A little of this, a little of that. What the heck: It's Friday!
It turns out that a Mid-Mon Valley landmark is moving. Liz Zemba writes in Thursday's Tribune-Review that Pechin's is moving to the mostly vacant Laurel Mall between Uniontown and Connellsville:
Laurel Mall's relatively modern, indoor setting will be the opposite of Pechin's current zero-frills setup: individual, outdoor shops face in toward an aging, patched asphalt parking lot. Its anchor, the grocery store, is housed in a sprawling, cinder-block structure.
Older customers will recall a time when gaps in wooden floorboards afforded glimpses of a stream that flows under the grocery store.
...
Pechin's has long enjoyed a reputation for undercutting its competitors, with its cafeteria boasting 19-cent hamburgers and full meals for less than $1. Grocery deals also abound, with Pechin's this week offering fresh split chicken breasts for 97 cents a pound, compared with $1.59 per pound at Giant Eagle, and 20-pound bags of Kingsford charcoal for $4.99 versus Giant Eagle's sale price of $5.99.
The prices at Pechin's, Zemba reports, have made the National Enquirer three times and the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Besides groceries, Pechin's also sells cigarettes, shoes, clothing, hardware, sporting goods and beer.
I can see where Pechin's might have trouble attracting people out into the woods of Dunbar Township --- it's not all that easy to find, especially compared to Laurel Mall --- but I suspect some of its appeal over the years has been the fact that it's a little bit obscure. Whether it has the same appeal in the bland confines of Laurel Mall (whose original anchor tenant was, of course, Murphy's Mart) remains to be seen.
...
I've written before (probably ad nauseum) about how much I enjoy listening to recordings of old-time radio shows. A lot of them are dross, but a few hold up very well: I actually enjoy "Dragnet" more on radio than on TV, and TV's "The Twilight Zone" owes a lot to the sci-fi radio anthology "X-Minus-One," which came just a few years before.
At Hamvention last weekend, I ran into my favorite old-time radio dealer, and like any addict, spent too much money on getting another fix. I literally now have several hundred hours of programs to work through, including "Suspense," "This is Your FBI," and "The Great Gildersleeve." I also bought copies of BBC's "The Goon Show," the radio comedy series that propelled Peter Sellers to stardom and was said to be a favorite of young John Lennon.
I find old-time radio great fun for car trips, especially since there isn't much to listen to on the ride home except the soporific sounds of NPR's "All Things Considered Until Your Eyes Glaze Over," right-wing talk radio bloviators, or badly chosen "classic" rock songs interrupted by 10 minutes of commercials. Anyway, no matter how bad the traffic jam in which you're stuck, it's hard to feel road rage while listening to "Fibber McGee and Molly."
Over the past few days, I've been listening to episodes of "Arthur Godfrey Time." Godfrey is all but forgotten today, but in the 1940s and '50s, there was probably no bigger star on both radio and TV. At one point, Godfrey had three successful series going on TV, a daily 30-minute morning program on CBS radio (including McKeesport's WEDO), a recording career and was very successful as a commercial pitchman.
Unfortunately, if he's remembered for anything, it's for his legendary volcanic temper, and his occasionally callous dealings with subordinates. He notoriously fired several performers on his shows who he thought had become too popular, including one --- Julius LaRosa --- on live television. His arrogance got him in trouble with the government, as well. A proud booster of private aviation and an enthusiastic airplane buff, Godfrey was cited after he buzzed the control tower at the Teterboro, N.J., airport. (He was mad because they wouldn't give him permission to land.)
In all fairness, Godfrey could also be extraordinarily kind, especially to people just starting out in radio or TV, and was a known "soft touch" for a wide variety of charities. He also had a large, and extremely devoted, circle of friends, who saw only the kind, warm Godfrey (not the sharp edge of his tongue).
That's the Godfrey on display on these programs --- the man with the deep voice and the dry wit, full of folksy aphorisms and gentle quips. I'm currently working through a week of episodes of "Arthur Godfrey Time" from January 1964 that celebrated his 30th anniversary with CBS. (Or as Godfrey does the station break once: "You're listening to Mr. Paley's favorite network, the Columbia Broadcasting System.")
