this is an interview with william cummings for in the age...
TRANSCRIPT
This is an interview with William Cummings for In the Age of Steel: Oral Histories from Bethlehem Pennsylvania. The interview was conducted by Roger D. Simon on July 8, 1975 in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Simon: This is an interview with William Cummings in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on July 8th, 1975 at his home on Main Street.
My name is Roger Simon. Tell me a little bit about your youth, what neighborhood did you grow up in in Bethlehem? Cummings: Well, I was born, as far as I know, not in a hospital, but in a home very close to Broad and Linden Street [Bethlehem,
Pennsylvania] on East Broad Street. And when I was about five years old, we moved to 418 North High [Bethlehem, Pennsylvania], which is just north of the cemetery. And all of my memories of Bethlehem, early memories, as a growing up boy in High Street.
Simon: This is between Church and Wall? Cummings: Right, between Church and Wall. And as a boy, a man living next door to us, who I don't believe I ever saw, was old, I'll
say Fred Wolle1 and he was a invalid at that time, bedridden, but he had been for years, if I have the name right, director of the Bach Choir2. But he lived there and this was the home on one side. And of course on the other side, was R.S. Taylor3, who was the lawyer in town for many years. And that's where I had my bringing-up, in that area. That was from about, as far as I can tell, 1914 until I really left home to go to college in 1930. And then my father lived there until 1945, and of course, that was my focal point in Bethlehem. (Whispers) Not turned off. Well, that was where I grew up. And the front of High Street going west faced the old Bethlehem, and then two blocks of us was the old Moravian4 settlements and a very, at that time, I would say upper class residential area. The home I was raised in was built in about 1884, a mid-Victorian gingerbread affair. In front of us, as I say, downtown were all of the middle class people, not many from the steel company at that time, they were mostly Bethlehem citizens, Moravians, merchants and other people. Behind us, within a block was one of the slums of Bethlehem. A block behind us.
Simon: Toward Linden and Maple? Cummings: Behind Linden. Yeah, behind us were two city blocks of some of the poorest people in the city.
1 Also known as J. Fred Wolle, he was the founder and first conductor of the Bach Choir in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 2 Founded in 1898, The Bach Choir of Bethlehem is the oldest choir in the United States. 3 Likely refers to Robert Sayre Taylor, Jr. (1903‐1993), a local attorney who was active on a number of not‐for‐profit boards. 4 Refers to the 18th‐century buildings constructed by Moravian settlers who settled Bethlehem in 1741. This religious sect traces its origin to pre‐Reformation fifteenth‐century central Europe.
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Simon: Were these immigrants? Cummings: Sons of immigrants, most of them. Some immigrants. And then of course I went to Neisser School5 first grade and grew
up with all of this conglomeration. Here were the sons of immigrants behind me and the sons of Moravians in front of me and 2 or 3 Negroes. And it's interesting that— Well, I won't go off on (inaudible)— That we went through Moravian, we went through Neisser, all of us together. And I can still remember many of those names and families. As a matter of fact, a good part of them were Lehigh6 professors that lived right in our neighborhood.
Simon: The fathers were Lehigh professors. Cummings: Oh yes. Professor Fox was languages, Professor Beiber, I think it was electricity. Professor Hall. Oh there were a bunch
of them in the neighborhood because of course at that time they could walk to college, they walked across the bridge. Simon: On Wall and Church Street, the smaller homes, were those the homes you're talking about? Cummings: Well behind us on Church Street were the small homes, some double homes. And then a block east of that were these
row homes of tenements and a pretty poor neighborhood. But we all went to school together, (chuckling) we all grew up together.
Simon: Where did the blacks live, do you remember? Cummings: One black, his father was a Pullman porter on the Lehigh Valley7, and he lived not in our particular neighborhood, he
didn't live with us, but he lived down behind the Nile Theater8. Simon: Which is now a parking lot, I guess. 5 An early public school located on Wall Street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 6 A private university in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 7 The Lehigh Valley Railroad was originally built to haul anthracite coal in Pennsylvania but eventually added passenger service and expanded to surrounding states. 8 Located on Broad Street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, this was a single level theatre with a small pipe organ.
Cummings: It's on Broad Street. I'm trying not to get into this. Simon: Oh, that's all right. Cummings: A black family who worked for Congressman Coyle9. Now we all grew up together, the Coyle daughter and children and
the help, we all for the early grades went to— You'd better delete that because she didn't go. That's all right, I'll correct it later.
Simon: That's all right. Cummings: But we all, the whole hodge-podge went to Neisser School, which is still standing. I don't believe it's been used as a
school for about 5 years. Simon: So, the one on Wall. Cummings: Yeah. Simon: Some of those poorer people, were they the servants for some of the more established families? Cummings: Not that I remember, no. The servants that we knew of were — and we had them in our house — were young girls from
Europe, mostly Hungarian or Germans or Austrian. And they came over here, my first remembrance, is just before World War I. Because one of them worked for us and her sister was a munitions worker and during the Armistice celebrations10, we went down and we waved at this friend of ours on the trucks as a munitions worker, this girl. And we recognized her and she recognized us. And most of the help at that time that I know of were immigrants. There were some Irish, I have to admit that. Some of the older families had Irish help and as I said, only the Coyles, that I know of, had black help.
Simon: Was the Irish help considered a little more a status thing?
9 William R. Coyle served as a Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania in the 1920s and 1930s. 10 Armistice Day marks the agreement between the Germans and the Allies to end World War I on November 11, 1918.
