When I was figuring out the route for our drive home across the county in March, I specifically wanted to include a stop in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania which was on the route we were taking.

I became aware of Bethlehem from seeing Walker Evans’s FSA photographs.  I liked his 1935 photograph of St. Michael’s Cemetery, with the Bethlehem Steel mill in the background, so much that I ordered a large print of it from The Library of Congress for my personal collection years ago. It has been on my wall since I received it.  In 2006 I was able to stop in Bethlehem briefly and photograph from the cemetery.  I was rushed because of the travel schedule and I vowed to return someday.  In 2017 I was able to see a print of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s 1986 photograph from the same cemetery at an exhibition at Pier 24 Gallery in San Francisco which added to my interest in Bethlehem.

On our trip It worked out that we spent a night in Bethlehem, and I was able to spend about four hours the next morning photographing before we got back on the road.  Again, I wish I had more time there, there is so much I found interesting.  It felt like we had gone back in time and I loved that.  I had seen “Herbert’s Typewriters and Electronic Calculators” shop on the way in the night before and headed there first thing in the morning.  They were closed but the display in the window said this was their 91st year.  I did an internet search later and found Herbert’s son-in-law was now the owner.  From Herbert’s I found a mass grave site for Revolutionary War soldiers in a residential neighborhood along the side of a hill.  Apparently, a hospital had been nearby and over 500 soldiers who died from their wounds had been buried there.  We were then headed to the old Bethlehem Steel Mill when I saw an older man standing by the railroad tracks with a camera.  I had my son stop and I went over to talk to the man.  He said a Norfolk Southern freight train was headed West by there soon and he was waiting to photograph it.  His name was Bob Wilt and he has been photographing trains in the Lehigh Valley since the 1960’s, publishing at least half a dozen books of his images during that time.  After the train passed my son and I went to the steel mill.  The mill area was basically abandoned the first time we visited but has since been redeveloped into an arts district called the Steel Stacks.  The project included building large walkways along the side of the steel mill which afforded great vantage points to photograph the entire length of the mill.  We finally made it up to St. Michael’s Cemetery where I had plenty of time to explore and photograph.  On the way out of town we stopped so I could photograph a small group celebrating St. Patrick’s Day early in front of Joe’s Tavern on Broad Street.  Joe’s eventually had to close due to the COVID-19 lockdown and was still closed as of September 2020.