The Morgantowner: Carbon County, Pennsylvania and Mauch Chunk

I had a stressful few weeks, leading services at temple and writing a sermon, teaching a four-week class about Bruce Springsteen called "Bruce Springsteen is 67!", and beginning a campaign for Morgantown City Council. I did the service, which went well, finished the class, likewise, and I'm waiting for printed cards before I go door-to-door for my campaign. I was at three meetings Sunday, and other meetings Monday, Tuesday and Thursday nights. My campaign committee met with me Saturday afternoon. I was ready to go.

The weather reports suggested that Presidents' Day Weekend was going to be unseasonably warm, and might break some records. How I relax is to disappear for two or three days to someplace I've never been before. I have a list prepared: counties within three hundred miles of Morgantown, in any state, in alphabetical order. Carbon County, Pennsylvania is number fifty-six.

Jim Thorpe is the county seat, and I remember reading in school about how the town came to be named that. The original name was Mauch Chunk, and there was an East Mauch Chunk. The two merged to become Jim Thorpe when the great athlete was entombed here in the 1950s. Thorpe attended an Indian school in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, maybe a hundred miles west of here. His third wife made a deal with the city, and the tomb is here with statues and plaques telling his story.

Presidents' Day weekend is "Winterfest" here where you can rent snowmobiles and have a great wintry experience. There is only one chain motel on the edge of the county, although many bed and breakfast places in town, all booked. I looked at PurpleRoofs.com, a site for gay-friendly B&Bs and found one listed. Two men own it. I called and spoke to one of the owners. They were booked solid, as were two other places he recommended. He said he and his spouse were from Pennsylvania, but had lived in the Seattle area for twenty years. They felt that social attitudes had improved enough that they could move back. He said there is still some static, but they are happy to be in their home state. I told him that my husband and I were in West Virginia the last five years after more than two decades in California, and that we were both from the East. Maybe it was just time for us to be back near where we were from.

Meanwhile, through the local tourism website, I found an ancient hotel in the heart of the city, and was able to book a room. With detours off the highway for lunch, gas and bathrooms, it was 300.5 miles to the hotel from our house. It was about 58 F. at 4 P.M., apparently down from a high of 62. Small piles of snow lined the gutters, but a snowmobile was out. People rented bicycles. I walked around the town, took pictures of a few historic sites, then came back to the hotel to rest up. I dined at a little Chinese place, similar to the one in Lynchburg last month, walked around the town some more, although it was empty by 7 P.M.

Today, I was out from 9:15 until after 5. Jim Thorpe, with 4800 people, is only the third largest borough (Pennsylvania for "city") in the county. Lehighton with 5500 and Palmerton with 5400 are larger. (The figures are rounded from the 2010 Census via Wikipedia). I also visited Lansford, Nesquehoning, Weatherly and Weissport. None of them were as old or as fixed up as Jim Thorpe.

Carbon County was so-named because of the anthracite coal that was mined here starting in the 1820s. The problem was how to get it from the steep mountains to the cities, and the solution originally was a canal paralleling the rough Lehigh River, and later a train, used as a roller coaster ride in later years. The canal is used mostly for recreation, and a part of the train route is used for tourists on holiday weekends, like this one.

The coal is mostly gone, although I saw a few mines open to the roads in the county. It's still a beautiful place, but on many of the mountainsides, the trees are gone and there are gashes left by minig, and abandoned factories. Some of the towns seem to be hanging in there, but Lansford, which has a historic district, has next to no commercial life.

I didn't bring appropriate clothing for outdoor activities. Still I hiked a bit of the Appalachian Trail on the southern border of Carbon County and swampy with newly-melted snow. I visited a string of parks along the Lehigh River, the canals and the railroad line.

I got back to Jim Thorpe after 4:30, parked the car and walked the six blocks of Broadway that is most of the town. In California, we would call Broadway a "canyon" because of the steep hillsides on both sides of the street, held up by massive stone walls, visible behind the structures on the street. The first few blocks are touristy shops and B&Bs, but farther up, there are real people living in the houses. Old-timers' homes are covered in aluminum siding; the gentrifiers have taken the fronts back to brick.

In many of the towns, I still saw "Trump" signs and even some Confederate flags. I felt some sympathy for the people. especially when I saw the empty storefronts in a town like Lansford, once prosperous, apparently, and now just sad. People with brains and ambition probably left generations ago, but the towns are pretty, and there is a certain majesty to the scarred landscape and the abandoned industrial sites. I wish things had turned out better for most of these towns. Even in Jim Thorpe, the school is now apartments, the jail and some of the churches are museums, the stores sell expensive soaps and candies to tourists.

There is a mall of sorts in Lehighton, with a chain supermarket and a few other stores. I even found a synagogue there, Temple Israel of Lehighton. Their website says they are "A Jewel of a Shul", founded in 1924, and undergoing "Re-Jew-Venation." The rabbi lives in much-larger Allentown, about 30 miles away. Her husband works in the Jewish community there.

I'll be home tomorrow (Tuesday), ready to work full-time on my election campaign.

I took lots of pictures.