On Sonny Drake’s first day dead, the power of his words banged around in my head like outlaw biker ghosts brawling inside the gas tank of his vintage Harley-Davidson motorcycle.

“Live Pagan, die Pagan,” he said matter-of-factly in our last conversation.

The day after Sonny’s death, a month short of his 72nd birthday, I watched still-robust green leaves in a vibrant neighborhood tree begin to turn fiery red as each leaf prepared to fall. All life goes down sooner or later. Sonny called his body a vessel, a repository that holds blood, bone, tissue and organs that one day drops like a well-used scooter in a fatal crash on an oily stretch of dark and dangerous road.

But the righteous spirit of his hallowed Pagan’s Motorcycle Club lives forever, Sonny said.

At my friend’s funeral at Indiantown Gap National Cemetery, about 75 Pagans rode their shining heavy metal beasts through the sacred green land of the dead, passing headstones commemorating military warriors past, parking in a long line that embodied the menacing muscle of a fire-breathing dragon.

Beneath wooden beams of an open air pavilion, two uniformed Marines gently folded Old Glory and presented America’s symbol of freedom to Sonny’s widow, Margie. Christian prayers ended as the nice pastor with whom Sonny and I went to high school and played football presented his practiced, pious smile and disappeared back into the solemn, silent crowd.

Life had officially ended for the former Pagan’s Central Pennsylvania chapter president.

But the club had the last word.

Stepping unexpectedly to the front of the crowd where the pastor earlier stood, a blunt East Coast Pagan’s chapter president and military veteran commanded center stage for an encore. Evoking Sonny’s bold spirit in a piercing growl, he made clear his personal devotion to his deceased brother’s final destination.

“Valhalla!” he blasted in a deep voice, referencing the hallowed Norse afterlife reserved for Viking chieftains.

Assembled club members bellowed in response.

“Valhalla!”

Again the president howled his message.

“Valhalla!”

The outlaw multitude rumbled louder.

“Valhalla!”

Riding words hard and fast to honor the glory of their horde’s living and dead, the president thundered, “Pagan’s Nation!”

Fired up club members screamed their oath to the heavens.

“Pagan’s Nation!”

“Valhalla!” shouted the Pagan’s chapter president one last time, raising a clenched fist to the sky.

“Valhalla!” came the club’s uncompromising grand finale.

Still cemetery air trembled. Moving en masse and climbing on their bikes, the red, white and blue colors they wore on their backs shined with fire god Surt etched in black in the middle of their cutoff denim vests. Kicking over well-oiled engines they roared away from the boxed white ash remains of a good man who loved his country, family, friends and club.

In life Sonny stood tall and lean, muscled with a shaved head and ominous black-inked tattoos on both arms depicting wailing skulls and the Grim Reaper beckoning from a bourbon bottle-sized gray brand cut into his upper arm.

Yes, Sonny Drake lived and died a Pagan – a Pagan forever, forever a Pagan.

Non-club members and citizens like most of us rarely get a look inside the mind of a patched Pagan and former chapter president. I did because Sonny Drake and I grew up together in rural Central Pennsylvania. We respected each other until the end. As his life shut down, I offered to write a chapter of his life as part of a club history that John Hall, another friend of mine for more than 50 years, is putting together with personal stories from memorable Pagan’s members like Sonny Drake. Hall, 75, an elder non-active Pagan and former New York chapter president, is the author of Riding on the Edge: A Motorcycle Outlaw’s Tale.

Despite sneaky undercover cops and deadly rivals, this hardcore brotherhood stands proud and unbowed among East Coast one-percenters. Pagan membership rosters swell with prospects flexing hard young muscle beside seasoned brothers who more than ever roll across America in what Pagan leadership considers their expanding nation.

Following a second near-fatal motorcycle accident, Al “Sonny” Drake Jr. moved in 2021 to Citrus County, Florida, with Margie and two Doberman defenders that roared at me in the background when he and I talked for hours on the phone about his relationship with the Pagan’s Motorcycle Club. Sonny didn’t give away any secrets or talk club business. He channeled raw spirit that drove him deep into the soul of loyalty he feels about his brothers.

“You’re the only person that I have spoken with about my experiences,” he said.

We also talked frankly about how Sonny confronted, faced and accepted death with gallant courage. Despite increasing morphine doses, he spoke clearly and realistically, expressing curiosity in the face of pain.

“It’s a process what I’m going through,” he said. “Not good. Not bad. It is what it is.”

Sonny embraced death as a stand-up role model, an icon among club members, their families and friends, particularly younger guys who looked up to him. Without many like him left, younger Pagan’s should take heed and learn how to ride reality from one of the best.

Before moving south he led the club’s Appalachian chapter near Duncannon, PA, a rough-and-ready assemblage of Perry County country boys who understand the land and how to nurture the rough terrain, hard rocks and all. A former Marine, American legion commander and federal naval supply depot security officer for decades, Sonny knew the rules of the road.

OK, so hard road almost ate him up a couple of times – actually a jittery white-tail deer who hit his bike with the force of a steroid-ridden semi-pro linebacker and an oblivious jackass in a pickup truck who pulled out in front of him. Bones that didn’t break the first time broke the second. Sonny healed both times. When he went down he got up. After chewing gravel he spit it out. A few years later he took another spill and asked for an extra helping of asphalt for dessert.

To Sonny Drake the trappings of existence boiled down to the initials LPDP – “Live Pagan Die Pagan.” The letters PFFP also meant something sacred. “Pagan Forever Forever Pagan” defined his club commitment. Sonny made his allegiance clear when he signed off in a final email to me he ended with those abbreviations.

Sonny Drake’s words to live by still pound in my head. You, too, should crave holy primitive enlightenment from the now-stilled heart of a Pagan prince who sensed ancient warlord blood in his ancestry and did something about it. His daring created a force that remains a two-fisted cosmic spirit that guides hardcore searchers to explore the unknown.

