My Shenandoah, 1966: Recollections of a 9-Year Old Along with the Ramblings of a 59-Year Old. a Nostalgic Look Back to the 60’S in a Small Coal Region Town.

By Andy Ulicny

My Shenandoah, 1966 was originally planned to merely record an objective local history, but its enthusiastic fans will assure you the book developed well beyond that into a highly readable, engrossing work for everyone. Its ample supply of endearing personal anecdotes and historical peculiarities make this local history quite an entertaining read.

The book also makes the jump from mere local appeal by embracing the universal nostalgia of the era we know as The Sixties. The original motive of providing a thorough demography of the Coal Region town of Shenandoah, fifty years before its Sesquicentennial, is achieved. However, the books scope is much more universal. It is an accurate picture of a small town America in that Golden Age of our nations history; it takes all its readers back on a nostalgic tour of that extraordinary decade known as the Sixties.

The first person narrative has two authors in one. Youll see the Sixties through the innocent eyes of the 9 year old who lived them. Gain his impressions of his education, his views on the towns diversity and its prejudices. Thrill in the childish enjoyment of life in small town America of this generation. But, realize that child has grown into a 59 year old historian. Explore with him the town and countys national prominence and historical figures. Look back at the Corner Stores, the Penny Candy, the Supermarkets, the Cars, the Drinking, and the Holidays. Philosophize with him over the changing times. Look back at a firsthand account of Americas most memorable decade and more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Aug 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781491774946

Andy Ulicny

Andy Ulicny, a proud coal region native of Shenandoah, was born in the Locust Mountain State Hospital on April 11, 1957. His father Frank was a legendary local figure throughout the area due to his football playing prowess as well as his coaching and teaching careers. Big Frank was a beloved mentor due to his firm yet caring nature. Mother, Anne Zinkiewicz Ulicny, was held in as high an esteem for her ability to raise the couple’s ten children. Many dubbed her as St. Anne. After splitting his parochial school elementary education between St. Stephen’s and St. Casimir’s schools, Ulicny became a member of Shenandoah Valley’s Class of 1975. The Blue Devil was highly involved in athletics, drama, chorus, and the school newspaper. Following high school, Ulicny matriculated for four years at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and earned Bachelor’s degrees in both English and Anthropology as well as a Master of Science in Education. For Ulicny, who settled in Shenandoah Heights, the life in education continued for the next 35 years as a teacher and Language Arts Department Chair at Southern Columbia High School. While at Southern he became known for his turnaround of the SCA Tigers Football team as well as his successful softball teams. He served the district in countless capacities. He coordinated dozens of proms, resurrected the Forensics team and Speech Class, initiated Tiger News as a daily televised broadcast, ran the Veteran’s Day Assembly, supervised the annual Graduation Project, prepared Graduation speakers, and initiated a program of summer overseas travel excursions. Since 1986 Ulicny has partnered with Hall of Fame play-by-play announcer Jim Doyle in broadcasting football games for WHLM Radio in Bloomsburg. His weekends in the fall are happily spent serving as color analyst in covering the Berwick High School Bulldogs, the Bloomsburg University Huskies, the Southern Tigers, and other local teams. The broadcasting pair was recognized with a “Pennsylvania Excellence in Broadcasting Award” in 2012 when their call of the Bloomsburg at West Chester Game was nominated and then voted as best football broadcast in the state that year. Ulicny himself has been honored with induction into both the Bernie Romanoski and Northern Anthracite sports Hall of Fames. He is also on Shenandoah Valley’s Wall of Fame as an honored alumni. Ulicny has a fascination with the area’s past and has done extensive research into both Shenandoah and Schuylkill County’s History. He is a longstanding member of the Schuylkill County Historical Society and specializes in local genealogy. His personal database of local family trees has over 60,000 individuals. The harder the challenge, the more he enjoys the digging into a person’s roots. With the turn of the new millennium Ulicny took it upon himself to see that all the tombstone inscriptions of the cemeteries up the Heights were transcribed. About a dozen, including four of the largest of the Shenandoah Parish Cemeteries, had never been recorded in any manner. “My Shenandoah, 1966” is Ulicny’s first venture at writing a book. Andy Ulicny is happily married to his high school sweetheart, the former Deb Berresford...the only girl he ever dated. They have one beautiful daughter, Nicole, the joy of their life, who lives and works in Norristown, PA.

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MY SHENANDOAH, 1966

Recollections of a 9-Year Old along with the Ramblings of a 59-Year Old.

A Nostalgic Look Back to the 60’s in a Small Coal Region Town.

Copyright © 2015 Andy Ulicny.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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ISBN: 978-1-4917-7493-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4917-7494-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015913086

iUniverse rev. date: 08/18/2015

CONTENTS

Chapter 1: Our Shenandoah – 1966. Welcome

Chapter 2: Our School Days

Chapter 3: Our Ethnicity: Pride and Prejudice

Chapter 4: Our Bigotry

Chapter 5: Our Summer Fun

Chapter 6: Our Organizations: Little Leagues & Lodges

Chapter 7: Our Corner Stores

Chapter 8: Our Supermarkets

Chapter 9: Our Roads / Getting Around

Chapter 10: Our Cars / Getting Around

Chapter 11: Our Beer

Chapter 12: Our Drinking

Chapter 13: Our Calendar - January

Chapter 14: Our Calendar - February, March, and April

Chapter 15: Our Calendar - May, June, and July

Chapter 16: Our Calendar: August – November

Chapter 17: Our Calendar of Traditions – December and the Christmas Season

Chapter 18: Our Calendar of Traditions – Christmas Eve & Christmas Day

DEDICATION

T his book is dedicated to the three most important women in my life: my mother, my daughter and my wife.

Mom, Anne Zinkiewicz Ulicny, had to deal with 10 little rapscallions and sacrificed her own tremendous intellectual talent and career potential to raise us. She managed it all with grace and ease and never a complaint. The town was right to nickname her St. Anne.

Nicole Ulicny, always the perfect daughter, she has been perhaps my greatest cheerleader in this and every other venture; providing great spirit to inspire me to keep on plugging away.

My wife Debra Berresford Ulicny… you will always be as the Dothraki say, Yer Jalan Atthirari Anni, that is my moon and my stars! Always supportive, even when I’d disappear and ignore you for hours working on the computer.

