Somewhere there's a thief with a giant red hat who is on the North Scranton Rotary Club's naughty list.
A giant Santa hat topping a stack of anthracite boulders disappeared last week. Members of the North Scranton Rotary, who have been capping the coal monument for six holiday seasons and take care of the now triangular-shaped piece of land that hosts it, noticed the hat missing Saturday, said Carl M. Baruffaldi, treasurer of the local service organization.
At the site to raise the U.S. and Rotarian flags, which had been at half-staff since the tragic shooting in Newtown, Conn., Mr. Baruffaldi also wanted to take photos of the park for the group's records. But the coal was bare. He looked around the immediate area and sent a query to fellow Rotarians.
A Grinch likely made off with the cap, wanting to have an oversized holiday novelty, Mr. Baruffaldi said. He doubts it was the weekend's high winds, since Rotary members fasten the cap with bungee and rope.
"Someone felt the need to take this cap. ... I hope they had a great Christmas," he said with more than a hint of sarcasm. "It's disappointing."
The coal monument at the confluence of the McDade Expressway and Routes 6 and 11 added to the spirit of the season for the past six years, sporting the huge red, tasseled stocking cap at the northern gateway to the city.
The Rotary will not file a police report, and Mr. Baruffaldi is not hopeful the spirit of the season will prompt the thief to return it. This is the second time the hat was stolen; the coal's first hat disappeared three years ago.
North Scranton Rotary gets a lot of positive feedback about the small holiday gesture, and the group will have another hat ready for Christmas 2013. Scranton High School home economics students make the hat, with the Rotary providing the $70 to $100 worth of materials.
The monument, dedicated by the American Automobile Association in 1941, commemorates the first traffic circle in Pennsylvania. It existed there before road networks changed and traffic circles fell out of favor.
Contact the writer: dfalchek@timesshamrock.com