More happenings in 1918:  Sylvester Fellin and his family are living at 105 North Pine Street.  They will move to 21/23 West Cranberry Avenue in eleven years to operate the Fellin Saloon next door to Alex and Anna Kudrick. 

A relative named John Kudrick (spelled with the "c") is living at 135 West Clay Avenue in West Hazleton.  I once asked my father who John Kudrick was and he replied that he was a cousin.  For more on this relationship, click here.

The Cranberry School is located west of the intersection at Wayne Street and West Clay Avenue.  Mame McCarron is the principal of the school and Beatrice Barnhart is a teacher.  Three additional schools in West Hazleton are the Mountain View School located at West Green Street,  the West Hazleton High School located at the corner of north 5th and Monroe and the 5th Street School located between Horn Alley and Branch Alley on south 5th Street.

On May 13, the first United States airmail stamps, featuring a picture of an airplane were introduced.  The first plane spotted flying over the area is an airplane carrying airmail at an average plane speed of 70 mph.

Death claims Claude Debussy and John L. Sullivan.

Fires destroy the Church Street School and the Harleigh coal breaker.  The Family Theater at Wyoming and Green streets is also struck by fire, but it is confined to the stage area and the front of the theater by a fire curtain.

The Cranberry Eagles baseball team is one of a number of local baseball teams competing in the region.  Click here for more on Cranberry and other local sports activities.

A popular war song is "Mademoiselle From Armentiers," and movie fans are flocking to see "Stella Maris" with Mary Pickford and "Tarzan of the Apes" with Elmo Lincoln.People are reading "Treat 'Em Rough" by Ring Lardner and Booth Tarkington wins a Pulitzer Prize for his work, "The Magnificent Ambersons."     

On June 6, Casey Stengel, after being traded by the Dodgers makes his return to Ebbets Field a memorable one.  In his first at-bat, Stengel calls time, steps out of the batter's box and doffs his cap and a bird flys out.  Knute Rockne is named football coach at Notre Dame.  In boxing, heavyweight contender Jack Dempsey KO's two opponents in 14 and 17 seconds respectively.

Consumers are dazzled by the pop-up toaster, three-color traffic lights, Rinso, Kotex and the Raggedy Ann doll.  Locally, metal trolley tickets (tokens) sell for 5½¢ each while mining union members pay dues of 25¢ per month.

A local directory shows a listing for Alex Kudrik living at 19 West Cranberry Avenue.  Click here for more on the Kudrick surname spelling.

The Kudrick household is awakened around 3 AM on November 11 by the sounds of colliery whistles, church bells, school bells, fire alarms, and sirens.  It is the joyous signal announcing the end of World War I.  The celebration in Philadelphia (shown above) has the same euphoria expressed in the emigrant neighborhoods in and around Cranberry Avenue in West Hazleton.  Joy abounds as amateur musicians on West Cranberry Avenue form an impromptu band and parade though the streets of south West Hazleton and Cranberry until dawn.  As a new day emerges, an unofficial holiday is declared.  The miners, factory workers and children all take the day off.  By 2 PM, the Kudrick children joyously march though the streets and alleys with their friends banging on pots and pans.

Events of 1918:  Events occur near the end of World War I that will affect the Kudrick Family homeland.  Click here for more on the formation of Czechoslovakia.

In October, Sgt. Alvin C. York almost single-handed kills 25 German soldiers and captures 132 in the Argonne Forest in France.  Seventy years later, I work on a program to develop an air defense system which is named the Sgt. York.

Taxes are raised 250 percent to meet war costs.  Eighty percent of tax revenue comes from large incomes, taxed at a 77 percent rate.  Camels are the soldiers' favorite cigarette.  The President declares May 30th (Decoration Day) a day of public humiliation, prayer and fasting.  Under the new war rules, restaurants exclude toast as garniture, additional bread after the first course, and double cream or crème deluxe.  All food waste is saved to feed animals.  After the Armistice, shops are posted with signs like "Closed for the Kaiser's Funeral.  After World War I, the coal industry came under stiffer competition by the cheaper, more easily transportable, storable and usable petroleum fuel, oil.  The surge of petroleum-based industries, notably home-heating and automobiles, together with the railroad boom of World War I helped speed the decline of the anthracite coal industry.
 
In early October, a rapid spreading epidemic of "Spanish Influenza" strikes the area including West Hazleton and Cranberry.  Deaths reach 588,000.  Click here for more on the epidemic.

Russian Czar Nicholas II, Czarina Alexandra and their five children are murdered by the Bolsheviks in a cellar at Yekaterinburg where they have been captive.

The chemical agent, Mustard, is first produced at Edgewood Arsenal in May.  Over 711 tons of mustard agent is produced at the Arsenal before the end of World War I. Several of my relatives will work at Edgewood Arsenal starting in the 1940s including my uncle Andrew McDeshen, my cousin Andrew McDeshen Jr., my cousin John Koneyak Jr., my cousin Elmer Koneyak, and my father Joseph Kudrick.  George Dulina, a cousin to the Koneyak side of our family, will also be an Edgewood Arsenal employee.

The popular slogan for the Imperial "Drop seat" Union Suit is "always a closed crotch."  With the ban on German imported clothing dyes, styles are limited to blue, black and brown as clothing becomes strikingly plain and austere.