What Other Bloggers Blog...

I was just reading another blog, one which I get to several times a week. It's Jim Rising's Blog.

Jim occasionally has a burr under his saddle. So do I.

We blog to bitch. Blogs were built for bitching. Blogging is bitching.

Seems Jim's been having some problems with his lawn mower. He fixed things, he's back in the business of mowing his lawn.

It's not my mower that drives me boogotz, it's my weed-whacker. Boogotz may not be a real word, but I'm not the only person on the planet using it, it's all over the Internet. A buddy of mine was fond of using it whenever he needed to express how something, or someone, was making him crazy.

"This phone won't stop ringing, it's making me boogotz!" There you you have BOO-gotz in every day usage. Or, "I wish he'd just shut the hell up, he's driving me boogotz."

So boogotz it is with me and the weed-whacker. Piece of junk that it is. Sure looked good when I bought it four or five years ago. It was a junker, a clunker, a loser, right out of the box. I should've returned it, right?

Being the procrastinator, a champion putter-offer, there it sits, full tank of a gas/oil mix and all, just daring me to come and try to start it.

No way, not this year, I ain't goin' near it. I ain't goin' through the usual routine of choking, pulling, yanking, coaxing and cussing that accompanies trying to get a sputter, or a cough, or a hack out of that thing. It teases you, like it has artificial intelligence, like it knows it's poking you in the eye when it won't start.

Or, it will start...then stop before you can crank up the throttle. Once it does stop, forget it, there's no weed whacking that day. As defiant as it can be on a cold start, once it starts then stops, it's even worse.

Not this year. I can't do it. I can't do it and there are weeds in need of whacking. Well, what I really need to do is give our ornamental grasses a haircut.

See that disgusting backyard over there? Of course it's not ours.

Below, yes, that's a little piece of our backyard, and a young deer cleaning out one of our bird feeders. His mother taught him how to do it, we watched her. This is why we no longer vegetable garden. Right behind this darling deer is one of our compost heaps. "Compost Happens." You can see some of our rotting organic matter right there on the left. We have a nice backyard. Nice, not award-winning. If you'd like a nice backyard, invest in perennials, buying as many as you can. Then they'll keep on coming back year in and year out. Annuals are for the deck, for the window boxes.

"Friends Don't Let Friends Plant Annuals." It's a gardening joke. There are so few. Perhaps you now know why.

I got me a new weed-whacker. A brand new battery-powered whacker that can't refuse to start, because all you do is flip the thumb-switch and off you go. At least that's the theory. The practice? Yet unknown. And with good reason. The battery takes around nine hours to charge.

Now it is charged. It's raining. No whacking today. We all know you can't mow or whack wet grass or weeds, it just doesn't work. Any man who's gotten out of chores knows rain brings a solid excuse, it'd stand up before a magistrate.

See, I figure this new toy is from a known and trusted name in power tools, so it has to work, it has to get the job done, it has to be at least as good as my ex-whacker, the gas-powered one, the one that mocks me. If this new whacker runs, it's got my attention.

Battery powered garden tools don't have a great reputation. Their history is pretty much one of not enough juice to get the job done. That's why we turn to the internal combustion engine for backyard chores. Gas gets it done.

I'll have to report back on what the new non-fossil fuel whacker does, or doesn't do. Until then, let's talk about Jim Rising.

Jim spoke of his Dad and how he possesses his Dad's inability to to fix things around the house.

I say to you, Jim, you can drive a nail, turn a screw, change a bulb. And that, old radio pal, is one hell of a lot more than many guys can do. Over the years, I worked with plenty of them, men who never weighed the heft of a hammer in their hand, never felt their anger swell as a screw refused to be screwed, they knew not the tingly jolt of 110AC that only forgetting to cut power can bring. I know such men, Jim. They exist. They are among us.

You, you, fixed that lawn mower. Be proud!

Go out and buy yourself something manly...or go to Hillside and make it a double-dip.

That Train Has Left The Station...For Good

The is one of my all time favorites rail-related photographs.

The photographer; David Plowden. If you like it as much as me, you can buy a copy. Not from me, from Mr. Plowden.

