Category: default || By jt3y

What am I supposed to do for cheap weekend entertainment now that the flea market at Eastland is gone? It's really left my Sunday afternoons with a feeling of emptiness. I pad around the house, drinking coffee and feeling depressed.

I suppose I could, I don't know, clean the garage or prune the hedges or do something useful with my time. But who needs that when you can go look at mildewed record albums, dirty Smurfs and old golf clubs?

So, in desperate need of a junk fix, on Sunday I drove out to Trader Jack's in Collier Township, just off the Heidelberg exit of Interstate 79, to get my recommended daily allowance of mold spores and decayed plastic. (By the way: avoid Interstate 79 in Allegheny County if you can until the construction work is done.) It's a long drive from the Mon-Yough area, especially to look at someone else's discarded krep, but like I said, I was jonesing.

One woman was standing in front of a big blanket piled high with old books, kitchenware, toys and other ephemera. "Fill a bag for a dollar!" she kept yelling. "Fill a bag for a dollar!" Hell, a dollar? Who can resist that?

I wandered over and found a unused passenger conductor's ticket-collection envelope from the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. Inside was another envelope from the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie and an unused B&O passenger's claim check. Evidently someone had saved several pieces of stationary as a souvenir, probably when passenger service was taken over by Amtrak in '71.

I also picked up two pop bottles (one white, for fruit-flavored pop, the other green for ginger ale) from Sperky Bottling Works in Monongahela, Pa., which I'd never heard of. Neither the Internet nor Lexis-Nexis turns up anything about Sperky's, which is not surprising. Anyone out there from the mid-Mon Valley remember Sperky's pop?

Not too bad for a buck, I figured. At another stall, someone had a big box of 45 rpm singles. I'm used to tearing through piles of old records pretty quickly. The kinds of records for sale at flea markets in Western Pennsylvania tend to be a lot of dross --- Lawrence Welk, showtunes, easy listening, K-Tel collections, sound-alike bands, etc. When you find something good, it's often missing its sleeve and is scratched to beat hell, or else it's been played so many times that the grooves have turned gray.

Occasionally you find a gem. This pile netted some old Stax soul, a single by Davie Allan & The Arrows, some Ricky Nelson, a few other items. No million-dollar finds, but not too terrible.

"How much?" I asked the guy sitting in the pickup truck.

"Fifty cents a piece," he said. "If you really like those, I got some better ones up here in the truck for a buck an' a half."

I had visions of a pile of original Elvis singles on Sun, or Bessie Smith 78s. They turned out to be a lot of kids' records and things like Bing Crosby's "White Christmas."

"Thanks," I said, "I better just stick with these."

At another booth stood a pile of yellowed old newspapers: Kennedy assassination, moon landing, Pirates '71 World Series, etc. Old newspapers draw me like a moth to ... well, to old newspapers.

"Want 'em?" the guy said. "Two bucks each."

"I've already got too much junk," I said. "Plus, I didn't really bring much money with me." (If I bring too much, I know I'll spend it.)

"How much you got?"

"I got seven bucks, and I don't want to spend it all. Let's say six."

"I'll take it. Get 'em out of here."

Back in the car, I looked them over. The Kennedy papers I have. I have a Post-Gazette from the day after the '71 World Series win, but in this pile was a Press from the day after that, detailing the riotous celebration in the Golden Triangle that snarled traffic and caused thousands of dollars in damage. (Lawrence Walsh, now at the P-G, had the byline.) Also in the pile were a Sun-Telegraph special edition from the St. Patrick's Day flood of 1936, a New York Daily News Sunday rotogravure from the same week (also showing pictures of flood damage), several pages of flood coverage torn out of the Post-Gazette, and three issues of the Homestead Daily Messenger from Sept. 5, 1938.

The Messenger has been gone for more than 20 years; most of the businesses advertised inside --- Wilkens E-Z Credit Jewelers, Katilius Music Store, long-closed shoe and clothing stores --- are gone, too. The headline reads "Czechs Prepare to Repel Germans Alone." World War II had just started, but no one knew yet what Hitler was capable of, so I have no idea why someone saved three copies of that day's Messenger.

But I have a suspicion. In the same pile, there was a clipping from a 1971 Messenger with pictures of the pharmacists at Weinberger's Drug Store in Homestead; while on the second page of the Sept. 5, 1938, Messenger, there's a little teaser ad: "What happens on Saturday? Weinberger's Drug Store opens!"

A little searching revealed that a Weinberger Drug Store was located on Diamond Street in Downtown Pittsburgh in the 1930s, and was presumably ruined in the 1936 flood. More sleuthing turned up a Harry Weinberger who was a 1925 graduate of the Pitt pharmacy school and lived in Homestead.

I have a theory that whoever saved those papers was a Weinberger --- maybe Harry Weinberger himself. Mr. Weinberger's first store was flooded out in 1936, which would explain why so many flood stories were saved. Rather than reopening the damaged store, he relocated to his hometown. When the ad announcing that his store was opening appeared in the Messenger, he went out and bought three copies, and when his sons came into the business, and their pictures appeared in the paper, he kept that, too.

Either that, or it's just a funny coincidence, but I like my story better. In any event, it was worth the drive out to Collier; who'd expect to find so much Mon Valley effluvia floating around there?

Still, I'd like to find a flea market a little closer to home, for the next time I get the urge. Anybody have any suggestions?

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Signs of the Times: Advertising sign in front of Elks Lodge 11 in Lincoln Place: "SPAGAGTTI DINNER, SAT APR 23." I wonder if that comes with meepbulls and gorlak bred.

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Welcome to the World: Congratulations to Bob and Julie Braughler on their new bouncing baby blogger. She'll be eatin' pierogies in no time, I'll bet.