Now, this is the kind of story that we at Tube City Almanac world news headquarters like to read! Patrick Cloonan in last night's Daily News:
McKeesport Mayor James Brewster said his city is in a "renaissance" aimed at addressing a wide range of needs, including three years of demolition and two years of reconstruction within city government.
"In the next 24 months the city will be focusing its efforts on addressing the inherent problems that have gone unchecked for years and have left our once great city on the verge of Act 47 status," Brewster said Wednesday. "This plan is designed to address the ongoing exodus of young people and declining tax base that has occurred over the last decade."
...
(The) mayor said "Renaissance 2005" addresses economic development, residential development, removal of blight (and) upgrading infrastructure and recreational facilities.
He said aims include "improving day-to-day services offered by the city and revitalizing public safety." Brewster said it represents a shift from the "fix and repair" mode that characterized the first 13 months of his administration.
...
"People are interested in McKeesport again," Brewster said. "And that's a good thing. And I think it's because we've taken a hard position on certain things."
As Twinkies celebrates its 75th anniversary, dozens of photographic interpretations of the iconic snack will be unveiled at an opening reception for the annual Object Show Exhibit and Contest sponsored by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the American Society of Media Photographers on Friday, March 11, 2005 at Point Park University from 5:00pm - 8:00pm. Internationally acclaimed photographer and artist Duane Michals will be the guest of honor.
In Our Fair City it was Cox's, in Washington, it was Lang's and Caldwell's, and in Greensburg it was Troutman's. Every city with pretensions to importance had a fancy department store. Those that actually were important had several; Youngstown, for instance, had Strouss's and McKelvey's. Pittsburgh had Kaufmann's, Joseph Horne Co., Gimbels, and others.
Remember the bells that used to call clerks to various departments? Bong. Bong-bong-bong-bong. It meant someone was needed in department 14. Those bells are playing a funeral dirge right now.
Naturally, the news that Downtown Picksberg's last remaining department store, Kaufmann's, is about to be swallowed by Macy's is sending a few people into spasms. And if you think Pittsburghers are upset, in Chicago --- where they're liable to lose Marshall Field's, a name that is as synonymous with the Windy City as the Cubs --- they're practically in apoplexy.
The problem is that the department stores have lost their relevancy, and while I've read a lot of things this week blaming Wal-Mart, Target, and the other usual suspects for the decline and fall of great names like Kaufmann's, as far as I'm concerned, Federated Department Stores and May Department Stores have no one to blame but themselves.
Appropriately for a guy who's writing a history of G.C. Murphy Co., I've always been interested in retailing, and I've read histories of Macy's, Dayton's, Hudson's, Gimbels and the others. These department stores always competed with the "discounters" of their eras --- Woolworth's or Murphy's or McCrory's --- and their prices were always higher. The reason their prices were higher, as Max Hess of the Hess's Department Store chain in Allentown explains in his book "Every Dollar Counts," was that they offered ridiculously high levels of service.
A customer who approached a counter at Macy's or Gimbels or Hess's back in the old days could count on being swarmed with attentive clerks. Hapless husbands would enter the lingerie department, tell the salesgirl "my wife is about your size," and she'd devote an hour to finding exactly what he wanted. Clerks kept files on the sizes and style preferences of their regular customers, so they didn't have to guess what they wanted --- they knew. Lose your credit card? Horne's would look up the number. Need a suit in an emergency after store hours? Chances are that someone at Kaufmann's would open the store for you. All of the bigger stores offered personal shopping services; many also had travel agencies, and some even offered rental cars.
There's a famous story about a fire in a Neiman-Marcus store that destroyed a bunch of wedding gowns on a Friday night --- hours before the brides were supposed to pick them up for their Saturday weddings. Neiman-Marcus flew in seamstresses and gowns from other stores and fitted them to the brides on Saturday morning, with time to spare.
