Bøger udgivet af Specific Publications

What is it about high school? When you consider that high school comes at exactly the time teens are about to erupt from a combination of physical growth spurts, hormonal tension stretched like pulled taffy, psychological confusion and misdirection, and major ineptitudes in all phases of life, mashing them together in a confined space for seven or eight hours a day is just asking for trouble. Yet for more than a century, that's the formula that's been used. Richard Benyo, author of Jim Thorpe Never Slept Here, childhood memoirs from the 1950s in East Mauch Chunk and later Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, graduates into Jim Thorpe Senior High School, and the disasters just start to pile up.

The once-prosperous town of Mauch Chunk, knocked out of prominence by the demise of King Coal, seemed ready to explode. Then the first corpse was discovered. From a state cop who rebuilds dead steam locomotives to a guy who lived his life out of a science-fiction novel by A.E.van Vogt, from a lawyer who wants to raise ferocious pigs in his backyard to a little girl who stalks the night, from a crusading newspaper editor to a half-dozen professional wrestlers, Mauch Chunk appears to no longer be dead--merely a haven for dead bodies. And what's up with that hit-man from Baltimore and the Mafia widow from Hazleton who owns a chain of bakeries. Mauch Chunk brings together a colorful cast of unlikely characters attempting to keep out of the way of each other and failing spectacularly.

It's 1956 in eastern Pennsylvania and Mauch Chunk and East Mauch Chunk are about to join to become Jim Thorpe, PA. As part of the July 4 celebration, a soapbox derby race is scheduled for the always-dangerous Fisher's Hill. The South Street Gang gets to work on their racer, only to have it destroyed by the competition. They regroup and create a unique entry with which they hope to go up agains the richest kid in town. In typical fashion, nothing goes exactly as the gang hopes.