What Remains

With so many new images of Allentown, I want to post an essay I published in November of 2008, after my first visit to Allentown. With only a cursory look, I didn't know that the Hispanic presence I saw was mostly Puerto Rican, and not Mexican. It's probably time for a new article on Allentown, but in the meantime, check this out:









A day after the Phillies won the World Series, unleashing a reasonably benign celebration that left only a few windows smashed, a dozen planters destroyed, negligible looting, a tacky bronze statue of a businessman tottering and 76 people (symbolically?) arrested, I took a bus from Philadelphia to Allentown to do a reading at Muhlenberg College. Amra Brooks had invited me. I've been in Philadelphia off and on for 20 years but that was my first visit to the Lehigh Valley, a mere one-hour-drive away. It's hard to motor when you don't own a car, and each time I boarded a train, it was headed to either New York or Washington.

The views on I-476 were lamely monotonous, so I dozed until 309, between Quakertown and Coopersburg. Looking out the window, I remembered a bus ride from Cromer to Norwich in East Anglia, where I sat in front of a middle-aged black man who debated with himself continuously. At first, I thought he was on his cellphone. I also address myself, OK, but only briefly, mostly in expletives, and never in public. “You’re an idiot,” I’d mutter with genuine disgust. During a World Series broadcast, a commentator said of Harry Callas, “If I had a voice like that, I’d just stay home all day and talk to myself.” Eventually, his meaty hand appeared on the window pane, just behind my face, and he left it there, mostly immobile, for a minute or two. In the village of Aylsham, this strange man got off, and I could see that he was wearing an old tweed suit and toting a brief case. Looking serious and confused, he approached a girl and a boy and asked them something. On another occasion in Aylsham, I saw the most beautiful gardens in my life, with all sorts of roses and tulips. I also examined a magnificent lich gate and the 17th century Black Boys Inn, with a carved black boy, sure enough, grinning on its cornice, flanked by two very pink female nudes.

Approaching Bethlehem, the modest clapboard houses, fronted by porches and neat, sloping yards, reminded me of a Charles Burchfield, then downtown with its cafés and shops, then I saw, hulking against the autumn sky, what's left of Bethlehem Steel. Its rusting chimney stacks, stoves and laddered furnaces were even more awesome for being strictly utilitarian, unlike the nakedly ostentatious towers of San Gimignano, Shanghai or Dubai. I've got to come back for a better look, I decided as we pulled away.

How long will these steel ruins remain standing? In The Rings of Saturn, a very moving meditation on mortality, personal and societal, W. G. Sebald describes the East Anglian village of Dunwich, once a top port in Europe. Peaking in the 13th century, it has mostly sunk into the ocean, thanks to the erosion of its shore line, “The parish churches of St James, St Leonard, St Martin, St Bartholomew, St Michael, St Patrick, St Mary, St John, St Peter, St Nicholas and St Felix, one after another, toppled down the steadily receding cliff-face and sank in the depths, along with the earth and stone of which the town has been built.” It took centuries. All Saints, its last medieval church, did not disappear completely until 1919. The church bells of Dunwich are said to toll beneath the waves. It’s curious that Sebald left out this poetic detail. Perhaps he thought it too quaint. On the village outskirts, there are the remains of the leper colony’s chapel. Everything will be erased from memories and earth, and all we’ll have are unreliable, slanderous and random words, if we’re lucky. Bill Knott:

All of us who lived on Earth

and all our loves and wars

probably won't appear much

in the moon's memoirs.

