BULLYING - NOT A NEW PHENOMENON

Bullying is nothing new in our schools or even in our neighborhoods.  I personally observed it many times and was even the victim of some forms of bullying, or what came to be known as bullying, when I attended public schools in my home town of Easton.  But the bullying victims among us then didn't' resort to killing ourselves to get away from it.

In order to understand the process of bullying it becomes necessary to understand why someone becomes a bully, and why people become the victims of bullying.  I am not proposing we blame the victim.  If I dislike someone enough to harass them, the problem isn't with them but with me. If we can understand why the bully does what he does, it will be much easier to head him off before he creates a problem for someone else. 

Of course the first thing we have to do is to take allegations of bullying seriously, whether we are the parents of a bully, of a victim, or school personnel.  The victim has to know that he or she can tell the adults in authority in their lives and be assured of a sympathetic hearing. Of course we also have to investigate allegations of bullying completely and objectively so as to weed out false accusations if they are made. Zero tolerance for bullying has to include zero tolerance for false accusations too.

The bully's parents have to be enlisted in the effort to prevent bullying.  Parents who do nothing about it, or have the attitude that kids-will-be-kids, should be cited for something akin to aiding and abetting juvenile delinquency.

ALWAYS ESTABLISH A BARGAINING POSITION

Charles Steinmetz, the electrical wizard of the early days of the General Electric Corporation, was also on the faculty of Union College, and in that capacity was also the faculty adviser for one of the fraternities on campus.  This fraternity was in the market to build a new fraternity house and had selected the plot of ground on campus where they wanted to place it.  Knowing the college likely would not approve their choice, they went to Steinmetz one night after supper and asked him his advice.

He agreed the college would likely not approve their choice and then told them to ask to build the fraternity house on a vacant piece of land that was next to the college president's residence.   The frat boys told Steinmetz that would never be allowed.  To which he replied "Of course.  Then you will settle for what you really wanted in the first place." 

JUST DOING HER JOB

I have had at least one cat in my house for the past 13+years, sometimes as many as 6, 5 currently.  One day my son called up the steps to me, telling me one of my cats that has since died, Daphne, was chasing a mouse around the kitchen floor.  I replied "Let her alone.  She is doing her job."

I went downstairs and we had progressed to tag team mousing.  Socks, a cat I have had since she had kittens in my garage, was watching behind the stove and Daphne was watching behind the dryer.  Any mouse brave enough to stick his head out didn't' stand a chance.

That is the one great thing, among many, of having at least one cat.  Mice can smell them and know they are not welcome here.

For all of you spay and neuter people out there, my five female felines are all spayed and the only reason Sassy is declawed is because she was declawed when I got her.  I don't believe in declawing my cats and my kitchen window sill proves it.

MORTGAGE MODIFICATION

Quite honestly, I think this mortgage modification program sucks monkey turds in the way banks are applying it.  In my case the modification offer came up with a payment that was $16 higher than the payment required by the original mortgage. Then they had the balls, when I wrote them and told them the proposed payment was too high, to write back and to acknowledge that I had 'rejected' modification. I did not reject modification, only the amount of the payment they came up with.

To be honest, my original mortgage did not require an escrow for taxes and insurance and the modification did, but why would they propose a payment to me that is higher than the one I couldn't' keep up?  If I were financially able to pay the modification amount, I would have been able to keep the original payments going.  As I just read online, the banks are not interested in adjusting the amount of principal owed but only in modifying the interest rate. 

Come on Mr. Obama.  How ab out giving us a modification program that really modifies our situation.

THE NATIVITY

Lu 2:1 ¶ And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed.
 2 (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)
 3 And all went to be taxed, every one into his own city.
 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David:)
 5 To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child.
 6 And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered.
 7 And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
 8 ¶ And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
 9 And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.
 10 And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
 12 And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.
 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,
 14 Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.
 15 And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.
 16 And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.
 17 And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.
 18 And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.
 19 But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.

LIMITATIONS OF CHEMICAL TESTING

Because of the limitations imposed by minimum detection level of a chemical analyte, it is impossible to ever determine with any degree of certainty if there are zero atoms of any analyte in a sample.  When you see in a test report of  some analyte, such as lead, listed as < A

Where A is a very low number, A is the MDL of lead, and a result listed thusly, can only reliably mean that the actual concentration of lead is less than A, not that it is A.  There indeed may be no lead in the sample at all, but the required test cannot accurately determine that. 

How difficult is it to determine what the concentration of an analyte is?  Imagine having 20 decks of cards, all with the same pattern on the back, but slightly different colors. Pick groups of cards that are approximately the same amount as  a full deck and sort them out by the colors of the backs.  At the end when they have all been sorted go back and determine how many of the selected packs have wrong cards in them.

Or imagine you have a huge pack of 1000000 hearts and one diamond.  If you had the patience to sit down and try to find the diamond in this pack of hearts multiple times, you would probably miss it at least once.  Assume that you ran an MDL study as outlined in the previous blog, and you determined that the MDL for finding the diamond was 2.   That means the result for testing one million hearts for diamonds would get reported as <2, whether the actual number was 2,1, or none. 

I hope after these two blog entries my readers, all two of you, have a better understanding of the limitations of chemical testing.

MINIMUM DETECTION LEVEL

If I am going to write a blog entitled The Thinking Chemist, I should at least write on topics relating to chemistry once in a while, so here goes.

The minimum detection level, or MDL, of an analyte, is statistically defined as the lowest concentration of that analyte that can be detected reliably 95% of the time under a given set of conditions, equipment, and analyst.  This is determined empirically and cannot be determined in advance by any sort of calculation, and must be determined by actually running tests on a standard concentration of a known analyte. It can change if major changes are made in the test equipment, testing done by a different technician, or even being done in  different room in the same building.

No test, no matter how well and how accurately performed will give you exactly the same number in 100% of the repetitive samples run.  There will always be a slight deviation that should be around a very low number, which will obviously be different for each analyte.

After one runs the repetitive samples  their standard deviation is determined and then multiplied by the Student #, which is different for different numbers of samples.  The resultant number is the MDL for that analyte under those conditions.

