The city I live in and some history facts in In the Kingdom of Suzu

One of my noters asked where I lived and I was going to answer her but then decided to make it its own entry!

I live in PA in a city about an hour NW of Philadelphia and about an hour and a half south of NYC. The city is Allentown, yes the place Billy Joel had a hit record back in the 80s except the city he was really singing about is Bethlehem, the next town east, home of Bethlehem Steel but I guess Allentown made better lyrics. Bethlehem is also the home of Just Born candies, makers of the marshmallow peeps.

I grew up in the next town east, Easton, on the border to NJ and back in the day we would cross the bridge to get alcohol cuz the drinking age in Jersey was 18. Easton is also home to Crayola crayon factory. Easton has a lot of history from when the country was first being settled, stagecoach routes, etc. My first job was in a building that back in the day had a tunnel leading from the house to under a creek to escape Indian attacks. When the lawyers renovated, they exposed the log cabin front and always told new clients the story of the escape route.

The small town of Nazareth is north of Easton and Bethlehem, home of Martin Guitar.

Allentown, among other things, was the home of Hess department store which back in the day had quite a few celebrities visit it. It had a restaurant, “The Patio”, famous for its strawberry pie and fashion shows.

Our county borders PA Dutch country and there were a lot of PA Dutch speaking people back in the day. When I moved to Allentown in the mid 70s, the local paper would run a column in PA Dutch once a week but alas, no longer.

North of Allentown are the Pocono Mountains, lots of skiing, etc. Coal region is also north and a lot of Slavic people settled there and just north of Allentown. That is where pierogi, halupkis to name a few are from. Also a big Italian population at the other northern end. Molly Maguires also made their presence felt.

Unfortunately, there have been some sensational murders here in the last two decades—shortly after I started working at the courthouse, there were the skinhead murders—two brothers and a cousin who murdered the brothers’ parents and younger brother, another teen who killed his parents about a month or so after the skinheads and last year, the 13 yr old girl who got her soldier boyfriend to kill her mom. Also last year, Jimmy Snuka “Superfly Snuka” was charged in the cold case murder of his girlfriend’s death from the 80s.

Hope you enjoyed the mini history facts!

Allen