The Nightly World of Sprout

I’m over at my brother Matt’s house at least once a week for dinner, and while I’m there, I spend a good amount of time with my nephew Travis.  Travis is 18 months old now, and for the last few months has been picking up his first words.  Once he gets home, the television gets turned on to the Sprout network, and usually stays on that channel until he is put to sleep.  He reacts to the different characters he sees there, too, although he can’t say any of their names yet.  Since I’m usually there during the evening hours, we’re watching the Goodnight Show, with Nina and Star.  I’ve gotten to know them and the cartoons they introduce fairly well.

The show kicks off at 6 with Nina singing the intro song, and after a few minutes talking with Star about the show’s theme for the night, the Berenstain Bears start off the cartoon lineup.  That sets the pattern of animated shows with Nina and Star segments between.  Sometimes Travis will stand in front of the TV set mesmerized with Nina and Star, and sometimes he would try to touch Star.  I do remember at one time thinking the TV was a kind of electronic window where the people on the other end could see and hear me.  I don’t remember thinking that I could touch people on the other end or somehow cross over through the screen into their world.  But I eventually figured out that the communication was one way, and that the people on the other end couldn’t see me.  I even remember Mr. Rogers saying that he couldn’t see me when he was on the screen, but by that time I got it.  It’s a concept Travis will soon understand as well.  Today, not only are there images on television, but there is also the internet, something that didn’t exist until I was an adult.  I don’t know how Travis sees it when someone pulls up an image on YouTube for him.  I wonder if he thinks that the images on the computer can see him and talk with him, especially now, when webcams and Skype have made interactive visual communication commonplace.  Small children may have a hard time telling the difference between a taped and live image.

The next segment to come on is the birthday messages with guests from the Sunny Side Up Show, which features a puppet chicken named Chica paired with one of several co-hosts.  It seems like it’s usually Liz, and sometimes Sean.  After Chica and another Nina and Star segment comes Thomas and Friends.  Thomas has recently been retooled and re-animated.  Previously, the setting was like a model railroad show, with voices added to the stationary figures.  I’m guessing that is how the Reverend Wilbert Awdry wrote the first Thomas books, by playing with a model railroad and creating stories based on what he saw and imagined.  But now the stationary faces and figurines have been replaced with real animation.  Thomas and the other engines talk, with their lips now moving and showing different facial expressions.  Sir Topham Hat and the other people in the show are animated that way as well.  Their faces and body parts now move.    Other than that, it’s still generally the same, but different from the days when Ringo and George Carlin narrated the series.

Next is Angelina Ballerina, which has also recently had an animation makeover, now using 3D animation instead of the old pen-and-ink drawings.  After Angelina is more Nina and Star.  At the top of the 7 o’clock hour comes Poppy Cat, which is fairly new to Sprout, or at least to me.  Each Poppy Cat episode is centered around an adventure that the cat and her friends go on.  It starts with Poppy’s owner, a small girl, reading Poppy a story she has written, and an imaginary world is created where Poppy and her friends go on an adventure.  Poppy’s friends include a mouse and owl, which are of course natural enemies to cats.  But in the cartoon realm, there are no rules, so Poppy and her friends can live happily in the better world that the small girl creates.

After Poppy Cat comes Nina’s Sand Drawings followed by Nina’s Little Fables.  To be honest, I don’t pay a whole lot attention to those features.  I just remember Nina would make finger drawings in the sand, and then the fables would show the dark shadowy figures of the animals she would talk about.  After that came Caillou.  It seems that is the favorite of a lot of the children.  Caillou just likes to let his imagination run away with whatever he sees.  I could relate to that, because I had all those kinds of fantasies, too.  In some ways, I’m still like that, an adult Caillou.  Around there, I Iose track of the order of shows.  I’m not familiar with what plays on the Goodnight Show after 8, when Travis goes to bed.   Right around 8 the Pajanimals come on, a show which Matt’s wife Christie loves, but doesn’t always get to see, as Travis is usually being fed or is being put to sleep at that time.  During the feeding and the rocking, my brother puts on the Weather Channel local forecast station, and puts Travis to sleep to the smooth jazz music that is always playing.  I think sometime during the 8 o’clock hour, Driver Dan’s Story Train comes on.  Driver Dan is a soft-spoken lion, who drives an odd-looking road train with rubber tires, with cars for each of his animal friends that he takes along.  After he meets his friends and takes a ride, the story comes.  He pulls a book from one of the cars on his train, and pulls out a car full of pillows for all his animal friends to sit on while he reads.   Also sometime during that hour, Kipper the Dog comes on, which formerly held the 7 o’clock slot that Poppy Cat now occupies.  Kipper is a gentlemanly brown dog with an English accent whose main friends are Tiger, another dog, and two pigs. 

All during the time the Sprout channel is going, Travis is alternately watching or playing with one of his many toys.  Other things distract him too.  He loves to play in his ball pit, he loves going head first into one of his blankets, or a pillow or something else that is soft.  He’ll walk into the other rooms and into the kitchen, where Matt usually is either cooking or cleaning.  I make myself useful right there, to play with and keep an eye on Travis while Matt is busy with his work in the kitchen.  Travis also loves to play with the broom, and once he sees it, he is walking around the house with it.  He also loves to have someone read him a book, but when he comes to me, I usually don’t get to read much.  He is constantly turning the pages before I could read them, and his child attention span being what it is, he is usually up and moving around before long, to the next object that gets his attention.

I usually stay in a different room while Travis is being fed his milk and put to sleep.  Sometimes I’ll stay around the kitchen, sometimes I’ll go into the guest room where the laptop usually is, and spend some time on the computer, as if I don’t already spend enough time online right here at home.  Once Travis is put in bed, Matt and I usually go outside, and he smokes his nightly cigar.  Matt quit smoking cigarettes several years ago, but he still feels a need to have some kind of tobacco habit.  I remember whenever he quit smoking for a while, he would start dipping Kodiak.  Now, I don’t think he takes in any other tobacco aside from his cigar. 

