Hollidaysburg

Like a river so many faces have flown beneath the branches.
The fruit of the labor of birth and the travail
Meets the passing of time in my hometown.

To think of the proud glory
Draws a tear,
Not only for the illustrious,
McKibben, Holliday, Brua and Gromiller,
The Schmidhammers, Gildeas, and Rileys.

But for the little days of my youth:
Dysart Park, Corney’s and Highland Hall.

Like a dream now
A motley parade of anonymity
Along epitaph street,
Clumsy stone windows
With dusted, plastic flower bunch,
A wind wakens to muffled cadences of drums
At the Senior High;
September afternoons with cheerleading squads.
I remember Principal Collins at Hollidaysburg High
And Uncle Donkel but most of all, geography
With Mr. Hooper.

Here’s to Hooper’s Troopers and teachers like that!

Must every day succumb to the kaleidoscope of the setting sun
Flickering through the oaks
Then rise up again
With the mist that lifts from the sculpted fairways at Blairmont Club?
All of the early days give rise to newer structures
As Altoona looms,
Clattering down Logan Valley Boulevard
To Lakemont like a green jewel
From which the murky creek issues
Like a crushed finger.

We swam in that water (no one would believe it sanitary today)
And caught rainbow trout---
Yes, rainbow trout!
And tied a turtle to a tree.
When the creek flooded the turtle drown.

Summer acquiesces to Autumn,
The cicadas restless chatter soothes me
And the passion of the green leave recoils into the fragile dusty earth.

I see them now on my dreamstreets.
Corney awake to the day
With his little coffee can of ice,
toiling to proffer a Cherry Coke™
Hammering and picking as if this little drink
Were prepared with such care as Harry’s Martinis in Manhattan.
“I’ll take the latest issue of Mad Magazine and some bottle top candy and bubble yum,”
counting out the two dollars thirty eight cents in change from chores.

Dr. Keagy taps on my 8 year old chest,
Listening with his cold stethoscope,
And Mr. Rubbe, and Mr. Treese.
Can you see them now?

Mrs. McCauley with her April shrines.
I can hear her now:
“Go out ‘n pick some daffodils
for Mary.”
And ‘Hey you’ and ‘Come Here’ that’s how she called
her fat tabbycats.

The parade streams along Allegheny Street
Past the Courthouse, past Pete the Greek’s.
Do you remember Central School?
I do.
Staring from St. Michael’s across the street
To the fenced in play
I see Walter Brenner playing kickball during recess.

Pool hops at Blairmont,
All of the furniture in the pool.
Early morning chilled water
Swim practice with Dean Patterson
And Eileen Smithe, The Sheedy’s, Dave Book,
And Alan Kleiner’s immortal lunging butterfly stroke.

I can see this clearly now, and smell the chlorine in the aquamarine lapping water
As well as the subterranean locker room painted in pale blue.
Can you smell the pool too?
Others say that we have come so far as to be of memory devoid
So self-sufficient that we no longer need
To dream this dream.

What ever became of Burkey the bum?
(Father Vago once gave him $5 and furtively followed him into the
The Pipe Room Tavern, where he demanded it back!)
Does anyone really know what happens to bums?
Do they receive funerals? Does anyone care?

The parades down Allegheny Street
blaring the fire engines shrill horns
make me cry.
The time The Jolly Green Giant came to the A&P and the kids
Rammed a cart into his legs to see if he walked on stilts.

Officer O’Leary (Blinky) and the other officer----the entire Hollidaysburg police squad close in on a Halloween trick or treater who has pounded somebody's station wagon with eggs, or smashed a dozen jack o' lanterns.

8 Track cassettes: “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and “American Pie”, Big John Riley on WFBG radio from the big city. “Garibaldi” and his spaghetti eating contest, I wanted so badly to win, never got a chance to participate---the runner-up ate too much and had to get sick right there in front of the radio audience.

Early Summer strawberry picking at Baronner’s and walking home with a sore back, a couple of dollars, a chance to buy a teaberry ice cream cone at The Meadow’s.

Then in late August when St. Mary’s is hot and steamy, and Father Mabon leaves the doors open, his cat walks straight up the aisle to the altar before communion, nobody makes a move because it is father’s beloved ‘Milky’ you should’ve seen the look on Fr. Vago’s face! He said more than once that “Father Mabon loves that damn cat more than he does people.” Maybe that is true.

Hollidaysburg is no better today. All of it is flown away like a tattered kite and life’s banner hides death’s slow march, the present tense has an unfair advantage, since it is alive and kicking, whereas each day has been thrown down like a bandage to decay, thousands of days deep.

In the face of all this today is a pale dream,
And I would dive blind into the dark murk of memory
If I could lay hold of that red rubber kickball
and play with Gary Hamilton
And trap the creek with Paul Murray,
The spear and the knife, the raccoon pelt,
Salting the squirrel skins…
Steaks, whiskey and pictures of women.

And to all of the present day Hollidaysburgers
I ask simply are you alive or dead?
As for me it is difficult to say,
The dead hold more life than the living,
The living deal death in forgetting,

New styles betray the world I recall.