Green, yellow, red and — 100 years ago — oh so new

People driving through Wilkes-Barre’s downtown a century ago found themselves encountering something new. Instead of watching police officers giving hand signals at the often-busy intersections, they now had to obey traffic lights.

The green, yellow and red flashers, now so familiar to us, made their local debut in summer of 1924.

We citizens of modern times might enjoy an “oh so superior” laugh at the expense of our predecessors in their Studebakers and Model Ts trying to adjust to directives from colored lights. But if we were suddenly catapulted back into their time period, more likely we’d be the ones facing culture shock.

That’s how different life here in Wyoming Valley was back then.

Let’s go back and test ourselves.

Employment: If you didn’t want to work in coal mining or railroading or in a noisy and possibly dangerous factory a hundred years ago in these parts, good luck. They were the big employment areas for men locally. Your best alternative is to make sure you’re born into a white-collared or moneyed family, or be willing to start at rock bottom and climb your way up.

Women, of course, often found employment as store clerks, launderers, garment makers, waitresses or silk mill workers. Nice clean work that was, but it didn’t pay well.

Education: Luzerne County’s high schools and colleges today produce small armies of trained young people ready to take on life’s challenges in many fields. If you’re a male time traveler, you’d be well advised to pick a family that could send you on to Yale or an equivalent, since Luzerne County wouldn’t even have a four-year college for men until after World War II.

On the plus side, College Misericordia (then for women only) was just getting started, and there were a few small private schools offering post-high school training in office work. Hospitals large and small maintained their own nursing schools.

Kids: Families could send their children to convenient neighborhood elementary schools. But dropping out of high school to work was still distressingly common, leading to tiny graduating classes.

Summers, though, were a pretty good time for the young. Towns tended to have excellent playgrounds and swimming pools, with monitors, and plenty of games and activities. If you bring kids in your time machine, they’ll thank you for the trip.

Entertainment: Radio in its infancy did not yet offer listeners a lot. Also, if you don’t like silent movies or record players you have to wind up, you’d best find a diplomatic way to turn down invitations to visit the 1924 locals you encounter.

The stage, though, was a different story. Venues like the Poli/Penn theater and the magnificent Irem Temple in 1924 presented titans like pianist Ignace Paderewski and bandleader Paul Whiteman – modern equivalents of whom we’d storm the ticket booth to see today. There was also good evening streetcar service to get you there and back.

Technology: We’d likely struggle to chill our food with a leaky icebox and cool ourselves with a clattering tabletop electric fan. Need medical care? If you have a phone, call up the neighborhood GP who practices out of his home. He’s smart and inexpensive, but you’d probably feel a lot more comfortable excusing yourself and ducking back to 2024.

Yes, there would be lots of questions for a visitor to our community’s past.

But one stands out, at least in my mind.

I wonder who the first dude was who gunned his flivver and tried to beat the first red light at Public Square.

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Tom Mooney is a Times Leader history and genealogy writer. Reach him at tommooney42@gmail.com.