TWO GUYS NOT TO PISS OFF

Our area had many ‘night’ clubs catering to young people in the 60s.  One such place was Bill Daniel’s Rock Palace on Hamilton Blvd. n Allentown, out near Dorney Park.

My classmate and fellow B.S. Chem at Lafayette told me about an experience 2 friends of his had at the Rock Palace while they were both home on leave simultaneously from different branches of the military.

On this particular Saturday night, they were just hanging out there having a few Cokes when they observed a young man go to 4 young ladies at a table and appear to ask one of them to dance.  She obviously refused and the young man walked away, returning with 3 of his friends and began to have heated words with the girls.  The 2 guys home on leave walked over to the girls’ table and told the others that perhaps they had better leave, the girls obviously wanted nothing to do with them.

Words got stronger and soon there was a space clearing on the floor anticipating a fight. At this point the rent-a-cop came over and asked the two of them if they knew what they were doing, and after being assured that they did, told them “Ok.  Kick the shit out of them.”

It turns out that one was a Blue Beret (Air force commando) and the other was a SEAL.  They put all 4 of the trouble makers in the hospital and the troublemakers got arrested for starting the fight.

 

THE TIE IN THE WINDOW

Growing up there are always stores in any town that a family or individual deals with on a regular basis, some that they get into occasionally, and some that they never get into at all.

One such store for me growing up in Easton was the London Shop. It was a men’s clothing store that was a bit more upscale than Joseph’s where we usually shopped for clothes.

Several weeks before my wedding I was walking past the London Shop and saw a tie on a display all the way in the front of a long display window that I just had to have.  I went into the store and proceeded to look through all the ties in their interior display, and found one that was merely close to the pattern and color of the tie I had seen in the window.  I was willing to settle for that almost tie.

A clerk approached me and asked if he could help.  I explained what I had seen and that there were none in the display.  The clerk replied that he couldn’t go into the window and get that one, which I certainly had not expected him to do.

Unfortuantley for the clerk, the store owner overheard the conversation and what the clerk had said and told the clerk “If the customer would like the tie in the window, go into the window and get it.”

After the clerk got all the way to the front of the window and back out, I bought a colored dress shirt to match the tie because I thought the clerk deserved a bigger sale than just an $8 tie.

DAD'S MOST MEMORABLE CHRISTMAS GIFT - a true story

Jobs for a young person, male or female, were a lot more available in the late 20s, when my father was a teenager, and in the 60s when I was, than they are today.  If you lived in town you could deliver groceries, pump gas or work in a department or five and dime store, like Woolworth’s or W.T. Grant’s.  In a rural area you could always get some sort of agricultural work.  Even some of the sizable corner grocery stores in my day needed bag boys.

One place my father could always get work was at Merwarth’s Greenhouse and Truck Farm, in Williams Township just outside South Easton, Pa., where he lived.  Even when he was in high school he used to go out there weekends and sometimes during the week. 

The year he was 15 he had been working right up until Christmas time, because  when you have a greenhouse, there is inside work even in the cold weather when you don’t have truck patch crops or outside flowers to contend with.

One job you have to perform 24/7 is to keep the fires going that provide the heat for the greenhouse, to keep it and anything inside from freezing.

The skeleton crew that was working at Christmas time were due to have Christmas Eve and Day off, but the fires still would need to be tended.  Syl Merwarth, the owner, asked my father to come out Christmas Eve to tend the fires to which he agreed.

Later that day as the workers were leaving, they got their pay envelopes, of course in cash, and everyone got $5 or $10 as  a bonus – everyone but my father.  As he walked home he reflected on this and determined that he would not go out there Christmas Eve, and that the place could freeze up and everything in it.

However, when he told my grandfather about the day’s events, my grandfather would not let him off the hook for tending the fires.  He had promised and that was that.

Naturally as he headed out to the greenhouse he wasn’t too kindly disposed toward the greenhouse, the owner, and anything else that happened to cross his mind.

When he got there and entered the greenhouse, not very willingly disposed to tending the fires, the owner came out of his house carrying a small box, saying “The fires are already taken care of.  We didn’t want to give you this in front of the others.”

In the box was a gold cased Elgin pocket watch with a  flip open back where his name was engraved.  He carried that watch for the next 30 years, except for when he was in the Army and stopped carrying it only when repairs on it became to expensive.  I have it yet and it will go to my oldest grandson.

TEAM TEACHING

I want to tell you dear reader of a teaching experiment about 100 of my fellow class of 1964 classmates and I were a part of the three years we were in Easton High School.  It was called Team Teaching and the basic function was simple enough – the first three periods of the day we would have History, Algebra II, and English (these were a sophomores. juniors and seniors had different courses but the idea was the same) and the 4^th period was a common class, usually a study hall but sometimes used for programs we were all to see or take part in. 

The first hurdle was getting selected for the group of about 100 students the program could take from each graduating class.  Considering that our class eventually had over 600 graduate, that meant roughly 2 in 13 would get selected.  At my junior high there were 5 individual homerooms with probably about 160 students.  Which meant there were between  20 and 25 of us chosen from that school.

Here is the problem.  Since this program was conceived as an academic program, or at least that is how it operated, a student whose aptitude lay in areas other than strict academic pursuits, such as in business or in vo-tech (we called it shop then), had no chance to be selected for this program no matter how good they were.  I would draw attention to 3 people who were not academic (read that in college prep) but who proved to be quite capable in their fields.

Jim took printing and specialized in the Linotype.  The print shop teacher told my father, who worked at the school, that people a scapable as Jim, come along once in a  generation.  Ed and Alice were 2 of the 7 of our fellow graduates who graduated with perfect 4.0grade point averages and they majored in business. 

