Publisher's Synopsis
Like the first "Letters To My Sister", this second volume "Chew Street and Beyond" is a collection of short stories that take place during the late 1940's and early 1950's in and around the city of Allentown, Pennsylvania.It chronicles my family's vacations, our adventures in our Chew Street neighborhood and our big move to the 'suburbs' in a nostalgic, funny and sentimental fashion.Postwar Allentown was, at the time, a thriving, growing community. A third-class city of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, its population of over 106,000 people was becoming quite diverse but it still held a strong Pennsylvania German attachment.My siblings and I grew up at a time in this country's history when a post wartime economy was rapidly changing our world. We shopped at Hess's, Leh's or the Zollinger Harned Company and all the stores in between from Fifth and Hamilton to Tenth and Hamilton Streets. We went to the movies at the Colonial, Rialto, Earle or Boyd theaters. We had steak sandwiches at the Look Lunch and tried a new kind of sandwich called a hoagie at Woolworth's.We rode trolley cars, saw the inception of the first television sets, marveled at a first trip to a 'supermarket', and were heavily influenced by 'television commercials' for everything from toothpaste to breakfast cereals. We played games with neighborhood kids and climbed a jungle gym at the local park. We made new friends and learned diplomacy and when that didn't work, we figured out how to stand our ground and occasionally, fight for our rights. We saw how new technology was beginning to impact our lives. We were living in some of the most exciting times in the twentieth century but didn't realize then how important those changes would be to our future.Throughout all those days, months and years growing up in Allentown, a fine golden thread was woven inextricably in the tapestry of our young lives binding us to our church, our family and our friends, old and new. I hope these gentle and nostalgic stories will entertain you, dear reader. Perhaps it will trigger fond memories of your own or for my younger readers, spur an interest in what it was like growing up back in those days. Enjoy!Janice Monahan Rodgers