Cummings: Not that I know of. Not that I remember, no. Simon: Just that they'd had them for a long time probably. Cummings: Yeah, that's right. (Pause) You ask me a question. Simon: Oh, okay. Was that sort of the worst part of the north side of Bethlehem? Cummings: No. Down under what is now the Hill-to-Hill Bridge11 was the real I would say slums of Bethlehem then and they were
until they were erased ten years ago. That was the real slums of Bethlehem. These people that I'm talking about were fairly respectable, but pretty poor, pretty poor, yeah. And there weren't many, there were two blocks of them, that's all. Yeah.
Simon: Yeah, just a few blocks. What did your father do? Cummings: My father was geologist for Bethlehem Steel Company. He came here in 1905 as geologist for the company. And as I
say, I was born on Broad Street and then he moved to High Street where we lived all of my growing years, so to speak. One of the interesting things that I remember and I can't find anybody that'll help me out on it is was one of our neighbors behind us were Pennsylvania Dutch12, the name of Kresge. My contemporary was Warren Kresge13 and his father was Adam Kresge, who worked in the plant. And I remember that during World War I, he was in some part of the Munitions Department. He was very important because he helped make either bullets or guns. And they spoke, the father and mother spoke, good what we called then and I still call Pennsylvania Dutch, but one of the grandparents lived with them and spoke no English. And this was probably the fifth generation and they were still speaking in that house Pennsylvania Dutch. I'd go in and the grandmother would come in and I couldn't understand her.
Simon: But she was no immigrant herself. Cummings: No, no, she was about 3rd or 4th generation. And that was the last of the old really Pennsylvania Dutch in this area. That
was the end, that generation was the end. Now for this argument, this is 1922. I was 11, Warren's father was probably
11 Located in Bethlehem, PA, construction began in 1922 on this concrete arch bridge that passes PA 378 over the Lehigh River. 12 Refers to emigrants and the descendants of emigrants from southwestern Germany and Switzerland who settled in Pennsylvania in the 17th and 18th centuries. 13 Warren H. Kresge (1911- 1995) whose parents were Adam and Minnie (Houser) Kresge.
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45, and grandmother was probably 80, and she spoke no English, that I remember. Incidentally, that family had a touring car called a Kritz14, K-r-i-t-z, if I remember it. All brass and leather straps down the front and big brass lights. I've (chuckling) never seen one since.
Simon: Was it a German car? I've never heard of it. Cummings: No, American. Kritz or Krutz. Kritz. And we used to go down and sit in it and just think it was wonderful to sit in this
great, beautiful old, I would guess it was a 1905 or 1910 car, that we sat in there and enjoyed being part of. But that was all. I think going back to Bethlehem at that time, we lived there a block from the cemetery and I guess 3 blocks from the railroad and the canal. And of course the canal was operating at that time. The canal boats drawn by mules. And it might surprise you to know that I (chuckling) rode on a canal boat from one lock to another. My father knew they were disappearing and he got my sister and I— We always used to walk; every Sunday we'd be down on the canal towpath taking walks, or through the cemetery or somewhere. We were always weekends spending quite a bit of walking time, and he got to know the gatekeepers on the canal. So we did have a trip down the canal from one lock to the other with our little Irish terrier pup. And they had in the back of the canal a recessed basement or room down in the canal boat with a potbelly stove burning anthracite, and I remember we took our dog, an Irish terrier, on board and while we went from one lock to the other, the pup came down with us. And he backed into this red hot potbelly stove. Well, you know what a smell it would make and in this little room six by ten feet, one of those things you never forget. But that was one of those things you remember from that age. I suppose I was seven or nine or ten, somewhere in there.
Simon: Were they still hauling coal down the canal? Cummings: Yes, it was all coal. They'd go down with coal and come back empty. They would come back empty, yeah. I think as I
remember, there were two mules pulled them down or pulled them back. The empties back and a little bit of current of course helped them going down.
Simon: What were some of the other families around there besides some Lehigh people and some steel people? Were they
mainly professionals and shopkeepers? Cummings: Yes, I would say so. When we moved there, one of the old, old mansions of the Chapman family was still across the
street, and that was the Chapman Slate Company15 family. I remember the house and I remember it being torn down and
14 Project staff could not identify this vehicle.
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I remember the new home going up on the lot. And the man that built it was an engineer for the steel company. And next to that, incidentally, the whole lot across from us was empty when we moved in because the 3 houses that are still there were built when I was a boy. And that was about 1920, somewhere in that area, '20 [1920]to '23 [1923]. And those 3 were steel company employees, those 3 front houses, yeah. And then behind them, the houses that were built were professors at Lehigh when they were built, yeah.
Simon: You mentioned the war before and the Armistice parade. Do you remember much else about the war experience? Cummings: I remember that on the Minsi Trail Bridge16 there was a gate right next to what was the tollhouse or the gate. I guess it's
still there where you can walk down in the plant, and that always had an armed guard. I remember that. I remember the soldier standing there, and you not only had to get a pass from the company but the soldier was there to let you go down in.
Simon: For security. Cummings: For security, yeah, because at that time the steel company was making a great number of armaments both for ourselves
and our allies. And it was a very, very critical steel plant in the country for armaments. One thing, as I mentioned, my father was a great outdoorsman, naturalist, hiker, bird watcher and interested in all things along that line, and took us on many local and county walks. This was of course before automobiles. We either went by trolley or walked. And one of the things I think is interesting is that where the present Bethlehem quarry is just east of the Minsi Trail Bridge, between the quarry and the canal there were ruins, as I was a boy, of an old toy factory, cast iron toy factory. And we went down there and found pieces of ladders or wheels from hook and ladder trucks or other toys made by this toy company. And there was another one, as I remember, that probably existed in 1900 or before. I told you this, didn't I?
