King of the Gypsies

According to my mother, a Gypsy king was buried in Allentown in around 1960, she knew about such things. She was born in Galgo, Hungary, an area of Transylvania, now part of Romania, near present day Gilgau. In Galgo, the Jews and Gypsies lived on the edge of town. In the early 20's, my grandparents, along with their Gypsy neighbors, came to Bethlehem to work at the Steel. On weekends, to make extra money, my grandparents would open their house and show Hungarian movies. None of their relatives, Jew or Gypsy, save one cousin, survived the nazi's; even the cemeteries were desecrated. As you can see from the document above, my grandfather earned his citizenship the hard way.

REPRINTED FROM DEC. 23, 2007

Relics Of Our Past

One of the surviving relics of our industrial past is the right of way of former railroad spur lines. Allentown literally had hundreds of factories serviced by dozens of spur routes and rail sidings. The area between Second and Front Streets was crisscrossed with dozens of spur lines. Even the west end had service. A line ran behind the current site of B'nai B'rith Apartments, across 17 th St. and up along side of the dry-cleaners. The B'nai B'rith was the site of the former Trexler Lumber Yard, which burned to the ground in a spectacular fire in the mid 70's; The heat from the fire could be felt in West Park. The rails and ties are gone, long ago sold to scrap yards. In many cases the space occupied by the right of ways can still be seen to the knowing eye. They appear as alleys which were never paved. Here and there a surviving loading dock provides another clue. Show in this photo from 1939 are the Mack Truck factories on S. 10th Street, now part of the Bridgeworks Complex. Here the components for Mack Trucks were manufactured. The parts were then trucked to the Assembly Plant (5C) located on S. 12 Street, right off of Lehigh Street. "Built Like A Mack Truck" became a figure of speech across America. It was a prouder time than the lyrics from Billy Joe; little did we know that things could get worse.

Beating World's Smallest Horse

Last night I attended the fair. This morning's Morning Call has a feature called Midway Callaway. It's about making cotton candy while wearing rubber gloves, putting it into a plastic bag and selling it behind a glass window. Brian (Callaway), that's not cotton candy, that's not a food joint, it's not even a midway. What I saw last night, despite perfect weather, was a sparse crowd on a sterile strip with glass and formica food trucks.

The night I took the attached photo, in the early 70's, music blasted from the hoochy-koochy shows. Andre the Giant easily defeated his opponent and Willie Restum held court outside the Beer Garden. Generations of Allentonians would gather once a year for a community reunion. I hope somehow there's still more to the fair than my aging eyes can see, and that today's children can still make a tradition out of it's current incarnation.

photocredit: stage on midway outside Hoochy-Koochy Show, Allentown Fair, early 70's, by molovinsky

An Unauthorized Interview

There is a nice little authorized interview with Greg Weitzel, Director of Parks, on Andrew Kleiner's blog. (www.rememberkleiner.blogspot.com) Here is an unauthorized one, maybe even worse. This morning at the Rose Garden, after Weitzel generously afforded me some time, he asked if our conversation would be on my blog, I made a gesture indicating it would not. Although I meant my answer at the time, as I drove back to the bunker where this blog is created, his words kept repeating in my reluctant mind. I say reluctant, because it was my intention to decompress for a few days with my historic type postings on Allentown's better days. Upon reflection, I found Weitzel's words need some discussion; maybe sort of an unsolicited reality check for him and a flag for us.

Weitzel claimed that the Rose Garden neighbors are delighted with the improvements in the garden, and that their property value will increase because of it. He stated he can prove property values go up with improved parks, citing several studies. MR. WEITZEL, PLEASE UNDERSTAND THAT THE ALLENTOWN ROSE GARDEN WAS MAGNIFICENT, AND YOU COULD NEVER IMPROVE ON IT. It was my hope, and all of us who rallied to defend this gem of Allentown, that your plans didn't destroy the classic ambience that people have been coming to admire for 80 years. Please try to understand that any study or statistic you could cite does not apply to Allentown's Rose Garden, and it's surrounding beautiful neighborhood. It makes me very nervous that you cannot differentiate between the iconic Allentown Park System and the generalizations citied in your college textbook. Do yourself a favor, and don't tell the neighbors that you have improved their property values, you will only peeve them off.

The Mighty Atom

Years ago, at the Allentown Fair, as one would push through a sea of carney delusion, tucked back by the 4H animals, was an island of reality. There, in an old battered truck, an ancient Jewish strongman performed incredible feats of strength, to sell only homemade kosher soap. Standing on a platform on the rear of his truck, flanked by photographs from his performing youth, he would bent horse shoes and bite through nails. Many years earlier, my mother as a little girl in Bethlehem, saw him pull a truck uphill with his hair. Even as an old man, like a reincarnation of Samson, his grey hair was still long.
In the summers of 1964 and 1965, myself and a friend,(Fred Schoenk, retired Allentown art teacher) made and sold printed tee-shirts at the fair. We had the honor to know Joseph Greenstein(The Mighty Atom) and his wife. For those interested, there are various articles on the Mighty Atom and even at least one book. Enjoy the fair!

