My Nightmare on Penn Street

There was a time when downtown Reading, Pennsylvania had everything. Of course I’m thinking of long long ago when it also helped to be a kid to believe that.

Reading’s Penn Street was like a theme park to me back then in the 1950s. I grew up in a post WWll suburb of the city and could ride the bus downtown by myself and not worry that my mother would call the police to form a search party.

As soon as I hopped off, I’d head for the soft pretzel cart in Penn Square and the vendor with the horn-rimmed glasses and a smile who hardly ever said a word. His pretzels cost a nickel apiece and some days were fresher than others.

Occasionally, I came downtown to fold cardboard boxes at Imber’s— my grandfather’s store. At a nickel a box he vastly overpaid me. Mostly my trips were just to have fun and wander into the “Five and Dimes”— Woolworths and Kresge’s —the shiny precursors to today’s dull discount stores.

From baseball gloves at Kagan’s to Boy Scout uniforms at Croll and Keck, Penn Street was the place that had something for everyone and offered special attractions for me unlikely to be found anywhere today.

Take the fluoroscope at Farr’s shoe store at 5th and Penn, a tool intended to show how the store’s shoes fit. This was a device that allowed you to look down and actually see the bones in your feet as you stood under its beam in your new penny loafers.

Turned out that it was as unsafe as it was entertaining, maybe as bad as having a load of X-Rays at once but who knew? And who sued years later after they found out?

The only escalator in town was at Pomeroy’s, Reading’s multi story department store. It was wooden and wonderful to ride. Unlike today’s smooth metal stairways, it bumped and shook as its moving stairs made their orbits between floors. When its stairs flattened out and disappeared there was a gap large enough between the moving wood and the stationary terminus that you could fit your hand in it if you didn’t know any better. One boy I went to school with did just that and lost pieces of several fingers. If it had happened today, I bet he might not have had to work a day in his life.

And there was the treasure chest at the Crystal, the biggest restaurant in town. What a smart bit of marketing by the owners who filled a trunk full of small rewards for kids who had urged their parents to bring them to eat there. I got my first baseball cards out of the Crystal’s “Treasure Chest,” including an early one of the great Red Sox slugger Ted Williams. Too bad I have no idea what I did with it.

A kid could entertain himself up and down Penn Street. You could watch the trains as they squealed across the tracks that crossed at 7th and Penn eating a Coney Island hot dog while waiting to get a haircut if the barber let you.

But some of my best times downtown as well as what turned out to be my worst were at the movies. Reading once had its fair share of movie palaces with the names of that era—Astor, Embassy, Loews and Warner. All are now gone along with the experience that came from buying a ticket to a grand theater as well as a movie.

And there was also the Park which was off limits to kids. If Penn Street had everything from A to Zeswitz— the music store where I bought my first record albums —then the Park Theater covered X. It was Reading’s home to the final years of burlesque as well as the early ones of Bridgett Bardot and later unadulterated very adult rated porn.

My first memories of going to the movies include “Mr. Roberts” starring Henry Fonda and Jack Lemon and “Guys and Dolls” with Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra. My parents took me. But what they never heard about was the time I missed a day of 6th grade to go to the movies without them.

Two friends of mine talked me into it although I can’t claim it took much more than asking me if I wanted to join them. We were all Jewish and it was a minor Jewish holiday and so obscure and insignificant an observance that only the most devout regulars at Kesher Zion synagogue showed up for morning prayer joined by us, three kids playing hooky.

Our absence from school and appearance at the service was a sham. We were on our way to a double feature. On the theater marquee was a pairing that wasn’t exactly biblical. We had skipped class and bluffed God to watch “Frankenstein” and “Dracula” and I’m talking the classic hall of fame horror genre versions starring Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Scary movies indeed!

That night as I lay in bed I knew falling asleep would be tough. Frankenstein and Dracula were either going to show up in my dreams or in my bedroom and I was powerless to choose. I was grateful for the street light down on the corner. At least I wasn’t totally in the dark. But suddenly a shadow streaked across my bedroom wall and I couldn’t move. I almost couldn’t breathe. Several more times the shadow seemed to lunge at me until I realized that it was created by each car that passed along the street outside my window. Nevertheless I was spooked for days.

Yes, I paid for more than just the two movies that day and I’ve never dared to watch either of them again. This particular wayward adventure downtown will always remain my Nightmare on Penn Street.