Tamaqua Then and Now

This book is a collection of photographs/postcards—then and now—of the town of Tamaqua, Pennsylvania, where I grew up. I graduated from Tamaqua Area Joint Senior High School in 1961, worked for two years at the Evening Courier, a newspaper that no longer exists, then joined the U.S. Navy. Thanks to the G.I. Bill, I was able to go to Penn State and I never really returned to Tamaqua except for visits to family.

So this book is a long overdue return visit. I collected old photographs and postcards of Tamaqua from many sources and then walked around town on two days in July 2009 taking new photographs of old sites. I did not use anything other than my eyes to attempt to match the new with the old. For the most part, I shot with a 10:20 lens because I believed that only a wide-angle lens would recapture the past. The camera actually captured much more than the originals, so I then cropped to more or less match.

This book is a work in progress and a labor of love. Although there is some history attached to some of the photographs, for the most part it’s the comparative scenes that I was most interested in. After all, I’m not a historian and I don’t have the resources to track down the history of each building. But I do have a camera.

I wasn’t able to photograph every site to match every postcard or photograph that I have. I just plain forgot to shoot the Majestic Hotel, and a truck that was parked in front of Odd Fellows’ Cemetery for days on end made me skip that scene. Heavy foliage kept me from shooting some scenes from the road to New England Valley and lack of time or foul weather kept me from getting some other photographs.

Given that some day I hope to go back and also my hope that other old photographs and postcards will surface, I’d like to think of this book as a first edition or first in a series. I love Tamaqua—it really was an important part of my life—and I’d like to help contribute to remembering it in my way.

I’d like to suggest that someone organize a major one-year photoshoot in Tamaqua to record what the town is like now so a century hence residents will have photos for comparison. When I think of all of the buildings that have disappeared in my lifetime (including the Courier!), I realize how important it is to document the town now for the day when it will be the town then.

R Thomas Berner

Farewell, My Lucy

A couple of years ago we replaced our noisy garage door with one that was so silent, Paulette and I never knew when one another had come home. On the other hand, Lucy would usually jump up from wherever she was and mosey down the hall to the laundry room and await the person or persons who had just driven into the garage.

We knew, though, she wouldn't be there the night we returned from a photo trip to White Sands. We knew because we knew our dog sitter had taken her to our vet after finding her lying on the floor and unable to stand that afternoon. We cut short our trip, checked out of our hotel, and returned to Santa Fe on a four-hour trip made mostly in silence. For part of the trip a rainbow seemed to track with us, but I think we both knew better. We just didn't say anything.

***

We rescued Lucy when she was two years old. Our previous golden retriever, Bailey, had died a couple of months earlier and our vet had alerted us that someone had an adult golden who needed a home. We both agreed we'd check out the dog and decide within a week. No quick decisions.

Lucy came home with us the same day we met her.

My previous goldens had adapted quickly to their surroundings. Show them the property line and they would, for the most part, never cross it. Lucy was a block away within seconds, chasing a neighbor's cat.

It was the first of many times we realized that she had a mind of her own and that she loved to run as far away from us as she could. No command would bring her back. We learned that the best way to have her return to us when we took her for a run in a nearby Penn State cornfield was to do it with her boyfriend, Ed, a golden one year younger. When Ed, who obeyed all commands, would return to his master, Lucy usually followed. Usually.

***

She did show some signs of adaptability when we moved to Santa Fe. Unlike us, she quickly figured out that when not moving around, you found shade. If she wanted to rest while on an early morning walk, she plopped down in the shade. Sometimes that meant I had to stand in the sun waiting until she was ready to move on.

We had hoped that she would stay close to home but when we took her to a nearby field and let her run, she ran, just as she had in Pennsylvania. Older, but no wiser. Getting her to return was tricky and so we seldom took her on runs, but did walk her every day, usually for four miles.

Around the age of 10, she wasn't as big on long walks and so I would walk her for about two miles and then go back out on my own. Closer to 12, she didn't always want to walk two miles and that was fine. I let her decide.

We usually entered the trail system near our house and at the first right turn, if she wanted to go home, she'd take the turn. but if she didn't, she'd move as far to the left as she could and walk past the right turn looking straight ahead. I think she was afraid that if I saw her look right, I'd take her that way against her will.