Thank you all, you have given my life meaning.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I nformation to make this book a reality has come from varied sources, too many to list. Many people may criticize that… and the lack of constant precise documentation… but I aimed for readability over accountabi lity.

For accuracy I relied upon the Schuylkill County Historical Society for so much of the source material. Thank you, Jean Dellock, Jay Zane, Tom Dempsey, Rich Nagle, Charlie Joyce, Dave Derbes, Tom Drogalis and the entire staff. I must provide an especial tip of the hat to past president Dr. Pete Yasenchak who always seemed to know everything. What a happy source of information; I am ever grateful for our friendship and tutelage; I owe you a big hug!

The Pottsville Public Library also endured my hours upon their microfilm machine as I poured over old edition of the Shenandoah Evening Herald and The Pottsville Republican.

Locally, good friend Bernie Sanders could always be relied upon to provide information that no one else seemed to know. He was always just a phone call away. My barber, John Catizone is also the supplier of a lot of hidden historical detail from his unique sources of notes, letters, and deeds. Brother Pete as well as my other siblings helped with family memories, although Tom tended to excuse his own personal hijinks and blame Brother Joe as the culprit.

My sister Annie Ulicny Taylor spent hours proofreading chapters in her already hectic schedule, not many folks can count on a terrific high school English teacher and Ivy League alum for such a mundane chore. She couldn’t get to all the chapters so blame my eyes for the typos that escaped; I missed them and was unwilling to pay over $6,000 for the suggested professional proofreader.

Finally, I’m in debt to my Facebook Army of Friends. I relied upon many of you for information, thank you all for responding to my posts with scads of information and memories. Brother Mike told me one of my trending topic once went viral… well the topic was favorite beer.

PREFACE

I n writing this book, I began with one goal, and found myself addressing another, and finally… yet another. As I shifted goals, I found I also shifted to a wider set of audiences. I do hope all three of my audiences will find it appealing and no one feels too left out.

First, the book was to be a history… dry and boring as that may seem. My town of Shenandoah has a glorious history. Much of the history of our formative and early years is well documented as there is a wealth of wonderful primary source material. However, my Shenandoah reaching back 50 years does not really have a recording; this more recent history back to the era of our 1966 Centennial. Oh, we have major news events recorded here and there, but not a work that considers the genuine feeling for our times.

I felt there was a need for a first person history of this time frame. Years ago I read a short three page interview that convinced me to record the history I know. A fellow named Pat Devers provided us with a glimpse of his Shenandoah of the 1890’s, he provided it in an interview in the year 1937 forty or fifty years after his youthful heyday in the town. It was a very short interview of remembrances that was then set down in writing by a historical recorder on three typed pages. In a mere three pages, he provided a wealth of information and gave us a powerful picture of his town as it was prior to the turn of the twentieth century. His interview provided factual data of material that otherwise would have been lost forever and gave a real feel for his times.

I figured it would be important for me to do the same. I wanted to get a record of my Shenandoah, and if you know me, I would hardly limit myself to three typed pages. I focus on Shenandoah of the 1960’s, but …if you know me… I’ll ramble. I’ll go further back… and also I’ll move forward toward the present as well. Why not? It’s all part of our town’s story.

Back in our Centennial year of 1966, I really wish that some 59 year old wrote a book on his Shenandoah as a nine year old… his Shenandoah of 1916. Imagine the wealth of information such a retrospective would have provided us of the town and its times. With this in mind, it became a mission of mine to capture the Shenandoah of my younger memories, to jump from the present of 2016 to go back to 1966.

So my first goal was to record the town and the times. I wanted to get a true feel for the era, not really as much of history, as of demography. I wanted to capture the essence of our people, our culture, our mindset, our traditions, our ways. I hope I proved successful in my attempts in this book. In any case, something is now recorded of those times.

Secondly, I found I wanted to entertain. I wanted the book to be a readable, fun, pleasurable experience. As I wrote, I found myself recollecting stories that I found enjoyable. I know that many of you will appreciate the family anecdotes and reminiscences of particular classmates and memories of the people of our town. I hope my remembrances jog even more memories from you the reader, ones not included in the book. Write your own down in the margins; insert a few pages of your own, personalize your copy of My Shenandoah, 1966 making it your Shenandoah.

Finally, I recognized that while readers from our town of Shenandoah, our Schuylkill County, and our Coal Region would connect with many of the specifics in the book. I realized this book would also be a nostalgic trip down memory lane for anyone who lived through the sixties and seventies. While the setting of my Shenandoah is quite specific, our 1960’s are rather universal.

As I wrote, I found myself having more and more wistful longings for those times as I explored our schools, our ethnicity, our prejudices, our corner stores, our supermarkets, our drinking, holiday traditions, and our toys. Our times were shared in many ways, not just by our region, but by our entire nation.

* * * * *

I hope you don’t find it too hard to follow the shifting voice of the narrator. At times he’s 9 years old … at times he is 59. Admittedly, I am the same person and the same voice, but at times I wanted you to hear my narration as Little Andy the kid, at other times I needed Andy the historian. If there are inconsistencies of voice and tense… please forgive me, I may not have been a talented enough writer.

Also realize, young Andy is coal region… through and through… and proud of it. You’ll hear him mention his hometown of Chendo and say Me and Pete instead of the properly grammatical subjective case of Peter and I. He’ll also give his unsophisticated 9 year old perspective of his times which most likely has evolved and matured over the past fifty years.

There are some problems with that 59 year old narrator Andy as well. He, too, is coal region through and through… and prides himself on a mastery of the coal region dialect even after an Ivy League education and 35 years as a high school English teacher. You would think those experiences would have expunged all of the dialect and the hard coal culture…but… you see… he doesn’t want it to ever be expunged. He takes great pride in that heritage!

He’ll take off on historical tangents. He loves historical oddities, fun facts, and inane word play. But, he’ll eventually get back on track… he just wanted to ramble… he planned to ramble… for the purpose of connecting in some other local history… or some anecdote… that he hoped you’d find worthwhile or entertaining. Bear with him and his tangents… for a page or so; he’ll eventually get back on track.

He also loved ellipses…those three dots of punctuation may not always follow proper grammatical conventional usage… but they allow for a more stream-of-conscious flow… and allow for sentence fragments… they’re probably driving the editors crazy! But, they’re stuck with them, and so are you.

