A Perfect Circle

I write about my home town of Slatington a lot. You all know how my memories take me back there regularly. I write about Slatington, because I know, or knew, Slatington pretty well. But Slatington doesn’t exist in a vacuum. In fact my high school, Slatington High School, was made up of the boroughs of Walnutport and Slatington and the villages of Slatedale, Emerald, Rextown, Welshtown, Bucktown, Friedens, and Lehigh Gap.  All of those villages make up Washington Township. All of these places make up a perfect circle around my town.

For my readers who don’t know the area I thought I would talk a little about some of those villages and the other borough.  I am not as well versed in them so if I make some mistakes I hope my readers will correct me. I think a lot of those who lived in Slatington may have looked down a little at those “bus people”.  Sorry about that!

First, the other borough, Walnutport. It’s often said, Slatington, Walnutport, same thing. But, growing up, Slatington was about four times as big as Walnutport. It was the only part of Northern Lehigh School District to be in Northampton County. It has a canal!  It had the Albino Woman! It also had The Anchor Hotel, a great place to go for food after a football or basketball game. Walnutport has grown a lot since my youthful days and now has become the commercial center of the school district. The main intersection in Walnutport boasts a McDonalds, a Burger King, and a Taco Bell! There is no fast food in Slatington. Sad. Healthy, but sad.

Slatedale is a village of about 500 citizens. It is often described as a sleepy village. That’s a good thing! During my early years and my high school years, Slatedale was a destination for furniture buyers throughout eastern Pennsylvania. It was the home of the now defunct, Kern’s Furniture.  It has an interesting baseball field in that if you hit a home run, the ball could land in Trout Creek and travel all the way to Delaware Bay!  Another nice feature of Slatedale is the aptly named Lovers Lane!

Emerald, still smaller than Slatedale, was known as Little Chicago.  That’s because a high percentage of kids who got in trouble in school were from Emerald.  I don’t know if that is true or if that is one of those looking down our noses at the country folk kind of things. A couple cool things about Emerald. It was first called Franklin until it was discovered that Pennsylvania already had a Franklin.  I am not sure if this is how it got its name, but driving into Emerald, from the east, the first thing you would see was a small, emerald green quarry in someone’s side yard.  Here is something I bet few people know. St. Peter’s Methodist Church, on Center Street, was the picture for a designated month on thousands upon thousands of calendars sold throughout the country and for many, many  years!

Friedens, just south of Slatington, is a village I know little about. I know it is the site of Peters Elementary School and of Avery’s Farm. I know there is a little flat stretch of road, known as the 1/8th mile where drag racing took place.  Growing up, Friedens was also the home of Endy’s Auction House and a restaurant called The Shady Nook. Cool name!

I will lump Rextown, Welshtown, and Bucktown all together.  They were all in the country between Slatington and Slatedale. All nice little villages. Rextown with its one room schoolhouse turned into a home. Welshtown with its, now closed, dump. Bucktown with Billy Buck’s store which was something out of a distant past.

Growing up, we didn’t think much of Lehigh Gap, as a village. It was a collection of just a few houses, a few of them very old stone buildings.  One of them became The Osprey House and the site of the headquarters of Lehigh Gap Nature Center.  Another is an abandoned tannery, closed for decades.  Still another is occupied by a descendant of the family that started the tannery.  If you walk on the D and L trail, through Lehigh Gap, you will see photos of the village when it was a thriving train station with an immense hotel.

That is my history lesson for today. Like I wrote, if any of my readers see mistakes or would like to add more please feel free to leave a comment.  Interestingly, with the exception of Walnutport, I can drive through any of the other places mentioned and they don’t look a lot different from when I was a kid. The more things change, the more they stay the same. All of these places, no matter how small, had some effect on making me the man I am today.