The first of these shows blew my socks off. Among a whole slew of Broadway and nightclub performers (most of them now forgotten), Godfrey had as guests Meredith Willson, Pat Buttram, Gen. Curtis LeMay and Edward R. Murrow. That may have been the first and only time that LeMay, Murrow and Buttram were ever on any broadcast together. (Murrow, already desperately ill from lung cancer, died about a year later.) One guest also read congratulatory telegrams to Godfrey from Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower.
But upon hearing the second Godfrey anniversary program, I almost crashed my car. Among Godfrey's guests were Joan Crawford, Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon (!), Lowell Thomas and Rosemary Clooney. Can you imagine that group of people in the same room together? On the same program were George Burns, Art Linkletter and Harry Von Zell were in Los Angeles, via long-distance telephone. (Gleason, naturally, gets off most of the best lines. How sweet it is!)
The third show's guest list was impressive, too, even if it paled in comparison to the previous day's --- Godfrey's panelists were Pat Boone, Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren, Johnny Nash and Steve Lawrence, among others. Admittedly, you have to be interested in 1960s pop culture to care about this stuff, but I found it pretty heavy indeed. I'm a little bit worried to hear who was on the fourth show: "My guests are Nikita Khruschev, Bob Newhart, Richard J. Daley, Keely Smith and Winston Churchill."
...
News from Penn State McKeesport: "Penn State McKeesport alumnus James E. Minarik, classes of '75 and '77, encouraged graduates at the campus' spring commencement ceremony to be persistent, to focus on the present and to commit to lifelong learning. 'It is very tough to see the future or to recognize change and innovation as it is actually happening, it is only when we look back like this that we can get any real perspective about how many changes we deal with year in and year out,' he said." (More here. Minarik is president and CEO of Directed Electronics, which makes among other things vehicle alarms, satellite radio receivers, and global-positioning satellite equipment.)
Also from PSM's press office: "Michelle Gordon Hough, assistant professor of business at Penn State McKeesport, has been named a Fulbright Scholar for the 2005-2006 award year. Hough will travel to Denmark this fall to fulfill the terms of her award, where she will lecture at the Niels Brock
Copenhagen College of Business." (More here.)
...
To Do This Weekend: Mon-Yough area parade buffs will be in high cotton on Memorial Day. West Newton's parade starts at 9 a.m. at Vine Street Park and proceeds to West Newton Cemetery. Irwin's parade starts at 10 a.m. at the corner of Second and Main, and travels up Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, ending at the Union Cemetery. White Oak's Memorial Day parade begins at 12:30 p.m. Monday at the corner of Willard Avenue and Lincoln Way. Versailles' parade starts at 3, and goes from Olympia Shopping Center to the Christy Park war memorial. (There's more in the Post-Gazette.)
As we come down to the wire, more and more Mon-Yough area school districts are deciding whether to take part in the state's Act 72 shell game ... er, I mean, property tax relief.
This week, school directors in Woodland Hills, East Allegheny, Clairton, Duquesne and Steel Valley all voted to participate. West Jefferson Hills school board tabled action --- which is as good as a "no" vote, effectively, because there isn't a snowball's chance on Route 51 in August that they're going to hold a special meeting to reconsider it before Monday.
Trying to fund anything through gambling revenue is a fool's errand. Gambling doesn't create any new money --- it just moves around some discretionary spending. Money that people spend on gambling is money they're not going to spend on a new DVD player, or Pirates tickets, or in a few cases, food and clothing. I strongly suspect that any money made by regulating slot machine gambling in Pennsylvania is going to be money that isn't collected in sales and amusement taxes.
I also firmly believe that our distinguished leadership is overestimating the appeal of slot machine gambling. I can understand the appeal of table gaming --- shooting craps, playing cards, etc., is competitive and social, even if some of the players look anti-social. But sitting in front of a metal box and plugging quarters into a slot is not my idea of a good time. You might as well go play a Coke machine --- at least you're a winner every time.
Yes, I understand that busloads of Pennsylvanians go to Wheeling Island or Atlantic City every single day and play the slots, but has anyone stopped to consider that maybe traveling somewhere else to play the one-armed bandits is fun mostly because it's a change of scenery? I somehow doubt that people from Munhall are going to plan vacation trips to play the slot machines in, say, Hays.
But because our solons lacked either the courage or the imagination to go all the way and legalize all forms of casino gambling, we're stuck with this namby-pamby slot machine legislation, which may or may not generate the $1 billion that its proponents say it will.