/will probably not appear

/will probably never appear

will probably never/not be mentioned

are probably not going to be mentioned

will hardly ever be mentioned

will largely never be mentioned

will hardly ever be mentioned at all

will scarcely ever be mentioned

will hardly be mentioned at all

will scarcely be mentioned at all

will barely be mentioned if at all

may not receive much feature

might not get any mention

might not get a lot of attention

might not get any pages

might not get much attention

may not be featured a lot

may not be mentioned a lot

will not be mentioned a lot

may only be mentioned in passing

may not be mentioned much if at all

may not be mentioned at all

may not be mentioned ever

may not be mentioned once

I doubt will receive much feature

probably won't get much words

might not get much mention

might not get mentioned much

might not be written of

will amount to about a page

may get about half a page

will end up in a footnote

may be mentioned in a footnote

may merit only a footnote

will probably never be mentioned

probably won't be mentioned once

will never be mentioned once

may not merit a paragraph

may not rate one paragraph

may not take up a paragraph

may not stretch to a paragraph

will never be mentioned ever

may not get a lot of attention/pages

may not receive one paragraph

may not be featured much
may not receive much feature

probably will get one paragraph

will probably be one paragraph

probably will never be mentioned

will probably never be mentioned

will perhaps never be mentioned

may not take up much space

Paraphrasing Norwich native Thomas Browne, whose pondering statue now sits in a square, surrounded by clothing stores, Sebald writes:

The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us. Hour upon hour is added to the sum. Time itself grows old. Pyramids, arches and obelisks are melting pillars of snow […] To set one’s name to a work gives no one a title to be remembered, for who knows how many of the best of men have gone without a trace? The iniquity of oblivion blindly scatters her poppyseed and when wretchedness falls upon us one summer’s day like snow, all we wish for is to be forgotten.--translated from the German by Michael Huse

Such a passage reminds me of Pound’s dictum, that poetry should be at least as well written as prose. Between the last three paragraphs, written mostly on a plane from Philadelphia to San Francisco, and this sentence now in progress, two hours have elapsed, since I had to take a Bart train to 24th and Mission. Surfacing, I entered the first eatery in sight and ordered a rather bland burrito. A pigeon walked inside, pecked from the floor, then hopped on a table to sort through an uncleared basket. Finding this sight delightful, an old guy with a NY baseball cap peered through the window, smiling. On the wall, three laminated Virgens de Guadalupe and a Sagrado Corazon de Jesus. Vietnamese at heart, I prefer neon to candle light when eating, and this place was cheap enough for drifters, two of whom sat at a table with their backpacks. As expensive as this city has become, people still wash up here, whereas in Philly, they’re just stranded. The last time I was in this corner, I had just been to a party where I was introduced to Buck Downs. With a name like that, you almost have to be a poet.

Baby Jesus was born in Bethlehem, but not this one, which merges into Allentown, as conveyed by these lyrics, "Well we're living here in Allentown / And they're closing all the factories down / Out in Bethlehem they're killing time / Filling out forms / Standing in line." Billy Joel wrote this ballad with Bethlehem in mind, but changed its title to "Allentown" to avoid any tinkling confusion with the Holy Land. For this bleak portrait, the popster was made an honorary citizen and presented with a key to the city. “Fame is not fastidious about the lips which spread it,” Elias Canetti has written. “So long as there are mouths to reiterate the one name, it does not matter whose they are.” And it hardly cares what is said about it, as long as its name circulates. In our own way, each of us is no different than George Foreman, who tagged his sons George Jr., George III, George IV, George V and George VI. One of his five daughters is Georgetta. As Barack triumphed, the Japanese town of Obama rejoiced. In 1977, Seattle gave Seattle Slew a parade after it won the Triple Crown, even though this stallion had nothing to do with the city, and had never even been there before. I can no longer find the source but didn’t Rilke say that as soon as people start to repeat your name, you should change it? Language casts such a wide dragnet, surely it will snag my pitiful moniker, if only by accident? Like Donna Summer, I will survive, yes I will.