* * * * *

I fought over the concept of including historical sources and providing precise documentation. So many local historical facts of our town are not well known. In this regard, a major part of me wanted for you to be able authenticate my statements.

However, I wanted this to be an entertaining and readable book, not dry documented history as in a textbook. Additionally, many of the trivial facts I pulled out of my head …facts stashed there over the decades of studying our local history and lore. Often, I could easily recall a historical fact, but not the source from where I I had gleaned it. You can trust that the facts mentioned here are accurate and they can be verified in a variety of local primary sources. I did do my research, but feel free to follow up and challenge me.

A history book must contain history. If you are not a major fan of the factual history of Shenandoah or of Schuylkill County, you can just browse over such paragraphs. In the opening chapter in particular such background in mandated. The later chapters are more to the meat and potatoes of the book and much more closely follow the title theme of 1966 and a fifty year retrospective.

Actually, if you want, you can look to the Table of Contents and pick your favorite chapters to be read in random order. I’d prefer you didn’t…you’d lose a little bit of the overall plan and chronology. But… in that I already admitted that I will be rambling… your shotgun approach may not matter all that much. It can be your symbolic protest…. and who am I to protest if you feel free to read the chapters as if they were all separate articles. In many aspects, they are.

In a few personal anecdotes I may have misremembered, or even taken some poetic license. But outside of the talking horse, Mr. Ed, coming over from a barn in Lithuania after eating oplatki at midnight… see Chapter 18 …all the material presented in the book is factually accurate.

* * * * *

In case you skipped the dedication… I wish to thank everyone who contributed ideas to this book. A special thank you goes out to my sister Annie Ulicny Taylor for proofreading many of the Chapters. I also need much more than a thank you to my beloved wife Deb who not only read over every word, but constantly provided moral support. My daughter, Nicole, the joy of my life, was also a great inspiration in the process! I also must recognize my Mom, Anne Zinkiewicz Ulicny for everything. She, and Big Frank up in heaven, directed the growth and development of that 9 year old, Andy. Hope he has made you both proud. Thank you, Guys.

Hopefully I’ve captured the spirit of the town we call Shenandoah… through the eyes of my generation looking back fifty from the sesquicentennial year of 2016. Hopefully, someone will capture the spirit of the town looking back fifty years from the bicentennial year of 2066!

Enjoy this book, my labor of love, and don’t be too judgmental of that naïve little author. Remember, he’s just a nine year old boy, telling you as he saw it back in 1966. As for the rambling 59 year old… well… do as you will… he can take it.

CHAPTER 1

Our Shenandoah – 1966. Welcome

W elcome to my Shenandoah … it is the year 1966. We’re in the 100 th anniversary year of the borough founded in 1866 just one year after the end of the Civil War. It is the great Centennial Year for one of the best known towns in Pennsylvania. My name’s Andy and I’m in fourth grade. I’m hoping to share my insights of 1966 and my Shenandoah along with the help of your Andy Ulicny of 2016 out there in the sesquicentennial year. While admittedly we’re the same person, we are also quite diffe rent.

That Andy Ulicny is a 59 year old retired teacher and local historian and I’m sure he’ll be giving a fuller… more rambling… he’d call it, pedagogical view… from the perspective of the 150th Anniversary of our town. I warn you, he may come across as a bit of know-it-all, but do have patience with him… he does love his local history and genealogy work. It is his passion. So, please, bear with him when he sets off on his incessant rambling tangents. I’ll try to keep him on track.

My Shenandoah has always had a bit of a wild and wooly reputation even for the hard coal regions of Pennsylvania. It has been called The Only Wild West Town in the East by the esteemed New York Times. In 1980, Francis N. Gallagher used that title in writing a book of wry short stories about his hometown of Shenandoah. Many locals still think of the town as out of the Wild West and refer to that nickname with a great pride in our hardy toughness.

Shenandoah also held the appellation City of Churches due to its numerous religious denominations, It was also tabbed as Little New York due to its ethnic diversity. Back in 1949 Sister Mary Accursia of the Bernadine Order mentions the title of Switzerland of America for Shenandoah. The town itself is set in a basin and surrounded by mountains making it reminiscent of the villages in the Swiss cantons set among the majestic Alps.

Shenandoah, despite being 1300 feet above sea level, seems to be down in valley. Most roads come down into the town from as high as 1600 feet above sea level. Hence Shenandoah Valley is a fitting current name of the local school district since its merger with neighboring West Mahanoy Township in 1968. That merger was a mere two years after the Centennial, and the district is now proudly Shenandoah Valley despite its relatively high altitude.

Town native and well known novelist, Darryl Ponicsan, grew up near Main and Oak Streets, and in one of his works… he rechristened his hometown of Shenandoah, PA giving it yet another name in 1973. Shenandoah was pulled inside out to become Andoshen. It was the title of his work and it also served as the setting for his third book. The entertaining volume presents some of the town’s more outrageous moments and personas … we’ve always had them. A good book needs some good characters, and the pseudonyms employed by Ponicsan for many of the local places and personalities aren’t that hard to figure out.

Andoshen wasn’t turned into a Hollywood movie with major stars such as Jack Nicholson, James Caen and Marsha Mason… those movies and stars came with Ponicsan’s later works such as the The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty. We coal region sorts find Andoshen to be the better read. I think Shenandoah would make for an amazing setting for a movie! The wild-eyed Jack Nicholson would fit right into a movie about my Shenandoah.

Ponicsan’s Andoshen was a mere 14 miles from the fictional… but not really fictional… Gibbsville of literary giant John O’Hara. By the way, we in Shenandoah lay some claim to John O’Hara’s genius … his father and grandfather had their homestead cattycorner to the site of the future Cooper High School at White and Lloyd Streets.

John O’Hara’s grandfather, Michael O’Hara, was among Shenandoah’s earliest settlers. He was a big, tough, no-nonsense Civil War veteran who could physically restore order in any melee. He became the fledgling town’s Chief Burgess in its incipient years.

John O’Hara’s father, Dr. Patrick Henry O’Hara was born in Shenandoah City in 1865… actually it was one year prior to Shenandoah’s official incorporation. A young Dr. Patrick O’Hara would eventually establish his medical practice in Pottsville.

