Floods

Images of floods turn one's thoughts to the Flood of 1955. Two hurricanes, Connie and Diane, hit the US five days apart, both in North Carolina. They had weakened to Cat 1 and Cat 3, resp. by then but two hurricanes coming so close together was a problem. There was little wind damage this far north, but Connie dumped 12 inches of rain and saturated the ground. Then, when Diane came along a few days later with 10-20 inches more, there was no place for it to go, and the rivers left their banks all the way up through the northeast. Around 200 people died from the storms, mostly in Connecticut, where Woonsocket RI was nearly washed away by a 20 ft. wall of water.

 
Locally, the most deaths were 80 lost at Camp Davis, a Boy Scout camp.

Total damages were in excess of 7-8 billion dollars in today's money.

There is a gallery of pictures of Easton during the flood here, including part of an 8 mm film that my father had shot -- and which we watched repeatedly when we were kids. My brother Kevin put it up on YouTube a while back. The view, for any locals out there, is from the Lehigh Valley RR trestle facing downtown. In the foreground, the 3rd St. bridge crosses the Lehigh and ducks under the NJRR trestle.



The most dramatic damage locally was the breaking of the Northampton St. Bridge when the Columbia-Portland Bridge, the last of the old covered bridges, collapsed and came cruising down the Delaware like a battering ram and took out the middle span. The bridge had been called "the Gibraltar of the Delaware" after surviving the Pumpkin Freshet of 1903, when every other bridge north of Trenton had been washed away, but the Hurricane Diane flood was too much. An account of its untimely demise can be found here. 

So it's not a new thing for two hurricanes to come in quick succession, nor for rain to outweigh wind as the major destructive force. When people say, "I've never seen it this bad in my life," it's well to ask how long they've been around.

Harvey and Irma were damn big storms -- and their landfalls were "target-rich environments." There were more people living in vulnerable areas and more and costlier buildings erected there, magnifying the destruction.

But 6-9 December, 1935, massive flooding hit Houston, not from a tropical storm, but from regular ol' thunderstorms.

20.6" fell in 35 hours over Westfield, TX. Houston reported 5.52" of rain. Satsuma in northwest Harris County had 16.49" of rain. Bayous were 52 feet above normal. The city's pumping station was unable to supply water for a few days and the city had no protection against fire. Buffalo Bayou at Houston 54.4 feet with 40,000 cfs. Buffalo Bayou at Addicks 85.6'. 2/3 of rural Harris County was flooded. Halls Bayou was over its banks. Spring and Cypress Creeks were out of their banks.

But about half of the modern city wasn't there yet, and in the 1930 census Houston was only the 26th largest city in the US, not the 4th, and held just above a quarter of a million people. (Detroit was 4th; Philadelphia 3rd. Los Angeles was 5th.) So there were fewer people to be flooded out. And there was not 24/7 coverage to hype the storm. (Which also meant -- as was the case with Connie and Diane in 1955 -- that people did not get a timely heads-up and were taken somewhat by surprise.)

Today we went to the funeral mass at Our Lady of Lebanon church for our neighbor's girl, Elizabeth, who was only 12. It was a sad affair. The grandmother broke down when they came to close the lid on the casket and began to wail. Not a few others came close to it, as well.

There were five priests concelebrating, including a couple of Latin-rite priests from up the hill. The deacon was a guy I went to high school with -- Tony Koury. 

 

 

Virtue Signalling

A house on the next block, half of a duplex, has two signs on its front porch, both identical. They read: "Hate Has No Home Here." Not that I suspect his neighbors on either side of harboring sinister sentiments; but I also suspect that the resident may actually hate such things as racism, sexism, or even Donald Trump. The message is repeated in Arabic, just in case anyone misses the signal, and also in Hindi and perhaps Urdu, as well as a script I did not recognize, in Hebrew, and in Spanish. Perhaps, by omission the resident is signalling a dislike for Germans or Russians or French or of speakers of Tamil. The irony is that people using one of the scripts displayed have oft-time exhibited murderous hatred for users of another of the scripts. Oh, well. The purpose of the sign is to signal the resident's moral smugness to members of his own tribe.