 

I usually take off a few minutes after we go back in, and Matt puts on either a science show or the Military Channel.  On certain nights during the peak of the season, Christie watches Dancing with the Stars or Glee, or other shows similar to those, although she hasn’t done that lately.  She has been falling asleep with Travis on the chair as she puts him to sleep, and is not really awake to watch any of her favorite shows.  Maybe she wakes up a little later and watches her shows after I leave, but I’m usually gone by then.  I’m usually home in about 10 or 15 minutes.  Since this isn’t my everyday pattern, I don’t repeat it the next morning.  But I have done this enough that I know the routine, and sometime within the next week I’ll go through the pattern again.

 

  

Miracle of Christmas Past

On Christmas night I watched a brief show about an incident that has been called a “Christmas miracle”.  It wasn’t a miracle in the sense of a life being saved or obstacles being overcome to bring a family together for the holidays.  It wasn’t something that happened on 34^th Street, either.  It was about something that happened in Pittsburgh, on a football field on Decenber 23, 1972 (since it happened on that date, I guess it could also be called a Festivus miracle).  Specifically, it happened in the final minute of an AFC divisional playoff game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Oakland Raiders, in a place called Three Rivers Stadium.  Outside of its context, it was not a miracle or anything really earth-shattering, but to Steelers fans, it miraculously saved their beloved team’s season, if only for one more week.

Until the waning seconds, the game was a tight, low-scoring defensive battle, with the Raiders having just pulled ahead 7-6.  Now with a little over a minute to go, the Steelers had their backs to the wall, facing a fourth and ten.  This meant, of course that they had to move the ball at least ten yards on the next play or the game would be lost and the season over.  Every fan who studied NFL history knows what happened next.   Like other improbable game changing plays before and after it, this play was branded with a nickname that suggested divine intervention.  A few days after it happened, Pittsburgh sportscaster Myron Cope named it the “Immaculate Reception”, a title he credited to a fan who called in.  The name stuck, providing a convenient way to index the play that is now regarded by NFL Films as the greatest play in pro football history.

How it happened

On that last gasp fourth down, Terry Bradshaw, then the Steelers young quarterback, was frantically looking downfield for an open receiver while being pursued by two Raider linemen.  Just before he was driven into the hard turf, he spotted receiver John “Frenchy” Fuqua, and sent the ball in his direction. Raiders safety Jack Tatum was speeding toward the ball in an attempt to either intercept the pass or bat it down, and if those two failed, then bring Fuqua down immediately and control the damage for at least one more play.  Tatum, Fuqua, and the ball all met at the same spot.  It ricocheted off of one or both of them, and into the hands of Harris, who then took the open route to the end zone ahead of him, having to brush off only one man on the way. 

That improbable play was tentatively ruled a touchdown, but there were questions about the play which had to be dealt with.  The game was on the line, and since this was a playoff game, the decision would almost certainly determine who would be playing in the AFC Championship game the next week, and who would be watching it at home.  In 1972, the addition of replay officials was an idea whose time lay two decades in the future.  It may not have even been conceived yet, although the understanding I got from what I read was that there was a monitor off to the sidelines.  If needed, officials could do a quick review to double check their call. The first issue that had to be addressed was whether the ball was touched by Tatum.  At that time, a pass was invalid if caught by an offensive player after being touched by another offensive player, without being touched by a defender.  In other words, if the ball bounced off Fuqua without being touched by Tatum, then the catch by Harris and the subsequent touchdown was null and void, and the play would be ruled an incomplete pass.  Some also questioned whether Harris even caught the pass.  The ball may have hit the ground before it reached Harris, therefore making it a dead ball and incomplete pass.  There is dispute as to whether the monitor was actually used by the officiating crew in coming to their decision, but they did at least confer on it before making the final call.  The touchdown was allowed to stand, which is probably the same decision that would have been reached by a replay official had there been one in place at the time.  Given the quality and angles of the video, it was not irrefutably clear whether the ball hit Tatum or just Fuqua, or whether Harris caught the ball or scooped it off the ground. *

Had the pass been ruled incomplete, the Raiders would have taken over on downs and ran out the clock.  They would have been the ones who went to Miami the next week and played for the AFC Championship.  Instead, the Steelers won the game and made the trip to Miami while the Raiders went home to their wives and children to begin their long offseason.  But the Dolphins were unstoppable that year, and the Steelers were the second to last victims of their perfect 17-0 season.  That record still stands as the only unblemished season in NFL history, although the Patriots came within a minute of sealing a perfect 19-0 in Super Bowl XLII. But the Patriots failed to hold on to their lead, and fell to the Giants in the final seconds. Other than that, no team since the league merger in 1970 has ever taken a perfect record into the post season.   

Side Note:

During this special on the Immaculate Reception, I saw something about Terry Bradshaw that appealed to me.  It was a brief off-field clip of Bradshaw being greeted at the guard booth outside Three Rivers Stadium.  He was driving a Ford pickup truck, not a BMW or Mercedes.  I don’t know if Bradshaw had other vehicles at home that his wife drove, and I don’t know what kind of car he drives now as a Fox commentator.  But I like the fact that he was driving a pickup truck.   Maybe it was just natural for a Louisiana country boy.  I’m not an expert on cars, so maybe it was one of Ford’s more expensive trucks.  Maybe back then players still thought of themselves more as blue collar workers and didn’t care for luxury and sports cars.  There are a lot of maybes that I don’t know about.  What I liked was that Bradshaw apparently didn’t feel any need to impress people with his car, at least not when he was driving to work.

*Raiders linebacker Phil Villapiano claims to have been illegally blocked in the back by Steelers tight end John McMakin, which if flagged would have carried at least a 15 yard penalty and a repeat of the fourth down.  The touchdown would have been nullified, although the Steelers would still have at least one more chance to win the game.

 

The Sense of Family

  April 30, 2001 was my first day on the job at a non-profit corporation in Princeton, New Jersey.  I had been looking to change jobs for a while, and was finally able to connect with a job I believed I was going to like.  It was not prestigious or high-paying, but it met that crucial, most important requirement. In addition to that, what greeted me there was a sharply different and much more relaxed working environment than that of the employer I had just left.  At first, I couldn’t put the exact words on the dynamic that made this office so appealing, but the right words were given to me by my co-workers.  It was the sense of family that existed there that set it apart from anyplace else I had worked prior to that.  

