From North Korea. Not with love.

North Korea is in the grips of a crystal meth epidemic. And now 99% pure crystal meth from North Korea is flooding United States drugs markets.. According to DAILY MAIL’s report on the North Korean nightmare, the drug is so common there that people are offered it as much as coffee or tea would be to guests in other countries. And in America? Meth has been found in lots of small hometowns across the fruited plain. Now 99% purity is on the way–thanks to corruption and drug gangs in North Korea.

Great.. this is the last thing the already meth-addicted coal region of Pennsylvania needs. The pure stuff..

Pretty certain that this is not how the end of March should be looking, but it is exactly how it looks here in Northern Schuylkill County tonight..

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_PzL0bJDW0?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

As someone from Schuylkill County, PA, I’d be remiss not to at least give a post dedicated to a pretty surprisingly fun song called SKOOK STATE OF MIND.

I personally never liked the term ‘skook’ much but it works well in this song..

Matt Freiler, of Deer Lake, is the young funny talent behind the video. It’s gone ‘viral’ in so much as people from Schuylkill County have been watching it .. 

If you are not from this area the video will mean nothing to you…

I think one day it will be interesting to go back and look at the places where scenes were recorded to see what other ‘landmarks’ of this dying area are gone by that point.

Until then though, it’s a fun song and deserves a listen..

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbo7UKb-Ckc?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]

For any Schuylkill Countians out there, this is a blast from the past.. The Schuylkill Mall’s TV ad from the 1990s.. all of these stars except a few are gone.. and the mall is almost vacant.. Sad how the mighty mall on the hill has fallen.

(Keep in mind that when this ad was made, around 1995, the mall had already suffered a mini-exodus of stores. But nothing like what has happened since 2008)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

Mall at Steamtown Going into Foreclosure

Call it the Fall at Steamtown..
Malls are dying quick deaths.
Even the big ones.

Incidentally Staples said it’s going to close 225 stores this year… I pick Cressona PA as a prime candidate..

Mall at Steamtown Going into Foreclosure

Which is Worse: A Bath Salt Epidemic or a Zombie Outbreak?

This Florida online paper perfectly sums up the horror that is drugs, particularly bath salts, in the once great coal region of Pennsylvania ..This is a great article, written from looking in from the outside. Dennis Maley, the author,  grew up in Schuylkill County PA, or as residents term it the “skook” .. He penned this article about a trip back and a sad view of how bath salts and other hardcore drugs have destroyed the last remaining goodness that was the county.

A few points from Maley:

I grew up in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, or the Skook as it’s affectionately known. It is an area that has suffered through a long history of problems with pervasive drug addiction. In that way, it’s no different than a lot of small, economically-depressed places that have fared poorly in the post-industrial economy. The stories are the same, but for some reason, the drugs are often different, perhaps reflecting the particular brand of desperation most prevalent in any particular geographical region.

He goes on..

I’d been hearing the tales for a long time, but by that last trip home the scope had become unthinkable. One after another, I heard dozens of stories about the ranks of friends and acquaintances who’d jumped to the dark side and become a “salter.” It wasn’t just the usual suspects either. Smart people with good jobs and intact families saw their lives quickly circle the drain before nose-diving down the pipe and into oblivion. 

I myself have known people, or known of people, who suddenly lost their way and changed their entire personality due to drugs.. It’s a horrible thing, too. The zombie look that the face gets is frightening.. 

Another point from the author:

All of it felt surreal. I was without a frame of reference. This many people couldn’t be off the grid, living some underground life as fiends with an insatiable craving for some drug you bought in a head shop with cartoon pictures on the box. Then it happened … I saw one.

She was a formerly gorgeous girl, five years my junior and daughter of a family friend. Her face was hollowed out so deep that it called to mind the Skeletor character from the horrible live-action movie, based on the He-Man cartoon. Her once full lips were now pencil thin and scabbed over on at least half of their surface area. The doe-eyed baby blues I remembered as her most striking feature had narrowed into slits, leaving her with only a permanent expression that seemed to drip with cynicism. Then there was the assortment of scabs and open cuts dotting her face. Her teeth looked like they’d begun rotting in place and her once-curvy body had thinned to the point that I might have missed her, had she been standing sideways rather than facing me straight on. 

I have seen the people he is describing.. I have seen beautiful young and hopeful people become destroyed because they made a choice to do some hardcore horrid things.  

While you see the coal region close up every day, looking at it from a new perspective always gives you a fresh look.. Reading an account from someone who left before the bath salt and meth fad began here is striking.. Everything that was is gone. Things that were stable are not..

As the Coal Speaker has followed for years, you never know where you’ll find a meth lab in the area..  The Coal Speaker has also began documenting what I feel will be the ultimate demise of the area: Closed malls, schools, hospitals, and hope. Deep down, beyond all the facts and headlines, there is something else happening.

