Geistown man details experiences through verse

BY MIKE FAHER
The Tribune-Democrat

February 16, 2008 12:01 am

— Though still spry and sharp at age 93, Harold Bracken can’t get around like he used to.
But, with help from several binders stuffed with papers at his Geistown home, he can take a stroll down memory lane anytime.
Bracken has spent the past few decades recording his experiences in poetry. He estimates he has written more than 500 poems, detailing a life rich with family, friends, travel and work.
“They bring back the memory of the times that the poems are about,” he said. “They bring back vivid, pleasant, beautiful memories.”
Bracken’s long life has given him plenty of material to write about.
Born in 1914, he grew up on Village Street in Johnstown’s Moxham neighborhood. With his father working out of town as an engineer during the week, Bracken recalls he and his “many, many friends” engaging in childhood shenanigans.
“We weren’t above getting into a lot of trouble,” he said with a smile.
Bracken’s family moved when he was 12 years old. He spent time in McKeesport, Windber and Richland, where he graduated from high school.
It was during the Great Depression, and work was scarce.
Bracken recalls people working for food on local farms, and he saw scores of men gathered in the morning outside Bethlehem Steel Corp.’s employment office in Johnstown.
“I can remember the men there standing in the cold, just waiting for work,” he said.
“If you didn’t have somebody to help you or didn’t come from a well–to-do family, it was awful.”
Bracken’s diverse career began when he joined the Works Progress Administration, a federal program designed to provide jobs for the unemployed during the Depression.
One of his first WPA jobs was digging holes for guardrails.
Then, in 1939, Bracken got a break when he landed a job at U.S. Steel, where he worked as a welder and roll turner.
After spending a decade in the mill, Bracken became a driver and salesman for Schmidt Baking Co. Salary was based on commission, and Bracken recalls that his shifts were “never less than nine hours, and usually 10.”
All the while, Bracken said his greatest joy was spending time with his wife, Dorothy, and their two children. He fondly recalls vacations and picnics.
“I was very family oriented,” he said.
Family plays a prominent role in Bracken’s poetry, which he did not begin to write until later in life.
His speculates that his father Horace’s love for verse may have inspired him to pick up a pen.
“Some of them are religious poems, and most of them are about people I have met in my life,” Bracken said.
“I just write when it stirs me up,” he added. “I can sit down and write a poem in minutes.”
Bracken writes about his children growing up and the passing of family members. But he can just as easily pen a whimsical rhyme about gathering with his friends at McDonald’s or eating watermelon on a hot day.
Bracken’s poems often return to a favorite subject: His wife, to whom he has been married for 67 years. He penned one such poem on the occasion of Mother’s Day in 1990:
I remember well, when love was new
And the world was made for just we two
No thought of the cares that life would bring
Only the dreams of love in spring
Bracken’s writing has not been formally published in any book or magazine. But it is clear his verse serves a much more personal purpose.
He concludes a poem about his father with this observation:
What would life be, what would it mean to me
If I didn’t have this memory?

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