To the tune of "Little Deuce Coupe":
'99 Merc
And she's finally paid off
('99 Merc, and she's finally paid off)
Well, I'm not braggin' but it's hard not to gloat,
'Cause after three years I finally paid off the note.
I'll have a little extra to put gas in the tank,
Since I made the last payment to Community Bank.
She's my '99 Merc
And she's finally paid off
('99 Merc, and she's finally paid off)
Just a gray Grand Marquis with stereo tape,
And a dent in the side door where a PAT bus scraped.
She's got a little V-8 but there's plenty of go,
Plus Traction-Lok gears for when I drive in the snow.
She's my '99 Merc
And she's finally paid off
('99 Merc, and she's finally paid off)
She's got eight-way power seats and anti-lock brakes,
Plus two sway bars so I don't get the shakes.
And though it sounds boring and you're ready to barf,
There's one more thing --- I got the title, daddy.
So laugh at my car if you think you must,
But the body's still straight and it doesn't have rust.
It's small enough to turn when I park on the street,
And I've got lots of leg room for my two lead feet.
She's my '99 Merc
And she's finally paid off
('99 Merc, and she's finally paid off)
She's my '99 Merc
And she's finally paid off
('99 Merc, and she's finally paid off)
(repeat until cease-and-desist letter arrives)
. . .
Interesting Fun Fact: Van Dyke Parks, who collaborated with Brian Wilson on some of The Beach Boys' most creative music (including the album "Smile") spent his teen-age years in McKeesport, along with his older brother, C. Carson Parks, who wrote such pop hits as "Something Stupid" (for Nancy & Frank Sinatra) and "Cab Driver (Drive By Mary's Place)" (for The Mills Brothers).
A 1960 graduate of McKeesport High School, Van Dyke Parks is also a children's book author and in 1990 was inducted into the McKeesport High School Hall of Fame. (Oh, and he was also nominated for something called "an Emmy Award," whatever that is.)
. . .
To Do This Weekend: St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 220 Eighth Ave., is holding its Lenten fish fry from 11:30 a.m. through 6:30 p.m. Fridays. Call (412) 664-9379 ... Pittsburgh-based reggae group The Wizdom Band plays Bubba's II, 9:30 p.m. Saturday. Call (412) 673-3586.
You've probably noticed the TV ads promoting Citgo's program that distributes discount heating oil to low-income families on the East Coast.
And if you shop at a Foodland store, you may have noticed promotional items for a new program promoting gasoline discounts --- a la Giant Eagle's hugely successful "Fuel Perks" program --- at something called "Fueland" convenience stores.
The McKeesport area is getting its first such store right now on Lebanon Church Road in Dravosburg, though a station in Turtle Creek is also accepting "Fuel Links."
But do you know why Citgo is running those ads?
And did you know that Mon Valley Petroleum was sold last year?
And did you know that all of these things are related?
Well, the crack(ed) Tube City Almanac research team has swung into action to bring you, our loyal dozens of readers, the stories behind the stories, and our I-Team investigation begins .... (swoosh!) right now!
. . .
First, about those Citgo ads. Citgo (which was Cities Service Petroleum back in the dim recesses of history) has been taking a beating in the marketplace ever since Venezuelans elected Hugo Chavez as president.
Citgo was once controlled by Armand Hammer's Occidental Petroleum but was sold in the mid-1980s, first to the parent of the 7-Eleven convenience stores, and then to an oil company owned by the Venezuelan government.
And the Venezuelan government is not terribly well-liked in a lot of quarters in this country. Depending on your point of view, Chavez is either a radical socialist dictator who supports terrorism, or a populist trying to reform Venezuela. Possibly, he's a little bit of both.
There's no doubt that Chavez has ruled the country with a iron hand since 1998, controlling virtually all branches of government and suppressing freedom of speech. But he was democratically elected and re-elected twice (with international monitors watching the polls closely), has apparently made serious efforts to help the country's poor, and some sources say that although corruption and inefficiency is rampant in Venezuela, the country is considerably better off than most of its neighbors.
. . .
U.S. relations with Venezuela hit the skids when President Bush took office in 2001 and began blasting Chavez as a Communist radical. It didn't help when a military coup that attempted to overthrow Venezuela's government in 2002 was linked to the U.S. government, or when Pat Robertson, in his inimitable fashion, suggested that Chavez should be assassinated.
Chavez, for his part, has called Bush an alcoholic and a terrorist. Last year, when he gave a speech at the United Nations a day after President Bush, Chavez took the podium to announce that "the devil was here yesterday, and it still smells of sulfur."
On the other hand, Latin American politicians have always boosted their approval ratings at home by making fun of the U.S., and if we really did attempt to overthrow his government, well, you can understand why he's a teensy bit cheesed.
. . .
In summary, Chavez is not a popular guy with the American right, and Citgo's U.S. dealers are taking it in the shorts. There's a boycott underway, largely "fueled" by conservative organizations like the American Family Association.
According to James Lileks, some independent Citgo dealers in the Midwest are switching brands or covering up Citgo logos. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reported in January that several Citgo stations there are also switching brands.
Hence the TV commercials showing Citgo's generosity toward American citizens, providing low-cost heating oil to the needy ("and pay no attention to the president of our country calling the president of your country 'a threat to humanity'").
. . .
Now, about the "Fueland"/"Foodland" connection. According to a press release from a company called "MetroSplash," the Fueland program was created by North Hills-based Superior Petroleum, which operates the Glassmart convenience stores around Western Pennsylvania --- including (in the Mon-Yough area) stores in West Homestead, Monessen and Wilkinsburg.
