Son Of A Butcher

When I was a boy my father and his brother operated two meat markets, one in Allentown, the other in Easton. Once a week my father would drive to Philadelphia to pick up sides of beef for the markets. For me it was a big adventure when he would take me along on the trip.  Before dawn we would drive to the Allentown market on Union Street, near the Lehigh River, and pick up his truck.  Basin Street would take us to S. 4th, for the slow ride up South Mountain.  Route 309 would take us down to Philly,  one stoplight at a time.

The meat district was along the River, on Delaware Avenue,  now flaked by Route 95 and Penn's Landing.  The extra wide brick street in the 1950's, complete with train tracks, had numerous packing houses on both sides. My father would walk through cavernous coolers,  marking his choices with wooden skewers.  After he settled up in the office,  the sides of beef were loaded into the truck. The next stop was the ice house, where blocks of dry ice were put into hanging baskets to keep the meat cold for the return trip.

He then headed back north up 611, along the Delaware to Easton.  The Easton market on S. 4th Street, and the adjoining buildings, were demolished decades ago for new insurance agency building. The side alley has been widened into Pine Street.  Next was the William Penn Highway to Bethlehem, and then on to Allentown to unload the rest of the meat.

Rocky and Paulie in the meat cooler

Morning Call Owner Taking Deposits

If I have succeeded in drawing you in with this teaser headline,  allow me to explain.  Today's local paper had two story titles which drew my attention.  One said that the owner of the newest apartments in Allentown was taking deposits, and the other said that the paper's publisher was moving on to another assignment, with The New York Daily News.  In my mind both of these stories are interwoven.

Needless to say that the newest apartment owner is J.B. Reilly.  Before my life as a blogger, I was a property manager in Allentown.  Myself and my counterparts had to spend $thousands advertising our apartments with the Morning Call.  However, we were not the current landlord of the Morning Call building, as is Reilly.

Although we have never met,  over the last few years Robert York and I developed a rapport of sorts.  I would complain to him about editorial policy,  mainly repressing my submissions about sacred cows and cronyism.  He in turn would express concern about what he felt were unfair complaints about the paper on this blog.

Neither of our replacements have been announced.

Alan Jennings' Missed Opportunity

This weekend Alan Jennings has an editorial in the paper about affordable housing, and landlording in Allentown. One would hardly know that the other week when I appeared on Jennings' radio show, Lehigh Valley Discourse,  he brushed by my experience as a city center landlord.  Instead,  Alan wanted to complain about Trump, never mind that we have our own issues here in the valley.  In light of  his editorial this week,  it may have been a lost opportunity.  I say may have been, because Alan wouldn't have agreed with my take on the problem,  and never has since 2005.

In 2005, when I ran as an independent candidate for mayor, I said that Allentown was becoming a poverty magnet.  As a landlord I saw how many people were being staked to move-in money by various social agencies in the valley. Thousands and thousands of people moved here whose career is exploiting Social Security Disability,  the job market was never a factor for them.  Those with that career are transient, with low and skipped rent deciding which town they move to, and for how long they stay.  That was a very politically incorrect observation at the time,  and is still a very sensitive issue.  However,  what isn't debatable is that Allentown has become a much poorer city in the last 15 years.   In a sense, Alan is in the poverty business.  Needless to say he still has social engineering recommendations, now about what should be done in 2018, to better the situation.  I could dissect them point by point, but let me instead make just one observation.  In reality there is no lack of affordable housing in Allentown, or there would not be so many low income people moving here. I do not believe that enlarging and making that segment of the rental market more attractive benefits Allentown in the long term.

Alan Jennings To Train Sharecroppers

Those of you who listened to the podcast of my interview with Alan Jennings know that toward the end of the interview I confessed to snickering about his organization's plan ( Community Action Committer of Lehigh Valley) to take over the farmer training at the Lehigh County owned Seed Farm.  Those who follow this blog know that I oppose Farmland Preservation,  because it is a ridiculous disconnect with the reality of food production in 2018.  It is however politically correct for urban liberals to think that if as much farmland as possible stays available,  there will be an endless banquet of environmental bliss, with organic food no less.  Alan sees it as an extension of food for the poor, sort of another ladder step in the food pantry mission. Low income food issues are because of money, not food production shortfalls. These liberals of course are ignorant of the long hours and hard work which goes into farming. They are also ignorant of the economic reality of competing with large scale agriculture.

Now, unless Alan wants to gift each of his graduates with a farm at our expense,  they will either be a farm hand, or at best a sharecropper.  What is really scary about Alan's plan is that it has the endorsement of the Republican controlled Lehigh County Commission.  They are apparently so vote craven, that they go along with such nonsense.

The only practical program assisting farming is Clean And Green.  Unfortunately, the Morning Call ran an expose on the program featuring photographs of large expensive houses,  surrounded by farmland. While the program limits tax reduction to only the land actively farmed,  the photographs give the impression that the tax breaks are going to people who don't need it.  I suppose the liberal paper thinks that those involved in agriculture are supposed to live in shacks.  Worse yet, the paper thinks that their story is a masterpiece, has has been running it on their website for months.

photocredit: Dorothea Lange, Son of Sharecropper, 1937

Cruising In Allentown

On Saturday Allentown will hold a Cruising Event,  celebrating a rite of passage from the Fonz days. Kids would cruise the circuit down Hamilton Street, back up Linden Street, and end up in the Fairgrounds at the Ritz.  The small town activity lasted well over twenty years.  Although the Morning Call article mentions it being banned in the 1980's,  I was a participant in the early 1960's.

While the newspaper does a good job reporting on the upcoming event, and the history behind it,  this post concerns our changing times here in Allentown.  I suppose we can now romanticize an activity that we once outlawed as the good old days, because the present is so much more dire.  Driving by and whistling at a girl is so much more innocent than drive-by shootings.  Driving around a loop is so much more innocent than drivers now being harassed and terrorized by gangs on dirt bikes, ambushing out of an ally in downtown Allentown.  Let up hope that we never get to the point of romanticizing those things.

artwork by Mark Beyer,  underground comic artist and native of Allentown

Change Coming To Parks

I tell people the only way that they will see my name in the paper is if I get arrested or die.  Considering that now you must order and pay for obituaries, I suppose only the arrest option remains.   I bring this up because it would not have been inappropriate for the Morning Call to ask me for my opinion about Lindsay Taylor being let go.  Nobody has had more to say,  or for longer, about the park system than me.  Although they do quote Cythnia Mota, I can  honestly say that I pass dogs being walked in the parks everyday who know considerably more about the park system than Mota.

Getting back to Ms. Taylor....Although I certainly have faulted her taking direction from The Wildlands Conservancy over park policy, especially the Weed Walls,  I never advocated for her dismissal.  However,  now that she has been handed the proverbial pink slip,  let me say that I didn't appreciate her attempts to justify Pawlowski's purchase of two parcels for future parks, among other things.

Lets get back to Ms. Mota.  The paper quotes her saying ....The next director of the department needs to reflect the city’s charging demographics, Mota said, emphasizing the city’s Hispanic population which now encompasses more than half of city residents. Taylor was the only woman who held a cabinet-level position in Allentown. All of O’Connell’s cabinet appointees so far have been white men. Although I will opine in another post about what qualities the next park director should process, none of them involve race or gender.

Although this next statement doesn't apply specifically to Ms. Taylor,  I am glad to see Ray O'Connell  willing to make changes in his administration.

photocredit:molovinsky

Jennings Interview Of Molovinsky & O'Hare

PODCAST FROM WDIY OF JENNINGS SHOW WITH MOLOVINSKY AND O'HARE