Religion: Roman Catholic...Status: Lapsed

I am a lapsed Catholic. Not exactly newsworthy, I know, and not exactly a singular situation. There's a lot of us lapsed across this land of ours. Different reasons, of course, but lapsed is lapsed.

I'd say that there are a great many lapsed Catholics who hit their knees each and every Sunday at the Holy Sacrifice of The Mass, all the while no more than numbly going through the motions. It's a free country...so far. Your religious beliefs, or lack of them, are your business alone.

My Dad was raised in a devout Catholic home, my Mom in a devout Welsh Baptist environment. They were a handsome couple. Our home was one of tolerance, religious and otherwise. How'd you like to have that sedan parked in your garage right now? God, me too.

My education was first entrusted to Sisters, Servants of The Immaculate Heart of Mary, the beloved IHM sisters. Great, great women. From there, it was off to several years of Jesuit thinking. I still have an enormous admiration for members of The Society of Jesus. So, while not a theologically intellectual giant, I do know my stuff.

Although there is great diversity within the Catholic Church, many Catholics are completely unaware of this colorful quilt that offers myriad means to the same end. Here, in NE PA, there is at least a nominal awareness. We know the term Byzantine Rite; we know Ukrainian Catholics, Magyar(Hungarian) Catholics, Melkite and Maronite Catholics. This RC diocese was one of the first and last that was drawn along ethnic lines.

We also know Polish National Catholics. In fact, the Polish National Catholic Church can trace its beginnings, indeed its founding, to 1897, on the south side of Scranton. My Dad told me all about it when I was a kid. He told me about Francis Hodur.

That Hodur would be a hero to my Dad is an oddity, because my Dad was ridiculously Irish.

Francis Hodur was as Polish as Karol Wotyja, as Lech Walesa, more Polish than Bobby Vinton. My Dad greatly admired Francis Hodur. As time wore on, he became Bishop Francis Hodur. That is he to your right. On the left is St. Stanislaus Cathedral, the original Mother Church of The PNCC.

I learned an awful lot of good things from my Dad. Let me tell you a bit about Vincent Thomas Sweeney.

To begin with, I am Vincent Thomas Sweeney, Junior, by my own choice. My parents, and I am confident both of their souls now rest, named and offered me for baptism as plain old Vincent Sweeney. They both so disliked the "junior" suffix. Neither of them were comfortable with me being "Little Vincie." I never was.

The "junior" is something I carry proudly at the end of my name by choice, being added when I was confirmed on a cold and snowy winter's night by Bishop Jerome D. Hannon. Us Catholics, lapsed and active and not quite sure, know all about the sacrament of Confirmation, it's the one that comes with a slap in the face, albeit a gentle one. The middle name of "Thomas" and tag of "Junior" were both my choices alone, because taking my Dad's name, his full name, was important. He was a great guy. God, as corny as it sounds, my father was both a "gentleman" and a "gentle man."

His greatness was no better manifest than in his disdain for misused and abused power of authority. He saw much of that in the Catholic Church. More specifically, he saw the imperious misuse of power in the Diocese of Scranton, which is why my father considered Francis Hodur, first Bishop and de facto founder of the The Polish National Catholic Church, a hero, a man worthy of admiration, a man whose story should be told to his son.

Francis Hodur, Polish immigrant and seminarian, was ordained to the Roman Catholic priesthood in 1893 in St. Peter's Cathedral in downtown Scranton. The same Francis Hodur was consecrated a bishop in Utrecht, Holland, in 1907 by The Old Catholic Church, a church itself founded because intelligent and thinking European Catholics had problems with papal infallibility - me, too. During those intervening years, much had happened, including Hodur's excommunucation. It has been widely reported that upon receiving his excommunication document, he burned it, throwing the ashes in a nearby brook. True? If so, good for him.

Parishioners at Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary Parish in South Scranton, all Polish immigrants or sons and daughters of the same, had gotten on the wrong side of one Bishop William O'Hara, Ordinary of The Diocese of Scranton. Seems the Poles of South Side wanted more control of their parish than the good Irish bishop was accustomed to allowing. There was a riot. People were hurt, several dozen people, when police attempted to break things up. Francis Hodur, then a priest at a parish in Nanticoke, was asked by those at odds with O'Hara to come help them with their problems. Hodur tried, and tried, and tried.

Father Hodur went so far as to travel to Rome and The Vatican in an attempt to negotiate peace between the parties involved. He could not. His pleadings were met with turned backs and dismissive actions. Sound familiar?

Returning to Prospect Avenue in South Scranton, Hodur was ultimately bounced from the Roman Catholic Church, officially excommunicated, making him an unwitting hero to his fellow Polish immigrants. Before long, they reciprocated, by organizing and voting to end all ties with the Diocese of Scranton, Rome, and all else that they saw as oppressive, unfair, and downright un-Christian. My opinion is that they were justified in doing so. These people had guts. Poles have a history of being courageous, one stretching back to antiquity - they also have a history of being very smart, intelligent, blessed with great minds. Their theology in breaking with Rome was and remains as rock-solid as the anthracite that built their American lives.

