Just back from the fine old cities of Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I was hit dead on by the humidity I’d foolishly thought to escape. It does get bad up there but somehow never seems as viscous at night.

I always enjoy the two principal cities of the Lehigh Valley because, despite all odds, they maintain a sense of gemutlichkeit that Baltimore seems to have long since dropped. Even so, things are different there, these days. The onetime industrial cities aren’t at all anymore. Allentown — the larger and once-flashier city — has a bombed-out downtown just like most other downtowns. She no longer can boast big department stores and a score of handsome theatres. The grand hotel is empty and the somewhat older hotel is creaking along like a dowager empress who still has her diamonds but can’t afford a cup of coffee. That hotel — my favorite, of course — even has a name that is now laughable. “Hotel Traylor” probably seemed English and elegant in 1913, but in 1913 “trailers” were not a domestic option. Now people are incredulous to find that I, their rather snooty correspondent, intend to stay at a place they hear as “The Trailer.” Bethlehem, by comparison, is fairly prosperous in the recent past. The home of Bethlehem Steel, the city’s most famous child has died and left it bereft of industry, but the quaint old downtown has survived with the help of its Moravian roots — which predate the Steel by a good 150 years — and a lot of amusing and very nouveau boutique-y shops. This is actually nice; downtown Bethlehem looks charming and pretty. Unfortunately, if you need to buy some new underwear, you’re just as much out of luck there as you would be in boarded-up Allentown.

Yet I love both cities. I always make a point of having drinks at the decrepit Traylor, even if I’m not taking up temporary residence there. I usually find a congenial and pleasant bunch there and the bartenders always pour a stiff drink. This visit was a little less pleasant but only because the two Baltimoreans who tagged along with me clearly didn’t find anything nice about the place and wanted to get the hell out as soon as possible. It’s hard to explain the combination of faded glory and conviviality that makes it a nice place to someone who would obviously prefer a place with nine dollar drinks and a fake Italian name. Allentown may have a dead downtown but it also has gracious residential areas with miles of pretty and well-kept Victorian rowhouses, and a world-famous public Rose Garden. A walk through its West Park is like a walk into 1915, complete with its bandstand — and the exceptional Allentown Municipal Band there to play marches and waltzes for your afternoon entertainment.

The real reason for the visit, though, was for Bethlehem’s annual Musikfest. (The German is theirs, not mine, for once.) Musikfest is something doing. The whole city goes berserk for this twenty-five year old event. No humble gathering of bands, Musikfest attracts everything from classical ensembles to the latest hip-hop. These are subordinate events, though, which I eschew in favor of the main attraction of the Festplatz — a gigantic tent with a dance floor capable of holding five hundred dancers. Festplatz is the home of the most relentlessly happy music on earth — polkas, waltzes and Rheinlanders, usually auf Pennsylvanien. They always import a dance band from Germany or Austria, but my favorites are of the homegrown variety. Walt Groller und sein Orchester, and Jolly Joe Timmer and his Bavarians can bring a smile to the most jaded. Oh, I know — you think there’s nothing tackier and sillier than polka music, but I can pretty much guarantee that if you visit the Festplatz this second week of August you’ll enjoy yourself. Add the large beer trucks and vast tents selling good Pennsylvania German food and you’ll follow in my footsteps and start searching the real estate advertisements in the Allentown Morning Call.

The overall good-time feeling of the event is augmented by its attendees. The people of Allentown and Bethlehem are a startlingly good-looking bunch. Three hundred years of German heritage have been tempered with Poles, Slavs, Hungarians and Italians and it has all filtered into a mix that produces pretty, curvaceous women and tall, well-built men. And, at Musikfest, they’re all in an exceptionally good mood.

Evidently beer, kraut and fourteen varieties of Wurst are good for you in many ways. I may have to retitle this blog if I move to Allentown...