REPRINTED FROM AUG. 24, 2007

The King has Abdicated

In 1958 my father had a food stand at the fair. It took him about an hour to realize you can not sell hot dogs in the King's back yard; Yocco, the hot dog king. When Yocco's claimed last year they were not at the fair because their canvas ripped, I was skeptical. This year it's official, they have abdicated their spot. Tonight the fair was jammed. In Ag Hall the granges still compete in vegetable canning. A wiseguy still incites you to dunk him. The world's smallest horse hasn't grown. Maybe Yocco's is gone, but the fair is still much more like 1958 than any other aspect of Allentown.

REPRINTED FROM AUG.28, 2007

Conclusion Of Water Thieves

GUEST POST BY ROB HAMILL
-Percy Dougherty is the chairman of the Lehigh County Commisioners. He has a PHD in geology and hydrology, and knows the Little Lehigh Aquifer probably better than anyone. From conversations, he is appalled by the well drilling on the banks of the Little Lehigh, calling the location, the worst possible from a stream health point of view. He calls the stream monitors “unnecessary as the location of the new wells are designed to specifically drain the creek, so there wouldn’t be any creek to monitor”. LCA finds it cheaper to drill two huge wells next to the creek, than to drill less productive wells that won’t drain the creek. He is a big proponent of using as much of the plentiful Allentown water as possible and as little Lower Macungie well water as possible. My favorite quote of his is, “There is not a water shortage, only a distribution problem”. At this time, he doesn’t think he has enough votes on the board to rescind the LCA charter and roll the responsibilities int o a Lehigh County controlled public entity. This would allow the county to plan for smarter growth, and actually allow our planning and zoning boards to have a say in how each township is actually planned and developed as opposed to having developers write the rules on the hunched backs of their attorneys while waving lawsuit pink slips in the face of barely paid public servants. Lehigh County could also use the $26 million in unencumbered cash that LCA is holding in its coffers for projects that might actually benefit our community.
-Delaware River Basin Commission(DRBC) is the only overseer of LCA. Their hydrologist for this area confirmed to me that in the Little Lehigh Aquifer, “groundwater and surface water are closely related, there is not a big separation of the two due to the permeable nature of this Karst aquifer”. This statement confirms that all this bottled water is directly draining our creek. Since the DRBC is located in Trenton, the patronage job board could seemingly care less where the water comes from, even if the wells are directly under and draining the stream. They seemed to ignore legal precedence that the wells should do no environmental harm. During the Dec 10th well hearing and approval, they only cared about the quantity produced, probably because their main preoccupation is with the location of the salt water line on the lower Delaware River. Anyway, with the head l egal counsel for the DRBC recusing himself from any LCA business at the hearing due to a conflict of interest; the doorway for LCA to be a friend to the bottlers and an enemy of the residents became easier.
WHAT CAN WE DO?
There are ways of putting pressure on LCA to serve the citizens over the special interests. The most direct would be to put a referendum up for vote in Lehigh County to end the LCA entity and roll the responsibilities to the County, who would have some political responsibility. This would involve a signature campaign to get it on the ballot which would be an effort, but doable.
Contacts could be made to the Lehigh County Commissioners to take control of LCA. Percy Dougherty is the Chair, while Andy Roman could put this on committee discussion. The County has a multi-million dollar shortfall this year, so the $26 million in LCA coffers is a great incentive.
Don Cunningham could appoint some LCA board members that are not there to just get along but to guard against the type of leadership that got us into this mess in the first place. He should take some heat here, as he was directly involved in bringing in the bottlers with no way of supplying the water needed. Why he didn’t lean on LCA to buy Allentown water in the first place is beyond me.
The Delaware River Basin Commission board members should hear from citizens concerned about the water abuse taking place in Lehigh County. Congress oversees the DRBC, so contact could be made with Charlie Dent to find out how to put real teeth in actual laws that are not enforced by the DRBC.
Governor Rendell recently attended a Renew Lehigh Valley meeting with one of our Lower Macungie supervisors, Deana Zosky and expressed interest in the plight of our water issues. He could direct the Dept of Environmental Protection at the state level to actually enforce current law without the need for expensive citizen lawsuits against the always big pocketed special interests.
Finally, The LCA holds bi-monthly meetings that are open to citizen input. Tell your concerns, an d stand your ground. Encourage Mr Arndt to retire and be replaced with someone with common sense and a respect for our residents. This is our community. The power of a right idea, well presented, with determined follow through, can change our little slice of the world. LCA needs to come to grasp with this decade and century.


