The city of Easton, Pennsylvania
Created | Updated Oct 20, 2010
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<b>Greatly condensed and mostly-accurate history</b><BR/>
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<p>In the glory days of the 19th century, the city of Easton was a thriving Pennsylvania town that commanded the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers.</p>
<p>For decades, the city prospered as coal road the Lehigh Canal down from the central hills of the state, fueling Philadelphia by way of the Delaware Canal, and New York via the Morris Canal.</p>
<p>When the 20th century dawned, steel rose to power in the Lehigh Valley, and if you weren’t working for Steel, then you were probably some unmanly little twerp twiddling around with math or art or some other such nonsense. The men were real men, the canal donkeys were real canal donkeys, and both were more or less happy to sweat their brains out pouring steel and hauling coal for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>And then steel crumbled. Bethlehem Steel, the region’s largest employer, faltered and by the late 1980s, Billy Joel was crooning about the Lehigh Valley’s dying industries in “Allentown”. Crime rose, the businesses failed and many folks began to look upon the Lehigh Valley as the rusted arm pit of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Then, in the early 1990s, certain individuals decided to do something. In this case doing something meant building tourist attractions downtown, re-modeling old buildings, and generally spreading around a lot of warm fuzzy feelings.</p>
<p>It worked. By the late 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people were headed downtown to visit “Two Rivers Landing”, a tourist attraction including “The Crayola Factory” – where people can watch crayons being made – and a canal history museum. A thriving arts community appeared, and soon quaint coffee shops and antique stores were opening throughout the downtown.</p>
<p>This success actually created some friction in the city, as other districts became upset that they didn’t have coffee shops, and that antique dealers had failed to appear on their streets. This led to accusations that the portions of city are not being properly marketed, and that all areas of the city should have their fair share of rampaging, lost tourists meandering down city streets.</p>
<p>Despite the tourism battles and the occasional gun fight, the city is a wonderful place to live.</p>
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<b>Crime</b><BR/>
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<p>There’s not much crime in Easton, but what there is seems to exist primarily to give politicians something to argue about. In spring and summer 1999 a number of stupid individuals decided that bullets ended arguments better than words, and started shooting at each other. </P>
<p>This heated up the otherwise drab mayoral race (which, up until this point, had focused on the rampaging tourist issue). Some might consider the occasional gun-touting criminals to be engaging in their own free-from artistry as they decorate the sidewalks with blood, but this viewpoint has – as of yet – failed to catch on.</p>
<p>Most citizens however, seem nonplused by the shootings, and have gone back to drinking their cappuccino while looking at bizarre-but-interesting art sculptures on the shores of Delaware.</p>
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<b>The Arts Community</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>The rise of the arts community in Easton is something of a mystery to those in nearby New Jersey, who were generally of the belief that most Pennsylvanians' concept of art involved looking at puddles of spilled beer.<p>
<p>However, the arts community does exist, as is proven by the large displays of interesting and occasionally bizarre forms of metal and plastic that periodically appear in the city’s parks. Galleries are scattered throughout the city, and the aforementioned coffee shops guarantee a steady supply of expensive yet tasteful caffeine. A prime attraction is the State Theatre, a restored turn-of-the-century (20th century that is) theatre that hosts a variety of entertainers and artists.</p>
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<b>The Crayola Factory</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>The city’s biggest modern day attraction is the Crayola Factory, a place where children of all ages can scribble on anything they want with crayons, pens and other writing utensils, while their parents are slowly, maddeningly bored out of their minds.<p>
The factory is an excellent place to visit, especially if you have a child in the 2-1/2 to 7-year-old range. <b>Under no circumstances should you enter the Factory without a child.</b> The Factory’s chief attraction is watching crayons being made, which for the uninformed, means watching wax dry. This is only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry, and the only real excitement comes from what the children do with the crayons after they’ve been made.</p>
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<b>The Shad Festival</b><BR/>
</font>
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<p>A shad is an ugly, plain-looking fish that makes a yearly suicide run up the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers in late spring. Thousands of the fish make the trek in order to give birth and die in the headwaters of both rivers, and if nothing else these fish teach a valuable lesson: As bad as your sex life may be, at least you don’t croak when you finally get to do the deed.<p>
Normally, one would expect that life can’t possibly get any worse when sex results in death, but for the shad, it does.<p>
Each year, the enthusiastic citizens of Easton gather for the Shad Festival fishing tournament. An award is given for the biggest fish caught, which is good the for the fisherman, but bad for the fish, since it dies without even having that little “upper” known as sex.
<p>
As a side note, in the early 1990s the folks in Easton decided to help out the shad by building a fish ladder on the Lehigh. The fish ladder gives the shad a choice on their final resting place – they can choose to fight the Delaware, or slip up the ladder and croak in the Lehigh.</p>
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<b>Easton slang</b><BR/>
</font>
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<p>Easton, like most of eastern Pennsylvania, has a significant number of Pennsylvania Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually of German decent, but early Americans couldn’t understand the difference between Duetch and Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch German dialect is dying out, but its corruption of the English language lives on. Here are a few sample phrases:</p>
<ul>
<li> “The soda is all” The soda bottle is empty.
<li> “The car needs washed” The motor vehicle needs to be washed.
<li> “The mailman went” The postal employee has delivered the mail.
