The Summer of Our Discontent

This is the story of a lawless town in a lawless summer. The lawless town was Slatington. The lawless summer was in the early sixties. I want to say 1962-63. I am not certain of the exact years. Maybe my Slatington readers can help me out.   I apologize in advance for my lack of clarity on individual events. This is more of a general memory of a very scary time for a child, this child. I would have been ten or eleven.

There were bombings. There was gunplay.  There were curfews put in place.  This had nothing to do with civil rights, nor Vietnam protest. This was not a time of protest for MLK and RFK assassinations. That came years later, and not to Slatington.

This was just a perfect storm of a criminal element taking over a town of four thousand using terroristic tactics and fear. The police were outmanned and out armed. The State Police became involved and a state trooper was shot. Sounds hard to believe, I know. Little Slatington.

I lived right in the center of the worst of it. I lived on Dowell Street a half block off of Main. I can remember a fight involving at least a dozen young men, right outside of my house. I watched from my upstairs bedroom window. I don’t know why, but my parents didn’t call the police. Maybe they were scared too. The gas station right down the street was the scene of a shootout. I seem to remember that the state trooper was shot across the street outside of Rice and Evans Bar.

Curfews were put in place for Slatington’s youth.   My memory says that a siren would sound at 8:30 giving us a half hour to get home. Another siren would sound at 9. We had better be home and safe. Eventually all of this subsided and we were no longer on the front page of The Morning Call every single day. It lasted a few weeks.

I was reminded of this time by reading, on Facebook, stories of the town today. The drugs, the vandalism, and the ineffectual police.  Everything old is new again.

If any of my readers have any specific memories, of this crazy time years ago, I would love to hear your comments.

“Hot town, summer in the city. Back of my neck gettin’ dirty and gritty. Bend down, isn’t it a pity. Doesn’t seem to be a shadow in the city!”. Maybe the Lovin’ Spoonful were really singing about Slatington! Yeah. Probably not.