Old Jail and Fulton Opera House, Lancaster, Lancaster County

Hello, and welcome to the end of August. There should have been an update two weeks ago, but I ran into a lot of trouble following a visit from Tropical Storm Isaias, and I was too busy dealing with the fallout of a flooded basement to be able to give the blog the attention it deserves. In the meantime, Blogger changed its format, so I've also had to spend some time learning how to use the new tools; if anything looks 'off' as you read this post, please let me know so I can try to fix it.

To somewhat make up for the skip, I'm pulling out my folder of markers in Lancaster and giving you a double entry. The Old Jail of Lancaster once sat on the property now occupied by the Fulton Opera House, and there's a marker dedicated to each building, so it makes sense to write about them together. It's not always a pretty history, but the truth is that so much of history really isn't pretty, and it's not my job to make it look nice. It's definitely interesting, though, and it's a long one too, so let's get started.

The Dorsey Brothers, Shenandoah, Schuylkill County

I admit that I've never been a particular fan of jazz or big band music. I don't ardently dislike it or anything; it just isn't a genre to which I was exposed much when growing up, and as an adult I'm really more of a soft rock kind of person. So while I knew of the existence of the Dorsey Brothers, and was aware that they were pretty big names on the circuit, the name never meant much to me beyond an occasional pop culture reference. And I definitely never knew they were from Pennsylvania.

That changed last fall, when Kevin and I went to Knoebels and I collected some markers along the way. I already told you about Victor Schertzinger, who was born in Mahanoy City; maybe twenty minutes after I photographed his marker, we were passing through the town of Shenandoah and spotted two markers standing side by side in a bank parking lot. What do you know - Shenandoah is the hometown of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey.

Victor Schertzinger, Mahanoy City, Schuylkill County

Anyone else having trouble remembering what day it is? I will admit that if I didn't have a reminder on my phone to tell me that today was a blog update, I probably would have forgotten. The joke in my house is that April was canceled; it's still March and it will continue to be March for the foreseeable future. By that logic, today is March 53rd.

I hope that you and your loved ones are all safe and healthy. As of this writing, the lockdown is scheduled to end in a little over two weeks. Hopefully I'll be able to go out and collect some new markers, but in the meantime, I've still got my handy backlog. Today we're featuring one that I collected while passing through Mahanoy City on my way to Knoebels last fall; I simply cannot take a trip anywhere without getting at least one of these markers for the blog. I do wonder at times whether anyone notices me hopping out of the car to take the pictures, and what goes through their mind. I always carry some of the blog's business cards, just in case, but so far no one has actually approached to inquire after the nature of my quest.

(To be fair, when I'm playing a video game, people don't usually approach to ask my character what the heck she's doing either. So it fits with the blog's theme.)

Mahanoy City is actually known as the birthplace of cable television. I know there's a marker for that too, so when I spotted this marker from the car, I assumed that's what it was. In my defense, both of these markers are on Centre Street, but at very different locations. Still, I can't be disappointed with what I caught instead.