So how’d Sonny Drake handle the 1% outlaw lifestyle?

“We all push our limits,” Sonny told me. “You’ve got to know who you are. You’ve got to know your place. Most people don’t know who they are. Too many people don’t know their place.”

Do you know your limits?

“Me? I’m good.”

How do you use that knowledge?

“I’m always casting pearls. I’m talking about lessons. Sometimes I kick myself in the ass wondering if I’m wasting my breath. Some people aren’t ready to understand. You only learn if you want to learn. That’s why I ride with the best. Always the A team, only the best.”

Did you jump at the chance to become a Pagan?

“I drug my feet about joining the club. A couple of 30-year guys would always say, hey, Sonny, when are you gonna put Sutar (that’s how the club spells the name) on your back? The Norse fire giant wielding his flaming sword is the club symbol – a god, a demon, a ruthless force to lead armies into battle. My family surname means dragon. I’m descended from Vikings so it looks like joining this fire-breathing club was meant to be. But I’d tell them, I’m not ready. I said I don’t think I’m the man you’re looking for. They got real serious and said you’re exactly the man we’re looking for. They knew what they wanted.”

Did you know what the Pagan’s wanted?

“When I was ready I knew they were right because I knew who I was. All honorable men belong to the same tribe. You’ve got to know who you are.

How did you handle your new outlaw life?

“Changing old ways is important. Everything changes. Nothing’s permanent. Not behaving badly makes a stronger nation. It’s great to be a Jesse James, right? Knuckle-dragging, chain-wielding, ax handle-swinging barbarians, right? We’re one-percenters. Nobody else in the biker world matters to us. But I won’t cross the line. I know what to do and what not to do. Knowing who you are is where club power is born. Look in the mirror. Tell me what you see. Tell me who you see.”

What did the Pagan’s see in you?

“The club saw discipline in me. Six years in the Marines, a top secret clearance in my job. The club respected what I would do to help. I respected the club. Look at me – Mr. Clean Boy Scout turned into a diamond, a chapter president. I added raw meat to the bone. A number of brothers influenced me to join. Like-minded brothers share the same patches, our military backgrounds, loyalty and respect. One in particular, I owe it all to him.  He knows who he is.”

Do risks come to a Pagan?

“In the club life we wear bullseyes on our backs.  Survival comes down to strength and loyalty. Living’s like riding a wild spirit that’s hard to control, hard to tame. Either you find the balance or you don’t.  We find honor and trust in the brotherhood. We’re getting bigger and stronger every day.”

You sure love your bikes, right?

“Bikes come and go, though. I’ve owned 16 Harleys over the years. My first bike was a ’67 XLCH Sportster I bought in 1970. I still have a 1947 Knucklehead (half ’47 Knucklehead/half ’48 Panhead) that’s a showpiece bike – one pure, sacred motorcycle. I totaled a Fat Boy when that deer ran out in front of me. I totaled a Softail when that pickup truck pulled out in front of me. For all my broken bones are worth, and I got a lot of them, I was sober both times.”

In our last two telephone conversations, Sonny talked about preparing for the last ride.

“I’m always searching,” he said. “Where did we come from? Where are we going?”

As life closed in, Sonny said he learned more about himself with each breath on each day. Continuing the quest for wisdom even when pancreatic cancer chewed up his body, Sonny knew the power of the fate he faced. He saw his passing as a trial by fire, an inferno that moved him deeper into a connection between the sweet mysteries of life and death’s mighty flames lifting him to Valhalla.

Telling me he hoped he didn’t sound corny, he said he told Margie, “I’m moving on. This vessel, this body, I’m in my cocoon, all curled up. I’ll emerge on the other side as a beautiful butterfly.”

Then Sonny laughed like he did when we boxed by the coal ash pit as teenagers and I caught him with a teeth-jarring shot in the mouth.

“Or a beautiful Harley,” he said.

A few days after Sonny’s funeral, I heard the boys threw him a party at their farm. Rain, gray skies and thick mud couldn’t dampen their mood or tone down the Pagan’s Nation message. Sonny’s final testimonial read aloud to a silent crowd encouraged guts and growth among the tribe.

 “Explosions come out of nowhere,” he said. “You better be ready to expect the unexpected. Loud and proud, I’ve lived my life to the fullest. We live in our own minds so you better get it right. To get something out you better put something in.”

Our beautiful outlaw put something in all right – something righteous and then some.

Even in death, when Sonny Drake spoke, the Pagan’s listened.

Maybe I did kill those chickens the summer of 1970, wiping out about 50 of the little cluckers on a Perry County back road when I was young, wild and free-range.

I launched my murder most fowl by making Sonny Drake and the other two guys in the van laugh so hard and so loud the chickens heard us coming and got so scared they ran together packed into a huddle so tight the panicky poultry suffocated to death. Asphyxiated, their bodies crushed so tightly against each other, they couldn’t muster a single cluck for help from their quivering beaks.

That’s what the farmer told our boss after witnessing us racing by howling at the top of our savage lungs with me inciting the riot, yelling the loudest, rocking the van back and forth and raising a cloud of dust as we fishtailed along the dirt road past the barn headed to the mountain.

The big German farmer later complained to Sonny’s father, Al, who was nice enough to hire us in the first place. I forget the exact nature of our job that morning, but Mr. Drake had hired us to help clear brush for a future new highway running through Juniata County. Mr. Drake drove a company pickup and held down a good job as a supervisor. Not one of us had listed chicken killer on our resume like we were bloodstained butchers at Mutzabaugh’s Meat Market in Duncannon.

