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On TV the Elks advertised mackerel as a breakfast treat. Never in my 65 years had I heard such an unsavory suggestion. Somebody else offered deppen pie. What's deppen pie? I've been all over the country, even outside the country. No place else had deppen pie at the church bazaar. The TV cable company, Service Electric, runs a "Community Bulletin Board" in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania. For an alien like me it's immersion education; the strange practices and customs of a culture I hadn't realized existed. Places like Port Carbon, Tamaqua, Ashland, Saint Clair, Schuylkill Haven and Mahanoy had never been within my cultural landscape. Now, I'm being offered bleenies, halushki and perogies, which I translated as pierogies, a kind of Polish ravioli with cheese instead of meat. And what's a "car cruse" or a "Chinese auction?" That doesn't sound politically correct. The Good American Hose Company was trying to excite interest. Is there a Bad American Hose Company, or a Good Australian Hose Company or a Good American Tapioca Company? What's a fish rodeo? I don't know, but there was an advertisement for kids to participate. It brings to mind surreal images of roping bucking mackerel as dawn delicacies. Advertisers on the bulletin board obsess about their bellies and their babies. They particularly want to get children involved in organized combat - violent, physical contact "sports," wrestling, football, basketball, anything where there's conflict. Sports have always mystified me anyway. Why teach children, or adults, for that matter to struggle, compete and combat? Isn't there enough strife in the world? But from toddlers onward education divides the society into competing segments anxious to wreak mayhem on their fellow creatures. The suggestion that cooperation makes better sense is a heresy. It's noteworthy that hunting doesn't seem to have the appeal that it has in the rest of Pennsylvania. I think it involves too much tramping around in the forest. The locals still enjoy killing things, of course. There's a notorious nearby attraction where birds are released and gunned down. Now that's got to be a lot of civilized fun! After food and kids, the popular TV bulletins offer alcohol - lots of alcohol, gambling, cars and trucks, and trips to exotic destinations such as Reading or, better yet, gambling in Atlantic City. I was impressed that the descendants of laboring European peasants are anything but hicks. They have developed a genuine culture and an interest in the arts. The little village of Frackville has its own public library. Most of the taverns advertise "live music." There's a local theater group as well as junkets to plays and musicals. Golf has become popular on local links. Coal miner's kids golfing, now that's surreal! Schuylkill County's 147,000 people give the impression of diversity, but all the blacks are in prison and the Hispanics are trucked in to tend apples orchards or provide other labor, then promptly trucked back out. In fairness, Hispanics have found a few toeholds among the other ethnic groups. The comatose coal industry has been replaced with prisons. Imprisonment gushes $10,000 an hour of tax money into the economy. It's strange that decent people should live on the captivity of other, but imprisonment is Pennsylvania's only growing industry. America imprisons more of its people than any other place on earth. Schuylkill County boasts two large prisons and a county jail, almost 4000 persons in cages, 3% of the population. That's something to be proud of. The county has a pervasive sense of genuine community. Every saint you ever heard of has his or her own church someplace in the neighborhood. They each offer some community service or useful social benefit. The town of Pottsville, not to be confused with the much larger Pottstown, a northern suburb of Philadelphia, is Schuylkill County's metropolis. It has over 10% of the population. Like the rest of the county, it's dying. John O'Hara's romanticized references to the district in the 1930s are long passe. Coal mining is no longer ubiquitous, indeed, it's now a mere industrial afterthought. The water and ground are polluted. The land is marred. Young people are seeping away. Until the age of interstate highways, the area was isolated. Like some remote island of the Seychelles it evolved along its alternate course. It's a shock to realize that such a different culture flourishes nonplus in the Pennsylvania mountains. Old World peasants play golf and munch kielbasi (kielbasa). For me, first coming to Frackville was a shock. It was an alien culture very different from my experience. Of course, I was a prisoner dragged into the state prison. That would be a shock to anybody. The prison is perfectly primitive, badly managed and staffed by shockingly inept people. How can the community be so socially responsible while the prison staff is so cowardly and such bullies? Maybe that's what decent people do where they descent to doing indecent jobs. The treacherous interstate highway brings thousands into the county, but nobody stops. Not even town-wide yard sales are a draw. To an outsider like me, it seems that that's fortunate. Why sell deppen pie to outsiders? Too quickly they'll be selling the locals apples from New Zealand and clones from Korea.
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