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By JERRY LYNOTT; Times Leader Staff Writer
Saturday, May 18, 1996     Page: 1A

NANTICOKE — It had all the elements of a major blockbuster.
   
ACTION!
    “My bed was shaking back and forth,” raved Ron Switay.
   
ADVENTURE!
   
“We rode the bus all the way from Glen Lyon to here,” exclaimed Dan Drury.
   
DRAMA!
   
“I want to see it go. It’s being stubborn. It’s not giving up,” lamented
Julia Wisniewski.
   
MORE DRAMA!
   
“They built that solid. They’ll have a hundred ton of steel after they’re
done,” boasted Henry Bobbin.
   
Critics raved Friday morning as two cranes razed what remained of the
73-year-old State Theatre on Nanticoke’s East Main Street.
   
Traffic came to a standstill. Police handled crowd control. Parents brought
their children to witness history in the making.
   
“It gets him out of his mom’s hair in the morning,” confessed Earl Lohman
of why he and his 4-year-old son, Joshua, were out Friday morning.
   
Traffic really did halt, but that’s because Main Street was closed for a
few blocks. And the police just made sure no one strayed too close to the
falling debris.
   
But for some, the destruction of a downtown landmark left them with
memories of the theater’s heyday.
   
“If you had a date and you could afford it, you went to the State,” said
Tom “Sonny” McLarney.
   
Two doors down from the din, McLarney, 73, paused behind the counter of his
restaurant, The Coffee Shop, to reminisce.
   
“It was beautiful. It was all marble and brass with a big chandelier,” he
said, stretching out arms for added emphasis.
   
McLarney acknowledged he was glad to see the building being torn down. It
had been neglected and became a danger and an eyesore, he said.
   
Wisniewski, seated at the counter, attached sentimental value to the
theater being battered apart down the street.
   
“I saw `Gone with the Wind,’ there, so of course that made it special,”
Wisniewski, 51, said.
   
The empty storefronts along both sides of the downtown artery and the
soon-to-be parking lot in the place of the theater suggest a different place
from the one where Wisniewski grew up. “The Nanticoke I knew no longer
exists,” she said with a sigh.
   
Across the street from the piles of bricks and lumber that once supported
the theater’s walls, floors and ceilings stands the clean-line design of the
Kanjorski Center, all brick and reflective glass. Across the street from that
is a convenience store, doing a brisk business from morning commuters and
people who work in the center.
   
The change struck Frank Brojakowski like the steel ball demolishing the
plaster walls, ceilings and wood floors in the apartments above the
street-level theater.
   
“There used to be a bowling alley in the lower level. I used to bowl there
after I got out of the service,” said Brojakowski, 71.
   
He remembered seeing shows in the Family and Rex theaters long ago. The
State was something special.
   
“This was the fancy one. They had the best movies here,” he said.
   
By the time Dan Drury set foot in the theater years ago, it was almost on
its last legs.
   
“I saw `Close Encounters of the Third Kind,’ ” said Drury, 31. The film
debuted in 1977. About four years later, the theater closed.
   
When the theater was open, Henry Bobbin sometimes found himself alone
inside the movie house.
   
“I’m going to tell you a story,” started Bobbin, 81. “I played hooky from
school and I’d go up in the balcony. I would fall asleep and have to come out
myself at night.”
   
Ron Switay’s problem was getting sleep. He lives in an apartment next door
to the theater. “An awfully big alarm clock” woke him up around 5 a.m. Friday
when one of the cranes started up outside his window.
   
When Switay returned home from work, his home was still there.
   
The crane operators opted for accuracy rather than annihilation, according
to Mike Cavage, job superintendent for demolition contractor, Linde
Enterprises.
   
Cavage said the theater’s construction and the proximity of other
structures made it necessary for an almost room-by-room demolition.
   
“You have to cube it apart,” he said. “The job itself is on schedule. In
another week and half we hope to be out of here.”
   
That was good news for McLarney, who said his business has dropped since
demolition began about two weeks ago.
   
“As a rule, I’m packed,” he said, pointing out the five or six customers
seated at the counter sipping coffee.
   
“I didn’t lose my customers,” he said, adding a twist to the drama outside
his window. “They just can’t get to me.”
   
Demolition of the old State Theatre in Nanticoke exposed the steel beams of
the 73-year-old building Friday.
   
TIMES LEADER PHOTOS/LEWIS GEYER
   
Nanticoke police Sgt. Richard Meyers on Friday morning photographs the
demolition of the old State Theatre on East Main Street.