From Crystal Club Soda to Gertrude Hawk Chocolate

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.