Do you think that would happen today? Maybe at Neiman-Marcus, which like Nordstrom's on the West Coast, still has a reputation for going above and beyond the call of duty. But I was in a Kaufmann's not long ago, looking for a small gift for a lady friend. It was an effort to tear the clerk at the jewelry counter away from her telephone call, and then it was an effort to get her to show me anything. Her attitude was --- can't you see it from the aisle way? Not at those prices, no, I couldn't.
And good luck finding a salesperson in men's wear or any of the other departments where items are "on the rack," so to speak. Gee, Kaufmann's: If I've got to find the clothes myself, and schlep them to the counter, and you're not going to do any alterations, then I might as well go out to Syms and save 25 percent off of your prices, huh? (Lordy, lordy, do I miss Kadar's, where Len and Dorothy knew my sizes, my tastes --- or lack thereof --- and alterations were always free.)
A lot of the services in these department stores disappeared, I suspect, when the names on the front doors ceased to mean anything. The clerks at Cox's were responsible to "Mr. Robert" and "Mr. William" (William and Robert Cox, that is), not to a nameless board of directors in Cincinnati or St. Louis. The decline of Gimbels can be directly traced to the time when the last of the Gimbel family left the company and it was sold to British-American Tobacco; and I'll wager that the decline of Kaufmann's, Horne's, and all of the others began when the founding families gave up control.
The stockholders want higher profits; overhead, like attentive clerks, eats up profits. So they've laid off much of the help and replaced the old-time clerks with younger people who can be paid less money, and who have less invested in the store. They've also cheapened the merchandise to the point where the shirt you buy in Kaufmann's isn't necessarily better than the one you can get out at Kohl's or Target. The problem is they haven't lowered the prices commensurately with the drop in service or quality. As a result, the department stores have shot off their own feet.
The other problem is that the conglomeration of little chains into May Department Stores and Federated Department Stores --- which is not a new trend; it dates to the 1930s --- has left individual stores standing for absolutely nothing distinctive.
For a long time after Kaufmann's became a part of the May Company, and Horne's became part of Associated Dry Goods, the stores maintained their individuality. A Kaufmann's store in Pittsburgh didn't look like a May Company store in Los Angeles, and Lazarus in Columbus, Ohio, was different from Goldwater's in Phoenix. That's because these stores maintained their own local buyers and marketers, and they tailored their stores, their merchandise, and their advertising to their communities.
But all that individuality cost money, too. So the chains eliminated it. Now an L.S. Ayres looks like a Hecht's looks like a Kaufmann's. Take a look at the websites for the different May Company stores if you don't believe me; they're identical except for the names. And they're all identically dull.
Thus, under the thumb of Wall Street pension fund managers, actuaries, accountants and other bean-counters, all of those once-great department stores have become bland and overpriced. This may have helped the stock prices of Federated or May --- for a little while, anyway --- but dull and expensive is not a sustainable business model. It didn't even work for Rolls-Royce, which has been split up and sold piecemeal to the Germans.
While I can get nostalgic for the old department stores, I have no nostalgia for the present state that they're in. They're not dying; in point of fact, they died 20 years ago and just haven't been buried yet.
Perhaps the corpses of Federated's and May's old soldiers --- Marshall Fields and Hecht's and yes, Kaufmann's --- can still be reanimated, but some how, I doubt that consolidating these massive, faceless companies into an even bigger conglomerate is the jolt of electricity that is going to do the job.
Last night, because the temperature was supposed to get so cold, I put a blanket on the motor of the car. This is something my grandfather used to do when the weather got cold, supposedly to make the car easier to start in the morning. It's never made sense to me --- just how much heat could a flimsy blanket retain? --- but I do it anyway.
For all I know, this is something my grandfather's grandfather did back in Hungary --- but in his case, great-great-grandfather was putting a blanket over the mule at night when the weather got cold, and I have a feeling it was benefiting the mule a lot more than it benefits the car. Nevertheless, I keep doing it anyway.