A house on the next block south (another duplex) has a sign in its window. This one features a line drawing of a revolver that seems to be pointed at the viewer and bears the inscription: "Never Mind the Dog; Beware of Owner!" This, too, is a kind of virtue signalling, albeit to a different peer group, and one which has a utilitarian bent in that the home may be that much less likely to be broken into by some of the local gentry.


I am trying to recollect whether the first house mentioned is the one that was raided by an armored car a couple years ago because the previous resident was selling dope to the kids on the playground behind the house. It was certainly within a few doors of the place.

Another block or so along, I saw on my daily stroll, a couple entering their home -- I assume it was theirs -- and the woman struck the man in the hear by swatting him with a sheaf of papers she had, shrieking (yes, shrieking) "Will you get that door open!!!" And the man replied testily, "I'm trying to find the hole!" I assume he meant the keyhole. The woman was casting shade. No one else was about, but still, when did people start airing their domestic concerns in this way. What's next: fistfights on airplanes? Oh, wait.

This is the same more-or-less daily walk on which I saw a fellow on a skateboard walking a pair of dogs, the which were pulling him along on the skateboard, like a team of Alaskan huskies. Except they were pit bulls.

You see all kinds of people. Sometimes you can use them in stories.

Section 8 Used to Mean Crazy. Sometimes It Still Does.

In yet another incident, five shots were fired at 1410 Ferry St., one of them hitting a neighboring residence another hitting a parked car. The shooting took place about 3:56 p.m. on 20 Sept. 2016, about ten minutes after the school bus had dropped off a load of kids at that corner, including three sisters aged 7, 8, and 9 who lived at the targeted house.

This is only one block north and three blocks east of where spree killers passed through town a while back. Fortunately, the TOFian granddaughter no longer lives in the neighborhood.

The shooter was in a black or dark blue sedan, apparently driven by a woman and carrying three males. There were four people on the front porch at the time, including the 8-year old girl, who was doing her homework.

The Glorious Eighth

The 8th of July comes on the 10th this year, in line with the modern custom of pushing celebrations off onto the nearest weekend in order to increase revenues. One cannot expect people to take time off from work simply to celebrate, let alone for employers to give people the day off. This isn't the Middle Ages, after all, when half the year was taken up with holy days and festivals. (They may up for it in the other half. In an agricultural society the work has to be done when it has to be done.)

The Easton Flag

8 July 1776 was the date when the Declaration of Independence was read in public in Philadelphia, Trenton NJ, and Easton PA. In Easton there was a public celebration with a fife and drum corps and the local militia. Robert Levers, Chairman of the Committee of Safety, read the declaration from the steps of the courthouse, which was then in Centre Square, and the crowd gave three huzzahs for the United States and unfurled of a flag bearing a representation of the thirteen colonies.

Back for the bicentennial the city tracked down a descendant of Robert Levers and flew him out to re-enact the reading wearing colonial togs. The courthouse was elsewhere and Centre Square is occupied by a Civil War monument, but a) it's location, location, location and b) the present courthouse has no steps and being situated beside the county prison attracts few tourists.

They also invited Lord and Lady Pomfret, after whose estate of Easton-Neston in Northamptonshire, the Penns named both the city and the county. They presented them with the rose rent, which I understand had been in arrears for two centuries. Perhaps they presented an entire bouquet. Such an act was at odds with the revolutionary fervor that had actuated the original events, but there were no hard feelings. Perhaps the took milord and milady to dinner at the Pomfret Club, a dining club so exclusive that it lets my dad in.

The city has repeated Heritage Days ever since, though without the descendants or Lords. It has expanded to include an encampment of Lenape Indians and (anachronistically enough) civil war re-enactors; as well as fun and games for kiddies, fireworks off a barge in the river, and so on. Driving past the Square today after breakfast with Pere today, we saw a food truck on South Third at Ferry that announced "genuine Egyptian food." Plus ca change, and all that.

