Something Negative Turned Out Positive

I don’t remember why my mother bought me a camera, but I can pretty much date the arrival of the Brownie Hawkeye into my life as 1954—or 1955. I know that because I have all of the photos from that period and some have dates on them.

I kept an album and the photos were stuck onto a page with black sticky corners. You had to lick them and they tasted terrible, but I endured. I may have graduated to a wet sponge eventually. I don’t remember.

Sometime after I married, my mother must have given me the album. There were fuzzy photos of a rampaging Little Schuylkill during the flood of 1955. And of a bus trip we 5th graders at Arlington Street School took to Valley Forge. When one of my classmates died, I sent a photo of him at Valley Forge to his widow.

Some photographs show friends playing basketball at the East End Playground. Later photographs show the town celebrating its 125th anniversary, which honored the Native American. We were taught that the name of our town, Tamaqua, was Indian in origin.

Other photographs show my train set and my younger cousins watching my trains. Then there was a trip to the Jersey shore with cousins.

Eventually I graduated to color and I have those photos, too. The sticky corners didn’t hold up after all these years and I removed most of the photos from the album, although I kept the album and the photos and stuck them in a box with other albums, the box relegated to a shelf or two in our garage.

What I lost in all those years were the negatives. Not that I needed them. I had the photos.

The other day I was rummaging through some boxes that contain photographs and newspaper clips acquired by my 95-year-old mother. I am creating a legacy DVD for children, sisters and cousins, mostly photographs that predate me (although I couldn’t resist including some of myself as an adult).

One of the envelopes that my mother had saved all these years was stuffed with square negatives. I dismissed the first envelope, but a few hours later gave it a second thought when I came across a second envelope and held one of the negatives up to the light.

It was Mr. Dillon! A neighbor in the 600 block of Arlington Street. Another showed young boys roasting hot dogs or marshmallows around a campfire. I recognized the negatives because I had taken the photos. What a great find!

I don’t know that I’ll be scanning any of the negatives, but just knowing that I have them after all these years is a good feeling. As a friend put, “Something negative turned out positive.” Bad pun, but nice sentiment.

Service Above and Beyond

A couple of months ago I needed to get a quick oil change before we took a long weekend trip. I dropped in to a nearby Jiffy Lube and my car was quickly on the rack and everything taken care. In the meantime, I waited in a pleasant room with free coffee, soft drinks and popcorn. (I had some popcorn.)

When my car was ready and my bill paid, the service manager walked me to my car, opened the door for me and handed me my keys, all while expressing gratitude for my business. The mechanic who worked on my car waved from his service bay and then thanked me and urged me to come again.

Last week when major service on my car was completed at the dealership where I bought it, the service agent went through everything that had been done to the car and explained what it all meant. This is routine for this dealer, but in light of Jiffy Lube and Santa Fe Imaging, I took greater note.

If you’ve read my previous blog entry, you know that I complained about lousy service after getting an aorta ultrasound. I’m still waiting for a response from the imaging service and I’m beginning to suspect I’m not going to get one.

Medical service, of course, is life and death and it would be difficult to declare that I’m not going there again, etc. In the case of the imaging service, my doctor said it’s the only one in town that could perform what she wanted. 

Be that as it may, the contrast between Jiffy Lube and Santa Fe Imaging is noteworthy. I mentioned it to my wife and we both agreed that given the economic climate, it’s good business to pay attention to customers no matter how little they spend.

Doesn’t the Walmart greeter make you feel good? Even the people who check your purchases at the door at Sam’s wish you a good day as if they really mean it and you want to respond in kind. 

If the downturn in the economy has meant one thing, it may be more touchy-feel treatment from providers of all kinds of service, from the mechanic in the service bay who changes your oil to the owner of a restaurant.

I hope that when (not if) the economy improves, the treatment continues.

It makes my day.

Body Parts

I think this speaks for itself.

Professional Relations
Santa Fe Imaging
1640 Hospital Drive
Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505

Your comment form does not provide me with the space I need to comment.

When I first called Santa Fe Imaging to make an appointment, I told the person who answered the phone that I needed an aorta ultrasound. She replied: “Which part of the body is that?”

After she figured it out and we agreed on a date, she told me to drink 24 ounces of water before the appointment and to hold it. When I arrived for my appointment, my bladder nearly bursting, the appointment clerk realized that I should have been fasting, not feasting and rescheduled the appointment.

A day before the appointment someone called to make sure all was in order and I repeated the above story. She said that the temps didn’t always know medical terminology, to which I replied: Aorta seems to me to be basic biology.

