dancing in the '70s

It was hard to believe that in the 1970s, within walking distance, you had a choice of disco, funk and lounge music. The buildings along Route 61-South, that once housed the Alley and the Disco Alley have long been razed and the location is now the current Aldi’s parking lot but things were so much different then. Let me give you a short history lesson.
Pottsville Musicologists defines disco as “up tempo music (but not as up tempo as polka music).” In the mid 1970s, all of Schuylkill County was distraught over the Rest Haven Scandal and were in search of a new beat to escape from the daily headlines of corruption in the highest places. It would not take long for the hypnotic sound of “Rock the Boat” by the Hues Corporation to captivate an audience from Sheppton to Port Clinton. To channel this energy, a massive undertaking commenced and the first discothèque was opened near Cressona. It was christened “Disco Alley.” I recently walked the grounds of the Aldi’s parking lot, able to find actual platform shoe footprints of some of those earlier disco adventurers. I highly recommend it.
What was this Disco Alley exactly? Mark Major, a local historian, called it the hottest, most elite and outrageous, one-of-a-kind "mother of all nightclubs.” During its early reign, The Disco Alley was like real-life theatre, with a fascinating cast of characters being selected for each night's grand cabaret performance party from the multitudes clamoring to get past the famed velvet ropes to do the Hustle under the rotating mirror ball that reflected a bundle of colored lights. Celebrity status did not guarantee admittance to the Disco Alley and many ordinary Skooks, such as I, got in while some more prominent were turned away. According to Major, billiard champion Joe Balsis and author Conrad Richter reportedly never gained admittance. Unbelievable! One former Winter Carnival Queen, according to one anonymous Winter Carnival committeeman, was stunned after being rejected from the glittering nightspot. The bodacious diva had exclaimed, "I was once Queen of the Snows!" as the doorman shoved her away.

If one tired of disco music, there was a secret passageway that led to the “Alley” on the other side of the large building. The entire building once had been a bowling alley but converted to a nightclub in the mid 60s. According to respected Schuylkill mythologists, a few patrons swore that when the band would take a break they heard rolling bowling balls and falling pins.
“The Alley” featured live musicians. The most notable was a group called “Waterfront,” named after the nearby Schuylkill River. The band was racially integrated, with a lead singer by the name of Johnny Friendly, but I could be wrong. It was here, according to the Zerbey History of Schuylkill County, that the county Funkadelic music explosion took place. Hundreds were captivated by the danceable beats and booming bass lines, and they headed to the Alley on band nights. As a result, the phrase was born, “Niveus populus de Schuylkill tellus operor non tripudio bonus” or “White Skooks can’t dance.”

The last piece of the musical treasure was the legendary “Fink.” This was center of the county’s lounge music. That style is defined by the conductor of the Schuylkill Symphony as “light melodies influenced by pop, big band and elevators.” If you were a fan of such syrup as “Muskrat Love,” “We’ve Only Just Begun,” and “You’re Having My Baby,” and you wore the right type of polyester clothing, then you were a bona fide lounge lizard. The Dusselfink was the place for the 30s and 40s crowd, especially those divorced or longing to be divorced. The scene was oblivious to the rise of funk and disco. This was the place to have your sangria or pina colada, while listening to some of the worst songs ever written. Do you remember that song, “Feelings?” You know that song; you heard it a million times. Didn’t it make you sick to your stomach? Didn't it make you want to smash your fists against the wall? It went something like this, “If you’re happy and you know it, and you really want to show it, clap your hands.” No that was not it…. It went like this….. “Feelings, wo-o-o feelings….”

The ‘70s are so long ago. I hope I taught you something. Have a Nice Day!☺

The schuylkill senior olympics of 1976

Do you have Olympic fever? I do.

The official Olympics are in China this year but I am worked up over our own Senior Olympics. I have been preparing by having dinners at the Fairlane Village Mall “all you can eat” Chinese buffet.. Tonight I will be looking forward to some old fashioned Peking duck….not Bejing duck… but Peking duck. I am over 50 and I am training for the Chinese Pentathlon; that is, I will eat five different courses at one at a time. The senior Olympics has added so many new events over the years and this is just one of them. Another is whining and still another is “The Decather.” I prefer the Chinese Pentathlon over the decather. The menu will feature Moo Shu Pork, General Tso’s Chicken, Cantonese Lobster, and Kung Pao Shrimp. It is tough being a senior athlete but someone has to do it.