St. Joe

Here is a short movie by Joe Hanceviz of the old church before its closing.

https://www.facebook.com/joe.hancaviz/videos/1056316324449399/

If They'd Had This Many Every Sunday

this would not be the closing mass for the building.

Too Close for Comfort, part two

TOF's cousin, his milk-sister from days of yore, was over to the stronghold the other day and, as so often the case, talk turned to the recent murder spree that touched down tornado-like in the West Ward and blew lives apart. The friends of the murdered man, one of whom ran out of the house to comfort him as he lay dying, bore names familiar to TOF from his own schooldays -- Bader and Kutz. And Mariellen, the aforesaid cousin, recollected that she had taught the fellow in middle school. He was not an academic powerhouse, but had worked hard and dutifully and had achieved respectable grades.

Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr.

There had been another murder in Easton this past March 11.

Jeffrey S. Knoble Jr. texted Andrew "Beep" White trying to get a room for the night, and White, trying to be a good Samaritan, rented a room at the Quality Inn downtown, across the street from the McDonald's that the TOFian family sometimes use. 

Too Close for Comfort

Last week, Kory Ketrow, 22, who graduated high school a year before the SAMBBITU, was shot multiple times and killed as he was walking home from a friend's house in the early morning of 5 July. This is only a block or so away from the SAMBBITU's own apartment, and that is too damned close.

Kory Ketrow

Lehigh Street, where you don't want to be.

Three Huzzahs for the United States

As TOF writes the Great Fireworks display down on the river is reaching its crescendo, since today was the celebration of the Glorious Eighth. (Yes, we know. Today is the Glorious Twelfth, but it is customary to move celebrations to the nearest weekend for the usual reasons of having people actually attend them. Besides, the 12th of July is Orange Day, celebrating the Williamite victory over the Jacobites at the Battle of the Boyne, and TOF sees no reason to celebrate such a calamity.)

 Heritage Day celebrates the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence, which took place in Easton, as well as Trenton and Philadelphia, on 8 July 1776. This year it was read by a re-enactor playing Robert Levers, the original reader. (One year, they tracked down a descendant of Mr. Levers to do the honors.) There was a second reading in the afternoon in German. (The news of the Declaration was first broken on 5 July 1776 by a Pennsylvanian paper: the Pennsylvanisher Staatsbote. 

Listen up, dudes!

The Easton Flag, said to have flown on 8 July 1776,
but oldest surviving one is attested in the War of 1812

Oddities

Sometimes, things are just odd.

There is an apartment complex along the way we take to go out west of town that bears the unlikely name of "Robin Hood and His Merry Band." There are eight buildings, four on each side of the road. Each building looks to contain four apartments, two at garden level and two above. Each building bears a name on its wall: Robin Hood, Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, Little John, Alan a Dale, Will Scarlett, Fair Annette, and hmmm. Me forgeteth the last one.

To complete the oddity: the street that runs between them, connecting Freemansburg Ave. with the William Penn Highway, is called "Greenwood Ave."

Fun and Games on the Old South Side

Haven't seen this sort of action in the neighborhood since they tore down the Delaware Terrace projects. The cops raided a house about a block away from TOF, looking for a fellow who had been dealing heroin on a nearby playground. There is an alley running behind the duplexes shown in the picture, and the playground is across that alley. In TOF's youth, that playground was actually a cornfield, improbably surrounded by houses and (on one side) by a carpet factory. Every spring the farmer would drive his tractor down from the hill and plow it up and plant corn. Eventually, a new generation of kids arose who regarded the corn as free for the taking, so he gave up and sold out and the city built a park where people could pedal heroin. The carpet factory is also gone. There is a drug store on the site.

