HAZLETON, A TOWN IN PENNSYLTUCKY: Coal county racists, I knew 'em well

Living outside Los Angeles, I never expect t0 see my old haunts mentioned in the newsmedia for anything good. It's a matter of pride.

My place of maturation, Pine Grove, in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, has one distinguishing characteristic. It's the site of a gigantic waste dump, accepting garbage trucked in from neighboring states. When farm runoff briefly contaminated its water supply many years ago with an intestinal parasite, it blamed excrement from beavers. Its garment industry pumped so much dye and contaminant into the Swatara River that ran through the center of town, the rocks on the bank were always stained yellow, brown, black or mauve.

But it was the birthplace of author Conrad Richter, locals were fond of saying. I had my doubts about this story but even if it was true, Richter's books, which we occasionally were compelled to read in school, were shit. He was right in there with James Fenimore Cooper in his skill at working like a literary Mickey Finn. (Try to get through "A Light In the Forest," just try.)

Palmerton, north of Allentown, is known as an eco-nightmare suitable for a science-fiction film. A New Jersey Zinc plant sterilized a facing mountain and plated all the exposed geology in the area an unusual and unnatural shade of gleaming purple. The locals never complained until it was too late. They didn't want to risk losing their jobs poisoning their community for the joy of smelting zinc.

And now Hazleton, a long exhausted coal town in Luzerne County, has made illegal immigrants definitely illegal. And this merited national news.

Often the coverage was curious, particularly on the evening major networks where everyone danced around the obvious. The people in Hazleton are bigots. From Schuylkill to Luzerne to Carbon county, I grew up with them, and knew 'em well.

They hate all outsiders, particularly anyone who wasn't lily white. Outsiders are/were city trash, people to be suspicious of. Catholics were "round heads." Teachers had too much time off in the summer and were too big for their britches. Suspicious of education in any form, the general attitude was that public schools cost too much in taxes.

They also hate rich people and support unions. But the former coal crackers are so poorly informed, ill-educated and driven by illogic, they regularly vote for the wealthy caste on the right in national power who work actively to destroy the things they hold dear and their way of life. This goes back a long way as coal region denizens were enthusiastic for hanging members of the Molly Maguires in their own social class on the say-so of people who ran the coal mines and railroads in the mid-1800's. The Maguires were a violent secret Irish immigrant group that fought to establish better terms and conditions for mine work.

The area has no such thing as a college town to give it even a small bit of culture and class. Football is big, though. Yay, football!

Everyone who can leave does, either by going off to college if their parents are of the few to be able to afford it, or by joining the military. Then they get to go to Iraq to learn "strength for now, strength for later," as it says in the Army's television recruitment spots. Iraq is worse, though.

In "American Theocracy," historian Kevin Phillips repeatedly paints Pennsylvania as a state more in tune with the way of things in the south, or Texas, than its northeastern neighbors: Reliably Republican in the interior, religious, homophobic and suspicious of science and schooling. It's another state with people who think creationism deserves equal time with evolution in class. Pennsylvania is regressive in every way.

It's also the birthplace of cable.

But good ideas are rare, often suffering beatdowns. Pottsville, the seat of Schuylkill County and the heart of the anthracite region had an early form of movie channel, like HBO, in the early Seventies. It was called StarChannel and offered movies around the clock to cable box owners. The kids I knew loved it but parents and elders were unimpressed. Watch recent movies in the afternoon or evening? Who would want to do that?

What else is a success from the heart of the coal country?

Yuengling beer.

Yuengling was the blue collar beer of the region. It was vile, below Pabst Blue Ribbon or Lucky Lager, but very cheap. Let's say it was about equal to Schaefer, another Pennsy beer.

In any case, all during the Seventies, Yuengling regularly bought local TV advertising on Sundays. If you watched pro football in the coal counties, you knew Yuengling as "America's oldest brewery."

Sometime during the late Nineties someone clever at Yuengling recognized the snob boutique microbrew boom as a marketing opportunity. "America's oldest brewery" would resonate with people who viewed themselves as hipsters.

The result, bars in New York City and Philadelphia who sell Yuengling as a premium beer to rubes with no taste but a desire to be seen as cool. If you're one of these and reading this, listen up! Yuengling was never hip. It is made in a region inhabited by people who hate you and everything you stand for.

But back to Hazleton, northeast of Pottsville and Schuylkill County.

"Standing outside city hall in the gathering dark, Norman Tarantino felt, for once, that he was lucky to live in Hazleton," wrote the Los Angeles Times late last week.

"Most of his friends had moved away over the years, convinced that the old coal city's best days were behind it. But as of Thursday night, Tarentino said, Hazelton once again has something to be proud of. It is the most hostile environment in America for illegal immigrants."

"When John Quigley, a Democrat mayor, lost his reelection bid in 1995, it was amid rumors that he had rented billboards in New York to recruit Latinos to town in exchange for government payments of $1,000 a head," read the newspaper. "Quigley called that rumor 'an urban legend . . . ' but many in Hazelton believe it."

Big ups, Hazleton! Stand tall! Illegal renters and workers out! Speak English, damnit, English, it's now city law! Go Keystone State! Support the Bund. Life sucks here and it's the fault of the wetbacks.

Pennsy was recognized for a big animal-cruelty fest, of sorts, too. (No, not rattlesnake-bagging meets. That's mostly Texas.) It was known nationwide as the Hegins Pigeon Shoot, and you can read Dick Destiny blog's rumination on it inPolishing the Bird and Crimson Country.