During this phone call, by the way, your person used the word “kidney” and I challenged her. I pointed out that this procedure had nothing to do with my kidney. She double checked the records and agreed.

I fasted, I arrived on time, I was promptly recorded and soon taken to a room where the correct procedure was done professionally by someone named Charlie.

Other than scheduling, which I’d give a 1 to, everyone else on your form rates a 6.

Needless to say, just repeating the which body part question will get me a lot of laughs at parties.

Sincerely,

Tales from Coal Country

The Black Rock That Built America: A Tribute to the Anthracite Coal Miners, By Gerald L McKerns C.C., Xlibris, 2007, 134pp. (Available at http://www.geraldmckerns.com/) 

This compact history of the Anthracite region of Pennsylvania comes with a lot of local anecdotes and personal insights one would not find in an academic history. That in itself makes it an interesting addition to the history and lore of the hard coal country.

McKerns was born in St. Nicholas, a company “town” just outside Mahanoy City in Schuylkill County. McKerns refers to St. Nicholas as a “patch,” which are small clusters of homes in between towns. Before bypasses, rerouted highways and Interstates, you went through a lot of patches driving from Point A to Point B. McKerns tells us some of what happened in the towns and patches and that is a welcome addition to any Coal Cracker’s history. (That’s what the C.C. stands for in McKern’s byline.)

For example, I did not know about that the religious differences in Mahanoy City were manifested in the membership of its two fire companies—one Irish Catholic and one Welsh Protestant. Summoned by an alarm that was a pretext for a fight, members of the companies met in downtown Mahanoy City. Shooting and death followed. Being of Welsh descent and as a former member of the historically Protestant fire company in Tamaqua, I understand—but don’t endorse—the division and am glad that today cooperation among coal region fire companies and diversity of membership is first and foremost.

The book is filled with many tidbits, some of which McKerns remembers from his youth, stories told, as he says, by “old timers who shared with me their tears and tales of days gone by.” McKerns tells of the day he witnessed the unsuccessful rescue of a miner while the miner’s son watched. The next day McKerns was asked to serve as an altar boy at a funeral mass and at the mass as he looked down the aisle at the grieving family walking in he recognized the miner’s son. “Just the other day,” he writes, “I watched men remove dirt that covered a miner who was in a hole in the ground and today men will put that miner in a hole in the ground and cover him with dirt.”

McKerns devotes one chapter to the Sheppton mine cave-in of 1963, which as a reporter for the Tamaqua newspaper I vividly remember. For coal region history buffs, that chapter alone is worth the price of the book. The book includes many old photographs and drawings, some of which, such as the cover, were done by the author.

McKerns ends on the optimistic note that coal will be king again. I’m skeptical myself, but having grown up at a time when coal mines were being shuttered and thousands of men were losing their jobs, I understand McKerns’ hope for a comeback. 

One thing that would have made this book much better is an index. Still, I will place it on my bookshelf with my other coal region books and pass it on to my children at the appropriate time, which I hope is a long way off.

No Greater Love

My Hero My Son, The true story of Sgt. Andrew J. Baddick, an 82nd Airborne Division paratrooper who made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq, by Joseph Baddick, BookSurge/CreateSpace, 2010, 277pp.

John 15:13—Greater love than this no man hath, that a man lay down his life for his friends. (Douay-Rheims Bible)

This book honors the life—and sacrifice—of a soldier who rescued a fellow soldier from drowning in a canal in Iraq, and then when told that another soldier was still in the water, jumped back in to save him, only to lose his own life.

One would expect a book by a father about his late son, both of whom served in the 82nd Airborne at different times, would be highly emotional, but Joe Baddick avoids over-the-top language and lets you decide when to sigh and when to cry. Joe writes in an original and detached style, almost as if he’s telling someone else’s story sitting in his living room or at a local bar. There are no cliff-hanger endings. The story is told simply and sequentially.

Joe gives readers some background on the Pennsylvania Coal Region so we can better understand him and A.J. (as he’s known) and then he takes us through A.J.’s childhood (which includes Joe's divorce and remarriage). Joe and I both grew up in Tamaqua, although I don’t know him. It turns out that enlisting in the Army did for A.J. what it did for a lot of us in the Region—it gave us a free ticket out of town and taught us how to focus on something.

Joe reproduces the official report on A.J.’s death, but also includes comments from other soldiers who served with him. There are just some things official reports don’t tell you that you’re glad to learn.

“Writing this book,” Joe says at the end, “has been a journey for me, back to happier times, interesting times, fun times, and sad times. In talking to other families [who lost their lives in war], I found out that our sons led very similar lives. They were loving, humorous, dedicated, professional, and seemed to be cut from the same special cloth that made them who they were, a breed apart from all others.”