And yet I sense that it isn't this uncertainty that has prevented some school districts from signing onto Act 72. Instead, I suspect they're more concerned over the provision of Act 72 that would require any future property tax increases over and above a certain "index" number to be put before the voters. We all know, I think, that if you put a school tax increase to a vote, it would be almost impossible to gain passage.
The fundamental problem --- and the one Act 72 is supposed to address --- is that a district like Duquesne or Clairton doesn't have anywhere near the taxable property base of a Hempfield. In terms of real, non-inflationary dollars, property tax revenues only ever increase if there's new development, or if you raise the tax rate. With a community like Duquesne, where there is little if any new development, and where the existing properties are depreciating, the only option left is to raise taxes, which only chases people away. But Act 72 is just a patch on an already bad system.
There are a couple of real solutions, I suspect, for any politician brave enough to suggest them. Before the 1950s, practically every municipality in Pennsylvania operated its own school district. In the 1950s and '60s, the state compelled them to merge --- that's how we got East Allegheny out of East McKeesport, North Versailles Township, Wall and Wilmerding, for instance. In a few cases, there was more than one merger --- the Port Vue and Liberty school districts merged into the creatively named Port Vue-Liberty School District, and then with Glassport and Lincoln into South Allegheny.
The state needs to do that again --- offer big incentives for school districts to merge, and arrange some shotgun marriages if necessary. What would be wrong with a countywide school district, for instance? That system seems to work well in western states. A school district that encompassed all of Allegheny County would go a long way toward addressing the tax revenue inequities between Quaker Valley (Sewickley, etc.) and Steel Valley (Homestead, et al).
Or go even further. Institute a statewide uniform school tax rate, assess all properties based on their full, fair market values (not on county drive-by assessments), and have people send their school property taxes to Harrisburg. Then disperse the money to the school districts based on a standard formula, with adjustments for schools or districts that are in extremely unusual circumstances. Sure, some people would scream, "Too much bureaucracy," but how could it be any more bureaucracy than our current system in Allegheny County of 43 school districts with 43 school boards, 43 school superintendents, 43 school tax rates, 43 school tax collectors, etc., etc., ad nauseam?
Right now, Pennsylvania ranks 49 out of 50 in the share of education funding provided by the state. Survey after survey by Education Week has shown that the fairness of funding from district to district is worse in Pennsylvania than in all but a few states. (Instinctively, we already know that a kid going to school in Upper St. Clair has access to technology and opportunities that a kid in Clairton doesn't.) You can get more information from Good Schools Pennsylvania, whose executive board includes (among others) the Mon-Yough area's own Linda Croushore.
What will it take for Pennsylvanians to wake up and demand that their state legislature do something besides these Band-Aid solutions like Act 72? Do we finally have to bottom out?
In the meantime, we sit and scratch our heads and wonder, "Gee, why do young people keep moving away from Pennsylvania? Is it because of our weather? Our outdated hockey arena? Our lack of doughnuts with flavored custard?"
Boy, it's a puzzler, it is.
Old photo time at Tube City Almanac! By my recollection, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the demolition of the old H.L. Green Co. store at the corner of Fifth and Walnut in Downtown Our Fair City.
Green's was a chain of variety stores --- five-and-10s --- much in the manner of G.C. Murphy Co. or F.W. Woolworth Co. Founded by former auto company executive Harold L. Green, it arrived on the dime-store scene fairly late --- 1932. (Most of its competitors had roots that went back to the 19th century.) Green's, therefore, was never one of the largest variety store companies, but it was very successful and profitable for a number of years, and it grew quickly by absorbing a number of other chains.
This made the demise of the H.L. Green Co. name all the more ironic. Green's, through a subsidiary, acquired a large share of stock in two of its competitors --- McCrory Stores and McClellan Stores. Through a complicated series of stock swaps, all three chains wound up merging, but the McCrory Stores gained control of the operation.
But Green's executives continued to rise to positions of prominence in the new organization, which for a short time was known as "McCrory-McLellan-Green." Indeed, one of the last presidents of McCrory Stores was a former H.L. Green store manager J. Philip Lux. Besides being a leading executive in the retail business for many years, Lux was also a minor footnote to major American history; he was the manager of the Green's store in Dallas, Texas, in 1964, and was subpoenaed to testify before the Warren Commission that his store had not sold Lee Harvey Oswald the rifle used to shoot President Kennedy. (Of note to McKeesporters: Lux was the man who years later engineered the purchase of the G.C. Murphy Co. five-and-10s from Ames Department Stores in 1989, which led to the final closing of the Murphy office in Our Fair City.)
