It's still controversial, that explosion that sent the battleship Maine to the bottom of Havana harbor in Cuba on the night of Feb. 15, 1898. It triggered the Spanish-American War. "Remember the Maine!" was long an American rallying cry, in the martyred company of Pearl Harbor and the Alamo.
Now memory of the doomed Maine is intertwined with more recent events ("Remember the Weapons of Mass Destruction!") as another misguided catalyst for American intervention. Careful analysis by some scholars, long after the fact, concluded the disaster that did in the Maine may have been an accidental igniting of the ammunition magazine, no Cuban terrorists involved.
But following the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine, America was whipped into one of its rare patriotic frenzies, ready to spar with a sneaky, sabotaging foe. A quick war dismissed the Spanish from the region. Years later, the public still cared about the Maine, and wanted the brave souls trapped in her hull recovered and given a proper burial.
In 1912, the United States Navy recovered remains, refloated the Maine, towed it out to open sea, and sank it again. But first they salvaged masts, port holes, and even a fancy Captain's tea set to send home for memorials and museums across the nation.
Some towns ended up with unusual artifacts from the Maine. Naturally, we go out of our way to visit these rusting linchpins of destiny. Reading scored what we'd consider a very coveted piece -- the bow anchor from the battleship, installed in Reading's City Park in 1914.
We made our pilgrimage to the USS Maine anchor during summer 2004. The park is arrayed on a forested slope, on the way up to Reading's famous Pagoda on Mt. Penn.
The anchor, propped against a stone and firmly bolted down, is adjacent to North 11th Street. Since the ship was already anchored the night of the fateful blast, one could argue -- at least one sitting drunk in a Reading bar -- that this is the only part of the Maine that wasn't sunk by Spanish perfidy.
Park visitors should circle around the anchor, touch it, and remember the second-hand hazards of smoking.
The City Park is thick with other memorials and statues -- a firefighter monument, policeman statue, Vietnam Memorial, and a kid-sized fairy tale castle, to mention a few. It's all well maintained and free of vandalism -- perhaps because the park houses a city police station with a dozen cruisers in the parking lot.
January 2007: The kiddie castle has been razed. According to one tipster, "The city cited
high maintenance costs as well as its
frequent use by drug dealers and the amorous."