The year was 1964. The occasion is the westbound Phoebe Snow's daily stop in Scranton, while on its way from Hoboken to Chicago. (The original Phoebe Snow was a Hoboken to Buffalo train.) The location is what is now The Radisson in Scranton, which was then a railroad station and division headquarters for the railroad. Mr. Plowden was traveling aboard The Phoebe Snow that day and stepped off long enough to take this photo. When he did, I doubt he gave much thought to this scene someday disappearing.

In six short years, this scene would become no more than a memory. The Phoebe Snow, a memory. Passenger rail service through NE PA, a memory. To the left is Miss Phoebe (foamer-talk) zipping across the Pocono Plateau at 65-70mph in 1954. Passengers and crew aboard that day could probably in no way envision a time when this train would be unavailable for thier travel needs. The last train to stop in NE PA did so on January 6th of 1970.

No sooner did it pull from the station, the same one so marvelously captured above by Mr. Plowden, than advocacy groups began popping up to lobby for the restoration of service. One group is still active, and they have nothing but my best wishes for success.

38 years later and...and nothing. Nothing, still no service. Worse yet, my optimism that we will ever again see rail service has evaporated like a puddle after a steamy July downpour.

Soaring gas prices, green initiatives, the billlions to update interstates, are all great arguments for a return of service. Funny thing, these are the same arugments made over 30 years ago for bringing back "the train." They continue to be great arguments, but it's unlikely they'll work any better than they did in 1970. We lost trains here even before Amtrak emerged and most all the rest of the country was left trainless.

It's not very risky saying that more of America is without service than with; to millions of Americans, the passenger train is no more than a vague rumor. The vast majority of Americans under the age of 50 have never seen a passenger train, never mind ridden one.

Amtrak did, though, have a secondary plan, a "Wish List" of routes they hoped to reestablish once things became profitable. The words Amtrak and profitable are not to be found in the same sentence. Had profits ever materialized, Scranton would have seen the return of service via a daily train from Hoboken to Buffalo, which was the original route of The Phoebe Snow.

After all other railroads had abandoned moving people to and through the Scranton and Wilkes-Barre area, The Erie-Lackawanna maintained, if only with what had become marginal service. The origins of that service are found in The Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad, The DL&W, hereinafter referred to as The Lackawanna.

The Lackawanna marked the approach of its 100th Anniversary in 1950 with, among other things, a brand new train called The Phoebe Snow. This was not a brand new train in name only, it was literally a brand new train.

New locomotives, new coaches, new diners, and what would become a Lackawanna trademark, brand new tavern-lounge cars, one of which you see at right. Much of this new train was built in Berwick by ACF, American Car and Foundry. Two complete train-sets; one for Buffalo to Hoboken, one for Hoboken to Buffalo.

The Phoebe Snow rolled out onto the mainline and into the hearts of Lackawanna travelers in 1949 as the best daylight streamlined train from metro NYC to Buffalo. Miss Phoebe replaced the Lackawanna's premier name train of longstanding, The Lackawanna Limited.

Running time from beginning to end was about eight and a half hours. Certainly nothing to brag about in today's terms of air time aboard a jet between the same two places. Factor in getting to an from an airport, late departures and arrivals, traffic tie-ups, blah, blah, blah, and the train still doesn't win any arguments. If all goes okay, flying from Newark to Buffalo takes an hour and a half.

Expediency is not among long-haul rail travel's many charms.

Short-haul is a much different deal. A train from NYC to Stroudsburg, Mt. Pocono, Scranton wins a lot of arguments. It makes a ton of sense.

A little rail-weenie history, with your indulgence.

In 1960, The Lackawanna entered a merger with its former avowed rival The Erie Railroad. The result was The Erie Lackawanna Railway Company, many vestiges of both predecessor railroads and the merged railroad are to be found across NE PA this day. These two railroads had what were darned near parallel routes between the tidewater of New Jersey and Buffalo. Erie's distinction was that it kept on going after Buffalo and stretched all the way to Chicago. At Chicago, Erie Lackawanna used Dearborn Station, where you could literally walk across a platform and step into The Santa Fe's Super Chief and complete a trip to Los Angeles.

From merger day on, the new railroad wanted out of the passenger business. Carrying passengers is a money-losing proposition. It's safe to say that no railroad made a nickel on moving people from probably WWII forward, or at least you'd never find a railroad to admit that it did. In 1969 Erie Lackawanna Railway Company, Inc. petitioned the ICC to discontinue long-distance passenger service. That petition was granted.

It was over. No more trains to, from, or through anywhere in NE PA.

