From Crystal Club Soda to Gertrude Hawk Chocolate

Sen. Barack Obama’s half-eaten waffle and sausage link are still sitting in a freezer at John Oakes’ home, but their online image has taken on a life of its own, attracting profiteers and inspiring artists.  Mr. Oakes, a loyal customer of the Glider Diner in Scranton, convinced the diner’s owner, Charles LeStrange, to bequeath to him any leftovers of Mr. Obama’s meal when he passed through Monday morning. The Chinchilla man was expecting to get a good laugh out of putting the leftover waffle and sausage link — along with a plate and silverware Mr. Obama used — up for auction Monday on eBay. What Mr. Oakes and the Glider Diner got were a flood of negative comments on the auction Web site and a high bid of $20,100 for the collector’s item, which led Mr. LeStrange to ask him to take the auction down.  [Times-Tribune]

School administrators who suspended two Scranton High School students who skipped class Monday to meet Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama were acting in accordance with district policy, Assistant Superintendent William King said Tuesday. But 18-year-old Colin Saltry claims an administrator also forced him to resign as senior class president. Mr. Saltry and senior Joey Daniel admitted they skipped their gym class Monday after seeing Mr. Obama’s motorcade heading toward the Glider Diner, where he made an impromptu breakfast stop. Mr. Obama signed excuse slips for them to show their teachers when they returned. Instead, both students were called to the office Monday afternoon and suspended for one day because they left school grounds. Mr. Saltry, meanwhile, said he accepted the suspension as a consequence of breaking the rules, and said it was worth it to meet the presidential candidate. But Mr. Saltry said he wasn’t expecting to be told to “start writing his resignation letter” after school administrators suspended him. [Times-Tribune] Editor’s Note: These students should be praised for their interest in politics. Instead, they are punished. Ridiculous.

Darak Williams, 26, and Kashema Reddish, 25, both of Scranton, are featured on America’s Most Wanted website in connection of the death of Reddish’s 3-year-old daughter, Kavannah Salvador, in February 2008.  [amw]

The proposed Commonwealth Medical College will soon own a 3-acre lot to build a $75 million headquarters beside the Northeast Intermediate School.  Medical school officials reached perhaps their biggest milestone yet tonight when the Scranton School Board unanimously approved the nearly $1 million sale of the Pine Street parcel.  Commonwealth administrators now expect construction of the future college’s headquarters to begin as soon as this fall and completion is set for early 2011. Before construction begins, they hope to secure the necessary state and city permits by this summer.  [Times-Tribune]

After four years, work has begun in earnest on the 500 block of Lackawanna Avenue, with crews working on the state Department of Transportation’s streetscaping project and local developer Donald Rinaldi’s renovation and restoration of much of the block.  When completed, he envisions one of the most distressed blocks in the city reborn as a downtown showpiece that includes commercial space in the front and rear of the buildings, condos, public spaces and a park. Since work began in earnest in February, new gas, electricity, water and sewer service has been installed and subterranean vaults below sidewalks have been filled. Upper stories of Rinaldi-owned buildings are being subdivided and outfitted for residences. Several false facades have been removed to be replaced or restored to their original form.  [Times-Tribune]

This bleak former coal town in northeastern Pennsylvania occupies a unique perch in this year’s presidential contest.  It’s the hometown of “Obama Girl,” the New York City model of YouTube fame whose racy videos proclaiming her crush on Barack Obama are definitely not campaign-sanctioned. Her parents still live here, and her unlikely career break has gotten older, working-class whites talking more than they otherwise might have about the young black politician from Chicago.  [McClatchy]

1954 Crystal Club Soda Bottle.  [ebay]

Photo by Bob Patterson.

The task of increasing participation in the comments section of the Crystal Club Soda website sounds like a great opportunity for an Irish guy with a good sense of mischief and a large supply of photographs taken in Scranton during the Fifties, Sixties, and early Seventies. It makes the assignment seem downright easy. Writing something that is a verbal collage of memories, ruminations, and insights augmented by a relevant snapshot from the past, seem like a good way to lure readers into sending their own pictures to the “Photo of the Day” editor, and/or posting their own take on the topic, in the comments section.