Perhaps it's an oversimplicfication to say this, but all those people wanted was a bit more control over their parishes in terms of the physical property itself. They'd sweat and worked like mules to pay for their church buildings, they wanted to hold deed to them. The bishop said no. As tradition dictated, and he enforced and reinforced, the deeds would be held by him, and any bishop who might succeed him.

There were other flash points, but the one that lore claims snapped the twig was O'Hara's directive that these Poles cease and desist celebrating Christmas Eve Midnight Mass, a tradition that dated back centuries to the old country.

Bishop O'Hara acted in a predictable stern and tyrannical manner, subsequent to which the shepherd's flock, or at least a part of it, revolted. The result is a church still strong and vibrant today, a church Catholic in every sense of the word, yet not in union with Rome. Polish National Catholic orders and sacraments are as valid and sound as the Church of Rome's.

Apostolic Succession, so important to the Church of Rome, exists unbroken within The PNCC. There are no dogmatic barriers between the two churches. What barriers exist are purely administrative.

The beloved, and likely to be canonized, Pope John Paul II recognized this. He'd hoped for a normalization of relations between the two churches. In some measure, there is that normalization, yet the Polish National Catholic Church remains independent and autonomous.

It's a little beyond 100 years since Hodur was made a bishop, yet trouble brews again. Dark clouds gather, a Roman Catholic bishop sits in Scranton who causes discomfort throughout the length and breadth of his diocese. I think I'm being generous in putting it that way.

Although this is not an ethnic problem, not a Polish/Irish/American skirmish, it is very much and "us and them" problem. To be more specific; it's and "us and him" problem. In my own very personal opinion, this present trouble rests with him. Let me strongly say, though, that being lapsed removes me from the situation. Therefore, it's easy for me to open my mouth, to speak my mind, to go for that "the pen is mightier than the sword" thing.

That being admitted, his "I'm the bishop and you're not" position will in time bring more loss to an already shrinking member base. And I'd bet a chunk of my 401k that the vast majority of priests attached to the See of Scranton don't like his position one bit either. They can look out upon their congregations each and every weekend and count the parishioners who were there last week and not this, then look into the eyes of those who likely won't be there next week.

A few priests are probably giddy about his pre-Vatican II strident let's get tough approach. I could name names.

What is in this man's head, I cannot even pretend to know.

He is not viewed as a force for good by those in his charge. His flock barely hangs on to being so, they are disenchanted, hurt, and saddened by the man's refusal to do so many things, and his hasty callousness to do so many others.

In spite of it all, maybe he has room for gratitude. He could give thanks that it's not the late 19th century, that there isn't a "Francis Hodur" to confront and challenge him, and that too many vocal and outraged Catholics like me are lapsed.

From the other side of the argument, maybe Bishop Martino should consider that the last time an ordinary of the Diocese of Scranton treated a large segment of his flock as his lesser, a brand new church emerged, and it's a great one at that. Best yet, that church that the Diocese of Scranton forced into existence is still there. http://www.pncc.org/

That it could happen again is about as preposterous a thought as you can have...isn't it?

Just How Weird Is This?

Here, then, a rather unremarkable photograph holding little interest for most. To the railfan, rail-weenie, or foamer(an explanation right below), this photograph is huge.

It's a train, so go ahead and get that big yawn out of the way.

Yet for those who drool, and foam at the mouth - foamer - at the sight of unusual pieces of railroadiana, there is tons of history in this bucolic setting, and aboard this conveyance. And, yes, "foamer" is a real word in the world of railfanning. While not a foamer myself, I confess to lingering along the margins of foamer-ness. I have trembled and twitched at the sight, sound, smell, and feel of a steam locomotive many times over the years. Those are not steam locomotives.

It was many of those years ago when this picture was taken. Here is where a little weirdness enters, where a stretch is necessary, for what I am about to say cannot be proven by me.

To be sure, I did not take this photograph. It does not belong to me, while at the same time I might have some investment in it. The reason? See, I'm damned near certain that's me you see leaning from the train as the train itself leans into that curve. I found this photograph on the net. It was a random discovery. At first glance I honestly thought, "Holy God, that's me and Perkins on that trip back in 1974!"

Upon enlarging as best as can be done, yep, I do believe it's us. I'm to the right, camera at my face. "Perk" is immediately behind and to my left. Nuts as it sounds, the camera strap around my neck is recognizable, I remember it well. They we are, frozen in time by the lens of some unknown riding the same train we were in 1974. It's a good shot at that.

