Books and Lectures Listings: Jan. 27 to Feb.3, 2017

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<p>ASHLEY &#8212; Eight years ago, Irena Szabalaj bought a sturdy brick building on Main Street because it reminded her of where she grew up, in Poland. It seemed like a good place to open her Imagination by Irena antiques shop.</p><p>&#8220;I like old things,&#8221; she said, pointing to vintage toys, a richly embroidered Polish-style vest her daughter used to wear, and a dresser she had just finished painting. &#8220;It&#8217;s relaxing.&#8221;</p><p>Lots of people who live, work or worship in Ashley will tell you it&#8217;s not just the antiques business that can be a quiet reflection of days gone by; it&#8217;s the whole borough.</p><p>Some of those folks, however, would like to see the community of 2,726 people become less quiet. Specifically, members of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society want to build a museum where the facility once processed millions of tons of coal.</p><p>&#8220;People love history; they would come,&#8221; said Steve Biernacki, who serves pizza, wings, a savory seafood chowder and many other specialty items in Kelsey&#8217;s Restaurant, which is just down the street from the old Huber site.</p><p>&#8220;We could be like Jim Thorpe,&#8221; Biernacki said, naming a Carbon County borough where the historic district is home to bed and breakfasts, boutiques, a renovated opera house and tours of the vintage jail. The community also boasts a park, 1 1/2 miles outside of town along Route 903, where you&#8217;ll find the grave of its namesake, the legendary Native American athlete.</p><p>Back in Ashley, Biernacki and friends Bill Best and Ray Clarke were disappointed when the Huber Breaker was torn down in 2014 and sold for scrap metal by a bankrupt owner.</p><p>They had hoped a museum could be fashioned from the breaker, with its old conveyor system and its Menzies cones, which were designed in the 1930s by local engineer William Menzies as a more efficient way to separate coal from a waste product called culm.</p><p>Now these members of the Preservation Society &#8212; Best is president and Clarke and Biernacki are on its board of directors &#8212; hope to build a new museum from the ground up, a place where visitors would learn how the area&#8217;s rich veins of anthracite fueled the industrial revolution and how hard the miners worked to support their families.</p><p>The society plans to hold fundraisers and apply for grants for the multimedia complex, Clarke said, adding he can&#8217;t estimate how long it might take for the dream to become reality. But the society already has established the beginnings of Miners Memorial Park at the site, with a monument, benches and parking area.</p><p>Thanks to a $100,000 grant awarded in July by Pennsylvania&#8217;s Department of Community and Economic Development, the Preservation Society intends to continue its project by having an engineer draw up plans for walking trails, landscaping, educational kiosks and additional parking.</p><p>Over the past several years, Clarke said, &#8220;Many individuals, including a lot of people who didn&#8217;t want recognition,&#8221; donated to a drive that placed the $11,000 monument and $30,000 parking lot at the site, along Main Street, where the old breaker once hummed with activity.</p><p>&#8220;The Huber Breaker was like a hub,&#8221; Best said. &#8220;They processed coal coming from Wilkes-Barre, Wanamie and other places.&#8221;</p><p>For decades, the breaker also processed coal from its own shaft.</p><p>&#8220;I remember seeing miners walking home, with dirt all over their faces, carrying their lunch boxes,&#8221; said LuAnn Haefele Dehaut, who grew up close to the colliery.</p><p>Dehaut, 60, remembers the miners from her childhood, when the Huber Breaker already was about a generation past its peak. The top year of production was 1942, when 1,503 workers processed 979,208 tons of coal.</p><p>After the Knox Mine Disaster of 1959 flooded the Wyoming Valley&#8217;s deep mines with water from the Susquehanna River, local coal production no longer was as profitable as it had been, and the breaker closed in 1976.</p><p>Four years earlier, another large employer in the borough &#8212; the Central Railroad of New Jersey &#8212; had closed its Ashley Yard.</p><p>Older residents, including Mayor Dave Evans, 81, feel nostalgic for the days when the breaker and the railroad helped make Ashley &#8220;a hustling and bustling town.&#8221;</p><p>The borough &#8212; which reached its peak population of 6,371 in 1950 &#8212; had silk mills and a cigar factory, too, according to Evans, who took a job at a shoe factory in nearby Wilkes-Barre after high school.</p><p>&#8220;Everything was rolling along nice,&#8221; he said.</p><p>&#8220;There were supermarkets, doctors and dentists,&#8221; reminisced Clarke, 82, the preservationist whose family used to run a floral and gift shop &#8212; and, for a shorter time, a tea room with scones and sandwiches &#8212; at the corner of Main and Hartford streets.</p><p>Main Street also boasted a bowling alley and a movie theater where kids of the 1950s could watch a cowboy serial for 14 cents, according to Ashley native Norene Bradshaw, 72.