Annual Dinner 2005   –   The Story in Pictures (and The Jazz Age) ©  Fri Oct 21 2005

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In a mere 7 weeks, the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, which Paul and Erminie Hafer opened on Saturday, December 11th, 1965, at 28 Warwick Street in Boyertown, Pennsylvania, will be 40 years old.

Of course, this anniversary was the theme of the Museum's Annual Dinner held last night in the lobby of 85 South Walnut Street in Boyertown  —  the "new" venue of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, since 2001.

For 64 years, the Walnut Street plant was the flagship facility of the Boyertown Auto Body Works, which Paul's father, B. Frank Hafer, and Messrs. Swartz and Hoffman began on Monday, March 1st, 1926, by purchasing (and renaming) the Boyertown Carriage Works from Milton Derr & Morris Gilbert, who had owned it since 1916.

The Annual Dinner  —  in recent years, held at the Inn at Moselem Springs  —  was this year moved to the Museum itself, giving attendees the opportunity to not only tour the Museum, but also inspect Jeremiah Sweinhart's Carriage Factory, which officially opened on Tuesday, December 3rd, 1872.   •••   2007 is the target date for opening the Carriage Factory to the public as part of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles experience.

On Thursday, October 13th, 2005, the engineers and contractors began their preliminary choreography to transform what, for decades, has been but an unseen storage area, into Jeremiah's magical blacksmithery of yesteryear.   The photo above/left shows the Sweinhart Carriage Factory as it appears today.   At right, you see it circa 1913.

The dindin cuisine was scrumptious.   I had the crab-stuffed flounder  —  to die for.   Others had stuffed pork chops or petite filet.   The sides were a two-toned sculpture of smashed taties, green beans and baby carrots, champagne & coffee, and a triple decadent dessert plate of pumpkin pie, chocolate cream puff, and raspberry cheesecake.   Ralph DeStefano, of Pollock Auto Restoration in Pottstown, gave the cream puff four stars.   I voted the pump pie a tie.

The palate portion of the evening was catered by Sweet Beginnings  —  just a block from the Boyertown Museum, at 35 South Reading Avenue  —  open from 8 to 2 for breakfast and lunch, and closed in the evening, as they are then busy catering dinners and late suppers throughout (mainly) Berks and Montgomery Counties.


The Jazz Age
After morselery, festivities emcee Bernie Hofmann, President of the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles, introduced the evening's featured speaker, James B. Reifsnyder, Chairman of the History Department at The Hill School in nearby Pottstown, who brought us a 62-minute presentation on The Jazz Age.

Though a very scant few of us are senior enough to experientially remember any of the 10-year period in American history, now referred to as The Roaring Twenties, still, when we hear or study about it, many of us find ourselves in the throes of its nostalgia  —  wishing that we could chronovisit that time of crazy cars, wild music, bathtub gin and flappers.   In preparing to put that turbulent decade into perspective with the war which preceded it, and the financial crash which ended it, Mr. Reifsnyder started by telling us:

"The history that moves me is not military history;  it's not political history, or economic history, but rather it is the history of culture.   It's the history of the books we read, and why we read them.   It's the history of the art that we appreciate, and why it moves us.   And I'm here tonight because I think my ultimate joy in studying the past is to study the music, and to think about what the music means  —  what it meant to us during The Roaring Twenties  —  what it means to us today."

Jim is not as old as The Jazz Age music, but was turned onto it by his high school music teacher in East Hanover, New Jersey.   In the early 1970's, Jim Reifsnyder went to Bucknell University, where he was one of the founding members of their 25-piece big band.   In 1974, that "Bucknell Jazz & Rock Ensemble" toured Europe, doing 21 concerts in 30 days.   In fact, they were the first jazz band invited behind the iron curtain.

Music speaks beyond language, beyond nationality, beyond age, beyond economic status, and even beyond one's particular culture.   Jim says, "There's a magic and a passion to music", and that's why he has been immersed in its study for the past 35 years.   He then played about two minutes of the introduction of Part 1 of the 10-part mini-series by Ken Burns entitled Jazz, which first aired over PBS in January of 2001.   The documentary begins with Louis Armstrong playing  —  followed by Wynton Marsalis describing in poetic terms, the unbreakable bond between the spirit of jazz and the spirit of America:

"Jazz music celebrates life, human life  —  the range of it, the absurdity of it, the ignorance of it, the greatness of it, the intelligence of it, the sexuality of it, the profundity of it  —  and it deals with it, in all of its facets."

Though the roots of jazz go back to at least the early 1800's, the music which is officially called "jazz" was born sometime around 1895 in New Orleans, Louisiana.   It combined elements of Ragtime, marching band music and Blues.   What differentiated jazz from these earlier styles was the widespread use of improvisation.   Mr. Marsalis expatiates:

"The real power of jazz, and the innovation of jazz, is that a group of people can come together, and create art  —  improvised art, and can negotiate their agendas with each other, and that negotiation in the art produces a dialogue, a conversation  —  in the language of music."