It wouldn't shock me to find out that the photographer was a little POed that we popped up in the shot. It's likely a better shot than came from my camera that day. We'll never know, because I made one dumbass beginner's mistake at the end of the trip; I opened the camera back before rewinding the film, destroying 36 exposures of Kodachrome which should have captured a marvelous day. Ordinarily, I'd burn several rolls of film on a trip like that. Money was a little thin. It was that radio job. One roll was about all the wallet would allow.

To get more specific and lay a little foamer-ese on you; those are The D&H's famous Alco PA-1 units pulling that train. A better look at those deisel locomotives is to the left. These units were so beloved by railfans that one of railfanning's biggest names, Lucius Beebe, once proclaimed that the PA-1 held the unique title of "Honorary Steam Locomotive."

Beebe was a feisty bugger. Consider this quote of his, "If anything is worth doing it is worth doing in style, and on your own terms, and nobody Goddamned elses!"

So it was that the D&H PA-1 was more of a rumor to me before seeing one in person. Having the opportunity to actually ride behind a trio of them(the D&H owned four, one was always in back-up status)was really a dream come true. I honestly couldn't sleep the night before that first trip.

It was on that sleep-deprived trip that I am convinced the photograph at the top of this post was taken, and I am as equally as convinced that is me and my dear friend Scott Perkins sticking the upper halves of our then twenty-something bodies out of the vestibule of a D&H passenger coach. We were trying to grab "the money shot" of those marvelous locomotives gliding elegantly along the river. What river? I'll take a guess.

After looking at the photo for what's probably too long, I'm going to say we're in Taylor, just south of Scranton, somewhere between the Davis Street Bridge and what is now the CP/DH rail yard known as Taylor Terminal. We're in the floor of the valley formed by the Lackawanna River. Although we're traveling through a densely populated area, the lush growth of late Spring masks what lies no more than a quarter mile or so either side of the river. Right beyond that right curve we're approaching is a left curve. Exiting the left curve, you'll see the entire Lackawanna Valley sprawl and stretch before you. Again, that's a an educated guess on location.

The excursion was a trip from The D&H's Hudson Yard in Plains, Pennsylvania(ironically within walking distance of where I now work), to Oneonta, New York and return. It wound its way through some of the most historical railroading territory in America, right through the heart of anthracite country, past fading traces of mines and breakers which produced the fuel that drove the Industrial Revolution.

Over on the right, yep, those are a couple of my pictures. They were taken on a trip where I managed to not destroy my Kodachrome with a bonehead move. You'll notice people trackside, spotting them easily in the top photo, needing to look a little harder in the bottom one.

What do suppose the odds are that someday, someone would, or could, ever simply stumble across these photos and say, "Holy Crap, look, that's me!"

I took those photographs on a different trip; one from Hoboken to Binghamton via Port Jervis, then back to Hoboken via Scranton. Great, great trip. Going into details would only tickle rail-weenies. those like myself.

So it is that I am semi-amazed, and decidedly amused, to find a photo on the internet that includes me, a photo taken by someone completely unknown to me, and with my presence in it being solely coincidence.

I'm also a little troubled to discover that maybe I am foamer after all.

On The Radio...

The location; Route 6 Plaza, just east of Honesdale, Pennsylvania.

The year; 1973.

The radio station; WHPA, The Friendly 1590. Later renamed WDNH, honoring Honesdale's being the once headwaters of the D&H Canal.

The cast of characters, l. to r.; Dave Fuhr (aka Dave London and other aliases), Scott Perkins, and the blogger.

One thing you can never accuse me of is concealing embarrassing photos of myself. Good Lord, how about that beard? Big, shrubby, bushy, it looks like something you'd pay a landscaper to yank out of your yard and haul away in a pick-up. It was the times, man, the times.

Our "remote studio" seems almost black in that photo, while my recollection is that it was red. It was also a piece of junk. Without benefit of any digital manipulation, that little camper doesn't look half bad. Believe me, it was bad, really bad.

It's not all that tough for me to say that just could have been the best summer of my life. A few others might be up there with it, but in terms of fun, excitement, life-alteration, path-choosing, and long-lasting friendships, it was one hell of a summer.

A few months earlier, it was actually during Holy Week, WHPA had called me. Seems they had this job and thought maybe there might be some interest on my part. Some interest? That's like saying the Blizzard of '93 brought some snow.

The quick backgrounder is that I'd wanted to be on the radio for a long time. Not that I thought I had what it took, but it was a dream nevertheless. Then The American Academy of Broadcasting opened a "campus" in Wilkes-Barre. The "campus" was roughly three rooms in an office building, one of which was an ill-equipped studio. If first impressions are accurate, The American Academy of Broadcasting's newest campus was seriously lame. I attended anyway.

What I Learned in Broadcasting School...

Well, not a whole lot, really. About the only thing I took away from the six-month course was this, "If you get into radio, expect to get fired for no apparent reason at least once." That was it. Surely wise words, yet for the money spent, the nights driving to Wilkes-Barre, then sitting bleary eyed through class after having worked and been in other classes all day, you might think there was more to be had. There was.