In any event, I don't have any idea when H.L. Green opened its first store in Our Fair City, but I've seen reference to an earlier "Metropolitan Store" being located Downtown, which was one of the chains that Green's purchased. In the mid-1940s, the Green's store burned down. Green's then cleared several buildings on the north side of the 200 block of Fifth Avenue for one of the company's largest stores. It opened in 1949. (These photos are from a 1950 feature in the magazine Chain Store Age.)
The corner entrance was (naturally) at the corner of Fifth and Walnut. The long side of the store, with the display windows, was along Fifth Avenue, Our Fair City's main commercial thoroughfare for many years. At the time the store opened, the other corners would have been occupied by People's Union Bank, the then-closed White's Opera House, and First National Bank of McKeesport. White's was torn down in the mid-1950s to make way for Cox's, which was itself torn down 40 years later.
Green's closed their McKeesport store in the early 1980s, and the property was sold and the relatively-new building was torn down so the lot could be used as a Sheetz convenience store. Sheetz didn't last long, selling the store to Belle Vernon's Guttman Oil Co. for use as a "CrossRoads" convenience store, which was transformed into a "GetGo" a few years ago. But when it first opened, many people considered Green's to be a nicer store inside than the G.C. Murphy store and the F.W. Woolworth in the next block!
Of course, I may be biased; my maternal grandmother was a longtime sales girl, assistant manager and floorwalker at H.L. Green's, retiring a short time before the store closed.
Spanning the glob to bring you the constant virility of news ... the thrill of viscosity and the agony of sore feet ... we are Tube City Almanac.
Our first item comes via Peter Leo in the Post-Gazette:
In his new book, "The Flight of the Creative Class," former Carnegie Mellon professor Richard Florida calls Pittsburgh a microcosm of what could be in store for America. You remember Florida, the Pittsburgher known for most bluntly pointing out the region's faults -- until The Andy Warhol Museum's Tom Sokolowski came along and Florida had to move. If you know his work, it comes as no shock that Florida postulates that Pittsburgh is ahead of the curve in an undesirable way. He writes about how close-minded attitudes have caused Pittsburgh to lose many of its most creative, intelligent, artistic, high-valued talents in recent times: "Its great export, local residents like to say, is no longer steel, but its young people, the very talent it invests so much in creating. ... I saw firsthand what being a less open and tolerant society led by squelchers did to Pittsburgh's economy. I fear this may well be a microcosm for what is now beginning to happen to our entire country." Maybe he's right, but geez, did he have to tell everybody?
The four-page complaint and demand for a jury trial was filed Thursday in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham by attorney Harry Manion. The complaint charges that the May 13 version of the comic strip, by Conley, ''constitutes a false and malicious libel of and concerning Lobel. The cartoon, read in its totality, is a smear of Lobel.
''It implies and asserts that Lobel is intoxicated when appearing on television. During his entire 34-plus-year career, Lobel has never appeared on the air intoxicated or under the influence of alcohol. The statement that Lobel is a drunk is false and is intended to injure him personally and professionally, and was made at a time when it was common knowledge that Lobel was in negotiations with his employer for a contract renewal."
I was out of town for my annual geek pilgrimage to Hamvention --- the swallows return each spring to San Juan Capistrano, the buzzards to Hinckley, and the radio buffs to Dayton --- about which more in a few days, whether or not you care.
But there is something more immediate to report. Let the record show that chemical weapons were unleashed on Sunday. The first battle began at about 3:15 p.m. and lasted for 45 minutes. The second began at 8:45 p.m. and lasted a half-hour. The targets were enemy insurgents, and the place was my little quarter-acre of FHA-financed American Dream in North Bittyburg.
Yes, friends --- I've got ants. My reaction was not quite the same as that of the housewives in all of those "Tom & Jerry" cartoons --- standing on a chair and squealing --- but it was close.