    I had the idea that this organization would be different when I interviewed there.  I learned that although the pay wasn’t lucrative, the company offered a generous benefits package that significantly offset any lack of monetary compensation that might exist.  Both the woman who interviewed me at HR and the manager I spoke with noted the benefits and the low turnover rate, and I found that many of the workers who performed menial tasks were still content where they were.  That said something to me right there about the culture of the company, and it stayed with me after the interview was over.  I had some reservations about the money I would be making, but decided that if I got an offer that was comparable to what I was making at my employer at the time, I would accept it.  I remember that I had recently put aside the aspirations I had to make a quantum career leap.  I decided to look for a job that I would like doing, and to look everywhere, including searching the help wanted ads in the newspaper.  And, of all places, that is exactly how I found out about this job opening.  When I received the call from the HR woman a week later extending a job offer, I didn’t hesitate.  The same pay with better benefits doing something I liked better was too good of an offer to pass up.

  I was trained on my job by a supervisor named Chris, who was soon to retire.  He was easy going and walked me through everything I needed to do.  Questions would still come up for the next few months, but he would always guide me through it, and I also found all my other co-workers approachable.  The first people I met were the menial task workers, since they were the ones I worked with.  I met Nolan, a machine operator who had been with the company thirty years.  Like several workers there, he faithfully commuted by train a long distance.  Nolan lived in the Bronx, and had to make his way from there to Penn Station, and then take the NJ Transit train to Princeton Junction, where one of the delivery/shuttle van drivers would be waiting for him and several other co-workers to take them the short distance to the workplace.  I don’t know how many connections he had to make before he got to Penn Station, but I think it took him at least two hours (probably longer) from the time he left his home until he arrived at the building. The company had been previously located in Brooklyn, and several workers left and found other jobs when the facilities were moved to Princeton.  But Nolan was one of those who remained faithful to the company and gladly made the long commute.

  There was Bernard, who worked next to me, and with whom I developed a close friendship.  Bernard also commuted a good distance, from Old Bridge, which on the map looks to be 30 to 40 miles away.  Because of his disabilities, Bernard couldn’t drive, and his mother didn't mind taking him to work every day, before and after he got married.  He would take the shuttle and ride the train with the other long distance commuters on the way home.  Phil was another dedicated worker who commuted with Nolan up to New York City, where he then took whatever subway got him to his home in Flushing.  From what I remember, it was the only full time job Phil ever had.  His mother worked for the company for years before retiring, which provided him an easy in.  Phil wasn’t introverted or withdrawn, but he was usually all business, and quietly did his work.  There are others who came from different areas.  There is Jack, who was married to the HR woman who interviewed me.  Jack was one of the maintenance technicians who came by to fix any mechanical problems that came up.  Both Jack and his wife commuted up I-95 from Northeast Philadelphia, about 30 miles away.  The same way I commuted, but a little farther.  Later, I met Janice, who I think was one of the managers, and I think she was also a long time employee.  Janice drove back and forth across the state from Monmouth Beach, a shore town near Long Branch.  Janice was also a talented artist, and every year at the arts and crafts show, she would sell some of her line drawings of the shore area she lived in.

  The annual arts and crafts show was just one of many efforts made by the management to promote a sense of family at the company.  Several times a year, they would provide a huge catered breakfast for all staff to attend.  Early on, there were also some cook-offs, where the employees would get to showcase their culinary talents, usually pasta or chili.  It was a pot luck where everyone would contribute something (I usually just threw in a bag of chips or a soda).  Every year in December there would be a service awards ceremony where employees would be honored for each five year milestone they passed.  One person I knew had worked 40 years and was the longest tenured employee there at the time.  But these are just small examples.  My previous employers didn’t have many events like that, which is okay, since those things are extras and not what people go to work for.  But they can make a difference.

    The difference in culture I experienced made this new company seem like heaven compared to my previous employer.  My old job was not a bad place to work, but being that it was a collections agency, the bottom line was to make money and generate profits.  The possibility of making a lot of money is a powerful incentive for those who have the tenacity to make it happen.  I was not a collector, but as a skip tracer, I had a job to locate borrowers in default status, and the collectors would handle it from there.  There was pressure to perform up to a certain quota, which if met was rewarded with a monthly bonus.  During the three years I worked at that agency, the turnover was constant, and most of the people I worked with at the beginning were long gone when I worked my last day there.  The top manager over the whole floor (I forget his exact title) resigned about halfway through my stay at that agency, although it was due more to his wife wanting to move back to their hometown.  Most of the floor supervisors and the top earners stayed throughout, since they were good negotiators, and had what it took to succeed and make a lot of money.  Overall, the collection agency was a good company and treated me well, but the nature of the business made it hard to be nice and generate a family atmosphere. 

  And there was more to working in collections than just negotiating a settlement.  There are laws in effect to protect the consumer when it comes to debt collections.  It is imperative for the collector to be thoroughly trained to understand and abide by those laws.  A borrower’s debt status is considered private information, and could not be discussed with anyone except the borrower without his or her permission.  There was probably more to it, but as a skip tracer, that was all I had to be familiar with when contacting a borrower.  There was probably a lot more for the collectors to remember.   On the computer screen in front of me was a fair amount of personal information about the borrower, including the social security number and a credit report.  All screens had to be dimmed when walking away from the work station, and as part of the contract, the windows had to be covered with closed blinds.  Other than making money, one rewarding aspect of being a collector is that the collector is actually in a position to help the borrower if the borrower is able to make the payments.