The most important thing came a month or two after completing the course. The American Academy of Broadcasting got me my first job in radio.

WHPA was on the phone because American Academy had given them my name. They'd called looking to make a hire for this station in Honesdale. What they had to offer was clearly that first foot through the golden door leading to the magical world of broadcasting. I wanted in bad. They let me in. It's a good thing WHPA's pockets were full of opportunity, since there was little else to put before any prospective employee.

It mattered not at all that WHPA was on the third floor of The Reif Building on Main, upstairs over Liljes(pronounced LIE-leez) Shoe Store in a town of rougly 4,500 souls. Heck, it was radio, nothing else mattered or counted. We were on the radio. All a bunch of young guys, mostly very early 20s, all cutting our teeth, all pretty damned bad on the air, and all having a blast. (Adrian In The Morning was the one among us who had any experience, so he gets a pass on being bad. He was in fact, quite good.)

What Happened at WHPA...

Honesdale was then a cow town in the truest and most flattering sense of the world. I've long had a thing for small towns, and Honesdale epitomized the American small town. There were two tractor/farm equipment dealers right there on the south end of Main Street. While they didn't roll up the sidewalks at night, getting stuck in traffic behind a haywagon or manure-spreader was common enough as to not prompt a second thought. It was still a Mayberry-esque place of neat and tidy homes with fine green lawns, a small courthouse square with a fountain, and a main street whereupon darned near all commerce in Wayne County was centered. Anyone now at all familiar with Honesdale knows that it has dramatically changed. Dramatic doesn't always mean better. My jury is still out.

While forgetting a lot from those days, these are a few of the highlights from that year and a half at WHPA.

We could start with that nifty remote unit pictured above. Hell if it didn't take a nice picture.
Nothing in it, nothing on it worked, N-O-T-H-I-N-G. Turntables - didn't work. Board - didn't work. PA system so you could actually "hear it live" - didn't work. Air conditioning - didn't work. The microphone you see me holding in the picture - didn't work. Whether anything in it ever had worked was an unknown. Worse yet by a mile was the fact that this circa 50s ex-camper was unroadworthy. We'd pull it using an abused and barely running Olds with a shot suspension, which was the official and only station vehicle. Both puller and pullee were literally uncontrollable, both were all over the road, shoulder to shoulder, on even the slowest and shortest of trips. Scott Perkins and I once took it to Hawley(he drove, I covered his rear flank by using my own car to keep distance between "it" and any unsuspecting motorist.) I recall us both being shaken by the experience.

The Wayne County Fair was the epicenter of summertime fun...if you didn't work for WHPA. Working for WHPA meant living at the fairgrounds about all of the first week of August. It meant sitting in that camper, wilting for hours and hours and hours. Drenched, soaking wet with sweat, we'd "interview" sponsors who'd gag up the money to be heard live from the fair. On occasional breaks, we'd wander down to the cow barn, where conditions were better. To this day, the very mention of the fair sends a fleeting yet very real wave of fear over me.

The control room board was brand spanking new, mostly because the original had caught fire one too many times. The "original" had to have then been at least 25 years old, and it looked every hour of its age. To the left of the board, a reel-to-reel tape recorder, used mostly to air the Penn State Cooperative Extension reports, a mainstay of agri-minded radio in our state's small towns. This tape machine was prone to hiss, sputter, and hack, but could be coaxed back to normalcy with a sharp whack, either alongside the machine or directly on top of it. You couldn't count the dents in this thing. Like so many other pieces of equipment, this junker was ready for the scrap pile long before they brought it up the stairs and into the station.

We had two reliable cart machines, with the word "reliable" being used in the most relative of senses. Both made a loud kuhhh-THWOCK when you hit the start button, necessitating all jocks develop a special skill for turning off the microphone in about a half-second, that half-second before starting the cart would eliminate anyone listening from thinking, "What in the hell is that noise?" Not that our audio was sophisticated enough for the average listener to discern nuances of any kind. See, our control room microphone was a model that under ideal circumstances might have been one step up from Mister Microphone...then again, maybe not even. Our pop cover was a scrap piece of yellow foam that was held on the microphone by a rubber band.

"Hey, did you see the temperature?" Why? Is it missing? Money was so tight that WHPA was unable to afford a thermometer, even the cheapest hardware-store type you could hammer into the outside of the control room windowsill. All employees, it was decreed and declared, must pause on the sidewalk before entering the building, take a hard glance to the right, thereby seeing and memorizing what the Honesdale Dime Bank's time and temp display had to offer. Then, immediately upon making it up the two flights of stairs to the station, report to the control room and deliver the current temperature. So help me God, that is how we did it. I can all but swear that never once did I give a temp in my year and a half there, because I knew it wasn't accurate.

