PITTSBURGH TO ALIQUIPPA

I remember, when I sit down to blog, how I keep reminding myself to write while the subject matter is fresh.  I have yet to do so, but I'm optimistic that someday I will.  I think I could actually get to like this if I did, keeping the details fresh in my mind as I type. 
Today I'm remembering my week at Gary and Linda's, in Raccoon Township, a part of Beaver County, and an interesting but heroically unimaginative use of the privilege of naming.  In terms of population, Beaver County is relatively small at 170,000 or so people (Marin County, by way of comparison, has about 252,000 people), but it has an amazingly large number of incorporated entities: two cities, thirty boroughs, twenty-two townships, and eight unincorporated areas.  We could stand on a hill and see five different boroughs or towns.

Aliquippa is the main city in Beaver County, a run down shell of the former industrial powerhouse it was in the 1950's.  Oddly, the rest of Beaver County is humming.  There are power plants, including the famous Shippingport nuclear power plant, the first in the United States (1957). 



Shippingport, PA.

There are steel mills, chemical plants, gypsum factories, mines, cracker plants, and small businesses galore.  

One of hundreds of factories along the Ohio River.

One of many mountains of coal waiting to be fed into the maws of the factories.

The Ohio River and the Beaver River, among others, allow plenty of shipping and recreation; they are significantly cleaner today than they were when I lived in Pittsburgh.  Trains still run through the area around the clock, and although they seem to run surprisingly frequently, a plaque in the town of Robinson notes that 120 trains per day ran through town back in the heyday.  That's one every twelve minutes, 24/7.

Passing trains, Robinson PA.

 The iron railroad bridges still span the rivers and are still heavily used, although they are rusting visibly.

A train crossing the Ohio on an iron bridge from the 1800's.

  There are more bridges in the city of Pittsburgh than any city in the world, and in Beaver County alone there are more than 460.  As in Pittsburgh proper, the terrain is hilly and green, much of it covered with trees as it was in the 1700's when whites first settled, but much of it open and grassy.  This time of year, the grass is as green as it might be in Ireland, and the lawns, some of which are more than an acre, are well kept.  Not much farming or ranching, although the area seems to be brilliantly suitable, but lots of what might be considered mini-estates in size.  The housing stock is divided between new and old, with plenty of relatively new subdivisions of relatively expensive houses and very expensive houses.  The commute to Pittsburgh is less than an hour, and along with the bucolic scenery and expansive river access, there is clean air and no City payroll tax. 

The weather, as usual on this trip, was fantastic.  We spent hours driving around the different communities, and Gary filled me in on every plant and factory, what they were used for, what they used to be, and so on.  I'm a fanatic for that kind of thing, especially in western Pennsylvania where I'm from.  Gary and I drove into Pittsburgh and down to the South Side, a reviving neighborhood across the Monongahela from downtown Pittsburgh, and it was even more classically American Industrial Revolution housing stock.  The brick buildings stand side by side, touching one another, for block after block, with bars and restaurants from many years ago hanging on against the relentless onslaught of gentrification. 

I can almost see and hear the men in their sleeveless T-shirts, smoking and drinking beer on the front stoops, while crowds of dirty, shirtless kids speaking countless languages run wild in the streets.  Laundry hangs on the line, desperately trying to dry before the soot in the air settles on anything wet, and the smell of food from around the world wafts through the air.  The bars--more than anywhere in the country, by some accounts--are packed with tough, mean steelworkers and coal miners on Saturday night, and the hundreds of churches fill every Sunday morning.  Only the schools are never full.

Some parts of the South Side are brand new, with loft apartments in place of steel mills, and the Steelers practice facility surrounded by restaurants and apartments.  As you head down river the gentrification slows, but that's my part of town. 

A lot of the communities in Beaver County have been here for more than a hundred years, and they have those houses, warehouses, and factories that exert such a strange fascination on me.  Gary and Linda live in one of the subdivisions, though, in a house they bought because it was exactly what they wanted and then proceeded to completely change.  I liked it because I had my own bedroom and bath and a fine place to park the RV. The food was good, the company better, and I won a dollar from Gary by coming from
w-a-a-a-y behind in a card game that he taught me.

