Hibou

Intermission. Before the snap...

As I (nervously) walked towards this last piece of history, that remained that I so strongly feel was the heart of our pop culture that we love today, I noticed that there was a lot of rubble surrounding the structure. Now of course I picked up a few pieces of glass and metal around that area that looked interesting but what I was not prepared to see, was this image here.

Now of course once I realized this, I had to wander off... wouldn't you?! Once I walked off the 'guided path', this is what I was faced with. Right. Up. And. Personal. (Oh, yes...)

Once I started to walk around and appreciate this site for what it was, I started to try to look at this area that I was standing in, as it would've appeared during it's time of peak operation... in other words, what it would've been like to park the car and walk through these gates in the early 1940's. Lunch-pail in hand... And so, I took more pictures of the region. But then... then, I took this picture and this was the moment that I think changed my own personal timeline. "Wait, that damn smoke stack is right behind this tree line..."

Since I feel like I'm stuck within the Doctor's Confession Dial - let's go with time... July 17th (Monday), 2023 at 5:02pm EST As I've attempted to write about numerous times here before, but got (let's call it) sidetracked, on our way back up from NJ when we picked up our daughter, I (for some unknown / known reason) took her on a field trip through the NEPA (North East Pennsylvania) coal cracking region. When I set out to go on this impromptu excursion, I didn't realize what was in store for for me, but as I mentioned before, it was on this day, on this hour that I felt like The Shadow was guiding me. Well... rather, the ghost of corporate sponsorship leading to the immediate success of one of our most treasures cultural icons of the 20th century, was guiding me. (Ahem) So... After Centalia, after "Santa Claus Coal Town", we arrived here in Ashley, PA. The home of the Huber (Maxwell) Breaker... home of Blue Coal. I parked the Jeep right where I showed that red arrow in the image above. I told my wife and my daughter that I would "just be a few minutes". You see, from where I was parked, all that could be seen was the great smoke stack, as that's all that remains here. In this series of photos, it shows the scale of what was once here in this location and that which remains... that being, the great tall smoke stack. My own photos... I knew that there was some sort of remembrance park here and that's all I was expected to find... which is why I told my wife and daughter that I would only be a few minutes. So as I mentioned before, I parked our vehicle, got out.... took some pictures and proceeded to the park. Once I walked through the gates of what was left of these hallowed grounds, I took more pictures! Again, in my mind, without the sponsorship of Blue Coal, there is no Shadow as we know...

I think I've found a format which just might work here...

I swear, it was so much easier when all I had to think and write about was where this hobby was headed and what was fueling the speculative market.

This is going to take me forever to get through but at least I'm here...

A quick interermission (?)...

Do you see this red arrow? This is where I parked the Jeep and began this impromptu visit to this 'Shadow' and Hallowed ground!

Once again, I'll attempt to restart this story... On our way back home, I had to make one last stop and that would be at that the remains of the old Huber Breaker in Ashley, Pennsylvania... home of Blue Coal! I guess this would be considered a pilgrimage to some. But this... this was the chance to witness history. The idea of touching history at this point was all but a dream within a dream!

That was a lot to get through as I'm inching forward... Intermission.