Simon: No. Cummings: At the south end of the Freemansburg Bridge, just around the corner where the power substation is today, the power
company substation, there was another ruins that we went around and we'd dig around and find a piece of an old cast iron
15 Incorporated in 1864, the Chapman Slate Company was located about 12 miles north of Bethlehem in Chapmanville, Pennsylvania. The Company’s founder was William Chapman. 16 A bridge in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania which crosses the Lehigh River and joins the northeast and southeast of the city.
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toy. And I've often wondered if anybody looked in the old city directories back in the 1890’s, 1900’s, they find any reference to these old toy companies. I don't know.
Simon: We can look that up. Cummings: It'd be interesting to me. I think another facet of early Bethlehem was luckily in my case, was my father's interest in
history and in the steel industry. And we went around, or he took us around to early points of activity in the steel industry. And I do remember the old blast furnace in Hellertown [Pennsylvania] that was standing when I was a boy. I don't remember any more than that about it. And I remember him also taking us to the old blast furnaces over at we call “ee-mouse”, now they call it Emmaus, and over around Macungie and Alburtis. Those furnaces were all standing when I was a boy and my father, as geologist, would be going out to look at their old iron ore deposits. And I guess if nobody else has told you, there were some right close to Bethlehem. Right over the mountain on the present property of the Saucon Valley Country Club17, there are two or 3 old iron mines. You're aware of this, I suppose. Yeah. And as a boy, we went out—I remember going out and seeing these old pits and being told about them and their activities in the early days of the steel industry in the Lehigh Valley. (Whispers) You must (inaudible) something else.
Simon: What about this Armistice parade, do you remember much about it? Cummings: All I can remember, we went from Neisser School down to New Street and the parade was up New Street, that I saw.
Because we were let out of school to go down and I suppose we all had a flag in our hand and we waved at the trucks coming up New Street from the New Street Bridge18.
Simon: Trucks of steelworkers. Cummings: Trucks full of steelworkers and many women, many women, say 20 or 30 women on each of these old trucks coming up
and lots of hoopla. That's all I can remember. I don't have more than that. (chuckling) Hell, I was only seven years old. Simon: What'd you do for recreation as a youngster?
17 The Saucon Valley Country Club was founded in 1920 by Bethlehem Steel executives and local business leaders. 18 The Philip J. Fahy Memorial Bridge runs over the Lehigh River and connects the north and south sides of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
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Cummings: Well we had across the street from us, as I told you, we moved in there were vacant lots and we called it the Biggie. And we had a ballpark, a sandlot ball field there where we could play baseball among ourselves. We played street hockey, nipsy19, hide-and-go-seek. And we've often compared notes with our contemporaries and wondered where those games went. Where did they go? (chuckles)
Simon: Still around. Cummings: Well, you don't hear—our kids never played them. Oh, they played sandlot baseball but nipsy, nobody knows what a
nipsy looks like today. Do you? No, see. We played that in the street and under the arc light on the corner in the summers. And of course, as I said, we played ball in the lot. And incidentally, this is where— We'd play ball in this lot and this is where Clarence Campbell20 would come, the son of the porter on the railroad. He'd be part of our game on the nipsy, playing ball there in the lot. And of course ultimately, it built up and— Also, for a while there was a tennis court in there owned by somebody else but we (chuckling) played on it. (Inaudible) say what did we do for (inaudible). We also as kids learned to swim in the canal.
Simon: Was it clean enough? Cummings: It was not clean enough, but if you were of the ilk that had a— I suppose, well I know I got the devil for going there, but
I also know that I swam in the canal and I'd come home with wet hair and my mom would just give me the devil for knowing I'd been in the canal. That's the only place I could get my hair wet.
Simon: You didn't go in the river? Cummings: Not starting. Later we did when we knew how to handle ourselves. But the canal was an open sewer, I might say. There
was nothing clean about the canal at that time. We would swim no clothes on and I think, and I can honestly say, that half of us would turn around away from the passenger trains and the other half wouldn't when they went by. But you'd have to talk to somebody who remembers more than I do about it. But I remember swimming in the canal. Oh, it was awful, it was dirty.
Simon: But there wasn't any other place to swim, I take it, except in the river.
19 Nipsy is a game in which a stick is used to propel a ball from the ground into the air. Once airborne, the ball is struck. The winner strikes the ball the farthest. 20 Project staff could not locate additional information on this individual.
Cummings: No, there were no pools, no pools at all. We could—you asked about recreation. We could go on the trolley car out to
Farmersville [Road]. Simon: Where is that? Cummings: On the way to Easton. And get off, and this is in the winter. We'd get off the trolley and go ice skating on what is now
Green Pond Farm21, the Green Pond of Green Pond Farms. And that was where we could do some ice skating. Simon: Could you ice skate on the canal? Cummings: We could on what we called the basin. It's not there anymore. It was down just north of the Minsi Trail Bridge. It was a
shallow, well it was called a basin. Simon: Like a lagoon, yeah. Cummings: Yeah, that was for kind of— They had them all along the canal, there were different ones, and that was shallow and not
flowing, and the ice would form there and we could do some skating. But the canal itself was too deep. We wouldn't dare, we were scared of that. We didn't do much skating on the canal. I did some but not much. None of us did; we didn't dare.
