Gene Autry was brought to Lehighton by a train and a need to get his saddle fixed. He put country music into the mainstream, our most famous singing cowboy. He was the real deal. |
Everyone knows how to fill a bathtub. The key is to put more water into it than is
allowed to drain out.
Same is true for our local economy. Keep more money here than we allow to leave.
Both of my grandfathers made the jump from farm-life to
business in the early 1900s. Cal Haas
worked hard as a bread deliveryman for two bakeries to raise enough dough
(couldn’t resist) to build his own general store in 1930.
My grandfather Cal Haas is on the left. A 2-seat carriage ride was part of his life led him to delivering bread and later groceries. He even borrowed a team and a sleigh to deliver in the snow. |
Cal promoting Freihofer's "Sonny Boy" bread. A photo of the store owner holding their bread was a common sight in many corner stores. This 20"x28" photo hung at Haas' most of their 60+ years. |
Zach Rabenold was a
welder at the Packerton Yard Shops. On
the side, he ran a tack shop in his backyard, one of his many leftover farm
skills. One day, Gene Autry and his
entourage were passing through town and needed saddle work done. Both Zach and Lehighton now had Autry’s money
in our bathtub.
We are really fortunate here in Carbon County to have so
much natural beauty that people can live in a place so many love to visit here
to play. (Rand McNally lists Jim Thorpe one of its ten
best small towns in America.) We have a
good tourism infrastructure that continues to improve as we add more bike
riding trails and more access to them.
Trails that bring tourists here to spend money earned elsewhere.
We have manufacturing too.
KME Kovatch and their 700-employees are set to send 100 trucks to
China. (Yes, EXPORTING to China at
$500,000 a pop!) They also have a large
pending order to New York City, as well as many other major cities including
Los Angeles. You could say the Kovatch
family and Nesquehoning are certainly doing their share to fill up the tub.
This is my Uncle Robert Haas on the last day of the store, removing the letters from the store he owned for 30+ years that his father started in 1930. |
The same cannot be said of other corporations. It is estimated that 70% of Pennsylvania
corporations pay no corporate tax. We
can be glad that Wal Mart and Lowes have come here. They do infuse new commerce here. But their lack of paying Pennsylvania tax
puts an undue tax burden on our smaller businesses, not to mention the business
they take from them.
You could have asked my Uncle Bobby Haas about that in
1996. That’s the year he had to close my
grandfather’s corner grocery store. I
could mention other small businesses that have since closed as well. Even though Kovatch is our largest
manufacturer, they cannot compete with other large multi-state corporations
with more tax loopholes to play in.
Most of our Carbon businesses pay too much in taxes because
of the sweetheart deals the much larger corporations get. But Governor Corbett wants to continue giving
big business big tax breaks that send our hard-earned money out of the state
and out of the country (i.e. Royal Dutch Shell Oil is getting a $1.7 billion
dollar tax credit from our Governor and General Assembly. Dutch Shell is on pace to make a $30 billion
profit this year.)
Our huge reserves of natural gas here in Pennsylvania should
be filling our tub to the brim. But
there are some large holes in it. Sadly,
most of the natural gas drilling jobs created have been filled by out of state
guest workers from places like Texas and Oklahoma and most of these workers
stay here 2 weeks and go home for 2 weeks to spend most of their paychecks back
home, sending more money down our drain.
Haas' Store after the remodeling of the early 1970s. |
We own the most gas of any state yet we collect almost
nothing from this state resource. It has
been a boom for the areas that have it, but the rest of the state earns
nothing. This and other leaks like the Delaware-loophole
are draining away money that should stay here.
(We must plug it up the right way, not the way Governor Corbett has
proposed.)
I owe my parents for instilling these insights in me, for
they taught me how to always try to buy local.
Like my parents, I have never left town to buy a car. Every washer, dryer, air conditioner, stove,
etc was bought at one of two local businesses.
We have always been loyal to our small town businesses.
Zach relaxing at Flagstaff Park in the 1920s. |
But we also need to make our tub ready to receive
money. We have many strengths here: we
have manufacturing, we have biking, rafting
and skiing, we have green energy in our Nesquehoning solar field, we
have an agricultural economy, we have a rock-solid work-ethic here. If we invest more in ourselves, nothing will
hold us back.
My grandfather's shop as it looks today. |
The "Shop" as we all knew it, as it looked one spring in the early 1970s. |
Gene Autry coming to town is a forgotten footnote in our past. But that doesn’t minimize the lesson in it. Had we not had a rail line through town, he would not have stopped here. Had no one here had the skills he was looking for, he would have
spent his money elsewhere.
My grandfather and Gene Autry are long passed away, though
Zach’s quaint Lehighton tack shop still stands at 9th and Mahoning
Streets. Who knows when the next Gene
Autry may plan a visit here? If we are
wise, we will create ways to always be ready to attract and receive
opportunities here.
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