When I had my little Datsun 200SX, I also used to put a 150-watt trouble light under the battery at night to keep it warm when the temperature got below zero. Again, I have no idea if it helped or not, but it made me feel like I was doing something.
At least when the motor club showed up to jump start the car, I could tell the driver, "I don't know what the problem is. I mean, I put a blanket over it and a light bulb under the battery and everything." And then I suppose he would reply, "No, that's for chickens that are trying to lay eggs, not for cars, you big doofus."
Actually, the only time that car ever stranded me was on a brutally cold winter day. I was working at my first job and had just moved away from home; I left the newspaper office, went out to start the car, and ... nothing. The motor club came and determined the fuel line was frozen, and they suggested it be towed to a garage. I said fine.
I had just moved to town, and didn't know any of the mechanics, so the tow truck took my poor old 200SX to the Nissan dealer, which is a fairly logical choice, but the Nissan dealer in town also happened to be the Mercedes-Benz dealer. You can imagine what their hourly labor rate was.
It still gives me a pain in the wallet to remember how much it cost to allow a 15-year-old Datsun to thaw out for several hours in a Mercedes-Benz dealer's service bay, but it was a week's pay, and they made me wait all day for the car. I still hear the dealer's commercials on the radio, and every time I do, I think: I hope that you get an itch someplace that you can't scratch, you rotten so-and-so. "Friendly dealer," my fanny.
In other business, Alert Reader Officer Jim writes to suggest I link to the ohfishul "Pogo" Website, dedicated to the great comic strip by the late Walt Kelly and says, "Sometimes I have way too much time on my hands; of course, I don't have a website dedicated to Pogo (or McKeesport, for that matter)."
Well, sure, I go Pogo, so I can link to it. I wish someone would reprint "Pogo" in a large format book like they do "Doonesbury." There is a company called Fantagraphics that has been reprinting "Pogo" strips in comic book format, but they only reprint a few months' worth in each book, and they're fairly expensive.
Speaking of comic strips: Someone turned me onto some great software called "Comictastic," which scrapes the comic strip webpages of your choice each time you load it up, and loads only the comic strips, ignoring the advertisements and other tedium. This is great stuff, but you Wintel PC users are out of luck: It only works on Mac OS X.
Drawbacks? The software costs $15, and depending on how many comic strips you read, it will take a while to configure the settings at first. But if you read a lot of comic strips, and I do, it will greatly speed the download time. Also, Comictastic doesn't care if you're reading online webcomics or syndicated newspaper comics; it can find them just the same.
If I haven't mentioned this before, shame on me. James Lileks of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and "The Bleat" has started a new online fiction-writing experiment. He bought a bag of old matchbooks and has created a character he calls "Joe Ohio."
Each day Lileks pulls out a matchbook and writes a story about what Joe was doing the day he got that matchbook. Some days are more interesting than others, but it's a great idea, and I'm hooked. Check it out.
Finally this morning, only from Fayettenam does one hear stories like this:
Four Connellsville-area men are accused of stealing a Pygmy goat, killing it and trading its meat for crack cocaine. ...
Police said charges of theft, receiving stolen property, cruelty to animals and criminal conspiracy were filed Tuesday with Bullskin Township District Judge Robert Breakiron.
The quartet allegedly took the goat the morning of Dec. 24 from Laura and Robert Locke's property on Englishman Hill Road in Bullskin Township.
Police said Albright removed the goat from a pen with a piece of rope, dragged it to a patch of woods and tied it to a shrub. Albright and Charles Smith Jr. allegedly beat the animal to death by striking it on the head with a hammer and/or a steel pipe. (Paul Paterra, Tribune-Review)
Whenever it snows, I enjoy listening to the school closings and delays on the radio, even though I'm not a teacher and I don't have any children. It takes me back to childhood.
Remember when there were days like this when you were a kid? I can remember turning on the old Atwater Kent in the parlor to listen to Rosey Rosewell read the school closings while my mother heated up some Postum for me. This is a strange thing to remember, because Rosey Rosewell died before I was born, and we didn't have an Atwater Kent, and I've never had Postum. So let's start over.
