FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS

As did my parents, some of my cousins grew up in Shamokin, Pennsylvania, a coal town that looks and feels like The Deer Hunter. Most streets are steep and packed with modest, often aluminum or shingle-sided, late 1800s-early 1900s rowhouses. From the tall hills that surround the “City,” one can see the City’s other house-intensive hills and church steeples rising above the flat downtown that was full of businesses in my youth but now mixes low-end retail and many empty storefronts with two large pharmacy franchises. When Main Streets die, you can still buy Metformin and Ace bandages.

Until the Depression, Shamokin prospered. But as demand for coal dropped, and as oil became more widely used, the Coal Region gradually lost jobs and two-thirds of its population. My father was drafted into the Army in 1949, stationed in Louisiana for three years, returned to Shamokin for a couple of years and then moved to Paterson, New Jersey to find better-paying work than was available in Pennsylvania. In 1955, he got a job in the Mahwah Ford Assembly Plant—biggest in the US—and never again lived in the Coal Region. This was a roughly common diaspora scenario.

Two weeks ago, my cousin, Jeff, who grew up in Shamokin, graduated from college and has lived outside The Region for decades, e-mailed me that our ancestral hometown’s football team was playing on Friday night against their neighboring rival, perennial (small school) powerhouse, Mt. Carmel, which had beaten Shamokin 27 annual games in a row. Twenty-seven games! The last time Shamokin won, Bill Clinton was president. (Insert Monica joke here).

I had seen one of those 27 games Shamokin narrowly lost, about twenty years prior. As the final seconds ran off the clock, a Shamokin fan near me moaned to his friends that his Mt. Carmel co-workers would remind him of Shamokin’s loss every workday until the annual rematch. He seemed to mean it literally.

But Jeff said the 2024 Shamokin was undefeated and might beat their rival. He suggested that I come out there from New Jersey, see the Friday night game in Mt. Carmel, stay over in his deceased Dad and Mom’s house and ride ATVs, grill steaks and shoot rifles on the coal hills on Saturday with him, my cousin, Rob, and Rob’s friends. It sounded like fun. I was down.

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I go back to Shamokin a couple of times each year. To get there, I drive three hours from New Jersey. The first two hours are on I-287 and I-78. Once I leave the superhighways, I travel on old, mostly two-lane state Highway 61. That road winds and climbs through about ten sleepy, hilly coal towns, separated by hardwood forests. These towns were established to house coal miners. As one passes deeper into the Coal Region, one feels that he’s traveling back in time, to an earlier period of American industrial and social history. Natives speak with a regional twang and in a unique vernacular.

In the Mississippi Delta, where cotton was grown by slaves and sharecroppers, Blues music was created as an artform. The towns there are connected by old US Highway 61. Bob Dylan recorded a famous album entitled Highway 61 Revisited to pay tribute to the Blues men, whose music formed the roots of modern Rock. A trip to Shamokin on Pennsylvania Highway 61 is a trip back to my roots. Both of my parents and all of grandparents, aunts and uncles grew up there. They went to school, played sports, worked and danced to the Big Bands that toured the Region.

Some of my ancestors were coal miners. Deep mining is dangerous. My parents told of how some men were killed in mining accidents. When this happened, and their bodies could be recovered, they were hauled to the front step of their houses, laid there for the families to “wake” in their living rooms, mourn and bury, using a small sum of cash that the coal company provided. My coal-mining grandfather died of Black Lung in his forties.

Most of today’s Shamokin and Mt. Carmel footballers are descended from coal miners. They’re sons of families who stayed in an area that still exerts a strong pull on natives; both those who stayed, and those who left. The winner of the Mt. Carmel and Shamokin game gets to possess the Coal Bucket trophy for a year. It’s their version of ice hockey’s Stanley Cup.