Simon: What about as you were a little older, as a teenager what kinds of things were popular recreation and entertainment? Cummings: Well, golly, as I say, I was a little different than a great number of them. I was good hiker and I was interested in the
outdoors and did quite a bit of that. I also along about that time had a good jolt with rheumatic fever and that curtailed my activities a great deal. I was not allowed to compete in competitive sports. I couldn't swim competitively, I couldn't run in track teams or play competitive sports. But as far as I'm concerned, I did swimming, that was my one sport I could do without competing, you know, just swimming. (Dog barking in background) So I didn't get into the athletics that my friends did; I did not get into that. And matter of fact, at that early age, again connected with the war, a friend of my father's came through town and he was stationed at the army camp in Allentown and he came to our house, I don't know, say five times. And by the time he left, he saw I was 8 years old or 6 or something, and he gave me his stamp collection of 400 stamps in a book, and I took to it. And maybe this was because of this rheumatic situation that I was more or less
21 Probably refers to the estate of Henry S. Snyder located on Green Pond Road in Bethlehem Township, Pennsylvania.
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confined compared to my friends. So I became active in stamps in 1920 or '18 [1918] or whenever it was and I'm still active. I'm still very much interested in stamp collecting and all of—many of its facets, and that did take a lot of my time then when I couldn't move around. Now that's a good question.
Simon: Were spectator sports as popular as they are today? Cummings: As far as I'm concerned, no, personally. But whether my friends— Well I know in 1929, now that's when I was 18,
(chuckles) one of the neighbor's boys had a Model A Ford and speak of spectator sports, he was a son of a professor at Lehigh and he a couple other guys— I was invited, but I didn't want to go and it wasn't my cup of tea. They drove to the Indianapolis Speedway races in May and they did it in a day and a half out and a day and a half back, over a weekend. They were interested in that phase of spectator sports; I was not. We did some fishing. We did fishing in the Monocacy22. We did fishing a little bit, tried to fish in the Lehigh but that wasn't very successful. But we did fish in the Monocacy and we'd go up in the Poconos23 for fishing.
Simon: With your family? Cummings: Yeah, always with family (inaudible). Simon: When did your father get a car, do you remember? Cummings: 1923. He was a Willys-Knight touring car24. And my father didn't drive until my mother died; she did all the driving for
14 years or so. And that would take us up to the Poconos and trips like that, not much more than that, but that kept us plenty busy. And there we did some fishing.
Simon: Still more oriented to outdoors kind of activities. Cummings: Yeah, yeah. Simon: Where did you go to school after Neisser?
22 Located in eastern Pennsylvania, Monocacy Creek is a tributary of the Lehigh River. 23 The Pocono Mountain region is north of Bethlehem. 24 Willys Knight Touring was made by Willys Overland Co. in Toledo, Ohio. The company eventually became American Motors, which was acquired by Chrysler.
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Cummings: Well, I went the first couple years that Liberty25 was opened. I was in Liberty if it wasn't the first year, the second year. Simon: I think it was open in '22 [1922]or '23 [1923]. Cummings: Well then I went up there— See, I was born in '11 [1911] and I went out— My sister might have gone the first year and
I the second. She was a year older. I went to Liberty for seventh and eighth grades at Liberty, and then I went away to school, prep school. Again, a situation that came up through my father's job. He was going to go around the world, well halfway around the world on an extended tour and (chuckles) had no place to put their son and daughter. Well they found a home for a daughter next door, the family there took her in, but they got me into prep school in the middle of a term, and I started in March, February, and I stayed in prep school until I finished.
Simon: Where was that? Cummings: Mercersburg Academy26. And then I went to Dartmouth after that. Speaking of that, a month ago I was at a 41st mini-
reunion of our class from Dartmouth27, and three of us at the mini-reunion all had gone to Dartmouth from Mercersburg in 1930. We'd been more or less in touch with each other all the time, so we just go together a month ago for what he called a mini reunion, 41st year.
Simon: Is that where your father had gone? Cummings: No, my father was from northern Michigan—was from Michigan and he went to what is now Michigan State College, at
that time was Michigan Agricultural College28. And he graduated from Michigan Agricultural College in 1892, worked a few years, and then went to Michigan College of Mines at Houghton, Michigan, and he graduated there in 1900. He came to Bethlehem in 1905, started here in 1905.
Simon: Did you think about Lehigh29?
25 Liberty is public high school located on Linden Street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 26 Mercersburg Academy is a college-preparatory school in south-central Pennsylvania. 27 Dartmouth College is located in Hanover, New Hampshire. 28 Michigan State College and Michigan Agricultural College became Michigan State University in 1964. 29 A private university located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
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Cummings: Oh yes, I not only thought about Lehigh but— Well when I was in school, prep school, which was before the Depression30, well things were fairly prosperous in my father's group and so whether went to Dartmouth, any college looked pretty good, was no problem. By the time I was a junior in college, my total room rent for the year was $28 and my food bill was zero. I waited on tables for my food and we rented a cabin for $100 for 4 of us for a year. And three of these fellows that were at this mini-reunion, there was three of the four of us that rented that cabin for one year of college.
Simon: This was from '30[1930] to '34 [1934]. Cummings: Yeah. But the freshman year we all had nice rooms and good accommodations and paid all our bills. But 1931, '32
[1932], the end of the rope had fallen on us. Simon: Did your father get a salary cut? Cummings: Very much so. Very much so, yes. Yeah. Yeah, they were really hurt here. They were really hurt. Four of them that
were all considered— three of them that were considered— This one you'd better be careful of on your machine. Three of them that were considered pretty, very bad, very bad— I think maybe this is interested. That age, we were all young, '31 [1931] I was 20, and we'd learned oddly enough how to drink beer. And we also at that time were—the Maennerchor was in existence. Well that was a German singing society originally, but they allowed the Lehigh students in if you behaved well. And it was a great hangout for Lehigh students for 20, 30 years at least, at least that long. This is no baloney. We'd get together Saturday night, say, the gang of us, a bunch of us, we'd go across the bridge and we'd look down at the steel plant, say the Minsi Trail Bridge where you could see down there then to the open hearths and I think there were 18 chimneys. And we'd count the number of chimneys with smoke, and even if it was in jest, if there were 3 lit, 3 with smoke, we'd joke and say well, we can have 3 beer tonight, because that's one more than last night—last week when there were two chimneys lit out of 18. And this is no baloney. This is a way we knew things were tough, that sure Dad would give 50 cents or a buck but that would be five beers. But we'd look at the chimneys and say, well, things are better than last week or worse and behave more or less accordingly. We joked about that for years and yet it really was no joke when you think of it.
