Lehigh Valley Railroad Piers

In this era of class warfare, while we worry that the rich are only paying 35% income tax, instead of 39%, let us be grateful that once upon a time we had the Robber Barons. In this era when we have to pay their mortgage for developers to build on Hamilton Street, let us be grateful that men built railroads with private money. Let us be grateful that incredible feats of private enterprise built piers, bridges and trestles. Trains allowed us to move vast amounts of raw and finished materials across America. This network allowed us to protect ourselves during two World Wars, and provided the prosperity upon which we now rest.

The Lehigh Valley Railroad tracks extended from their piers in New Jersey to the shores of Lake Erie. The Mile Long Pier in Jersey City was the scene of German sabotage in 1916. A train full of munitions, awaiting shipment to Europe, was blown up on July 30th of that year. In 1914, the railroad built the longest ore pier in the world, in Bayonne. The ore would come from Chile, through the new Panama Canal, for shipment to Bethlehem.

reprinted from August 2016

Blogging, The Last Watchtower

Anybody who buys The Morning Call on Monday knows what slim pickings is. The paper is produced on Friday, with a one man weekend crew, to cover the police blotter. There's hardly enough paper to cover the bottom of a bird cage. That leaves the news junkies forced to read garbage like this. Even the blogosphere is slim pickings. Another local blogger says that I'm lazy and preoccupied with choo choo trains. I actually haven't done a choo choo post in over six minutes, that's how long it took me to read the paper this morning. Truth to be told, I am fascinated with how much Allentown has changed within the last 50 years, and the railroads are a good metaphor. In my youth, the city was serviced by rail branch lines with dozens of sidings, supplying many industries with raw materials, to produce products distributed all over the country. Those industries fostered a large middle class, and a high standard of living. We were the truck capital of the world, we were home to the first transistors, and a retail legend. The tower shown above in 1963, and the gas tank in the background, were on Union Street. Although they are both now gone, this lazy blogger will continue to combine history, news and commentary for those of us who still remember a different era.

reprinted from November of 2013

Farm Nonsense In Lehigh Valley

There is no end to the nonsense about farms in the Lehigh Valley.  Subscribers know that I oppose Farmland Preservation.  While there is plenty of farmland in the valley,  all Farmland Preservation does is buy development rights from land owners who never intended to sell the land in the first place.  Ironically the rational farm program, Clean and Green, was misrepresented and bashed in a Morning Call article which has been featured on their webpage now for over three months.  If Farmland Preservation wasn't enough waste of our taxes,  the County has been subsidizing a program to teach farming.  Next, we'll be paying for actors to make believe they're farmers at county display farms.  Get over it... farming is hard work for real farmers on real farms.  Clean and Green provides a tax break for such real farming.

But continuing the nonsense,  now Community Action Committee of Lehigh Valley,  which assists low income people in various ways,  wants to take over the county training farm.  Next we'll be giving their graduates their own farms.  That organization already sets people up in business.  They don't just give fishing poles, they give fish markets.  The Seed Farm offers opportunities for those in the inner city to discover their green thumbs. “I like the idea of bringing in a more diverse population,”  County Executive Phil Armstrong said,  as if minorities were excluded from the previous program.

Ironically the director of Community Action just asked me to appear on his new radio show.  I'm not trying to be the guest from hell, but this blog would serve little purpose if I pull punches,  even with an upcoming host.

Allentown's Delusions Of Grandeur

On yesterday's post about the All American City,  someone commented that Allentown had a lot of nerve applying,  considering that the city elected a mayor facing numerous corruption charges.  Also yesterday,  I announced on facebook that Bernie O'Hare and I will be Alan Jenning's first guests on his new WDIY radio show,  after he resigned in 2014 in protest that the station wouldn't air his previous show with us.  Not to be an ungrateful guest,  but I scanned the station's upcoming schedule, and it's business as usual.... Another host interviews J.B. Reilly, talking about business leadership in Allentown.  I don't mean to imply that Reilly has delusions of grandeur,  we are building him a $Billiion dollars worth of real estate. However,  not only was the deck stacked in his favor, it was made for him.