About 20 years ago things began to look, feel, and smell right for the return of rail service between Scranton and Hoboken, followed by a quick PATH connection through the Hudson Tubes into Manhattan.

Ten years ago, things looked, felt, and smelled even better. I was a believer, convinced it was a given, it was undoable, that the train would be back.

Today, I doubt it. Today, I can't much see me and Carol taking the train into NYC any time soon to shop, catch a show, have dinner, whatever. There are two chances it'll ever happen; slim and none.

The most widely accepted excuse for the lack of progress in restoring service is The Lackawanna Cut-Off, an engineering marvel that runs from Port Morris, New Jersey, to Slateford Junction here in Pennsylvania. You can read tons about the Cut-Off elsewhere, if you're so inclined. For present purposes, though, let's just say that the Cut-Off is still there...trackless. Still in place, but with no tracks. Ties? Yes. You can see that in the relatively recent photo to the right. Tracks? Not a one.

Where'd they go?

Conrail tore them out in 1984, claiming they needed the rail for use elsewhere in their system.

Rubbish.

Conrail tore them out to eliminate the possibility of any competition using this route as access to the Port of New York. But that is a long story best told another time.

Putting the Cut-Off back together would be one daunting task, and mighty expensive, but it is a project that can be completed with enough money. The entire project of restoring service from Hoboken to Scranton, including a re-tracking of the Cut-Off, is an estimated $551 million dollars.
We spend $341.4 million per day, PER DAY, on the war. A day and a half or so of no war would put the train back in place, giving Pocono commuters one heck of a viable alternative for getting in and out Manhattan day and night.

It would also, and perhaps more importantly, reconnect NE PA with the rest of the USA through public transportation. Many of the largest metro areas in this country would be hours away, and very accessible via rail connections in NYC.

It's never going to happen.

Sadly, there are other considerations, other roadblocks to the train coming on back. For instance, every town along the right of way in PA expects any train that does return to stop there. The only stops that would make the train viable are Scranton, Mt. Pocono or Tobyhanna, and East Stroudsburg. Adding stops means slowing the schedule. Even the the leanest and most optimisic running time between Scranton and Hoboken is three hours.

Three hours makes the train an attractive and viable mode of transportation. Any longer and the train becomes a novelty.

Tiny steps are always being taken, but the project remains unfunded by the feds. Unfunded means not much of a priority. Unfunded means "dream on" for now.

In 2005 an environmental study was completed and submitted to the feds. It's 2008. Nothing has happened. Nothing will.

The project I once believed was unstoppable has been stopped, or at least solidly stalled until someone, some entity, has the guts to pronounce it dead.

As much as I love train travel, as much as I would like to see service back once again, as easy as it would be to hop a train and go visit family in New Jersey, or maybe ride into NYC for no more than lunch, or to shop, as much as passenger rail service would enhance the improving quality of life here, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about. And there are several reasons for that.

Tell you what. If this thing happens before this decade ends, I'll ride the first eastbound run and, if there is food and beverage service, I'll buy everyone on that train a drink, maybe two. Let me know about departure time.

And leave room for the pigs, they'll need space to take-off and land that day.




I do have to split a hair here. Although Mr. Plowden has always referred to the train in his magnificent photograph as The Phoebe Snow, I would suggest it may not have been such. Following the Erie and Lackawanna merger in 1960, The Phoebe Snow came and went several times. The train service continued, but the train pictured changed names, equipment, and schedules a number of times before passenger service ceased in 1970. Being the consummate rail-weenie, I do know that the smooth side coaches in the picture were indeed part of the original Phoebe Snow train-set. Despite that, the train could have been the westbound Lake Cities, which, to confuse things even more, became yet another named-train as it rolled eastbound from Chicago. In 1964, there was a world's fair in Flushing Meadow, NY. Erie Lackawanna then named the Chicago-Hoboken train The World's Fair.


The last train I did ride from Scranton was just that train, The World's Fair, and it was in the Summer of 1964.

What To Do With A Day Off?

Friday was a day without work for me. It followed a very busy Thursday, one full of emotions, both ups and downs. Even at that, all of those emotions were good.

Starting the day was a drive to Clarks Summit to say good-bye to George Gilbert. George was buried Friday, following an inspiring liturgy at Our Lady of the Snows Church. Lapsed badly as I am, the RC liturgy always moves me, often to tears. Sadly, "Snows," as most call it, is a church I've visited but twice; both times because of the death of a friend.