Simon: Was it—being that age and getting right smack into the Depression like that, was it pretty hard to keep up your
optimism?
30 The Great Depression was a North American and European economic slump, which lasted from 1929 till 1939.
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Cummings: That's a good question. There were a bunch of us, and I'll be very blunt, that I think the way we were brought up and the
background of our fathers that— Well, for instance, I went to college and the first year my room was $220 for a year, second year it was $25, and we thought it was great. You know, you had to make ends meet, you worried about it, but hell, everybody else was in the same boat. Well most everybody else. The average college student in '31 [1931], '32 [1932], they had no money. The sons of the millionaires did but everybody was tightly clamped down.
Simon: Did a lot of kids drop out, do you remember? Cummings: Oh, one of my friends that we got to know dropped out because of the Depression, that I know of. Now I'm sure my
class, there must have been 50 that did, must have been, but one that I knew that we were pals and he just couldn't come back because of money. Well, I had 2 or 3 that they just couldn't make it financially. But at the same time, a large proportion of us graduated.
Simon: Did you spend your summers in Bethlehem when you were in college? Cummings: No, I'd spend them where I could. I spent one summer here, one bumming around the country, say, one working. I got a
job as a— Of course, I got a job up in the coal fields as a helper on a Diamond drill rig. Well that was of course through my father and his friends. That was a couple months. And then the following summer, one of the summers there in the tail end of the Depression, I went up into Canada. Incidentally, I didn't say yet that after Dartmouth I went to Lehigh for two years and got a degree in mining engineering. The summer of '34 [1934] between the two colleges I spent a good part of it up in Canada in a gold mine just looking around. My father and a couple others said go ahead and I went. I don't whether it cost me $150 for the summer or not but it wasn't much. And had a good time. Did nothing, looked around these gold camps and this new gold area. Very interesting. There were 4 men put up I think about 50 bucks or 60 bucks apiece and sent me off to look over this new gold rush camp and see if I could smell out which one of these 20 different gold mines would be worth investing in. Well my father put up, as I understand it in telling it over again, Dad put up about $1000 before the smoke cleared, in the stocks. And he sold out and made $5. Another Bethlehem man put up, I don't know, $1000 on what he'd learned and he made $600. Another man from up in the coal fields, the Diamond drill contractor, he put up quite a few dollars and he held onto his stock, one of them, and he made quite a few thousand dollars. (chuckling) I was always his friend. I was always his friend, because he didn't know enough to sell out. But they paid I guess it was $300 for the summer in the middle of the Depression.
Simon: That's good money.
Cummings: One summer I did nothing, nobody could do anything. I just bummed around town. Simon: Which year was that, do you remember? Cummings: I'd say '32 [1932], I'd guess. Simon: What was Bethlehem like that summer, do you remember? That was probably about the worst part of the Depression. Cummings: Well, luckily, there was a group of us, luckily, and when we talk among our friends, when I travel, when I get with other
people and compare notes, nobody can believe that so many of us knew each other personally, and still know each other. That grew up here. Last night we talked with some people in Atlanta we grew up with. Three weeks ago we were on a boat trip out of Chicago to Minnesota and back on an ore carrier with another two couples we grew up with. We had a group of about 10 couples, not married, say 20 boys and girls, all of who were in roughly the same financial situation that lived through the Depression by making their own fun. We really did. What else could you do? We drank beer, that was all. We'd go to the Maennerchor31 and drink beer.
Simon: Where was the Maennerchor? Cummings: Well, the best way to tell you is the Hill-to-Hill Bridge has a Christmas tree in the summer—at Christmas and the
Maennerchor was almost underneath it. Simon: Right down there under the bridge. Cummings: Right underneath it and it was a big, it was a big— The upstairs was a great big concert hall for songfests and plays or
anything and the downstairs was a rathskeller32. It'd been here since 1895 or some such year. And the old guard were all old Pennsylvania German students at Lehigh helped it out and then we local people with these girls through '31 [1931]to '35 [1935], hell, we were there every weekend. Summers, you know, and holidays. With our parents, with our parents. It was a wonderful place.
31 The Beethoven Maennerchor is a choral society founded in Bethlehem, Pa. in 1891 32 A beer hall or restaurant, usually located below street level.
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Simon: What was a glass of beer at? Cummings: A nickel. Simon: A nickle. Cummings: Sure up until I guess a dime by then, but a pitcher of beer was 50 cents. And we used to say that our parents, they didn't
care where we were going as long as it was the Maennerchor. They knew we were in pretty safe hands. That you weren't going to some bar, you weren't going off to some sleazy joint with a bunch of pick-ups or anything like that. There were always tow or three tables of pinochle with the old German citizens, always there. Two or three tables of pinochle and then here would be the rest of us drinking beer and singing and frolicking. It was a hell of a healthy situation. And as I said, our parents thought it was okay, and be there with us.
