January 12, 2007
A Discouraging Word
Apparently prompted by Monday's Almanac, "A New Year's Resolution," an Alert Reader from Yorba Linda, Calif., writes:
I left McKeesport (in June 1962). Downtown died a thousand deaths since then. Among them:
Former mayor Andrew Jakomas's scandal and "banishment" to Miami. Taking out the streetcar tracks, not allowing parking and painting that hideous "artwork" on the pavement of Fifth Avenue. Not rebuilding downtown after The Famous fire. McKeesport's "Finest" not cracking down on the crime downtown. I could go on and on.
Finally, I took my wife back there in '95 to show her my native city. Susie always looks at the positive and pictures her living in all of the places she has visited in the country. McKeesport is the first place where she said she would "never" want to live. We haven't been back since.
Unless McKeesporters wake up and clean house of your crooked politicians, you're doomed to never recover.
How did Greeky Jakomas get dragged into this?
McKeesport of the 1960s was a wide-open place that allegedly was run by U.S. Steel and the rackets. Those allegations have been well documented, notably by John Hoerr in
And The Wolf Finally Came and by David Chacko in the novel
Brick Alley. (The Allegheny County district attorney's office had several investigations of McKeesport government underway in the 1950s and '60s, mostly connected to influence peddling and gambling, but no charges were ever brought as far as I know.)
All of the complaints about the haphazard schemes to redevelop Downtown (including the notorious pedestrial mall on Fifth Avenue, which lasted less than a year, I'd like to point out) have been hashed and rehashed for 40 years. You can read about some of them
here, you can read about the
Famous fire here, or you can read about allegations of political corruption
here.
Fixating on the problems of the 1950s, '60s and '70s is not going to help us now. What happened 40 years ago is not terribly relevant to the problems that face the area today --- yes, we are dealing with the consequences of what happened then, but the players are
long gone.
Andrew Jakomas left office in 1965 after losing the Democratic primary to Albert Elko, for goodness' sake, and Mayor Jakomas died in 1994.
As for the trolley tracks, that was a Pittsburgh Railways decision that was made in 1963, and although McKeesport pushed to have the streetcars removed, they were going to be eliminated anyway, no matter what McKeesport did.
When the current
Glenwood Bridge was built in 1966, it was constructed without trolley tracks. That would have eliminated the heavily trafficked 56 line, and the 68 line (McKeesport via Homestead and Duquesne) had already been converted to buses in
September 1958!
Nostalgia is fun, but wallowing in historic grudges and scandals gets us no further along than mourning the loss of Cox's, Jaison's and Immel's, or the National Works for that matter. Fighting these battles again is pointless.
Speaking of losses: Several people have pointed out to me that the National Tube general office building and the old Henry B. Klein men's store on Fifth Avenue are both being torn down this week. Both had fallen into serious disrepair, and although the last thing McKeesport needs is another vacant lot, neither is a serious preservation loss.
It's a shame the G.O.B. couldn't have been used for something --- it was kind of an attractive, funky-looking building, and I was always amused by the cupola on the roof. I was told that the cupola was used by company guards to spy on employees, especially before the plant was unionized in the 1930s, but I have a feeling the uses were more prosaic --- monitoring train movements in the freight yard in front of the plant, for instance.
The Klein building, located about two blocks from the hospital at the intersection of Fifth and Center, wasn't particularly appealing from an architectural standpoint, but according to last night's
Daily News, demolition proceedings were stalled for two years because of the building's location in a historic preservation area.
I know next to nothing about Henry B. Klein (or as the old-time McKeesporters still call it, "H.B.K."), but it was once one of the region's leading haberdashers. Anyone with stories or recollections of H.B.K. is welcome to share, of course.
Also to be demolished is the old Stern Enterprises parking garage near the Executive Building and the Midtown Plaza --- a building with no particular value (except as a pigeon roost) and another thing about which I know next to nothing.
Knowing next to nothing has never stopped me from commenting in the past, of course.
. . .
To Do This Weekend: Do you have happy feet, even though you're not a penguin? Bo
tep your way over to the Palisades, Fifth Avenue at Water Street, where country line dancing gets underway at 8:30 p.m. tonight. Call (412) 678-6979 for details. Or swing by tomorrow night when the Pittsburgh Area Jitterbug Club takes the floor --- the Lindy hopping starts at 9. Call (412) 366-2138.
January 10, 2007
Jurassic Parking
I couldn't find a parking space Downtown the other day.
Normally, I'd be thrilled to not be able to find a parking space in Our Fair City. I would give dearly to see Downtown crowded every single day. I hope that Downtown McKeesport gets so crowded that --- like Yogi Berra said --- "no one goes there anymore."
But Downtown wasn't crowded. No, there actually weren't that many cars around, but I still couldn't find a parking space.