If you're a Mon Valley kid, you probably grew up turning the radio over to KDKA when there was the threat of snow in the forecast. And by "threat," I mean, "a snowflake anywhere within 40 miles of the Monongahela River," because when you're a little kid praying that school might be cancelled, well, you can always hope, right?
I used to feel bad for kids who went to places like Yough School District, because they had to wait through the entire alphabetical list to find out if their schools had a one-hour delay, a two-hour delay, a two-hour delay with no morning kindergarten, or ... be still my heart ... were closed.
There were a few schools that always mystified me. What or who was "Providence Heights Alpha"? When I was growing up, it seemed like they were always getting school canceled, lucky buggers. And then all of those "Montessori schools." I had no idea what they were, but there were a lot of 'em.
If anyone doubts that there are a lot of Catholics in Pittsburgh, one listen to KDKA's school closings would disabuse them of that notion. Jack Bogut or John Cigna would read "Riverview" and then they'd be into the "Saints." "St. Angela Merici, closed." "St. Anne, closed." "St. Cecilia, two-hour delay." The poor kids from Shaler had to wait until that whole list was done, and it wasn't even like they could go to the bathroom during "St. Edward's," because for all they knew, there might be no other Catholic schools closed, and then they'd miss their announcement.
And if you missed the announcement, brother, what a pain. You had to wait through a half-hour of weather, banter, news and commercials before they'd read the list again. By then, it was time to get to the bus stop; if you went to the bus stop and your school was on a two-hour delay, you'd be standing out in the snow like an idiot. On the other hand, if you waited to hear whether your school district was on a delay, and it wasn't, you'd miss the bus. Who says childhood isn't stressful?
Luckily for me, the parochial schools I attended never canceled, so listening to the school closings was at best (you'll pardon the expression) an "academic" exercise. The nun who was the principal, Sister Mary Herman Goering, believed in the value of a good education, I'll give her that. Every other school around ours might be closed, there might be snow up to the top of the steeple on the church next door, and we'd have to find a way to school, or get marked "absent."
I'm not sure when that changed. It might have been in March of '84, when we lost most of the third-grade in a drift between the flagpole and the front door. The kids survived by eating a box of Fruit Roll-Ups they found in Timmy Johnson's book bag, and some Pop-Tarts they found in Timmy Johnson's book bag, and eventually, Timmy Johnson.
That eventually turned into a bit of a scandal, as you might well imagine. It was Lent, after all, and the Diocese couldn't decide whether eating Timmy was allowed on Fridays. He wasn't seafood, though as I recall his pants were usually wet. I don't remember how the controversy was resolved, because I was young, but if you looked in back issues of the Pittsburgh Catholic, I'm sure there was coverage.
When the snow melted, the custodian found the third-grade, of course, to the great relief of their teacher, Sister Mary Hypochondria, who was counting on them to meet their goal for the annual Easter candy fundraiser. But for those few weeks, it was pretty nerve-racking. The Bishop came for a visit and the teachers had to sneak the second-graders into the third-grade classroom through the windows while he was out in the hallway.
I thought I'd find a different snow day policy when I got to Serra, but no such luck. The monks were equally reluctant to cancel or delay the start of school; I guess they figured that if they could make it into the building wearing sandals and robes, a little snow and wind couldn't be that tough for teen-agers wearing Dockers and boat shoes.
The official explanation that I got from someone in the office was that we couldn't delay school. Many students came on buses from other school districts that weren't canceling or delaying school, and they would arrive on-time, and everything had to be ready when they got there.
That logic didn't hold up, because what about those kids whose districts did delay school? They showed up two hours late, thus missing parts of three classes and homeroom, where attendance was taken. It also hosed those of us who got rides or drove to school.
I can remember one snowy day when about 80 percent of the school didn't make it in. Those of us hopeless nerds who made it in for first bell got to sit in study hall for two hours, which gave us a lot of time to fold paper footballs and flick them at one another.