Simon: Were there some neighborhoods that they, say as a teenager in the mid-Twenties, late Twenties, neighborhoods they
expected you to stay out of? Cummings: Oh yes, oh yes. The South Side. The street is completely gone now. There was a street called Columbia Street. That
was between— There was 3rd Street. There was 4th Street, 3rd Street, and then 2nd Street. And the alley between 3rd Street and 2nd Street was Columbia Street, and that was the red light district of Bethlehem. And I only know it because we weren't supposed to go there. I was too young. And I also know it because I'd walk to work with my father and we could go through there to work in the morning, but never be caught there any other time. And that had a very bad reputation, and it was well known all through the east here as a gay recreation spot for Newark and New Jersey and the riff-raff from the eastern big cities.
Simon: It was right next to the railroad station pretty much. Cummings: No. As a matter of fact, it was east of what was the railroad station. There was one building put up there. I remember
this story, I saw it happen. There was a yellow brick building, two stories, maybe three, and my father made the remark, and by that time I was old enough to know what he meant, and he'd seen some pretty rough spots, he's been all over the world by that time, and he (chuckling) said that's the only building that he ever knew of, heard of, or saw that was built from the ground up out of brick to become a house of ill repute, and became one. (Chuckling) There'd been plenty of them that were old hotels that fell into disrepute but this is only one that was built as such. I remember that. That was a rough spot, and there are others can tell you more about that.
00:42:12
Simon: When did that end, do you know? Cummings: Before the Depression. A policeman was killed. A policeman was killed on the steps of one of these bawdy houses. Simon: In a raid or some fracas? Cummings: A fracas, and that crystallized. From then on, enough public furor that they had to curtail it. And I think up until that
time there was always some kind of a political raised-eyebrow department there. Yeah. Simon: Why do you think so? Steelworkers needed it or— Cummings: It wasn’t the steelworkers— No, as a matter of fact, I think if you go back, and you can, I think, go to the Globe Times33
in the middle Twenties, you'll find about these places and well, they tell the story, and I don't know how true it is, that they'd bring busloads of men in here from New York and Newark and cities for the weekend because this was an open town at that time. No, I don't think it had to do with the steelworkers here. They were too damn hard at work raising a family, raising family. I think one little sidetrack, a human interest story is that speaking of steelworkers, when I was 6 or 7 or 8, just before the war—World War I, well, I told you this woman was in the Armistice parade in the truck. Well her sister was our housemaid. (interruption in recording) — (inaudible) she's 18. Came and she lived in our attic, and she watched over me from the time I was six to ten or so.
Simon: She was from Hungary. Cummings: Yeah. And then somewhere along the line she got married and I went away to school, I went away to college, but I know
that she was helping Mother. She'd come and help do laundry or help clean or do this and that over these years. And then when we were married in 1941, I came back to Bethlehem after being away to college and working for those years, we were married and this Theresa was married but her husband had been badly injured in the steel mill and he was on relief, he was on— Call it relief, I'll change it later.
Simon: Okay.
33 A newspaper published in Easton, Pennsylvania that is now called the Express Times.
00:45:53
Cummings: So she was supplementing the family income by helping my mother all these years and then my father after my mother
died. And when we were married, she came to help us one day a week or wherever we were on a weekend, why she'd come and sit with the children or she'd help here and do that. And in the meantime, her son grew up and graduated from college and he was looking for a job and so she asked if I could— He took a degree, got a degree in business administration or accounting, and she asked if I could help him out. Well I got him an interview with my friends in the steel company accounting department and it actually happened that just last night Mrs. Cummings, looking through the steel company directory said, `My, Anthony has come quite a long ways, hasn't he?' And he has got a very responsible position in the accounting department, built himself a very fine home in the Butztown area, and put an addition on the home with a room, bedroom and a bathroom and sitting room for Grandma, for his mother that was our—
Simon: This is the girl that came to your parents at 18. Cummings: (chuckling) 18, yeah. And there are many of them in town, many, many of them. Many of them spread through the
town, yeah. Simon: Did your father belong to any lodges or clubs? Cummings: No. Bethlehem Club34. Well, he was a early member— Well, he used to belong to the Northampton Country Club35. I
was going to say that— You talk about youth, well my youth was trolley cars. We’d—he'd go out to the Northampton Country Club on Sunday morning. We'd get up at 6 o'clock, walk up to the trolley, 5 minutes.
Simon: Where? On Broad? Cummings: Broad Street. Get on the trolley that went to Easton and get off at the Northampton Country Club and have breakfast.
And then I would caddy for him. Now I don't know whether I did that six times or 40, but I did it enough that I remember going out there for breakfast, having breakfast with him and caddying. And that of course was before Saucon Valley Country Club36, which was 1920— And we used to go, speaking of that, when we were kids to get to the Saucon Valley, we'd go by trolley.
34 Established in 1909 as a social club for Bethlehem Steel executives; the building is located on New Street in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. 35 Founded in 1899, the Northampton Country Club is located in Easton, Pennsylvania. 36 The Saucon Valley Country Club was founded in 1920 by Bethlehem Steel executives and local business leaders.
00:49:10
Simon: Where did the trolley go? Cummings: Went from 4th and New [Street] up— You'd be interested how it went up, those names of those streets. You know
where the Alumni building is at Lehigh, that curve that says turn right. Simon: Brodhead and Summit, yeah. Cummings: Well, that was the trolley made that turn. Came up— Simon: That's probably why it's a soft turn. Cummings: Well, it made that turn, went over and got on is it Wyandotte that goes all the way up. It went up Wyandotte and there
were two of these— If it ran away, there were these turn-outs where it would come back. And if it ran away, it'd go back up into the mountain. And we'd go to the country club that way.