From the story:

Easton police served a narcotics search warrant and made one arrest Wednesday morning on the city's South Side.
Elijah Thompson, 23, was taken into custody as part of a Vice Unit investigation into heroin dealing at Milton Street Playground, police Lt. Matthew Gerould said at the scene.
Police obtained a search warrant for a car behind the home, Gerould said, and found $1,500 worth of heroin in the vehicle, Gerould said. Drugs were not found in the house but packaging materials were, Gerould said.

If you take a gander at the picture, you will see a big stone house in the background. This was the first house in the area and was built and inhabited by Francis Schwar (pron. Schwär), from an extensive family of stone masons. The area was once known as "Schwartown" for the large number of relatives scattered about. Their daughter was TOF's grandmother, who lived two houses to the left, off frame. Two houses farther down is the TOFian Fortress of Solitude.

Special Response Team action is actually rare these days on this side of town. But some years ago, before the projects were torn down, a dead body turned up at the intersection in the background. In another incident around the same time, a car full of urban youth pulled up to the red brick house across the street to the left from the Schwär house in the background, and took refuge inside. (That house, too, had once been a Schwar house.) Shortly after, another car pulled up and a hand emerged from the window with a gun, but found no target but a tree. That incident was captured on a nearby security camera. The first car, the one from which the youths had emerged, was being sought by cops for a drive-by shooting in the West Ward. Apparently, the cops were not the only seekers. The gun-brandishers were organizationally related to the targets in the original fusilade.

Counterattack!

TOF is trying an experiment. Can he load a video from his machine to the intertubes? We shall see. [The answer turned out to be no.]

The great classic movie COUNTERATTACK was made in 1964/65 by a groups of juniors and seniors at Notre Dame High School, Green Pond, PA, and was presented on the occasion of an evaluation by Middle States Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools at the request of the principal, Fr. Strassner. Much of what has changed in the last 50 years can be deduced from viewing this film.

From comments by four of the original cast: Gary Armitage, Jim Reilly, Jim Welsh, and yr. obt. svt.:

Earlier scenes (and a different "plot") had been shot in 8mm color film during the Fall. These scenes involved infiltrating German lines to blow up a bridge that the enemy might use to escape the encircling Allied armies. A pond and clever photography angles stood in for the river. The bridge was supposed to be just under the water to foil aerial recon, so we only had to build the approaches on the near side. However, lighting proved a problem and a coherent film could not be built from the good scenes.

Our watercooled machine gun (non-operative, dang it)

We learned the Fall footage was toast around December and told Fr. Strassner, "Sorry - maybe early 1965." He says, "Boys you're playing in the adult world now. You will produce a film." So we shook  him down for:

• $$ 
• time off from school, and
• the football team's 16mm camera, since the football season was over 

Equipment, helmets, etc. consisted of parental souvenirs from WW2 plus various working rifles here and there. We purchased black powder and blank cartridges from a local gun shop. Most of the filming was done on the farm of our producer, Jim Reilly. (It was a Christmas Tree farm, of all things.) Hence, there was dynamite available for the special effects.

Our machine gun in the pillbox

We made the film in the late winter, which was not severe. In several scenes, for continuity, we had to use Ivory soap flakes to replace the snow that had in the meantime melted. We had a range safety officer whenever live ammo was being fired, and everyone double and triple checked to make sure they were using blanks. (Only one person held the live rounds.) In the 8mm color films you can see the muzzle smoke from the blanks, but not in the 16mm b/w.

I suppose there was some luck involved in that no one was hurt, but it wasn't dumb luck.

Round about April Fools Day, Gary and Jim R. pulled an all-nighter to cut the film. Robert Jennings did the title screen. He and Gary used an acid etched glass screen for rear projection which Gary learned about from reading 4SJ's Famous Monsters of Filmland. It seemed to take forever. Jim R. spliced and edited. Editing was easy, he said, since both Gary and he had the same vision for the film, having shot most of it.

