Has everybody recovered from International Village? Good! This is the first Village in recent memory that didn't get at least one day of rain, and the surging throng of humanity that jammed Stephen Barry Field seemed to be enjoying itself.
But don't start your diet just yet ... the rib cookoff runs tomorrow and Sunday from 12 noon to 11 p.m. at Renzie Park.
There's also a petting zoo and pony rides for kids, a craft show, and live country music most of the day on Saturday. Ray Ryan & The Riverside Band and Liz Calfo & Total Recall perform Sunday. (Download the flyer.)
Yep --- after three days of eating ethnic foods made of cabbage, garlic, pork and mysterious spices, it's time for barbecue!
And then on Monday, Rite Aid and Eckerd present the annual antacid festival. Don't miss it!
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Homewreckers: The city will hold a hearing Tuesday morning on 40 buildings that are slated to be torn down, including a number of private residences, reports Ann Belser in the Post-Gazette.
I've attended some of these hearings, and occasionally someone shows up to protest the demolition of their properties. Some of the excuses are entertaining, if not particularly convincing.
In most cases, however, no one shows up to try and save their structure. Indeed, some of the owners of these properties died or moved to Florida 30 years ago (or is that redundant?). Others are, frankly, slumlords, who buy houses at sheriff's sales, rent them out for several years, and never invest a nickel in them or even bother paying the taxes. Then they abandon them and stick the city with the bill for tearing them down.
They ought to be locked up --- but the best local officials can hope for is that a judge will place a lien against the property to cover the cost of the demolition and the back taxes. That, of course, just makes it more difficult to sell the property later to someone who might actually do something with it --- and so it goes.
While it's sad to see so many pieces of the city's history destroyed forever, the needs of the present residents and business owners have to take precedence over saving old buildings just for the sake of saving old buildings.
Besides, it's not like we have a shortage of two-story 1920s frame houses in McKeesport.
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Watch This Space: On the other hand, one building whose abandonment has really galled me for years is the Penn-McKee Hotel ... but it looks like there might actually be some movement in finding a useful future for the old girl. Check out the website for Penn-McKee Place.
The website is registered to Jim Armstrong, an evangelist from White Oak, and he proposes using the building as "incubator business space and a multi-tenant community center" for "art, faith and business."
I know from personal experience that "community centers" like this have a place for use by small businessmen and women, as well as studio space for artists, musicians and writers. I've seen them in Picksberg and other cities.
I don't whether it can work in Our Fair City, but I see no reason why it couldn't --- and I think we all have a vested interest in hoping that it does.
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To Do This Weekend: Digest all of the food you ate this week at International Village and the BBQ Festival, and try not to get whiplash from your burps.
GOP maintains presence in Port Vue
Port Vue may seem an unlikely home for the Mon Valley Republican Committee. The borough has an overwhelming Democratic majority and no Republicans serve on council. ... Mon Valley Republican Committee Chairman Brett Kovac is aiming to change that. "I like the odds at what they are," Kovac said. "The work remains here. I like the challenge."
Kovac said his reception in Port Vue hasn't always been warm. He said that one time a little boy passed his storefront and said, "I'm not going in there. That's that Bush place." (Stacy Lee, The Daily News, Aug. 15, 2006)
Every year, tens of thousands of Pennsylvanians descend on Our Fair City's Renziehausen Park for the ethnic food, dancing, food, music and food festival known as "International Village." Though other communities have imitated it (and I'm looking at you, Picksberg), they have not been able to duplicate the experience.
For months ahead of time, churches, ethnic clubs and other associations prepare foods and crafts for sale, while performance groups prepare traditional costumes and practice folk songs and dances.
Did I mention food? I did? Good.
Well, that time is here again! Today, tomorrow and Thursday, the balalaikas, tamburas and bass guitars will be plunking, the dancers will be twirling, and thousands of Westinghouse electric roasters have emerged from pantries and basements and been pressed into service to keep pierogies, pirohis, perogis, pirozhkis and pirogies warm. Some people will even be making piroghies.
In the past, International Village was mostly made up of those "nations" that stretched from, oh, say, Dublin to Minsk, and south to Palermo. But over the years, as different ethnic groups have settled in Western Pennsylvania, more and more traditions of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa are being represented at the "Village."
For those of us who enjoy eating sweet and sour pork, cheese ravioli and halushki while listening to Slovenian music, this is a definite plus.
Lifelong residents of the Mon-Yough area know that the Village represents a great time and a chance to get in touch with your ethnic roots. But for those Almanac visitors who aren't in WEDO's coverage area, here's an insider's guide to International Village, telling you the kinds of things that you don't get in the free souvenir program.
. . .
International Village is held at Stephen Barry Field in McKeesport's Renziehausen Park for three days every August.
Contrary to popular belief, you can reach McKeesport quickly and easily, and we do have paved roads. Renzie Park is particularly easy to get to --- from Westmoreland County, take Route 30 west to Route 48 south. Take Route 48 south to Route 148 north. Follow Route 148 north about three blocks to Eden Park Boulevard.
From Pittsburgh, you may take the Parkway East to Forest Hills, then take Route 30 east to East McKeesport. Turn right onto Route 148 south and follow Route 148 to Hartman Street, then turn left.
Unlike what you may have seen reported on the Pittsburgh TV news, we are largely friendly and harmless, and we do have such conveniences as electricity, telephones and indoor toilets. No Starbucks yet, but we're hopeful. (We'll probably get one just as that trend finally dies.)
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Parking is at a premium during International Village. Some of the local churches offer paid parking in their lots, but any free parking near Stephen Barry Field tends to fill up quickly.