Lucy figured in three books I wrote. In the first, The Cottontails and the Jackrabbits, a children's book, a golden retriever "steals" a baby jackrabbit. All ends well, of course, because golden retrievers retrieve, not hurt. In fact, for this book I need an illustration of a golden running through a field of wild flowers. We took Lucy to the nearby field and just to make sure she'd come back to us, we took a supply of dog biscuits, which in our house are called bones.

Unleashed, she did not move. We told her to run. She did not move. Finally, I threw a bone and she went after it and came right back. So we were now in reverse of the past. Rather than using a bone to lure her back, we used it to get her to run away. (See photo above)

In The Hunt for Domingo Roybal, Lucy's eye problems became problems for one of the minor characters who spent a lot of money on clothing and was always short of cash. Then there was The Bump on Lucy's Nose, a children's book based on another medical problem Lucy came through successfully.

***

A couple of nights before we left on our photo trip, we had a really violent storm. Lucy got in bed with us, something she did during storms only when she got older. The next day we had several errands to run and for some reason I invited Lucy to join us. She had a hard time jumping into the car, but I suggested that it was because she was so excited she didn't position herself correctly before leaping. Still, the three of us had a grand time together running errands.

The next day we left her in the care of her beloved dog sitter and never saw her again.

We will scatter her ashes among the wild flowers in the field where she liked to run when we let her.

A Boswell Moment

(In 2002, Bill Welch, who died on Sept. 4, was honored by Penn State as a Renaissance Scholar. He asked me, among others, to make remarks. My remarks follow.)

Had I known I was going to get my three minutes of fame as Bill Welch’s Boswell—that’s Boswell the biographer, not Boswell the sportswriter—I would have taken notes. Much of what I have to say has been dragged from my aging memory. It has been contextualized, re-contextualized, romanticized—and sanitized.

By sanitized, I mean I won’t say anything that wouldn’t be acceptable in mixed company—mixed company being defined as journalists and non-journalists.

I used to think that Bill was a trivia expert because he could produce information about anything, anywhere, anytime. Now I realize that the man I met more than 30 years ago was a Renaissance scholar. I am here to pay tribute to the scholar.

As a scholar, Bill had a rocky start. When he attended Penn State, he was one of the original HUB Rats. He was so good at it that President Walker red-shirted him—and that’s the real reason it took Bill five years to graduate.

As a scholar, he takes his time. Don’t lend him a book. It took him 20 years to read and return Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. And I still don’t think he read it, but he did say it helped him fall asleep at night.

Bill is very good at coming up with a light-hearted one-line comment on just about any situation. Shortly after I started working with him at the Centre Daily Times, I noticed a story that referred to him as a native of State College. I pointed out that to be a native of some place, you had to have been born there—and he had been born in Philadelphia. After all, the word “native” is derived from “nativity.”

Without pause, he replied: “True, but I was conceived here.”

Bill may have struck the first blow for fetal rights—and we didn’t know it at the time.

Bill is an original. No cliché has ever passed through his lips or his typewriter. Jerry Weinstein, our editor at the CDT, said that Bill was his best writer—but he didn’t write enough. When I told Bill what Jerry said, Bill said he didn’t write more because he found writing difficult. And while that may sound self-deprecating, it really was his honest response, not his usual one-line quip.

If brevity is, as Polonius said, the soul of wit, then, in Bill’s case, it is also the seed of wisdom. I remember a time when he needed to rein in an aggressive city editor. Trying to find a way to make the person understand good people skills, he said: Your approach is Napoleonic while mine is Socratic.

Consider the sub-text and allusion in that sentence. In one sentence, he was able to size up a situation and give it perspective.

But enough of Bill’s quick wit. The most important thing about Bill Welch is not his humor or his intellect, but his selfless character.

Bill can tell a story about himself and not be the center of the story. It can be an adventure or a travelogue and you feel as though you’re with him. His stories entertain, enlighten and inform.

I have seldom seen Bill angry. The only two times I ever saw him get short with someone involved situations in which the other person was racially insensitive. The blood rose immediately and Bill pounced. No time for Socrates.