Sure am glad they don't have a mortar.
Jim Welsh in back. George Savitske with 'noccs
Jim was a member of the Adventure Club

Once the film was made, we looped a sound track. This is not easy to do with silent film. Sound was recorded on a separate reel-to-reel tape recorder, which in the premier showing was kept in synch with the film by judicious pausing of the tape deck. We whistled, coughed, and spit into the mike to record the sound effects! I did most of that. Going "pooh!" into the mike sounded remarkably like an explosion when played back. The Great Escape provided the theme music. I suppose we could have had trouble over that. We even had a script, in English and German, although during the premier Mrs. Marschall, one of the parents in the gym/auditorium, could be heard clucking, "Ach, nein!" so one supposes the translation was not the greatest.

The tape reel is now lost or, more precisely, has not been found. So the film is now silent by default. In the event the film ever gets uploaded, TOF's Faithful Reader is advised to go "pooh!" at the proper moments while watching.

Let's aim our mortar right about there, where Savitske is.
Home-made mortar in background.

We presented Counterattack at a required student assembly during the Middle States visit scheduled for April 6 - 8. At the end, there was stunned silence from the rest of the student body, then an eruption of cheers and applause.

The present film has a few infelicities in the early part due to the transcribing. What TOF has now is a DVD copy of a VHS tape shot off a movie screen projection of the original 16mm film. So there is a moment of snow, some out-of-focus segments, and some sprocket jerking; but things settle out.

The film involves a US squad led by a lieutenant that digs in on a hillside during a general retreat in the face of a German counterattack. They find a machine gun nest at the bottom of the hill with two gunners who are wondering where the hell everybody went. The LT tells them they have to bottle up this pass so the Germans can't break through. It's probably a suicide mission. Everyone is properly enthusiastic.

The Germans attack. The LT says, good thing they don't have a mortar. Then the mortar starts laying in rounds, so the LT sends two men -- Jim Reilly and Jim Welsh -- to sneak through at night and take out the mortar. They do this, though Reilly is killed. Then there is more attacking and more defending. There seem to be more Germans than there actually were in the cast because we played multiple roles. TOF was killed twice! One of his roles was the German lieutenant, and he can be seen initially directing the mortar to lay in the fire.

 The last scene shows the lieutenant's helmet as a grave marker and American soldiers walking past (George, Jim, Jim, Red, Dan, and the rest having gained them the time for a counter-attack) a voice says, I wonder who that guy was. Freeze frame. End.

Filmic Lessons Learned

Our beloved pill box. At the bottom of a hill, with no easy
escape for the gunners. Hmm.

In the walking-past scenes, there were only a few guys but they circled the camera and walked past again and again.

We had not learned that things always look faster on film and therefore one ought to move more slowly when being filmed. Hence, the sometime herky-jerky looking motions.

It's "lights, action, camera," not "lights, camera, action." A couple times actors start the scene from obvious standing starts.

At about 6:24 into the movie, Red Scannell learns the truth of the old adage about not spitting into the wind.

Our beloved pill box being blown to smithereens along with
gunner Carl Symmons whose immaculate hand will
protrude from the resultant debis.

If you are going to blow up a laboriously-built pill box, you only get one chance to film the scene.

German Wehrmacht greatcoats can be made by taking ordinary greatcoats and dying them in a boiling cauldron with dark green dye, then sewing on Wehrmacht rank badges and such.

Audiotape has "stretch" but film is ratcheted. Therefore the one will get out of synch with the other.

Stuntmen? We don' need no steenkin' stuntmen!
Red, executing forward somersault in media res.

At 12:48 in the film, Red learns that if you are in a fox hole and a grenade lands nearby, standing up is not an optimum strategy. The explosion sends him into a perfect forward somersault down the hill.

(Red was the de facto stuntman. In the original 8mm color film, he dove into the pond fully uniformed in order to swim the satchel charge out to the (faux) bridge.)

Kids in 1964/65 could do things that kids of 2014/15 cannot dream of. Today, a kid can get in deep trouble for biting his lunch sandwich into the form of a handgun. 

The Cast: Where be they now?

