Jan/100
The Krux guides teens at a crossroads: With guitars, computers, billiards and espresso, a hangout aims to keep youths and the town clean and safe.
AMANDA PALLESCHI
Of the Patriot-News
A group of teenage girls spent a recent Friday evening under the glow of new laptops at the Krux Youth Center just off Dillsburg's town square, doing the sort of things teens mostly do on the Internet: Facebook, MySpace and some Yahoo chatting about cute boys and mean girls.
John Parzyszek, 50, the father of three teenagers who go to Northern York County schools, opened the Krux in September. He walks by to say hello to the girls and scan their activities.
The chair in front of the third computer, the one with the Confederate flag for a desktop pattern, remains vacant.
Parzyszek, known to most who frequent the Krux as John P., rolls his eyes and shrugs this off.
"It can have different meanings, so they say. I don't know. You have to pick your battles," he said.
When it comes to the Krux's computers, the battles he's picked in the three months since he opened the place have included putting blockers on the Web browsers -- blockers that have seen searches for "Bloods," "Crips" and "Lords."
Churches, schools and YMCAs have long been trying to think of ways to guide youths.
Often, it involves some attempt to speak their language, engage their interests and provide them with mentors to whom they can relate. Such programs, including Bethesda Mission's youth program and Harrisburg's Center for Champions, have been in the midstate for years. Denise Wendle has been running the Center for Champions in Allison Hill for 12 years. The nonprofit program stays afloat with the help of church donations and some money from Dauphin County, she said. Over the years, Wendle has been able to bring on paid staffers to help run after-school programs -- such as Christian-based hip-hop, basketball and baseball -- for Harrisburg city youths in grades 1-12.
Parzyszek has started the effort in more suburban and rural communities, in hopes that the Krux will be a model for similar spaces throughout the region.
He sees a rural youth culture on the verge of delving into classically urban problems: the steady stream of drugs from surrounding big cities into the area, petty crime and bullying.
He named the center the Krux because "Krux ... is a crossroads, the decisions they make at this stage in their lives determine if they'll stand on a corner or not," he said.
"Chicago, New York and Philly didn't start out bad, but too many people turned a blind eye."
Parzyszek grew up in Chicago, and moved away from the city to clean up his act after a few brushes with the law as a teen. He sees his adopted hometown at a crossroads, too.
"This town is small, but it don't take long to heat it up," he said.
Things usually get going at the Krux around 4 p.m., when the Northern High School students have made the trek down Baltimore Street, past Dillsburg's town square to the Krux.
The Krux was run with a different name by the Rev. Mike Hammer of Dillsburg's Celebration Community Church for two years.
It closed for 14 months after that, and has been under the direction of Parzyszek in a freestanding building across from Dillsburg's town square. It's an established nonprofit organization, complete with an espresso bar, pool table, a professional 18-channel soundboard and Parzyszek's white Dodge Caravan, always parked outside.
Donations and concession sales keep the place going. Parzyszek and church and parent volunteers are an after-school, and even weekend, presence.
Tom Kibler, a Carroll Twp. police officer, said many teens in the community need it. On a recent Friday evening, Kibler brought his homeschooled son Dakota, 13, to the Krux to plug his guitar into the soundboard.
"It might sound silly, but they're putting a lot of love into kids who might not have that at home," Kibler said. "These rural parents will drop [their kids] off, come back six to eight hours later because they didn't want to deal with them at home, and then they get into mischief."
The Kiblers eventually went home for dinner that Friday evening, but Austin Hartwell, 15, stuck around.
Hartwell said he's getting over his bad habits of skipping school and stealing from neighbors. His mother, Ida Hartwell, 31, a single mom living in Dillsburg, said it was hard to get through to Austin. Sending him to live with his father didn't help.
"He never really had a relationship with him, so it didn't work," she said.
The Hartwell home is within walking distance from the Krux, so when it first opened in September, Austin Hartwell started stopping in after school. "He would come home and talk about John. He really bonded with him," she said.
"On weekends, he is there from open to close," said Ida Hartwell, who works as a bartender on weekends. "I don't look at it like a teenage day care center, but it's constructive, and it's totally believable that it's a good time."
