HAZLETON, Pa. — Summer mornings often found Joseph Maddon, a boy with athletic ability that made him stand out and a sense of wonderment that made him special, on his bike.
He’d ride from his neighborhood of tightly packed homes down to “the Strip” around the Jeddo Basin, where the giant machines of the Jeddo Coal Company performed strip mining. Rather than mining by sinking shafts into the earth, the machines were used to remove swaths of dirt overlay, revealing coal veins that lied nearer to the surface of the earth here than in most other places.
It was fascinating to Maddon, who’d ride on into the woods and breathe in the wafting smells of plants and flowers.