TOF is collecting info where he can, and will update this as he is able. If TOF's Faithful Reader knows any of these folks, or knows Kevin Bacon (whose connectivity is legendary), pass the word that their vitae are wanted.

• 

  Jim Reilly, producer and editor

  Jim Reilly became a City and Regional Planner. Had two boys (both doing well). Served 25 years in the medical corp, Army Reserves, including service during two wars. Published over a dozen articles related to planning in refereed journals. Married, divorced and happily remarried. Retired and now the editor of the International Society of City and Regional Planners publication, cleverly titled, the ISOCARP Review. 

• 

  George Savitske, later a colonel

  The LT, George Savitske later became, like his father, a colonel in a real army, in Vietnam.

 

• 

  Dan Hommer, once of the Adventure Club

  Dan Hommer became a researcher in brain science at the NIH in Bethesda until his recent death. He had done seminal research into the brains of alcoholics.

 

 

 

 

• Jim Welsh

  

  Left: Jim Welsh, leading the infiltration

Red Scannell, surveying his domain

• Red Scannell taught drama in high school for many years before selling English textbooks for McGraw Hill. When last heard from, he was living in the Seattle area.

• Gary Armitage was mostly behind the camera, so no shot for him. Married Stephanie Mullen and has 5 children and 1 grandchild. He's run University and College Conference Centers since 1974 and taught in the Hospitality Management Program at the University of New Hampshire for 15 years. He is currently Director of the Leadership Institute in Lincoln, NH, and Executive Producer for the Wonderland Films Horror Film entitled "Chain of Souls." Still making movies! 

Joe Dobrota, hiding behind cast titles

• Robert Jennings
   
• Thomas Fisher
   
• Joe Dobrota

• 

  TOF, downy-cheeked agent of world domination
  Left: Sterling Carter, of the Adventure Club

  
  

  Mike Flynn became a quality engineer and industrial statistician, published a few articles in general topology and applied statistics. Worked as a quality management consultant on several continents and published several science fiction novels and short stories. Married now for forty-odd years, some of them very odd. Two grown children and three grandchildren.

• Sterling Carter graduated from Univ. of Scranton, became a salesman and lived in California, a beloved husband, father, and grandfather before his untimely death.

Carl Symmons, under debris. RIP

• Tony Ingraffea, a Peace Corps veteran, is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Cornell.
   
• Carl Symmons

• Frank "The Wildman" Stephans

No students were harmed in the making of this movie.

TOF's efforts to upload the movie have run into a size limit.

Viz., The video is five times larger than the limit.
TOF must learn to make the video into five smaller pieces

or something.

A Placid Day on Old South Side

Yesterday, as every year since the memory of man runneth not to the contrary, the Sicilians of St. Anthony of Padua parish in Easton PA have manned up and hoisted a 200-pound statue on their shoulders and paraded around South Side with an Italian oom-pah band while people run out from their houses and pin money to the banner. Go figure. It's enough to give Baptists conniption fits.

When TOF was the TOFling, they would stop at a house across the street from his and oom-pah until Mr. or Mrs. Bosco would come out and do the honors. South Side has changed since then. It was once called German Hill, and the Germans were none too happy about Italians moving in. Now, on TOF's block are blacks and Arabs, Irish and left-over Germans. But last year the Lebanese family -- which attends Our Lady of Lebanon -- went out and pinned money, so who knows? Anybody can play!

The parade starts at the Castel di Lucio club a couple blocks from TOF's stone-built fortress of solitude. It sat on the edge of the Projects for many a year, but the projectors generally left the Sicilians alone.

St. Placido, a sixth century monk, is the patron of Castel di Lucio, Sicily, "from which many Easton area residents trace their ancestry."

He ain't heavy. He's my ancestral patron saint.

San Placido, looking especially placid.

For those interested, there are additional photos here.