When I was a high schooler at the now defunct Cardinal Brennan High School in the roaring 90s, life was fine. Kids did bush parties—late night beer fests in the middle of corn fields or in hideouts in the woods. That was the test of a teenager… beer. Miller or Coors.. toxic sure… but things changed.

These days drugs are rampant.. And if you think the cops are immune you’re pretty naive to how things work.

There seems to be a disconnect—county leaders don’t realize just how fast and how much the area changed.. They don’t get the immense change that happened. And most don’t realize how much bath salts, meth, and other hard core drugs are responsible.  War has come to our towns.. The drug war. And sobriety is losing.

Don’t get me wrong. The drug was has failed. But let’s not forget how it was meant to fail—the CIA has been busy beavers.. 

I feel like I am digressing.
Back to this article..

Despite your belief about drugs and whether we should jail people for them…there is something very rotten at the core of Schuylkill County. 

And I fear the when Krocodil makes its debut in the region.. Then the real zombie look will be en vogue.. 

Which is Worse: A Bath Salt Epidemic or a Zombie Outbreak?

Don’t get bruised. Don’t get battered.

Chances are, you were already.

When I was driving home with my wife and child from our Thanksgiving family affair, we passed by a Walmart. The place was mobbed with people and cars—so many that people started parking in a dirt and muddy lot that separates the store from the town of St. Clair, PA. God bless the workers tonight who will be faced with bruising and battering that was mentioned above.

People in pajamas flocking to the aisle with the cheap TV. People donning their finest spandex while they flea for iPhones and pads. Maybe iPads.

It was a little horrifying to see so many people out and about in Thanksgiving taking part in such rampant materialism. Couldn’t they wait until 3am for those ‘doorbusters.’…? 

And speaking of doorbusters. I have come to despise that word over the past 36 hours.

PHOTO CREDIT:

A woman carries Nordstrom shopping bags at The Grove mall in Los Angeles November 26, 2013. This year, Black Friday starts earlier than ever, with some retailers opening early on Thanksgiving evening. About 140 million people were expected to shop over the four-day weekend, according to the National Retail Federation. REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fckR5u2ukeQ?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=374]

Didn’t go to a party tonight, but I went to a block party in Minersville.. Had some good buttery halushkie, and other coal region food at its best and most artery clogging.

Sadly I didn’t hear SAPPHIRE sing Kiss Me Deadly because Ayden  got tired and we had to go home.. But enjoyed the show I saw nonetheless.

It certainly put me in a Lita Ford kinda mood—maybe because so many in this region drink their Yuengling while still dressing like their kissing deadly in 1985..

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

For fellow Schuylkill Countians: An ABA parade is set for this year

This is great news… 

For fellow Schuylkill Countians: An ABA parade is set for this year

I took this photo today as i drove by my long gone high school..

With another cold winter ending, the rebirth of spring beginning, Cardinal Brennan sits there vacant.. On a hill in Fountain Springs, PA..
My alma mater now has simply become a relic.. A closed down school in the distance. Memories are fading.. Lives moved on. But what secrets, I often ponder, does that cold building still hold?
Do bells still ring, and do poets still sing? Does an echo survive of time gone?

It’s been 6 years since Cardinal Brennan began the process of shutting down.. That’s six graduating classes that never finished there and two that never even started..

Last century, when times seemed simpler and I was a high school student, I went to this building.. Now it’s empty and desolate.. It’s simply a aging piece of brick and mortar..

But I suspect, in the stillness of the night, the building’s spirits and past somehow lives. At least I’d like to believe that..

This is the kind of sunset that says winter is almost over

A pretty rough morning in the coal region

A little piece of news from the homefront .. Shenandoah had a very rough morning today as a fire ripped through several homes, injuring and forever damaging people’s lives..

It happened on West Coal Street in Shenandoah, PA. The fire broke out at 330am … no one was killed, but there were injuries. Multiple buildings were destroyed.

Fires happen every day every where. But when you hear of an entire block being torn down by flames, it’s a reminder to me of why I don’t want to live in a row home setting. 

The ties that bind you.. or trap you..

The coal region of Pennsylvania was a quaint little place since I can remember.. I was born and raised (for a bit) in Centralia PA, with a mine fire burning hot under my feet.. My family moved to a nearby town.. my heart and soul has been in this place for a long time.

But perhaps the same ties that bind you also trap you in. 

I read an article today in my morning paper.. It’s a little inside baseball perhaps, but it’s on my mind.. The article paints a story of a dying area.. Restaurants and bars are shutting down in the coal region.. the Pottsville REPUBLICAN and HERALD speaks about Cactus Jacks, the Restaurant at the Station in Tamaqua.. Yockos in Minersville. (All big deals).. another bar detailed in the article is only open one day a week.. 