Jeane and I joined Gary and Linda in a trip to the only winery in the area, a surprisingly nicely done place in Gibsonia, where my dad's half brothers died of muscular dystrophy in the early 70's (another story, another time).  The grapes come from Erie and are crushed on site, and sold by the glass, bottle, or case.  Jeane, who knows wine, said they were pretty good, but sweeter in general than California wines.


At the winery in Gibsonia.

NEXT:  MT. WASHINGTON, NOW AND BEFORE

UP TO PITTSBURGH

I'm checking in for the first time in a shocking three weeks.  I thought I was more conscientious than this, and I'm surprised to see Key West as the last entry.  A lot of water under the bridge since then, or, more accurately, dollars in the tank.  I swear I can almost see the price rise at the pump while I fill up. 

I left Key West and drove back to Coral Springs, and departed for Lake Placid and Mom's house for one more visit before heading north.  The consistently warm weather in the northeast persuaded me to move up my schedule, which originally plotted mid-April for snow country.  The RV is NOT a good vehicle for driving in snow.

Back in Lake Placid, I checked in on Mom and on Uncle Jack, a retired Coast Guard officer with a million stories. I also viewed the 40+ stunning murals that chart the history of the area and Lake Placid in particular.  Some of them are as large as 20 feet high and a hundred feet long, and I can't imagine the time and skill needed to complete such fantastic works of art.


A small part of a huge mural featuring life sized cattle.

I discovered on my way out of town that State Road 84 (Alligator Alley), which runs from Broward County across the state to Naples, on the Gulf, has maybe one or two exits over the entire 80+ mile trip.  Not paying attention, I missed the Highway 27 exit and got locked onto the Alley, and after maybe 20 miles I realized I was probably on my way across the state.  At 8.5 miles per gallon, that looked to be a 20 gallon oversight, about a hundred bucks, plus several hours.  A short debate later, I made a U-turn on one of those "Official Vehicle Only" crossings, conspicuous as hell, and beat it back to Highway 27.  I got away with it.

Like a guy who makes the major leagues for one game, I had a cup of coffee visit in Tampa with my old camper friend Lon and then left for Atlanta, where my brother Michael lives.  My only stop on the way up was an RV park just inside Georgia, dotted with moss covered oak trees and cute little iridescent green frogs that I hadn't seen anywhere else.  One other thing of note there was the gigantic flea market that connected to the end of the RV park.  Pretty exciting for the locals on a Sunday morning.  I also discovered the best used book store ever, a library outlet.  Seems that libraries don't buy all their books, they lease them, and return them to the publisher when they're done with them.  I found thousands of books in excellent condition, for one to three dollars, and stocked up.  Good titles, too.

I reached Atlanta around March 24th and parked in Michael's driveway.  His wife, Chris, was up in Pittsburgh, holding a vigil for her mother Mary with her three siblings.  As her condition deteriorated, Michael made plans to go up to Pittsburgh for the impending funeral.  When Mary entered hospice for her final hours, Michael decided to drive up with me in the RV and ride back with his daughter Jennifer after.  The timing was perfect.

Mike's a great travel companion, having a good attitude, immense travel experience, terrific people skills, and enough money to help pay for gas.  We made the 700 mile journey in two days, arriving on Thursday, March 29th, after an uneventful journey.  The only interesting stop was a little RV park in Seven Mile Ford, Virginia, where we met the locals in the deli/coffee shop and in the cheap housing in the RV.  Four dollar breakfasts of cheap food and bad coffee, but nice people.  Very typical of rural America.  Not the 1%, that's for sure.

I stayed for a few days in Mt. Lebanon with my old friend Joy Alex and her husband John Hensler, their lovely daughter Ellie, and Joy's mom, now suffering from dementia and other ailments but still sweet.  They live in a house built for his own use by Ed Ryan of Ryan homes, who built some 64,000 homes in his career.  This house has some unique features, since Ed's son had muscular dystrophy, and the yard, with a rectangular three lots at the rear, covers three acres, making them the largest private property in Mt. Lebanon and a generous payer of property tax. 