You see, I had to spend about five hours Downtown, so I couldn't park on Fifth Avenue --- the meters there only allow you to park for one hour. I checked the meters on Market Street, but they only go to two hours.
I checked the ramp from Lysle Boulevard to Water Street --- those used to be 10-hour meters, and I usually parked there when I worked at The Daily News. But all of the mechanisms have been removed from those meters, which I suppose means that you can't park there any more. In any case, there weren't any other cars there.
I went to the Sixth Avenue Garage, somewhat reluctantly, since I assumed it would be more expensive. I drove up to the ticket dispenser and hit the button.
Nothing. It was either out of tickets or turned off. I suspect it was turned off, because there was no one in the little booth to collect money --- I guess only leaseholders are allowed to use the Sixth Avenue Garage now.
I drove to "Cox's Corner," the lot across the street from the People's Building. A sign on the booth says to pay the attendant, but I looked all around and didn't find one. Maybe parking is free there now, but I sure didn't want to risk it.
Instead, I drove down to the new city hall (the old National Bank Building) to see if I could park there. Nope! And the Midtown Plaza Garage has been "closed for renovations" for two years, while the Lysle Boulevard Garage is just closed. (You may remember my idea for that --- a park-and-ride garage for Port Authority --- a concept which may become moot if all of the buses are cancelled.)
At this point, I was seriously considering leaving the car on the street and paying a ticket. My last city parking ticket was for $4 (expired meter), and it seemed like a small price to pay to not deal with the aggravation of looking for someplace legal to park.
On a whim, though, I cut down Sheridan Alley and checked the meters between the PNC Bank and Lysle Boulevard. Eureka! Ten hours. And it only took me 20 minutes to find a meter.
How many visitors to Downtown McKeesport are going to try for 20 minutes to find a meter, though? In a business district where two out of every three storefronts is empty, it should not take 20 minutes to find a place to legally park. Hell, it shouldn't take 20 minutes in a crowded business district.
Here's a modest proposal. Anyone from City Hall or the Parking Authority who sees this is welcome to steal it:
- Rip out the damned meters.
- Make parking on Fifth Avenue free, but limit it to one hour, with towing enforced and a $50 fine.
- Put in the electronic machines that the City of Pittsburgh has now installed. I first saw these suckers in Canada a few years ago, and it amazes me that it took so long for them to catch on here. It's a great idea.
These gizmos work on solar power. You put in money or a credit card and tell the machine how long you want to park. (The rate increases if you park more than four hours to discourage people from staying.) Then the machine spits out a little paper ticket with the expiration time printed in big black letters. You put the ticket on your dashboard, face up.
- Everywhere except for Fifth Avenue, you have to have one of those valid tickets on your dashboard to park.
- If a cop or meter enforcement officer comes by and sees that the ticket is expired, he or she writes you a violation. Easy-peasy. No more maintaining 200 meters and emptying the cash from them --- you maintain a couple of machines, loading them with paper and emptying the loot.
It's hard enough getting people to visit Downtown McKeesport. Most of them are afraid they're going to get clonked on the head by marauding villains. (You're not, I walk the streets all the time --- or maybe I look too pathetic to rob.)
Once we get 'em Downtown, let's not make it so hard for them to
stay
January 08, 2007
A New Year's Resolution
If you don't like this one, blame the priest who told it during his New Year's sermon. That's where I heard it:
It was the Great Depression, and Clancy was laid off and looking for some way to stay busy. Just after Christmas he went down to talk to Father Murphy.
"Well," said Father Murphy, "the vacant lot next to the church is full of weeds and junk and garbage. I suppose if you've time, you could haul away the trash and clean that lot."
Clancy set to work that January, dragging old tires and broken boards and all sorts of debris out of the lot. Next he cut down the overgrowth, dug out the rocks, and turned over the soil. In the spring he planted row after row of vegetables --- tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, corn --- and that summer he began distributing the spoils to the hungry families in the neighborhood.
Father Murphy was astonished and gratified, and one afternoon, when he spotted Clancy on his hands and knees, pulling weeds, he went over to greet him.
"Clancy," Father Murphy said, "what has happened here is a miracle. Isn't it marvelous what the Lord can do?"
Dripping with sweat, Clancy leapt to his feet. "Aye," he said, "and do ye remember what this land looked like when He was working it by Himself?"
. . .
That story brought to mind a
Christmastime blog entry by City Councilman Paul Shelly. "Anyone who grew up in McKeesport before the early '80s has to get a little disturbed when driving through our downtown area now," he writes. "Some of my most vivid memories as a child in McKeesport are of going Christmas shopping with my mom and being elbow to elbow with folks up and down Fifth Avenue and having countless stores and shops to stop in.
