The Pottsville Summit

                                       POTTSVILLE SUMMIT SCHEDULED FOR MID-JULY

A summit meeting is defined as a meeting of leaders, usually with considerable media exposure, tight security and a prepared agenda.

Pottsville City officials will sit down with the leaders of the street people, loafers, and deadbeats as well as the leaders of the pipe-dreaming, goody two-shoes who want to bring back the city of years ago.  In the late 1950s a family could enjoy the entire day on West Market Street. Mom could take the kids to Raudenbush’s for some delicious sticky buns while dad could throw the medicine ball at the YMCA, take a Turkish steam bath and then go out and play the numbers at a nearby establishment.  Later the family could sit down together at the Sugar Bowl and enjoy a wholesome well-balanced meal followed by CMP sundaes.  They could then leave, once again play the numbers, and then motor home in an East Penn bus.

It seems that West Market Street has undergone a dramatic demographic change in recent years.  Sociologists attribute this to the removal of the cartoon characters that once were erected on Garfield Square, as well as the lack of sticky buns in the area. 

Why the cartoon characters? Well the answer is two-fold.  The first fold is that these cartoon characters attracted families from near and far.  Middle-class families got a sense of calm and peace just to see bigger-than- life, cuddly cartoon characters such as Droopy , Nancy & Sluggo, Alley Oop and Snuffy Smith.   The second fold is that the criminal element was kept at bay by such authoritative cut-outs such as Dick Tracy, Joe Palooka, Dudley Do-Right, and Mighty Mouse. 

 

All of these cartoon characters, by the way, were meticulously hand-painted by members of the Schuylkill Allied Artists with paint purchased locally at Mansell's Paint Store.  Little Lulu took three years to complete and used over fifteen gallons of red paint.

Copyright infringement litigation eventually led to the demise of the cartoon character replicas gracing the Square.  The family of Snuffy Smith agreed to a seven figure settlement which emptied the city coffers.  Many of the city residents, now distraught over the loss of the cartoons, began to dress up as Far Side characters; a tradition that continues to this day.

Soon the area became a mecca for frisky young teens who wanted to beget children and live the American dream –that is, to be housed, fed, given medical insurance and clothed at taxpayers’ expense without ever having to lift a finger.  

But today there are disagreements between the old guard and the newcomers.  The city officials will try and iron out the differences at the much bally-hooed Market Street Summit in mid-July.  

Some say that the long-overdue Summit is being called in order to stem the cry from the west end to restore Yorkville Independence.  It would be a borough without the baggage, by being free of the publicly subsidized housing that is so prevalent in the city- a city that has its goal of having more publicly subsidized housing by 2030 than its sister city of Pyongyang, North Korea.  Others say that the city has already passed Pyongyang in subsidized housing.

Several years ago some concessions were made to the street people when Tony’s Produce Market was leveled due to the complaints that the sale of fresh fruit and vegetables was culturally abhorrent and disrespectful to the new residents in the city. 

The natives are still restless and the summit seemed to be the only sensible solution.

Each side has their demands. One the one side: The Library must become more bed-bug friendly; No parades to be held before noon as not to disturb the residents’ sleeping; free day care from 8 PM until one hour after the bars close; iodized bath salts.  The goody-two shoes, on the other hand  want the return of the Easter Parade; gentlemen to walk on the roadside of the sidewalk; a Mayor’s Dance to be held during the summer on the large asphalt lot at Second and Market; thank you notes to be written when receiving a hand-out; clothes (including pajamas) should not be two sizes too small for pedestrians walking on Market Street.

At this moment, it appears that the only thing agreeable to all sides is that sticky buns sales should resume on West Market Street as quickly as possible.

 

 

In remembrance of a life cut short

 

Sometimes I find it very difficult to keep a smile on my face. Even if I stand upside-down my smile will disappear, or turn right-side up, depending on whether you are standing on your head or on your feet. In any event the smile is not there anymore. 

When I was younger, if I felt down in the dumps, I would go down to the candy store – every elementary school had a candy store next door – and fork over a nickel and get waxed lips. My candy store of choice was next to the East Ward School in Schuylkill Haven.  Those lips worked for awhile. I could put a smile on my face, at least  until I needed to open my mouth.  After awhile I would eat the waxed lips rather than throw them out.  I never figured the nutritional value of waxed lips.  I must have devoured a ton of them over the years.

 

Today was one of those days in Schuylkill County that I found hard to smile.  A bright, young man with so much promise… taken away by a member of the taliban in far-away Afghanistan.