Last April, Superior also bought Mon Valley Petroleum (the former King & Keeney Oil Company on West Smithfield Street in Elizabeth Township) which had been controlled by McKeesport native Hartley King, founder of King's Family Restaurants. MVP operated the "Buy 'n Fly" stores around McKeesport, including those on Walnut Street in Christy Park and on Route 30 in North Versailles.
Fueland is an entirely new but related chain which rolled out its first new stores in the Kittanning area, according to an article last year in the Leader Times.
MetroSplash owns a system called "Fuel Links," which --- like the Giant Eagle "Fuel Perks" programs --- offers discounts to people with customer loyalty cards. In this case, people with these new Foodland cards.
Superior Petroleum has no corporate relationship to Citgo, other than as an independent dealer of Citgo products at some (but not all) of its stores.
. . .
As far as I can tell, the "Fuel Links" program is not interchangeable with Shop 'n Save's "Pump Perks" program, which is run in conjunction with local Sunoco stations, even though Shop 'n Save and Foodland are both supplied by Minnesota-based Supervalu.
Confused yet? Good!
"Fuel Links" gives Foodland a chance to compete with Giant Eagle, and hopefully mitigates some of the damage that's being inflicted on Citgo dealers.
But considering Foodland is a weak third- or fourth-place in the Pittsburgh market, behind Giant Eagle, Wal-Mart and Shop 'n Save, this may be a case of two drunks trying to prop each other up.
So, that's the connection between Latin American strongman Hugo Chavez, Citgo gasoline, Foodland and Elizabeth Township, and we hope you've enjoyed this little slice of retailing news and geopolitical intrigue from your neighborhood.
I'd say that "now you know the rest of the story," but Paul Harvey has very mean lawyers.
Allow me to talk about myself for a minute, hmm? I try not to do that at the Almanac, but I think I'm entitled once in a while, and if yinz don't like it, well, see you later.
If it seems like I am filling the Almanac with more scrawls than bloviations lately, there is a simple reason for that --- the book is due to the publisher by May, so I'm frantically trying to whip the manuscript into some sort of shape.
Add to that a number of writing projects at my real job and the need to write copy at my weekend job, and there's not much verbiage left in the tank some days. Sitting down at the drawing table and scribbling out a cartoon, on the other hand, provides a certain amount of relaxation. Your indulgence is appreciated.
Incidentally, regarding the book --- if you haven't checked out the website lately (www.gcmurphy.org), you might like to. I've been trying to keep it updated with fresh material, and one new feature is called "Photo of the Month." I'm posting images that I've acquired that are probably not going to make it into the book.
The current photo is a February image --- a Valentine's Day display window --- and there will be a new one for March on Thursday.
One of the "good news, bad news" situations is that I presently have enough material to fill three volumes. Former G.C. Murphy Co. employees and customers have been extraordinarily generous, and I continue to get emails and letters (it's "G.C. Murphy Book Project, P.O. Box 94, McKeesport, PA 15134") on a weekly basis.
Unfortunately, Penn State Press wants 90,000 words. So we're going to have to figure out what to do with the rest of the material.
Just last week I received an email from someone in Indianapolis. He was a union steward at Murphy's Indianapolis warehouse from 1971 to 1978, and while going to night school at Indiana University, he wrote a master's thesis on working conditions and employee job satisfaction. Would I like to read it?
"Would I like to read it?" Does it rain in Indianapolis in the summertime?
Ultimately, much of what we collect going to end up with the rest of the G.C. Murphy Co. archive at McKeesport Heritage Center. The Murphy material (much of it stuff that was covertly spirited out of 531 Fifth Ave. before Ames could throw it away) currently fills several large file drawers.
It's some measure of the affection that people continue to have for Murphy's that since starting the book project, we have now collected at least two more good-sized boxes full of stories, newspaper clippings and mementos more than 20 years after Murphy's ceased to exist as an independent company. And that's not counting material I've acquired on my own over the last two years.
By comparison, the entire corporate archive of the McCrory Corporation --- a competing variety-store company that was once three times the size of G.C. Murphy Co., and controlled by one of the richest men in the United States, Meshulam Riklis --- fits into two standard boxes at the Historical Society of York County.
Since we can't publish all this stuff, and since not everyone is going to want to trek to McKeesport to see it, we may use the G.C. Murphy website to distribute some of the choicer bits. I would hate the stories and memories to not have a wider audience.
. . .
Meanwhile, Alert Reader Eric sends along a link to a common misspelling of the editor's last name. According to the website "toygers.org":
The Toyger is a designer cat. It is designed and bred with the demands of modern apartment life as a human companion foremost in mind. Glittered, pelted, dramatic pattern appeals to both the high-tech glamour and nature-loving, wild dreams of city-caught people while the laid back, easily trained character of these cats make them a joy to live with.
‘The Ice Clog Debacle’:
Pennsylvanians don't really need to pay an outside consultant or to await the results of legislative hearings to figure out what happened on the state's ice-clogged interstate highways last week.
To wit, state government messed up. It was the job of PennDot and the state police to keep the highways in safe condition and to protect the public from life-threatening situations. Those agencies did neither. (Associated Press via Centre Daily Times)
The sale of beer in Pennsylvania's grocery and convenience stores could be halted by a Commonwealth Court ruling.
The court ruled today that Sheetz Inc. should not have been given a license to sell takeout beer from its Altoona store unless it planned to allow customers to drink beer inside the store. (Harrisburg Patriot-News)
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