   From the skip tracing end, the major disadvantage was that most borrowers were unlocatable.  The information provided on the file was a list of possible relatives and neighbors, a credit report, and it was rare, but there were sometimes one or two references who may have information on the whereabouts of the borrower.  There were several steps to be taken, including calling three possible relatives or friends, and then calling trades and inquiries on the credit report, which I think were other creditors who had current information on the borrower.  However, I found out early on that most trades and inquiries do not skip trace with collections agencies, and I almost never called them.  I rarely found any information from the possible relatives or neighbors, although sometimes the file would provide a direct match with the address given at the top of the file.  If the borrower could be contacted at the number, or if it was verified that the borrower lived there, that was a locate.  Without a direct contact, the general rule for a locate was that the borrowers address and phone had to be verified by two sources.  We were expected to locate a certain number of borrowers each day that way.  I wasn’t good at that, but most of the other skip tracers were, or at least that’s what I thought.  Later, I found that at least a few of my co-workers weren't being totally honest in recording their locates.  Several of those locates came up on my screen as bad.

  My new job was in a much more relaxed and easy-going environment.   Of course, everyone is expected to work and produce, but both the atmosphere and the work itself were much less stressful, and coming from my previous employer to my new one, that was a huge improvement.  Yes, talking on the phone is easy work in and of itself, but there was always some pressure to produce.  The experience there helped me develop some communication skills, but I just didn’t have the tenacity or negotiating savvy to make it happen.  The environment at the new job was much more placid.  I checked reel-to-reel and cassette tapes for sound quality, and after about four years, I began tweaking the sound of the newly uploaded mp3 files, from which the CDs were burned.  Finally, I spent most of the last few years working in the library services department, where I processed most of the incoming books that were to be recorded in studios by volunteer readers.  It all ended in December of 2008, when the company downsized.  I saw it coming for a while, as there was a TV monitor in the lunch room that was almost always tuned in to CNN or Fox News.  It was hard to avoid hearing it.

  Toward the end of my run there, I noticed something was different.  It seemed there wasn't much of that sense of family left there.  It happened gradually, so I didn't really notice it until I looked back later.  Several things had happened.  Most of the people I worked with during my first year were gone.  The turnover rate was slow, but it was still happening.  Jack and his wife, who hired me, were both gone, and the CEO at the helm when I started had retired in 2005.  That didn't make a whole lot of difference to me, since I thought highly of the new CEO, and he appeared to me to be continuing in the same direction as the previous one.  

  The biggest change to me was the phasing out of most of the production department I worked with, which happened in 2007.  I was told right from the beginning that this was coming, several years in advance.  It was made clear to me that CD and mp3 technology would make most of the production jobs obsolete, and it was again stressed in a production meeting some time in 2005.  We had been reminded from time to time, but in that meeting we were told in uncertain terms that by June 2007, most of the people sitting in the room would no longer be working there.  We were given the opportunity to cross train in other departments. Meetings were set up with a career counseling agency.  In short, the management did everything they possibly could to prepare us for the possibility and likelihood of losing our jobs. 

  Fortunately for me, I survived the production job cuts.  But it was a depressing time as I saw most of the co-workers in that department report when their last day at the company would be.  When I was called into the manager’s office, I was relieved to find I would be retained.  I was now spending a good part of my time in the library services department, and because of that there would still be work for me.  If I had found out I was indeed losing my job, the librarians let me know they would be glad to have me transfer to their department full time if that was possible.  But my job was safe for now.  It was mid-2007, and it still looked like I had a long future there.  I had no idea what was about to happen until gas prices started to spike in early 2008.

  Later, in the fall of 2008, the economy tanked, and although I though my job was fairly safe, anything was now possible.  I had a few friends in different companies who had already lost their jobs, and I was glad to still be working at the time.  But a little before Thanksgiving that year, a memo was distributed stating that our company would have to make serious budget cuts.  I don’t think it said anything about eliminating jobs, but I’m sure that’s how everyone interpreted it.  And on December 4, 2008, I was called into the production manager’s office, and given my severance package.  It was an abrupt end to seven and a half years of working there, but it didn't come without warning.  The upcoming months would bring their own challenges, however, and I am working on writing about that period, too.

  What I just wrote about covered mostly my experience at the beginning and end of my tenure at my company. But there were seven years in between that were the happiest times of my professional life.  I was blessed to have something that I never had at any other place I worked, at least not to that extent.  I was not 100 per cent committed to working my whole life there, but I may well have stayed there until retirement had a bad economy not prevented it. There was not much sense of family left by the time I was handed the pink slip. And the downsizing was not over, and periodic job cuts continued as recently as this fall.  Very few of the people I worked with are still there, although there are now ways I can keep in touch with them.  I just hope to again find a place to work with the sense of family we all enjoyed there. 

  

Taking the Train

  Before I purchased my first car in 2000, I got around mostly by taking SEPTA.  It seems that SEPTA can reach just about every part of Philadelphia within the city limits, but once in the suburbs and beyond, transit services are quite limited.  However, there are some areas that can be reached effectively by taking a train or bus, although not many.  Before I brought my car, my favorite leisurely place to travel by train was Doylestown, which is at the end of the Lansdale/Doylestown train line.  I’ll try to describe here what I remember from taking that train, which I haven’t done in over a decade.

  I live in Langhorne Borough, so to go from where I live to Doylestown entirely by public transportation, I would start by walking from my house about four or five blocks to get on the 14 bus.  From there, I would ride the bus about a mile and a half to the Langhorne train station.  The West Trenton train line would take me inbound from Langhorne to Jenkintown, where I would switch trains.  Along the way between Langhorne and Jenkintown, the train passed through about five miles of Lower Bucks County, mostly through Middletown and Bensalem townships.  It then crosses the city limits and passes through a small corner of Northeast Philadelphia, where it stops at the Somerton and Forest Hills stations.  After going back outside the Philadelphia city limits, it runs through a stretch of Montgomery County known as the Huntingdon Valley.  The Philmont, Bethayres, and Meadowbrook stations all lie within that general area that has a Huntingdon Valley mailing address.  The next areas are Abington and Jenkintown, where the station lies, as the tracks run along the boundary between Jenkintown and Wyncote boroughs.  Just before Jenkintown station, the West Trenton line junctions in with the tracks coming from the Doylestown and Warminster lines.  Once at Jenkintown, I would reverse directions and head back up the Doylestown line.