             I think I am too old now to wear waxed lips to my hide unhappiness even if I could get my hands on some waxed lips.  I recently heard that Pottsville's Surgeon-General had issued warnings about those wax lips. He said they attract near-sighted Zamundian honey bees. The bees, as we all  know, came to America in 1988 by accident when the crown prince of Zamuda visited the American Way Fair. 

           Most of the candy stores next to elementary schools are now gone and I am too lazy to wait in line at Walmart; even though I get to ride in that store on a scooter, along with so many others who ate too much funnel cake and pepperoni pizza over the years. 

Anyway, today's young people are too sophisticated for waxed lips when they can now get tattoos and collagen lip enhancement treatments paid by their parents' medical insurance up to age 26 or through taxpayer funded medical assistance.

  It is the 21st century and Pottsville’s Surgeon General says it is healthy to express one’s feelings rather than hold them in.  So have sworn off waxed lips forever. I will now express myself. So here it goes....

 My problem right now is the struggle that I have with the disharmony between my search for meaning in life and the harsh realities, cruelties and the sometimes meaninglessness that confront us daily. 

Today was one of those days in Schuylkill County as I stood with so many others in line to pay respect to the fallen young hero.  It was a beautiful and sunny day.  A good day for the Belmont Stakes but certainly too nice of a day for a funeral. 

What keeps me going is the lesson I learned from reading Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut.  One must live as a time traveler passing back and forth in time, focusing on the good times, whether past, present or future, but realizing that bad times will be unavoidable along the way. Just don't dwell on them. 

 

 One must also remain wary of antithetical concepts, such as good and evil.  Most of us would want good, but we must remember that good is defined by the existence of evil.  There is evil out there. Always was and always will be. We just have to gravitate towards the good. Keep a moral compass handy at all times.

Today I did not have to time travel.  Today I saw good in Schuylkill County, right here in the present moment in this county where neighbors gathered together from all the county's small communities. Orwigsburg especially felt the pain.  It was unfortunate that the harsh reality of evil brought it to the forefront but good was there. It was up and down West Market Street. Goodness was visible and evil was nowhere to be found.

 On a day that was too nice to be day for a funeral, the sun was shining but so was the goodness in people.  The goodness was apparent on the faces of the countless people standing in line or the people who slowed down while driving by in their vehicles.

Why even the disheveled street people who roost on the other side of Market Street were curious and respectful.

Please keep the young man, who had so much promise, in your thoughts and prayers. He was a credit to the county and the nation.

Quit dwelling on your facebook pages, tweets and your selfie photographs for just a little while.  There will always be time to update your facebook status later when you can tell the world that you had scrapple and scrambled eggs for breakfast which will trigger dozens of insincere "likes" from your hundreds of so-called cyber friends.  

Yes, there will always be time for fun, maybe even time for a little beer pong now and then,  but do try and do something  positive in the world in the small amount of time you are allotted.
 

                           Don't waste it on all on self-absorption.

 

If the world seems too vast and you are as geographically challenged as me, then just do something positive in this small rectangular speck of the universe we call Schuylkill County.  

 

 

 

 

 

County Scandal, part I

It was one of those mornings in Schuylkill County when the sky was blue - a teaser before the clouds rolled in for the rest of the day. I was going into the Court House, on my way in to the Treasurer Office, to get my dog tag.  Actually not my dog tag in the possessive sense of that term, but my dog’s tag.  I certainly didn’t need a tag for myself.  I already had one. It is good until I expire.

 I was unable to get down the corridor, blocked by FBI agents carrying boxes out of the Clerk of Court Office to a large, white truck parked in the lot. You probably read about it in the newspaper or saw it on television. Things were moving faster out of the courthouse than bananas sold at Bill’s Produce on Senior Citizen Day or X-Boxes at Wall-Mart the night before Christmas. The Court House is normally quiet unless it is Taco Salad Day at the Canteen Restaurant, when the Mariachi Bands serenade the county employees during lunch hour. This day was no Taco Salad Day, but it was busier than ever.

  I made a bee-line out of that hall of justice as fast as I could, which is not very fast at all.  The dog tag could wait until next year. I already had a large FBI file (as well as my own dog tag and thank God I hadn't yet expired). I didn’t want garner any more attention.  According to Edward Snowden, everyone that has every clicked onto the Beansoup for the Soul Website is listed in the giant Government Surveillance Book. As webmaster I am certainly in it. Besides, many years ago I ripped off tags from mattresses at the Dusselfink Motel which I wanted as souvenirs to remember those nights that I got lucky.  I knew it was against the law, but I ripped off every  tag off that I could.  I courted danger in those days.  I also falsely impersonated a Vulcan once during the Winter Carnival. Now, I had to duck for cover.

