Mr. Garrity, my elementary school art teacher, died yesterday at the age of 90.  His obituary told me a lot about his professional life. I didn’t know he had his work, mostly sculpture, in several museums and in the Capitol building in Harrisburg. My memories of him go back over fifty years, so they could be a little clouded.

I remember he was tall, probably the tallest man I had met at that point in my life.  I remember him being passionate about teaching us art.  I remember him being gentle and I don’t recall angry words coming from his mouth.  I remember that his mom taught in one of our elementary schools.  I remember that he was single. I remember that he hated coloring books! He didn’t think that art should be “between the lines”.

As a teacher, he was an adventurer. He didn’t like being tied to the classroom. He was my teacher at the Lincoln Building and he would often take us down to Trout Creek and under the Main Street Bridge to draw.  He taught in all five of our elementary schools: Lincoln, Roosevelt, Peters, Walnutport, and Slatedale.  I’m sure he took the kids in those other schools somewhere equally interesting to explore art.

I can recall two indoor activities. One, was dipping Autumn leaves in some sort of hot liquid and attaching them to paper. It smelled so good. I can smell them right now. Ahhh. The second was paper mache. I think that was his favorite indoor project because I can remember doing that a lot.  Come to think of it, that smelled really good too!

We were lucky to have him in our school district. He probably got the kids who had some artistic talent off to a great start. For those of us without, he taught us to explore, to think, and not to worry about convention.

Mr. Garrity was a wonderful art teacher. I hope his next life, whatever that may be, is filled with sculpture, and painting and paper mache, and that he is never forced to stay within the lines.

Much as I was not much of an athlete, I was also not much of an actor.  But I do remember doing one skit in front of our Junior High assembly … in drag!

Let me set the stage. Slatington Junior High, two of my favorite school years, 1964- 1966. We would have assemblies every two weeks, always on a Thursday. The boys had to wear a jacket and tie on those days. The girls had to wear dresses, but they always had to, every day.  Yes, the world was changing into tie dye, madras plaids, and bell bottoms, but not the Junior High kids of Slatington! Each assembly program was assigned to a specific homerooms and they had to come up with an assembly program.  The programs were usually talent shows of some sort. Occasionally we would have an outside speaker come in and the homeroom was off the hook.

Our principal was Jay Hagenbuch. He was a small, thin man, with snow white hair who always wore a gray suit and a bow tie. He looked more like he should be a film critic in New York, but he was our principal instead.

It was my seventh grade homeroom’s turn and a few friends and I decided to do a skit for our assembly.  The homeroom teacher, Mr. Yehl, approved it and on to the stage we went.  We acted out the hit song “Come a Little Bit Closer” by Jay and the Americans. If you don’t remember the song, it is basically the singer getting excited by the flirtations of a beautiful Mexican woman and what happens after.

Yes, I was the beautiful Mexican woman and I made the singer’s mouth water. Haha. But, I belonged to Bad Man Jose! You can only imagine what happens next. If you can’t, you can find the song on Spotify. We were a big hit and I ended my acting career on a high note.

In eighth grade I played air guitar in a band doing “Love Potion #9” by the Searchers. Remember that one? “I closed my eyes, I took a drink. I didn’t know if it was day or night. I started kissing everything in sight. But when I kissed the cop down at 34th and Vine, he broke my little bottle of Love Potion #9.”  Good times.

I hope this made you think of your Junior High days, or, ok, Middle School.

 

I was once, during my elementary school years, a Crusader. No, I did not join The Catholic Church and march off to the middle east to fight Islam.  Well, maybe in a past life. In this life, I have never been a Catholic. I was born and raised in the UCC church. In particular, St. John’s UCC, on Second Street in Slatington.  Today, I think most of my readers know, I consider myself a Buddhist.

So what is all this talk about being a Crusader?  In my little town, there was a religious after school program, run by the local Baptist Church, called The Crusaders.  It was open to all denominations and a lot of my friends attended. So I did too.  It was every Wednesday during the school year. I can remember being seated in rows, by grade K – 6.  It was run by two older women, Mrs. Pritchard and Mrs. Breisch.    I remember them being strict and cranky, but we had a lot of fun anyway.