A bar being shut down in the coal region is a big deal. You’d expect in this area a dirty little tap room would be shuttered if they were serving underage minors. But in the economic troubles lately, the prime reason for closure is money troubles.. 

I think back to my life as a  child. The area, then, wasn’t the best. As mentioned at the beginning of this post, it’s a nice little quaint place, for sure.. but things to do? This ain’t no city, bo.  There were restaurants and run down bars, and a mall or two or three, or ‘tree’. When I was a child I didn’t think there was much to do. No kids did. It’s why most of them had ‘bush parties’ where beer was served in the middle of no where. But today, now, I look at the local disgrace the area is becoming and wonder if anything is left for my son to enjoy. 

I thought deeply about this as a result of that newspaper article. What does bind me to this area? It’s family. That is the answer.. It’s family.. I don’t work close to here, I actually commute a distance. My wife does too. When we want to do something with my son, we travel away from here.. But when we want to be comfortable and feel at home, here we are..

I think it was always that way, a bit. I believe that this region ‘felt like home’ .. It’s why, for decades, the Ashland Boys Association Parade was filled with thousands. Until it got canceled a few years back and struggled to begin again. Good luck to Ashland bringing it back in ‘13. 

It’s also why a town named Girardville hosts a spectacular St. Patrick’s Day parade.  Even Bill Clinton showed up in 2008 to campaign for his wife. The town wholeheartedly supported him.. he even had a screamer from Tony’s.. no word on whether he became immediately dyspeptic. 

There are other pearls that can be unearthed from time to time. Jim Thorpe is a beautiful and fun place.. Schuylkill Haven hosts a great summer weekend with fireworks.. and the Bloomsburg Fair is going strong. 

But what else is occurring?

Crime… drugs… lots of drugs. Lots of drug abuse. Lots of dilapidated homes literally falling down  into streets (Girardville, PA)… and now closing businesses.. 

The Schuylkill Mall is being hard hit, as are other malls. A new refurbished movie theater opened. I wish them luck and hope the mall stays open. I recall some early memories as a kid thinking it was a mecca of shopping.. of course smoking was legal indoors the smell of cigars also fills my fading memory..

I just hope and pray that, as long as we choose to live in this place, it will stay safe and quaint.. and more and more quiet, perhaps.. 

Family is why we stay. 
Besides the ties of that, there are few others …

However … even one day if the Coal Speaker leaves the coal region, you will never be able to extract the ‘area’ from him.. or anyone else that chooses to go.

After high school several friends had a mass exodus from here to go other places. Many returned and now, again, live locally after ‘living their lives’ in a city or larger place. 

But the coal region can come back, though it will never return to the paradise that it was during the coal mining days—that paradise was not shared by all and truly only for barons and bosses of coal mines that could care less about safety of workers. A part of this region’s history is that it was filled with hard workers and good people. Conservative Democrats… fair-minded but also sometimes a little suspicious of ‘outsiders’. Perhaps that also became its 21st century demise..? Any for of progress is despised by too many, forcing those younger with dreams and ambitions to look elsewhere to find that progress. 

I don’t know.

I cannot count myself as smart enough to understand why an area disintegrates .. I wish I was smart enough to know how to bring it back. 

But I’m not.

So with that all said, I end with this: Perhaps within the next few years my wife and I will be forced to make a decision. Keep the ties that bind us knotted and tight, or loosen them up and fly away. No matter the choice, we have a third party role: Our son. And in the end, it’s his future that matters the most now of all.

The flu is spreading.. Some are filling up on pills or racing for the vaccine. We here in Schuylkill county PA take a different approach. Friends neighbors and coworkers share boilo this time of year. And thanks to wonderful coworkers at my wife’s job, warm apple pie boilo is bringing soothing relief to sore throats in the Coal Speaker abode tonight… Got boilo? We do..

*Ignore the Jack Daniels bottle.. It’s simply a container for the greatest alcohol on earth.

So my local Walmart had a mobile meth lab in the parking lot.. Merry Christmas.

Pretty big day in the Skook, even with it being Christmas..

It may be everyday that a meth lab in some town gets found, but not a mobile one. A meth lab on wheels.. 

Turns out that the owner of the vehicle was from Berks County. So Schuylkillians are in the clear on this one. But… it may be proof that you can find pretty much any item at Walmart.

This is Girardville, Pennsylvania, tonight. The Jiffy Mart has stood for decades. And now it’s burning to the ground.. those who live in the coal region or who did live in it will know this is a pretty big deal. This is a huge chunk of history in a small mining town vanishing before firefighters’ eyes.. Sad night in the coal region.