O Tannenbaum

  This is a picture of the Christmas tree which sits in the community park in Langhorne.  There was an illumination ceremony last Friday night, for which part of the street was closed off to traffic.  It’s something that has been happening all over around this time, to kick off the holiday season.  And of course I came across plenty of houses with Christmas lights, but I haven’t mastered night photography, and I don’t really know if my camera has the settings to capture it.  Most of the Christmas lights came out blurry, and I didn’t know how to sharpen the image.

  After a quick Wikipedia check, I found that the tradition of lighting Christmas trees originated in what is now present day Latvia and Estonia in the 16^th century, and in Germany a little later.  Those trees were first illuminated with candles, which sounds like a fire hazard.  They were adorned with religious ornaments, such as the communion wafers used by the Catholic Church, and later sweets were added for the children.  I didn’t research how the Christmas tree eventually became a household item during the holiday season.

  Every year when I was a child I watched the children’s special Santa Claus is Coming to Town, which I now also have on DVD.  For most of my childhood, that was the official story of how Christmas trees were first illuminated.  It happened during the wedding of Chris and Jessica Kringle in the forest, with the Winter Warlock using his magic to light all the trees.  It’s an easier and more appealing way to explain to children where all the stories and traditions came from.  Most people probably didn’t bother to research the actual story anyway, as it’s just a curiosity.

  I’ll be taking more walks in the upcoming weeks, and I’ll probably have my camera some of the time.  I may be able to get better pictures of some Christmas house lights.  There’s also going to be a live nativity scene at the Langhorne Methodist Church on Christmas Eve.  If I get some pictures there, I’ll post them here.

 

Overlooking Jim Thorpe

  I took this picture about five years ago, and I believe I was using my old film camera.  I stood on a vista overlooking the town of Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.   Since my mother grew up there, and my father in nearby Lansford, I visited this area frequently as a child to see our relatives.  It was later, sometime in the 80’s, when Jim Thorpe really boomed into a tourist town.   The place I stood to take these pictures is outside a nightclub called Flagstaff, built sometime in the early part of the twentieth century.  I don’t know if it’s the same building that once housed big bands like the Dorsey brothers or if the original building was torn down and replaced.  The vantage point was an obvious draw for the venue, where people could dine and listen to music, while at the same time viewing the town from several hundred feet above.

 For anyone happening to read this that is unfamiliar with the town or the person, I’ll try to give a Wikipedia in a nutshell summary.  Jim Thorpe is named after the famous athlete of the early twentieth century.  He played professional football and baseball, and won several gold medals in the 1912 Olympics.  However, he is also well known for having those medals revoked after it was learned he had been paid to play football and baseball.   That of course meant he was a professional athlete and technically ineligible to participate in any Olympic event at the time.   During his lifetime, he probably never set foot in the town that is now named after him, and I believe the closest he came to Mauch Chunk (the town’s name at the time) was the Allentown and Bethlehem area.  He was raised in Oklahoma as a Native American, and spent the final years of his life as a struggling actor in Los Angeles.  Off the field, his was a troubled life, plagued by alcoholism, financial difficulties, and two failed marriages.  Professional sports were not a multi-billion dollar industry during Jim Thorpe’s time, so being a professional athlete did not bring him fortune.  He was able to get some small roles in Hollywood, but unable to establish a solid acting career. It was a few years after his death in 1953 that Patricia, his third wife and widow, found the town of Mauch Chunk an attractive place to bury her late husband, and one that would build a memorial for him and give him the respect his family believed he deserved.

  In 1955, the issue was left to voters on a referendum as to whether to provide a memorial for Thorpe and rename the town after him.  By a narrow margin, the residents of the two boroughs of Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk, separated by the Lehigh River, voted to merge and rename the town in Thorpe’s honor.  The memorial was built, but went mostly unnoticed for several decades before a tourist railroad helped revive the town.  With the railroad and its natural beauty, Jim Thorpe was reinvented as a tourist town and mountain resort.  During the anthracite boom, Mauch Chunk was a transportation center for coal coming from the nearby towns.  Once it arrived there, it would be shipped by canal alongside the Lehigh, then the Delaware River until it was loaded onto ships in Bristol, Pa.  Later, when railroads took over, Mauch Chunk was the railroad center for loading trains with coal from the nearby towns.  From World War II onward, the area had been dying after oil replaced coal as the home heating fuel of choice.  Some mines were still operating as late as the early 1970’s, but were manned by a skeletal crew. 

  I remember it was in July when I took these pictures, and it was a bit hazy, so it wasn’t a totally clear day.  The Lehigh River divides the old town of Mauch Chunk on the left from the small part of the former East Mauch Chunk visible on the right.  To the left of center is the Asa Packer mansion, and the building with the clock tower is the Carbon County Courthouse.  The train station is toward the bottom center, and is partially obstructed by the trees.  From this height, the town looks almost like a model train display.  The vista where we stood is actually on the west side of the river, as the bend in the river is also obscured by the trees.   

  I haven’t been up there in a while, but I hope to go back soon and get some more pictures from ground level.  I do have some pictures I took over 10 years ago that I may post here sometime, but I actually snapped those pictures on a disposable film camera.  It was later on when I wanted to get more serious about photography.  Photographing Jim Thorpe is one of the things that got me interested, as I wanted to take people there to see the area, but obviously I can’t take everybody.  Since I couldn’t always bring the people to the places, photography provided me with a way to bring these places to the people.

A Willow Tree's Place in the Game of Golf

  While I was out walking today, I took this picture from a hilly side street near where I live.  Part of that street runs along the border of the Middletown Country Club.  The willow tree pictured here sits by a pond, in a small valley between the hill on the right and the mound on the left.  The fairway lies on the hill to the right, so the object for this hole is to get the ball over the pond and have it land it on the green.  The challenge is to not overshoot or undershoot the ball.  Undershooting can run the risk of landing the ball in or near the water.  Overshooting can take the ball off golf course property.  Just to the right of the green pictured here is a large net meant to catch balls that sail past the green.  However, they often go over and through it.  I know the man who owns that property.  He has told me that he sometimes hears the balls hitting the side of his house, and he is always picking up balls from his yard. 

  Since the golf course property runs along the street, which is another way to lose a stroke.  Even though the street is a little off the trajectory between the hill and the green, aiming the ball too far the wrong way can land it on the concrete.  On the whole, I don’t know how this course rates with professional or experienced golfers.  My only experience has been with miniature of chip and putt courses, so I would find any real golf course challenging.  The only remote idea I have of what it’s like to play 18 holes comes from playing the old Sega Genesis video game about 15 years ago. I don’t think I’d be able to clear that pond or the trees if I had to shoot from the hill.  But in the middle of all that is this willow tree by the pond, which I thought would make a nice picture.