Housekeeping Notes: Well, I'm using Movable Type to update the Almanac again. Regular readers (those who eat a lot of fiber) will recall that Movable Type went toes-up in June during a server crash at Dementia World Headquarters. It's been live again for a while, but in the meantime, I so thoroughly screwed up the computer code behind this Web page that I couldn't get MT working again.
What does all this mean? Well, the Almanac has looked fairly lousy lately, especially in Internet Explorer. I apologize for that. The comments feature is active again, but now I need to find a way to re-import all of the archived entries, which will be a royal pain. Until that's complete, you won't be able to find anything older than a month or two.
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Several people have had kind things to say about the Almanac on their own Web pages, which I truly appreciate, and I also appreciate all of the nice emails I've gotten lately. Many of them are reprinted and answered here, but there are other folks who have asked that I not use their names, so I won't.
If you're just joining us, this is not really a "blog" in the sense that blogs are usually collections of links with some personal information and commentary. For the most part, I don't like to write about myself, and since launching this little endeavor, the entries have gotten longer and longer. (Diarrhea of the typing fingers and constipation of the brain? Perhaps.)
Rather than a "blog," this is more like an old-fashioned small town newspaper column. My earliest influences as a writer were Joe Browne and Peter Leo at the Post-Gazette, so that's not surprising.
And hopefully, that's the last Almanac entry I'll write about writing for a long, long time.
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This isn't the only regularly updated feature on the dementia.org server, by the way. Alycia Brashear, also known as "Stunt Violist," is Picking My Brain. She and some other Web writers have been added to the Tube City Online Virtual Library.
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Not My Desk, Chris Livingston's sometimes painfully funny accounts of working for temporary agencies, is again being updated after a long hiatus. Livingston also has a blog now.
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L.A.'s Rip Rense has another installment of Less Than Satisfying Encounters With Humanity, or LTSEWH:
I had drunk a good deal of tea and water. I was walking. This is not a good combination, in this, the era of the "customer only" bathroom. But when you gotta go ...
"Excuse me," I said, smiling, "Do you have a men's room?"
The woman behind the counter of the Arco gas station/mini-mart/hot dog stand/cosmetic surgery salon did not smile back. She did speak, though, which was a step in the right direction, and here is exactly what she said: "Customer only."
She was not from this country. Come to think of it, neither am I. I come from a country where business operators smile and say, "yes, sir, first door on your right." I don't know where that country went, but it sure as hell is gone.
I got home late last night and put a frozen pizza into the oven (that's me, Mr. Health Nut). At about 9:30 the phone rang; I checked the pizza, and it was almost done. Too bad, phone caller! My need for processed cheese and carbohydrates are more important than your puny phone calls! So I let the machine pick it up.
It was an insurance agent. He had a quote for me on a homeowner's policy. Crud. That's the call I've been waiting for. I pulled the almost, but not quite, cooked pizza out of the oven and picked up the phone.
He's a local guy, at an independent agency, and he recognized my name: Didn't I used to write for the newspaper?
"I think I've written for all of them, once," I said.
Anyway, turns out we had several mutual friends. He quoted me a good price on a policy --- full replacement value on the house and contents, low deductible, $300,000 liability coverage --- from a small company in Ohio. He also knows my real estate agent, and has worked with her before.
Since the other agent I asked for a quote still hasn't called me back, I have a pretty good idea that this guy's going to get my business, despite the fact that I had to eat a lukewarm, half-cooked frozen pizza for dinner.
They call this the housebuying process; I call it the getting-smacked-repeatedly-in-the-face process. It's the death of a thousand cuts --- fill out this form, sign this, sign that, write this check, write that check. I'm probably going to write a guide for other people in my situation once this process is over.
I'll also rat out my Realtor, home inspector, insurance agent, and the other folks who have been much more helpful that I expected. If you know me, you know that I prefer to deal with small, local businesses, and I haven't been disappointed in my choices.
In a year or two, when I'm settled into my heavily-mortgaged shack, this will all seem worthwhile.
For now, it's just frustrating: I'm out about two grand and haven't got anything to show for it yet but an empty bank account and a stack of photocopied forms which, frankly, I really haven't read. I'm fairly certain that one of them commits me to hand over my first-born son unless I can guess the name of a mysterious, gnarled little man who throws temper tantrums. (I'm not entirely sure, but I think I used to work for someone like that. Rimshot.)
We're getting closer to the big day, assuming that I've got the mortgage, which is a big assumption. It's going through the county Redevelopment Authority; supposedly, the local underwriter has approved it, but the state guy is still looking over the application. Maybe he's been too busy approving plans for slot machine parlors, I don't know.
A few weeks ago, the mortgage company sent me a 10-point letter outlining everything the state underwriter wanted to see --- three years' worth of tax forms, three years' worth of W-2s, a resume, a letter explaining that I was the only one who was going to live in this house ('tis true, sadly).
Everything but a birth certificate and a prostate exam, and I swear I saw an old pair of rubber gloves on the mortgage guy's desk the last time I was in his office.
The part that completely freaked me out was the credit report. Point 7 on the letter was something like, "please explain the following derogatory reports received from a credit reporting agency."