As a young man I did attend the 1976 XXI Schuylkill Senior Olympiad that was held in Hegins. It was awesome to watch Grandpa Trout being helped onto the podium to receive his gold medal for watermelon seed spitting while his beloved Pine Grove Township anthem was being played. He wiped tears from his eyes as he tried to sing along. It was a great day to be a Trout.
Every four years, since 1884, the Senior Olympics have been held in various areas of Schuylkill County. The only times the game were cancelled occurred during the first and second world wars and, in 1992, the year Lawrence Welk died. That year, the participants were so distraught they just wandered about aimlessly.
While the games have modernized over the years (for instance, the athletes no longer compete in the nude) most century-old traditions are still honored. First of all, the opening ceremonies are breathtaking. In 1976 hundreds of aging athletes shuffled into Hegins Park, marching under the flag of their respective municipality. Pennsylvania is noted for its largesse of local governments, so this ritual continued for many hours. The first flag was that of Ashland, followed by Auburn, and Blythe Township. I think you can figure it out by now that the municipalities were in alphabetical order, with the last flag being that of West Penn Township. The procession of athletes took over eight hours.
Everyone in attendance had his or her own favorites but nearly all teams received rousing applause. The only noticeable disruption involved one winner who stood on the podium with her fist raised, protesting Pottsville's absorption of Yorkville many years ago. The mainly German-American seniors of Yorkville now must bring home the gold for Pottsville rather than their own independent borough. I hate when politics enters into the sports world.
After the last athlete entered the stadium, the host municipality had to entertain the audience with something that portrays its unique heritage. Hegins had several women make faschnachts and funnel cake, which was then passed around on paper plates to be sampled. Afterwards eight stocky women dressed in the latest fashions from Sixteen Plus knitted a quilt in the form of a hex sign. The crowd roared with approval.
Soon the torch was brought into the stadium by the elderly relay runners to light cauldron which would signal not only the opening of the games but also keep the bean soup warm. After the cauldron was lit by one of the surviving Maroon Cheerleaders, the pigeons were released - but immediately shot down before getting airborne by the Hegins Skeet Shooting Team. It was a beautiful sight. All the while the crowd could be heard singing the Maroon’s Victory Song.
Once the Township Supervisor Chairman declared, in perfect Pennsylvania Dutch, that the Senior Summer Olympiad was open, the games began in earnest. The rivalry between the superpowers of Pottsville and Shenandoah was the focus of attention and the object of most of the sports betting. For years the senior Olympics became a symbol of the struggle between the North and South of the Mountain with Shenandoah and its satellites battling Pottsville and the up and coming rising stars of Orwigsburg and West Brunswick Township for dominance.
Yes, there were some scandals and accidents. A few athletes were disqualified when their urine tests came back with positive readings for Geritol. And one elderly member of the Porter Township synchronized swim team drowned to a Captain and Tanelle medley without anyone ever noticing.
The political rivalry seemed to disappear when the athletes returned to the Senior Olympic Village to sit back on lazy boys and adjustable Craftmatic beds, swapping pins as well as swapping stories of their grandchildren, and complaining about the weather. It was great to see the athletes sharing Metamucil and Dentucreme, living in perfect harmony. The boundaries of “north” and “south” seemed to be forgotten. The Senior Olympic Games created a small window of time when Skooks allowed themselves to believe that peace and goodwill would prevail in the County; that competition could coexist with harmony. No longer were there any “North” and “South.” No longer were there upteen municipalities all duplicating services.

It was a great time to be old in Schuylkill County.

Polka Club memories

I was at the Altamont Free Festival back in the late nineteen sixties. You know, the legendary celebration held in the south end of Frackville. How did I hear about it? Well, I was sitting at the counter at Phaon’s Diner waiting for my scrapple breakfast, listening to my Toshiba transistor radio which was tuned to the WPPA Sunday morning Polka show. It was difficult to hear polka music in my native west end of the county so I had to set the radio next to the window to get clearer reception. That is when I first heard that a free concert was planned to be held in Altamont with an intoxicating line-up of the county’s best bands. Later Yak Tam Billy Urban made the same announcement on WMBT, the station that played progressive polka music.