So while Dr. Patrick’s son…John O’Hara, writer …was born in Pottsville in 1905… and did live and work in Pottsville… he kept a close eye on the aristocratic Irish circles in his ancestral stomping grounds of our Shenandoah. He visited often and he knew us well. I think it is the down to earth spirit of Shenandoah that turned O’Hara off to the snobbery, elitism, and class distinction he so often wrote about in his works.

Shenandoah did attain county-wide preeminence by the turn of the 20th Century; Shenandoah had grown to be the most populated city in the Schuylkill County. Furthermore, Shenandoah attained statewide and even a nation-wide prominence due to its prodigious coal production. We were the central hub of America’s energy production and the hub for America’s late nineteenth century’s Industrial Revolution. With such growth and importance… by those Roarin’ 1920’s… there was a serious movement to have Shenandoah replace Pottsville as the county seat.

The famous Robert Ripley made note of the town’s crowded population density in his well-known Believe it or Not newspaper feature. He called Shenandoah the most populated square mile in America, even surpassing New York City and San Francisco’s Chinatown. The town’s ever burgeoning population was forced into an ever more crowded square mile. The mines and collieries surrounding Shenandoah prevented the municipality from growing beyond those circumscribed limits. Mining the coal was more significant than accommodating the coal region town’s work force.

Some people say Ripley, in his Believe It or Not cartoon, also noted that the blossoming town of Shenandoah had more barrooms per block than any other place in America… but I can’t verify this claim… it might just be local folklore. Admittedly, the immigrant mining population enjoyed plenty of beer and spirits. Even during Prohibition, Shenandoah enjoyed its drinking establishments.

It’s rumored that every third or fourth door in Shenandoah provided access to a Speakeasy. Just let dem revenuers try to stop us! After long hours in the dark mines inhaling constant breaths of coal dust, the fatigued miners needed to cleanse their throats with beer and even a few shots. Sadly, this form of self-medication could not prevent the prevalent problem of miner’s asthmas that claimed so many of the town’s laborers prematurely with early deaths.

* * * * *

We, the locals… including all my school mates in 1966… know Shenandoah it by its more popular two-syllable pronunciation, Chendo.

Others will add a third syllable and pronounce the Sh and say Shen-uh-doh. You’ll even hear old timer’s toss in an invisible r into the name…Shan-a-door.

Of course the Queen’s English has Shenandoah pronounced with its four full syllables as Shen an do ah. Of course the Queen’s English is famously ignored locally and replaced proudly with the much preferred coal region patois! There is a famous riddle, I believe it was posed to Oedipus by the Sphinx and it goes, Where do you find a tree in Chendo? Of course if you don’t want to be eaten by the Sphinx you need to correctly respond, Between the two and the four!

Chendo, Shandor, Shen-uh-doh, Shenandoah…as Shakespeare would say… a rose by any other name still smells as sweet….unless, of course, you’re down in the southeast end of town by the Shitty Creek… for near that town landmark…. nothin’ smells too sweet.

The town actually took its name from that creek. No, we’re not Shitty City…the town was first incorporated as Shenandoah City. You see, that open-sewer of my Shenandoah 1966 was a rather well known geographical feature harkening back a full century earlier to 1866. It was called Shenandoah Creek. The creek was an idyllic flow of fresh mountain-spring water which joined with Kehley’s Run of water coming down from the Locust Mountain.

The two little rivulets met up on what was to become the east end of Mt. Vernon Street. In my Shenandoah of 1966 it went underground for a bit but re-emerged to go under the cement bridge on the east side of the aptly named Bridge Street and then flowed along westward paralleling the railroad skirting the town on one end and heading toward the mine patch of William Penn.

Back at the time of the town’s founding, and perhaps for many centuries prior, the stream was well known and clearly marked on maps as Shenandoah Creek. The Native Americans of the region named it. We little savages of the 1960’s would rename it The Shitty Creek as it had become an open sewer. Some adults actually posted signs branding it euphemistically as Stink Creek, but we knew better.

No, we kids in 1966 surely didn’t call this little stream Stink Creek or Shenandoah Creek; it was The Shitty Creek. We pronounced creek as crick giving it a wonderfully poetic assonance matching it with the preceding scatological term. In my Shenandoah of 1966 the creek was an open sewer, eye-sore!

Mom and Pop would never let us say the word shit… but they’re not in earshot now and I want to be accurate in this history…so I’ll use the term everyone else employed. In fact, I’m not sure if the phrase you’ll be up Shit Creek without a paddle is a regional phrase or a truly national idiom that has been derived from us. To us, we could take it literally, we actually knew the location of Shit Creek; we played down there.

In my 1966 the creek was deceptively scenic… from afar. At a distance it had an enchanting, charming appeal with the ubiquitous coal region white birch trees and sweet wild greenery often surrounding its banks. However, get closer, and you could sit crick-side within the town boundaries and watch toilet paper and turds flow by. There, quite a fetid aroma wafts upwards toward you. You can hunt for rats there if you really wanted, they’re not too hard to find. Sorin’s and Sweet’s junkyards are within a stone’s throw of the crick and they also provide some nice natural habitats for those disgusting, loathsome rodents.

But, I digress with these fond, nostalgic memories from the huckleberry days of my youth. Some people feel that with the Civil War having concluded just one year prior to the town’s incorporation, memories of the Union forces fighting in the Confederate’s picturesque Shenandoah Valley of Virginia had great patriotic impact. With a pretty little creek coursing through one end of the town having that exact same name… well, the choice of the town’s official name was probably rather automatic.

Actually surveyor Peter W. Sheafer referred to the planned town… in writing…. as Shenandoah as early as 1858. This is obviously years prior to the beginning of internecine hostilities between The North and the South. So it was the Creek, with its oft butchered name that gets credit for the name of the borough.

The original papers of incorporation show the borough as officially named Shenandoah City and even the original Philadelphia land investors who owned almost the entire town questioned the addition of City to the town’s title. Samuel Jarden wrote in one of his frequent notes to his land agent Peter W. Sheafer, "We feel a little curious about the decision …the City … How was that decided?"

The we, in the note, refers to the owners of the William Jones Tract upon which Shenandoah was built. Samuel Jarden, William Bowers, Josiah P. White, and later Samuel Lloyd comprised that firm of Philadelphia based land investors. If the names seem familiar, they should. Peter W. Sheafer who surveyed the town…. and set it up in square blocks and numbered lots… named many of the principle streets in their honor.