"Driving through town today, during the holiday season, I was reminded once more of what once was and what could be in McKeesport," Shelly says. "Revitalization won’t be easy or quick but it can happen."
Our Fair City took its share of knocks in the news last year --- the notorious
fake-phallus-in-the-microwave-story, the
Tanya Kach case, and the news that Penn State McKeesport Campus is changing its name (even as the New Kensington Campus is reassuring residents that it's "proud" of its New Kensington heritage).
My problem is not with the media, mind you --- the
Almanac had its
share of fun with the microwave story. And in a region where everything was going well, stories like those would be laughed off and forgotten. When everything isn't going well, stories like that just linger.
. . .
My complaint is that too many people --- including people who live here --- use incidents like those to shake their head and say, "oh, poor McKeesport."
Over the summer, a lady from Elizabeth Township wrote a letter to the
Daily News saying that she grew up in McKeesport and loved the city, but wanted to urge people
not to move there because it was full of crime and drugs and mean people and dirt (and I think
Oompa-Loompas), and I'm pretty sure she also implied that the Lindbergh baby was dumped in the Youghiogheny River, but I don't have the letter in front of me.
Years ago, the
Valley Mirror ran a list of "Top 10 Ways For Homestead To Stop Being Called a Depressed Mon Valley Mill Town." (One was "add Prozac to the water supply.) The point was that "depressed Mon Valley mill town" seemed to have been permanently attached to Homestead's name.
In my experience, no one who cares about the city --- from Mayor Brewster to Shelly down to your humble correspondent --- is blind to the problems. During the
Santa Claus parade, I was struck by the irony of seeing Downtown teeming with people, music and excitement, lined up in front of abandoned storefronts.
"Salute to Santa" was originally designed to draw people into town to shop and eat during the holidays. Now, if they want to shop or eat after the parade, chances are they were going to have to drive to White Oak or at least to Olympia Shopping Center.
And the problems are not confined to Downtown --- plenty of once-great residential neighborhoods are suffering the effects of abandoned houses and absentee landlords. Houses that would sell for a million dollars in Shadyside can be picked up for $40,000.
Some of these problems began developing 20 or 30 years ago, and they won't disappear overnight.
. . .
But instead of mourning what's lost, how about making a New Year's resolution to appreciate what we have?
Recreational Assets:
- A wonderful riverfront area that hosts a busy marina and free, safe public events nine months out of the year
- One of Western Pennsylvania's best regional parks, with a nationally-recognized rose garden, a fishing lake, tennis courts and a great museum
- A well-maintained and rustic bike trail system
Cultural Assets:
Educational Assets:
Public Assets:
- Charitable organizations like the Crawford Trust, the G.C. Murphy Co. Foundation and the McKeesport Hospital Foundation
- Service organizations like the YMCA, UPMC McKeesport, the Salvation Army, and Boy and Girl Scouts
- Government services like a full-time, paid fire department and a complete police department with detective bureau and juvenile officers
. . .
I was thinking about all of this on Christmas Eve, when I went to Mass at Holy Trinity Church (now part of
St. Martin de Porres Parish) on Sixth Street --- a beautiful service in a historic sanctuary, filled to the walls with people of every age, race and description. Any suburban congregation would have been proud to host a worship service of such grace and humanity, but they wouldn't (couldn't) have one-tenth of the heritage of that great old church, built by Slovak immigrants.
If you "love McKeesport," like the lady from Elizabeth Township said she did, then make a vow to visit one or more McKeesport assets this year, and look at them objectively --- if you visited Cranberry or Peters townships, wouldn't you be impressed? You're darned right.
Get permission to view some of the art, science or vocational projects on display at McKeesport Area High School. Take in a concert or play. Attend International Village or a free "lunch on the lawn" this summer.
And instead of complaining about what the Mon Valley has lost, try promoting what we have. Instead of bad-mouthing the valley, shop there, bank there, worship there, and maybe even move back there. (Although I don't live within the city limits, I live within a stone's throw, and I have always considered myself a McKeesporter.)
God provides, of course --- but like Clancy demonstrated with the vacant lot, He can use a little assistance on Earth.
No, you probably can't donate $1 million to some worthy cause, and you may not be able to start a business or renovate an old building. But in whatever way you're able, there's nothing stopping you from making a little difference in the Mon Valley's future.
. . .
P.S.: I'm even more full of hot air that you thought, aren't I?
It's a shame the G.O.B. couldn't have been used for something --- it was kind of an attractive, funky-looking building, and I was always amused by the cupola on the roof. I was told that the cupola was used by company guards to spy on employees, especially before the plant was unionized in the 1930s, but I have a feeling the uses were more prosaic --- monitoring train movements in the freight yard in front of the plant, for instance.
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.