Thanks to a David T. K. Wong fellowship, I was in East Anglia for just over 8 months. Comprised of Norfolk and Suffolk, the region is like a bump, a butt stuck on England. When I told Londoners I was staying in Norwich, they laughed. Centuries ago, it was the second greatest English city. There’s a saying, "It's normal for Norfolk," to designate behaviors too outrageous or idiotic anywhere else. Norfolk is like New Jersey, a taint area. It ain't New York and it ain't Philly, it's taint. Philly itself is taint, since it has to crouch in the shadow cast by that huge, musty schlong, still formidable after its triple castration, counting WTC 7, which simply imploded and collapsed, with no plane stuck in its maw. East Anglia was the home of the Iceni. Led by Queen Boudicca--whose heroic, charriot riding statue is catty corner from Big Ben--they defeated the Romans and sacked Londinium, before she was killed and buried beneath platform 8, 9 or 10 of King’s Cross rail station. A much sadder royal person lived in East Anglia, the Maharajah Duleep Singh. The English robbed from his family the Punjab, bigger than England itself, and, as an aside, the mother of all goddamn diamonds, the Koh-i-Noor monstrosity. To compensate, Queen Victoria gave this Singh dude a stipends to move to Thetford, where he spent his time wooing barmaids and died nearly broke. I went there to stare at his not unimpressive equestrian statue, erected only recently, complete with dedication by Prince Charles.

Just before the bus stopped in Allentown, I noticed Tu Nueva Casa Restaurant and Tu Casa Nightclub at American Plaza. Mexicans have been in the area since the twenties, recruited by Bethlehem Steel. A 1923 advertisement from the Fort Worth newspaper, Prensa:

SE NECESITAN TRABAJADORES EN PENNSYLVANIA

Necesitamos como 200 hombres solteros para ir a la Bethelem Steel Co., Bethelem, Pa. Véngase pronto, si no está trabajando porque saldremos en trenes especiales el viernes. Buenas casas y buen salario. No cobramos gastos de oficina. No escriba; véngase listo para salir si es buen trabajador.

SAN ANTONIO LABOR AGENCY
M. L. Osborn (El Colorado) C.G. Garza
1225 West Commerce St

[WORKERS NEEDED IN PENNSYLVANIA

We need 200 unmarried men to go to Bethlehem Steel Co., Bethlehem, Pa. Come quickly, if you are not working because we will leave in special trains on Friday. Good houses and good salary. We do not charge office expenses. Do not write; come ready to leave if you are a good worker.]

A corrido from that time:

Corrido Pensilvanio

El día 28 de abril
A las seis de la manaña,
Salimos en un enganche
Pa’l estado de Pensilvania.

Mi chinita me decía,
Yo me voy en esa agencia,
Para lavarle su ropa
Para darle su asistencia.

El enganchista me dijo,
No lleves a tu familia
Para no pasar trabajos
En el estado de West Virginia.

Pa’ que sepas que te quiero
Me dejas en Fort Worth,
Cuando ya estés trabajando
Me escribes de donde estés.

Cuando ya estés por allá
Me escribes, no seas ingrato,
En contestación to mando
De recuerdo mi retrato.

Adiós estado de Texas
Con tu vas tu plantacion,
Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no piscar algodón.

Adiós, Fort Worth y Dallas,
Por no de mucha importancia
Yo me voy pa' Pensilvania
Por no andar en la vagancia.

Al llegar al steel mill worque,
Que vemos la locomotora
Y salimos corriendo
Ochenta millas por hora!

Cuando llegamos allá
Y del tren nos bajamos,
Preguntan las italianas,
¿De dónde vienen mexicanos?

Responden los mexicanos,
Los que ya saben “inglear,”
Venimos en un engache
Del pueblo de Fort Worth.

Estos versos son compuestos
Cuando yo venía en camino
Soy un muchacho mexicano
Nombre das por Contestino.

Ya con ésta me despido
Con mi sombrero en la mano,
Y mis fieles compañeros
Son trescientos mexicanos.

***

On the 28th of April
At six o’clock in the morning
We set out under contract
For the state of Pennsylvania.

My little sweetheart said to me,
“I’m going into that office,
And say I’ll wash your clothes
And take care of you.”

The contractor said to me,
“Don’t take your family
Or you’ll pass up this job
It’s in the state of West Virginia.”

“So you’ll know that I love you,
When you leave me in Fort Worth,
And you have started working,
Write me from where you are.

“When you are there
Write me, don’t be forgetful;
In reply I will send you
My picture as a ‘forgetmenot’.”

Goodbye, state of Texas,
With you goes your plantation
I’m going to Pennsylvania
But not for picking cotton.

