Guess Who Is Coming to Town?

Local news is all abuzz over Donnie’s rally at the PPL Center in downtown Allentown tonight. Route 22, MacArthur Road, and 7th Street will be shut down for Donnie’s motorcade. Good luck getting anywhere in the Lehigh Valley today. Allentown schools get the day off. Can’t have school buses delaying the Trump Express. People are already camped out at the PPL Center. Didn’t these folks heed Donnie’s warning about “carnage in the streets” of American downtowns?

It is ironic that majority (55%) Hispanic Allentown will host Donnie two days after his MSG Rally. Will a racist comedian make a crack about Puerto Rico being an Island of Garbage here?

I wonder if any of those Allentown school kids will use their “day off” to watch Donnie’s motorcade whiz by. Sixty-four years ago, young Skip Dufton trekked three city blocks from South Scranton Junior High to the corner of Pittston Ave and Maple Street to see Candidate JFK’s motorcade make its way toward downtown Scranton. Imagine 1,200 kids lining an otherwise nondescript city street and cheering wildly.

In those simpler times, the roads were not shut down and no one checked spectators for weapons. I thought about that lack of security three years later when a Dallas motorcade proved fatal to the young president.

Pennsylvania requires 180 days of instruction for its public school students. How will those Allentown kids feel when they have to sit in class on an extra hot, humid day in June next year while their Bethlehem and Easton peers are swimming or playing basketball? I would have made that sacrifice for a glance at JFK as he drove by. Would Allentown kids feel the same about Donnie?

By Ed Dufton