Allentown continues to run with sacred cows and cronyism.  My new radio debut may be very short lived.

Blogger on left before being outlawed at The Morning Call

Before The Transformation

For most of Allentown's past, there was no need for a Transformation. We were the ideal city, so much so, that in the mid 1970's, we were proclaimed The All-American City. We were Mayberry, only much larger. Our little leagues played under the lights, and our fathers worked for top union wages. Imagine a city that could boast that it actually manufactured its own fire engines! Imagine a city that had no litter. We now have so much litter, not only do we need trash cans, we need trash compactors. We once were a destination and envied. This blog will continue to report current city events as I perceive them, engage with the bureaucrats as my energy permits, and occasionally share a glimpse of our past.

reprinted from September of 2012

UPDATE JUNE 25, 2018: An article in yesterday's Morning Call compared our current  All American City application with that designation in 1975. Although the article gave statistics, it made no reference that any changes might be abnormal.  At that time, Allentown was 97% white, 2% black and 1% Hispanic.  We are now 53% Hispanic, 10% black and 33% white.  At that time, center city had 3 department stores and dozens and dozens of smaller stores, owned by different people.  All that is now gone, but we have eight new buildings, owned by one person. Besides the dramatic racial demographic shift, which sociologically is a case study in itself,  the article also omitted the social economic shift.  The center city population is drastically poorer than before.

Trolley Demise In Allentown

A local young urbanist speculated that automobiles put the end to trolleys in the Lehigh Valley. He was half right, actually it was the Mad Men from General Motors. In the early 1950's, Americans were still a one car family, even in the prosperous Lehigh Valley. The mass transit system was still full of the other family members, still using the system for work, shopping and school. Between the late 1940's and 1953, Hamilton Street had both trolleys and buses. In the late 40's, General Motors wined and dined transit officials all over the country, exhorting the benefits of their buses. Shown above is a Lehigh Valley Transit work car, towing a trolley to Bethlehem Steel to be scrapped. The photograph was taken in 1952 on St. John Street, heading toward the Fountain Hill route. In June of 1953, the last trolley would run on Hamilton Street.

reprinted for September of 2011

The Dinosaurs Of Sumner Avenue

Up to the early 1950's, Allentown was heated by coal, and much of it came from Sumner Avenue. Sumner was a unique street, because it was served by the West End Branch of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. The spur route ran along Sumner, until it crossed Tilghman at 17th Street, and then looped back East along Liberty Street, ending at 12th. Coal trucks would elevate up, and the coal would be pushed down chutes into the basement coal bins, usually under the front porches of the row houses. Several times a day coal would need to be shoveled into the boiler or furnace. By the early 1970's, although most of the coal yards were closed for over a decade, the machines of that industry still stood on Sumner Avenue. Eventually, they took a short trip to one of the scrap yards, which are still on the avenue, but not before I photographed them.

reprinted from 2016

photocredit:molovinsky

Local Complacency In The Lehigh Valley

Most liberals in Lehigh Valley who are bent out of shape about Donald Trump are completely complacent about local politics.  Because of this complacency we have a former mayor being sentenced in early September on 47 counts of corruption.

It pains me to say that we also have a local newspaper steeped in protecting local sacred cows and cronyism.  There was never a word about corruption at city hall until the FBI raid in 2015. A former Allentown school board member, Scott Armstrong,  complains about how silent they are now about the up-side-down district finances.  I occasionally remind my readers about the paper's silence concerning the agenda of the Wildlands Conservancy.

Readers concerned about the unlevel playing field created by the NIZ are mostly confined to this blog for information.  When the paper publicizes their Keystone Journalism awards,  all we can do is wonder about the news in the towns with the losing papers.