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.