Simon: How far did that—where did that trolley end up? Did that go to Coopersburg? Cummings: Quakertown. No, no. No that trolley went to Center Valley. There it met the Liberty Bell route from Allentown that
went to Quakertown and Philadelphia. And we'd go down there. We'd get on—take one trolley, get on the other and then go down near Quakertown and go for a hike. Again, this was my dad. North. We'd go to Belfast. I remember going to Belfast on the trolley. Going to Easton and down the Delaware River on the trolley. We went all over.
Simon: Did you spend a lot of time at the country club? Cummings: Oh, as kids. Well, you see, you couldn't. We didn't have a car, (chuckling) well, until '23 [1923]. Simon: It wasn't open until '23 [1923] was it? Cummings: About '23 [1923], yeah. Then I did spend some time after that, yeah. Yeah, we did. In this same group I mentioned.
Dad was not a charter member, but he joined within six months. His name was not in the charter member of the country club. But he belonged to Northampton at the time.
Simon: And he belonged to the Bethlehem Club. Cummings: The Bethlehem Club. Bowling. Great hobby was bowling. Yeah, he was one of the old-timers there. I think another
factor of living here all this time was growing up two blocks or three blocks from the river. And most of the time that neighborhood was dirty as hell. Dust, soot, grime, filth, smoke.
Simon: From the steel mill. Cummings: Well now, this is what I was going to say. A part of it certainly was from the steel company, but those damn to railroads,
the Lehigh Valley37 and the Jersey Central38 with soft coal steam locomotives, they just spewed forth smoke up and down that valley and there were many, many, many trains a day. And when they went to diesel, I guess after the war, we still had some dirt from the steel company, but it was a fraction of what it was when these two trains were running. I think I'm dead right that most people thought it was steel company. Most people thought it was steel company. Now the people out in West Bethlehem at the end of Market Street and the end of Prospect, they had the roundhouse down there and they got the roundhouse smoke and they knew it was the railroad. But the people in this part of town, we—I know my mother thought it was mostly steel company dirt. But it was the darn soot from the trains. Well there's a lot of facets to this whole thing and it's just too bad you couldn't have caught somebody 20 years older, you know, 20 years ago that had the full story of the—
Simon: Twenty years ago I wasn't running around with a tape recorder. Cummings: No, no, but I meant— We said this one woman, Mary Alder, that she used to come in here and she'd get drunk. She was
an old, old Bethlehem girl, she'd be in here at 65. She was 65. That isn't on, is it? Simon: Yeah, I can— Cummings: I could add to it—
37 Originally built to haul anthracite coal in Pennsylvania the railroad eventually added passenger service and expanded to surrounding states. 38 The Central Railroad of New Jersey (also known as Jersey Central Railroad) mainline ran from Jersey City west to Phillipsburg, Easton, Bethlehem, Allentown, Wilkes-Barre and Scranton in Pennsylvania.
00:52:28
Simon: Tell me about the downtown a little bit. What was that like on the North Side? Was there much of a downtown on the North Side? Or was it mainly on the South Side?
Cummings: How long have you been here, two, three years? Simon: Five years. Cummings: Well you didn't see— No, I know another thing. This is going to be of interest to you. Bethlehem had its downtown, the
North Side. Respectable, call them legitimate, middle class shopping area. But anybody, and I mean this, 60 to 80 percent of Bethlehem shopping in Allentown. When I was a youngster, my father said that if Mother got in the car, she didn't have to do anything, the car would go to Allentown to Hess Brothers39. She didn't have to do anything, the car would go.
Simon: Automatic. Cummings: (chuckling) Automatic. That it was a great (inaudible)— That's where Mother took all of us kids to go get suits or shoes
or socks or clothes, toys, anything. Bush and Bull's was here then, now Orr's40. But it was always kind of an emergency to go down there, but if you went to get your Christmas outfit or really spend money, it was Allentown. And again, we went first by trolley car. And just as even when you first came here five years ago, Allentown on Saturday has what, 30, 50 times as many people on Hamilton [Street, Allentown] as we have on Broad Street, and it was true then. Something didn't click down here.
Simon: You can see, I mean just even though the South Side is declined, you can see the number of storefronts, even if they're
now empty. Much bigger than the North Side really. Cummings: Oh, in length of—
39 Hess Brothers department store opened in Allentown, Pennsylvania, in 1897. Under new ownership, the name was changed to Hess’s in 1968. The store closed in the mid-1990s. 40 Headquartered in Easton, Pennsylvania, the Bush and Bull Department Store was located on Main Street in Bethlehem. Orr’s Department Store had multiple locations including a location in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
00:54:48
Simon: Well the number of stores and— Cummings: And on 3rd and 4th Street. Simon: Yes, 3rd and 4th Street. Cummings: But most of them were little. Most of them were— Simon: A one-man operation. Cummings: One-man operations and they certainly catered to the poor, the working man. The working man was then making what, 2
bucks a day, 3 bucks a day. Well hell, when I started to work in New Jersey, I got 44 cents an hour. Now you'd think that was 1905, wouldn't you? But I got eight times four, three dollars and a half a day working in 1936 out of college. Well now and I was highly paid, so think what the poor fellows were getting here. And these stores on the South Side were catering to those laborers. Another thing somebody might not tell you, but at that period of time, I'm now in the Twenties, we had plenty of Hungarians, plenty of Slovenians, plenty of Austrians, plenty of Germans, plenty of Spaniards, plenty of Portuguese spread through the south— And they each had their own stores. You could go into a Spanish store and buy Spanish food, you could go into a Portuguese store and buy Portuguese food, you could go into an Italian store and buy Italian food. And my father, who had traveled a lot, South America and around in his job, he loved, not exotic foods but different ones, and he'd bring home all of these things from these stores on the South Side, which you could get. You'd just walk in and—
Simon: But he'd be the one to go down there and buy it. Cummings: Oh yeah, not Mother. She didn't want to go over there and he'd get it coming to or from the office. Hell, I had garbanzas
[garbanzo beans]— Do you know the word? I had them at what, 12, and he bought them over there. And we had alligator pears before anybody knew what they were. But he found them over there. And good Spanish olive oil we had as a kid, which you'd get over there. And all these other— Bacalao. Do you know what that is? Dried salted fish. He'd bring home these foods that he'd learned. And there were other stores, as I say, for just Italians. Same with churches. And you've got somebody to tell you about the South Side churches.