The Glorious Eighth

Centre Square ca. 1776

The Declaration of Independence was printed during the late afternoon on Thursday, July 4, by John Dunlap, a local Philadelphia printer. Congress ordered that copies be sent "to the several Assemblies, Conventions, and Committees or Councils of Safety, and to the several Commanding officers of the Continental Troops, that it be proclaimed in each of the United States, and at the head of the Army." By the next morning copies were on their way to all thirteen states by horseback and on July 5 the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote, published by Heinrich Miller, became the new nation's first newspaper to announce that the Declaration had been adopted . On Saturday, July 6, the first newspaper print edition of the full text of the Declaration appeared in the Philadelphia Evening Post.  

On Monday, July 8, the Declaration of Independence was publicly read in Easton, Pennsylvania, (as well as in Trenton, New Jersey, and Philadelphia itself). A mural by Robert C. Burns, apparently unavailable in an on-line image, hanging in the Northampton County Courthouse depicts the reading in Easton from the steps of the old county courthouse in Centre Square. A large crowd had gathered. The colonel and field officers of the 1st Battalion were among the select group gathered about the entrance to the building. Just before the reading started, a company of Light Infantry marched down Northampton Street to the beating of drums and the playing of fifes. The Ensign of the company carried a flag, "the device for which is the thirteen united colonies."

The Easton Flag

As the company of infantry was drawn up in front of the courthouse and the new flag held at attention, Robert Levers, a member of the Committee of Observation and Inspection (and who had been in Philadelphia working on a new government for Pennsylvania), read the imperishable document to a large, attentive and serious audience. At the close of the reading the bell in the cupola pealed forth the glad tidings of the birth of the Nation and the spectators "gave their hearty consent with three loud huzzas and cried out "May God long preserve and unite the Free and Independent States of America." Northampton County's liberty bell which pealed from the cupola of the old courthouse in July, 1776, is now on display in the Government Center.

Centre Square today

One of the Pennsylvania representatives (John Dickinson) refused to sign the Declaration of Independence and George Taylor of Easton was appointed to replace him. He signed his name to the Declaration of Independence on August 2, 1776. His house sits at 4th and Ferry Sts.

That flag.  Eastonians firmly believe that their city flag is the same as that displayed on the Glorious Eighth, although there is no chain of custody. Much like the Shroud of Turin, there is a gap in its history. 

"Just who retained possession of the flag is of course only traditional. Naturally, it may be presumed it was either Colonel Robert Levers or Lieutenant Valentine Beidelman, both of whom were trusted custodians of local affairs of the new government." -- History of Northampton County
 

On September 6, 1814, fourteen-year old Rosanna Beidleman presented a flag to Captain Abraham Horn's Company as they left for Camp DuPont, Marcus Hook, for service in the War of 1812. This is the present Easton Flag, and it is supposed to be the same as used by the earlier Easton Light Infantry. "The probability is that the flag presented to the emergency company was the original Revolutionary flag, on account of the presentation being made by a descendant of the trusted lieutenant of the county." (History of Northampton County)  It presents 13 eight-pointed stars in the blue field and 13 red-and-white stripes in the canton. Almost, it is the reverse of the "Betsy Ross" flag. If the flag dates only from 1812, it would likely sport 15 stars and 15 stripes as other flags of that time did.

At the conclusion of the war, the Company disbanded and returned home with the flag. Members of Captain Horn's Company, along with Captain Peter Nungesser's Company of Light Infantry, formed the Easton Union Guards in 1816. In 1821 they deposited the flag with the Easton Library Company for safe keeping in Library Hall on North Second Street.

At the time of the Sesquicentennial held in Philadelphia in 1926, the flag was removed from its pole, placed between two pieces of plate glass and framed for exhibition. On its return, it was bolted to the east wall of the Easton Public Library's marble stairway in the front entrance to the Carnegie building. After some repairs over the years, it remains on exhibit in the Library.