Also both times to say good-bye and pay my respects to those left behind when a radio legend signed-off for the last time. Sorry to be corny, but it's pretty much how it is with, as Tommy Woods called us, Radio-Heads. Tommy himself being one of the biggest Radio-Heads to ever sit before a microphone, and a really good guy. I've been a self-confessed Radio-Head since listening to distant stations under the sheets on cold winter nights, and steamy summer nights as well. I'm also among the lucky, the ones who actually got out from under those sheets and made it into radio.

There are degrees, levels if you will, of the Radio-Head thing. Some are completely, totally, fanatically obsessed with radio. Others, not so much so, yet still being Radio-Heads without question.

I can't here list who was at GG's Mass of Christian Burial without the risk of offending someone. I don't want to offend. That all of George's magnificent family was there is all that matters; that I personally got to hug and kiss most of them is all that matters to me. The Schumachers were always so nice and welcoming to me, like they'd known me forever. Thank you.

And so it was that George was solemnized, eulogized, and then buried at Dunmore Cemetery, one of the oldest and easily one of the most historical cemeteries in NE PA. I'd put it right up there with Wilkes-Barre's Hollenback Cemetery, itself a ponderous burial ground. Today, cemeteries have websites, but I can't find one for Hollenback(if you know of one, please pass it along).

To say that both of these graveyards hold the remains of the some of the biggest and most powerful establishing families of our part of the world is pure understatement. Hollenback's rolling hills gently conceal the coffins of veterans of The American Revolution. Amazing.

Dunmore Cemetery's narrow roads are a favorite walking trail for those fond of a daily constitutional. So impressive a place it is, that I know people who have left specific instructions that they be buried at Dunmore Cemetery, coming only to that decision after walking the cemetery on a regular basis.

After the early part of Thursday spent saying good-bye and paying respects, the later half of the day was a time for a party; The SPCA of Luzerne County's Annual Celebration.

It used to be that the organization had an annual dinner, in the traditional sense. We've kind of reinvented the gathering. It no longer resembles an "annual dinner," which we've discovered pleases most people. There's food and drink and entertainment. My personal thanks to The Cameron Avenue Band, Damian The Magician, and The Doghouse Dancers. Also a heartfelt thanks to the generous board of directors, devoted employees, and dedicated volunteers who all make working at The SPCA of Luzerne County such a joy.

Friday, I did nothing, and loved every minute of it.

Our No Rules Policy...

Sitting around HQ the other day, I realized we have no rules here. Given that the internet itself is synonymous with having no hard and fast rules, applying any rigidity to a blog is really a fool's pursuit.

So that would be Rule #1 of our No Rules Policy; No Fool's Pursuits Allowed.

Rule #2 is No Net Police Allowed, Nor Wanted, Nor Welcome. I so dislike people who think they're carrying a badge and wielding some authority as to what belongs and what does not. I've said some pretty rude things to board moderators over the years who are bound and determined to patrol their boards/forums like Wackenhut Guards. "No Lifer" is the term immediately coming to mind when I encounter these types. I refer not to the Wackenhuts, but rather martinet moderators.

I'm working on a Rule #3 right now. Maybe I'll just make it No Spitting On Floor. Used to be you'd see signs forbidding such behavior years and years ago, which always suggested to me that in some places it was perfectly fine to spit on the floor.

It's a first cousin to No Dumping Here. Does that mean dumping Over There is allowed?

One forum visited often by local media people, past and present, has a moderator who spanks those who stray off topic. He's also placed a filter in his software keyed to automatically bust you for using a handful of words, none of which are among the famous seven you can never say on television. Expletives here and there spice things up. "Sentence enhancers" can make an idea jump off of a page at you. Judicious use of certain words is a skill not all possess.

I've been wired for roughly 12 years now, which is a good bit longer than many. Yes, I know, a guy my age knows nothing about computers or the internet, right? "Road apples!" as my good buddy Scott Perkins used to say. It's unimportant to list all I do know. If you'd like to think otherwise, please feel free to underestimate me.

As noted in a previous post, being underestimated can, in time, be a very powerful tool to have at your disposal. Underestimating an individual helps only one person, the person you underestimated.

What's on my mind this time around is the blog and what it is.

