That may sound a little like a Supreme Court Case, like Roe v Wade. It’s not. It may sound like this will be a story about the fabled Thanksgiving football rivalry from days gone by. It’s not. It may sound like, since you know my love for Slatington, a rant against my town’s closest neighbor to the north. No, it’s not that either. So, what is it? Let me explain.
Most of my consistent followers know that I am a Licensed Professional Counselor and that I recently opened my own solo practice in my Slatington hometown. You also may remember my concerns about getting this population to endorse counseling and seek out help. It’s a little over six months and the results are in. They have not. Not one from the Northern Lehigh area. But there is a glimmer of hope from the little town of Palmerton, just three miles to the north. A friend recently suggested that maybe the residents of Slatington are just more well-adjusted. Okay. Let’s go with that.
That got me thinking about the differences between these towns on either side of Lehigh Gap. These may not be historically accurate as they come from observations over the past 69 years. Their populations are very similar, just under 5000. Palmerton is a planned community, planned to support the New Jersey Zinc Smelter on either end of town. The big homes on the hill, the row homes closer to their main street, and a beautiful park centrally located. Slatington’s growth was much more haphazard. It was a small farming community that grew rapidly with the discovery of slate.
Slatington was mostly Pennsylvania German and Welsh. Palmerton was mostly eastern European. The Welsh drawn to Slatington for its slate quarry work and the eastern Europeans coming to work in the zinc smelter. Slatington, after slate died, became a bedroom community of Allentown. Palmerton remained a self-contained town much longer. There is still a zinc facility on one end of the town. Palmerton’s movie theater, The Palm, lasted about two decades longer than Slatington’s Arcadia.
What does all that have to do with my counseling practice? Absolutely nothing. I think I am grasping at straws to explain the ambivalence to counseling by my Slatington peeps! Please don’t worry about my practice though. It is thriving. Clients make the drive to Slatington from Allentown, Easton, Coopersburg, and Nazareth. Others settle for video sessions (not my favorite). I guess we’ll see what happens in the second six months of my lease. Slatington wasn’t built in a day!
A Semi-retired Kind of Life 