  Since I usually would take this ride on Saturdays, there was a lengthy layover at Jenkintown.  But there is also a nice park there with a long oval and back walkway along the Tacony Creek.  When the weather is nice, that was a good place to pass time between trains.  There wasn’t much nearby for shopping, except a deli to buy food, which I rarely shopped at.  Most of my time would be spent walking through that park or sitting inside the station when it was open, which it usually was on Saturday mornings.  There is a tunnel running under the tracks there for safe passageway between the inbound and outbound platforms.

  Once I was on the Lansdale/Doylestown train, the first outbound stop was Glenside, after which there was another junction, where the Warminster bound trains would split off.  After passing the North Hills and Oreland stations, the next stop was Fort Washington.  I was used to going that way, since I worked in Fort Washington for a few years and took the train there.  As the train approached Fort Washington, we passed under a few bridges, for Route 309, then the train trestle, and then the Pennsylvania Turnpike.  In between the tracks and the turnpike, I remember seeing what looked like a small animal farm.  If my memory is right, I think I saw horses and maybe sheep in that small strip of land, but I don’t know what exactly was being done in that space.  It was a long time ago, but I remember something was done in that space.  Living between a highway and an all freight train line doesn’t seem like an ideal place for people or animals.  After Fort Washington came Ambler, and after that came Pennlyn and Gwynned Valley.  I forget which two stations it lied between, but I remember the tracks ran right next to a sewage treatment plant somewhere in that area.  I even remember once when the train had to stop briefly next to that plant, but I don’t remember being overwhelmed by fumes.  After Gwynned Valley was North Wales.  I travelled to North Wales a lot at the time, because I had some friends from my church that lived there, and spent a lot of time with them.  There was also a small restaurant called the Hickory Pit at that station, which I ate at a few times.

  At Lansdale there is a junction.  The SEPTA line splits off to go in an eastward toward Doylestown.  Straight ahead after the station is a rail yard, which was used by Conrail to park their freight engines.  The north bound track stretched beyond that and ran through Upper Bucks County to Quakertown.  At one time, that line ran straight to Allentown and Bethlehem, and carried passengers between Philadelphia and the Lehigh Valley and beyond.  I think passenger train service between Philadelphia and Allentown ceased at least a half century ago.  Cars, buses, and highways made trains obsolete for travel and commuting between those two areas.  At the time, there are no passenger trains going anywhere near the Lehigh Valley, unless there is a tourist line I’m not aware of. 

  After the SEPTA line leaves Doylestown station, it passes through some areas that have managed to remain rural through all these years.  I remember crossing route 309 at Colmar station, and then crossing the county line over into Bucks at Link Belt station.  After passing through New Britain and Chalfont, the train nears its terminal at Doylestown.  The Doylestown station is within walking distance of the courthouse, as well as the Fonthill and Mercer Museums, and the shops on Main Street.  Going back, I would usually ride the 55 bus, which runs up to Doylestown along route 611.  I could take it to Noble Station, which is just outside Jenkintown and the next stop going north to West Trenton.  What I liked about that route was the convenience of having a Barnes and Noble book store right by the station.  If I had to wait close to an hour to take the next train, I could pass the time in the store.

  Although I didn’t take a lot of trips there, I did like riding the train, and I liked Doylestown.  It appealed to me simply because it’s a nice small town that could be reached by SEPTA, since I didn’t have a car.  I always liked Central and Upper Bucks County, because as I was growing up, those areas were still rural.  It seemed almost like going back in time.  Most of it is now built up, but Doylestown retained its small town quaintness.  And since I had a monthly trail pass, I figured I might as well use it. 

 

 

 

 

 

Urban Legends

  I remember hearing stories during my childhood. I took a lot of these stories as fact, even into adulthood, until I though back and remembered them. The first of these stories that I can remember was told to me by my brother.  It went that Walt Disney’s body was sitting frozen somewhere, because as his end was near, he wanted to someday be brought back to life.  For a long time, I was thinking that maybe one day there would be a scientific breakthrough, and a team of doctors and scientists would unfreeze and attempt to revive his long dead body. Years later, I was telling this story to a friend, but cautioned that it was just something I heard, and might be an urban legend.  Someone else overheard me and confirmed that is indeed all it is.  But I have come across many stories like that throughout my childhood and high school years, and often bought into them for a long time.  Even now, it’s not always easy to distinguish myth from fact.  I can’t really even begin to get into all the legends I heard over the years, but I’ll try to share some of the stories that stick out the most to me.

Eddie Haskell and the Bucket of Spit

  I got to listen to a lot of stories about popular culture figures, particularly rock stars. On that subject, I can think of two popular myths about Alice Cooper that came up repeatedly. If nothing else, they fit his projected image well and enhanced it.   First, there was a long running rumor that "Eddie Haskell is Alice Cooper". That meant, of course, that Cooper was actually Ken Osmond, the former teenage actor who played Eddie Haskell on Leave it to Beaver.  This was a bit surprising to me, because Cooper and Osmond do not look alike at all.  And anyone who wanted to look into this could have easily found out that Cooper’s birth name is Vincent Furnier, and that he spent his teenage years in Glendale, Arizona. I found out later that the legend originated when Cooper was misquoted by a college newspaper. Eventually, he took to wearing a t-shirt he had made with the words “No, I am not Eddie Haskell” ironed on it. But legends die hard, including urban legends, and for years after that Cooper continued running into people who thought he was Eddie Haskell.

  There was another popular myth about a supposed ritual Cooper performed at his concerts.  While he was performing on stage, a bucket would be passed around the audience, like a collection plate in church, with every fan spitting in it.  Once the bucket was filled, it would be brought onstage to Cooper, who promptly drank it.  I remember reading about some fans who managed to find their way to the hotel his band was staying at while on tour in 1973, at the height of their popularity.  It was described by journalist Bob Greene, who toured with the band and published a book about it titled “Billion Dollar Baby”.   One night after a concert he ran into a group of fans who bought into that legend and actually went through the trouble of collecting a bucket of spit from among the concert goers.  They managed to get into the hotel the band was staying in, and didn’t forget to bring the bucket with them.   Despite Greene’s attempt to explain it away as nonsense, the fans were determined to somehow meet Cooper. And they still believed he would gladly guzzle down the putrid cocktail they had made for him.

