the 21st of june marked a splendid turnout for the second poetry reading for the labors of our fingertips: poems from manufacturing history in berks county. almost all of the seats filled as 24 appreciative audience-folks at studio b in boyertown listened to the stories built into these poems, and four of the actual poem-sources shared their heart-words and memories with everyone as questions filtered toward them at the front of the room.
( all photographs of this poetry reading are courtesy
of samantha waterman, a great supporter of this project )
linda steffy joined this reading as well, as she did the first. other new faces for the memory-sharing from poems from the project were the ever-hysterical winnie pitzonka, as well as alice gerhart and lester christman. pitzonka made her way through life with belts and suspenders. gerhart briefly knew her days as a cutter of vents for parachutes in world war ii. and christman kept close to caskets at the boyertown burial casket company for 40 years. below, you'll notice an excerpt from christman's poem, and you'll see pitzonka's and gerhart's further down the blogging road.
born in 1927, lester christman lives in bechtelsville borough in berks county. here is an excerpt from his poem crafted as a part of this project.
*
soldering, repairing, welding. on the fifth floor of boyertown
casket works, i labored with the boxes for those who stopped
breathing. on the top floor, the sixth, paint met each surface.
i learned my way around a casket in 1947, after the draft
and spending a year in germany and france. at first, they
paid me 99 cents an hour, and in a month, they gave me
a raise by one nickel. my aunt, uncle, and some cousins
in the family worked at the factory, too. richard yoder
gave me papers he had typed up as records of this history,
industry firsts—cast-iron caskets, plastic ones, full metal tops,
plexiglas inner liners. eventually, they had me delivering
the caskets to undertakers all around our region, across
county lines. i became friends with those undertakers,
something few can say. but i never dreamed they’d close
that place, 40 years of working there built into my bones.
a friend and i visited, cameras snapping scenes of the dim
demolition, watching brick break, crumble, falling of tallest
walls, dust rising, sky expanding where one department after
another had been. i have an album of these photographs,
the evolution of an industry leaving our town just
like the bodies for the caskets we created left living, left
life, and found new, quieter homes in the dirt, earth.
two careers later, the director of ott funeral home asked
if i would take a job picking up the dead from hospitals
and nursing homes. he’d known i delivered caskets
for years. so he hired me to bring bodies back,
an incidental full circle route for my days. babies
and children were the hardest on my eyes, where
i kept strong on the road for the integrity of knowing
someone had to do this work. i’d grown used to it
with the older folks. i transported hundreds of bodies.
*
thank you to everyone who attended the reading to make it a wonderful sunday afternoon. and a gracious thank you to sammi mason for offering her skills with hair-curling for the poet !
( winnie pitzonka is possibly one of the best
laughter enthusiasts in the bally borough. )
( winnie pitzonka eggs on kicks of laughter almost as though it's her job. )
( linda steffy and the infamous little timing device of her teenage years. )
( alice gerhart spoke not only of her brief time in cutting vents into
parachutes but also about her many years as a local art teacher
and even had one past student stand up in the audience to thank her
and tell her what a wonderfully encouraging mentor she had been. )
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