Driving

I saw John Fielding driving David Kamioner north on Third Street at Washington Street in a beat up compact car that reminded me of my old Mazda. I forget who was driving, but John Fielding was wearing a black cowboy hat.

Former Northeast Tap Room Owner Back in Berks

There’s a light around Pete Cammarano.
It’s not the light from the ancient Reading Premium beer signs behind the bar at Mike’s Tavern.
Pete, 53, of Reading owned and operated the Northeast Tap Room on North 12th Street for almost 20 years.
He sold the Tap Room in 2003 and moved to Seattle and then Memphis, Tenn., looking for a new start.
He came back to Reading and bought Mike’s at 135 Exeter St. in May, from the Duplak family, who owned and operated the bar for 76 years. The original liquor license hanging behind the bar is dated 1934, one year after Prohibition ended.
Mike’s was popular with shift workers at the former Dana Corp. Parish plant. The blue-collar shot-and-beer crowd is gone.
Pete bought the Northeast Tap Room in 1983 and replaced a Budweiser tap with one of Yuengling’s varietal beers. Eventually, the Tap Room offered 100 different beers. The tavern started drawing beer aficionados from all over Berks County.
Then around 1990, the microbrew craze hit and the Tap Room was a hot spot.
While living in Memphis, where he opened a hoagie shop, Pete came home for the holidays in 2009 and visited Mike’s, which had been one of his old haunts.
The owners were looking to sell and Pete saw a way home.
Since May, Pete has transformed Mike’s. Stella Artois is the most conventional beer on tap.
“The Stella Artois is there on tap so the others can be weird,” Pete joked.
Mike’s features three varieties from Lagunitas Brewing Co., San Francisco, on tap and 80 other beers, domestic, international and “weird.” One tastes like Frank’s Black Cherry Wishniak.
Pete, almost from the day he left Reading, felt the tug of his hometown calling him back.
As the light faded outside one recent afternoon and patron after patron wandered in, Pete greeted each by name.
The patrons at Mike’s, many former denizens of the Tap Room, will tell you that it’s the warm light of Pete’s beer knowledge, mellow personality and friendly smile that keeps them coming back.
For Pete, he says he’s home for good.
“This is where I’m supposed to be and it feels really good to be back,” he said.

Eagles vs. Giants, 1968

A snowball hit my bedroom window on Christmas morning, 1968.

It was the O'Hara boys.

It couldn't have been 9 a.m., and already they were suited up in New York football Giants uniforms.

John, 11, a notorious instigator, was spinning a football as his brothers Patrick, 9, and Victor, 8, blew on their hands and jogged in place.

"Are you coming or what?" John snarled.

I was pulling on the pants of the Eagles uniform my dad had just given me for Christmas.

At 10, I already was an inveterate Eagles fan. My father sold bobble dolls, pins and pennants with his partner, Jack Becker, at Franklin Field. I sat on the cement stairs in the stands behind the Eagles bench on a crushed cardboard box my dad gave me when he greased the security guard. Back then it took only $5 to get a 50-yard-line seat for the second half. Another buck got me hot chocolate and a hot dog.

Jack O'Hara must have gotten to the stores too late, or maybe he was in New Jersey, when he bought his boys their navy blue football costumes.

Nevertheless, it would be two-on-two, All-Star format, on the lawn of the Norris Hills Apartments.

Did I mention it was snowing?

It was me and Patrick against John and Victor. We kicked their butts.

The field was on a slight, north-south grade. There was a parking lot on top and an enormous evergreen at the bottom. The sidelines were the sidewalk and an apartment building.

As usual, John and I were the protagonists. Victor and Patrick were supporting characters.

John was much stronger and more athletic than I was, but he also was a hothead.

Patrick and I waited for Victor to fumble the ball or drop a pass from his frozen hands. John would unravel, and we'd sweep to victory.

Win or lose, we walked off heroes. In uniform. Bruised and bloodied. Veterans of a real tackle football game. A snow game, at that.

Even though John was angry at Victor for fumbling a last-ditch, razzle-dazzle kick return, he piggybacked him home when the boy complained his feet were frozen. They probably were. His mother, Lenore, would see to them.

When Dad asked who won, I told him, "The Eagles did, of course."

Mom made us some hot chocolate.

Dad and I sat by our cardboard Christmas fireplace and laughed at replays of Eagles fans throwing snowballs at Santa Claus.

Geedas Chronicles: For boy little things mean a lot

Geedas Chronicles: For boy little things mean a lot

For boy little things mean a lot

Joey Motze has spent a lot of time in hospitals.

That's why he cherishes the little things in life.

He embraces the simple pleasures, like going to church and school and not feeling sick all the time and having the energy to do the things kids his age do.

The Mount Penn boy was born with a disease that destroyed his kidneys when he was just a baby.

The 12-year-old sixth-grader at Antietam Middle School had a kidney transplanted from his mother, Jeanie, when he was 3 years old.

"That kidney lasted nine years," Jeanie said.

When it failed, Joey's dad, Michael, donated one of his kidneys in September.