We had this newsroom, it was adjacent to the main studio. I use the terms both newsroom and main studio with great latitude. The place was God-awful. However, the aforementioned Adrian busted his hump trying to give us jocks something that approximated a real radio station. The man fought an unwinnable battle. Adrian rounded up scraps of wood and paneling and set about cobbling together a "podium" of sorts from which to deliver a news cast. Hammering, pounding, shoving, bending, a driving a few old nails into what still looked like a pile of scrap wood and paneling, there it was attached to the wall. He'd also attached an old and creaky boom for a huge ribbon microphone in the same tentative manner right there in front of the "podium." We had a sports guy, Bob Shilling, a part-timer. Bob was then, oh, in his late 40s/early 50s. Great guy. Bob could get a little animated while doing sports. One afternoon, Bob's animation managed to cause his arm to brush or swipe the microphone boom while he was live on the air. In turn, the boom tore loose from its weak moorings, thereupon crashing down into the Adrian-Crafted podium. From there, the now tangled entire mess crashed to the floor. So did I. I think I may have peed myself then, and I'm coming pretty close to it right now just thinking about it.

Bathroom Duty. Maybe that should be "doodie" or "doo-doo." Somewhere during those very early days, staff was informed that we would all take on the added responsibilities of housekeeping. Yes, we would empty waste baskets, dust, tidy, sweep, mop, wipe, swab, polish, and otherwise maintain the studios and offices of WHPA. Management's inclusion of the station's sole bathroom was where they crossed a line. None of us, not one among us, was willing to clean a bathroom more than, oh, once. In fact, I refused flat out, wouldn't even do it once, and didn't much care what the consequences were. See, not only we were beginners, we were also very young, possessing that arrogance which drives you to just say no in those situations when you felt completely put upon; scouring a toilet last used by someone else met the definition of being put upon. NONE of us would do it. Our General Manager had few options, save for firing the entire staff. He did not. He probably should have. This weakness, this failure, of his to take action led to a number of other challenges to his authority, which ultimately did him in.

About that General Manager. He was a gentleman by the name of Ken Rogers. Ken swore that the more famous singer, Kenny Rogers, had been forced to call himself Kenny instead of Ken because our Ken insisted. Being both members of AFTRA, the more senior of the two ruled. Remember Sky King? Remember those suits, the hat? Now you have a working image of Ken Rogers. With booming baritone voice, he was the big city cowboy come back to his roots in a small town, where he'd impress the locals all to hell. I don't think he did, really. Ken could drink. To be honest, so could we. If we hadn't known how, Ken could have taught us. Ken claimed John Wayne was among his best friends. Ken claimed a lot of things...and maybe they were all true. He also swore he'd starred in a television western called The Streets of Laredo. Although never having been able to confirm that, I have no evidence to indicate it's a falsehood, either. He'd shown an inability to meet disregard for his authority, which surely emboldened some to exploit that weakness. And so it was that Ken was toppled in what amounted to a palace coup about mid-way through my stay there. Certain employees had gone to the station's owners about what they felt was Ken's gross mismanagement of the station, they'd made a pretty strong case of it. I wasn't a coup plotter, I didn't have the juice with the owners to get a glass of water from them. One or two others knew the owners well enough to get their ear. This wasn't the first time, other employees had tried this approach before. Those times it had failed. In 1974, it worked. Ken was fired. Now all would be right with our radio world. Predictably, it was not.

Here's who we were that Summer of '73;

6-9 AM: Adrian In The Morning.

9-12 Noon: Scott Perkins

12 Noon-3: Chuck Pyle, then the above pictured Dave Fuhr/Dave London after Pyle left.

3-7 PM: Vince Sweeney, alternately referred to as The Weird Beard. Yeah, that's right, they really did call me The Weird Beard. It was not of my choosing, but I managed to soldier forward.

I have no pictures of Chuck Pyle, none of Adrian either. What's bewildering is that I was already then a serious amateur photographer who had a really good camera that was always with me. Still, no photos, save for the one above. Who took that shot is lost to the ages, but judging by composition and exposure alone, I'd say it was someone who knew what they were doing, probably a newspaper photog from town.

Yeah, we had a ball that summer. Big men around town, I suppose. Getting recognized quite a bit, sometimes by voice alone, actually having someone ask me for my autograph - a stunning development. When I was asked, I honest to God didn't believe it. Most of our free time was spent, where else, in the saloons of Honesdale, and a few in Hawley too. Our favorite was Bruce's Half Way House. It's still there, presumably Bruce no longer is. I was never sure what "half way" point this joint marked. We worked long, hard hours. So, we played hard when the time came. Weekend air shifts could often stretch into eight and nine hour affairs. We all worked six days a week, sometimes seven. I have no recollection of any vacation time or holidays. We all made crap money. My starting salary and ending salary were the same; $100 per week. I had to fight to get that.