I knew it would a once-in-a-lifetime experience. I had to go to Altamont and be part of the county’s musical history. Just think about it, the Jordan Brothers, The Other Side, Lil’ Andy, Tony Karpee, The Schuylkill Haven Belvederes’ Drum & Bugle Corp, Big Barrel Emil Simodejka, Buddy Widel Trio, The Individuals, and so many others, all on one stage...and for free. The event would go down in Schuylkill County musical mythology.
It would be three days of peace and love in “The Mountain City.”
Before I tell you of the festival, I want you all to know that while my musical taste was based in “underground” Polka music, I was open-minded to listening to other forms of music. Underground polka music is the edgy polka music that did not have a mainstream following. Traditional polka music could be heard on the Lawrence Welk Show but I preferred the raw energy heard at the Bavarian Festival in Barnesville. The best polka music was not the sappy, upbeat, happy Myron Floren-variety, but rather the type of polka that reflected the dismal lifestyle of many of our county youths. This music circled itself around both aggression and crime (as found in the lyrics of “Who Stole the Keeshka?”) and misogyny ( “She’s Too Fat Polka”- utterly offensive to Rubenesque women). As an angry white boy, it was the music that spoke to me…it was both the music that annoyed anyone over thirty and was also the music to allow me to “get jiggy with the ladies.”
While polka music was unheard of in my native Pine Grove, misogynistic lyrics were not. In fact the west end “Hoe Down” music was notorious and the subject of a Grand Jury Probe on obscenity in the record industry. That will be a story for another day.
I was attracted to this new, high-energy polka music with its pulsating 2/4 beat, and I remained an underground polka aficionado for many, many years - a regular on the polka party club scene that flourished in the clandestine, boilo-fueled houses of northern Schuylkill county. I longed for those twelve hours of non-stop musical bliss. Minersville was a Mecca for polka clubbers like myself, where the all-night DJs would play the latest Jimmy Sturr, Frankie Yankovic, Stanky and Eddie Blazonczk albums for the revelers, remixing polka tracks in and out of each other. Some of these house DJs became celebrities in their own right; Jouz Cabachi, from WPPA, is one name that comes to mind. This legendary figure turned polka turntablism into an art form by beat mixing, matching and scratching, exploring the repetition and altering rythms of polkas, obereks, mazurkas and czardashes. Yes ear-shattering clarinets, accordians, alto saxes and trumpets all blending together! What a time to be alive! Stomping on people’s feet! Frantically pushing and shoving into the swirling crowd as if it was an out of control rugby game! Full-figured factory girls in their stretch pants seductively removing their babushkas and throwing them into the crowd; all the while the energy was fed by kielbassi and pierogies, washed down with boilo, Columbia beer and Kaier’s ale.
Whoop-I, Shupp-I!

Of course, we got criticism from our elders, as there were many injuries, mainly broken toes. Soon safety codes were enforced at the clubs due to the public outcry. The Bavarian Festival was shut down and many of the clandestine clubs turned themselves into respectable parking lots that began appearing in the area in the nineteen seventies.
I will have to tell you about the Altamont Festival some other time.

population increase

I read in the paper that Schuylkill County’s population has finally increased after a steady decline since 1930. The paper credited “fewer deaths and more births.”

Well I am certainly doing my part by staying alive. I have eliminated the cheese from all of my Big Macs and Double bacon burgers. And as for tobacco, while it is healthier than crack, let’s face it, it cannot be considered a health food. That is why I have cut down to one pack of Camels a day.
There are also safety changes that I integrated into my lifestyle. I now have a hands-free cell phone in my SUV. Now I don’t have to be distracted with the phone and I can concentrate on my driving and changing discs in the DVD player while I am on Route 61.

My new motto is “One hand on the wheel, the other on my Fast Forward button.”
My drinking and driving habits have also changed. With gas now costing $4 a gallon, it is cheaper to drink than to drive. So I drive less and drink more, pocketing the change, laughing all the way to the bank.
With these lifestyle changes I hope to last to a extremely old age lingering, forgotten and alone, in a bed; helping to keep our county’s population stable. I now have a living will that requests that I be kept alive by any means necessary and that, if possible, I be transported to Mount Carbon so that I can help keep that town’s numbers up even while comatose.

We also need to thank our local prisons for helping to keep the population up. We not only have the County jail in Pottsville but two state correction facilities north of the mountain, and a federal prison in Minersville. Hopefully more human behavior and activities will become illegal in the future so that additions can be built onto these facilities to make room for the next generation of criminal and increasing the county’s numbers to boot.
I am not sure how many residents are at these facilities, but I would bet that once released most inmates would leave the county. Therefore we should all write to the Pardon or Parole Board objecting to any type of early release until the next census is taken, lest our numbers decrease.
I understand that many girlfriends of prisoners with their children already relocate to the area temporarily to be close by. This should be a signal to the Chamber of Commerce to begin a massive “in-big-house” promotion to retain these mostly young people from leaving the area.

Lastly, the paper failed to give due credit to the humungous rise in illegitimacy in the county. We need to thank these young women for doing their part to keep the population numbers up. If a young girl had to wait until she married and was financially able to support a child, the number of births would be dramatically down. If it wasn’t for these frisky youngsters, Schuylkill County could face extinction, just like the Dodo Bird. That is why I am such a big supporter of the New Year Baby Contest, middle school baby showers, Eighth grade proms and slutty clothes for pre-teens. I say, get the youngsters interested in procreating as early as possible. Entice them with prizes and photo ops in the newspaper to keep our county’s numbers up. Some naysayers argue that I am foolish for advocating such a policy. They claim “young girls are ready or able to properly care for a baby.” I reply with one word, Hogwash! That is what social workers, foster parents, food stamps, and the Women’s Shelter are for. At next year’s Pottsville May Fair I plan to sell five inch, yellow rear car window signs that proclaims “bastard on board” as well as bumper stickers that read: "Honk if you're a bastard" and donate all profits to the winner of the New Year Baby Contest provided the baby’s parents are not married (to one another). Will you buy one to help keep the population numbers up?

Remember when it comes to population, its quantity, not quality.