Their land speculation, in the area that was to become Shenandoah, proved to be a great economic boon for them. Their names remain omnipresent in our town, even if only a handful of citizens from my Shenandoah 1966, or old Andy’s 2016 could recognize the connection.

* * * * *

In and around my Shenandoah 1966, the youth will proudly shout out a name-phrase celebrated with statewide acclaim: Shendo - 462! The 462 is an homage to the town’s famous telephone prefix…462. If you needed DeFillipe’s Cleaners back in 1966, you call 462–1743. My fourth-grade buddy, JoJo Bellucci, may answer, ask for his dad.

All the phone numbers I knew began with 462, we didn’t need to memorize that part, just the next 4 digits. Our area code was 717 but you didn’t need that for local calls, only people calling us long distance needed to use it. Those were costly calls few people made unless it was an emergency or a special holiday. Collegians calling home to talk to parents would wait till ten o’clock in the evening before dialing … the rates were dramatically reduced after that hour. Note, we literally did dial; we used a dial on a rotary phone, no push buttons. Why, some phones in older homes with older hook ups even still had party lines… a shared line with neighbors.

By our sesquicentennial of 2016 the population of our state and nation has grown to the point where we now need 10 digits for all our phone calls. No more just beginning with our infamous 462. In fact, decades ago we were pushed out of our heritage with its 717 area code and forced to take on the newfangled 570. Oddly, such a change played upon us psychologically, we had a loyalty to that 717 exchange shared with the state capital of Harrisburg.

In the most recent decade, we recognize it is not just more homes with phones due to a growing population, but more and more people with more and more phones. The new millennium ushered in the age of the omnipresent cell phone. It seems that each person now has a personal cell phone and each has a unique phone number. If this was trendy in my Shenandoah of 1966 we’d have had 12 different phones in the household? Preposterous!

It’s hard to believe that I have to write this, but we weren’t constantly connected with everyone else. In a car we were isolated from interruption. If we took a walk or went shopping…we were isolated. In my Shenandoah our singular, home, landline phone didn’t have an answering machines. If no one answered, the caller figured no one was home… good logic. They’d have to call back later. It worked for us.

As for texting… that word was unknown in America prior to the new millennium… in Shenandoah which was always a little behind the times… texting was probably unknown for about a decade into it. Some high tech doctors may have carried beepers for emergencies but that was especially unique. There was an unacknowledged sense of freedom from not being so overly connected to everyone’s beck… and literally call.

But, I ramble, back to our Welcome to Shenandoah 1966… and to our family’s house on Emerick Street. There are 12 of us living here, but only one stationary, jacked-in, heavy duty, dial-me-with-a-dial, telephone. Our little home will house as many as 15 of us in future years, but for now it’s just me and a few of my siblings: Pete, Mary, Frankie, Tommy, Mickey, Joey (aka Uzhu) and baby Annie.

Of course Mom and Pop own the house and live here. They bought the house from Mom’s mom, Granny Zinkiewicz. Granny of course also now lives with us as does her bachelor son, Antush… which we anglicize to Tony. Large households like ours were not an aberration in this town. Many homes housed such extended families.

Many families had lots and lots of kids…perhaps it’s that Roman Catholic background. I’ll be one of ten kids in the years to come. But we’re not the largest family in town: the Keithan, Sosna, Chesonis, and the Chatkiewicz families as well as quite a few others rival if not outnumber us. Hmmmm… not all of those families are Catholic!

To fit everyone you would think it must be a huge house. Not really. Almost all of the houses in the town are the typical 15 foot wide frontage and the property goes 60 feet deep which included the yard. These typical homes configure to the standard half of half of an original lot. Yes, that’s no typo… make it a quarter of the lot originally sold back in the day by Peter W. Sheafer for his consortium of land owners of that William Jones Tract. In my 1966, many of the homes are half of a double home or more likely one in a row of row homes that will likely stretch the entire block.

The original property lots that were sold in Shenandoah by P. W. Sheafer were rather huge. They were basically 30 feet wide by 120 feet long. One can see the map and the proportional size of the lots in the 1875 Beers Atlas of Schuylkill County. On the Shenandoah pages you can note many of the names of the earliest inhabitants penned into their deeded lots on that map. Almost all these early settlers’ names are English, Welsh, and Irish. A sprinkling of German families will also be noted.

Within the confines of what is to become Shenandoah City, the first frame building erected was the United States Hotel in 1862. It was a two story edifice and stood on what today is the southwest corner of Main and Center Streets. In fact, a version of the hotel has stood there for most of the town’s history. One did in my Shenandoah 1966.

The first private frame home in the town would be built by James Hutton who purchased two lots on the northwest corner of South Main and Poplar Streets. Today, a quart shop inhabits the lot. Readers of the Future or those contemporaries not from the region: a quart shop is a place you could go to buy a quart of beer. Well you could get a six pack, but a cold quart bottle in a paper bag is much more traditional coal region. You could also pick up some ciggies, snacks, maybe a hoagie.

James Hutton, an English miner, set the tone for the earliest area of the town to be established. The area of South Main was prominent in the early settlement of the town in that this area was closest to the first Colliery, Shenandoah City Colliery. Hutton could just cross the dirt road of Main Street and head down the hill, cross Shenandoah Creek and the newly built railroad tracks and he’d be at work.

Shenandoah City Colliery was in the town’s South East corner; you’d have a great view of it if you could look back down the railroad track eastward from the Pennsy Bridge… but that would be rather anachronistic as the Gold Star Highway and its bridge aren’t built till after the abandonment of the Colliery and the end of WWII. But, in the earliest years, Shenandoah City Colliery provided the earliest miners with work even prior to the town’s incorporation in 1866.

The town grew quickly with masses and masses of laborers immigrating to Shenandoah and buying up the lots once they became a bit more financially established. Many out-of-work Civil War soldiers made their way to Shenandoah. Many potato-famine Irish immigrants who came to America in the preceding decade… made their way here as well to work the mines. With the passage of time, more of the Union veterans and the Irish laboring class who originally rented stark, basic housing from the mining companies began to own their buy property.

Later the Slavs (cultures who came speaking Polish, Lithuanian, Russian, Slovak, and Ukrainian among others tongues of Eastern Europe) bought up lots. Lots and lots of lots! The Slavic folk came to work the mines and were pushed to the lowest paying laborer positions. In the 1890 Census Directory of Schuylkill County you see but a small sampling of Slavic names.

