transformed herself into a Mickey Goldmill from the Rocky film – you know that Burgess Meredith character - except for her blue-rinsed hair and panty hose.
“Go for the ribs! Don’t let that bastard breathe!”

While at the fight, word got out that “Chaney was coming to Pottsville.” Mammy was a movie fan and she swore up and down that it had to be Lon Chaney, Jr. trying to raise funds for the restoration of her beloved Majestic Theatre. You know, the abandoned Farmer’s Market next to the Coney. Mammy prays every night that she will live long enough to be able to watch some of the classics when it reopens.

After the fight, we all headed over to the Historical Society, as a late night discussion was being held on the history of traffic patterns on Centre Street. We skipped the discussion and found the list of famous people who had visited the City. It was alphabetical, beginning with the Swedish group, Abba and ending with Zeppo Marx. To my astonishment, Henry Clay never came to the City, despite the humungous statue that sits high above Centre Street’s vertical park. When I asked why, the curator informed me that one of my ancestors, Caiphus E. Trout, had organized “Canal Boat Veterans for Truth” during the election of 1844. Apparently, this group of disgruntled canal boat crewmates exposed Clay to be a braggart, whose claim of inventing the game of poker did not hold up to scrutiny. This uproar cost Clay the election and he refused to come to Schuylkill County. After James Polk won the election he commenced what some called an imperialist land grab under the pretext of Mexico having weapons of mass destruction. Alas, the only things found south of the border were some stale burritos and salsa sauce. But such is politics. When the war was over, the United States got California and Pottsville got the Clay statue. Ironically, if you look closely at the statue, you will notice an uncanny resemblance to Caiphus E. Trout holding a ball of yarn.
I was bewildered to discover that the first sitting president to come to Pottsville was Harry S. Truman in 1948. Why he did not stand up puzzles historians to this day. The one guy with the bad back, who should have been sitting, was Senator Jack Kennedy. He stood tall in Garfield Square in 1960 and gave his famed, “Ich bein ein Pottsviller” speech to a massive crowd trying to get into the diner for glazed donuts. Many forget that the less glamorous vice president Nixon was in the square the same year declaring, “I am not a crook” to a puzzled audience, not used to such declarations from their politicians. Mayor Mike Close promised to name a swimming pool after the presidential candidate who drew the larger audience in 1960 and that was Kennedy, of course. The rest is history, and that’s no ball of yarn. So that is how I spent my summer vacation. Pathetic, wasn’t it?