MORE NEXT TIME

THE STRANGEST NIGHT OF MY LIFE

A WORK OF FICTION (that I wish wasn't)

I am not a person to go out very much, and I certainly wouldn't go out on the night I am about to describe, at least not this particular night. It was cold and the weather was looking threatening for at least snow flurries if not a full scale snow storm. There was a time when snow didn't stop me from doing anything or going anywhere. I went out on a New Year's Eve when I couldn't see 2 car lengths in front of my car, it was snowing so hard. I have gone out in rain equally blinding, but as I have gotten older I have either gotten smarter or more fearful. Whatever the reason, I wasn't planning to go out on this particular night.
I was in college in the late 60s, and while I didn't take part in protests, sit ins, etc., I did participate in the coffeehouses that dotted the landscape in those years. By the time I was back in college, the coffeehouse movement was past its prime. Around that time I bought my first guitar and over the years I have learned to play it decently, even writing my own songs and poetry set to music. I was glad my parents got to share whatever passed for talent in me before they died, especially my father. He used to play accordion when I was little, and he told me he would play in speakeasies and bars for beer when he was young and single. Sometimes he even used a harmonica in his act. His mother and her sister were both guitar players in their youth, so I guess my 'talent' is inherited. I have always wished I could have seen him play like that once. Or at least to have seen a photo of him on the stage.
As I said, I hadn't intended to go out this particular night, but I had read in the paper that a local man had opened a coffeehouse and was advertising an open mike night. I am not usually one to share my playing with an audience, and the night was getting miserable, but something told me to go out anyway.
I parked my car, entered the coffeehouse, and went to the counter and inquired about the open mike night as I paid for a cup of coffee, cream and sugar. The young fellow at the counter nodded toward the corner and told me that one other fellow was signed up ahead of me . I took my seat and as I sipped my coffee I looked toward the corner to which the man had nodded. In the shadows was a what appeared to be a young man in his mid twenties, but his face was partially obscured by the strong shadow thrown by the stage light. He appeared to be dressed in very old clothes. Either he didn't have anything else, or it was part of his act, so I thought.
While I sat there, he got up and went to the man at the counter and had a few words with him. The counterman came over to me and told me that the young man had requested that I go on first. This time when the young man sat down his face wasn't shaded and I got a good look at him. As I said, he appeared to be in his mid 20s, shorter than I, and had sandy red hair. I had the distinct feeling I had seen him before, which in our small town that isn't that unusual. You tend to know everyone or at least have seen them.
I sat on the stage and played my guitar and sang a few country songs, one folk song from the 60s, and read one of my poems and then I thanked the 6 people in the room for listening to me, and I sat back down.
The young man rooted in a box behind his seat and got out a beautiful accordion and an apparatus that I soon recognized as a harmonica rack. You clamp the harmonica in the rack and then wear it around your neck, playing like Bob Dylan or Neil Young. He played a few old country songs and again I had the strange feeling I knew him. The accordion playing sounded strangely familiar, like I had heard it before.
When he was done he packed his accordion up and came over to me and introduced himself. He told me his name was Harry and that he enjoyed my playing and hoped that I had enjoyed his. I told him I had and that I had the funny feeling that I had met him before or heard him play. He just smiled and headed for the door, calling over his shoulder that we had met years ago. I opened the door to go out right after it closed on Harry, but there was no one in the street and the snow was beginning to fly.
I went back inside and inquired about Harry and imagine my shock when I was told that I was the only one to play all night. Shaking my head I went back outside to go home, remarking to myself that Harry had the same first name as my father, but my father had always used his middle name. As I got to the car it dawned on me where I had seen Harry before and where I had heard him play. I had heard Harry play in my living room as small child and I had seen his photo pulled from a box of photos my Aunt had kept in her closet, a old, sepia toned photo of my father, taken when he was in his early 20s.

THE GREAT PIZZA INCIDENT

This happened in the mid 80s when the car we had was a 78 Dodge Volare Wagon, complete with roof rack. I was working for Armour Handcraft in West Hazleton at the time and I either had a one day layoff or I was laid off for a longer time. In any event I had the day off and after lunch I had to run to Hazleton to pick up a few things, and then take the long way home through Ringtown because Joe Dettrey, who had been on of my inspectors at Purolator, had died and I wanted to go to his viewing. My wife said I should stop at a pizza shop in Hometown that we knew had good pizza, and pick two up for supper. They may have had a special on but I don’t remember that.
Anyway when I got to the pizza shop I exited the car and locked it, something I rarely if ever do, because of the purchases I had made in Hazleton earlier in the afternoon. After waiting for the pizzas I brought them out and set them on top of the car while I got out my keys and unlocked the door and got in. You will note I did not say I took the pizzas off the top of the car.
As I pulled out onto 309, I heard something moving around on the top of the car, which subsequently proved to be the pizzas, but which at the time I thought was merely a loose brace on the roof rack, because I knew one to be difficult to keep tight. I looked into the rear view mirror in time to see one pizza go sailing of the back of the wagon, depositing sauce and cheese on the tailgate. At this point I knew I had a problem and pulled to the shoulder. Managing to save about 75 percent of the remaining pizza on the roof, plus a little road grit, I continued on home looking like I was delivering a pizza with a free car attached.
Arriving home I turned down the alley instead of parking by the garage, because I knew I would have to clean the pizza remnants off the back of the car. My hungry wife and sons awaited the pizzas they weren’t destined to have. Stopping my pizza splattered car along side the house where I could get at the hose, I got out and said to 4 hungry mouths "Don’t even ask." I didn’t have enough cash to get any more pizzas either.