  These are plenty of other legends, some of which exceed the perversion of the ritual described in the last paragraph.  There are stories I have heard about Frank Zappa that I don’t care to get into here.  By their reputation, people like Cooper and Zappa will attract those kinds of absurd tales.  I often heard a famous story about Rod Stewart being rushed to an emergency room.  Later versions have Stewart substituted with someone else, and some versions have Elton John involved in it.  People like Rod Stewart and Elton John also have reputations that invite urban legends.

The Chair in the Bushes and other Rural Folklore

  I remember getting a ride to the train station from one of my co-workers a long time ago.  I forgot exactly how the subject got to this, but I think we were talking about some rural areas of Bucks County, near New Hope and Peddler’s Village.  Specifically, I believe our conversation got to Buckingham Mountain, which is a small ridge in that area.  There is a narrow road that goes over it, and supposedly, a car can move uphill without accelerating on the gas pedal.  Some strange paranormal force moves cars to the top.  I have driven over that mountain many times, but I never cared to try out that theory.   Not too far from that mountain is another site with a legend attached to it.  At a nearby intersection of rural roads, a girl was supposedly struck and killed by a drunk driver, sometime in the thirties or forties.  For decades after that, people driving by that intersection at night could see a small girl sitting in a rocking chair if they flashed their headlights.  I remembered that one for a while, since I find stories like that interesting, even if they are hard to credit.  Several years later I was reminded of that when I heard the same tale again, except this time it took place somewhere in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.  It may have actually been a popular ghost story that expanded into an urban legend.  Wherever it came from, there is plenty of mythology about both the Pine Barrens and the rural areas of Central and Upper Bucks County, as both areas abound with myths and folklore.    

Pop Rocks and Soda: An Explosive Combination

  Having grown up watching after school children’s shows, and Saturday morning cartoons, I remember the classic Life cereal commercials featuring Mikey, who hated everything.  But to everyone’s surprise he liked Life cereal.  A few years later, a friend told me that the actor who played Mikey had died after eating a few packs of Pop Rocks Candy and washing it down with soda.  I forget exactly how it killed him, but apparently one of his digestive organs was ruptured by the mix.  However, I soon heard people dismissing that story as a rumor. I have a vague memory of seeing a Life commercial years later featuring the grown-up Mikey, who was indeed alive and well, but I’m not sure of this.  I don’t want to start an urban legend myself.  But what is certain is that Mikey (real name John Gilchrist) did indeed survive into adulthood.  Where did a myth like that start?  I wonder if it began with a mother trying to scare her kid into adhering to a healthier diet.  If that was the case, today they at least don't have to worry about their kids eating Pop Rocks. They were taken off the market in 1983, so there is no more danger of someone actually being killed by overdosing on Pop Rocks and Soda. 

  On the subject of soda, there was an urban legend I heard about Coca-Cola while in high school.  A decomposed body had been found at the bottom of a syrup vat used to fill the Coke bottles.  For weeks or months or however long it was, thousands of bottles of contaminated Coke were going out to stores and being guzzled by thousands of people . I didn’t think to ask myself why I hadn’t heard about it in the news, and why there wasn’t a mass recall.  As far as I know, there is no news of any illness breaking out as a result. Pepsi also had its share of urban legends attached to it, most recently a slew of text and social media messages that an HIV positive worker in one of their bottling plants had been accidentally (or maybe purposefully) bleeding into the bottles and cans.  So far, I have not heard of any outbreak of illness from that one either, although my understanding is that HIV does not live long outside the body, so there is very little risk of contracting the virus by eating contaminated food.

  In some of my classes during my college days we had an exercise.  Everyone sits in a circle, and at the top of the circle, a sentence is whispered in the first person’s ear.  It is then whispered into the next person’s ear, and so on until it goes around the circle and comes back to the top. The sentence is almost always different at the end than in the beginning, and sometimes bears little resemblance. That same phenomena could explain how some urban legends get started, and how they vary along the way. Some of these legends started from misquotes and misprints, or misunderstandings.  Maybe some are started as complete fabrications, maybe what is normal is too mundane and boring, and the legends add some proverbial spice to them.  But there are other myths that have no rhyme or reason.  I could go on.  Books can be written about all the urban legends that are floating around out there.  In fact some books have.  But I think I’ll stop here.     

The Wide River of Dreams

  I remember when I was 15, and took a trip for the first time with my father to Penn State’s campus.  As a water works superintendent, that was where he would go every year for a state-wide seminar, which would always take place in the first week of August.  We came from Bucks County, so we travelled west, and for the first few years we took the Pennsylvania Turnpike to Harrisburg.  From there, we went north and crossed the river to Duncannon.  However, the first year, my father missed the Harrisburg East exit and we crossed the Susquehanna River to the Harrisburg West exit.  I had wanted to see the Susquehanna for a while, and also wanted to look for the Three Mile Island cooling towers.  When I did see the river, what really amazed me was how wide it actually was.  At that point it was about a mile wide.  It looked more like a bay or a sea.  I also noticed it looked shallow, as there were a lot of rocks and shoals, and low-lying islands which could easily be submerged during floods. 

  For the next five years after that, I went with my father to his annual seminar at State College.  Every year at some point we crossed the big river.  The next year, he got it right, and made the Harrisburg East exit, and continued on the highway for about five to ten miles past the city, and through a confusing clover leaf connector.  We crossed the river somewhere in Dauphin County over into Duncannon, where the Susquehanna receives the Juniata River.  From there, we would ride along the Juniata until Lewistown, with its huge dam, and then take 322 the rest of the way to State College.  After a few years, my father took a different way to get there.  Since my parents are both from Carbon County in Northeast Pennsylvania, we would travel up the turnpike’s Northeast Extension and then stay over with relatives on Sunday night.  On Monday, we rode westward on I-80 until the Bellefonte exit, and then went south to State College. 

