Category: default || By jt3y

A little of this, a little of that. What the heck: It's Friday!

It turns out that a Mid-Mon Valley landmark is moving. Liz Zemba writes in Thursday's Tribune-Review that Pechin's is moving to the mostly vacant Laurel Mall between Uniontown and Connellsville:

Laurel Mall's relatively modern, indoor setting will be the opposite of Pechin's current zero-frills setup: individual, outdoor shops face in toward an aging, patched asphalt parking lot. Its anchor, the grocery store, is housed in a sprawling, cinder-block structure.

Older customers will recall a time when gaps in wooden floorboards afforded glimpses of a stream that flows under the grocery store.

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Pechin's has long enjoyed a reputation for undercutting its competitors, with its cafeteria boasting 19-cent hamburgers and full meals for less than $1. Grocery deals also abound, with Pechin's this week offering fresh split chicken breasts for 97 cents a pound, compared with $1.59 per pound at Giant Eagle, and 20-pound bags of Kingsford charcoal for $4.99 versus Giant Eagle's sale price of $5.99.

The prices at Pechin's, Zemba reports, have made the National Enquirer three times and the front page of The Wall Street Journal. Besides groceries, Pechin's also sells cigarettes, shoes, clothing, hardware, sporting goods and beer.

I can see where Pechin's might have trouble attracting people out into the woods of Dunbar Township --- it's not all that easy to find, especially compared to Laurel Mall --- but I suspect some of its appeal over the years has been the fact that it's a little bit obscure. Whether it has the same appeal in the bland confines of Laurel Mall (whose original anchor tenant was, of course, Murphy's Mart) remains to be seen.

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I've written before (probably ad nauseum) about how much I enjoy listening to recordings of old-time radio shows. A lot of them are dross, but a few hold up very well: I actually enjoy "Dragnet" more on radio than on TV, and TV's "The Twilight Zone" owes a lot to the sci-fi radio anthology "X-Minus-One," which came just a few years before.

At Hamvention last weekend, I ran into my favorite old-time radio dealer, and like any addict, spent too much money on getting another fix. I literally now have several hundred hours of programs to work through, including "Suspense," "This is Your FBI," and "The Great Gildersleeve." I also bought copies of BBC's "The Goon Show," the radio comedy series that propelled Peter Sellers to stardom and was said to be a favorite of young John Lennon.

I find old-time radio great fun for car trips, especially since there isn't much to listen to on the ride home except the soporific sounds of NPR's "All Things Considered Until Your Eyes Glaze Over," right-wing talk radio bloviators, or badly chosen "classic" rock songs interrupted by 10 minutes of commercials. Anyway, no matter how bad the traffic jam in which you're stuck, it's hard to feel road rage while listening to "Fibber McGee and Molly."

Over the past few days, I've been listening to episodes of "Arthur Godfrey Time." Godfrey is all but forgotten today, but in the 1940s and '50s, there was probably no bigger star on both radio and TV. At one point, Godfrey had three successful series going on TV, a daily 30-minute morning program on CBS radio (including McKeesport's WEDO), a recording career and was very successful as a commercial pitchman.

Unfortunately, if he's remembered for anything, it's for his legendary volcanic temper, and his occasionally callous dealings with subordinates. He notoriously fired several performers on his shows who he thought had become too popular, including one --- Julius LaRosa --- on live television. His arrogance got him in trouble with the government, as well. A proud booster of private aviation and an enthusiastic airplane buff, Godfrey was cited after he buzzed the control tower at the Teterboro, N.J., airport. (He was mad because they wouldn't give him permission to land.)

In all fairness, Godfrey could also be extraordinarily kind, especially to people just starting out in radio or TV, and was a known "soft touch" for a wide variety of charities. He also had a large, and extremely devoted, circle of friends, who saw only the kind, warm Godfrey (not the sharp edge of his tongue).

That's the Godfrey on display on these programs --- the man with the deep voice and the dry wit, full of folksy aphorisms and gentle quips. I'm currently working through a week of episodes of "Arthur Godfrey Time" from January 1964 that celebrated his 30th anniversary with CBS. (Or as Godfrey does the station break once: "You're listening to Mr. Paley's favorite network, the Columbia Broadcasting System.")

The first of these shows blew my socks off. Among a whole slew of Broadway and nightclub performers (most of them now forgotten), Godfrey had as guests Meredith Willson, Pat Buttram, Gen. Curtis LeMay and Edward R. Murrow. That may have been the first and only time that LeMay, Murrow and Buttram were ever on any broadcast together. (Murrow, already desperately ill from lung cancer, died about a year later.) One guest also read congratulatory telegrams to Godfrey from Lyndon Johnson and Dwight Eisenhower.

But upon hearing the second Godfrey anniversary program, I almost crashed my car. Among Godfrey's guests were Joan Crawford, Jackie Gleason, Richard Nixon (!), Lowell Thomas and Rosemary Clooney. Can you imagine that group of people in the same room together? On the same program were George Burns, Art Linkletter and Harry Von Zell were in Los Angeles, via long-distance telephone. (Gleason, naturally, gets off most of the best lines. How sweet it is!)

The third show's guest list was impressive, too, even if it paled in comparison to the previous day's --- Godfrey's panelists were Pat Boone, Abigail "Dear Abby" Van Buren, Johnny Nash and Steve Lawrence, among others. Admittedly, you have to be interested in 1960s pop culture to care about this stuff, but I found it pretty heavy indeed. I'm a little bit worried to hear who was on the fourth show: "My guests are Nikita Khruschev, Bob Newhart, Richard J. Daley, Keely Smith and Winston Churchill."

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News from Penn State McKeesport: "Penn State McKeesport alumnus James E. Minarik, classes of '75 and '77, encouraged graduates at the campus' spring commencement ceremony to be persistent, to focus on the present and to commit to lifelong learning. 'It is very tough to see the future or to recognize change and innovation as it is actually happening, it is only when we look back like this that we can get any real perspective about how many changes we deal with year in and year out,' he said." (More here. Minarik is president and CEO of Directed Electronics, which makes among other things vehicle alarms, satellite radio receivers, and global-positioning satellite equipment.)

Also from PSM's press office: "Michelle Gordon Hough, assistant professor of business at Penn State McKeesport, has been named a Fulbright Scholar for the 2005-2006 award year. Hough will travel to Denmark this fall to fulfill the terms of her award, where she will lecture at the Niels Brock
Copenhagen College of Business." (More here.)

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To Do This Weekend: Mon-Yough area parade buffs will be in high cotton on Memorial Day. West Newton's parade starts at 9 a.m. at Vine Street Park and proceeds to West Newton Cemetery. Irwin's parade starts at 10 a.m. at the corner of Second and Main, and travels up Main Street to Pennsylvania Avenue, ending at the Union Cemetery. White Oak's Memorial Day parade begins at 12:30 p.m. Monday at the corner of Willard Avenue and Lincoln Way. Versailles' parade starts at 3, and goes from Olympia Shopping Center to the Christy Park war memorial. (There's more in the Post-Gazette.)

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