CLARK JESTER'S BARN AND SQUARE DANCING

Clark Jester’s barn was an old barn situated along Hellertown Road (Industrial Drive in later years) about a quarter mile from my home on Belmont St. There were several old houses near the barn, though I am not sure if either of them was the associated farm house, or if indeed there ever was one. In those days the main things on that road were a Pennsalt Chemical plant, abandoned when I was a child, the Fowler Toy factory, which burned horrifically one Saturday morning, and Aerni and Hitzel’s coal yard.
The latter was a most interesting place because I learned in later years that what they had there was a coal breaker, way south of any hard coal deposits in Pa. They would get run of mine coal, which was rock coal just the way it came from the underground or stripping, and crush and classify it themselves in this coal breaker they had on the property. On Saturday mornings during the heating season we would hear it smashing and banging away and it was only in later years that I realized what it was. The building looked like organized firewood but served its owners for many years and survived the threat of fire. To be more precise, the buildings of the breaker survived until the Interstate was run through that area.
Anyhow, Clark Jester, who didn’t live anywhere near the barn where his name was on a wooden plaque above the huge double doors, was an excavating contractor who kept his dump truck, trailer, and excavating equipment in the barn.But on Saturday nights a magical transformation would take place. The equipment would be moved out, the floor cleaned a little, and there would be square dances held there. I was too young at the time and by the time I had attained an age where square dancing looked like a good idea, the barn and the dances were long gone.
They used to do square dancing in gym class in high school, but gym class in general was not a favorite of mine and I was not one of the in bunch and I found any sort of thing like that with girls was not yet to my liking.I have always dreaded being forced to do something I did not like. I was never a model of physical coordination in those days and I would have gladly sunk into the floor.
My father used to do a lot of square dancing before WWII, when he was still single. Many times he would play accordion for an impromptu dance session in a bar room where he happened to be. One of the fellows he ran with in those days was a good rolled up sleeves piano player but only when he was drunk, or so Dad said. They had been hunting near White Haven one day and stopped at a bar room where they were known to have a few before returning home. It was about 4 in the afternoon when they stopped. The guy who was the piano player started pounding away on an upright piano against one wall, and someone found an accordion for Dad to play. By the time they left they had been playing off and on for 12 hours.

A REAL ESTATE SCAMMER I HAVE KNOWN

There has been, in the later half of the 20th Century after WWII, and continued into the 21st Century, a proliferation of real estate ventures that have taken the form of gated communities, time sharing or as one place around here put it, interval ownership. For the most part the sales presentations have been high pressure, but above board. The ones that have been less than ethical have seemed to have been marketed to those who really can’t afford the inflated prices they are charging, or don’t understand the well-rehearsed patter the sales person throws at them.
The first experience I had with this method of real estate sales was 32 years ago and the dramatis personae were my ex-wife Jean, our friends Art and Sandy and their infant son Geoffrey, and yours truly.
We had met Art and Sandy after we joined Emmanuel’s U.C.C. Church in Hazleton. Ghulam Nasrani, the pastor, had asked Art and I to be the adult leaders of the youth fellowship of the church and through that the 4 of us became fast friends and socialized together on many occasions.
On a Sunday in late fall of 1972 Jean and I had gone to Valmont Plaza after lunch, to one of the few stores that was open on Sunday in those days. When we came out there was a flier under our wiper suggesting that the reader come see the flaming fall foliage at Valley of the Lakes, a private resort community which had begun selling lots down 924 almost into Sheppton. The added incentive was that they had free sausage sandwiches, birch beer, and each couple taking the tour would receive a basket of apples.
Jean and I discussed it on the way back from the Plaza and thought it would be a pleasant way to spend a Sunday afternoon. One of us called Art and Sandy and they thought so too. They drove to our house in McAdoo and the five of us drove out to the entrance to Valley of the Lakes, which proved to be past Oneida on the back road headed toward Weston. The parking lot proved to be unpaved but smooth enough, and we soon found the outdoor tent where the sausage sandwiches and birch beer were located.
I’m not sure if we registered or if they just kept an eye on the ups, as I subsequently learned the sales people referred to the customers as, but soon we were approached by Hal Steare, who would have been a credit to the generation of Southerners known as Irish travelers. Despite appearances, he had all the charm and warmth of a funeral director, who smiles at you while he is sizing you up.
We exchanged the requisite pleasantries with him when he asked where we were from and did we have any trouble finding Valley of the Lakes. After a few minutes wait, while he was oh-so-nice and warmed Geoffrey’s bottle, we were off in one of the Jeeps the sales people used to take their pigeons, I mean customers, on tours of the resort, which at this time, was still in the construction phase and really had nothing of any immediate use available to show us.
There was a 2 way radio in the jeep which crackled to life in staccato bursts with "Is Lot xx available yet? Or "Lot xx has just been sold to the Blank family." After a while we got the impression that these outbursts were not real and were somehow being orchestrated from some great room full of radio transmitters unavailable to all but the chosen few amongst the leadership of the sales force. After showing us around the incomplete parts of the resort, which included at that time 7 lakes that were being dug in the valley (hence the name of the place), Steare seemed to be homing in on this one particular lot. It wasn’t lakefront and as I remember it 35 years later it wasn’t even cleared yet. I’m not sure how big it was but 2 acres runs in my mind. These resorts don’t sell very small lots because privacy is one of the selling points they use.
Anyway, as we drove up, he told us that in order to appreciate the fine opportunity we were being offered, we should get out and walk the property, which we did. It really didn’t seem any different than any other lot we may have been directed to on the same road. But we played along and got out. Like magic, as if they were called from some special place on the property, several other Jeeps pulled up to the same lot and their pigeons, I mean customers, got out at the enthusiastic urging of their versions of Hal Steare, and walked the property.
We thought it strange that out of all the other lots that must have been on the same road that 3-4 Jeeps of customers are all converging on one lot. That proved to be one of their selling points or at least what they would use to try to wring a commitment out of us. We were told that we had to decide at that moment to keep the other folks from beating us to this valuable real estate. Presumably the other Hal Steares were doing the same thing for their ups.
I don’t know about you, my dear reader, but not only is a decision to buy real estate not one to be rushed, but the average person doesn’t have the financial independence to make a snap decision like that. That kind of a major purchase must be weighed carefully by those asked to make it. But we were told that the decision had to be made right there and then. Jean and I had only been married a little more than a year, and Art and Sandy a bit longer, but suffice it to say that together we would had a hard time floating any kind of loan for anything, no matter how good the opportunity.
At being informed that neither family would be taking advantage of his fine offer at this time, Steare’s whole persona changed. He could not get us back to the sales office fast enough, all the while berating us for not buying into the once in a lifetime offer he made to us. Unceremoniously dropping us off at the sales office he went off in search of his next pigeon, I mean customer.
In Steare's defense, having done a few sales jobs in subsequent years, if he was working on straight commission, I can understand his not wanting to spend much more time with us after we dug in our heels and refused to buy at once. Time is very much money to a straight commission salesperson. But that does not excuse the tryout for the Indy 500 we got on our way back to the sales office, or the unceremonious way we were dumped once we got there. If he had driven in a civilized manner and maybe even explained to us the difficulty of making a living that way, we might have been more sympathetic. But when he turned into Mario Andretti pulling away from the starting line at Indy, our blood began to simmer just a little.
No one said anything about the apples, but Art and I made sure we got a case for each of us.
As we drove back to McAdoo, we discussed the topic of ethics and legality in real estate dealings. Sandy was somewhat more knowledgeable than the rest of us because her mother was a real estate agent in New England, and to the extent that Sandy had been exposed to the nuts and bolts of the profession, she understood a little of what was ethical and legal. By the time we got to McAdoo we had decided that Sandy and Jean would make supper and that Art and I would compose a letter outlining what our experience had been, what we thought was unethical about them, and threatening to report the situation to the state real estate board if we did not receive written apologies from both Hal Steare and the management of Valley of the Lakes.
We received a more or less standard apology letter from Valley of the Lakes, which contained about as much sincerity as the Democrats applause at President Bush’s State of the Union address. I don’t recall if we ever got even an insincere apology from Hal Steare but I seriously doubt it.