The first topic that comes to mind is that of Scranton’s notable cars, which is ripe with many wonderful subjects worthy of consideration. Unfortunately, no matter how good the descriptions are, if readers had their own candidates to remember, then it doesn’t seem like they will be very prone to read about someone else’s favorite ride. If, however, a picture of the 31 Deluxe Chevrolet sedan which was a common sight on the streets of Scranton while the members of Saint Paul’s High School class of 1961 were working their way towards graduation, well then, folks might have their memory jogged and be more likely to scan the words and then possibly offering a subjective response to the comments section.

[In a recent phone call, Hitzel reports that the car was purchased from one of his father’s cousins named Gertrude Hawk(s?)]

More digging in the negative files might ultimately produce some images of drag races conducted legally on the runway of the Forty Fort airport in the mid fifties, but as the deadline nears for this installment of Scranton Scrapbook nears, those particular items are unavailable.

Another advantage of the column on a website format is that the writer can ask a question and hope that some knowledgeable reader will not only know the answer but share it with all by posting his version of that information.

For example, while riding around in Bill Hitzel’s ’31 Chev, one other car that was notable was a very fast 1940 Willys coupe, but the name of the owner of that vehicle is an unfathomable trivia question for this writer.

One parochial grade school memory was that the class room overlooked a yard where a 16 year old public school student parked his brand new 57T-bird. On one rare instance, when he didn’t had a school holiday, he was spotted going out for a cruise by an envious student who didn’t even have a driver’s license.

The paved A&P parking lot near “the Patch,” was, on Sundays when the Store was closed, a relatively safe environment where kids with a driver’s learning permit could practice the basic maneuvers, until becoming proficient enough to advance to streets.

Car enthusiasts in Scranton during the Fifties flocked in droves to the Scranton Hobby Center to buy the plastic model kits made by AMT. The memory of that particular facet of life in Scranton brings up some interesting questions:

Before Scranton Hobby Shop opened on Adams Avenue, didn’t they have a smaller shop and wasn’t it located on Mulberry?

Didn’t Scranton Hobby Shop spawn Auto World?

Weren’t both of them owned by Oscar Kovaleski? Didn’t Auto World help support Oscar Kovaleski’s car racing endeavors?

Members of that 1961 class had a memorable moment in early 1958, when 1959 cars were spotted on a car transporter truck near the school. Since the cars were being shipped to Europe, the speedometers, which included numbers reaching 200. The excitement subsided when one smart fellow, figured out that meant kilometers per hour and not miles per hour.

Recently an automobile tragedy occurred in Maryland when a car plowed into a group of spectators at an illegal street race. That incident spurred memories of a night when a drag race on 309 near Lake Scranton, was interrupted by the police. Memories of the event which are nearly 50 years old, indicate that the Scranton group had shown some better safety sense by temporarily stopping the other traffic on that road?

In Scranton, one story which was often repeated (urban legend) about a young fellow who took some of an inheritance and went to Stauffer’s Chevrolet on a Friday and bought a new Corvette. He totaled the car that night and waked away from it and returned to the dealership on Saturday to buy another new one. Some would have you believe that he also destroyed that one and walked away from it and finally got the hang of handling a high performance machine and managed to safely negotiate the streets using the third one which he bought on Monday. (Skeptical objection by a fact checker: would that particular car dealer have had that many of the sports cars among their “on hand” stock?)

Wasn’t there a vehicular accident in Scranton involving a runaway truck on the Moosic Street Hill and didn’t that event become a song? The disk jockey has the answer to that question and will play Harry Chapin’s “Thirty Thousand Pounds of Bananas” while we speed out of here. Burning out has become illegal in California (“illegal show of speed”) and it may not be sanction in Pennsylvania, either, but if it isn’t; have a nostalgic “lay a 100 foot patch” type week.

Times-Tribune reporter Stacy Brown had exclusive access to a fundrasier featuring former President Bill Clinton at Mayor Doherty’s house Wednesday night. [Times-Tribune]