The farmer considered us a gang of hoofty desperadoes coming home to roost. The big man in the bibs and straw hat pegged me as a hardboiled slaughterhouse madman. In a way he was right. Back then I didn’t give a peep about those dirty birds and almost asked the farmer if we could collect their limp downy corpses for a big barbecue at our next underage beer party.

If anything I considered the feather fluster second-degree poultry slaughter, definitely not henocide. I explained that wolves must have snuck down from the hills after we passed by to petrify the pecker-headed poultry.

I didn’t mean to kill the chickens. The thought never crossed my muddled mind that the dumb clucks could hear us or were even listening. If they hadn’t been so chicken and ignored the clatter their descendants might be alive today and their great-grandmothers would have lived on not as spring chickens, of course, but as aging biddies with nice nest eggs. But, no, the bird brains put all their eggs in one basket and the family tree came crashing down to bury their petrified chicken bones in the dirt.

Deep-fried finality serves them right on a silver platter.

In the long run, though, maybe I did the checked-out chickens a favor. Who wants to wind up as nuggets or a McChicken sandwich? Aren’t ghosts of chickens past/passed better off as birds of a feather flocking together in chicken heaven than getting executed to make industrially flattened meat patties?

More than 50 years later, henpecked by guilt, I’m ready to take responsibility for my featherbrained folly and apologize to the late Mr. Drake, the farmer, and mostly, to the deceased chickens.

Sonny’s gone now but I’m sure he’s proud of me as he lives eternal life in Valhalla shaking a tail feather, drinking mead and ale from an antler beer stein and digging into free all-you-can-eat chicken wings and legs and whatever other parts of the birds he wants to gobble. As for me, I no longer see walking dead chickens in my sleep, stunned zombie birds looking at me like I’m a nightmare worse than Colonel Sanders. I crave peace of mind, not chickens cackling at me like I’m some carnival geek.

Now I’m chicken tender, beating my big white meat breast for chicken compassion.

Maybe that’s why 30 years ago I turned pescatarian and only consume plant-based Chik’N Patties. Veggie chicken burgers don’t kill themselves by running into each other before I smoke ’em on the grill. Nope, no beef, pork or poultry for me and my aging heart. I’m a happy man, a proud Appalachian American raised with all the smoked trout, thick ears of Pennsylvania yellow sweet corn and fat red field-grown tomatoes I can eat.

Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Shortly after federal immigration agents arrested Higinio Mendez-Salazar I tried tracking his whereabouts. I quickly lost the man millions of Americans want to disappear.

Nobody will help me locate him, not his former federal public defender, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, Pike County jailers where ICE holds many undocumented immigrants or the U.S. Marshals Service.

I hope Mendez-Salazar’s family knows his location. I won’t knock on the Pittston Avenue door of his former residence in South Scranton and ask because I don’t want to further upset, scare or cause anybody to mistake me for a big, white plainclothes cop with a gun.

Maybe ICE gave him a phone call. Maybe they put him on a plane to Mexico. Maybe he’s in detention in Pike County Prison, but immigration officials there don’t answer the phone and don’t return my messages. Maybe ICE sent him to another state. Maybe they sent him to another country.

I lost track of Mendez-Salazar after authorities released him from Lackawanna County Prison. Mendez-Salazar just seemed to fade away, sucked into the darkness of an increasingly cruel immigration stranglehold that defies the public right to know how our heralded nation of law functions. To millions of American citizens living in a nation born of and dependent upon immigrant energy, he’s just another “illegal,” a vicious slur against millions of good people living and working in America as undocumented immigrants.

A June 6^th federal government press release announced, “The United States Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced Higinio Mendez-Salazar, age 52, Citizen of Mexico residing in Scranton, Pennsylvania, was charged yesterday by Criminal Information with Illegal Reentry.”

Federal prosecutors charged him with no other crime: no rape, murder, gang membership, child sex trafficking or heading up a drug cartel. Mendez-Salazar is only charged with returning to the United States “after previously having been removed from the United States.”

“The case was investigated by U.S. Immigration and Customs and Enforcement and Removal Operations and the Pennsylvania State Police. Acting United States Attorney John C. Gurganus is prosecuting the case,” the press release said.

Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) refuses to say what exact role they played in the capture of this man who did nothing illegal other than make his way into America’s Promised Land where, instead of feeling protected, he is persecuted and prosecuted.

On June 11 two Lackawanna County Prison officials told me Mendez-Salazar was an inmate at their facility “booked” there on June 4. Yet U.S. Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs and Enforcement (ICE) detainee locator listed him on the same day as being imprisoned at the Pike County Correctional Facility. Pike County Prison officials failed to respond to my telephone message about whether Mendez-Salazar was an inmate there.

“Mr. Mendez-Salazar was released to the custody of the US Marshals Service on 7/4/25,” Lackawanna County Warden Tim Betti said in an email. Betti said the county jail has no contract with ICE and that authorities locked up Mendez-Salazar in the county jail because of a previous county warrant.

“He was committed here on 6/5/25 on a bench warrant from Judge Thomas Munley and he has a detainer from the US Marshals Service,” Betti wrote. “I believe the Judge Munley bench warrant is for unpaid court costs and fines.  I have no idea what the USMS detainer pertains to.”

On July 14 I called the U.S. Marshals Service in Scranton and left a message, asking for Mendez-Salazar’s location. An agent later said they don’t have him. Try ICE, he said.

A federal judge in Wilkes-Barre eventually sentenced Mendez-Salazar to time served on the federal charge.  A staffer in the judge’s office said he has no idea where Mendez-Salazar went when sentencing concluded. Sometimes ICE is waiting in the hallway to pick up an undocumented person, he said, although another Wilkes-Barre judicial staffer later said she never saw that happen in the Wilkes-Barre federal courthouse.