I have known longer than many about his medical problems and yet I have never heard him complain.

Even though, in his words, he took life on a respirator to the outer limits and he also needed to go through extensive rehabilitation, he never complained.

Even when he was on dialysis, he never complained.

Even when Borough Council is acting up, he never complains.

Well, a little bit.

He reminds me of Job. Great patience. Great role model. The ability to make us all feel good about ourselves and each other. Not only a Renaissance scholar, but a Renaissance man.

Congratulations to a very deserving person.

Thank you.

Why Republicans Are Fighting an Uphill Battle in New Mexico

Mr. Dooley dropped by my office the other day to provide some insight on the current state of political affairs in New Mexico. I wasn’t taking notes so this is from memory and it’s not in his Irish brogue. I can’t write like he talks. I can’t even talk like he talks.
Dooley: So, Berner, you’re looking forward to the next round of elections in The Land of Enchantment?
Berner: Should be interesting. No incumbent for governor. Republicans could win.
D: Not a chance.
B: Why not?
D: When you hear Republicans talk, what do they say?
B: Here, they’re talking about how corrupt the state is.
D: What else?
B: How fiscally conservative they are.
D: Right. To cut to the chase, they say: Less government, lower taxes. Right?
B: Sure. All Republicans say that.
D: Let’s discuss issues. Let’s start with DWI.
B: That’s a big issue in New Mexico. The party that can solve that can reign forever.
D: So here’s the Republican response: Less government, lower taxes.
B: What’s wrong with that?
D: How does that solve the DWI problem?
B: Beats me.
D: What’s another issue?
B: I have to admit that public education is in a sorry state. Even I am shocked at the political meddling that’s going on in higher education.
D: So here’s the Republican response: Less government, lower taxes.
(I didn’t say anything and Mr. Dooley kept talking.)
Voters are not terribly bright and in New Mexico I sense they’ll just vote for the Democrats. But think about it. The Democrats have been in power a long time. DWI became a problem on their watch. Low achievement in the public schools—on the their watch. But the voters don’t see that and the Republicans don’t get it. Look, if you want less government and lower taxes, it means you’re not going to work at solving the DWI problem and the low academic achievement in the public schools. And all the other problems that people expect government to solve.
(I just listened.)
So the Democrats win every time. Only losers are the people. But, hey, they love their lower taxes.
On that note, Mr. Dooley left New Mexico for Pennsylvania.

Chianti From a Tuscan Villa

Paulette and I are very happy to see our collaborative effort, Chianti From a Tuscan Villa, in print.

We spent seven days on a modest group tour of the Chianti region of Tuscany, staying in a Tuscan villa and going on day trips around the area, to Castellina, Florence, Lucca, San Gimignano, Siena, Tavarnelle Val di Pesa, and Volterra.

On those day trips, we both photographed extensively with the idea of creating this book, a combination of Tom’s photographs and Paulette’s paintings, to create our interpretation of the region that gave birth to the Renaissance and Chianti wine.

And although we visited places not on the tour, such as the Beaded Lily Glass Works in Florence, our plans for other sites did not always pan out. Thomas wanted to see the tomb of Elizabeth Barrett Browning in the English Cemetery in Florence, but the cemetery was closed for renovation work. He did manage to get some photos from a distance. (If you want to see Browning’s tomb, watch the movie Tea with Mussolini. The film opens at her tomb. The film also shows frescoes of Santa Fina in San Gimignano’s Collegiata. )

Alas, museums and churches, for the most part, did not allow photography, and if they did, it had to be without flash (no problem) and tripod (which made getting good photographs in low light a challenge). One church, Santa Lucia al Borghetto in Tavarnelle Val di Pesa (the town where we stayed), allowed photography and the use of a tripod, one of the few times indoor photographs could be taken at a slow speed.

The typeface for the book title and running heads is Medici™ Script Std Regular from Adobe, appropriate for a book of photographs and paintings about the land of the Medici family.

If you have any questions, contact journprof@comcast.net.

The old New Mexico State Penitentiary

On July 25, 2009, as part of PhotoArts Santa Fe, I went on a field trip to the old New Mexico State Penitentiary, infamous for a riot in 1980 in which 33 inmates were murdered by other inmates. About 10 photographers spent three hours shooting inside and outside the prison. Most of the interior shots had to be done on a tripod, unless you wanted to use flash, which no one did.