By the time the next summer came around, 1974, much had changed. Lives had moved along. Fuhr had been replaced, Perkins had made a huge leap to Syracuse and kept on leaping right out of the broadcasting business, I was seriously looking to get out and would escape by autumn of that year. Things were bad. Getting paid was always iffy, you never knew whether the station could cover payroll. What benefits we had were lost, management hadn't been paying premiums. Those long hours that were once tolerable were no longer so. Even though all kids, really, fatigue was taking a toll. All of us were the definition of living "paycheck to paycheck." None of us had a spare dime the day before payday. But we had something else.

We had been given the chance to take the first step on one heck of a journey, we'd gotten into our dream field of radio, and we'd sure had more good than bad times in our short time together.

It was a great summer...

Thanks, Nancy...Thanks, Kevin

Thanks to Kevin Lynn's hiding out in Jamaica for a week, I get to thank Nancy Kman for inviting me to sit in Kevin's chair for a couple of hours this past week. It was great. I love radio. In fact, like I told Nancy, radio was my "first love" when it came to broadcasting.

What I probably didn't mention was that radio likewise made for a "cruel mistress." Radio never brought the level of success desired, but I did meet Carol because of radio, met her right there in a radio station. She was literally the FM to my AM. Meeting Carol more than makes up for my disappointments in radio.

Had things gone differently, which they very well could have, my career would have been radio and not television. Kevin and Nancy alike have set foot in both worlds, but now reside behind the microphone.

One thing I've always loved about radio is that you can't "hear" wrinkles, you can remain ageless on the radio. Please, this is not to say that Nancy has any wrinkles, she does not, she looks sensational.

Kevin, well, uhhh, let's just say he looks great for a man of his age. Yeah, I know, he'll get me for that. He might have a couple years on me...maybe. OK, see the picture of him above? It is indeed a true and accurate representation of Kevin Lynn. He looks great. Or at least he did the last I saw him. Surely Jamaica treated him well, bestowing a tan and that relaxed look only a vacation far distant can bring.

Since I did mention ageless and radio in the same sentence, how about Paul Harvey? Astounding, just astounding. Mr. Harvey will be 90 years of age on his next birthday. And he's still on the radio. He was there in 1973 when I opened my first microphone and mumbled whatever it was I mumbled.

There must be some age which you pass when people just have to respect you for what you do if you're still doing it. There must be a milestone you pass when it becomes obligatory that regardless of how people really feel about you, they have to offer their respect and, even if grudgingly, their admiration.

It was wonderful being back on the radio. I cannot thank Nancy enough for making me feel right at home, feel like I belonged there. She made me enormously welcome the second I walked into her presence. And thanks to all the folks who called and said kind things. Sometimes, you leave me at a loss, all I can say is thank you, and hope you know it comes from the very bottom of my heart.

There was also the opportunity to speak with Steve Corbett and Joe Snedeker. With both gentlemen, a distinct pleasure all mine. Yesterday, Thursday, was a day I will not forget. It was a blast.

The Keds Crew...

Without a date on the photo itself, it's tough to say what year this was. Nudged to take a good guess, I'd go with 1955 or 1956.

It's Summer, and easy to tell it had to have been a hot day, since running around half-naked wasn't much encouraged back then except in heat extremes. Two of us are topless. Three of us are in Keds. U.S. Keds at that. Pretty much the shoe of choice when it came to something in canvas with a rubber sole. The alternative was a brand called PF Flyers, not as in demand as Keds.

If it was 1955, it could very well have been the heat and tropical damp that preceded the calamitous events accompanying Hurricane Diane in August of that year.

In brief, remnants of Diane stalled over the Poconos where it rained for days. Huge amounts of rain, non-stop, driving, pounding rain. The word torrential, had it not yet existed, would have had to have been invented for this rain. The Poconos are a split watershed; some streams and creeks flow east and into the Delaware River, while some flow west towards the Lackawanna River, then the Susquehanna River. Neither side escaped Diane's surge.

Instead of the relief from August heat that many thought this rain would bring, death and destruction came calling. Lives were lost in the Poconos, including in the larger settlements like Stroudsburg and Mount Pocono. Estimates put life-loss at nearly 200 along the eastern seaboard, with at least 50-60 of those poor souls swept away in NE PA.

Life was also lost in Dunmore and Scranton, where the destruction was enormous. While portions of Scranton were completely erased by Diane, more portions went untouched, like my neighborhood. We never saw so much as an overflowing storm sewer from Diane - not at all so a few miles to our south.

Scranton's Flats section, for decades all snug with tidy blue-collar homes, was completely washed away. That neighborhood returned as all commercial development, with houses never replaced.

Roaring Brook had come screaming down out of the Poconos looking for a broader and deeper stream to take its anger, which it found in the Lackawanna River. The Lackawanna was already itself so swollen that Roaring Brook was literally forced to turn back on itself, quickly creating a debris filled lake that wiped out an entire piece of the city, including a large rail yard that was likewise never rebuilt.