Mendez-Salazar’s federal public defender no longer represents him because, according to a source, “his criminal case has concluded.” ICE no longer lists Mendez-Salazar in the ICE Online Detainee Locator System.

As America’s ICE-cold grip tightens on freedom, Mendez-Salazar is just another Mexican eaten up by our system of so-called liberty and justice for all. American government at the highest levels has declared war on immigrants, targeting them as the main “enemy of the people” in our new Mexican-American War. Immigrants from numerous other countries find themselves in the crosshairs, but Mexicans seem particularly vulnerable. Dehumanizing immigrants and their families is now part of a national political strategy to lose them whether by accident or by design.

In our alleged land of the free an increasingly powerful police state continues to openly hunt humans.

Although Mendez-Salazar and I once shared life in the same city, he now exists as an invisible man, vanishing like he never existed in Scranton in the first place. To Trump, ICE and countless Americans, “making America great again” means making millions of undocumented immigrants simply disappear.

A little frazzled but still in control the young bearded guy in front of the oven ladled tomato sauce on the dough with the ease of a Renaissance artist layering red paint on a priceless fresco.

Looking up he quickly explained.

“I just got an order for 30 pizzas,” he said. “It’ll take me 20, 30 minutes to get to yours.”

He wanted me to understand his challenge so I didn’t take the delay personally (I take everything personally and he must have picked up the vibe) or think he and his crew were goofing off on the job.

I knew better than that.

This is Santucci’s Pizza  at 901 S. 10th Street in the South Philly Italian Market, billed as the “Original Square Pizza,” and the best pizza in Philadelphia, a city with as many pizzerias as Michelangelo slapped brush strokes on a slice of the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

I’ve visited the Vatican. I strained my neck looking at the ceiling. But instead of gawking at angels assisting the righteous to ascend into heaven and pudgy cherubs (probably hungry for pizza) hovering naked near the roof, I’d rather watch a Santucci’s master chef create a fresh pizza with the sauce on top of ready-to-melt mozzarella and crispy dough holding the righteous secret recipe together.

I’ve eaten pizza in Rome and in Assisi, too, after visiting St. Francis’ tomb. And I swear on my middle name (Francis) that Santucci’s pizza is better than any pizza, as good as it was, I ate in the old country. Not only is Santucci’s pizza the best pizza in Philly, it’s the best pizza in the world.

How ‘bout that? Yeah, I know. But I’m not here to argue with you. When my mind’s made up, my mind’s made up. Don’t even think about trying to persuade me otherwise. I’ll just get worse.

When my wife and I drive from Scranton to go down the shore for a week we stop and grab four Santucci’s pizzas and load up on 9^th Street supplies like scamutz cheese, rolls, seeded bread, Sicilian olives and long hots. We eat Santucci’s slices for six nights straight. Hot, cold, whatever, I’ll embrace Santucci’s pizza anytime, anyplace. But my favorite moment arrives when I’m eating two scorching slices right out of the box while smacking my lips at the back of my car as I’m standing in the street.

We made it to the neighborhood early Saturday after a Friday night book-signing event for my latest novel at the Pen & Pencil Club. The P&P is America’s oldest press club where I’ve been a member for about 40 years. So we hit Santucci’s pretty much first thing in the morning, me thinking I might be blessed and get the first pizza of the day. We drove around for about 20 minutes looking for a parking space and as fate or divine guidance might have it, I eventually grabbed one of three VIP (very important pizzeria) spots right outside Santucci’s front door.

After finding out about the super pizza order, I said I’d wait no matter how long it took. As busy as the workers were everybody in the place treated me beautifully, the way it’s supposed to be. When my pizza was ready the man behind the counter pulled that red hot square out of the oven and handed over my reward. Everybody wished me well as I grinned and leaned into the door with my shoulder like a 220-pound Eagles halfback hitting a hole and sprinting for the end zone.

Like always when we come to Santucci’s, my wife Stephanie had already raised the Suburu Outback hatchback, made space and laid out the paper towels. Was it coincidence when Stephanie opened the box I heard the church bells across the street at St. Paul Roman Catholic Church peal louder than usual? I almost blessed myself. I almost took a knee.

“Whoa, I can’t even touch the crust it’s so hot,” I said as I juggled the steaming saucy, gooey dripping slice and took my first sacred mouthful.

Sauce sweeter than Dean Martin singing “That’s Amore,” chewy white cheese soft as a Northern Italian grandmother’s loving touch and a light golden crust baked to perfection created a sacramental food miracle even better than turning water to wine. I ate the one slice. I ate two slices. And after Stephanie tore the thick crusty edge off her second slice I ate the rest of her heavenly nourishment.

Later that night after we got home we tuned into Saturday Night Live at the Oldies hosted by my buddy Shadoe Steele on the Cube, the # 3 station on the Audilous Global Radio Network, slid the final six slices into the oven and opened a nice bottle of Angeline pinot noir. A few years ago in Northeastern Pennsylvania hard coal country Steele and I were known on my news talk radio show as the Pizza Kings. Unlike today’s pampered YouTube chooch who gave Santucci’s a 7.5 out of 10 review, Steele and I ruled as two-fisted heavyweight champion pizza eaters. We’d take it to the street, exactly where I stood Saturday morning, slice in hand and ready to bite, chew, swallow and bite again as I awarded Santucci’s a 15 out of 10.

I’m sending this column to the Pope, by the way. Santucci’s is a blessed experience. If Leo ever comes to Philadelphia he’ll need a place to eat. Of course I I know just the spot. But I’m not sharing. Nobody gets my Santucci’s pizza.

And I mean nobody.

Not even JC, Pope Leo’s big boss.

Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, is Trump Town.

This struggling provincial city needs all the evolution it can get.

Low Cut Connie offered to help.