By definition, it's a log, a journal. It's a listing of one's personal observations, experiences, likes, dislikes, grumbles, gripes, bitches, and moans.

Thanks for noticing, I do indeed offer my fair share of all of the aforementioned. Happy to not let you down. We aim to to please. If you don't see what you're looking for, beat it, we probably don't have it.

I had a blog several years ago, it was homemade. I wrote some simple HTML tags to create a page, put it on that "free" space so graciously given me by my then ISP, and would often make a post or two. It was not interactive, mostly because I then lacked the skill to write code to make it so at the time. Now that I have the skill, who needs it?

Blogger.com has made life so much easier. Anyone who reads a blog has internet access, and with that you are but a few mouse clicks away from having a blog of your own. Yes! You, too, can have a blog.

One of the best ways to get yourself a widely read blog right away is to enable the option which allows readers to post a response to whatever it is you said. That way malcontents who have nothing better to do than sit at a keypad and complain can heave rocks at you without you knowing who they are.

Having that suite in The Hotel Anonymous sure gives some people stones, including those they can throw.

Get evicted from that suite, and the stones just go away.

What I've done here, simply, is made life easy for everyone. You're so very welcome.

Disabling the "allow comments" option makes me sleep better, rest easier, and live a fuller and richer life. (I'm still waiting for it to make me run faster and jump higher, like a certain sneaker used to do.) Not having to worry about who it was that called me, oh, arrogant, let's say, is one less thing on my plate of concern for the day. Good. Less stress, more life.

I write this because several have suggested that they'd like to leave a comment after visiting. That's terrific! Those who've told me that are precisely the people I'd love to hear from. But, wait, I already have heard from them.

They ain't the only people out there reading this blog.

If you're a blogger with a dash of savvy, you have software on your blog to track visitors by ISP, by IP number, by their location, and also by the page that brought them to your page, when they visited and how long they stayed. Oh, and you can see what they viewed first and last on your blog. The only thing you don't know is their name, street address, the last book they read, and what's in their MP3 player at the moment.

So, you say, what in hell good is this info? Other than it being a curiosity, a novelty to see where your readers are and how they got to you, it does offer a safeguard in the event that some brave soul holed up in The Hotel Anonymous makes seriously nasty comments.

Armed with their IP number, you can report them to their ISP. Ostensibly, providers don't want that type customer, so they'll at least dump the offender.

Is there a point in here somewhere? Well, geez, I'm not so sure. Does a blog need a point? I suspect not.

But let me try and cobble one together anyway. My blog is my blog. I don't ask that you like it, agree with it, endorse or support it, or even look at it. It's mostly for my own amusement, really.

I write because I often like to write. I write because whatever small skill is there gets very rusty without use. I write because I once heard Tom Clancy say that if you ever favored yourself as a writer, you have to write every single day.

Paraphrasing, of course, but Clancy went on to say that it doesn't matter what you write, or how you write it. Punctuation, grammar, syntax, spelling, forget it, they don't matter until, and if, you get to a finished product. Just force yourself to sit at the keys and write, write every day, if only for a few minutes.

I just did. Thanks for reading.

George Gilbert...

Bad news travels fast. Word that the radio industry had lost a legend hustled around NE PA in a big hurry.

George Gilbert died Saturday night at home, surrounded by family. George was 76. George Gilbert was a great guy.

Really wanting to post pictures of George caused me to raid two other blogs.

I'm sure my pals(and fellow bloggers) Kevin Jordan and David Yonki won't mind me borrowing their photos.

When I first met George in late 1978, his hair had completely grayed, and he'd acquired that distinguished look which many seem fortunate enough to have come upon them in their 40s and 50s.

Tall, ramrod straight, George was a handsome man.

To say that WARM owned radio hereabouts for years may be understatement. WARM was radio hereabouts. There was WARM........then there was everyone else.

WARM wannabes were all over the place, not one of them ever breathed the same rarefied air. The Mighty 590 had the summit all to itself.

Monster ratings, air personalities known by everyone - known by name and voice, the best radio news department between here and Philly, here and NYC, and probably here and Syracuse.

People in that time didn't live in Nanticoke, or Laceyville, or Dunmore, they lived in WARMland. If you think that's nuts, just ask around, ask folks in their late 40s, in their 50s, and beyond. We all lived in WARMland. WARMland was a very real place to many people, it was wherever you could listen to WARM, and WARM was everywhere.

