Hog Town Moon: Chester, PA 1949 ~ 1969

Synopsis: Hog Town Moon

The year is 1949: Delmar ‘Kid’ Kanky awakes to an overcast Chester, Pennsylvania, morning. He strains to see the world outside his grime-crusted bedroom window while pondering the attributes of becoming a man as he shaves his pubescent face.

Kid introduces us to the Kanky family. They share stories about their ancestral heritage. Kid’s father, Otis, tells us about working at Sun Shipyard and the racial problems he encounters with his Ukrainian boss and his varied ethnic crew.

Across town things start to heat up. Kid, Wuzzey, and their buddies blast Michael Kuzmenko in the face with a basketball while playing HORSE. Kid’s pals circle around Michael spitting, kicking, and harassing him for coming over to “their turf,” even though it’s one of the white schools in the Slavic West End.

Anger spews and festers from the Kuzmenkos and their neighbors as more and more black families continue to move in and stake their claim within white neighborhoods. Kid senses the momentum of his people as prominent black leaders start to question equality and equal rights for black students and workers.

On Smith Street, Jersey peach juice isn’t the only thing dripping down Vince Muscolino’s wrist. Soon he’ll catch the wrath of Kid and Wuzzey. Kid absconds with Otis’s pearl handle switchblade and plants it in Vince’s stomach. Kid gets away with murder. It’s Al Muscolino who avenges his brother’s death while Johnny Mazza supplies the snub-nose 38. Johnny delivers the goods as promised in the men’s room of Royal’s Pool Hall.

Outside the Temple Baptist Church, the Reverend White runs toward the pandemonium on the sidewalk. Al Muscolino has taken care of business. Three shots fired: one barely misses Kid and instead kills bride groom Walter “Wuzzey” Swiggert and his bride Cora Staglin who are ready to embark on their honeymoon.

The sixties have not been kind to Chester. The town is a wasteland of abandoned homes, businesses left vacant and covered with graffiti while drug addicts and their dealers control the streets. The once-smoke-billowing factories line the waterfront like mausoleums. And the Delaware River is so toxic you dare not light a match near it.

Kid takes umbrage with the treatment from the white faculty of Chester High School. His childhood friend Mutt Coleman has returned from Viet Nam. The school won’t hire a black teacher. Inside the 1631 Bar, along with his friends, Kid decries to burn down Chester High School, a national landmark built in 1901 by local architect William Provost Jr. — a symbol enshrined to privileged “whites” only.

It’s 1968.At 3:10 a.m., on a bitter cold January morning Kid Kanky sets Chester High School ablaze. In less than three hours, sixty-seven years of history and the memories contained of thousands of students who attended are destroyed. Does it bring about the change Kid seeks? Only time will tell.