Then came college. No one expects colleges to cancel classes. Except one year, when the temperature approached negative oh-my-God and the snow came down in clumps, like on a bad '70s sitcom. The Governor declared a state of emergency and ordered all non-essential businesses and offices to close by 3 p.m., and told all non-emergency vehicles to stay off the roads.
All day, we kept asking the college administration: We're going to close, right? And the word came down, no, we're staying open.
Until about 3:20, when the power company threatened to knock the college off of the grid, and someone said: "Hey! You can go home, now! We're canceling classes!" By which time the Port Authority buses had stopped running.
This, incidentally, was the first winter I decided to commute to school instead of living there, which meant I was neatly hosed.
A co-worker who I considered a friend had a car, and was heading home to the Mon Valley. I figured if he could get me close, I could walk the rest of the way, or find someone to give me a ride.
He lived in Munhall, so I asked, "Can I ride with you as far as Eighth Avenue?"
"Um ... no."
"Wait a minute, come on! It's on your way!"
"No."
"But I'm not asking you to take me home ... just drop me off at Eighth Avenue in Homestead!"
"No, I'm sorry, no."
Now, there are a few explanations possible. Maybe he drove back and forth to campus in a truck that his family used to haul pig manure, and he was embarrassed. Maybe he liked to dress in drag when he drove his car, and didn't want anyone to know. Maybe he had a one-seat car.
Or maybe he was just a jerk. Needless to say, we were no longer friends after that, though I often wonder when they finally found him.
Er, I mean, I often wonder whatever happened to him. Yeah, that's it.
Anyway, I get nostalgic when I listen to the school closings on the radio. And until the statute of limitations expires, I refuse to say more on the grounds that it may tend to incriminate me.
Why are you reading this? There's a snowstorm a-comin'! The blizzard of ought-five! The kind of snowstorm that people will be talking about ... well, until the next snowstorm! You should be out buying toilet paper and bread!
By the way, I'm not sure why everyone in the Mon Valley buys toilet paper and bread during snowstorms. Unless they like to sit by a crackling fire, watch the snowfall and eat Town Talk and Charmin. Or maybe the fear of a snowstorm causes their bowels to loosen. In which case, just what the heck are they doing with the bread?
Since I was busy this weekend battening down hatches in preparation for this historic weather event, I'll turn the remainder of today's Almanac over to the author of the truly remarkable spam email I received over the weekend. Here it is, verbatim:
When the Sakala Brothers duet of Moses and Levy penned their hit song Sandra which spoke of a woman who became an instant millionaire after 'sweet-hearting' dogs, Chawama bizarre rumour mongers had their own humourous way of condemning the inhuman behaviour which was the main talking point at the beginning of this millennium. A 2002 report by the West Virginia Nursing Shortage Study Commission predicted that the region would need an additional 448 nurses by 2008. The report also said the region lacked a way to track how many nursing students were "in the pipeline" to meet the projected need. Stephen has said that, unless his agency changes the way it does business, taxpayers will no longer be able to shoulder the spiraling costs of caring for New Hampshire's most needy residents. The goal of GraniteCare is to reduce nursing home admissions by shifting to home-based care when clinically appropriate. Todd Roberts, a partner in the Redwood City office of Ropers Majeski Kohn Bentley, which is representing the Gorilla Foundation, told the paper his firm was still reviewing the suit. There is a township in Zambia that would produce many mystery writers in the world of stranger-than-fiction, it is Lusaka's Chawama township where residents have a very subtle way of adding their voice to the various issues affecting them. Haverty's is a full-service home furnishings retailer with 118 showrooms in 16 southern, central and south Atlantic states providing its customers with a wide selection of quality merchandise in middle- to upper-middle price ranges. But geez, if we spend too much time on that we won't have a chance to mull over, as Marv Albert used to say, the 'wild and wacky.' Therein lies the real story of this day.
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