 I headed down Second Street and stopped in front of the Eagles Bar, across from the world renowned Lipkin Incubator Building. Unbeknownst to most people, the Incubator is where city chicken was discovered by Mr.Lipkin many years ago.  I looked up at the jutting broken plastic sign, swaying in the breeze, which once proudly stated “Eagles Club” but now had the blank look which characterizes the expression on the faces of people that I passed along the way.  I headed inside. I wanted a drink today and not city chicken.

                                   City chicken could wait! 

 

 I took off my brown fedora, placed it on the bar and grabbed a stool. Before long I noticed I wasn’t alone. I let go of the stool and looked over my shoulder.  There at a table was a man, sitting by himself, smoking a cigarette and looking at daily lottery tickets. He smoked as if he was sending smoke signals to a distant planet. 

I was puzzled. “What planet?..... Pluto? Couldn’t be..... It’s no longer a planet.” My brain started to work over-time.

How much is that worth? I had no answer.

 He was a portly, thick-necked gentleman with greasy, disheveled hair; black with some grey showing at the roots that protruded from his vast scalp .  He apparently used more dye in his hair than all the dye used at the recent St. Clair Fish and Game Easter Egg Hunt.   

He was dressed rather conservatively for Pottsville. That is, he was wearing a clean long- sleeved white shirt and did not have a baseball cap on his head.   In downtown Pottsville, a man wearing anything other than a T shirt and a baseball cap on is about as inconspicuous as a nudist in the Winter Carnival Parade.

 

He signaled me over to his table. It was then I realized I was in a room with the famed City of Pottsville’s Surgeon General. I was asked to join him for a mid-afternoon drink, a pickled egg and several slices of beer bologna, that were lined up in a row on a small white dish. I quickly acquiesced and sat down at his table. It was then I remembered the planet I was trying to think of earlier.

Uranus!

He leaned over and asked me what I had thought of the Lager Jogger 5k Run that had recently been held in the city. I told him that I enjoyed it. He looked at me with sharp distain; staring with his eyes that reminded me of the eyes of the wooden horse that once looked out the window of Knapp’s Leather Good Store on South Centre Street. He raised his left arm and pointed at me as his voice went up two octaves:

“Those foolish people don’t realize that running will cause them shin splints, bunions and falling arches in years to come and not necessarily in that order.  The proper way to any finish line is to shuffle or cake-walk along, or better yet… get a ride. Haven’t these people ever heard of the STS bus system?”

I could see that he was getting upset and I quickly changed the subject. I asked him about an inquiry I had received several days ago.  It concerned the so-called Rest Haven Scandal of the early 1970s.

I was unaware of the details. I wasn’t sure if such a scandal ever occurred and if it did occur, was it sexual in nature. I had thought it may have involved hanky-panky between aged residents. You know, perhaps clandestine illicit relations on a Craftmatic adjustable bed after the lights were out.

The Surgeon-General, puffing on his cigarette, responded curtly, “No, it was not like that at all. Clandestine illicit relations occurred elsewhere in the 1970s causing scandals, not in Rest Haven. You are thinking about Martha's Vineyard or Washington DC.”

 Cigarette smoke then trailed upwards forming a cloud above his large bulbous head. What type of cloud? I quickly remembered. Thank God my brain was still working overtime.

                                     It was a cirrus cloud!

I continued my rapid-fire questioning. “Did the Rest Haven Scandal involve illegal break-ins by so-called plumbers or electricians attempting to fix the Rest Haven Bingo games?  Who would order such a break-in? Would the bingo prizes be that important?”  I remembered that the District Attorney in the 1970s organized bingo raids quite frequently, attempting to eradicate the scourge of bingo once and for all.  Maybe Rest Haven was the crown jewel of that crack-down.

  Again the answer was in the negative.

“What the hell was the Rest Haven Scandal then?”

“Sit back, boy and I will tell you a story that will knock your compression socks off. But first, pass me the salt and help yourself to a pickled egg and  some beer bologna.....  I like horse radish on my hard-boiled egg. How about you?”

                              

                                       TO BE CONTINUED

 

 

 

 

American Way Fair Memories

                               (sometimes good material just appears to fall out the sky)

 

 

                                           Say it ain’t so, Joe! 