YOU KNOW YOU ARE FROM SOUTH EASTON IF YOU REMEMBER

You know you are from South Easton, Pa. if you remember –

1)                  The smell from the tannery on Ann St.

2)                  Condron Playground on Wilkes-Barre St.

3)                  Ruth Schinstine’s variety store

4)                  Transogram Toy factory

5)                  Paradise Club (original location)

6)                  Apricot St.

7)                  The Neighborhood Center on Philadelphia Rd.

8)                  Junior high dances at Shull

9)                  Stern Field soft ball games and Veterans’ housing project

10)              Fleas Club

11)              Taking the old smelly buses to town

12)              The Berwick Theater

13)              South Easton Memorial Day Parade

14)              The Italian gardens that preceded the recently demolished Delaware Terrace

15)              The snow cone man at the playgrounds

16)              Zehnder’s Brick Works

17)              Aerni and Hitzel’s coal breaker

18)              The WEST tower

19)              Korte’s

20)              Castel club

21)              Holy Cross Park

22)              The Cedarville School

23)              Swift Meat Processors on Canal St.

24)              NIA Bakery

25)              Barney’s Lunch Room

26)              Korner Kitchen

27)              Shapiro’s

28)              Craft Rug Mill before the fire

29)              Lou’s Shoe Store on Davis St.

30)              Both American Stores

31)              Your neighborhood elementary school

32)              Pennsylvania Plush Weavers

33)              King’s Bakery

34)              Scher’s variety store – both locations

35)              Straup’s Pharmacy – both locations

36)              Jim Dervin’s WWII tank retriever turned tow truck.

37)              All the corner stores that dotted that landscape

38)              Sledding on Milton St.

39)              The original Shiloh Baptist Church

40)              All the great people of all races getting along.

41)              Wildcat gardens where the 700 block of Williams St. was put through

42)              Jim Lum’s candy wholesaler

43)              Reverends Shafer and Buchanan

44)              Royce Barr’s junk shop where Morris and Whildin had their warehouse.

45)              The ice cream stand on the triangle @ Williams, Seitz, and Philadelphia Road

46)              Brandau’s, Rinaldi’s, or Waterbor’s gas stations

47)              Braun’s, Bob Ruschman’s, or Tindall and Ruschman’s junkyards

48)              Cy Hunter the honey dipper

49)              All the old volunteer fire companies turned drinking clubs

THE BELMONT JUNGLE WARS OF THE 1950'S

JUNGLE WARFARE

THE BELMONT JUNGLE WARS OF THE 1950'S

INTRODUCTION

The Belmont Jungle wars existed only in the minds of the boy-soldiers who fought them. The battlefield was small - about 2 acres, and the weapons were primitive - cap pistols, slingshots, and spears made from wild carrot stalks. But alliances were made and remade, battles fought, and territory won and lost. But a decisive victory was denied the combatants. Age and time defeated the boy-soldiers where cap pistols, slingshots, and spears could not, and mother nature reclaimed the Jungles after our final defeat. But the wars were real to us, and it is this reality I hope to convey.
We were all boy-soldiers when the battles raged the fiercest. But soldiers, and boys, move onto other things. One fellow, my neighbor, is retired from the state police, I became an environmental chemist, and the others, like so many acquaintances forged in countless battles by innumerable armies, have retreated into the recesses of our minds, and into history. But under our adult facades, we are still the boy-soldiers who once lived their lives in our bodies, sometimes smiling to ourselves as we remember our wartime exploits. And like soldiers of so many other wars, we rarely talk about what we did. As with them, it is too painful. As with their listeners, ours really don't care what we did.

