Billy Givens Remembered

The best way to remember Billy Givens is through his writing, which makes the rest of us look pretty tame.

Northampton County's controversial $111 million megabond:

"On December 18, 2001, in his last act as president of Northampton County Council, Wayne Grube and his fellow rat pack gnawed a hole in the wall connecting council chambers and Community and Economic Development Chief Vincent Dominach’s conference room. Through this hole, the rat pack rolled Michael Solomon’s $111 million wheel of cheese, reeking of Limburger, from council chambers into the conference room. Solomon fancied limburger because it comes from Belgium, home of the company that insures his $111 million wheel of cheese, at a premium cost to Northampton County taxpayers of an unauthorized $880,000. This room is the nest of the Northampton County General Purpose Authority (GPA). There, on December 19, the GPA rats, led by County Executive Glenn Reibman, gnawed and pawed at Solomon’s wheel of cheese. They broke it into pieces of varying size, suitable for distribution to their fellow scavengers in corporate Northampton County; e.g., bankrupt Bethlehem Steel’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chairman, Robert S. “Steve” Miller. The GPA gave Miller a $13.1 million piece of Solomon’s Limburger wheel. In its rush to adjourn, the council rats failed to authorize the $880,000 insurance expense, taxpayer money the GPA rats have spent in rank violation of Pennsylvania’s Municipality Authorities Act of 1941 as amended."

Michael Solomon's Ghost and Northampton County's shadow governments:

"Northampton County Councilman Nick Sabatine says he may challenge State Senator Lisa Boscola in this year's general election. Boscola is the best-known member of the airport authority's board of governors, as is Jeff Skinner, a former chairman of the Lehigh County Commission and, more recently, a number-cruncher for confessed-felon Michael Solomon's wounded, $111-million, 30-year mega-bond.

"A specter haunts the parapets of Northampton County Prison's cold stone walls. It is Michael Solomon's ghost whose plaintive shrieks, sharp as the ribbon-wire atop the prison's perimeter, slice the February night's pre-dawn cold. They cross Easton's Union Street, to the vacant field beyond, as rampant with weeds as the "shadow governments" that spring from Reibman's Medusa-like head. As Solomon's ghost recedes, it is replaced by the apparition of his $80-million prison. At the pace his state and federal investigations and sentencing proceeds, he could well wind up being the prison's first inmate.

"Before building the prison, however, Sabatine and his council cohorts should remodel Reibman's various "shadow governments," beginning with Doughty (pronounced doubty), and his airport authority. Council could then proceed to the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation (LVEDC), followed closely by radical surgery on the General Purpose Authority, or GPA."

Easton's Dutchtown-Gallows Hill:

"The Morning Call Girl, prostitute to Easton's politicians, has emerged from those little blue and white whorehouses on the city's street corners, as it does each morning, making its customary rounds, hawking its wares. Today, this lady of the morning perpetuates the party line, promoted by Easton Mayor Phil Mitman, that the Dutchtown-Gallows Hill neighborhood has been relocated from Easton's Downtown Historic District (added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982) to the West Ward.

"Mitman - abetted by Northampton County's Executive Glenn Reibman; Council President J. Michael Dowd, whose district includes the Government Center with the apocalyptic address, 666 Walnut Street; President Judge Robert Freedberg; District Attorney John Morganelli; St. Bernard's Parish; and the Allentown Catholic Diocese - stole the African/Latino-American Dutchtown-Gallows Hill neighborhood from the Downtown Historic District.

"The neighborhood wound up in the possession of West Ward, into whose hot hands it was delivered by that Easton fence known as Weed and Seed. The weeding of Dutchtown-Gallows Hill started with Urban Renewal in the 1960's and 70's when an entire block was demolished to make way for a parking lot for County government offices. The weeding continued with demolition of the Convent of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, now proposed as the site of the County's new Domestic Relations building. The weeding has progressed to the place where Northampton County and its seat Easton would rip the whole of Dutchtown-Gallows Hill from its roots in the National Historic District. Obviously, no seeding is planned."

Hard On (Son Robin's favorite)

"Each Saturday morning between 10 and 11, protesters against President George W. Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq gather at Downtown Easton Pennsylvania's historic Centre Square.

"There they huddle beneath the annual Yuletide season Peace Candle. Recently resurrected by workers from its flaccid state of repose at the city's Bushkill Drive storage yard for its yearly erection, the edifice that failed to make it into the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest candle - disqualified because it's constructed of plywood and papier-mâché, not wax - rises above Centre Square, more a phallic symbol of American male hubris and Pax Americana than it is the totem to a threatened world peace.

"Huddled with the protesters last Saturday was www.billybytes.com website and newsletter writer Billy Givens, a veteran of the Korean Conflict and one who is proud that the Soldiers' and Sailors' monument includes a bas relief of the Civil War battle in the bay of Mobile, Alabama, where 71 years ago Givens was born into and grew up under the shadow of a Jim Crow apartheid."

Unfortunately, Billy often had his facts wrong, but his imagery is pure art, better than anything in our newspapers or blogs.

I'll miss this Southern rebel.

Update: The "Excess Times" has its own touching tribute to Billy, who once claimed the Lehigh Valley is "really just something they made up, a Madison Avenue jingle."