Simon: Yeah.
00:59:12
Cummings: Because I don't know enough about them. But there plenty of those, plenty of them, any sect you wanted. Simon: Tell me about the North Side churches then. Cummings: Well, there were the Lutherans spread all over and the Moravians, two or three Moravian. The Lutherans were all over. Simon: Was there something of a social pecking order? Did it seem to matter very much whether you were— Cummings: Not as a boy. It did— I saw it when I grew up, but when I was a boy I didn't even notice it. As a matter of fact, I was
baptized in the Holy Infancy Catholic Church over on 4th and Taylor is it, 4th and whatever it is, and Mother went to that church because that was the only Catholic church. And between my mother and myself, I think we built five different Catholic churches in town. (chuckling) You know the system of the Catholics, when they get big, they divide and you start another one, then you start another one. Well we started on the North Side on I believe it was a converted barn. If it wasn't, it was a very rudimentary wooden church on Union Boulevard, I think it's between New and Main. And then the next thing you know why they moved to West Side. The Catholics bought out a Lutheran church or somebody's church, which is a big nice brick church. Well then they filled that and then they built a church over here, St. Anne's41. Then they filled that and they built one out here. (chuckling) And if you're a Catholic, you go where they— You can leave that all out. Matt Emory could tell you more about churches. Did he tell you much about it?
Simon: He told me a bit about it, yeah. Cummings: Because that's his cup of tea. It's not mine, not a bit. Simon: So the South Side people shopped on the South Side and the North Side people shopped in Allentown. Or lots of them. Cummings: There's not a hell of a lot of untruth in that. But, of course, the North Side had their shops downtown. The old stores
were there, but they weren't humdingers like Allentown. Simon: Do you think the Moravians, who owned a lot of that property, retarded the development of the North Side, they weren't
eager for commerce? 41 St. Anne’s Catholic Church is located on Easton and Washington Avenues in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.
Cummings: Not in my lifetime. The story that I get is that they retarded the growth of Bethlehem in 1860’s, 1870’s, 1890’s when they did own everything and they were very close-knit. But by the time I knew anything about it, why they had sold off all of these great big farms or holdings that they had and were no longer holding it among themselves. My dad told of course that when he came in 1905, it was pretty damn primitive, the city. Well his house— We bought a home on Wall Street, Mrs. Cummings and I did, in 1942, a brick home with a slate roof, a cellar and an attic for $2,400. It had an outhouse, a two-holer outhouse in the backyard.
Simon: No plumbing. Cummings: No plumbing. No real bathroom fixtures. We had chemical toilets in it. A bake house in the backyard, been there since
1840, and that was within 250 feet of Wall and High Street. Right in the center of Bethlehem. We had no sewers in town until well after World War II, long after. Now that part we were backward on, the city was, with their cesspools all over town. Has anybody else told you that? Must have. That took a long time coming, that took a long time coming. Then somebody else who knows more about it should tell you about our water, drinking the river water and the local water we'd had for years. And then we got this mountain water and that was a blessing. We were lucky. Boy, Jesus. When you think of Pittsburgh and Cleveland and the big cities and the water they drink after it's purified, why we're just trebly blessed. But it took a while to get here, it took a while to get here.
Simon: What was World War II like? Well you came back here, you said, in '41 [1941]. Cummings: Yeah, and I was in the mining department42 of the steel company. Simon: Were you working for them before '41 [1941]? Cummings: No. When I got out of college, I worked for the New Jersey Zinc Company43 in Franklin, New Jersey. That was at 44
cents an hour. Then I went to Minnesota for three years and that's where I met my wife. Came back here in 1940 before the war. Matter of fact, we were on our honeymoon during Pearl Harbor44. Yeah, I remember it exactly.
Simon: Terrific. Did you know where Pearl Harbor was before then?
42 The department responsible for mining the raw materials used in steel production. 43 Now known as The Horsehead Corporation, this company was a major American producer of zinc, especially from 1897-1966. 44 On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii.
01:01:13
01:04:09
Cummings: You mean geographically? Oh yeah, sure, for sure. Geography was always one of my good subjects. I had no worry
about that one. No, no. Simon: So, what was it like here during the war? Cummings: Well, it was busy as the devil, as you can well imagine, and the women again in the plant running three shifts a day all
the time, everything going full. Simon: Were you working in fabrication or— Cummings: No, I was in the main office in the mining department on the iron ore end of it. I tried to get in the service, a couple times
I went down and physically they wouldn't let me in. Well I found out, of course, later that I guess if I'd have gone down, you know, tried again the last month, by that time they were taking my disability, but I didn't go the third time.
Simon: Your rheumatic fever? Cummings: Yeah. And I say I didn't go the third time. But again, we had the Maennerchor to go to with all of our friends and the
girls that were home from service, or their husbands were in service, we'd be down there. A great hangout for all of us. But it was a busy spot, it was a busy spot. But I don't know, when you put all of that down, it comes back out on the tape, what do you do, type it, have somebody type it or you listen to it a couple times?
(end of recording)