It has been said that jazz is an artform which is a way of understanding ourselves.   Jazz has been called the purest expression of American democracy;  a music built on individualism and compromise, independence and cooperation.   Mr. Reifsnyder tells his students:

"When you hear Dixieland Jazz played, it's democracy in action.   It's the essence of the idea that we're in this together  —  we're equal  —  and we're each going to have a chance to sing our song."

It's also been said that Jazz could only have happened in an entirely new world.   Jazz is an improvisational art  —  making itself up, as it goes along  —  just like the country that gave it birth.   It rewards individual expression, but demands selfless collaboration.   Jim explains:

T I M E L I N E    O F    T H E    J A Z Z    A G E

"New Orleans was originally a French settlement.   It was, for a time, taken over by the Spanish in the 18th century, and of course, eventually, as part of the Louisiana Purchase, it was incorporated into the United States in 1803.   And, it's a city that echoes those European traditions and sounds.   There are Spanish elements in the music;  there are French elements in the music;  there are certainly native American elements in the music;  black American elements;  there's a bit of the black church;  there's a bit of the slave songs, and the work songs that came out of the fields of Louisiana and the American South  —  and they all kind of percolated.   The music really is kind of a gumbo  —  all kinds of different influences and cultures thrown into one.   And I think what makes it magical is that those cultures don't compete with one another  —  they blend, and they make something new  —  something that is uniquely American."

mouse over the purple letters at the right   for side articles on the Roaring Twenties

Buddy Bolden (1877-1931), cornet, is generally considered to be the first real jazz musician.   Possibly the best known early jazz musician was Jelly Roll Morton (1890-1941), piano.   Worldwide, the term "jazz" is virtually synonymous with the name Louis Armstrong (1901-1971), cornet & trumpet  —  who was born in the cradle of jazz, New Orleans.  

The impact of Satchmo and other jazz musicians altered the course of both popular and Classical music.   African-American musical styles became the dominant force in 20th century music.   Also born in New Orleans (1961), was the Duke of Modern Jazz, Wynton Marsalis, who started playing trumpet at the age of 6, entered Juilliard at 17, and was a major contributor to the Jazz documentary, produced by Ken Burns.

Though jazz had originated in New Orleans in the late 1800's;  after the Federal Government closed down the Storyville district of New Orleans in 1917  —  which had been a 20-year experiment in legalized bordellos  —  their music migrated up river:  to Memphis, St. Louis, even Minneapolis, and then to Chicago, which became the focal point for jazz in the early 1920's.

JAZZ  —  point here for word origin

There's not a great deal of agreement on the years that constituted the "Golden Age of Jazz", but the 1920's were probably the beginning of it, and the two technologies which propelled it into a nationwide phenomenon were the phonograph, and radio  —  but really in reverse order.

Though record players had been available for a number of decades before, they were very primitive, and prohibitively expensive.   However.   In spite of that, the first jazz recording was released by the Victor Talking Machine Company on Monday, February 26th, 1917.   And in 1919, Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton was out there too, on the Gennett Record Company label.

But the event which catapulted music to the masses was the advent of commercial radio, which burst onto the American scene at 6 o'clock on the Tuesday evening of November 2nd, 1920, over 833 kilocycles on the AM band, from radio station KDKA in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

And radio not only sold radios.   Its concomitant side effect was that it sold records.   People heard a recording on the radio, and rushed out to buy their own copy of it  —  so they could play it whenever they wished.

Mr. Reifsnyder sums up:  "Jazz was the soundtrack of the decade.   It was the celebration of enterprise, sacrifice, and the triumph of freedom over oppression.    It was exciting.    It was explosive.    It was entertaining."

And ... you could dance to it.

A number of those in attendance, at the 40th Anniversary Edition of the Boyertown Museum's Annual Dinner, were also on hand when the Museum opened in 1965  —  most important of which was Erminie Shaeffer Hafer, co-founder of the Museum, and wife of the late Paul Hafer, who was President of the Boyertown Auto Body Works from 1934 to 1973, and the main driving force of both the Body Works and the Boyertown Museum of Historic Vehicles for the 78 years, from 1926 through 2004.

Paul Robert Hafer, passed away on Sunday, October 24th, 2004, just two weeks short of his 94th birthday.   In the next few months, we hope to have the Paul Hafer Biography posted on our website.   Click here for the current mini-blurb.

Others at the 2005 Annual Dinner who were at Paul's elbow 40 years ago were Beulah Fehr; and Gloria Jean & George M. Meiser IX, the driving forces of the 1869 instituted Historical Society of Berks County, located at 940 Centre Avenue in Reading, Pennsylvania.

As you may have noticed in a couple of the pictures, the Museum has a very unique lectern  —  and the Annual Dinner was its inaugural comeoutance.   The design and construction  —  quite befitting an auto museum  —  is the sole brainchild of our chronic Museum volunteer, Ed Miller.   Its glass top is framed by a circa 1920 exquisite wooden steering wheel; mounted on a white enameled exhaust system tail pipe; all supported by an extra-weighted fire-engine-red automobile wheel, sans tire.     It's beautiful.     It works.     And we love it.     Thanks Ed.

The Jazz Age  –  selected bibliography

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This Recent News // Annual Dinner 2005 page was last updated on Tuesday, January 10, 2006.