</p><p>&#8220;I was just delighted with it,&#8221; said Michele Casey, who moved to the borough decades ago because it was her husband&#8217;s hometown. &#8220;My husband&#8217;s family was large and welcoming. It was a really good place to raise kids, and you knew everybody. We were the epitome of &#8216;It takes a village.&#8217; &#8221;</p><p>As Casey shared a table with her niece, Christine Casey, and their friend, Norene Bradshaw, at Kelsey&#8217;s Restaurant on a recent evening, they said Ashley doesn&#8217;t feel as close-knit as it once did.</p><p>Long-term residents move away or die, they acknowledged, and new people move in. And, because adults are likely to spend more time on the job today rather than in their backyard gardens, and children are more likely to play an organized sport on a distant field instead of a pickup game with kids next door, residents of the same street don&#8217;t know each other as well as they once did.</p><p>Neighborhood schools closed long ago &#8212; today&#8217;s students take buses a few miles from Ashley to Hanover Township &#8212; and many of the businesses that were just a block or two from home have closed, too.</p><p>&#8220;I could take my kids for walks to buy clothes or to go to the bank or the magazine and newspaper shop,&#8221; said Ray Clarke&#8217;s wife, Jane, 80, remembering the convenience of Main Street&#8217;s once-flourishing business district.</p><p>The town is still walkable, Jane said, but there are fewer destinations to reach on foot, especially since the post office closed in 2011 and the Citizens Bank branch is slated to close this month.</p><p>&#8220;A lot of older people walk to the bank, and this will be very inconvenient for them,&#8221; Jane said. &#8220;Thank God I&#8217;m still driving.&#8221;</p><p>Although there are several closed businesses on Main Street, including one where nobody has bothered to take away a faded sign advertising Zenith televisions &#8212; residents estimate it&#8217;s been there since at least the 1960s &#8212; there are a few newer, niche businesses such as a dog groomer, Irena&#8217;s antiques store, and Pocono Mountain Leather, which Carmen Cesari opened 12 years ago.</p><p>&#8220;I love this old building; I love the beautiful wood ceiling,&#8221; said Cesari, 74, who sells boots and other items in a building that dates to 1903. &#8220;From what I understand, it was a boarding house, and the railroaders used to stay here.&#8221;</p><p>Cesari said he became a parent &#8220;late in life&#8221; and wanted to raise his daughter, now 20, in a peaceful place, so he traded Long Island, N.Y., for the Ashley area 18 years ago and opened his store here six years later.</p><p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a quiet little town,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s old-fashioned. People ask, &#8216;How are you&#8217; and they really mean, &#8216;How are you?&#8217; &#8221; Cesari said. &#8220;You don&#8217;t find that everywhere.&#8221;</p><style>
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<div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/ashley-1-18-17-5.pdf">
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<div class="neCaption">Irena Szabalaj holds an embroidered ethnic vest at her antiques store, Imagination by Irena, in Ashley. Szabalaj says she appreciates the older architecture on Main Street, and eight years ago she purchased a brick store that reminded her of her hometown in Poland. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-011-5.jpg</photo1><caption1>Irena Szabalaj holds an embroidered ethnic vest at her antiques store, Imagination by Irena, in Ashley. Szabalaj says she appreciates the older architecture on Main Street, and eight years ago she purchased a brick store that reminded her of her hometown in Poland. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </caption1><photoCredit1></photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Ashley-Main-St.-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">In this view of Ashley&#8217;s Main Street, the municipal building is on the right and Kelsey&#8217;s Restaurant is on the left. Longtime resident Michele Casey recommends the lobster mac and cheese at Kelsey&#8217;s. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Ashley-Main-St.-5.jpg</photo2><caption2>In this view of Ashley&#8217;s Main Street, the municipal building is on the right and Kelsey&#8217;s Restaurant is on the left. Longtime resident Michele Casey recommends the lobster mac and cheese at Kelsey&#8217;s. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader) </caption2><photoCredit2></photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-017-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Michele Casey says Ashley was a close-knit and neighborly place for her children to grow up in. &#8216;We were the epitome of &#8220;It takes a village,&#8221; &#8217; she said. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-017-5.jpg</photo3><caption3>Michele Casey says Ashley was a close-knit and neighborly place for her children to grow up in. &#8216;We were the epitome of &#8220;It takes a village,&#8221; &#8217; she said. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </caption3><photoCredit3></photoCredit3></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-018-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Christine Casey, who grew up in Ashley, says people tend to not know their neighbors as well now as they did years ago, but notes that is true of many communities. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo4>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-018-5.jpg</photo4><caption4>Christine Casey, who grew up in Ashley, says people tend to not know their neighbors as well now as they did years ago, but notes that is true of many communities. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </caption4><photoCredit4></photoCredit4></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-019-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Ashley native Norene Bradshaw says the people of the borough and surrounding towns are very generous in making donations to the Ashley Food Pantry. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo5>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_ashley.ashley-019-5.jpg</photo5><caption5>Ashley native Norene Bradshaw says the people of the borough and surrounding towns are very generous in making donations to the Ashley Food Pantry. (Mary Therese Biebel | Times Leader) </caption5><photoCredit5></photoCredit5></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_TTL010117ourtownashley1-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">From left, Ray Clarke, Bill Best and Steve Biernacki, all members of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society, were sad to see the old facility torn down in 2014, but they hope a coal-mining history museum can be established in its place along Main Street in the borough of Ashley. The three are pictured in Miners Memorial Park, which already has been established near the site. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader) </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo6>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_TTL010117ourtownashley1-5.jpg</photo6><caption6>From left, Ray Clarke, Bill Best and Steve Biernacki, all members of the Huber Breaker Preservation Society, were sad to see the old facility torn down in 2014, but they hope a coal-mining history museum can be established in its place along Main Street in the borough of Ashley. The three are pictured in Miners Memorial Park, which already has been established near the site. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader) </caption6><photoCredit6></photoCredit6></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Ashley-5.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The view of the Huber colliery from Frederick Street in Ashley. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader)</div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo7>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/web1_Ashley-5.jpg</photo7><caption7>The view of the Huber colliery from Frederick Street in Ashley. (Sean McKeag | Times Leader)</caption7><photoCredit7></photoCredit7></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p><strong>By Mary Therese Biebel</strong></p><p>mbiebel@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>ABOUT THIS SERIES</strong></p><p>Beginning today with the borough of Ashley, the Times Leader will look at life in nearly two dozen Luzerne County communities in a new feature called &#8220;Hometowns.&#8221; Throughout the year, in alphabetical order, we&#8217;ll devote a story, video and graphic to the towns&#8217; past, present and future. The series will run in print and on our website at <a href="https://www.timesleader.com." target="_blank">www.timesleader.com</a>. Next up: Bear Creek Township and Bear Creek Village.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Mary Therese Biebel at 570-991-6109 or on Twitter @BiebelMT</p></shirttailMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><videoMeta><p><table style="border:none;width:98%;" class="mceItemTable"><tbody><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">VideoID:</td><td id="videoid" style="width:50em;font-size:90%;"> eNcC54anKBw</td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">VideoType:</td><td id="videotype" style="font-size:90%;"> YOUTUBE</td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">URL:</td><td id="url" style="font-size:90%;"> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNcC54anKBw</td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">Video Embed String:</td><td id="videoembedstring" style="font-size:90%;"> </td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">Video Caption:</td><td id="videocaption" style="font-size:90%;">Welcome to Ashley</p><p></td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">Video Credit:</td><td id="videocredit" style="font-size:90%;"> Sean McKeag</p><p></td></tr><tr><td style="font-weight:bold;font-size:100%;vertical-align:top;text-align:right;border:none;">Video Position:</td><td id="videoposition" style="font-size:90%;"> </td></tr></tbody></table></p><p style="margin-top:10px;font-size:70%;color:#555;">(use the &#8220;for files&#8230;&#8221; link above to associate attached files with this source)</p></videoMeta></div>

Luzerne County hometowns: In Ashley, the past is never far away