GUEST POST BY ROB HAMILL

NOTE BY ADMINISTRATOR: Rob Hamill has been waging practically a one man defense of the Little Lehigh. It's not easy to go against Cunningham, the County and Coca-Cola; we owe him our gratitude, michael molovinsky

ADDENDUM: This article was reprinted courtesy of THE LEHIGH VALLEY COMMENTATOR, a subscription based alternative paper covering national and local issues. inquiries to P.O. Box 596, Emmaus, Pa. 18049

Water Thieves In Our Community

GUEST POST BY ROB HAMILL, PART 1

In the Winter edition #5 of the L.V. commentator, we broke a story about Lehigh County Authority’s(LCA) plan to drain the Little Lehigh Creek for the benefit of the bottling plants in Fogelsville. The story outlined the very real harm in using wells located in the upper headwater aquifer of the Little Lehigh Creek for massive (4 million gallons per day) withdrawals to feed the water bottlers. This is in addition to the LCA force feeding water hookups since 1966 to every single developer of any sort in Lehigh County through legalized bullying and strong arm tactics.
We have had one of the wettest Junes on record, and LCA put us in a state of residential water emergency, because they refused to cut back the bottlers from taking an extra 3 million gallons per day over the last 2 years.
Think of a government body with no controlling authority and no political ramifications of any action no matter how outrageous and generally harmful to the residents- you have LCA in a nutshell. Here’s our follow up six months later.

THE PLAYERS
-Nestle, Coke, and Niagara are the beneficiaries of the water promised. They have set up bottling operations all over the country, and they are quite good at going through the loopholes for getting bottled water from communities. There is a local “commercial water advisory board” that could recommend the bottlers use less water, but because Mr Arndt appointed a representative from each of the bottlers and nobody else, there is little chance that they will give up any water “rights”. They feel it might be better if dust comes out of residential faucets than to cut back their usage. If you go to Wal Mart in Trexlertown, you can buy water bottles whose listed source is “Lehigh County Authority”, they advertise the bottles as “Great Value”. Maybe our residents could buy a few cases to water their plants without breaking this summer’s LCA water rationing law. Trout in the Little Lehigh might benefit from a bunch of water bottles thrown into the creek too, after all it would just be giving a little back from what is taken.
-Aurel Arndt, the long term head of LCA, promised this bottling plant water back before 2006. This was just before Mr Arndt asked Allentown to subsidize water to the bottlers at a substantial cost to the city. This was justifiably rejected by Allentown, so Mr Arndt stormed out saying~ “Fine, we drill wells then”. This left us residents and our natural resources at the wrong end of a hissy fit by a completely unreasonable LCA head. The benefit of using Allentown water is that there is so much of it, and it is by far the most environmentally friendly option, in that you are not using stream headwater water.
In a recent LMT meeting Mr Reiss asked Mr Arndt (1)who his boss was and (2)who owned the water under LMT? The telling answer was (1)the captive customers were his boss and (2)the commonwealth owns the water under our feet ~(AND I, Mr Arndt, SPEAK FOR THE COMMONWEALTH
Mr Arndt has a long history of pushing public water and sewer relentlessly with no regard for anything else other than the cheapest way to expand his empire. It is as if he sees no difference between the go go 1960’s and the overbuilt, overtaxed, burdened, community we have now. He sees nothing wrong with turning Lower Macungie from a sleepy rural community into the fastest growing municipality in the state because he connected all the developments with water and sewer, and forced the developers, through economics, to build high density developments. Last year, during an expansion of the sewer to western Lehigh County (to service the bottlers), LCA condemned 3 farms rather than using an existing right of way along a railroad track, because it was cheaper. When I publicly objected to this, a few days later, an LCA truck was 4-wheeling in my vernal pools next to the creek under the guise of “checking the sewer line”.
During a recent lot line adjustment that I did on my farm, LCA tried to force me to put another 1600 foot water line down the spine of my property, and in the process, remove a working century old cistern, destroy a standing and viable 250 year old barn, and remove a shed. Luckily the LMT planning commission realized the illegal and reprehensible LCA tactic and sided with me. I objected to the new wells at LMT this past winter along with objecting to the DRBC at the Dec 10th meeting, and a letter to the editor. What is unnerving is that there is no boss above Mr Arndt.
-Mr Cunningham sent his henchpeople to every Lower Macungie meeting on the well issue to give support to the well drilling. Ms Feinberg was quoted last winter as saying ~”We could throw some trout in the (seasonal drainage ditch) Little Lehigh” (when the wells have dried up one of the most prolific limestone trout streams in the state). When the LMT supervisors saw they couldn’t stop the wells, but only put in wellhead and stream protective measures; Mr Cunningham’s staff member, was seemingly overheard saying in a boisterous tone,~ “Well we bitchslapped the treehuggers good this time”. Mr Cunningham can appoint new people to the LCA board of directors, but his staff doesn’t give anyone interested in preserving a famous cold water trout hatchery any hope. I guess mechanized bottlers are more important than fly fisherman, the beautiful riparian ecosystem, Lehigh Parkway picnickers or City of Allentown drinking water users(after, of course, the Little Lehigh has completed its flow). Isn’t a free flowing Little Lehigh Creek the greatest natural gift we can leave our children? Why are we playing Russian Roulette with a potential devastating dry-up of the Little Lehigh? Why did Mr Cunningham back the bottlers over our citizens?

PART 1 OF GUEST POST BY ROB HAMILL