References

The Declaration of Independence: First Public Readings
The Reading of the Declaration of Independence in Easton, Pennsylvania
The Easton Flag
History of Northampton County

The Glorious Eighth

Today is the Eighth of July, the anniversary of the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence.  This was done in Philadelphia, Trenton (NJ), and Easton (PA).  The fact of the Declaration having been signed was first announced in the July 5 edition of the Pennsylvanischer Staatsbote.  

The celebrations at Easton featured a reading of the Declaration from the courthouse steps, back then in Centre Square (The Great Square).  There was a band, the ringing of a "liberty bell" cast by the Moravians of Bethlehem, and the unfurling of a flag bearing a device representing the thirteen united colonies.  The crowd gave three loud huzzahs and cried out "May God long preserve and unite the Free and Independent States of America!"

Tradition has always held that the flag unfurled that day is the one shown above, known as the Easton Flag.  However, there is no documentation of this.  The existing flag, somewhat tattered, can be traced back to a flag presented to Capt. Abraham Horn's company of the City Guard prior to their departure to the War of 1812.  It was later presented to the Easton Library Company, and is still displayed there in a protective glass case.  But the fact that this particular specimen of the flag dates only to 1812 does not mean the design was not Revolution-era.  It's just that there is no proof one way or another.

In any case, today (well, technically yesterday, since it is now after midnight) was the big celebration, with Revolutionary re-enactors, a reading of the Declaration, rock and bluegrass performances, a re-enactment of the Delaware Indian treaty, clowns, magicians, and jugglers, and a big fireworks display on the river.  Pretty loud, too, and I'm way up on the cliffs.

This is from last year:

Thanksgiving

was celebrated in the usual fashion by the 105th meeting between Easton Area (PA) High School and Phillipsburg (NJ) High School.  In anticipation thereof the Easton Red Rovers burned down Phillipsburg. 

The Glorious Eighth

comes on the 11th this year. 

On the 8th of July 1776, the Declaration of Independence was read aloud in public in Philadelphia, Trenton, and in Easton PA.  Easton held a public celebration. 


The Easton Flag.  Said to be the device displayed on 8 July 1776
The flag itself, preserved at the Easton Public Library, can be authenticated only to the War of 1812, when it was carried by Capt. Horne's Company of the City Guard. 

The event is celebrated as Heritage Day, and includes a public reading of the Declaration, song and dance, and a big fireworks display on the river. 

The Freddies

Since 2003, the high schools in the Lehigh Valley have a peculiar custom.  Every year the high school plays are evaluated and awards are given for various achievements.  The Freddy Awards, named for the ghost that haunts the State Theater, are given out in an annual ceremony at the old vaudeville theater.  It is, apparently, unique in the nation.  At least sufficiently unique to attract a documentary film maker from LA, who filmed rehearsals at several of the schools and who also filmed the awards ceremony in 2008.  Much film editing followed and the documentary is soon to be released. 


Info on the documentary can be found here: mostvaluableplayersmovie.com/trailer.html
The trailer is here: www.mostvaluableplayersmovie.com/trailer/medium-res-trailer.html

Nice to see some recognition of the performing arts.  Alas, there was no such award when I trod the boards as Mayor Shinn in The Music Man back in the year mumblemumble.  In a peculiarity, the role of Mayor Shinn was also played by my uncle in a community player production.  In that, my brother Dennis played Winthrop.  For my high school play, my brother Kevin inherited the role.  It's all in the family. 

A Bit of Nostalgia

The Feast of St. John Neumann



The fourth bishop of Philadelphia was the founder of many parishes in the 1850s; among them, St. Joseph's Church in Easton PA. 


This was a German church, announced in Der Unabhaengige Demokrat:

Neue Kirche
Naechsten Sonntag, den 3 Oktober, wird der Hochwuerdigste Herr Bischoff aus Philadelphia, John Nep. Neumann den Grundstein zur deutschen Roemisch Kirche, in Süd Easton, Lecha Anhoehe, um 3 Uhr nachmittags feierlich legen.

Rudolph Etthofer
Kath. Pastor
Der Unabhaengige Demokrat (Sept. 30, 1852)