I took only my Nikon D40 with a Sigma 10:20 lens. I figured that being inside a dark prison, I wouldn’t have much use for my D80 with its 18:200 lens–and I was right. Most of the spaces were not very big, so the wide angle worked perfectly.

We started in the gas chamber, but I have not organized this book according to the way we moved through the prison. In fact, once we were shown the gas chamber, we were free to roam about the unit in which the murderous riot took place. We saw where inmates’ heads were chopped off and where one inmate’s body was incinerated.

I didn’t take any photos there, but I did shoot the gas chamber. It was used only once--in 1960--so it didn’t quite carry the same burden that the cellblock of death did.

Our guide said that the prison was closed in 1999 and everyone moved to a new facility nearby. As the photos show, no effort was made to clean up. Today part of the prison is used as a movie set.

The Hosie

One of the anchors in my younger days, at a time when anchors were very important (and had nothing to do with the Navy, which would come along a little later in my life), was the American Hose Company No. 1 of Tamaqua. At the time, it was one of four companies in town, joined by the Citizens, East End and South Ward. All members were volunteers.

You had to be 18 to join any of the companies, and one great benefit was that you could drink even though the legal age was 21. Because the fire companies were all clubs and admission was by membership only, there was little fear of a surprise raid by liquor control board agents.

However, the real anchor was not the alcohol, but the camaraderie. And in some cases, surrogate fathers for a fatherless male.

Volunteers learned to work with others of all ages, not only in training to fight fires but in cleaning up after. I still remember one major lesson after all these years: Always be ready for the next fire. When we returned from a fire, we’d pull all of the hoses off our trucks and replace them with dry ones, putting the wet ones on the hose rack. Today, when I return from a photo shoot, I immediately download my photos to my computer and ensure that my camera batteries are charged: Always be ready for the next shoot.

I feel a great loyalty to the Hosie and was thrilled when I was asked to help write the history of the company for its 100th anniversary celebration in 1978. By that time I was a graduate student at Penn State, married with children. We made weekend trips to Tamaqua in part to see Grandma but also for me to conduct research on my master’s thesis, about The Evening Courier, where I had my first full-time newspaper job after graduating from high school in 1961. (See One Man’s Newspaper History.)

Imagine my delight in the next century when, while doing research for a book about Tamaqua, I came across an old photo of members of the Hosie posed with their three trucks (circa 1930). Because my book focuses on doing comparative photos—then and now—the old Hosie photo was perfect.

Of course, I now know no one at the Hosie, having let my membership lapse in the early 1970s. But I was able to locate a retired member who had served the community as fire chief, and he set up a photo opportunity for me.

And it was revealing. The trucks are no longer red, but blue. The Hosie houses, but does not own, the town’s only aerial truck, as it did when I was a member. The members could not afford to raise the money to buy an aerial truck, so the borough council bought one. It doesn’t say AMERICAN HOSE CO. NO 1 on its doors, but TAMAQUA FIRE DEPARTMENT. Each member now has his own gear with his name on the back, wrapped low around big rubber boots so when the alarm sounds, each can jump into the boots and pull up his trousers and jump onto the truck. No more trying to put on gear while hanging onto a truck bellowing through town to a fire.

Before we could set up the equipment for the photo shoot, an alarm came in for a propane spill at Turkey Hill (a convenience store) and the men were off. I almost—almost—jumped on the truck, but instead photographed the trucks as they pulled out.
When the trucks returned to the Hosie, the captain looked at the old photograph I was trying to imitate and, on his command, drivers moved the trucks into position. Because the aerial wasn’t the Hosie’s, it was not included in the updated photo.

After the shoot, my contact showed me around. In the bar we looked at old photos of what we called the marching club. I recognized many of the people in the 1960 photo. Most, if not all, are gone. I had a hard time identifying anyone in the 1978 photo.

When I got back to Santa Fe and compared then and now photos, I realized that firefighting equipment had gotten so big, the view down the street was obscured.

But the memories lingered, anchored in time.