Category: default || By jt3y

Chris Osher had an intriguing, if depressing, look at a slice of life from the Mon-Yough area in Sunday's Tribune-Review. In "Ring of Fire," Osher writes that eight members of the 1993 state champion Duquesne High School football team are now serving prison sentences for their role in a drug trafficking operation that moved more than $13 million worth of heroin into the region.

Federal prosecutors allege that the eight formed the Western Pennsylvania connection for a Dominican heroin wholesaler in Philadelphia, distributing stamp bags marked with a jaguar from Duquesne.

Thus, Duquesne, which once exported steel around the world, earned the dubious distinction of exporting heroin to Pittsburgh neighborhoods and suburbs alike in the 1990s. (I can remember a cop down in Washington County telling me in the mid-1990s that Route 837 was the "heroin highway," because so much was moving from Duquesne to Clairton, Donora and Monessen, and then out into rural areas.)

Osher writes that not everyone from the championship team ended up dealing drugs. The running back took his football scholarship and put it to good use, earning his degree from Duquesne University and becoming a broker for Mellon Financial. And bless him, Jade Burleigh, now 29, moved back to Duquesne, where he's involved in coaching youth football.

As the football coach, Pat Monroe, points out, sports is just a "temporary distraction." (Duquesne, which once had seven public schools and three parochial schools, is now lucky to graduate 30 high school students a year, according to a school director in Osher's story.)

Blame the professional sports leagues; unsatisfied with drafting college kids, they increasing want to draft high schoolers. That's fueled a lot of fantasies for kids in Western Pennsylvania over the years, who think they can blow off their educations and wait for a multimillion dollar NBA or NFL contract.

No one ever warns them that if they don't get that offer, they're going to land flat on their backs, without a high school diploma or much of a future. When the cheering stops, the stadium sounds awfully quiet.

And blame their parents and peers, too (that translates as "the rest of us") for not placing the same premium on education that we place on watching the Stillers, ESPN, "March Madness," etc.

...

On a happier note, historian and West Mifflin resident Brian Butko, who wrote the book (literally) on Isaly's, is getting good notices for his newest release, Greetings from the Lincoln Highway: America's First Coast-to-Coast Road. Appropriately enough, the reviews are coming from newspapers in the small and mid-size towns that the Lincoln Highway has served best for most of a century.

The Canton, Ohio, Repository calls it both "a history book and travel guide," while the Nevada, Iowa, Journal says it's "funny" and "insightful." Bonnijean Adams also interviewed Butko in the Daily News.

...

Meanwhile, I mentioned last week that the 15th Avenue Bridge is going to be renamed in honor of retired state Sen. Albert "Bud" Belan. I didn't realize that the Clairton-Glassport Bridge is being renamed in honor of another retired state senator, Clairton's Ed Zemprelli, as Brandy Brubaker and Pat Cloonan reported in the News this week.

The "new" bridge opened in 1985 and cost $22 million; Zemprelli was instrumental in seeing that money was available for its completion. The old Clairton-Glassport Bridge, which opened in 1927, wasn't anywhere near as old as the 15th Avenue Bridge, yet it always seemed to be in a much more advanced state of dilapidation.

I suspect that the chemicals from the coke ovens in Clairton --- which in the old days used to strip the chrome from car bumpers --- caused the bridge to corrode much more quickly than usual. That same pollution also used to kill all of the vegetation on the Glassport-Lincoln side of the river, but ironically didn't prevent several trees from taking root in the dirt and crud that had collected in the superstructure of the Clairton-Glassport Bridge.

At the Clairton (actually, "Wilson") end of the old bridge, all of the traffic had to make a sharp right and then a sharp left to get onto Route 837. In the "crook" of that L-bend in the bridge sat a bar called the "Wiltin' Hilton." I wish I was making that up, but I'm not. Actually, as a kid I thought it was a pretty clever name.

...

Correction, Not Perfection: Contrary to the old essay I posted earlier this week, the 15th Avenue Bridge was completed in 1908, not 1906. I've corrected the mistake.

Actually, if you want to be pedantic, the McKeesport & Port Vue Bridge Company was chartered in 1906, but construction of the 15th Avenue Bridge didn't begin until 1907.

The bridge was opened in September 1908 (after a lengthy legal battle with city authorities, who refused to allow the Port Vue Traction Company to connect its streetcar tracks with Walnut Street). I also believe that the 15th Avenue Bridge was a toll bridge, at least at first, because I've seen pictures showing what appears to be a toll booth at the McKeesport end.

You can read all about Our Fair City's legal battles with the Port Vue Traction Company, among other tales, in Ron Beal's wonderful book McKeesport Trolleys.