That unprecedented and verifiable success was pretty much the doing of one man. That man was George Gilbert Schumacher.

George created, crafted, babied, coaxed, and shaped into existence the sound that made WARM a household word. It wasn't just a radio station, it was literally a way of life. WARM was an enormous component of each and every day in NE PA for decades. George could have easily taken full credit for all of that...but he never seemed to be interested in doing so.

In accomplishing so much, George launched a lot of broadcasting careers. Mine included. More accurately, George Gilbert redirected the course of my career, such as it was. If not for George, the strong likelihood is that my life would have been spent somewhere west, far west. My immediate goal in 1978 was a job in Dallas, Texas, a job "promised" me by a radio group programming chief the second it became open. If it ever became open, I don't know. If my phone in Williamsport did ring with news of that job, no one was there answer it.

In 1978 my phone had already rung. On the other end, George Gilbert.

The mention of the name both stunned and numbed me. George was a devotee of economy when it came to words. If he had nothing worthwhile to say, he didn't. Unlike most of us blabbermouths who stumble into broadcasting, George was in reality a quiet guy. However, don't mistake the man's quiet for a lack of presence, for George was a very powerful presence. He possessed a presence that could fill a room.

He called because he had this job that I might be interested in pursuing. Thinking back on it, I can tell you with complete certainty that he told me the job was mine, if I wanted it. Before that phone call, I had never met George Gilbert, but knew him well, and had known him well since I was a kid, by name, by reputation, and by that fine baritone voice of his. He was The Mighty 590, he was WARM, he was Double-G.

Taking up George on his offer and accepting the early mid-day shift on WARM literally set the course my life would follow up until this very day. Although I spent seven years at WARM, George's time there was coming to an end as mine began. My guess is that we spent just about a year working together, during which I came to really like George Gilbert. From that first minute through the door at WARM it was clear that this guy was well-liked, beloved may have been more like it. Getting to know and like George was a package deal; you got to feel the same way about his family, too. What a genuinely nice, friendly, and sincere bunch of folks.

GG needed a challenge and a change. He went to Williamsport, where he would take a stodgy, block-programmed, simulcasting AM/FM combo and morph it into something magnificent, not to mention highly successful. I always thought it amusing that George went there after bringing me from there to here. As an aside to other dear friends Gary Chrisman and Ken Sawyer, I do hope they realize that they likewise share George's legacy as so many of us do.

Now, he's gone.

My life is better for having known George Gilbert Schumacher. No doubt countless others can and will say the same. I hope that brings comfort to his wife and kids, they deserve no less. I honestly believe that's about all George would have wanted.

Don't Get Around Much Anymore...

Not getting around much anymore comes with a simple and verifiable explanation, one which has neither to do with age, nor energy level, nor interest, nor disinterest. It's strictly a function of one inescapable truth; getting from here to there has become a nightmare.

Actually, if you can find a better way to travel, how about this for your catch phrase, "We take the nightmare out of here to there."

Admittedly, I haven't flown from "Avoca" since before 9/11. For someone who flew regularly for years, that is a long time. The last "big trip" Carol and I took was a Bermuda cruise the summer before last. We sailed from Philly. It was sheer joy eliminating the need to fly. If you haven't done a cruise without the flights, you have no idea just how sweet it is.

We really have one airport, just like we have one stadium, one arena. So, call them the airport, the stadium, the arena. Naming rights aside, they are what they are. Our airport's name is a clumsy molar-mangling mouthful that has annoyed me for years, not to mention it being hollow and meaningless.

The "international" designation is a bit of pomp which we could do without. Yes, I know, you could fly from here to Bratislava non-stop if...if...if...

Look, if my aunt had certain body parts, two in fact, she'd be my uncle.

I'd settle for a non-stop to Pittsburgh. Might as well shoot for Bratislava, or Singapore, or even Dublin.

Flying from Philadelphia, Newark, even Allentown was often more appealing than trying to get out of Avoca. So help me, it was never about price with me, it was about avoiding tangled, convoluted, and headache connections, ones that resulted in what should be two hours pleasantly spent, into eight or nine hours and three or four airports making me miserable. Many surely know the feeling.