Give the town one more decade of immigration, and by 1900, almost two-thirds of the town’s population is seen to have originated in Eastern Europe. This is a staggering jump in the immigrant population! In 1891, not a single member of twelve man town council was of Slavic Blood. By the turn of the new century, Slavs hold five of the twelve positions in the town’s council. Soon after the turn of the century, even the office of Chief Burgess, a term rather synonymous with mayor in the early years, was held by a Slav. He was Kasimir aka Charles Magalingo, a Lithuanian.

It is closer to the Roarin’ Twenties when the major influx of proud Italians come to Shenandoah in the final wave of twentieth century immigration. Of course beginning in this new millennium… the twenty-first century… Spanish speaking immigrants will come to the town, but that is a book left to some future historian, perhaps one of Latino blood.

The Italians purchased their lots among their own people, mostly in the northwestern end of the town. If Shenandoah were to have an area called Little Italy (which it didn’t… we reserve that term for New York City) it would have been West Coal Street and its near environs.

The newly forming Italian neighborhood stretched down Coal Street all the way down the hill and then up Glover’s Hill. The far end of Glover’s Hill was actually in the coal patch known as Brownsville in West Mahanoy Township. If you were to visit a home within a block or so of West Coal you would smell the wonderful aromas of Italian cooking and hear them speaking their lively native tongue with gusto.

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Enough on that tangent of our cultural emigration, let’s get back to attaining property… How did one go about purchasing a lot in Shenandoah? P. W. Sheafer was the man to see, either in his Pottsville office or perhaps he kept an agent with office hours in Shenandoah. He worked for the Philadelphia consortium of Bowers, White, Jarden, and Lloyd. He also served as agent and was co-owner of the western part of the town with Samuel H. Gilbert and his wife Catherine who were also of the big city of Philadelphia.

Sheafer’s agency would have facilitated the records of the transactions, provided the deed and would have taken care of the paperwork with the Recorder of Deeds in Pottsville’s courthouse. He had boilerplate templates for lots in Shenandoah or the somewhat separate West Shenandoah with either of the Philadelphia based ownerships. Just fill in the blanks. Lots were referred to by block and number on the town plan he had surveyed back in 1862. Again, these original lots were massive: 30 feet in width and going 120 feet in depth. They were all charted on Sheafer’s master-plan of the town.

Back in 1862, Sheafer supplied the names for the Streets and also names for the alleys. As mentioned, many of the early land speculators of the town are memorialized in our street names. The bulk of the town was originally laid out on the William Jones Tract owned by Bowers, White, Jardin and Lloyd. They purchased some of this tract from a man named George Emerick who also is awarded a street name. Samuel Gilbert and wife Catherine who own the adjoining tract to the west are commemorated with their street names in their western end of the town.

Other streets in P. W. Sheafer’s original survey of Shenandoah had traditional names such as Main and Center which are rather uninspired. Many sources will show Center Street spelled in the high-falutin’ Centre Street fashion. Sorry, but as a hard-core son of the Coal Regions, I just can’t get myself to use this more gentrified spelling. You’ll also note I’ll use theater instead of theatre, too. You say to-may-toe, I say …" well.. I’d never say to-mah-toe, you catch my drift here. I’m from Chendo, such pronunciations will not cross my lips.

Line Street, which today is Washington, marked the line of the town’s northern boundary along the mountain which was owned by the Estate of Stephen Girard. Of course here in the coal regions you had to have a Coal Street.

West Street was the western boundary of the William Jones Tract owned by Bowers and his group. It is strangely unique to have a West Street, recognizing a western boundary that is rather geographically centralized in a town. It was the boundary between the two rival sets of land owners those of the William Jones Tract and Samuel Gilbert’s lands in West Shenandoah.

Smaller alleys divided the major streets. They were originally christened with the colorful names of Fruits and Grains. God only knows why Sheafer chose this theme for our alley nomenclature, but I feel it was inspired. God only knows why someone felt a need to change the naming system about fifty years later.

I’ve not been able to find the exact date of that horrid decision to re-name the alleys, but I’ve narrowed it to between 1911 and 1917. Here are the original names for you to enjoy. Maybe you might to choose to address a letter to one of the original alley names; challenge that postal worker! Granny Zinkiewicz, even in my 1966 and in even later years still talked of living in her beloved home on Huckleberry Alley; they had chicken coops out back.

To get a great idea of how Sheafer’s lots looked in early Shenandoah visit the nice people at the Schuylkill County Historical Society and have a look at the 1875 Beers Atlas of Schuylkill County. They have a few originals and even reprinted some reduced sized versions to be sold as a fund raiser. The Shenandoah pages show the original layout of the lots with the current owners. It is wonderfully insightful.

In time, most of the original lot owners in Shenandoah would eventually split their massive 120’ by 30’ lots. Often the split was with a son or daughter upon marriage. If the original owner split the lot from its length of 120 feet to halve it to 60 feet, then each new lot had a frontage on parallel streets with adjoining backyards. Backyards were important neighborhood gathering places with common water pumps, and drains, outdoor bread ovens, and clotheslines.

A generation later, you would usually see the half lot split again, this time they would split the width of 30 feet to a 15 feet wide front and maintain its 60 feet depth. If this were the case, the owners are adjacent neighbors on the same street. Census records often show this typical splitting of a larger lot. It is a norm with families dividing and sharing their lots with new generations entering the scene.

The proximity of family members was highly desired by the early residents of Shenandoah and that makes it easier for people who later research family trees. Look in the census and quite often you see the same names side by side. It is also worthwhile to routinely check marriage license records for the names of neighbors and see if a now married daughter is next door. Very often she is. Family was significant among the immigrants to Shenandoah. In those days there was a heightened importance on family. Of course you wanted to take care of your kids; hopefully later… they’d want to take care of you. Family was the social welfare net.

This 60 foot by 15 foot lot is the typical lot size in my Shenandoah of 1966. I have a hard time thinking of any of my buddies who don’t live in half of a double home, or in a row home. The concept of our row homes strike fear in the hearts of our nation’s brave firefighters. In our coal region towns, if one home catches fire, it could easily take down the whole block.

