Finally! An actual mention of Our Fair City by the national political writers!
The conversation was about how tiring it must be to run for president, and someone --- a woman --- said that on top of everything else, Hillary Clinton has to spend an hour and a half getting ready for each day's campaigning. She didn't mean studying her notes and making sure she knows the name of the mayor of McKeesport, Pa. (Michael Kinsley, Slate.com)
When he steps aboard a campaign bus in Pittsburgh on Friday, Senator Barack Obama begins a six-day journey across Pennsylvania and its complex political landscape, one that is largely favorable to his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Mr. Obama will travel from the gritty western part of the state to the more prosperous east, at times riding straight into unfriendly territory, like that in Johnstown, the hardscrabble, blue-collar base of John P. Murtha, the powerful congressman, who is one of Mrs. Clintons staunchest allies.
Hugh Geyer, original lead tenor for The Vogues, has rejoined the group.
That means that Geyer is no longer singing with The Vogues.
Huh?
Yeah, it's confusing. The original members of the Turtle Creek-based quartet lost the rights to the name and trademark in the early 1970s.
Opinions differ on what happened; some people claim that dishonest managers and agents cheated the group, while others claim that one of the members was greedy. Possibly the answer lies somewhere in between.
A lawsuit ensued between the new owner of the trademark and Chuck Blasko, the original Vogues' second tenor. The courts awarded Blasko the right to perform with a group called "The Vogues" in 14 counties around Pittsburgh, while the owner of the national trademark was allowed to use it everywhere else.
For years, if you saw a show by "The Vogues" around Pittsburgh, you saw a group with one original member (Blasko), but if you saw "The Vogues" anywhere else, including Las Vegas, you saw no original members. When Blasko's group toured nationally, it was billed as "The Five O'Clock World Tour," named after one of the group's biggest hits. (Sadly, it's not an unusual situation, and it's happened to other rock groups of the 1950s and '60s.)
Several years ago, after The Vogues were spotlighted in a Rick Sebak WQED-TV special, Geyer, who still lives in the Mon Valley, joined Blasko's group. I saw them at a outdoor concert in Turtle Creek a few years, and they swung --- they really laid the crowd out. I've seen a few reunited 1960s groups that could no longer perform, but this group sounded good, and a lot of that was due to Geyer, who sang the soaring, high passages on many of The Vogues' hits.
Then a week ago I heard an ad on an out-of-town radio station advertising an appearance in Cincinnati by "Hugh Geyer and The Original Vogues," and I said --- huh? I didn't think Blasko's group was allowed to tour under that name.
I emailed my friend Tom, Geyer's stepson, who maintains a website about The Vogues and also hosts tubecityonline.com. Tom says Geyer has left Blasko's group and joined The Vogues.
If you want to see them, the bad news is that you'll have to leave the Mon Valley. The nearest upcoming shows are in Mingo Junction, Ohio (that's just south of Steubenville) on Saturday, April 19 and in Mentor, Ohio (east of Cleveland) on Saturday, April 26.
But that Mentor show might be worth the trip --- Frankie "Sea Cruise" Ford and Shirley Alston Reeves of the Shirelles are also scheduled to appear. Plus, it's good news that Geyer (who's a nice guy) is getting some national publicity.
And even if "The Vogues" is no longer all original four guys from Turtle Creek, it looks like they put on a pretty good show.
. . .
Chiaverini's Closes: One of McKeesport's nicest restaurants that you didn't know about is no more. Chiaverini's Family Restaurant on Walnut Street in Christy Park, near Enamel Products, has closed. I found out Saturday, when I stopped for dinner.
A note on the front door thanks customers for their 22 years of patronage. I'm getting old, because I didn't think they had been there that long.
Too bad. The service and the food was always good, but in recent years a limited operating schedule had sometimes made it hard to make time to eat there.
Mike Littwin of Denver's Rocky Mountain News has really outdone himself in this profile of Clairton:
(S)ure enough, just as I'd been warned, there was the white smoke belching from the Clairton Works mill, on the banks of the Monongahela River, one of the few working mills left in the region.
And long-abandoned storefronts were, in fact, boarded up --- ghostly reminders of what was and what would never be again.
And, yes, as the whistle blew, men in hard hats, many carrying lunch pails, headed home to their company-built houses, constructed in the days when the mills ran up and down the river, or maybe they went to a nearby bar for a well-earned beer or two after a hard shift.
This is the largest coke-manufacturing plant in the country, producing, the U.S. Steel literature says, 4.7 million tons a year. You can see the smoke, and smell it, for miles.
I hadn't come in search of a cliche, but here it was awaiting me.
Once known as glass city, when 70 percent of the world's glass was made here, this town is probably better known now as the home to Terrelle Pryor, the No. 1 college football prospect, who signed a letter of intent on Wednesday to attend Ohio State.
Beyond that, though, this economically battered city of 10,000 is fairly unremarkable in southwestern Pennsylvania. Like many cities in the region, it has lost a third of its population, and Clay Avenue, its downtown, is a shadow of its former self.
It's Dyngus Day! Have you checked your dyngus today?
Wait! Stop! Before you disrobe, you need to know that the day after Easter is known as "smigus dyngus" in Poland and "pomlazka" in the Czech Republic.
Until I started working part-time at a radio station with a bunch of polka shows, I had never heard of this tradition, which is kind of surprising, considering the number of Poles and Czechs in the McKeesport area.
There is a "Dyngus Day Dance" at 6 p.m. tonight at the American Legion hall in Jeannette. North Huntingdon's Frank Powaski, who hosts one of Pittsburgh's most popular polka shows Sunday afternoons over WKHB (620), is the emcee, and Ray Jay and The Carousels will be performing.
Other than that, the Mon Valley is shockingly short on Dyngus Day activities --- which I find surprising, since we have so many dinguses around here. (Rimshot)
OK, enough with the jokes. According to the website Dyngus Day Buffalo, the word "dyngus" comes from the medieval Polish word "dingnus," which means something that's "worthy or suitable" as a ransom to protect a village. It also has its roots in the German word "dingen," which means "come to an agreement."
As with so many festivals, this one started as a pagan tradition. An article in the Polish American Journal explains:
The custom of pouring water is an ancient spring rite of cleansing, purification, and fertility. The same is true of the complimentary practice of switching with pussy willow branches, from which Dyngus Day derives its cognomen "Smigus" --- from "smiganie" --- switching.
The pagan Poles bickered with nature --- "dingen" --- by means of pouring water and switching with willows to make themselves "pure" and "worthy" for the coming year. Similar practices are still present in other non-Christian cultures during springtime.
Whipping brings good luck, wealth and rich harvest for the whole year. The strength from the rods is passed onto the person whipped. The whip or "pomlazka" is made from willow rods. The easiest variety is made from three rods, but it can be braided from 8, 12 or even 24 rods.
Boys surprise the girls by dousing them thoroughly with buckets or bottles of water all the while reciting a little rhyme: "Good day, good day, my lily, I water you to keep you from withering," or "Water for your health, water for your home, water for your land, here's water, water!"
Formerly this practice was much rougher, for young men literally dragged girls to ponds, wells or streams at dawn and threw them in.
It was expected that the girls accept this all good-naturedly and reward their tormentors with decorated eggs, bread and a glass of brandy/wine --- or all three. The dousing was supposed to make of them good future wives with many children.
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