DESCRIPTION OF THE BATTLEFIELD

Those of us who grew up in the back part of South Easton, by this I mean Line St. and South of there, though I suppose there were exceptions, fondly remember the Belmont Jungles. How the area came to be known as the Jungles is lost in time, but Ramar of the Jungle, a sort of civilized Tarzan, was a popular TV series in the early 1950s, so perhaps that is where the name came from.
The Jungles were about 1 1/2 blocks long by a half block wide. The area was bounded by Center Street on the west, Glendale St. and one of Paul Lamberts farm fields on the south, Raub's truck farm on the east, and on the north by Raub's truck farm, several private residences and Hazel Alley. There were actually 4 distinct mini-battlefields within the overall area of the Jungles, each with its own personality.
The westernmost section had a few trees along Center St., along with elderberry bushes and a few trees on Glendale St. The remainder had low bushes, milkweeds, so named from the milky sap they gave off when the stems were broken off, and 'wild carrots', which provided many spears for the battles (non-injurious of course) after they were grown and dried. These 'wild carrots' would give you large blisters if handled when green, and we all did that sooner or later. there were several paths through this area. One led from Bill Blum's trash burner, at the corner of Center and Hazle, just behind Hazle St., to the wooded second section of the Jungles. Another led from the boundary between the first two sections to a clump of trees halfway back Glendale St. The exact location of these paths varied somewhat from year to year, but these two paths were the main routes through this part of the Jungles.
If I make the Jungles seem like another world, it is because to we boy-soldiers it was. It was a world populated by our friends and not our parents or other adults. We alone determined its boundaries and planned its defenses. It was our secret world where adults rarely intruded. Even though we knew it well, the Jungles somehow seemed different when we were in them, as if crossing the boundaries from our home yards to the Jungles instantly transported us away from our familiar homes. Though it has been over 40 years since I last set foot in the Jungles, and over 10 years since I even observed the boundaries up close (I did not cross the boundaries into the Jungles. I can never do that again. The Jungles are not a battlefield anymore. The battle scars have healed and they have been reclaimed by the surrounding countryside, and progress has transformed them into no more than a memory.), if my imagination and memory couple up just right, I can close my eyes and again I am ten years old, running through the weeds and vines, and climbing the trees. Those are very pleasant memories for me.
The next easternmost section of the Jungles was more wooded than anything else. The interior of this section consisted of taller trees than at any other place in the entire Jungles. The paths through this section were muchly determined by where there weren't any trees. There were no easily used entrances to this section form the north, the Hazle St. side. Partially blocked by dense elderberry bushes, most of this side was piled with years of yard waste and furnace ashes. This section was directly behind my house, and I can recall few times going into the Jungles from this direction. There was only one path into this section from the east, about 2/3 of the way from Hazle to Glendale. the rest of the way was blocked by thick undergrowth and two huge wild cherry trees.
The trees and dense undergrowth along the south side of the third section of the Jungles, as you continued eastward, ended about 30 ft. north of where Glendale St. would have run if it had gone all the way to Industrial Drive. The remainder contained the same sort of vegetation as the westernmost portion, except where residents of Belmont St. had planted vegetable gardens and had trash burners. A drainage ditch of sorts was on the southeast corner of this section, separating it from a huge mount of earth, Glendale St., and the incinerator of the Radio City Electronics plant. Glendale St. was only a half block long and ended at the rear of the Radio City plant. Low vines and poison ivy occupied the few places that weren't trampled into paths or play areas. There were two paths running through this section, the main path which went from northwest to southeast, and another that ran straight south from the beginning of the first one. There was a third shorter path which ran from the southeast end of the first one to the farm fields down over the bank.
The fourth, and easternmost section of the Jungles was where we played the most. Full of the same spear-like wild carrots found near Center St., it also had shorter more spread out trees than the second section, denser undergrowth, and 3 paths, two running east-west and one running straight south, though it was usually too densely overgrown to use, from behind Robeson's new ranch house. The route of paths in this section of the Jungles were rarely changed because of the dense undergrowth. Children had obviously been playing in the Jungles for many years at this time, the mid 50s, because there was a large shallow depression in the southwest corner which had been dug by my father and Uncle Lester in the early 1920s, when they lived in the same neighborhood, though not the same house that I grew up in.

SHOWER HOUSE AT BREAKER #7, HARLEIGH, pA.

The baskets hang there forlorn and forgotten

Waiting for those who will never again come

Forgotten shavers and dried cakes of soap

Never again to do that which they had done

So many years ago when voices rang

And stinging water flowed

Washing away the dark grit

Of countless days in the mines

The men are gone and no longer

Is there the cacophony of voices

In all the languages of the world

Swirling above the benches and lockers

Only the silent baskets remained

To remind us of the men

Who once used them

Now even the shower house is gone

Nothing remains to tell us

Of what was once there

Of the countless hours

Spent underground by countless men

Ruining their health to keep the fires burning.