Once the water came and went, the real fear of a Typhoid outbreak crept over the area. We boiled water for weeks. We also were given these little pills to dissolve in water before drinking it. Seems I never heard of anyone contracting Typhoid.

Out on Wyoming Avenue, life before and after Diane just went on, with the guys being guys.

My Mom, I would bet, took the picture. She probably also lined us up and told us to smile. Kids that age, especially guys, don't just hang around the side of a house and take a breather, unless they're up to no good. What "no good" could it have been? We were all in the 5-7 age range at the time. Our main concern was more like getting that nickel for a Popsicle, or knocking whatever ball we could find around in one of our yards, or trying to climb the Falk's Catalpa tree, or maybe being allowed to cross the street by yourself.

Left to right that's me, David "Skipper" Falk, Bobby Earles, and Louis "Butch" Falk. If there was a ringleader, an alpha, it had to have been Butch, if only due to his age. Butch Falk had a couple years on the rest of us. The Falks lived next door, that's their house's foundation and their garbage cans bringing a certain patina to the photograph. For my money, this photograph simply wouldn't "work," it wouldn't capture a certain moment in time, without the house, the cans, and those bricks we all took for granted that hot summer.

This sure wasn't a wealthy neighborhood, you can easily see that. But look at the smiles on those pusses. We were happy kids taking a time out from the business of being a happy and in-motion kid just to have that snapshot taken by my mother.

Over 50 years later, it's kind of nice that we did.

Free Advice for New Brewers...

News comes this past week or so that we have some new brewers in town. A couple of gentlemen are the latest owners of The Lion Brewery and plan to continue it success, which is a terrific idea. I have some advice. It's free, there is no obligation, and no telemarketer will call.

I like beer and all that goes with it; the camaraderie, the tradition, the history, all appeal to me. Me and beer go back a ways. The back story, if you will...

The Standard Brewery sat on Penn Avenue in Scranton, the 1200 block. When I was a kid, we had a pile of those chalkboards, like the one you see at the left, all over our house. I'll go for the short version about Standard Tru-Age Beer and the Sweeneys.

I grew up in the house once owned by Standard Brewing's brewmaster. His name was, fittingly enough, very German; Otto Houseman. I have only the fuzziest recollection of Mr. Houseman, sad to say. His name, though, lived on in our house a long time, for several reasons.

One of which was that Otto had given my Dad his brewers "tools" when the Sweeneys bought the Housemans' house. There were various hygrometers, thermometers, and other glass vessels with which to judge a beer's specific gravity, which indicates just where the brew is at in terms of being ready to rack or bottle.

Another reminder of Otto Houseman's presence and occupation was a very healthy and robust row of hops we had growing in our backyard. One can only guess that Otto had planted seeds from Standard Brewing hops along the fence line at the back of the yard at some point, and they just kept coming back year after year. If you grabbed a cluster of these lush green little cone shaped flowers, and rubbed them between your hands, you smelled beer. Hops give beer its bitterness and much of its aroma. The damnedest thing is that brewing beer is the only use hops seem to have. There on the left, you see me, my sister Maureen, and that line of hops in the left rear of this photograph, and another batch of them over to the right.

What the by then out-of-business Standard Brewery did best back in those days, mid to late '50s, was burn; it caught fire with regularity. More accurately, it would smolder. Also more accurately, someone started the smoldering. Oddly, there was never some spectacular blaze that leveled the place. All the smoke and resultant dispatched fire fighting apparatus came after its closing, which I recall my Dad placing in 1954. I can still remember Assistant Fire Chief John Connolly waving to me from the roof of The Standard Brewery as his crews poured water on the building. Chief Connolly was a neighbor, his sons went to school with me. The building was vacant, but much of the operation was still intact, or it was until neighborhood vandals destroyed whatever the owners had left behind.

Prior to the vandalizing, and immediately following its closing, piles and piles of Standard Tru-Age Beer promotional items went to auction. My Dad bought a small pile himself, paying as he would say, "...pennies on the dollar." Back then, that's about what it was worth, pennies. Today, it makes sick to think of all the Standard Tru-Age memorabilia that got thrown away at the Sweeney house. And you really should know that The Standard Brewery still stands, or at least a fair chunk of it. I think it's an auto parts operation now.

The point here is that my cognizance of beer and a fascination with its history and making goes back to about my kindergarten days at Longfellow #28 School, or thereabouts.

My first taste of beer came at roughly ten or so as I glugged a substantial mouthful from Dad's quart bottle of Stegmaier which was sitting in the fridge. It was curiosity-driven, just me wanting to know what it tasted like, why the fascination? It was indeed Cold and Gold from The Poconos; I liked it immediately. It would be years before actually drinking an entire bottle of beer.

Beer is ancient. All known civilizations brewed something akin to beer down through the centuries. Ben Franklin is often quoted as saying, "Beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy." Did Franklin ever say that? It's a nice thought, why explode it?