Perhaps the worst disaster the town ever faced was back in its fledgling years. The infamous date was November 12, 1883, about a third of the town’s homes burned to the ground.

No, it wasn’t Mrs. O’Leary’s famous cow to blame for that conflagration, that was in Chicago. Here it was a maid at the United States Hotel. Yes, it is that same United States Hotel, built just 20 years earlier as the town’s first frame building. This is ground zero for the fire of 1883 that brings about the devastation of a major portion of the town. It was such a tragedy that it had people wondering if Shenandoah could rise from the ashes.

The maid supposedly was in a darkened room and was attempting to refill a kerosene can. She lit a candle to be able to see to pour the kerosene….not a good idea. The fire spread down South Main, jumped the street and worked its way down East Oak Street. By the time it finally burned itself out 300 properties were destroyed, and over 500 people were left homeless.

With so many of the homes adjoining, the town’s earliest fire companies didn’t have a chance. Half-doubles and row homes will create similar scenarios for serious fires in the decades to follow.

The town did rise like a Phoenix from the ashes. Like Chicago after its fire, there was the Second City… we in Shenandoah also rebuilt, bigger and better. The United States Hotel would see a second incarnation. Whether it be called the U.S. Hotel, Ferguson’s Hotel, or Hotel Shenandoah the centralized hotel would be a major center of the town’s social activity. Babe Ruth and many other celebrities of days-gone-by enjoyed their stay at the establishment here in the thriving days of Shenandoah’s glory years.

In my 1966 the hotel was massive; a block-long building fronted on West Center Street and it was known as the Hotel Shenandoah. The great building housed the Union Bank, and also O’Neill’s Bookstore. It served as the bus station for Capital and Continental Trailways, as well as the local Heights bus which did its run every half hour. It had a ground floor and three stories of rooms above it.

In 1966 The Shenandoah Hotel was still a central landmark of the town; I worked the desk there through my high school years. The thought of that building stimulates so many fond memories; it was a symbol of the town’s greatness. It reeked of the town’s grandeur and history.

Today in 2016, the tradition of a hotel on the spot has ended and a mere one story bank is situated there. Most of the site is now parking or part of the drive-in services of the bank.

But, I digress…back to the traditional homes of my Shenandoah in 1966.

Twelve of us in the household, and later 15 of us would seem to easily fit into the half a double home on Emerick Street. Five of us brothers slept in 3 beds up in the attic. Bunk beds were set up in Granny’s room for a few more kids. Uncle Tony had his own room. My parents had a room to themselves… although there was a seemingly permanent crib set up in there for a newborn.

Of course, in those days, we didn’t stay in the house all that much. We kids were outside playing for all the daylight hours. Mom cooked great meals for the whole family, seems she was always peeling and mashing potatoes. For dinner, we had a very large table. We’d gathered to watch TV at night, laying about the floor as kids do. Each of claiming our own unique spot on the carpet.

For us, it all was the norm. Did we feel deprived? Hardly! Dad, as a teacher, had a better paying job than most. Heck, he was pulling in $4,000 dollars a year.

Come on into our house, the door is always unlocked. In fact, in 1966, most of the homes keep the doors unlocked, but most of the women were housewives tending to domestic chores in the house all day. Many households would lock up at night, but I don’t think our house even had a key! Truthfully, a key was not used to open our front door for decades and decades.

Not all women were housewives in my Shenandoah of 1966, many worked as seamstresses in the factories throughout the town. Many were waitresses or store clerks… one was even a doctor, Dr. Mary Romeika, but professional women were a rarity. Women who could drive a car were rarities. A handful of mothers I knew could drive, but again in my Shenandoah this was a rarity.

I’m at 18 S. Emerick Street, the Ulicny residence. We’re down in the first ward, that’s the eastern end of the town. At the turn of the century….that’s the 20th century, call it 1900 from here in 1966… this ward was known as The Bloody First. It seems that on most paydays here in the Bloody First, the miners got a little rowdy in the taverns. Fights, occasionally with knives and even handguns, broke out while the workers were under the effect of demon rum…or whiskey, or beer.

The town originally was broken into just two wards, separated as political divisions by Main Street. As the population grew the political voting districts would be redrawn into five wards on January 3, 1876. I first learned of the ward system because of the town’s fire whistle. The town had 50 or so red fire alarm boxes attached to the telephone poles spread evenly throughout the town.

In case of fire you’d rush to find the nearest red box. Then you’d smash the glass and pull the handle of the alarm to set off the horn that would blow loudly announcing the fire. But you needed to blow a series of blasts to code in the general location of the fire.

The first set of blasts indicated the ward. So three blasts, the fire is in the third ward. The second set narrowed it all down a bit further to a particular place within the ward. Each of the fireboxes had its number posted on it. This told the firemen the cross streets from which you set off the alarm and they’d head to it. Most residents posted a card with the codes in their homes. But, the initial blasts let us know if it was in our ward or the ward of other family or friends. The fire whistle was tested daily at noon to assure it was in working condition. Nowadays in 2016 we use the telephone and its 911 system to call in a fire alarm, but I’m pretty sure those red boxes are still on many of the poles in town.

In the earliest years of the town, the alarm was a massive fire bell. It was cast in 1875 and hung at the town’s first fire house, the original Columbia Hose and Steam Co Number #1 on Jardin Street adjacent to the town hall and police department. Within a year, it rang loudly to hail in the nation’s centennial of 1876. Eventually the fire whistle system with its red fire boxes replaced it. The historic bell is still proudly displayed outside the new borough hall and police headquarters on West Washington Street.

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In the neighborhoods of my Shenandoah, we kids had lots of buddies. Our first friends were found nearby. Near neighbors like Eddie Wilco and the Lipiec brothers: Butchie and Johnny, were among my first friends in the town. We didn’t knock on the doors of close friends… we’d go call for our buddies. We’d stand outside their door and yodel… Yo Eddieee, Yo Eddiee! Yo is a very popular word in Shenandoah which can be used in all sorts of ways.

We kids in Shendo loved the word Yo! I don’t think kids call for their friends anymore. Maybe this was only done in the coal regions… maybe only in the Shenandoah of the ’60’s. After a while parents got tired of the frequent yodeling, and when friendships bonded to a certain point, a mother, like Annie Wilco, would tell a good pal like me to just open the door and walk on in.

