Bethlehem Reverie

July 23, 2006

Dear Susie,

Maybe it was because I had just taken a hot shower and was relaxing, but your voice was very hypnotic tonight, and listening to you talk about Bethlehem was stirring up lots of old memories that have been stored a long time. I haven't lived in Bethlehem for many years, but I have lived there four times, under different circumstances each time. I was born at St Luke's (as all my sibs were), and just remembered tonight taking the family car to Monocacy Creek to wash it by the creek (this was obviously pre-green days). I think I might even be able to find Monocasy Creek, but if not would you take me back there? I believe (though this is very gauzy) that my mother and aunt took me to a Friend's meetinghouse near there, too. Is that possible? Then we moved to NJ, but we moved back to Bethlehem the year Jimmy was born, 1962. My father was in the doctoral program at Lehigh, and worked as an assistant dean for a year. That was the year I went to Nitschman JHS, and we lived on 16th Street, near (I think) a big Greek Orthodox Church. I studied Latin and learned to wrestle, and then we moved back to NJ again. Then I returned to Bethlehem to go to Lehigh. After my freshman year I moved off campus with friends, and lived in Freemansburg. We had long hair, and the local steel workers hated us and threw beer bottles through our picture window, and the cops came and wanted to arrest us for underage drinking (only that was not our drug of choice, but they were too backward to know). I also lived in a farmhouse in Cetronia, near Dorney Park. We lived there a whole year and never even considered going to Dorney Park. We did a lot of acid that year, and I dropped out because eight weeks had passed and I had only gone to my figure drawing class and was failing all the other courses. I worked in the Poconos a while, then reenrolled and lived with friends at 425 E. 4th Street. I think it's a funeral home or somesuch now. Then Nancy and I got married and traveled around a bit, then came back to Bethlehem (for the last time) and lived on Broadway, right above St Lukes where I started. I was in graduate school and Nancy was finishing up at Kutztown.We worked at the Allentown Book Shop in the Whitehall Mall in the evenings. I'm still friendly with a couple people who worked at the store, including my best friend Ted, another friend Anne, and of course Nancy and Maggie. Then we left for Syracuse, never to return. That was 1975.

Thanks for shaking up those memory banks. It was enjoyable. XO W