At first Luzerne County government bosses in this county seat people once called “The Valley with a Heart” cut a deal with the band to play a fun summer concert called Rockin’ the River. Then little power-hungry bosses bowed to bigger power-hungry bosses who crave more control, more censorship and more authority over people who call Wilkes-Barre home. Elected and appointed public servants suddenly cancelled the show for Friday night’s outdoor riverfront concert. 

Luzerne County Manager Romilda Crocamo said in a statement “our goal is to have a place where we can enjoy music, food, promote our community, have fun, be safe and free of politics and propaganda.”

You can’t take a deep breath in Luzerne County without almost choking on toxic local politics. As for propaganda, Crocamo’s mere use of the word unleashes her own bias. Propaganda means harmful disinformation that is often untrue. Crocamo refuses to even tell band members what exactly they have done to deserve her defamatory insinuation that sure sounds like a First Amendment violation to me.

Back in the 1990s Luzerne County prosecutors charged me and three co-workers at The Times Leader with felonies for doing journalism in Luzerne County. For our trouble, we later won a national journalism award for our service to the First Amendment and a free press.

Crocamo, who failed to respond to my written questions, is just the latest in a long line of lackluster Luzerne County lackeys. She said in a WILK News Radio interview Tuesday morning she wasn’t even familiar with the band. If not, how did she know they’d be inciting revolution through propaganda?

Alan K. Stout, Executive Director of the Luzerne County Convention & Visitors Bureau who willingly helped kill the music, refused to answer my specific written questions.

“I can’t really get into it on here, but there was much more to it and everything that he (Low Cut Connie singer Adam Weiner) said in that video was not true. Romilda is handling it and I’m fine with it,” Stout said in a Facebook Messenger response to my questions.

Stout called the heavy-handed decision to blacklist the band “just another day at the office” and refused to say what he claimed was inaccurate about the video Weiner posted on social media.

Weiner said in the heartfelt post he addresses diversity and inclusion in his performances and recently released a song, “Livin in the USA,” that “speaks to the terror, the unease, the fear that so many people in the United States are experiencing right now because of these ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids that are absolutely inhumane and anti-American.”

“I will not stop speaking about that,” Weiner said of the ICE raids. “For all these reasons, the organizers of this event feel that my show is too controversial. It’s going to alienate people and be too polarizing, so they cancelled the show.”

Is it coincidence that current Republican law-and-order Luzerne County District Attorney Sam Sanguedolce recently signed off on working with federal immigration ICE agents in a pact the first of its kind in any Pennsylvania county? Sanguedolce failed to respond to my written questions asking if he played any role in the decision to cancel the concert.

 It also didn’t help Weiner’s image among “authorities” that he stood on principle when he pulled out of a March Kennedy Center concert in Washington, D.C. to protest President Donald Trump’s takeover of the previously nonpartisan venue.

Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) mentality is written all over Luzerne County‘s narrow-minded decision to cancel the Low Cut Connie gig. Complicit in silent tacit approval are Rockin’ the River sponsors including Geisinger, Mericle Commercial Real Estate, Pennsylvania American Water, King’s College, Wilkes University and too many others.

I lived and worked in downtown Wilkes-Barre for 17 years during which I wrote newspaper columns for the Times Leader, often focusing on injustice. Decades ago I called Wilkes-Barre “pound-for-pound the most racist city in America.” In 2020 Avventura Press published my novel about Wilkes-Barre bigotry and how MAGA madmen in the city take credit for Trump’s 2016 presidential election victory. So grim and relevant does the story remain that Avventura Press this year published Paddy’s Day in Trump Town Revisited which includes the original novel with a current nonfiction introduction, five up-to-date chapters and an epilogue I aptly call an “Apocalogue.”

Sound familiar?

Mind control is everything in Luzerne County. MAGA crusaders now rule. Republicans last year took over the lead in voter registrations for the first time in decades. But even when conservative Democrats dominated, Luzerne County festered as a nest of judicial criminality, sexism, ethnic hatred and racial bigotry. Luzerne County history remains riddled with political secrecy, cover-up and retribution.

In this craven cultural landscape littered with “Bikers for Trump,” rattlesnake hunts and abandoned coal mine shafts, local yokel MAGA political powerbrokers pulled the plug on Low Cut Connie for one reason and one reason only.

MAGA hates anything they deem “woke.” Liberals, Blacks, feminists, LGBTQ people, undocumented Mexicans and other people of color who dare consider Wilkes-Barre a diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) safe house are not welcome.

Trump is the almighty MAGA God.

Low Cut Connie is Satan.

All hail Trump!

Ask for a match to burn Low Cut Connie at the stake and MAGA will fire up a flamethrower.

Public outrage would erupt if a Jew hater painted a swastika on a Scranton, Pennsylvania, synagogue door. Public backlash would come fast and harsh if word spread that a Jew hater threw a rock through a window at the Scranton Jewish Community Center.

Media would rush to cover the story. Local, state and national elected officials would hold press conferences and issue statements the way they did after the October 7 Hamas attacks when public servants swore they stood with Israel.

Yet silence ensues after a thwarted June 26 physical attack on an Orthodox Jewish rabbi disrupted a peaceful human rights rally on Courthouse Square in Scranton.

Is the reason for this shameful silence because the rabbi and his five Jewish colleagues had come to Scranton at the invitation of rally organizers to publicly protest American-backed Israeli genocide in Gaza? Is this shameful silence because these bold Jews stand firm with countless innocent Palestinian children, women and men of all ages Israel continues to slaughter in almost two years’ worth of bombs, bullets and starvation?

Is our community’s shameful silence because these Jews are not the right kind of Jews?