I'll try to get back to this stolen moment in time that I referenced last week as it relates to Blue Coal and the Huber Breaker in Ashley, PA., formally owned and operated by the Blue Coal Corporation which was a subsidiary of the Glen Alden Coal Company. I was able to obtain these two great photographs off of eBay... the first is an original photo by Peter Rekus that appeared in the Patriot News Newspaper (Harrisburgh, PA.) on September 13, 1984 of the Huber Breaker as seen from Interstate 81. The last time I traveled past this area, I was able to see that the reason I was never able to see this magnificent structure from the road, while driving in a car, was that because that area is mostly obscured by trees. I added a blue tint to the photograph which I think adds a bit more detail to the photograph... Here's a great little write-up from 2013 including pictures of the breaker, a year before the structure was demolished... https://sestevens.com/pennsylvania-urbex-revisiting-the-ashley-huber-coal-breaker/ And the local news feature from a year later in 2014... https://www.wnep.com/article/news/local/luzerne-county/breaking-down-the-huber-breaker/523-cb7cf801-fbc8-4632-b3a9-942d394877c1 ... ... The second picture I was able to obtain over the course of this past year was this fantastic original promotional 8X10 featuring Frank Readick Jr.as The Shadow for Blue Coal. Frank Readick Jr. Now, James LaCurto (remember that name) was the very first radio actor that gave voice to the mysterious figure of The Shadow as he introduced Street and Smith's Detective Story Hour in 1930 but was quickly replaced by Frank Readick Jr. as LaCurto decided to depart from the radio waves to revisit the bright lights of Broadway. I'll get back to him later but for tonight, I want to focus a little more on Readick as I believe it was truly his voice that prompted the listeners of the Street and Smith Detective Story Hour to seek out the non existent pulp featuring this mysterious figure known as The Shadow in 1930/1931. It was this public response that prompted Street and Smith to construct a pulp magazine featuring The Shadow and as fortune would have it, Walter B. Gibson happened to be at the right place at the right time in order to facilitate this! There are no known recordings that exist of Frank Readick Jr. introducing Street and Smith's Detective Story Hour from 1930/1931 on the radio, but there are these theatrical shorts that exist from that time that were produced by Columbia and distributed to local movie theaters to introduce their feature presentations. These do feature Frank Readick Jr. as The Shadow, so we can get a sense of how these were received by the pop culture audience of the early 1930's. And in a bit of a twist for the 1930's Shadow radio series... there was one episode that is just one of my favorites and it's not hard to determine why. Now this one sits just outside of the 1930's (in the early 1940's), but it kind of features two Shadows?! In this episode, Bill Johnstone plays The Shadow with Marjorie Anderson as Margot Lane. The surprise 'guest' though is Frank Readick Jr. who plays... You have to listen to this exceptional episode from January 19, 1941.

So, well now... Here's a cheap intermission while I still continue to contemplate how to go forward. Mick Hucknall in 1992. And in case I haven't mentioned it before... that was the best year of my life. I'm sure I'll get to the juxtaposition soon enough here.

This year can't end soon enough. As it is... the recent events in my life can only illustrate one simple fact. And that is, as these years slip by, we all grow older despite our internal mechanisms to hold on to where we've 'locked' everything in, as it relates to the past. Like my friend Rob has told me... "You and your time travel". Yup. Time is undefeated. (I'm desperately trying to unseat its title...) Anyways, I found this image this week and it's just so good. This random picture of Orson Welles and the magnificent, Rita Hayworth. In this image I see Orson (cigar in hand), either trying desperately to hypnotize Rita, or conjuring his Shadow years (as this was taken in 1945), by attempting to become invisible at this moment in time and cloud her mind!

Now I know I'm still dancing around this and I'm still not at the point where I stole history. Stole history? Oh yeah... you see, I believe it was that significant moment that forever changed my own history - my own timeline. Perhaps, that's why I'm finding it so hard to push through and past this point. If you were given a chance to touch history in a way that shouldn't be allowed... would you? Well. I think I did just that. Before I sign off for the night and for the week, I want to send a thank you to my friend Rob who gave me this delicious RedBreast 12 a few years ago. I never opened it and I think I was saving it for some "End of the World" type of event like we all experienced in 2020. Ironically, that was what prompted me to restart this journey and this journal... Anyways, I think I'm there and holy $#!+, if you're paying attention to the news lately, we might just be at that precipice. But no, seriously speaking (is there such a thing with me?), this Irish Whiskey he gave me all of those years ago certainly helped to get me to this point tonight. Thank you Rob... yes, it has been opened now. And with that, I think I'm going to dip back into the 80's with Susanna Hoffs for a bit. Cheers.

