Ghost Riders of Saucon (Part 1): The Tumultuous Life and Times of Wayne “Ike” Eisenhart
The fuzzy photo that jumped out for me comes from 1966.
It's from the Reflector, Hellertown-Lower Saucon's High School's yearbook, and it displays a face that seems at once clouded in time and terribly vulnerable—and young.
That sweet face, gazing across the decades, is one of several that drew me to this story. Wayne Eisenhart is just 14 here, maybe 15—a freshman from Bingen on the JV football squad. He reminds me of my son and his buddies at that point.
There’s mostly just a boy there, without a trace of the swagger and danger that would eventually emerge. That was still a few years away.
Wayne would change a great deal, and I won't pretend to grasp just how things took such a dark turn for Wayne. I’m not sure anyone alive, except perhaps his brother, David, knows what happened in terms of the young man’s attraction to hardcore outlaw biker culture—and all that followed. In 2022, David doesn’t want to talk about it, and I obviously want to respect that. The story of Wayne Eisenhart still brings up a world of grief and pain for those closest to him. The more I learn about Wayne, the more I feel his loss, too, not personally, but as a fascinating and tragic figure from a different era.
The year 1966 was a time of revolutions, both societal and personal, and Hellertown, too, was changing rapidly.
And it wasn't.
The photograph above comes from an era in which Vietnam was beginning to heat up, and working-class teenage boys like Wayne might eventually face potential conscription in a deadly, confusing war. But not quite yet.
By 1966, the Beatles were starting to smoke pot, and their music was getting a little trippy. But bands like the well-behaved Sandpipers and their famous “Guantanamera” dominated the airwaves. Indeed, I still remember my mom singing it to herself.
The Sandpipers in 1966
Wayne's generation, or at least part of it, would eventually start to rebel in dramatic ways, with young people trying to find themselves in a world that seemed to be growing, well, helter skelter.
Still, some things in Hellertown seemed the same in 1966 as they did in 1905, if the newspaper archives are to be trusted. There was a very strong sense of community. Dewey and the sportsman's clubs were very much central to the idea of "Hellertown." There wasn’t a lot to do, and so what teenagers did was hang out. The big “spot” in the 1950s and early 1960s was “Guro’s,” located where Saylor’s is today. It was a soda fountain/slash dance hall.
My neighbor Jerry Savitstke, who was a generation slightly ahead of Wayne’s, compares Guro’s to “Al’s Diner” in the iconic Happy Days TV series.
Over the next few weeks, I'll be presenting, in serial form, this story from Saucon Valley's past that says as much about what it means to live in Saucon Valley today as it did half a century ago. It centers around Wayne, but it's bigger than any one person.
I hope you'll find the tale as absorbing and moving as I do.