As we got into our elementary school years our neighborhood circle widened to guys like Gary Baker, Wally Weikrykas, Georgie Mikita, Paul Brutto, Gary Hronec, Bernie Skaudis, Alfie Viedaka, and Ronnie Barlow who all became fast friends. We might even go a bit further afield to make teams for baseball and we’d check on the Whitecavages (Paul and sometimes Billy), Jimmy Maloney, Jackie Kelly, Adolf Wychulis, and Johnny Finneran. Looking at the ethnic diversity of the names, Poles, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and Irishmen you can tell we were a very cosmopolitan bunch of little rug rats.

We’d gather down the Kiddie Park in the South East end of town bounded by the Shitty Creek and decide what sport was in season for the day. It was pick teams and we’d play from morning to dark. It could be a game of football with a peewee-sized football on the road of the Kiddie Park in the morning; then baseball with a taped up ball at the Babe Ruth Field across from the Shitty Creek in heat of the afternoon. We’d probably follow it all with a round of basketball at the hoop set up at Ateeco; you know… the pierogie plant, on the macadam of their parking lot under their security lights in the evening.

Beyond our neighborhood circle, we also made town-wide friends at school, and at scouts, and in organized youth sports. By the time we reached the coming-together age of high school, all the guys from the various schools already knew each other. We knew a handful of the girls… but we’d soon learn who the others were… by God, yes, we would be entering adolescence!

We’d later connect to the youth of nearby towns through high school sports. This connection was an odd one. It was one of rivalry in sports. We didn’t really like these kids. If we knew a kid by name, he most likely was that town’s sports star, so we hated him all the more.

Generically these faceless individuals were opponents; they were the enemy in the rigid mindset of our home team pride. We felt an awkwardness if forced into their presence; we weren’t supposed to like them, yet they often seemed nice enough; regular guys like us once we got to know them.

There was tension, a resentment; perhaps a prejudice. We didn’t want to see a kid from North Schuylkill walking the streets of our town. He wouldn’t dare come through wearing a letterman’s jacket. He’d probably feel he’s trespassing, same as we’d feel if we were in his town of Ashland.

To demonstrate the deep-seated feelings of enmity toward the nearby schools, take the example of my younger brother, Frankie. In the late 1980’s he was very hesitant to move into the ideal house for his family up in New Boston. Why? He didn’t want his children to attend Mahanoy Area and have to compete in sports for the rival Golden Bears! It didn’t seem right. But, the brothers, now in their forties, convinced him it was ok. We’d even root for his kids…so long as they weren’t playing Shendo.

We called the kids from Mahanoy City… the most intense of our local rivals… The Zulus. Yes, today it very politically incorrect…but there was no such thing as political correctness back in the sixties. In fact my Shenandoah has never been in the forefront of political correctness; probably never will be.

The kids from Mahanoy retaliated and called us… get this… by the same name: Zulus… yeah, I know, quite a snappy comeback, right? What did you expect… they were from Mahanoy City.

After a few years of hearing them call us Zulus … we eventually took a liking to the name. What they hoped would be a disparaging term was now taken as a compliment. We actually took to calling ourselves The Zulus. My how time turns things!

We were kids with a lot of pride. We had pride in our families, in our neighborhoods, in our ethnic heritages, in our schools, and in churches. Most of all we had a wonderful pride in our hometown of Shenandoah.

It was a pride that would grow and deepen in our high school years. The experience of attending the local public high school really turned us even more Shenandoah Proud as we became Shenandoah Blue Devils!

Most of my adult life has been spent teaching up near Knoebel’s Grove at one of the most wonderful schools in the state: Southern Columbia High School. During most of my 35 years teaching, you’d have found me in the coaching ranks with the Black and Gold of the Southern Columbia Tigers. I developed a great pride in my teams and celebrated whole heartedly in all sporting and academic achievements of my adopted school; and those accolades were legion!

Yet, like all my high school classmates, I will forever be a native of Shenandoah. I’ll always be a Blue Devil. We’ll always bleed the Blue and White of Shenandoah.

CHAPTER 2

Our School Days

School days, school days,

Dear old Golden Rule Days.

Reading and ’Ritin and ’Rithmatic

Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.

      (School Days, Will Cobb & Gus Edwards. 1907)

A s a nine year old in my Shenandoah 1966 you find me attending fourth grade at St. Stephen’s; the Slovak parish’s parochial elementary school. We were taught by a team of three Sisters of the Order of St. Francis. We had three nuns and three classrooms for the eight gr ades.

In our parochial schools we did learn to abide by the Golden Rules of the song and of our Good Sisters. We were also … if not literally… at least metaphorically… taught to the tune of the aforementioned hickory stick in the lyrics of the song. Sometimes it was a ruler, or a paddle… or a stern glance or a threatening voice, but it was a stricter education with an emphasis on discipline and recognizing proper authority.

Of course our public school peers had it pretty much the same, just with lay teachers instead of the nuns. Corporal punishment was the norm; our parents certainly knew the old axiom spare the rod and spoil the child. Our teachers, academics and pedagogues that they were, knew that axiom even better.

In this new millennium, my generation harkens nostalgically to the Good Old Days… "My God, kids today! They run home and complain to their parents that the teacher hit them! Back in our day, if we told our parents the teacher hit us… our parents would smack us again!" My, haven’t we’ve grown to be complaining old curmudgeons… but we did try to hide the fact if we got in trouble with a teacher and we got smacked. We sure weren’t going to go home and blab about it.

In the eyes of our parents, the teacher was always right. If we were punished in school, we deserved it, and we’d be whacked by our parents again for our purported misbehavior. That extra whack was also for the stain on the family name and for putting the teacher to the trouble of enforcing discipline.

My butcher friend, Paul Kowalonek had a great line on this. Whenever I’d walk through the doors of his shop, Kowalonek’s Kielbasi Heaven… he’d publically announce in his ringmaster voice; "Another teacher…These days… the teachers make the big money… and they don’t even have to hit the kids anymore." He slyly viewed the corporal punishment as the manual labor part of our job. I suppose all that whacking could fatigue the poor, overworked teacher.

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As a fourth grader in 1966, I found myself uniquely upon the cusp of a trend that would see the paradoxical beginning of the end of the town’s plethora of separate parish parochial schools.

Fifth grade next year will find me in St. Casimir’s School which is the school of the town’s largest Roman Catholic Polish Church. In fourth