Pottsville is losing its American Way Fair!   Another  loss to the downtown reeling from the loss of Pomeroy's, the Necho Allen Hotel, and the underground rest rooms. The tragic news came unexpectedly, as the $17 million Union Station was built, in part, to handle the influx of tourists, sightseers and street urchins that came to the annual Fair, boosting the city's economy.

All we have now are our memories to hold on to.  Man, it was one hell of a downhill ride, and I loved every minute of it.   How does one describe the AWF to the uninitiated?  For starters, try watching such films as “The Easter Parade,” “One Flew Over the Coo-Coo’s Nest,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “State Fair” and “The Grapes of Wrath” simultaneously.

Go ahead. I will wait until you are done…… You can get all of these films at the Red Box in the downtown Giant Supermarket….. Hurry up. I am waiting……

                                        (later, the next day)

                                               See, wasn’t I correct? 

 I did forget to mention that the new movie, “Mr. Peabody and Sherman” has a small scene in it, where the talking dog and his pet boy get into the Way-Back Machine and travel back to Pottsville in 1976; the year that the Fair opened.  It is a short five minute scene and only features the American Way Surplus Swine Flu Shot Tent with crowds of people lining up to get immunized with surplus swine flu vaccine, before Mr. Peabody yells to Sherman, “Hurry up, boy. Let’s get the hell out of here!”

I was there at the first fair.  I loved every minute. 

It opened on a solemn note, with the ecumenical blessing of the funnel cake batter, a prayer for those afflicted with disco fever, and a moment of silence for all of those who overslept. Then the Mayor and the Winter Carnival Mascot, Pottsie Ottsie, took to the podium to declare the official opening.

But, before I continue, think about 1960 when Senator John F. Kennedy visited Pottsville and removed his hat when speaking at the Garfield Diner as he tried to catch the attention of one of the Diner’s  waitresses.

From that moment, the men of Pottsville forever stopped wearing hats. Unfortunately they proceeded to burn down all of the city’s haberdasheries, leveling them into what we know today as parking lots.  In a similar manner, in 1976 the men of Pottsville stopped wearing shirts at any downtown fair after the mayor removed his polyester leisure jacket and polyester shirt to welcome the participants. 

His Honor was a hell of an emcee, bellowing out those immortal words, now taught to children in every middle school, home school, cyber school and charter school:

  “…You've proven to the world that several hundred people – and I call you people because I am one - can get together and have eight hours of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, funnel cake and Italian Sausage, and I God Bless You for it!”  

Fortunately. while the men tore off their shirts after that announcement, no men’s clothing stores were damaged.  We have our level-headed mayor and the Pottsville Police Commissioner to thank for that.

From that moment on the AWF became synonymous with bare-chested men showing off their pasty, beer barrel abs. Noted linguists contend that the term “man boobs” became acceptable part of our English vernacular due to that historic, opening fair in the heart of the anthracite coal region.

It was then time for the music to begin. The Pottsville Kilties then performed, playing the melodic “Afternoon Delight” on their bagpipes while perched high atop the rooftop of the Park Hotel. A truly magical ‘70’s moment.  There was music of all variety was heard that beautiful day. For instance, there was Little Andy singing “the Disco Duck Polka” while Country and Western sensation “Wee” Willie Whistle doing a Texas swing version of “Play That Funky Music White Boy”  and the Byzantine Choir doing a somber, slow version of “(Shake, Shake, Shake) Shake Your Booty, ” in the Ruthenian language.

 Wasn’t the music of the 1970’s the greatest?

Besides watching two transient street people, affectionately known to all as "The Captain and Tennille" play tennis on East Norwegian Street in a match unrivaled since Wimbledon, one of the athletic highlights of the fair was the 400-meter bed race with beds from all of the local furniture stores participating. There were teams from Nathans, Levitz, Brighters, Rombergers, Pomeroys and Sears going bed-to-bed with Tenenholz’s, Ufbergs, and Sisweins.  The local betting parlors were very busy that day with frantic wagering on which furniture store would win.   The winner, by the way, was a Chippendale bed from Tuzon’s, a 30-1 long shot. In last year's bed race, Goodwill was the only contestant.  Betting fell off precipitously.

The American Way Fair is now history.  Some say it will be like Philadelphia’s American Bandstand and relocate out west. Rumor has it that it may reappear in a year or two in Tower City, Sacramento or Rough and Ready. We can just hope.

All we have left are cherished  memories and perhaps, some Italian sausage or funnel cake shoved in the back of the freezer.  Thank you Billie, thank you Joe and thank you to all of the others who played any role in the AWF and that awesome, Sunday afternoon delight!