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Present could use a little dose of past MARK GUYDISH OPINION

Thursday October 22, 2009 | 01:00 AM

On North Wyoming Street in Hazleton, near the hub of town, sits the now-infamous La Cantina Bar. It gained notoriety this month after a Wild West-style shootout, with reports of multiple guns drawn, sounding like a saloon scene in a Sergio Leone “spaghetti western.”

Across the street and a few buildings south, in an old fire station where brave men once slid down a brass pole on their way to danger, is the Greater Hazleton Historical Society Museum. The pole, trucks and hoses are gone, replaced by artifacts preserving the area’s history like a patchwork quilt.

One display sports items from a funeral home, including a wicker coffin and canvas stretcher. Another has an antique barbershop chair complete with striped pole, straight blade and shaving cream cup with brush.

There’s a genuine phone booth sitting next to a real (though not functioning) switchboard that once routed calls via wires manually plugged into holes marked for faraway places like Freeland. It was the days when “party lines” required residents to listen for the number of rings to know if it was their call. With a cell phone strapped to your side sporting a color screen and micro-keyboard that grants access to the World Wide Web, you can pause and imagine the operator politely telling you “One moment please.”

How quaint.

Bottles line the shelves of one display, with signs from the places that sold Hazleton Pilsener beer (yes, that’s how they spelled Pilsner), Hazle Club soda, and Freeland Lager. Across the aisle is a recreated general store, with a wood-framed display case and a magnificent brass and wood cash register that makes you yearn a bit for the days before computer screens and bar code scanners. A clerk reading an amount, buttons clicking, a bell jingling, and your change. Slow? Sure, but that’s not always a four-letter word.

Plenty of history to see

Upstairs sits a turntable and other paraphernalia from the old WAZL radio station, as well as knickknacks from a variety of former banks, once the backbone of the city’s business district. There’s even an “Ediphone,” Thomas Edison’s version of today’s digital recorders. Speak into a tube and the words were etched into a wax cylinder.

Bas-relief sculptures of Greek figures that once lined the halls of Grebey School hang here. There are the metal remains – barrel and trigger – of a rifle reportedly used in the Sugarloaf Massacre of 1788.

There are remnants of an old ice cream shop and the famous Hazle Park. There are football helmets from high schools that no longer exist, reminders of arch rivalries fought in “Turkey Day” classics.

You can buy souvenirs once sold at Angela Park, flip through photos of elegant buildings foolishly razed in the name of modernity, and ponder everything from arrowheads to farm plows.

You could get lost in history, including old books and unorganized filing cabinets of news clippings, photos and documents. But you have to get in first. And there’s the rub.

The museum has always operated on the will of a few and a shoestring budget, unable to manage any kind of regular hours. You need to call ahead for access. It never mustered sufficient support to grow into the resource it should be, an antidote to the bad news at La Cantina, an anchor that can hold a block or a street together.

It deserves better. Consider membership, or a donation, or a visit. The Web site is www.hazletonhistory.8m.com. The number is 455-8576.

Because losing history erodes our future.

About the Author

Mark Guydish covers education for the Times Leader. Reach him at (570) 970-7161 or mguydish@timesleader.com.

A West Hazleton native, I worked as a service technician repairing electronic mailing and shipping systems, a bike shop owner and an Emergency Medical Technician (among other jobs) before landing a reporter job at the Times Leader Hazleton Bureau in 1995. I started by covering primarily politics in Hazleton City and outlying municipalities, eventually became "social issues" team leader in the Wilkes-Barre office with the accent on education, and headed the Hazleton Bureau for a spell before returning to full-time reporting, my preferred position. I'm an avid cyclist and rode across the country in 1990, a trip of more than 5,000 miles from New Jersey to Seattle and down the coast to San Francisco. Years in the Boy Scouts made me a life long backpacker and camper, and I've yet to find a better way to enjoy the quiet lure of winter snow than cross country skiing.

Mark also writes a regular blog for timesleader.com.