A Man Don’t Know What He Can Do

by Elise Miller Davis

Just before midnight in February 1952, Roy Gaby, driving for a Houston Texas, trucking company, ran out of gasoline while returning from Waco in a heavy 14 wheel truck-trailer. From a house nearby he telephoned his wife "SOS, honey, I’m out of gas." Mrs. Gaby sighed, bundled up the baby and set out to the rescue in the family car. On the way home Mrs. Gaby drove ahead of Roy. About ten miles from Houston a speeding car, with an apparently drunken driver who was never stopped, darted out of a side road, forcing Mrs. Gaby’s car off the highway on the right. In the rear-view mirror she caught a glimpse of Roy’s truck swerving to avoid a collision. Then she heard a crash.
The engine had smashed into a mammoth oak tree, the trailer had piled up on the cab and Roy was trapped in the twisted debris. A passing motorist rushed into the village of Fairbanks and notified Deputy Sheriff Don Henry. Henry decided to try untelescoping the wreck. "We attached a wrecker to the front of the mashed in engine, hoping to pull it straight enough to get Gaby out. The idea didn’t work. We added the power of a truck at the front of the wrecker. Finally, two more trucks were attached to the rear, and they pulled in the opposite direction. But still, no soap. Small flames appeared beneath the truck, and there was no extinguisher at hand.
Halting passing drivers, Henry set helpers to working frantically at the crumpled doors with hammers and crowbars. The twisted doors refused to budge. Henry crawled onto the hood of the cab and turned his flashlight on the victim. The steering wheel was crushed against Gaby’s waist and his feet were pinned beneath the twisted brake and clutch pedals. Tiny flames were licking at his feet. "I’m an accident investigator" Henry told me later, "but I’ve never seen a more terrible sight and I’ve never been more helpless."
At that moment a husky Negro appeared out of the darkness. "Can I help?" he asked quietly. Henry shook his head. Nobody could help if three trucks and a wrecker couldn’t budge that cab, and by the time the cutting torches and the fire apparatus arrived it was just going to be too bad.
The Negro calmly walked over to the cab, put his hands on the door and wrenched it off! Speechless, the crowd watched the Negro reach in the cab and tear out the burning floor mat. Then he put out the flames around Gaby’s legs - with his bare hands.
"It was just about then that I caught a glimpse of the big fellow’s face," said one of the witnesses. "At first I thought he was in a trance. Then I saw that set expression for what it was - cold, calculated fury. I’d seen it before - at Pearl Harbor, on Okinawa. I remember thinking: Why, that guy’s not calm, he’s enraged. It was just as if he despised fire."
Swiftly, almost as if rehearsed, the Negro worked on, poking large arms into the truck cab. "He straightened that steering wheel like it was tin," the driver of the wrecker said. With his left hand on the brake pedal and his right on the clutch, he all but uprooted the whole works to free Gaby’s feet. But the crucial job wasn’t done. The victim still lay encased in what witnesses called ’a squashed sardine can over a bonfire.’
Stubbornly the big man struggled to squeeze in beside Gaby. The space was too tiny. Stepping back from the cab, he hesitated fleetingly. The flames were growing. He glared at them, slumped to a squatting position and began pushing into the cab, fighting crazily. At long last he was in far enough to rest his feet firmly on the floorboard. He started rising slowly. His muscles bulged in the half-light and the sleeves of his shirt tore.
"My God, he’s trying to push up the top!" a woman’s voice called. Neck and shoulders against the caved-in roof. Hard. "We actually heard the metal give," reported a farmer who had come to the scene. Discussing the rescue afterward, Deputy Henry shook his head, still baffled. "And he held up that top until we could pull Gaby out."
In the excitement of attending to Gaby, no one thought to thank the Negro or even ask his name. Later, at the hospital with Gaby, Deputy Henry told newsmen: "The mysterious Samson disappeared as quietly as he’d come. If I hadn’t witnessed it I’d never believe that a lone man could do the job we couldn’t do with three trucks and a wrecker." "I wish I knew his name," put in Mrs. Gaby. "He was a giant."
Actually, 33-year-old Charles Dennis Jones is not a giant. He is six feet two inches tall and weighs 220 pounds. He’d been out to nearby Hempstead to change tires on a disabled truck when he came upon the accident. By morning the whole city of Houston was wondering about his identity. Newspapers throughout the country carried the story. But Jones didn’t tell even his wife about his experience. His boss, C.C. Meyers, became suspicious when he noticed the big fellow walk away from a group of employees discussing the amazing rescue. Remembering the mission he’d sent Jones on the night before, Meyers grabbed a photograph from the company files and headed for the Sheriff’s office. "Yes, that’s him," agreed Deputy Henry. And Meyers knew immediately how Charlie Jones found the strength to lick that fire.
One December night 14 months before, Jones had come home to the three-room house where he lived with his wife, Mildred, and their five small children. Under one arm he carried a tiny pine tree, and a single string of Christmas lights. They’d had a lot of bad luck that year. Only two months before both his mother and Mildred’s had died within a week, leaving grief, doctor bills, and funeral expenses. But Evelyn Carol, his eight-year-old first born, wanted some real Christmas-tree lights and he had them. He’d manage. He was healthy and husky and could stand a 16 hour day. Double work meant double pay. And they had a roof over their heads. Paid for.
Mildred left for church, where she was singing that evening. Jones tucked in the children. As he undressed, he wondered if he should risk leaving the tree lights on. He decided he would. Evelyn Carol wanted to surprise her mother and he’d promised. He fell asleep.
Mildred’s pillow was still untouched when Jones awoke. There was a burning in his nostrils, a crackling sound in his ears. He heard a child’s cry: "Daddy!" Instantly he was on his feet, awake in a world on fire, pushing through choking waves of smoke, grabbing small bodies until he counted five, finding his way to the open window, pitching the children out. People gathered. And Mildred came running through the darkness, crying his name. Then Jones heard a man’s voice, maybe his own: "No, no-Evelyn Carol, come back, come back!" A child’s answer: "But I must get my Christmas lights!" And like a fleeting spirit Evelyn Carol in a little white nightgown ran back toward the flames. Later a neighbor told how Jones had raced after his child but just as he neared the dwelling its last remains exploded. How the blast had thrown Jones to the ground, unconscious.
The next morning for the first time in ten years, Charles Dennis Jones failed to report to work at Robertson Transport. Everybody there had heard. When a man loses a child and his home, has four children to support and another one on the way, what can other men do? Before nine o’clock a paper was circulating - from workshops to offices to yards. By noon an envelope bearing the names of 84 Robertson employees, and $765.50 was delivered to Charlie Jones. The following day friends at Hughes Tool Co., where Mildred had formerly worked sent in $80. By mail, from strangers, came $16. There were countless offers: Can you use an icebox? An army cot? A boy’s coat size 6? It seemed everyone had united to help the Jones family. And before long Charlie began to work on a new home. He figured that before the new baby came he’d have his family back under their own roof. You could understand why he would always hate fire.
Reading a newspaper account of Jones’s heroic rescue, R.A. Childers, Houston businessman, wrote the papers, saying that he would give $400 to start a fund providing an annual college scholarship for a Negro High school graduate. The rescue had taken place during Brotherhood Week. "Could anything be more characteristic of brotherhood than the fact that Jones walked away without waiting for thanks?" Childers asked.
And so it came about in the new house Charlie and Mildred and their children had built with their own hands that they received a group of citizens who informed them of the proposed Charles D. Jones Endowment Fund. Jones heard the committee’s proposal in his faded blue overalls, eyes glazed by unshed tears. His wife stood beside him, his children huddle near. He didn’t say a word.
Finally, Mr. Childers broke the silence. Somehow Charlie must give a statement to the press. There was the mystery he might yet clear up. How in the name of heaven had he managed to wrench off a steel door, beat out flames with his hands, raise with his back the crushed-in top of the drivers cab? Charlie Jones looked at Childers and at the hushed group around him. He cleared his throat and said simply: "A man don’t know what he can do until another man is hurting."