  With my interest in maps and geography, I wondered how the Susquehanna would look from I-80.  That highway crosses the river near Bloomsburg, which I would guess is about 100 or so miles up the river from Duncannon.  It also is on the main branch, before its confluence with the West Branch in Sunbury.  Even up there, the river was still wide and resembled a bay or large lake.  A little while after crossing the main stem, I-80 crosses the West Branch, which I was also about to see for the first time, and it too was very wide.  The next year, my brother Mark started travelling with us to Penn State, and he too was amazed by the width of the river.  But of course, it was also noticeable that the river did not look very deep at any of those places.  It looked obvious that the river was not navigable other than for casual activities like motor boating and canoeing.  Rocks and shoals were visible everywhere, and all the bridges over the river were low.  At one time, there were huge anthracite and lumber industries along the river.  The lumber industry may still be big, I haven’t really researched that.  I sometimes wondered if some of the cities on the river like Harrisburg and Binghamton, NY would be larger metropolitan areas had the river been navigable up to those points.  I guess it depends on how large and in-demand these industries were.   I know anthracite was the main source of heating fuel at one time, although canals and later railroads were effective ways to transport coal.

  A while back I read Susquehanna, River of Dreams and if I remember right, I read that at one time navigators did try to use the river during its flood stages.  The word freshet was used to define the flood of the river caused by the spring snow melt.  Apparently, these freshets made the river navigable at least for wood barges.   I also remember that canals were once built alongside the river at least as far up as Columbia in Lancaster County.  It was once possible to depart for Europe from there, although I don’t think that actual ocean-going vessels sailed up and down that canal.  I guess that smaller boats picked up passengers and took them to a transfer point where they would board a ship.  I’ll have to check that again.

  But the Susquehanna has been put to use, if not for navigation, then for power.  There are several dams along the river, and at least three nuclear power plants that I can think of.  Three Mile Island, of course, will always be remembered.  It came to epitomize the danger of nuclear power plants.  Not too far downstream from TMI is the Peach Bottom plant, and up on the main stem near the I-80 bridge is Berwick.  Of the dams, the one I can think of as the most well-known is Connowingo in Maryland.  Other than that, I can remember Shamokin Dam near Sunbury, because the town across the river from Sunbury was named after it.

  One aspect about the Susquehanna that makes news from time to time is that it is notoriously flood prone.  I guess the most famous incident was Hurricane Agnes in 1972.  Wilkes-Barre, in Northeast Pennsylvania was hit particularly hard and a good part of the city was underwater.  I remember hearing a story (almost certainly an urban legend) about a coffin being uprooted from a cemetery in Wilkes-Barre and actually washing that deceased man’s coffin into his former home, where it opened in front of his horrified widow.   But urban legends aside, there are plenty of very real stories of flooding along the river, including recently, with the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion being threatened.  

  What has attracted me most about the river and the entire Susquehanna Valley, is the natural beauty of the area it runs through.  It is mostly mountainous and rural, and perhaps managed to stay that way because the river is not navigable by commercial vessels.  I have seen it at several different points, mostly by crossing over it on highways.  There are several college towns along its banks.  Bloomsburg, Lock Haven, Bucknell (Lewisburg), and Susquehanna (Selinsgrove) are a few I can think of offhand.  Millersville and Elizabethtown are not too far away.  It runs through the heart of Pennsylvania’s Amish country and the famous group of people it is named after.  There are places I haven’t been to and would like to see, especially at the river’s source and mouth.  I have seen pictures of Cooperstown, NY, and Havre De Grace, MD, but have never actually been in either of those places.  Cooperstown, of course, is famous for the Baseball Hall of Fame, but it also sits on Otsega Lake, which is the source of the river.  I have been near Havre De Grace, since I-95 crosses the river near there, but I have never gotten off the highway and into the town itself.  Aside from those places, I would like to see the confluence of the North and West branches of the river at Shikellamy State Park, where there is a vista it can be viewed from.  But whatever part of the river I go near next, I want to bring my camera and get some pictures.    

  

Being At the Game

 I wanted to see a Temple football game for a while, and finally got the chance this season.  Even though I’m not as big a sports fan as I was during my childhood, I still get out to a few Phillies games, one every few years.  I had been talking about this for a while with my brothers, and we all thought it was a good idea to go to a Temple game sometime.  Through the generosity of my brother John, we all made a trip to Lincoln Financial Field on October 1 to see Temple take on Toledo.  From the viewpoint of a Temple fan, the game itself wasn’t too good, because they lost fairly badly to the Rockets.  In the second half, it became a one-sided Toledo rout.  But I knew by their opponent that that was a good possibility, and I knew also that there were positive things I would take away from the experience, win or lose, and I’ll try to share my thoughts on it.

  I didn’t really follow any sports while I was a student at Temple.  It was a while after I graduated that I started to take an interest in the football team.  The program was notoriously abysmal throughout my years as a student there, and for many years afterward.  Finally, after the 2004 season, the Owls got bounced from the Big East, and it looked like it might finally be over for football at Temple.  From what I understood, it would not be worth it financially to downgrade the football team to Division IAA status. They were perennially among the worst of the 120 or so NCAA Division I schools, and, if I remember right, they had more than one winless season over that stretch of time.  The poor performance combined with the lack of fan support at home games was enough for the Big East heads to cast Temple adrift.  But the university made two moves that, to me at least, were wise and saved the program.  After two seasons as an independent, Temple was able to get a football-only invitation to the Middle American Conference.  It didn’t have the level of competition or the BCS automatic qualifier status the Big East had, but Temple would fit in better there.  Next, they hired Virginia offensive coordinator Al Golden, and there seemed to be something different about him, as he seemed to be bringing a more positive and enthusiastic attitude with him.  I had a feeling that things were going to change.  Of course, it was just a feeling and it could have turned out to be very wrong, but fortunately this time my feelings were right.  The Owls got progressively better each year, and finally, in 2009, they ended up with a winning season and their first bowl appearance in 30 years.