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I reached Shamokin on Friday evening, minutes too late to catch a ride with Jeff and my cousin Rob to Mt. Carmel, eight miles away. Understandably not wanting to miss any of the game, they had left without me. I knew how to get to Mt. Carmel’s field, but didn’t want to get caught in pre-game gridlock and have to find parking in that town, which is also full of rowhouses and thus, short on street spaces.

Stranded in Shamokin in the dark an hour before game time, I ambled on steep streets that I had walked or run on as a child or teen when we’d go back to visit family at Christmas, Easter and in the summer. On Friday night, there were no other pedestrians and most of the houses had no lights on, probably because so many residents had gone to Mr. Carmel to see the game. My cousins later said there were 6,000-7,000 people at the game. That's most of the ambulatory persons in each town.

After trekking Shamokin’s West Side, I walked downtown in the chilly darkness. In a very basic, vest-pocket park that was put in the place of a demolished store, a man projected a live, local cable TV feed of the game on a 10’ x 15’ section of white stucco wall of the building on the forty-foot-wide park’s western edge. About 50 people stood or sat on benches, lawn chairs and wheelchairs and watched and listened to the game. At my New Jersey high school’s town’s games, there are scarcely more spectators than players. And no simulcasts.

Shamokin won, 21-0, though the refs inappropriately nullified a long, perfectly thrown touchdown pass by home team Mt. Carmel. Offensive pass interference? Nah. So, let’s say 21-7. Regardless, the Shamokin boys controlled the play and broke a twenty-seven-year losing streak. Let’s Go!

I walked back up to the family’s Walnut Street house, where Jeff, having returned from Mt. Carmel, found me. He took me back downtown to the very old, local, indie, burger shop, Coney Island Lunch, with its long lunch-counter and twenty-foot high, orange walls, on Independence Street, the main drag. (Insert Bill Clinton fast-food joke here).

As we were arriving, the conquering heroes were re-entering town in the team bus. Multiple police cars and fire engines had their sirens on, the players' and the cheerleaders on the buses were yelling and the band bus was blaring. A honking caravan of cars traversed the town. The jubilation was pleasing to behold.

Some say that Americans ascribe too much importance to sports. But sports are a celebration of youth and vitality.

Plus, it’s a human impulse, and a benign form of tribalism, to root for the home team. Much of Latin America and Europe is futbol-crazy. Similarly, TV networks turn singing and dancing contests into major, multi-year franchise; viewers root for and identify closely with their favorite performers, even though the performers are complete strangers.

In contrast, these were hometown boys in a place where hometown means more. And no matter where they’re from, high school athletes pour their hearts into what they do; the games are important to them. Therefore, I was happy for the Shamokin boys and those who rooted for them, breaking the long losing streak and casting aside the team’s and town’s losing identity. In this economically depressed, depopulated place, I couldn’t help but think that no matter what else these players might do or accomplish, this night would be one of the best memories of their lives.  

When I said to Jeff how great it was that the Shamokin boys had broken a 27-year losing streak, he pointed out that it had actually been 28 years; because of the Scamdemic, they didn't play this game in 2020. I thought, "What if the 2020 team had won?"

And how lousy it was that bureaucrats and politicians stole that opportunity from them. Even if they had lost, it would have been a better outcome. At least they could have looked forward to playing that game and that season and found out how good they were or weren’t. And had the overall experience that playing a sports season entails. In place of such unmade memories, there is, and will always be, a void.

Multiply this by tens of millions of kids missing hundreds of millions of experiences and memories during the lockdown and 18 months of school closures. Whether in sports, music performance, jobs or adventures or time with friends, girlfriends or boyfriends, adolescence offers fun and formative experiences that many people can only have under 21.

These experiences form identities that last for rest of peoples' lives. When you’re an adult, doing something unexciting to make ends meet, it’s important to recall the times and places you did exciting stuff and put your pride on the line. And how you dealt with challenges and succeeded or failed, or some combination thereof.

Time wasted or stolen is gone forever. During the lockdowns and school closures unimaginable amounts of person-to-person time were stolen from hundreds of millions of people, especially the young. It was a crime against humanity.