I'll try this again... My wife and I had just picked up my daughter from the Newark International Airport... she was so tired but so relieved to be off of this 12 hour flight. We drove for a little bit but decided to stay at a hotel in Jersey. The next morning we started and made our way back up north but taking a bit of the scenic route - stopping in Centralia and visiting the site of the old St. Nicholas Coal Breaker, which is no longer there of course. As I started to post just over two months ago... the last stop we made in Pennsylvania was in Ashley, which is just one mile outside of Wilkes-Barre, PA. I ended that last post stating that I felt at that point of our trip back home, The Shadow was now guiding me. I have been obsessed with this one particular sponsor of the Shadow radio shows of the 1930's - Blue Coal. As I explained to my daughter after we left Ashley, PA., in my view, if it wasn't for Blue Coal, there aren't any superheroes as we've all come to know and love. Now yes, this may be a stretch but maybe not. Blue Coal was the primary sponsor of the radio show broadcast on the Mutual Broadcasting System (Mutual Radio Network) for 12 consecutive years from 1937 to 1949. They had also been involved in the earlier attempts of the show in 1932/1933 and 1934/1935. This site here is a great resource that shows all of the different sponsors over the years. https://www.shadowsanctum.net/radio/radio_es.html One other sponsor, shown in that list (1938/1939), was for these automotive tires... Goodrich Safety Silvertowns. When you listen to some of the episodes around that time, it's quite funny to hear The Shadow break in during the live commercial announcements stating something like "The Shadow knows - how important it is to be able to stop on wet roads". I bought this promotional tire ashtray of theirs... One very interesting story, to put a spotlight (pun intended) on how important Blue Coal was to the success of The Shadow, was from this sponsor of the show that premiered in 1932. This attempt of The Shadow radio program was sponsored by Hachmeister Lind Co., the manufacturers of Perfect-o-Lite which were automotive headlights. I also bought a pair of these headlights as well... Based on the packaging, you can see that these were the latest and greatest in terms of automotive illumination! Anyways, like I said... they were the sponsors for the inaugural Shadow radio program (in which the character of The Shadow was not simply a narrator as had been in 1930/1931 for Street and Smith's Detective Story Hour.) but that series only lasted 5 episodes. The reason why that initial Shadow radio show failed was because Street and Smith lost their sponsor (Perfect-O-Lite) because the company was sued into bankruptcy because their bulbs were so bad that so many people that used them, got into accidents at night. Yeah, despite their advertising... you couldn't see around corners with these things! So in the early 30's, had it not been for Blue Coal, The Shadow radio show might now have existed and furthermore, might not have developed into the 1937 version that magnificently cast a 22 year old Orson Welles as The Shadow. So here's this extension... if it wasn't for Blue Coal and the immediate success of the radio series, a few notable fans by the name of Bill Finger and Bob Kane might not have created what they did.

I can only go so far...

My wife and I had just picked up my daughter from the Newark International Airport... she was so tired but so relieved to be off of this 12 hour flight.

That clip of the episode of Doctor Who that I posted, "Heaven Sent" , in these past couple of months, has become my favorite. And that would be because I'm one hundred percent feeling like this is me right now... this is where I'm at and damn you, Steven Moffat for this episode. I'm sorry... Thank you Steven Moffat for this episode... I've watched it a few times over the course of these past couple of months. Maybe I didn't have the foresight to see this but here we are... According to Doctor Who WIKI, The Confession Dial is a small, circular disk used as part of a Gallifreyan ritual act of purification. (Editor's Note- I've been mildly obsessed with the history of the Cathars for many years now...) The Confession Dial allowed a dying Time Lord to face their demons and make their peace before their mind was uploaded to the Matrix. Now how could I NOT be attracted to that?! So... My Confession Dial.

I can do this... ... I hope.

... and why can't I go past that last post?

It's like I'm stuck here...