We used to hear Bible stories, and read from the Bible, and learned all about how to be a good Christian.  The year culminated with a public program where we had to openly recite Bible verses in front of a church crowd.  Not fun for this introvert!  In sixth grade, I had perfect Crusader attendance and was rewarded with my very first Bible. My family was not very religious. I still have that Bible today. Fifty four years later.

I don’t often think about The Crusaders. It was a very small part of my spiritual self-discovery. But this memory was triggered by talking to a client whose childhood was spent in Ohio.  He started talking about The Crusaders program he attended as a kid!  I thought it was just a Slatington thing, but apparently it was a Baptist Church thing. Who knew?

As I said, The Crusaders was a small part of my religious training. Most of it came from Confirmation classes and being in the youth group at St. John’s UCC during Junior High years.  I hope this memory triggered some memories of your own. Maybe you were a Crusader too!

 

 

I was a Slatington High School wrestler.  I was not a very good wrestler. In fact, if I had forty matches (which sounds about right) I am lucky if I won three.  Yeah. I sucked. But I was good at not getting pinned. I’ll take some consolation in that.  I may have been a pretty bad wrestler, but wow did I have fun and learned some valuable lessons.

Wrestling, real wrestling not WWE, is a sport you either love or hate. It can be boring to watch I will admit.  But I don’t know that I ever worked harder than at wrestling practices. They were brutal and exhausting. We started wrestling practice while football was still in season. when football ended, many players would switch to wrestling and many said “no way! those practices are way too hard.”  So I take some consolation in that too.

In my sophomore year, we got a new assistant coach. He was our football coach, Jack Cassebaum,  and he was crazy in many ways. I plan to write a post just about him in the near future.  He was a real tough guy. He pushed us hard. I remember one practice he made us do crossfaces (basically, you are on top of your opponent and you throw your left arm across his face to turn his head and weaken him for your next move).  He made us do crossfaces on our practice partners until their nose bled!  My partner was a good friend named Bruce Roth. We were laughing all the time we are doing this and my nose does not bleed easily!

I don’t know if that experience helped me be a better wrestler. My record says no. But what I learned from Coach Cassebaum was to always give it your all even when you are losing. I remember a practice, after a meet in which the whole team did poorly, where he pointed me out as an example of Bulldog Pride and never giving up.  He said “You should all be like Denny here. Loses every week, but tries his best.” More consolation.

In my senior year, the only way I was going to wrestle was to get down to 133 pounds. I weighed 154. But I almost did it. For a month I starved myself, sat in a steamy shower in a rubber suit, and spit in a jar on the way to a meet and to weigh in.  First meet, I missed making weight by two ounces. Arghhh.

Other good memories of wrestling were the team bus trips, the oranges after your match, the camaraderie of your fellow wrestlers.  I remember when I was in ninth and tenth grade, the senior boys would harmonize perfectly, in the shower, to The Beach Boys song Barbara Ann.  I also remember my mom on her feet screaming support when I was in a match. Yes, a little embarrassing but she died during my sophomore year of wrestling and I never heard her after that.

So was I the wort wrestler ever at Slatington High School? Arguably, yes. But was it an experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life? Inarguably, yes.

 

No Slatington today. This weekend I saw the movie “Bohemian Rhapsody” and it inspired me to write, instead, about the passion in our lives.

For those of you who don’t know, “Bohemian Rhapsody” is a movie about the band Queen and, in particular, its lead singer Freddie Mercury.  It gave me a lot more insight into the life and struggles of  Mercury. It is a wonderful movie and the thing that stood out the most to me was Freddie Mercury’s passion for life. Whether it was his music, his desire for fame, the love of his life, his passion to explore boundaries, his love of family…whatever he did, he did with passion.

I love to see that in my fellow man. Whether it is the traffic cop who dances while he works or the kid whose goal is to honor all veterans’ graves in cemeteries in his state, their passion is amazing.  Whether it is the man or woman climbing Everest or the person collecting salt shakers from every nation or earth, their passion is inspiring.  Whether it is a scientific research team trying to cure cancer or the kid in ninth grade trying his or her best to make the soccer team, their passion is wonderful.

