Nay Aug Falls

Nay Aug Falls this morning.

Nay Aug Park: Gravity Railroad

Pennsylvania Coal Company Railroad car at Nay Aug Park.

Nay Aug Park: Gravity Railroad

The marker for the Gravity Railroad car has been returned to an upright position. It was laying on the ground most of last summer.

Nay Aug Park

Nay Aug Park on Sunday morning.

Nay Aug Park

The tree house in Nay Aug Park, along the Davis Trail.

Laurel Line: Scranton

Philadelphia Suburban 76 northbound along Laurel Line Drive in Scranton on Saturday morning.

Lackawanna Railroad: Scranton

Canadian National 3254 eastbound on the Lackawanna mainline out of Scranton last Saturday morning.

Nay Aug Falls

Nay Aug Falls this morning.

Nay Aug Park

Looks like Fall has arrived at the park.

Laurel Line

Philadelphia Suburban 76 northbound, at milepost 3 on the Laurel Line this morning

Erie Railroad: Wyoming Division

Looking west along the Erie, at about mile 12.4 this morning.

Cleveland: Playhouse Square

Playhouse Square on a wet Saturday morning in July 2004. We'd got into town in the middle of the night, and made our way up the street to the new (at least to us) Starbucks in the Hanna Building. We could have used a good coffee place here back in the '70's, that Royal Castle coffee wasn't all that great.

Scranton

There hasn't been any activity in this new park for months. Construction started last fall and seemed to move at a brisk pace until the end of April then stopped. The only thing that's changed since then is the height of the weeds.

Erie Railroad: Wyoming Division

Yesterday we hiked along the Erie for awhile, with the weather being so nice the ATVers were out as well. This is looking west from near milepost 14.

Scranton: Roaring Brook

A lone fisherman along Roaring Brook yesterday morning, just downstream from the Myrtle Street Bridge.

Nay Aug Falls

This mornings look at Nay Aug Falls. Ever since all that rain a couple weeks ago Roaring Brook has been living up to its name.

Lackawanna Railroad

Nickel Plate 514 with a short excursion train, passing over Cedar Avenue bridge, last Saturday morning.

Nay Aug Park

Fall is starting to set in at nay Aug Park, from last Sunday morning.

Cleveland: Playhouse Square

At the Allen the week of Monday April 3 through Sunday April 9, 1972 (at various times each day) was the Yogi Bear, The Flintstones and the Banana Splits show. This was put on by some theatre group from Parma. This was a real disaster. The shows consisted of people in costumes of the famous TV characters, miming along to a taped show. Not too many people came to this fiasco. The lowlight came that Saturday, April 8, when the cast trashed one of the dressing rooms and broke a water pipe in a second floor shower room. The week before this, Victor Villiamis, dressed in a Yogi Bear costume, and I went to every store on Euclid Avenue, from Playhouse Square to Public Square, asking store clerks to put our posters in their window. I found out a guy in a Yogi Bear costume, is a babe magnet. The guy that’s with him, in no costume, is a bozo. Almost everyone would say to me, “who are you supposed to be? Boo Boo?” This wasn’t the most pleasant experience for me, especially since I saw a few kids I went to school with along the way. On the other hand, not a lot of people can boast of seeing The Banana Splits in concert!

Cleveland: Playhouse Square

Remembering Brel...

Late winter of 1973 saw preparations of turning the grand lobby of the State Theatre into the Playhouse Square Cabaret. We worked day and night on that project. My friend Russell and I spent several weeks stripping black paint off the marble baseboards in the outer lobby. The dark musty space had become a beehive of activity almost over night. Over the course of about a week Smitty had put together a stage using all sorts of odds and ends salvaged from the theatres. The base of the stage was made from the framework of the Cinerama screen. Smitty and I spent a frigid Sunday nailing the rest of the stage together. The stairs that lead up to it were strong enough to support a tank. Over the course of several nights Kevin and Poe had shined the big brass railings on the lobby’s grand stairs. That was quite the transformation. On a Sunday afternoon new chandeliers arrived. They’d been purchased from the Commodore Hotel in Toledo.

Smitty and I spent several days atop scaffolding in the lobby, vacuuming out dirt and dust from the cove lighting trough just below the ceiling. We also figured out why a strip of lighting didn’t work. A mouse had chewed through the wires, shorting out about five feet of lights. To economize on light bulbs, we replaced every other bulb in the trough. My first television appearance was rolling the scaffold across the lobby behind a Ray Shepardson TV interview. An amusing side note was when famed TV commenter, Dorothy Fuldheim blurbed our show, but said it was at the Hippodrome.

As all this activity went on so did rehearsals, “Marathon”, “Marieke” , “Carousel” and the rest of the songs which would be forever tattooed on all our brains would ring out in the huge lobby as work went on. Passersby on the street would look in through the front doors, wondering what was going on in the long vacant State Theatre.

In retrospect, this all came together rather quickly, probably in about six weeks. But at the time it seemed to go on forever. Work intensified as the opening date drew near, Russell and I would be there every day after school, until close to midnight. Soon opening day arrived. It was Wednesday, April 18th the doors opened as we hurriedly rushed about. We skipped school that day, helping to hoist a chandelier into place at the back of the State auditorium. Patrons would park for free in the Playhouse Square garage, and enter through the back of the auditorium and linger for pre-show cocktails, before heading down to the lobby for a buffet, and the show. I vividly recall running a mop across the floor as the first patrons arrived. Among the first to arrive was our English teacher, who asked “why weren’t you guys in class today?” Russell and I feebly responded “ uh, we were sick.” Soon the show went on.

The cast Terry Piteo, Cliff Bemis, David O. Frazier and Providence Hollander received a rousing ovation at the end of the show. The show was only supposed to run for about a month, but when the reviews hit the papers on Friday, April 20, it became a runaway hit. That October there was a big party when the show had it’s 100^th performance, little did we know, another 422 would follow. A Marathon indeed!

Erie Railroad: Wyoming Division

Looking west along the Erie's Wyoming Division yesterday morning, from near milepost 14. Just a few weeks ago this giant puddle was dry.

Lackawanna Railroad

Canadian National 3254 emerging from the east end of Nay Aug tunnel yesterday morning.

Nay Aug Falls

Nay Aug Falls this morning.

Scranton: Board of Trade Building

The Board of Trade Building, last Saturday morning.

Scranton: Lackawanna Avenue

Looking west down Lackawanna Avenue, last Saturday morning.

Lackawanna Railroad

The excursion, heading east towards Tobyhanna. Just ahead, behind the trees, to the right of the curve, was where Luna Park was once located.

Lackawanna Railroad

Another view of Canadian National 3254 on the Lackawanna mainline, just east of Nay Aug Tunnel.

Lackawanna Railroad

Canadian National 3254 exits Nay Aug Tunnel yesterday morning on the way to Tobyhanna.

Scranton: Step Falls

Step Falls as seen from the Harrison Avenue bridge yesterday morning. Last Thursdays heavy rain had the creek running high. A small tree is hung up at the top of the dam.

Nay Aug Falls

Nay Aug Falls was really roaring this morning after that heavy rain on Thursday.

Scranton: Pages and Places

A scene from today's Pages and Places book festival at Courthouse Square in Downtown Scranton. This is Spruce Street, looking east.

Scranton: The Electric City

The Electric City sign atop the Board of Trade building, last night.