Please, anyone who knows me at all can vouch for my being an unabashed booster of NE PA. My cheerleading for this part of the state is constant and genuine. Say, proud to say, we sure do have a nice new airport terminal, complete with a lot of pretty neat artwork, some by an old acquaintance of mine, Henry Fells, or Hank as most call him.

The need for better air service here has long been a hot topic.

Getting it has long been a hot potato.

I'm strongly in the camp of those who think we need an independent airport board, one made up of business, community, civic, and social leaders, rather than one confined to county commissioners from two counties, two counties that should be "best pals." I figure the six commissioners have enough to do, so just get out of the airport business and be done with it.

Pittsburgh is now the source of my pain. See, I need to be in Pittsburgh in early June for at least a day, two if I choose. Long-distance driving's charm left me long ago. If I can fly somewhere, anywhere, hand me that boarding pass, return my seat to wherever you want, and buckle me in.

Years back, a USAir 737 pilot told me a pretty cool story. Flying time, air time, from Avoca to Pittsburgh could be as short as nineteen minutes. Correct, nineteen - 19 - minutes. From wheels up to wheels down, nineteen minutes. Fuel economy, and landing slots at Pittsburgh, were the only reasons the trip ran roughly an hour. Now, if you haven't done the hop from here to there recently, you might not believe how long it takes. A quick story to establish a point of reference.

I once flew from Avoca to a small town in Idaho named Pocatello, where friends of mine picked me up and drove me to their home in an even smaller town hours away. I spent roughly eleven "airline" hours that day, and boarded and deplaned at least three jets operated by three airlines, not counting intermediate stops, to make the trip. I thought it was a remarkably long journey.

Europe was closer time-wise. There was so much up and down and up and down that I really hated flying for a long time after that day. That was over twenty years ago.

Here, in 2008, getting to the other side of the state can take even longer.

I'm not driving to Pittsburgh.

If you like to play Remember When, let's remember when about the only place you could get to from Avoca was Pittsburgh. That wasn't all that long ago. I think 2001 was the big bad year when USAir's fortunes really tanked, at least as far as Pennsylvania operations were concerned. Pittsburgh used to be the center of USAir's universe, the airport authority going so far as to build a brand spanking new airport, predicated upon the logical thinking that USAir would be its anchor.

Shortly after the new 'port was built, USAir dumped 1,200 jobs in Pittsburgh and discontinued literally hundreds of daily flights. They also scrapped plans to build a major maintenance facility in Imperial, which is the town where the airport is physically located. Imperial would be Pittsburgh's Avoca, if our airport was in Avoca. Apparently, it's not, it's in Pittston Township. More deception. I give up.

Poking around the last few days, I was astonished(and frustrated) to find that there is no direct service from Avoca, Allentown, Pittsburgh, Williamsport, or even Harrisburg, to Pittsburgh. Some of Pennsylvania's key cities are at least a couple legs/stops/changes away from our gateway to the west, the city of three rivers, the Pirates, Steelers. The town that gave the world Andy Warhol, and the "Imp and Iron." ("Imp and Iron" is a shot and a beer - shot of Imperial and a glass of Iron City, on tap of course.)

A trip to Pittsburgh from Avoca(or wherever the airport is)can now consume up to ten hours of your travel day. Depending on times you need, ten hours or more. The minimum time would be over four hours.

Over four hours.

In four hours you could wing it down to Key West from Newark. In roughly four hours you could have an early couple eggs over easy with home fries at La Guardia, then hit several mojitos with lunch in Old San Juan, Puerto Rico. Add another hour, make it five hours, and you could be working on a tan in the US Virgin Islands.

All I need is to get to Pittsburgh.

The trip could take up to ten hours. Ten hours would be a few hours short of here to Honolulu. Ten hours is almost 75% of the flight to Australia. Ten hours would not only get me to The UK, it would give me time to get into London, find a great pub, and blow back at least two pints of an English best bitter. Chip could recommend a brand.

After a ten hour trip via either Philly, Detroit, Washington, Cleveland - and I am not kidding about that route - I'll be ready for a couple mojitos, or maybe an Imp 'n Iron or two. And I'll be tired, but enlightened as to the sad state of air travel here in the USA.

The Irish Thing...

I began pounding out a few thoughts on the Irish Thing over parade weekend. For whatever reason, once parade weekend was gone for another year, my mind wandered off in other directions. After all, the whole world isn't Irish, nor is being Irish the whole world. Proud as I can be to carry Irish blood, that about says it.

