Category: Commentary/Editorial || By

It occurred to me recently that for my entire life, I've lived within walking distance of the Monongahela River, the Youghiogheny River, or both.

And except for about a year and half while I was in college, and about a year after I graduated, I've lived within two miles of Our Fair City.

Both of these factors are either a symptom or a cause of mental illness, I suppose, but it's nothing that a highly skilled team of clinical psychologists couldn't figure out.

Anyway, it's true. I grew up in Versailles and Liberty, and now live at the top of Dravosburg Hill. While people can talk about living in the "412," I've rarely been outside of the "664."

. . .

But I did live in Oakland (until I ran out of money during my sophomore year of college) and after I graduated, I lived in Monongahela. During my senior year, I was hired by the Observer-Reporter --- the daily newspaper in Washington --- as the night cops reporter at the magnificent sum of $320 gross (and I do mean "gross") per week. I continued to work one day a week for Kennywood just to pay my bills.

Still, I was grateful to get a job working in my field, and at a pretty damned good local newspaper. A lot of my fellow English majors were doing exactly what you would expect English majors to do after graduation --- answering telephones, waiting tables and selling insurance. (Let this be a lesson to you, kids.)

Though I wasn't making much money, the O-R gave me a portable scanner, a very nice Nikon 8008 camera, and a cell phone, and a license to neb into other people's business five nights a week. I also learned a lot from some very talented reporters --- including Scott Beveridge, who these days blogs about the Mon Valley and other things.

. . .

It wasn't all beer and skittles. (Why, sometimes I couldn't even afford real skittles, and had to make do with imitation skittles.)

There was the time I went to a fatal accident at a coal mine, and a couple of miners grieving their buddy's death offered to detach my head and shove it up my rectum. I beat a quick retreat off the property, but they still followed me for several miles down Route 136 in the middle of the night. (And then I turned around and went back.)

Another time, another fatal accident, I was standing around, waiting to talk to the cops when the sister of the victim spotted my camera. She screamed, jumped me and had to be pulled off by a deputy coroner.

One of the requirements of the job --- or at the very least, a strong recommendation --- was that I live within the newspaper's circulation area. You can take the Mon Valley out of the boy, but apparently you can't take the boy out of the Mon Valley, so I found an apartment in Monongahela, or "Mon City."

(Many natives, by the way, don't like the term "Mon City" any more than people from Washington like the term "Little Washington.")

. . .

For the most part, I loved it. I was about 20 minutes from the office, which was close enough to get to work in a hurry, but far enough to get some isolation from the bosses. And in Mon City, I could walk to everything. Span & Taylor's drug store was across the street, Cope's Superette (a grocery store) was a few doors down, and I found a barber and a church a couple of blocks away.

The apartment itself wasn't great, but for $285 a month, who's complaining? I was on the second floor of an empty storefront on West Main Street, in a recently renovated building owned by a family from neighboring New Eagle. It was relatively quiet, except in the middle of the night, when coal trucks slowing for the red lights would Jake brake and knock me out of bed.

In the end, the job ground me down. Washington County is relatively small, and being the night cops reporter meant covering a lot of chimney fires, two-car fender-benders and weather stories.

It's hard to get it up for work when your job consists of writing 300-word stories week after week that begin, "A strong line of thunderstorms swept through Washington and Greene counties last night."

. . .

Also, I had to move back in with mom for a while. My poor old Datsun 200SX was dying.

One day, I dropped the Datsun off for state inspection, and the mechanic called me about a hour later. "You better get down here," he said. The car's frame was no longer connected to its body, except by gravity. This explained why she made a loud "clunk" every time I went across a railroad track.

On my rookie reporter's salary, I could afford a car payment or an apartment, but not both. After several months of commuting from McKeesport to Washington, a job opened up at the gray lady of 409 Walnut St. The pay was a little bit more, and combined with the fact that I wasn't driving 30 miles one-way to work, it was a no-brainer, so I gave my two weeks' notice at the O-R.

. . .

About a month before I moved out of Mon City, the first-floor storefront was rented to Pizza Outlet. This didn't faze me at first --- I thought it might be nice, like having my own personal cafeteria downstairs --- until one evening just before they opened, when they decided to season the pizza ovens by throwing in handfuls of pepperoni and letting it burn to a cinder.

I came home from work that night and unlocked the door to be greeted by billowing clouds of smoke, and gagged. It was winter, but I opened the windows anyway, to no relief. I went downstairs to complain, but no one was around.

By the next morning, everything I owned felt greasy and smelled like smoke. That night, they did it again, and I called the landlord to complain. The pizza shop's manager called me to apologize. "How about I make it up to you? I'll buy you dinner."

"Dinner?" I said. "Cripes, I don't f------g want dinner. I want to get a good night's sleep. I don't want my apartment to stink like burned pepperoni. What the hell is the matter with you people?"

. . .

Fast-forward to this September: I was paging through the Daily News when I saw a story about a big fire in Mon City. There was a picture inside. "That looks like the back of the building where I used to live," I said. "Holy crap, that was the building where I used to live."

Sunday, I had business in Washington County, so I cruised down to West Main in Monongahela to see if anything was left.

The building has been leveled, and West Main looks like it's struggling --- Cope's and the Keystone Bakery are gone --- but it's no worse than any other Mon Valley town, I guess, and better than a lot of them.

. . .

In general, Monongahela residents seem to take a lot of pride in trying to keep their community looking good. (Hint, hint, Mon-Yough residents. Let's clean up our messes!)

According to the Lost Monongahela blog, there are rumors that a gas leak started the blaze, or possibly that one of the upstairs tenants caused the fire while cooking meth.

Well! Nothing like that happened when I was living there! Everything was fine when I left. I even got my security deposit back.

But say, you don't think the fire was caused by a delayed reaction to the pepperoni, do you?

. . .

Opinions expressed in commentaries at Tube City Almanac are those of the authors, and do not reflect those of Tube City Community Media Inc. or its directors.