Luckily, Renzie Park is a large, regional park, so there are spaces available, but they're not necessarily adjacent to Stephen Barry Field. If you can walk, simply plan to wear comfortable shoes, and give yourself plenty of time. You will enjoy the stroll. Renzie is lovely on a summer evening.
If you are elderly or disabled, I hope you can find a space close to the entrances.
But if you're able-bodied, and you insist on circling the parking lots near the tennis courts endlessly for hours hoping that a space opens up, I reserve the right to mock your wardrobe, grooming and parentage.
. . .
In a related matter, have some common courtesy --- for crying out loud, don't park on the end of the aisle and block other people in. Your legs aren't broken. But maybe they should be. At the very least, someone should steal your hubcaps.
Also, there is no valet parking at International Village. I don't know who you gave the car keys to, but I sure hope you have a bus schedule handy.
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Do: Wear your "Kiss Me, I'm Irish," "Treat Me, I'm Dutch," "Proud to Be Italian," etc., T-shirt.
Don't: Tell Polish jokes, or say something like, "Wow! Look at all the hunkies!" And speaking in an exaggerated, "Mamma-mia! That's-a speecy-spicy meatsaballa!" accent around the Italian booth is considered bad form.
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If you are over the age of 10, and are eating hot dogs at the "American" booth, you should be ashamed of yourself. You probably think burritos heated in the microwave at Uni-Mart are "authentic Mexican cuisine."
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The food prices are set by the individual groups doing the vending. You may find $5 for a kolbassi sandwich too much to pay, and decide to eat somewhere else. That is your prerogative.
But for some of the groups exhibiting at International Village, this is the one big fundraising event they have each year. They will no doubt invest the profits from your $5 kolbassi sandwich into silly, frivolous extras like the water bill, the gas bill, the light bill, and educational and cultural programs.
Choose instead to stop for a 99-cent "extra value" cheeseburger on the way home, and contemplate all of the ethnic and social programs the Wendy's Corporation has funded in your community over the last year. I hope the mustard and pickles cover up the taste of regret, you cheapskate.
Or, buy something at the Village to eat. It's your choice. There's no pressure.
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Admission: There is a small admission charge to enter International Village. I believe it's $1. (It's $2 this year.) For a long time, it was 50 cents, and before that, it was free.
There are still people who think it should be free, and mark the city's "decline" to the year that they started charging people four bits to walk around International Village. Many of these people are also still upset that CBS cancelled "Ed Sullivan."
If you're one of the people, I'm wondering how you made it onto the Internet to read the Almanac, so please write to me.
A postcard to P.O. Box 94, McKeesport, PA 15134 is acceptable. Feel free to steam a stamp off of a Christmas card, or just send Bob Cratchit over to deliver it.
They say deaths seem to come in threes. So it would seem in the Mon-Yough area, which has lost three people of note in less than a week: Former city mayor Thomas Fullard, former Daily News publisher Patricia J. Mansfield and Clairton Mayor Dominic Serapiglia.
Fullard had the bad luck to take over the city just as it was entering a period of steep decline. McKeesporters, like millions of other Americans, were moving to the suburbs in droves; inflation was hitting double-digits; and ill-planned redevelopment Downtown had chased away many paying businesses. And in September 1975, financial pressure (some of it caused by payments on the debts incurred by the redevelopment) had forced the city to lay off 17 police officers and 54 other workers in the streets, sewers, sanitation and water departments.
That Fullard handled his job with skill and aplomb was evidenced by Pat Cloonan's obit in Saturday's Daily News, where everyone --- including Fullard's political adversaries --- offered words of praise.
That fine tribute doesn't seem to have made it online, but Jerry Vondas' memorial in the Tribune-Review did.
It was sad to hear of the death of Mrs. Mansfield. It would be hard to overstate the impact that several generations of Mansfields have had on the region since 1925, when Senator William D. Mansfield and several business associates purchased the Daily News, though the paper's obit mentions some of the family's many charitable contributions.
Like Fullard, she took over a difficult job at a difficult time. Upon the death of her husband, longtime News publisher Tom Mansfield, the former middle-school teacher assumed the top position at the newspaper.
At one time, owning a local newspaper was a license to print money, but that's not the case any more. There are dead papers throughout our region, from the Monongahela Daily Herald to the Jeannette News-Dispatch to the Homestead Daily Messenger. It is to Mrs. Mansfield's great credit that she was able to preserve a great institution for another generation of Mansfield ownership, though it now survives under different stewardship.
That brings me to Mayor Serapiglia, who died after an illness. Brian Bowling's obit for the Trib tells a story that would not have seemed out of place in the 19th century.
His father died young, forcing young Dominic to shine shoes to bring in money for the family; when the Korean War broke out, he went to serve in the Marines; he came back to spend most of his adult life in public service jobs of one sort or another, working for the county, the Turnpike Commission, and state Sen. Sean Logan.
And he was a charming example of typical Mon-Yough chauvinism, rarely leaving Clairton, but as his son told the Trib, that kind of dedication has a strong positive side: "If every community had someone with that much passion for their town, they'd have something to be proud of."
. . .
On a lighter note: Practically everybody who read Friday's Almanac had a supermarket memory to share. Maybe I should lay off the politics permanently and just write about A&P and Thorofare.
Alert Reader Bill H. of Elizabeth writes that I forgot one well-known name in local supermarket circles:
While going through some old papers over the weekend I came across a picture from the Daily News that my mom had cut out. It was of my brother and the Elizabeth Forward High AV Club. I flipped it over and this ad was on the back, at least part of it. Bartolotta's was one of the super markets that was in the new A&P store at Lovedale before it was a Shop 'n Save. As far I know this was from about 1969 as my brother didn't graduate until 1970. It almost seems that the supermarkets are playing a large game of musical chairs.
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