If blogger.com had a central casting site, if I asked for an Irish guy's jpeg., that could be him over there on the right. It is an Irish guy, he's not from blogger.com. He's Seamus Sweeney, late of County Louth, Republic of Ireland.

So help me, that is Seamus Sweeney, standing among his potato plants, on his farm in place called The Mills of Louth, the Sweeney ancestral home. The year would be, oh, I want to say 1970/71. Uncle Seamus, to be more accurate, great Uncle Seamus. Seamus, whose son assumed the anglicized James as his first name, was my grandfather's brother. Younger brother, I think.

See, my grandfather never really went on and on about the old country, although he left parents and brothers and one sister behind when he sailed for our shores in roughly 1907. Patrick Joseph Sweeney left The Mills of Louth because things were bad in Ireland, they were hard, there wasn't much of a future. He knew it and wanted more from life. Here he found much more. Including a young woman by the name of Mary Agnes Traynor, Agnes to most. They married. She was Catholic, which made a wedding easy. What she was not was Irish. Agnes was English. Patrick and Agnes were marvelous people, just the nicest, kindest, warmest grandparents. My memories of them both are many and wonderful. That's Patrick on the left as a very young man, location completely unknown.

Somewhere in the early 1920s, Patrick and Agnes grabbed the kids, the two that had come along so far, and sat in a studio for a family portrait. I wonder how they got there? Did they have an automobile? Maybe they took a streetcar. Could be they walked. Left to right, that is my Dad on my Grandfather Sweeney's knee, my Aunt Mary, and my Grandmother Sweeney. They're all gone now.

In total, there were six Sweeney children with my Dad being the oldest. One of them, his "sister" Esther, was actually a first cousin, legally adopted when her mother died in childbirth. Esther is the only one still living.

Sitting upon the shores of the other side of my immdediate gene pool were the Davies family. Rhys Jenkin Davies and Marianne Terret Davies. Rhys is pronounced Reese. He was known as "Shink," a once popular Welsh nickname. Shink was gone before I got here. I never had the pleasure of knowing my Welsh grandfather. My Welsh grandmother, now there was a great lady. She was my Gram. As you can see, Shink was largely bald. Patrick probably had the same number of hairs in his head the day he died in 1974 that he had the day he walked out of the Mills of Louth in 1909. It's important that you know what once Patrick J. Sweeney walked away, he never looked back.

The Davies family, by contrast, did go back a time or two, making the crossing aboard The Queen Mary.

Sorry for the tedium. We all have families of which to speak. I am, though, headed somewhere with this.

The matter of loyalty, ethnic loyalty, if you will.

Cornered and forced to choose one and only one, I doubt I could. I feel the same about my ancestry being Irish, as about it being Welsh, as about it being English. Actually, you could unite the Irish and Welsh as one. Technically, genetically, we are of the same tribe. The Irish and the Welsh are both Celts. (Our NBA team notwithstanding, the pronunciation is with a hard C; kelt, not selt. Anyone have a satisfactory explanation for that?)

While proud of my roots, there is also a big part of me that says it's getting about time we wrap up this preoccupation with "what" we are, for what we are is Americans.

Each year when parade weekend comes around, I often think of my grandfather Sweeney. Always nice thoughts, for sure. He was a great storyteller, he had a story for every situation, every occurrence. Patrick was, you could say, a raconteur. Two of his frequently told stories, both short, were;

1) The great admiration he had for the eastern Europeans and Italians who came here at roughly the same time he did, late 19th and early 20th century. Essentially, he thought his great journey was nothing compared to theirs. Many times he told me of how they came not knowing the language, not one word, while he'd been speaking English his entire life. That, he would say, made things easy for him. It was a humble thing to say. Patrick Joseph Sweeney was indeed a humble man.

2) Not so much a story, but rather an observation, and a telling one at that. A number of times in his later years, family offered to send him back "home" for a visit. The thinking was generous, figuring he'd like to see the old country again, to walk the roads he walked as a kid, to spend time with what family he had left, and there was family. There still is. Whenever the offer of a trip came up, his answer was always the same. I can hear him now, his brogue likely as thick as when he made the crossing as a teenager, "Now why would you think I'd want to go back? Why the hell do you think I left in the first place?"

Kind of hard to argue with that.