I usually watch CBS Sunday Morning on Sunday night. The show is filled with stories about people whose lives are filled with passion. The collectors, the artists, the entertainers, the writers are all covered on this show.  But, more importantly, it shares stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things.  Here’s one. The woman who has waited outside her home, in some small town, every morning, just to say hello to every student going to the bus stop. This has gone on for like fifty years! Passion.  Or the man, in his nineties who has run every…single…day…of his life since high school.  Passion. The couple who has ridden at least one roller coaster in every state in the union. Passion!

I am 66 and still looking for my passion.  Maybe that is why I love seeing it in others because I have rarely seen it in my own life.  Oh, sure, I really like a lot of things and I have been in love in my life, but that is not the same as having a passion. A passion that you cannot put aside, that you can’t ignore, and that you can’t live without. I suppose the closest I have come is the year I celebrated turning 50 by training for, and running a marathon.

When I see a movie, like Bohemian Rhapsody, when I read a wonderful book; when I see great art; when I read about people overcoming odds; the passion  that lies within me gets sparked. But, alas, it always fades in a few days.  Maybe, getting older, with time running out, will make a passion catch fire.  I guess we will have to wait and see!

I hope you all have found your passion and that it drives you to do great things.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Feel free to leave me a comment!

Any Edgar Allen Poe fans out there? If so, you will recognize this title from one of his greatest poems…The Bells.

But those aren’t the bells I am writing about today. I am writing about a nice memory from my youth in Slatington. The bells I refer to are the sounds of  The Chimes coming from Citizens’ National Bank.  I believe it was something that was unique to our town. Oh…and London, England.

Our town chimes were controversial at the time. I was about nine years old when they were installed. As I remember, they were controversial for two reasons. The first controversy was that people didn’t want this noise foisted upon them, especially if they worked night shift and had to sleep during the day. Air conditioning then was not ubiquitous and we often slept with windows open in the summertime.

The other controversy , and I don’t know if there is any truth to this, was that the borough was spending money on these chimes instead of the swimming pool we so richly deserved. Maybe someone who knows the details of this can comment if The Chimes were a borough thing or a Citizens’ Bank thing. Enquiring minds want to know. We did get a pool just a few years later.

The Chimes, recordings from Big Ben in London, would ring out loudly at 9 in the morning, noon, and 5 in the afternoon. You could hear them all over town. I think I may have learned punctuality from The Chimes. Especially the 5 pm chimes…playing on the Lincoln playground, wrapped up in a game of strike out or basketball. The Chimes would start to sound (always the ringing of the hour followed by music, or maybe the other way around) and we all made a mad dash for home. Dinner is about to be on the table!! Better not be late! There is no excuse…The Chimes!

Here is a side note about The Chimes that animal lovers may not want to hear.  We knew that when The Chimes rang out, all of the pigeons of Slatington would try to escape the sound.  Their refuge was a slate quarry just outside of town. They would hide on the slate ledges until The Chimes were done, then fly back to town. We would sit next to the quarry, with our 22 rifles, and wait for their approach. The pigeons needn’t worry though because it is almost impossible to hit a flying pigeon with a 22 rifle.  I am probably 0 for 250!

I don’t know if the chimes still exist in Slatington. I hope so. It was a quaint recognition of the need to add the beauty of music to our lives.  It was also a good way to teach punctuality and, therefore, responsibility. Two things we need much more of today.

I woke up early today, checked my phone, and the temperature was 11! Too soon!

 

Our town library was very small.  But it was big in my world, in Slatington, circa 1967. If I think real hard, I can still smell the delightful fragrance emanating from the stacks of old books.  Maybe it is because of the small space. Maybe it is because most of the books were very old.  Maybe it is because I want, so badly, to be back there, sitting in our library on a cold winter’s night…surrounded by the world explored in books!

It used to be a post office, but was vacant for many years. There was an apartment upstairs. My friend Denny Rauch lived there. To get in his apartment you had to climb a fire escape and then climb through his kitchen window!  I digress. Our library was in an old post office. It was on Main Street between Second And Dowell Streets. If you looked out the front window you could see Slatington’s famous Fireman Statue, at that time just silver.