Goodbye, Fort Worth and Dallas,
You’re not much to me now,
I’m going to Pennsylvania
To be a vagrant no more.

When we got to the steel works
We saw the locomotive
And we came running
At eighty miles an hour!

When we arrived there
And got off the train,
The Italian girls asked us,
“Where do you come from, Mexicans?”

The Mexicans reply,
Those who know how “to English,”
“We come out under contract
From the town of Forth Worth.”

These verses were composed
When I was on the way;
I’m a Mexican boy,
Call me “Contestino.”

And with this I take my leave
With sombrero in my hands,
And my faithful companions,
Three hundred Mexicans.

--from Paul S. Taylor’s Mexican Labor in the United States, Vol II (Berkeley: University of California, 1931)

The second largest steel producer in the U.S., Bethlehem Steel was responsible for the Golden Gate Bridge and nearly all of New York’s skyscrapers, but not the World Trade Center, by which time the company had gone into decline. A key defense contractor, it produced half of the bullets America used in World War I. In World War II, its shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts cranked out more than a Navy ship a day. The work in its steel plant was brutal, dangerous and mostly done by immigrants from places like Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Czech, Slovenia, Italy, Greece, Mexico and Puerto Rico. In 1941, just before the U.S. entered the war, the steel workers went on strike to demand, among other concessions, a 10 minute lunch break and a "welfare room," where they could shower and change into clean clothes to go home at the end of the day. Earlier strikes had been put down by state troopers, but the union, now formed, became increasingly stronger until some blamed it for the company's demise in 2003, when 11,500 employees supported 120,000 retirees and dependents.

In 1958, Bethlehem Steel had six of the top ten highest paid American executives. The top earner was its chairman, Arthur B. Homer, who grossed $511,249. His workers averaged $1.96 an hour. The company's first chairman, Charles M. Schwab, built Riverside, a 75-room French chateau in New York's Upper West Side. Finished in 1901, it was so lavish that even Andrew Carnegie was quoted as saying, "Have you seen that place of Charley's? It makes mine look like a shack." Schwab lost his fortune in the stock market crash of 1929, and died more or less broke in 1939, when he bequeathed his mansion to NYC, intending it as the mayor’s residence. It was never used as such. In 1949, Riverside, the most extravagant house ever built on Manhattan Island, was finally razed.

I got off the bus and, wanting to see Allentown, walked to my hotel instead of catching a taxi. Trekking nearly six miles, I passed a disused rail station with its fake campanile; the Catch-22 nightclub; the 1899 Soldiers and Sailors Monument with one stiff angel atop its tall column; a handsome art deco, WPA-era post office. I stopped to admire the cupola on the old court house, and hesitated in front of El Barrio, where I would return the next day for some tasty ox tail with rice and beans. Past downtown, there was a stretch of funeral homes and law offices, strip malls, then a silent amusement park. Halfway through my foolish journey and frankly starving, I dashed into China King and had a forgettable yet satisfying plate of rice and stir fried beef with its medley of junk vegetables. The friendly proprietor came out to chat and said that he had lived in Allentown for all but four of his twenty seven years. He got me to confess that I was there to do a poetry reading. “Oh yeah?” he said, pausing to digest this unlikely information, then, “You know, I wrote a poem once. It was about autumn. The wind was blowing hard, very hard, but the dry leaves, you know, they did not want to fall from the branches. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Bethlehem has produced one poet that I know of. Hilda Doolittle was born there in 1886. In 1911, she published a children’s story, “Old Tommy,” where there’s a little boy suffocated by his environment. “Everything indoors seems for girls,” he said. "I have no patience with these foolish little things. I want to be something great and build big houses and sail ships to far countries, or write a thousand books. I want to be something great." H.D. skipped town the first chance she got, and never returned to live but as a cadaver. Her grave, always decorated with seashells left by an admirer, murmurs these hushed lines:

SO YOU MAY SAY

GREEK FLOWER ; GREEK ECSTASY

RECLAIMS FOREVER

ONE WHO DIED

FOLLOWING INTRICATE SONG’S

LOST MEASURE.

.