I got home early Sunday morning, slept for a few hours, and then unpacked the car. At about 3 p.m., I called someone about some side work I may be doing. He told me to come out and meet with him in North Versailles right away. I said I'd be there in 30 minutes. I flipped on the bathroom light --- and there they were, dozens of giant, fanged beasts, their shiny black carapaces gleaming evilly in the harsh incandescent light.
OK, would you believe three? I stomped two by the sink. The third tried to make a break for the commode, but I got him, too, as he crawled up the side.
Ants! Eek! I'm not particularly squeamish. Show me a spider, and I'm fine. (I squash them, but they don't particularly bother me.) Even snakes and worms don't faze me. But for some reason, I don't like ants. Yes, they're supposed to be industrious, but how do we know what they're really up to? They live in colonies, for goodness sakes. Who knows what they've been plotting down there for all of these years?
If I had ants in the bathroom --- which doesn't have a window --- they had to be coming from somewhere. With great trepidation, I looked into the kitchen, and the floors were (pardon the expression) crawling. There, on my nice clean tile floor, were ants everywhere, wriggling in under the back door.
I should pause now and point out that about an hour before, my neighbor was out cutting his grass. I strongly suspect that he hit an anthill, or at the very least the noise and vibration of the mower freaked the little buggers out. I did my best Michael Flatley impression all over the kitchen floor, and then ran downstairs. Last year, I had done some preventive spraying for carpenter ants, and I had about a half-gallon of poison left. I used to dose the back porch and the ground underneath. And still they kept coming. These weren't carpenter ants --- these were demon ants from hell!
Or maybe common pavement ants. It's hard to tell.
Keep in mind I had promised to be in North Versailles within a half-hour. That was 20 minutes previous. Down the hill I went to the House of Rancid Lunchmeat for ant baits and Raid. I'm not convinced that ant baits do a darned thing. In fact, I think they're an aphrodisiac for ants. And as for the Raid, it's perfumed, for crying out loud, so how good could it work? It must be what the ants roll in when they're getting amorous.
Nevertheless, I baited the kitchen and the back porch with ant bait and sprayed a perimeter around the windows and doors, and I stomped on several more ants in the process. Then I went to my meeting.
On the way home, I did something I rarely do --- stopped at Wal-Mart --- and bought two pounds of ant powder ("guaranteed to kill ants") and some more ant baits. I salted the ground all the way around the house with powder and spiked the ant baits down everywhere I found a crack or crevice. (I also angered Mrs. Robin Red-Breast, who's built a nest on my porch. She came swooping out and chirped angrily at me for several minutes as I worked.)
As I finished my anticide, the neighbor from the other side came out with a bag of garbage to put into the trash can. "Can I ask you a question?" I said. "Are you getting any ants right now?"
"Those big black ones?" she said. "Oh, yeah, we get them every spring. I had an exterminator out. He called them concrete ants. He said just put some baits and spray down. It worked. They'll go away in a few days."
She turned to go back into the house. I had just started to relax when she said something that made shivers run up and down my spine: "Wait 'til you get the mice. We get those every year, too. I got 13 last summer."
Do you think it's possible to live year-round in a dirigible?
You are on an archived page of Tube City Almanac.
Click the banner to return to the front page; or click here to visit Tube City Online.
Published weekdays (usually), except holidays (and when we have something better to do) at McKeesport, Pa., by Tube City Online LLC, P.O. Box 94, McKeesport, Pa. 15134.
Opinions expressed here are those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily represent those of any organization. No warranty is given or implied for the information and opinions contained herein; the reader uses that information at his or her peril.
Except where noted, all contents are copyright © 2003-2008 Tube City Online LLC, a limited-liability company chartered in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. No content from Tube City Online may be reproduced in whole or part in any digital or print publication without express permission, except that short excerpts may be used with attribution in commentary or for critical purposes.
Tube City Online is edited by Jason Togyer, member National Writers Union, Society of Professional Journalists, American Radio Relay League and National Radio Club.
Also, objects in Tube City Online may be closer than they appear. If Tube City Online is swallowed, seek professional help immediately. Stop use of Tube City Online if condition persists or worsens. Tube City Online is produced in a facility that also includes Peanuts. Do not expose Tube City Online to open flames and keep it out of the reach of children. Do not back up, as severe tire damage may result. Not responsible for lost or stolen articles. Tube City Online is still not a significant source of saturated fats or Minnesota Fats.