Derogatory reports? Jeepers H. Crackers! What did they know about? The check I bounced in 1993 when the bank's computers went down and failed to make a deposit? The time I was three days late with a payment to a brain surgeon to cover a trepanning job? The secret call I received from my stockbroker advising me to sell shares of a company before some bad news came out?
Oh, wait, that last one was Martha Stewart, never mind.
I've heard horror stories about incorrect credit information ruining people's lives, and the printout that the mortgage company sent me was no help at all. The three lines in question said things like, "REPR MAASCORECRECAFIOH 30D $10 $390 7/02 PIF" What the hell does that mean?
Panic-stricken, my knees quivering like Michael Moore's belt at an all-you-can-eat pancake restaurant, I ordered a copy of my credit report from Equifax.
It turns out that the "derogatory" information was pretty mild: A student loan company lost my address and starting sending bills to an apartment where I lived for about a year, and I was 30 days late with a quarterly payment. I used a credit card's "pay by phone" service and they entered the information wrong, bounced a check and then billed me for a returned check fee and a late payment. (I got them to admit their mistake, they waived the bounced check fee and I closed the account, but it was reported.) I tried to sign up for a gasoline company's Internet payment service; the sign up failed, but the company stopped sending me paper bills, and I missed a payment.
There was nothing hugely wrong on the credit report, nor were there any accounts listed as "open" that were actually "closed." I was shocked at the detail of the information on the report --- how did they know that I cried when Bambi's mother died, and besides, I was only seven --- but that's to be expected in this day and age.
So, without any information to the contrary, I'm assuming that all is ready for closing, and my long march into 30 years of debt.
If not, I'll be really ticked: My pizza got all congealed and soggy for nothing.
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This, if true, gives a black eye to the volunteer fire service in the Mon-Yough area. According to Dan Reynolds in the Trib:
A Glassport volunteer firefighter arrested on charges of setting a trash bin fire is a primary suspect in a yearlong string of Mon Valley arsons, court documents say.
The arson investigation also led to the arrest of two former Glassport volunteer firefighters accused of stealing a fire helmet and a portable radio from a Glassport fire company in June 2003.
Nearly a century ago, the Balkan Hotel and Bar, a three-story mansion located at the crest of Coulterville Road, North Huntingdon Twp., was a private home built by Robert Wallace and Susan Stewart Ekin.
The Ekin estate sat upon endless groves of red delicious apple and peach trees, and the family operated a dairy farm that provided milk to residents of White Oak's former Fawcett School area.
So a picture is worth a thousand words, eh? Well, consider today’s installment a 4,000-word essay.
Instead of writing blather, I spent last night trying to fix the comments feature so that you, our Alert Reader, can go back to telling me off directly, rather than emailing me.
That’s the kind of service we’re dedicated to, and it’s why we’ve remained the Mon Valley’s Leading Source of Misinformation Since 1995!
(All photos copyright © me, and I suppose I’m welcome to them. Please don’t reuse them without permission.)
Spectators at Billy Price concert, June 26, 2004, Riverfront Park in McKeesport (aka Our Fair City).
More from the Billy Price concert, June 26, 2004.
Billy Price and the Keystone Rhythm Band on stage at Riverfront Park, McKeesport, June 26, 2004
Finally, it's the “McKeesport Weed & Seed Express,” snapped June 29, 2004 in the Christy Park section of Our Fair City. We don’t have an Amtrak stop any more, and PATrain has been gone for 15 years, so this is the best we can do, I suppose.
(Obligatory trivia: If you saw “Dogma,” which runs about every 15 minutes on Comedy Central, the scene inside the bus station was shot at Our Fair City’s former Amtrak station, which also serves as the McKeesport bus terminal for Port Authority.)
Eat my dust, Chris Potter! We have our own Mon-Yough version of "You Had To Ask" here at Tube City Almanac.
Of course, we don't give away any prizes to people who submit questions. Maybe we should: First prize could be a Tube City Online T-shirt, second prize would be two T-shirts, third prize would be three T-shirts, etc.
Anyway, Jayme S. writes:
Looking for any info you may have on Immel's in McKeesport. I saw it mentioned a few times on your site (which is great, by the way!). When was it around? What kind of merchandise? Any info would be appreciated!
A man who shot himself in the groin after drinking 15 pints of beer and stuffing a sawed-off shotgun down his trousers was jailed for five years Tuesday for illegal possession of a firearm.
David Walker, 28, underwent emergency surgery after the March 6 incident in Dinnington, northern England. Tests were continuing to learn if Walker would be left infertile, his lawyer Gulzar Syed said.
We were crossing the Crawford Avenue bridge in Connellsville as Amtrak's Capitol Limited slowly chugged to the city's telephone-booth-like train station ... an Amshack, if you will.
"Hang on, I want to get a picture," I said to my friend Dan as I wheeled the sleek, gray Mercury onto South Arch Street.
"You don't have to hurry," he said. "It's not moving that fast. I think it's stopping."
The Merc screeched to a halt on West Fairview Avenue just as the crossing gates dropped and the Capitol's horn blew a warning. From behind the buildings to the right I could hear the big diesel-electrics revving up.