THIS WASIN THE READERS DIGEST WHEN I WAS IN JUNIOR HIGH

Milking the Wrong Cow

Without going into a lot of details, by the age of 11 Mom had found herself put out on a farm as a sort of foster child. I say sort of because it was not by her mother's choice that it be done, but leaving the mechanism for another story, she was fostered out to a farm family in Forks Township, just north of Easton, Pa. Having spent her first 7 years in the small slate quarry town of Pen Argyl, and the intervening 4 years with her family as they bounced around from institution to institution, she had her first taste of what it was like to live on a farm in mid 1920s America. It was a harsh life, to be sure, but she was treated no differently than the farmer's own children, and as she described her experiences to me as a child, I got a sense that she regarded them as brothers and sisters in the same way she regarded her natural brother and sisters.
Anyway, as I had said, it was her first experience on a farm and with farm animals. Her first real job on the farm, certainly within the ability of an 11 year old to learn, was to help in the milking of the cows, something that had to be done twice a day, and was the only job a farmer would do on a Sunday. As few farms in those days had automatic milking machines, the farm lady showed her how to do it and then gave her a bucket and stool and told her to go to Grayey, the cow on the end. She was an easy milkier and would let anyone milk her anywhere.
Unfortunately for Mom, she went to the stall on the end, not the cow on the end. The on the end was occupied by the farmer's bull. Without the bull's services once a year, the cows would have no calves and would therefore have no milk to give. Unfortunately for Mom, not only are bulls of a decidedly nasty temperament, the bull's scrotum is situated just about where the cows udder is, between the hind legs. Mom managed to get into the stall and have her stool set up and was about to give the bull the surprise of his life when the lady yanked her out from the stall. Right then and there I would suppose was my mother's first lesson in the difference between cows and bulls.

Industrial Waste

A lot of the palaver over industrial waste overlooks one thing.  Waste from any industry is not created in a vacuum of responsibility.  There was a plant near where I grew up that produced insulation for home building from the abandoned heaps of slag left in the area since the days of the iron smelters.  It was called rock-wool and resembled in form the fiberglass insulation we see today.  They had a very noxious stack smoke and were eventually asked to leave the area.  My point is the demand for new homes, maybe even the home you live in if it was built in the late 40s, created the rock-wool, and with it the waste stream from that plant.  Our grandparents created the waste.

That is not to absolve a manufacturer of the responsibility of providing a clean and safe work environment and from having processes that are environmentally friendly.  I just want to make sure that there is proper responsibility placed on all responsible parties.

SOME ECONOMIC ARGUMENTS AGAISNT STRIKING FOR WAGES

Let me say at the outset that my father belonged to 2 unions over the course of his working life – The United Steelworkers and AFSCME, while he worked at the local high school.  In fact he even helped get the union in there.  I myself belong to the electrical workers while I worked in my adopted hometown in a factory that made automotive and aircraft parts.  My former brother in law belonged to the Operating Engineers for 40 years also. 

I believe that the trade union movement, along with the right to strike, especially in the early days, really did do something good for the working man, in real wages and working conditions.  However today with the uncertain economy and inflation, striking for wages makes no sense.

Some simple math will bear this out.  I do not claim credit for the basic idea.  That goes to my friend Phil and his father, minister at Methodist church across the street from my junior high.  But here I am trying to bring the idea into the current times.

Let me start out with a few assumptions.  You can alter the details but the basic tenets will remain the same.

1)                 Before strike wage of $10 hourly

2)                 After strike wage of $11 (10% raise)

3)                 Strike lasted one month – 160 working hours

4)                 We are just dealing with gross wages, not net.

Simple math will show that for the lost wages of $1600, it would take 1600 hours of work to recoup just what was lost due to the work stoppage, before the raise would really kick in. In other words, it would take 10 months of work at the new rate.  This says nothing about the economic destitution being experienced by the striking workers, as well as the people they owe money to and need to pay, like the food store, utilities, car and mortgage payments.   Still want to strike for wages?

My Philosophy

I may come across sometimes as unmindful of the concerns of the little people or uncaring about the environment.  The last one hurts a little because, as a chemist familiar with test procedures and the results for this area, I probably have a better idea on the state of the environment than people who are much more militant about their environmentalism.

Let me say at the outset I do not want to see the local environment, as well as that of the larger area and the country as a whole, polluted.  I have lived here nearly 40 years, raised my sons here, and now my oldest son is raising his sons in the area.  I have the same interests as someone who is just starting out and has children who are much younger than they are.  My environmental beefs are two fold – what constitutes pollution and what efforts will be the most efficient and cost effective.

To a certain extent, just as beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so is pollution.  Cigarette smoke represents pleasure to some folks (I don’t know what is pleasurable about using your nose for a chimney and your lungs for a filter but I won’t go there) and can represent agony and allergic problems for others. Deep coal mining in this area served to heat homes and businesses all over the country, including the house where I was raised in Easton, but represented miserable working conditions, inhumane employers, and black lung, to generations of miners.  Coal mining money from this area helped to get Lafayette College going, indirectly contributing to my education. We had Markle, Pardee, and Van Wickle Halls, all partially built on the backs of generations of men coughing their lungs up in the mines of the Hazleton area.

But I learned a long time ago in college, but not in my classes, that if you are going to be against something, it is far better and increases your credibility if you propose a viable replacement for that which you are against.  For example, if you are going to work toward eliminating coal use, you had better come up with a viable alternative.  And by that I mean one that will not replace one hurt on our citizens, a dirty environment, with a different one, energy costs they can’t absorb. 

We must also remember that industry does not create their waste materials, legitimate or otherwise, in a vacuum.  If you have ever bought a gallon of paint, and who hasn’t, you have contributed to the waste stream of the paint mill, not just purchased a product from it.  Your demand for a gallon of paint, evidenced by your purchase, also created the ‘demand’ for whatever waste products the manufacture of that paint necessitated.   The factory did not create the waste – you did.

That does not mean we can’t insist that the manufacturers of what we use as individuals and as a society, conform to processes that are the easiest on the environment and result in the least amount of waste.  But if we want what modern business can give us, than we also want the waste involved. 

                                                                                           

The Thinking Chemist 12/02/2010

Some of you may wonder about the the title of my blog.  I am indeed a retired chemist who specialized in trace metal analysis at the end of my career in labs.  The Thinking part comes from forming my own opinions about the world around me, after looking at the evidence and, well, thinking about it.