Inside, there were two desks. One was to return books. The other was to check out books. Mrs. Davies, the head librarian, manned one of the desks. Mrs. Dettmer usually manned the other. There were two tables for reading or doing research.  Actually, though, those tables were more for hanging out with friends and trying to sit next to a girl you liked.  They say , today, the produce section of a grocery store is the best place to find your true love. Back then, it was the library.  We would have such a good time, and only if we got rowdy did we get a shh!!! from Mrs. Davies.  If you got lucky, at closing time, it only meant you got to walk a girl home. Good times!

I loved the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System.  Dewey must have been a most creative man! Remember checkout? A little pouch on the inside back cover of the book held a pink card. When you checked out a book, the librarian would use a rubber stamp to stamp on the due date. Don’t be late returning it!! It may cost you a nickel!!

Whether getting a book or doing research or looking for girls, our library was such a personal place and an integral part of our lives.  Our library moved to a bigger space about a block away. I was part of a book chain that moved the books to their new location.  There is now an antique store in place of the old library. Very appropriate!

I am still a big reader and I use Parkland Library often. But I miss the charm of the old Slatington Library… and the smell of musty old books. I also miss being a teenager, but that is a whole other story. I am sure there is a book about that! You could find it in a library!!

 

Remember Petula Clark singing her hit Downtown (the lights are much brighter there!)? Remember years later Billy Joel performing Uptown Girl (living in her uptown world)? Uptown and Downtown. Two parts of many American cities and towns. In all the old cop shows, when they arrest someone, it would be “take ’em downtown”.

In my little town , with a population of a little over four thousand, there is a definite downtown and an equally defined uptown.  A town divided.  Oh sure, we were all pretty much the same, a mostly lower middle class community of Welsh and Pennsylvania Dutch.  But there were some differences.  I am going to attempt to point them out, but here is a little warning. We are talking over five decades ago AND I have an uptown bias! I was an uptown boy. Uptown Proud!!

Slatington also had an Out Town. But that is a story for another day.

Geography. I am thinking there are three things that separate downtown and uptown. The Main Street Bridge, the Hundred Steps, and the Danny (the Dan Jones Hill). Bottom of the Danny…downtown. South of the Main Street Bridge…uptown. Bottom of the Hundred Steps…downtown. Maybe that is why it is called downtown.

For the most part, uptown kids went to Lincoln Elementary and downtown kids went to Roosevelt Elementary.  Abe Lincoln versus Teddy Roosevelt! What a fight that would be. Both schools were traditional brick buildings of their day. Today the Roosevelt is Borough Hall and other offices. The Lincoln Building exists only in memories. Sad.

Downtown had the “rich” kids of Kuehner Hill. It’s funny how that was the swanky part of town until Maple Spring Acres was built a little farther north.  Uptown had the big homes on East Franklin and East Washington Streets.

Even little league baseball was somewhat divided between the ups and downs. Uptown boys were most likely to play for Slatington Rotary and the downtown boys were most likely on the Skeet Club team.

But we were the same people, with some very minor differences, living in a great town. Junior High brought us all together. Kids from Walnutport, Peters, and Slatedale elementary schools joined us there too.

I haven’t lived in Slatington for about thirty years. I am close by in Schnecksville.  I don’t know if they still identify the two parts of town anymore. But every time I drive through town, and I cross north over the  Main Street Bridge, Petula Clark starts up in my brain.  You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares and go…Downtown!

 

The Slatington of my youth was a pretty self-contained little town. It was kind of like Emmaus and Nazareth are today.  You didn’t need to go to Allentown for much. In fact, some families never left town. Almost everything you needed could be found in the 600 block of Main Street or at least a short walk from there.

Sometimes I have trouble sleeping or getting back to sleep. I am a 66 year old male after all and we are famous for having to get up to pee several times a night!  My trick for getting back to sleep works most of the time. I either, in my mind, walk through the old green pigments plant I used to work in or I recall the stores on Main Street in Slatington.