On Friday, March 30th, my girlfriend Jeane flew in for a weeklong visit.  One of the sad duties we had was going to the visitation for Chris' mom on Tuesday and the funeral on Wednesday.  I discovered at the last minute that I had prepared for such an event in a very half-assed way, and did not have the proper clothing in the RV.  I found myself dressed in a pair of decent grey slacks, black loafers, light green socks, a dark blue jacket from a formal suit, and a light blue V-necked T shirt.  I did have a belt, fortunately.  I felt conspicuous as hell, and noticed a sort of bewildered reaction from the other visitors at the funeral.  "I'm from California," I'd say, helpfully, and they would nod, relieved, as if that explained everything.  I looked like a badly paid English professor from a small college in the 1970's. 

Chris and her siblings, Bill, Donna, and Kathy, were profoundly moved by the vigil and the events of the last days.  They were fortunate to have Hospice, and had the opportunity to say everything that needed to be said and to have time to just sit with Mary at the end.  At the very last, while all four were present, Mary opened her eyes, said "I love you," and slipped away.  There was more to the description, but the obvious mingling of joy and grief at the perfection of the passing gave me chills. 

We went to the funeral at St. John Chrysostom Byzantine Catholic Church in Homestead, a blue collar neighborhood where Mary lived in the house her mother bought for her when Mary married, way back when.  Michael and Chris were married in that church forty years ago, when Mike was nineteen, on the same day of the year my parents were married twenty-four years previously.  He wore a crown that made him look like that guy in the Imperial Margerine commercials, but kept his dignity.

The church itself was very interesting.  Byzantine Catholics, unlike Greek Orthodox, recognize the authority of the Pope and his infallability when speaking  ex cathedra, but maintain their own liturgy and vary somewhat in expressing the rites.  Although the Mass is usually conducted in English in the United States, it is sometimes conducted in Old Church Slavonic, a language put in writing and used by St. Cyril, who devised the Cyrillic alphabet still used in Russia and other eastern European Slavic nations, and St. Methodius.  This is a fantastic history, dating back to perhaps 836 AD.  Its use seems to be somewhat similar to Yiddish in that it enables people of different languages, particularly eastern European, to combine together in worship.

The church, recently redone, featured a confusing juxtaposition of art between the paintings and stained glass windows.  The barrel ceiling, the area of the church behind the altar, and an enormous and bewildering flat panel consruction in front of and around the altar were painted in a style best described as medieval.  Everything seemed to be two dimensional, flat, in appearance.  The saints all seemed to be the same guy, maybe with different hair and beard and more or fewer wrinkles.  The hands were weirdly skeletal, with long bony fingers jutting out at impossible angles, as though the artist could not decide whether they were facing forward or backward.  The colors of the paintings were not very many, seeming like they were selected from a sixteen color box of Crayola crayons instead of the sixty-four color box. 

Jesus was portrayed in different locations as a grown man, typical of  Catholic churches, but in one location he appeared with the Virgin Mary as what seemed to be a boy of about eight years old, something seldom seen.  I'm not sure whether it was intentional or a badly drawn infant, but it raised interesting questions in my mind at the long funeral mass.  Was eight year old Jesus a rambunctious youngster?  Did he get in trouble?  Make mistakes?  I've always wondered about that, just as I wondered about the eight year old Superboy.  I wouldn't want to piss off either one of them.

The stained glass windows, each donated by an individual or family with a lot of Vs, Ks, and Js in the name, were an entirely different order of art.  They appeared almost fully three dimensional and were brilliantly colored, like the rarely seen 256 color Crayola crayon box.  There may have been sixteen shades of blue alone, along with rich reds, golds, and greens.  There were not many locations of purple, perhaps because of the connection to royalty, but there were some stunning whites that almost seemed to be lit by light from above, which, due to the subject matter, was obviously the artist's intention.  The faces and hands were first rate, and the folds of the garments leaped out from the glass.  It was a fascinating display of a mighty talent,and I wondered at the difference in quality between it and the painting.  Maybe they ran out of money.

The procession traveled to a cemetery not far from the church, and we passed by a military funeral in process at the entrance.  Judging from the age of the honor guard, I judged that we were witnessing one of the all too frequent passings of a WWII veteran.  The cemetery seemed to have a de facto organization by ethnicity, Di Carlis with Cimolis, O'Neils with Grogans, and Kawolskis with Grochowskis.  It was a beautiful and peaceful day, and a short but moving ceremony capped by a fantastic song by Bill's son Doug.  Altogether a fitting end to a long life, eighty-nine good years and two bad months, as Bill said.