Late last month, Joey's doctors at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia cleared him to go to church.

It might not sound like much, but the immune systems of transplant recipients are deliberately weakened to lessen the likelihood that they will reject their new organ.

Last week, Joey was cleared to go back to school.

"They hung a banner up in school that said 'Welcome Back Joey,' " he said.

Jeanie said the school district has been fantastic. When he was home recovering, Joey's teachers came out to the house a few times a week to make sure he stayed on task and kept up with his classmates. On Halloween, some district officials put on costumes and visited Joey at home.

Joey's sister, Danielle, 22, has been a huge help too.

Joey said he likes learning at home because it is quieter and he has more time to watch his favorite television shows. He misses going to school because it's easier to keep up and he likes being with classmates and friends.

Spending a lot of time in the hospital has been kind of tough, but he said he also enjoys going down to CHOP, which is what the Motzes call the children's hospital, because the staff there takes such good care of him.

Joey said he doesn't make New Year's resolutions and has learned to take life one day at a time.

"I'm in pretty good health now," he said.

He hasn't been outside much lately.

"It's too cold," he said. But when he does go outside, he likes to ride his mountain bike and shoot hoops.

Joey still has to go to CHOP once a week for blood work and other tests to see if his body is accepting his new kidney.

That's why he cherishes the little things in life.

When texting gets out of hand

In the hours before the Penn Street stabbing, Oct. 2 had been a slow day on the police desk at the Reading Eagle.
I was going through my e-mail when I came across a press release announcing the Pennsylvania Turnpike is now the first text-free tollway in the nation.
Statistics show that since Jan. 1, 2009, there have been 213 distracted-driver accidents on the turnpike.
I remember thinking how much texting has become a part of the social fabric. I often text my kids before I call them to make sure they’re not in class or working. Calling without warning is considered rude by some.
Around 11 a.m., the scanners crackled out a report of a stabbing in the 400 block of Penn Street.
When I got there I saw Christina Espinoza, blood streaming down her face, telling police that her boyfriend, Hector Leonel Pinto Catalan, 34, had just stabbed her in the forehead with a kitchen knife. Hector fled but was arrested later and charged with aggravated assault.
I had a camera with me and took a few pictures.
In one photo, as police, firefighters and paramedics tended to Christina, she appears to be texting someone on her cell phone.
“Now, that’s efficient,” I thought.
Anyway, ever since that day I had been wondering what important message required her immediate attention. After all, she just got stabbed in the head, right?

I ran into Christina on Oct. 15 in Reading Central Court, where she was waiting to testify at Hector’s hearing. I asked her who she was texting.
Christina said she actually had just received a text from Hector.
“He was asking me why I called the police on him,” she said.
Christina told me Hector didn’t stab her. She said they were wrestling over a kitchen knife when he let go suddenly, causing her to stab herself in the head. She said she wasn’t going to testify against Hector.
Assistant District Attorney David Golberg said that without Christina’s testimony, the charges were dismissed.
“This stuff happens all the time in domestic violence cases,” Golberg said.
OMG.

Jello Pudding Packs and other senior moments

One reason my parents have lived as long as they have in relatively good health is my mother's wonderful sense of humor.

Take for example, the case of the missing pudding pack.

One day, Mom was doing a load of wash, when something went awry.

Ever since they moved into a rancher in a 55-and-older community in Montgomeryville, Mom and Dad have been cramped for space. They used to have a three-story twin home in Norristown where I grew up, and they had a house in the Poconos until a few years ago.

Anyway, there are always things other than clothes and laundry detergent on top of the dryer. Diet sodas, canned goods, and various and sundry other items she can't find a place for in the kitchen cabinets reside there temporarily.

On this occasion, as Mom stuffed a load of colors into the washer, a Jell-O pudding pack got swept in with the clothes.

The pudding packs survived the wash cycle, but when Mom put the clothes in the dryer, she and Dad got their first clue something was amiss.

"It smelled like I was baking a cake," Mom said, unable to stifle her laughter.

All that tumbling around in the hot dryer proved too much for the pudding packs and they began releasing their chocolatey goodness, coating the damp clothes like some ill-conceived fabric softener.


It took a few minutes for Mom to figure out what had happened.

Dad stood behind her, wondering aloud if she wasn't having an episode of some sort.

"Why did you put pudding in the dryer?" Dad asked incredulously.

"I didn't do it on purpose, you dope," Mom responded, equally nonplussed.

Back in Norristown, the laundry room was in the basement. God only knows how many similar incidents occurred when the laundry was something Mom did away from prying male eyes in between her full-time job as a key punch operator at Bell Telephone and making dinner.

Mom preferred it that way and, truth be told, Dad and I also liked it when the laundry was squarely Mom's province. Now, with everything on one floor, foreign objects in the laundry are more easily detected by otherwise oblivious males.

To her credit, Mom rarely treated us like laundry morons except the time she accidentally splashed bleach on my favorite golf shirt.

When I complained about the white blotches on the shirt, Mom showed her true colors.

"Here," she said. "Let me rinse that out."