Devoted to unswerving opposition to a Jewish state but not a Jewish homeland, these Jews take to heart the sacred Torah scroll that teaches love of justice. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder the six men dressed in traditional Orthodox Hassidic clothes held signs declaring their support for Palestinian freedom. Dedicated to opposing American-funded Israeli carnage of innocents in Gaza and the secular nationalism called Zionism, the men represented Neturei Karta International, a Jewish religious community based in Monsey, New York, that considers Israel a rogue cancer state that needs to be peacefully dismantled.

I watched closely as the rally came to a close and a visibly agitated man stood face-to-face with Rabbi Dovid Feldman, well known nationwide as a staunch anti-Zionist Jew whose followers compare the Israeli mass murder of Palestinian civilians to the Nazi extermination of Jews. Feldman had calmly stood his ground as the agitated lone wolf earlier interrupted speakers and insulted other protestors as he created tension during the rally, focusing and obsessing over insulting the Jewish men in black. When the man finally physically closed in on Feldman and his nonviolent colleagues this wild agitator ramped up his ire. Event marshals smoothly took up positions between him and the pro-Palestinian Jewish protestors.

Closer and closer the antagonist moved until he quickly pressed forward and a marshal stepped in to intercept him. That motion set off a pushing and pulling match as others closed quarters on the assailant, trying to bodily keep him under control as he squirmed, pulled hair and bit two people, drawing blood and lashing out in wild desperation.

A Lackawanna County deputy sheriff I alerted to the unfolding violence responded and cuffed the attacker with help from protest marshals and others. City police and an ambulance eventually arrived to take statements and treat victims.

A victim told me after the melee that the man had mentioned a gun. Others said he spoke of “lighting up” people. Protesters expressed fear for Jews if police released the man without filing criminal charges. One victim wondered if the defendant owned firearms or had a history of violence which a past newspaper story reported he does.

Protest organizers issued a press release about the violent incident. Several concerned activists also appeared at the Scranton City Council meeting to alert city officials of the violence that resulted in county deputy Craig Blasi filing criminal charges against the out of control instigator. Lackawanna County Sheriff Mark McAndrew responded quickly to an email providing me with a copy of the criminal complaint and affidavit of probable cause.

Scranton Police Chief Tom Carroll did not respond to two emails I sent him asking for details about his officers’ role in this shocking antisemitic attack. Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti also did not respond to my emailed questions about this incident. Neither did well-known Scranton Temple Hesed Rabbi David Swartz answer my two emails about the antisemitic cruelty displayed in the city he serves.

Do Scranton community leaders only take antisemitism seriously when Jewish victims support the brutal Israeli apartheid and occupation of Palestine and the West Bank? Do public officials here only call out antisemitism when Jewish victims agree with Israel’s eradication of Palestinians? Do otherwise good citizens ignore antisemitism unless the victims are their kind of Jew?

Fearless activists who speak truth to power will continue to fight Israel’s final solution for Palestinians. People of conscience like the Jewish men in black will continue to help create peace by opposing Israeli military savagery. In the name of decency truly brave leaders will protect some of the world’s weakest and most vulnerable civilians, defenseless people struggling for a homeland against Third-Reich-style persecution.

Israel’s indefensible war crimes must not go unpunished.

Shalom in Hebrew means peace and well-being. If the definition of the word is ever to be taken seriously, civic leaders who vow opposition to antisemitism must choose consistency over hypocrisy. Either you’re against antisemitism or you’re not.

Shalom must never be mistaken for Sieg Heil.

Already moving on the polished Susquenita High School lobby floor, as soon as the band kicked into the “Wipe Out” drum solo, Jesse shifted from first to second gear with a smooth clockwise rotation that made him look like a Perry County tornado.

We watched in awe, clapping and egging him on although he needed no prodding. Whirling, smiling, building rhythm the way he did as a pulling senior guard looking for somebody to crush on the football field, when sweat broke on Jesse’s forehead out came the white handkerchief as he dabbed drops, wiped bright red cheeks and kicked into third gear with both feet mashing two-step dance steps better than Charlie Downs ever mashed potatoes at the Ranch House restaurant and nobody could mash potatoes better than Charlie Downs. I know this historical fact because Charlie Downs once boasted of his potato prowess while I was paying my bill and buying a cellophane-wrapped $2 trucker music record album to listen to on the plastic record player I kept on top of my underwear drawer in my bedroom.

Jesse’s dancing matched his heart, pulsing pure as the snow-covered back road I walked to school on cold winter mornings. With his soaked dress shirt sticking to his chest he moved like a freight train riding magic rails from Marysville to Duncannon along the glistening steel track that parallels Route 11&15 in front of the one-story red brick house my family rented back in the 60s.

Jesse sometimes gave me a ride home from summer football practice when I was in the 10^th grade, dropping me off behind my house near the corner of Schoolhouse Road and Sawmill Road by the trailer park where Sonny Drake lived and I dumped coal ash in a pile by where Sonny and I pounded each other with my dad’s 16 oz. World War II boxing gloves beside the little creek that ran blue-green with shiny ribbons of raw sewage.

Jesse helped me adjust to some of the bad times we all experienced. A few years older, red-haired Jesse carried himself like a Viking sentinel headed home after a successful hunt in the mountains. Our mothers were friends, nurse’s aides working at the Kinkora Knights of Pythias nursing home where they made little money but cared for people who needed attention and love. One cranky old man wouldn’t let anybody but my mom trim his toenails. A shy old woman beamed when Jesse’s mom fixed her hair. And, at the end of the shift, these two dear friends knew they had done their best with what they had.

We all did.

That was the secret then and still is now.

Do the best with what you’ve got.

Some weekends Jesse would pick me up and we’d drive to drink beer with our buddies in the woods (near Montebello, I think) finishing off a quarter keg in the frigid night before heading home late to the sometimes hard lessons we learned like when we found out Mike Wright died in Vietnam.