A popular activity for the women in town was to actually go shopping on Main Street on a Friday night.  My mom and my Aunt Lorna would do that most Friday nights. My cousins Terry and Mike and I would stay at my place and make believe we were the Beatles.  With Love From Me to You! Our moms would usually bring something home for us.

Here is what you could get in the 600 block of Main Street, or close by. You could do grocery shopping at one of two stores, Acme or A & P.  You could buy auto parts at McCann’s. You could buy stationery at Kern’s and jewelry at Mack’s.  You could buy shoes at Kramer’s or Jones’s shoe stores. Need some nails…Guy’s Hardware, with an amazing toy selection in the basement!  Candy and cigarettes at Kuntz’s, Sporting Goods at Marty’s, and hats, yes, hats! at Martha’s.  At prom time, we all got our tuxes at a men’s store whose name I cannot remember. At the five and dime, the ArGe store, you could get most anything. There were two pharmacies, Bechtel’s and the Corner Cut Rate.  The Corner Cut Rate soda fountain was a place to get refreshed. If you needed something stronger there were two bars, Art’s and Rice & Evans.  A liquor store and the post office were the government’s places on Main.  When you got your prescription, and your new hat, you could finish off the evening with a meal at Handwerk’s Restaurant! If you ran out of money, you could get more at Citizens’ Bank or the First National Bank of Slatington.

That was the business side of my hometown. There were other businesses, of course, scattered throughout the rest of town.  But that one block was the economic powerhouse that sustained us.  It was often busy and always fun to be there. Here is an interesting side note about Slatington stores. Every year, on Good Friday, all the stores would close from 12 to 3, to represent the time Jesus was on the cross. How quaint! How small town! How politically incorrect!

Thanks for the chance to reminisce. It was a wonderful time to grow up.  The wonder years.

If any of my Slatington readers remember anything else, or find some mistakes, I would love to hear it in a comment. To my non-Slatington readers, if you grew up in a different small town I hope this sparked some memories. If you grew up in the country, I am sure you have your own special recollections. If you grew up in a city, I’m sure this talk about living in a small town must be hard to relate to. What can I say except…small town magic!

I lived in a half of a double house from first grade to fifth grade.  Today they are called twins, a much nicer name. We rented from the owners, who lived in the other half.  It was the Lazorchek family. Nick, the dad, was a barber. The front room of their house was a barbershop.  This was on Dowell Street, named after a founder of the town, Robert Mc Dowell.  I guess early Slatingtonians weren’t big fans of prefixes!

It cost one dollar to get a haircut in the early-60s. One dollar, can you imagine? There were a half dozen or so barbers in Slatington. They all charged one dollar. They all thought that it was time to raise the price of a haircut. But each one was afraid to make the first move!  Inflation affects barbers too.  I was privy to the information about what was to happen next because my dad often talked to Nick, my barber/neighbor.

Collusion! Conspiracy!  Cabal! The barbers all got together to discuss their frustration with the price of a haircut.  I can imagine them looking for an out of the way place to meet to discuss the issue.  Maybe they met in Bedbug Cave or in the old, abandoned cemetery off of Seventh Street. These are the barbers I remember from that time: Nick, Shorty Lehman, Patsy Frieda, Claude Merkle, Kenneth Eckhart. I am sure there were others but here is the point. They all got together to put forward a travesty on the male citizens of our fine borough! Every single barber, there were no holdouts, raised the price of a haircut to $1.25!

We survived the rise in price, of course. But just a few years later the younger, male townsmen got their revenge on the barbers. That was the time the Beatles arrived and a lot of us stopped getting haircuts at all. Revenge is sweet!

Today I pay $14, plus tip, for a haircut. Still relatively cheap even though I have very little hair to cut.

I don’t know what barbers are left in Slatington. I do know that Patsy Frieda, son of the aforementioned Frieda, still cuts hair in his shop on Main Street.  He is in his eighties.  It’s been a while since I have been in there, but it is a treasure trove of Slatington memorabilia. I’d like to go in just to see his historical collection, but I am not sure I want to trust someone in their eighties to cut my hair! I may come out of there looking bald…oh, wait! 🙂