In addition to all of the personal information, Joe describes two private meetings that families of soldiers killed in the war had with President Bush. Joe reports that at the first one when Joe’s wife started to tear up, the president put his arm around her and said, “Let’s cry together.” Joe calls Bush “the real article” and includes two photos, one of Bush holding Joe’s granddaughter, Andi Rose.

The title of this essay is meant to convey two meanings. One, of course, is A.J.’s sacrifice. The other is Joe’s love for his son. No greater love.

User Fees and Parking

I receive a newsletter from Arthur Frommer, a name you may recognize if you travel and buy travel guides. I usually skim and then delete his newsletters, but I saved one to use as a take-off point in an essay.

In a recent newsletter, Frommer complains (I actually want to say “whines”) because the application fee for a visa (not the credit card) was being increased to $150 per person and the fee for obtaining a passport was being increased to $135.

I found a slightly lower figure at www.state.gov, but that doesn’t mean the fee is not proposed to increase at some point. Whatever, it doesn’t invalidate what I’m about to comment on, and that is Frommer’s statement, to wit:

“So once again, instead of funding the cost of running the State Department from general tax revenues (which is the fair way to do it), we are charging a user's fee that is a burden not to our well-off citizens but to Americans of low income. $135 for a passport!”


Fair to whom?
What set me off is Frommer’s feeling that the State Department should not recover reasonable costs, such as the costs of processing visa and passport applications, that it should all be funded by taxpayers. Take his argument to its logical (it’s actually illogical!) conclusion and you have the taxpayers subsidizing all kinds of fees.

Think about all of the things individuals seek from government that have some processing time connected to them and, hence, a fee. A journalist wants a copy of a document s/he should pay a reasonable fee for the copy. Real estate agents wants a list of deed transfers; pay for it.

What lies at the bottom of Frommer’s thinking is what I call the free parking space mindset. No matter where I’ve lived, people have complained because they’ve had to pay to park.

Why can’t parking be free? they ask.

If parking were free, there would be no parking because the first ones to the space would sit there all day.

But parking is free at the mall, some argue.

Not really. When the mall is built and the owner calculates rents, he factors in every one of his costs, including what it cost him to build a parking lot, stripe it and maintain it.

There’s no such thing as a free parking space.

And, while I’m at it, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Or a free travel guide.

So get over it, Mr. Frommer, and everyone else.

Canyon de Chelly

Acting on the advice of friends, Paulette and I signed up for an Elderhostel trip (just as Elderhostel was changing its name to Exploritas). We went to Canyon de Chelly in nearby Chinle, Arizona. It is a national monument and, to quote the National Park Service:

Reflecting one of the longest continuously inhabited landscapes of North America, the cultural resources of Canyon de Chelly include distinctive architecture, artifacts, and rock imagery while exhibiting remarkable preservation integrity that provides outstanding opportunities for study and contemplation. Canyon de Chelly also sustains a living community of Navajo people, who are connected to a landscape of great historical and spiritual significance. Canyon de Chelly is unique among National Park service units, as it is comprised entirely of Navajo Tribal Trust Land that remains home to the canyon community. NPS works in partnership with the Navajo Nation to manage park resources and sustain the living Navajo community.

We took the first date available in 2010 and it happened to coincide with my birthday (and I’m showing off my new bolo in the accompanying photo). As part of the program, we were taken on a guided tour of the South Rim and the canyon floor a thousand feet below and sat through several interesting and worthwhile lectures about the Navajo. When we left, we drove along the North Rim and stopped at every outlook. A snowstorm had hit overnight and was continuing off and on as we stopped and photographed.

Once back in Santa Fe, we culled our photographs and then Paulette picked up her brush and created her own interpretations of Canyon de Chelly. So here they are—pixels and bristles™.

Table of contents
Homage to Edward S. Curtis 1
South Rim View 2-3
Teysi Overlook 4-5, 6
South Rim View 7-13
Spider Rock 14
Ring 15
White House from the Canyon Floor 16-17
White House from the South Rim 18
Standing Cow Ruin 19
The Bayeaux Tapestry of Canyon de Chelly 20
Rock Art 22-23
Canyon Floor 24-25
First Ruin 26
Horses 27
Hogan 28-29
Canyon Floor Image 30-35
Canyon Floor 36-39
Canyon Floor Trees 40-41
Antelope House 42-43
Antelope House from the North Rim 44
Antelope 45
North Rim View 46-57
Paulette on the North Rim 58
Outside Our Motel 59
The Story Behind Pixels and BristlesTM 60