I threw the car into park and jumped out the door. "Oh, it's stopping, is it?" I had just about time to focus the camera and squeeze off three shots as the Cap accelerated east, towards Washington.
Dan --- who couldn't care less about trains, we were coming back from a car show in Uniontown --- was watching as the mail and express cars at the end of the Capitol disappeared around the curve. "Are those the cheap seats?" he asked.
"Something like that," I said, climbing back into the driver's seat. Someone had pulled up behind the Merc at the stop sign and was waiting impatiently for me to move. We hung a right onto Water Street and headed back through Connellsville.
A friend of mine has a saying about towns like McKeesport, Homestead, Braddock --- places that have been mercilessly batted around for the past 30 years. "What do you do with a place like that?" he says.
It's a rhetorical question. The problems are easy enough to identify: There are too few jobs, too little money, too much infrastructure for too few people (Our Fair City has lost about half of its population since 1950), and too many absentee landlords. What can you do, but survive and try to make things nice, even if it's just one little corner at a time?
The question applies equally well to Connellsville. Coal mining collapsed in Fayette County long before the steel industry collapsed in the Mon-Yough valley, and Connellsville --- which in the '40s and '50s was a thriving city --- is still feeling the hurt.
It doesn't help that some nimrod is going around setting buildings on fire. There's a large vacant lot now on Crawford Avenue --- the main street in Connellsville --- where Burns Drug Store used to be.
Uniontown, the seat of Fayette County, is getting a downtown facelift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, but that's mostly through the largess of Fayette County Commissioner Joe Hardy --- the millionaire founder of 84 Lumber. Bully for Joe for putting his money where his mouth is, but Connellsville and McKeesport don't have a sugar daddy.
And besides, fixing up Downtown McKeesport won't fix the problems in the Jenny Lind Street area, to name one part of Our Fair City that's in bad trouble. Neither will putting a coat of paint on Downtown Uniontown fix its other blighted areas.
So, what would you do with a place like Connellsville? A lot of people would like to know.
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An Alert Reader asked me over the weekend if I had seen a story in The Daily News about a proposed police merger between Liberty Borough, Port Vue, Glassport, Lincoln and Dravosburg.
I don't know how, but I missed it. (Chuck Gibson had the story.)
It's an excellent idea, in my humble opinion. Look, you have to provide police protection for your residents. Policing in a small town can take up to 60 or 70 percent of the budget (for many communities, it's the only service provided --- public works is often handled by the Council of Governments or private contractors).
The alternatives to having your own local police department are not great. You can rely on the state police, which in the Mon-Yough area could mean waiting a half-hour or more for emergency responses, and forget about routine patrols. (Both Clairton and Braddock were forced to rely on the state police in the 1980s --- no offense to the troopers, but no one in those towns looks back on that experience fondly.)
Or, you can purchase police service from another town, like Wilmerding and Wall have done. In that case, you're at the mercy of the other town's government. If they have a good police department, then your police protection is good. If it's bad, you're stuck with the contract. You have little or no voice in the police department's operation.
With a merger, a joint police commission is formed, including representatives from each of the towns. And, depending on how the commission's charter is written, each of the towns has a say in the policies and procedures that the police department follows.
Plus, the cost of administrative expenses and supplies is spread over a larger population. In communities like Liberty, Port Vue, Lincoln and Glassport, where many police officers work for more than one community, and where the departments back one another up on hot calls, it's a no-brainer.
The idea apparently had a warm reception at a meeting last week, according to Gibson's story, and it sounds as if longtime Liberty police Chief Luke Riley is among the advocates. That's a pretty brave stance, considering he could lose his job in a merged department --- or at the very least, might not be in charge. Riley deserves to be commended for sticking his neck out.
The proposal is now in the hands of the five borough councils. For the sake of the taxpayers, let's hope that they treat it seriously.
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Three other Mon Valley communities are considering a police merger --- Charleroi, North Charleroi, Fallowfield Township, Speers and Twilight, which like the South Allegheny communities and Dravosburg are all contiguous, have estimated that a regional force would save taxpayers about $200,000 in the first year alone.
According to Karen Mansfield in the Observer-Reporter, the next meeting is set for Aug. 18 in Charleroi.
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Updating a story we've been following at Tube City Almanac --- Cost-conscious newspapers are squeezing the funny out of their funny pages, according to Newsweek:
"Dilbert" cartoonist Scott Adams says he worries not only for himself ("Yes, I am that selfish") but for artists trying to break into the business who could inject new life into newspapers. "There are several up-and-coming cartoonists who I have great hope for. If you have fewer spaces, these new guys aren't going to get a chance."
ROB: I didn't respond in any way. My response if somebody'd asked me to my face would be it's a comic strip, it's a fantasy world. Clearly, animals don't speak in real life either. ... So, they came up with a creative way for me to tactfully end the strip.
CB: PETA did? That was thoughtful of them.
ROB: Yeah, "We recommend that you have Pete and Mary marry, bring the animals to an animal sanctuary and everybody walks away happy."
CB: Hilarious.
ROB: Yeah, and then I ... don't have a job!
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