</ul>
<b>Greatly condensed and mostly-accurate history</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>In the glory days of the 19th century, the city of Easton was a thriving Pennsylvania town that commanded the forks of the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers.</p>
<p>For decades, the city prospered as coal road the Lehigh Canal down from the central hills of the state, fueling Philadelphia by way of the Delaware Canal, and New York via the Morris Canal.</p>
<p>When the 20th century dawned, steel rose to power in the Lehigh Valley, and if you weren’t working for Steel, then you were probably some unmanly little twerp twiddling around with math or art or some other such nonsense. The men were real men, the canal donkeys were real canal donkeys, and both were more or less happy to sweat their brains out pouring steel and hauling coal for the rest of their lives.</p>
<p>And then steel crumbled. Bethlehem Steel, the region’s largest employer, faltered and by the late 1980s, Billy Joel was crooning about the Lehigh Valley’s dying industries in “Allentown”. Crime rose, the businesses failed and many folks began to look upon the Lehigh Valley as the rusted arm pit of Pennsylvania.</p>
<p>Then, in the early 1990s, certain individuals decided to do something. In this case doing something meant building tourist attractions downtown, re-modeling old buildings, and generally spreading around a lot of warm fuzzy feelings.</p>
<p>It worked. By the late 1990s, hundreds of thousands of people were headed downtown to visit “Two Rivers Landing”, a tourist attraction including “The Crayola Factory” – where people can watch crayons being made – and a canal history museum. A thriving arts community appeared, and soon quaint coffee shops and antique stores were opening throughout the downtown.</p>
<p>This success actually created some friction in the city, as other districts became upset that they didn’t have coffee shops, and that antique dealers had failed to appear on their streets. This led to accusations that the portions of city are not being properly marketed, and that all areas of the city should have their fair share of rampaging, lost tourists meandering down city streets.</p>
<p>Despite the tourism battles and the occasional gun fight, the city is a wonderful place to live.</p>
<font size="3">
<b>Crime</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>There’s not much crime in Easton, but what there is seems to exist primarily to give politicians something to argue about. In spring and summer 1999 a number of stupid individuals decided that bullets ended arguments better than words, and started shooting at each other. </P>
<p>This heated up the otherwise drab mayoral race (which, up until this point, had focused on the rampaging tourist issue). Some might consider the occasional gun-touting criminals to be engaging in their own free-from artistry as they decorate the sidewalks with blood, but this viewpoint has – as of yet – failed to catch on.</p>
<p>Most citizens however, seem nonplused by the shootings, and have gone back to drinking their cappuccino while looking at bizarre-but-interesting art sculptures on the shores of Delaware.</p>
</font>
<font size="3">
<b>The Arts Community</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>The rise of the arts community in Easton is something of a mystery to those in nearby New Jersey, who were generally of the belief that most Pennsylvanians' concept of art involved looking at puddles of spilled beer.<p>
<p>However, the arts community does exist, as is proven by the large displays of interesting and occasionally bizarre forms of metal and plastic that periodically appear in the city’s parks. Galleries are scattered throughout the city, and the aforementioned coffee shops guarantee a steady supply of expensive yet tasteful caffeine. A prime attraction is the State Theatre, a restored turn-of-the-century (20th century that is) theatre that hosts a variety of entertainers and artists.</p>
<font size="3">
<b>The Crayola Factory</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>The city’s biggest modern day attraction is the Crayola Factory, a place where children of all ages can scribble on anything they want with crayons, pens and other writing utensils, while their parents are slowly, maddeningly bored out of their minds.<p>
The factory is an excellent place to visit, especially if you have a child in the 2-1/2 to 7-year-old range. <b>Under no circumstances should you enter the Factory without a child.</b> The Factory’s chief attraction is watching crayons being made, which for the uninformed, means watching wax dry. This is only slightly more exciting than watching paint dry, and the only real excitement comes from what the children do with the crayons after they’ve been made.</p>
<font size="3">
<b>The Shad Festival</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>A shad is an ugly, plain-looking fish that makes a yearly suicide run up the Delaware and Lehigh Rivers in late spring. Thousands of the fish make the trek in order to give birth and die in the headwaters of both rivers, and if nothing else these fish teach a valuable lesson: As bad as your sex life may be, at least you don’t croak when you finally get to do the deed.<p>
Normally, one would expect that life can’t possibly get any worse when sex results in death, but for the shad, it does.<p>
Each year, the enthusiastic citizens of Easton gather for the Shad Festival fishing tournament. An award is given for the biggest fish caught, which is good the for the fisherman, but bad for the fish, since it dies without even having that little “upper” known as sex.
<p>
As a side note, in the early 1990s the folks in Easton decided to help out the shad by building a fish ladder on the Lehigh. The fish ladder gives the shad a choice on their final resting place – they can choose to fight the Delaware, or slip up the ladder and croak in the Lehigh.</p>
<font size="3">
<b>Easton slang</b><BR/>
</font>
<font size="2">
<p>Easton, like most of eastern Pennsylvania, has a significant number of Pennsylvania Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch are actually of German decent, but early Americans couldn’t understand the difference between Duetch and Dutch. The Pennsylvania Dutch German dialect is dying out, but its corruption of the English language lives on. Here are a few sample phrases:</p>
<ul>
<li> “The soda is all” The soda bottle is empty.
<li> “The car needs washed” The motor vehicle needs to be washed.
<li> “The mailman went” The postal employee has delivered the mail.
</ul>