Jesse drove that sleek white three-speed-on-the-column machine he loved and handled like a stock car champion. One rainy Sunday afternoon he taught me how to work a clutch and let me practice with his car in the bowling alley parking lot. Then we finished off the beer left over from Saturday night when we cruised big city Second and Front streets in Harrisburg, drinking cans of Bud, staring at the city that breathed hot neon all around us before heading back to our rural darkness where we belonged.

Those teenage days are long gone, of course.

So is Jesse who left us in 2021..

Among the stars in the photograph that’s Jesse dancing with his granddaughter Sophia who he drove to ballet classes for years.

Our beautiful memories remain, sometimes even picking up steam as we grow older and remember that great gentle dancing man moving, breathing, sweating and riding the music forever and ever, amen.

No doubt about it, Jesse Boyer sure could dance.

Dressed in casual summer wear, Pennsylvania State Rep. Kyle Donahue slid through the crowd with the ease of a smug political hack on his way to an afternoon clambake. Carrying one of his children on his shoulder as his wife walked with another little one, the self-absorbed state lawmaker was making a public appearance more to improve his image than for constituent service.

Democrat Donahue represents the 113^th District where I live in Scranton’s Hill Section. He was attending the June 14 “No Kings” anti-Trump rally on Scranton’s Courthouse Square. Later in the day he addressed the crowd through a bullhorn, vowing to help lead the fight to save democracy.

 “We are here to remind people today that we are not subjects, we are citizens,” Donahue said according to the Scranton daily newspaper.

“Across history, people have said enough to crowns, to empires. To systems that put power in the hands of the few, and demand silence from the rest,” Donahue said according to a local television report.

A few weeks ago I asked Donahue in an email if he would help me repatriate the human remains of a 2,000-year-old “mummy” Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in Scranton claims is Peruvian. Museum officials should have returned these human remains to Peru decades ago.

Everhart representatives now refuse to disclose more details about the mummy, discuss the one or two shrunken heads they also publicly displayed in the past as well as explain the human remains of a Native American that Everhart “experts” claimed decades ago on a form federal law required them to file.

Hoarding human remains tarnishes the Everhart Museum’s reputation. Covering up and trying to ignore ethical and moral responsibility humiliates countless decent people this cultural institution serves, people upon whom the museum depends to survive. I expected city native, resident and state lawmaker Donahue to help me do something about it.

As a former president of Scranton City Council, former director of the Scranton School Board, board member of the Scranton-Lackawanna Human Development Agency and board member of Scranton Tomorrow you’d think Donahue would want to help.

But my state representative never responded to my email even though a staffer in his office told me on the phone he received the email and would make sure Donahue saw the three columns I wrote about the Everhart Museum’s three separate sets of human remains.

After exchanging polite small talk with Donahue at the protest rally I asked if he planned to get back to me on the mummified human remains. He said he would reply to my inquiry.

“When?” I asked.

Donahue floundered, murmuring he’d respond when he better understands what’s going on with the issues I raised. I gave him a look you give bugs at a picnic. Donahue should know all he needs to know had he read and understood the shocking columns I sent him via his PA House of Representatives website.

I told Donahue a high-ranking Peruvian Embassy official in Washington D.C. with whom I spoke has expressed interest in helping repatriate the mummified human remains. I said a federal law enforcement investigation into the Native American human remains could also take place. I told Donahue looted human remains matter.

Any smart sensitive public servant would have expressed some level of awe at the disgraceful Everhart Museum news. Instead, Donahue gave me the spiritless look of a soft stuffed animal before sailing into a whiney monologue about how busy he is with the budget and other dull duties his Democratic Party masters tell him to perform. Donohue truly seemed impressed with himself as he described the hack labor he gets paid far too much money to undertake supposedly on behalf of good citizens like me. Obviously uncomfortable, Donahue skulked off into the crowd.

Donahue would have no doubt expressed immediate interest and deep compassion if the mummy’s remains were the body parts of a long dead Irish coal miner discovered after years trapped underground. Outrage over old Irish bones discovered in a Scranton Irish neighborhood cave-in where the miner’s ancestors still live and vote would likely send a lace curtain phony like Donahue springing into action.

Boasting about his Irish heritage on his official government website, as a member of the St. Patrick’s Parade Association of Lackawanna County and the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackawanna County, Donahue at least shows some concern for ethnic ancestry.

His own.

So it’s easy for him to ignore the ancient human remains of a dead Peruvian teenage boy, an indigenous person of color about whom few of Donahue’s tribe cares. Mummified South American human remains pale in comparison to the kiss-me-I’m-Irish power of Scranton white privilege Donahue carries into his re-election bid.

Everhart Museum officials gravely smear Scranton’s reputation.

Rep. Kyle Donahue discredits his city, his Irish roots and himself.

Trial by fire brought Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro to the forefront of America’s antisemitism frenzy. Asleep following a Passover event he hosted at the governor’s mansion in Harrisburg in April, police security awakened Shapiro and his family after an attacker set fire to their state home.

Police say alleged arsonist Cody Balmer confessed he hated Shapiro and lashed out angered by Shapiro’s public support for Israel’s attacks on Gaza. As a result, Shapiro now reigns as the darling of liberal Democrats because they claim he was targeted as a Jew.

Indeed Shapiro is Jewish. But no evidence shows the defendant attacked because Shapiro is Jewish. The New York Times in a recent editorial and the Washington Post in a recent news story recklessly connected violent religious prejudice to a crime that lacked any evidence of religious bigotry. No proof in the defendant’s statements to police or physical evidence elsewhere shows that antisemitism drove the accused firebomber’s actions.

If strong disagreement with public policy focused on Israeli war crimes is antisemitic, I guess I’m antisemitic too.