That we still have an brewery here in NE PA should be a source of pride. And, please, this not an encouragement to imbibe.

Without stats or reams of research, I have zero idea how many metropolitan areas still have a "major" brewery, but my guess is that it's not many, especially among those in our size range. Not included in my assumption are the many micros across the land, two of which were once brewing here and now gone. That this area can't support a micro-brewery mystifies me every bit as much as why an amusement park can't fly here, which I did mention in the previous post.

The Lion Brewery's history, while not paralleling the history of brewing beer in NE PA, is important because The Lion survived; it's still here, and by most accounts, it's still prosperous.

It could be better. It could be more. Personally, I think it should be a rock-solid piece of NE PA culture, one that we show off and brag about at every opportunity.

Right about here I was going to say that I'm not a marketing expert. Then upon taking a second think, it might be that I am. Over 30 years experience in the broadcasting business left me with more than scars and a few funny stories, it left me with a pretty good nose and head for what works and what doesn't work when it comes to "selling" a product to the public.

And so it is that here comes some free advice to the newest owners of The Lion Brewery. Yes, it's free, and it's probably worth it.

1) Develop a signature beer. Whatever it is, make it good, with body, flavor, and character. It need not be overwhelming, just good honest beer. Oh, see to it that it has a sturdy head, rich, thick, and lasting with decent "legs." Maybe all you need do is take plain every day Stegmaier Gold Medal Beer and tinker with the recipe just enough that it becomes a beer that anyone would be glad to drink, even a beer connoisseur with sharp discerning taste.

Gibbons might not be a bad idea either, since Gibbons was The Lion's signature beer for decades, replaced only by Stegmaier after their brewery folded. You still brew and bottle Gibbons, my suggestion is that you stop hiding it. What about the original Steg recipe? The Gibbons recipe? I'd pay important money to know what Steg tasted like when it won those gold medals.

2) Brand it, brand it, brand it. Television, radio, print, billboards...literally keep whatever that signature beer is in front of every face 24/7. Think slogans, jingles; "Ring-A-Ding-Ding" worked wonderfully for a long time. "Gimme, gimme, gimme Gibbons." likewise worked for a long time.

You might want to re-invent and resurrect one or both of those campaigns. You might want to freshen them, update them, but don't immediately ignore them. They worked once and well, and they could work again. If you take nothing else away from these unsolicited comments of mine, please consider this; both Steg and Gibbons have a long, long history here, don't treat them like they didn't exist prior to your arrival. BTW, welcome to NE PA, welcome to Wilkes-Barre and The Wyoming Valley!

3) Build a presence where it matters most; places where people drink beer. You can start right next door at Dukey's and keep on moving out in concentric circles. No matter what it takes, see to it that your signature beer in on tap at every bar from Hazleton to Forest City, from Stroudsburg to Williamsport. Cut deals, make promises you can keep, negotiate prices, but get your product out there front and center.

Design and have manufactured a really distinctive tap handle, have a marketing firm make you mock-ups until you know it's the one that no one will miss when they sidle up to the bar. Buy them by the hundreds, making sure wherever your signature beer is, there'll be that unmistakable handle.

4) Take your name and face to the commuity region-wide. It's been more than 20 years since I sat in a kitchen drinking beer with a dear friend while discussing The Lion, its products...and it's seeming lack of foresight. This was somewhere near the mid '80s. We both could feel the rebirth of this area, we both saw the early signs that the really bad days were ending, that new and better things were on the way. What occurred to both of us (among myriad other brilliant beer-fueled ideas including a clam chowder recipe that is a story unto itself) was that The Lion was in a unique spot to get on board fast, hard, and early, to position itself for taking that journey into a more promising future.

We envisioned a team of horses, a well-built beer wagon full of wooden barrels, men at the reigns in handsome uniforms. Sounds like a stolen idea, which it sure was. Stolen or not, it would be a huge marketing gimmick, one which would pull crowds wherever it went. And the point would be, it should go EVERYWHERE. Expensive? I suppose, but surely there could be deals made with local/regional horse owners, especially those with draught horses, such as Percherons and Clydesdales. Even if it was one horse, a smaller wagon, and one guy in a uniform, it would still work, it would still turn heads that aren't now turning.

5) Really push brewery tours. Your website claims you offer one tour per day on select Saturdays...and by reservation only. Don't steal a recipe from Dick Yuengling, but go ahead and steal a page from his play book; invite customers in, don't shut them out.

Just my nickel's worth, fellas, but you're telling those interested in your brewery that they really aren't all that welcome to pay a visit. You're saying, "OK, if you insist, I suppose we can squeeze you in somewhere." That ain't exactly extending a warm welcome to become a loyal Lion customer.

I want The Lion to succeed beyond anyone's wildest dreams, because it would be good for NE PA and a damned shame if we ever lost this treasure.