  Fast forward to now, a few years later.  Golden is gone, but the change of culture he brought to the team is still here so far.  It seemed like now new coach Steve Addazio was actually taking it up a notch.  Going into this game, Temple had just come off of what may have been their biggest victory in recent years, as they had dominated Maryland 38-7 on the Terps home field the previous Saturday.  They had also come close to defeating Penn State a few weeks earlier.  It looked like this might just be their breakout season, and it seemed likely they were headed to the MAC Championship Game in Detroit.  If they could steamroll through the rest of their season, maybe they could even get a national ranking, although that was a stretch.  And while thinking of those possibilities, I kept in mind that this game could turn out to be a disappointment.  The Owls were facing a better team than their record indicated.  The Rockets had just come off a disputed loss to Syracuse, and a few weeks earlier had come close to defeating Ohio State.   But after considering all that, I still though that Temple was the better team.  I found out I was wrong, and we ended up leaving early in the fourth quarter when we determined the game was out of reach.  It was a similar situation to the week before, when most of the Maryland fans were long gone by the time the clock ran out.  Except now, it was us, the Temple fans, who were leaving early.  We had another reason to get out early, since the Phillies were scheduled to play at 5pm.  We wanted to get out before the traffic for that game started pouring in.  My brother had a VIP parking permit that someone from his work gave him, and the Phillies traffic had not arrived yet, so we got out quickly and were on I-95 in about three minutes.

  But other than watching my team lose badly, going to this game did help me remember what I liked about all the games I went to at the Vet and Citizens Bank Park.  And I was able to see the Linc for the first time.  I grew up watching the Phillies and Eagles play at Veterans Stadium.  The Vet opened in 1971, when professional sports were just starting to become a multi-billion dollar industry, and football had just caught up with baseball in popularity.  The stadium design was also following the general trend of dual-purpose stadiums that housed both the football and baseball teams of a big city.  When I first went to the Vet, I was about 10 years old, and only knew about professional sports from what I saw on television.   As we were approaching the stadium on I-95, what struck me about the Vet at first was that it resembled a giant cake.  Once I got inside, it seemed different from what I saw on the small screen, because there are some things that the cameras can’t capture.   I found that although the field looked good on TV, and still looked good from the stands, other parts of the stadium were not as neat and clean.  And of course being there gave me the experience of trafficking with other sports fans up close.  Most people acted civil and just had a good time, but there were always those who couldn’t just enjoy the game, and there were always a few people who drank too many of the stadium’s overpriced beers.

  Being that this was a Temple game, which was in less demand than the Eagles, we were able to get seats about four rows up from the Toledo sideline.  As far as I can remember, that was the closest I ever got to the playing field.  It was around the 20 yard line, so it made the other end of the field hard to see.  However, because of modern technology, the large end zone video screen allowed us to watch all that was going on when the play moved to the other end.  Remembering the Vet, I was able to appreciate how the Linc was designed for football.  There is a huge deck with an open space that allows fans to see the game if they happen to get up to use the restrooms or go to the concession stands.  There was also a plaza on the lower level, outside the stadium, but on the grounds, inside the gates.  There were several bandstands there, and one of them was occupied by a cover band playing classic rock songs.  My brother told me that during Eagles games, there are several bands playing, although I don’t know if they played simultaneously.  It seemed that a lot of the concession stands were closed, although I imagine that during Eagles games everything is open.  When Temple faces an opponent like Penn State, or in 2013, when they will play Notre Dame, I would also imagine that everything will be open and going full steam.  I didn’t venture up there, but the upper tier of the Linc looked almost vertical from where I sat.  At the very top, it looked like there was very little except a small wall, behind which is a drop of several hundred feet. 

  I didn’t think there would be too much rowdiness at the Temple game, as I assumed a college football game would be more of a family event than a professional game.  It looked like that anyway, as I saw several families with their student children.   There are also little features of the game that I don’t see, which occur while the network breaks for commercials.  During that time, while viewers at home are watching ads for cars and restaurants, random contests for the fans take place on the field.  One involved letting a male student attempt a field goal from the 10 or 15 yard line.  There was a passing contest with a female student trying to catch three passes from Hooter, the Temple mascot.  Since this was Breast Cancer Awareness Month, there was a lot of pink in the audience, aside from the usual cherry and white of Temple.  The dance team was also used to promote that cause.  Another obvious difference between being at the game and watching it on TV is being among the crowds, as I noted above.  The television cameras don’t get all that goes on in the stadium.  They may zoom in on a few fans, or show quick flashes around the stadium, but other than that, they don’t capture the fan culture at football games.

    College games are also notable for the enthusiasm that is generated, both by the marching bands and the cheerleaders.  The Temple band occupied a section directly across the field from where we were sitting.  The cheerleaders were there, as well, but our view of them was obstructed.  The Temple Dance Team, which is a separate unit from the cheerleading squad, also performed on and off the field.   The general impression I get from college cheerleaders is that the enthusiasm and acrobatics are more the focus than glamor and choreography, which is what seems to be the focus of NFL and NBA cheerleaders. As far as the fans themselves, we were on the Toledo side of the stadium, so I got a much closer look at their fans than the Temple fans.  The Toledo fans brought cowbells with them, and banged them every time the Rockets made a big play, which was often, and more frequent as the game went on.  I don’t know if that is a regular part of high school and college football, since I can’t remember seeing a college football game since I was a child. 

 Since we entered and left by the VIP entrance, one thing I didn’t catch much of was the tailgating, which is another huge part of the culture in the NFL and college games.  That’s where the diehards are, kind of like a fraternity.  Sometime if I get to see another Temple game, I would like to just go through the parking lot and meet some of the tailgaters.  If nothing else, getting to know them and move about freely among them would probably give me something interesting to write about in a future article or blog. 

 After our fourth quarter bail out, the ride home was mostly quiet.  The Linc is right next to the highway, and I could see into the stadium for a few seconds while we passed by.   From the car, it looked like most of the people appeared to be in the stands as we were making our way home, although I doubt many of them were still around when the final seconds ticked off the clock.  But despite two more losses after the Toledo game, The Owls are still 8-4, and in all reasonableness should get a bowl invitation on Sunday.  I think their best days still lie ahead.  I won’t be able to go to every home game, and I actually prefer games against MAC opponents that will be less crowded and demand a smaller price.  And although I do prefer watching at home, I still want to get out to more Temple games in the upcoming years.