Forget about the day I stood in solidarity on the Orthodox synagogue steps across from my apartment in Wilkes-Barre while elderly Jewish volunteers washed painted swastikas off the huge wooden front doors. Forget when I visited rabbis to side with Jewish teenagers from New York City who sought refuge in my town and faced drunken Wilkes University thugs firing off Nazi salutes while partying on a rooftop across the street from the Jewish students’ classrooms.

Forget the day my little Hassidic neighbor Rachel cried on her mother’s lap as 4-year-olds often do and I gave her a tiny stuffed toy raccoon to help stop her tears, forging a heartfelt friendship that resulted in the beautiful child calling out my name every subsequent time I saw her. Forget answering the knocks on the door at night and walking across the street with Rachel’s sisters who asked me to turn on their family’s stove when their strict religious commitment prohibited them from doing so.

Ignore my wearing a yarmulke at a co-worker’s Orthodox wedding near Boston to which my wife and I traveled or donning another yarmulke for another Jewish co-worker’s daughter’s Bat Mitzvah.

Disregard the third yarmulke I wore as I sat alone for a service at the Hassidic synagogue near my home because my neighbor invited me to attend. Overlook the excitement and laughter on another soft night when I stood in that same neighbor’s kitchen and casually mentioned to several women that my mother’s mother’s side of the family has Jews in the lineage.

I always considered myself Pennsylvania Dutch German and Irish. But maybe Shapiro has another long lost non-practicing Jewish cousin, a radical left wing Zen atheist living in Scranton who cares not at all about the governor’s personal faith.

Like alleged governor’s mansion arsonist Balmer, I, too, despise Shapiro, not because he’s a Jew but because of his unswerving support of Israeli genocide. Balmer reportedly is mentally ill and in dire need of help not condemnation. I’m of clear sound mind and will defend myself and others who fight for Palestinian freedom and human rights despite Shapiro’s supporters’ devious defamation.

Anti-Israelism is not Jew hatred.

I reject any and all twisted attempts of biased “scholars” who redefine religious hatred to meet their own fanatical political goals. Claiming self-defense, Israeli government killers carry out their final solution. With full support from the United States government this Fourth Reich bombs, starves, assassinates and otherwise ethnically cleanses Gaza of Palestinians where innocent men, women and children of all ages struggle to simply survive.

Genuine antisemitism crushes hopes, dreams and humanity.

Make-believe hatred only increases the pain.

In yet another stunning example of cold dispassion, Everhart Museum of Natural History & Art officials in Scranton, Pennsylvania, refuse to respond to my questions about whether they possess Native American human remains. And, if they do, why have they failed to adhere to federal law that requires them to return the human remains to the appropriate tribe?

Museum officials have already shown gross disregard for propriety by trying to ignore their shoddy handling of other human remains. Everhart representatives once publicly flaunted the mummified corpse of a 2,000-year-old male teenager they claim is Peruvian. They billed the event as an entertaining way to celebrate college basketball “March Madness.”

Museum officials then compounded that grisly exhibit that dirties the museum’s reputation as a respectful repository of the past. They refuse to explain what happened to one and maybe two shrunken heads museum administrators displayed as human and featured for years to the ghoulish delight of children and other insensitive gawkers.

Museum officials even posted a bizarre slide show on Facebook that showed what appeared to be a tiny human head, shrunken and tanned by boiling, its mouth agape as long wavy dark hair swings in a grim display the museum previously presented to the public. Nine years after posting the photos and within days of my describing the body part in a column, somebody deleted the Everhart Facebook posting.

Now, following the shocking 2023 report in the Pulitzer Prize winning digital non-profit news outlet ProPublica titled “The Repatriation Project” that details “The Delayed Return of Native Remains,” the January 2025 updated ProPublica database says, “The Everhart Museum reported still having the remains of one Native American that it has not made available for return to tribes.”

“America’s institutions hold human remains and sacred items taken from the graves of tens of thousands of Native Americans,” says the ProPublica series introduction. “A federal law, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), was meant to help return them, but decades after its 1990 passage, many tribes are still waiting.”

Under the auspices of the U.S. Department of the Interior, the National Park Service (NPS) enforces NAGPRA violations. In an email NPS Public Affairs spokeswoman Sarah Sparhawk said, “The museum (Everhart) reported these human remains to the NPS in 1995, as required by the Act. More information on a specific inventory would reside with the appropriate museum.”

In a June 4 email I asked Everhart CEO and Executive Director Timothy Lennon Holmes, Everhart Museum Curator James Lansing and Everhart Museum Board of Trustees Chair and attorney Caroline Munley, “Is staff at the Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art in possession of Native American human remains? If so, when and how did the museum obtain those human remains? Has any museum representative tried to repatriate the human remains to the appropriate tribe?  If not, why not?”

Museum representatives Holmes, Lansing and Munley failed to respond.

If Everhart Museum officials do possess Native American human remains, from where were these body parts looted? Does the museum know the name of the grave robber who handed over the human remains? Was money exchanged or services bartered? Do records of the macabre transaction exist? Did somebody lose, throw away or steal the Native American human remains?

Did museum officials contact any Native American tribes who might want to claim the human remains? Will museum officials search for the Native American human remains the NPS asserts the Everhart Museum reported? Will museum officials try to reintern the remains in a dignified manner?

Will federal law enforcement officials join this pursuit of justice?

Everhart Museum of Natural History, Science & Art officials serve the community as a non-profit organization always on the lookout for funding and tax deductible contributions. Everhart officials regularly welcome school children whose teachers depend on the museum to awaken their students’ curiosity and guide them morally and ethically. Museum officials also crave professional respect from colleagues.

Yet, based on their reluctance to tell the truth, their silence only provides heinous meaning to the word “whitewash” as they suffer a mortifying blow to their credibility.

Will we one day rectify these abuses to America’s sacred lessons of history?

Only time will tell.