Category: default || By jt3y

Speaking of Mifflin Township (were we? sort of), its direct lineal successor made national news this week when a 74-year-old woman was charged with robbing the National City Bank branch inside the Shop 'n Save at Century Square.

Take a look at the pictures by the Tribune-Review's Andrew Russell and the Post-Gazette's V.W.H. Campbell Jr. No offense, and I say this with all due respect, but I wouldn't be surprised if the suspect was going to use the money for a new set of false teeth. I'm no cover model myself, but mercy.

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Down in Morris Township, a rural community south of "little Washington" on I-79, Scott Beveridge writes in the Observer-Reporter that Consol, the former Consolidation Coal Co., based in Upper St. Clair, has purchased $18 million in property in Washington and Greene counties over the past three years. It intends to longwall mine the ground below, and since longwall mining invariably causes the land on the surface to collapse, Consol has decided it's cheaper to just buy any affected properties than to try and fix them.

In Morris, that's left the township studded with abandoned houses that are now being stripped of valuables and recyclables. One of the homes is a stately Victorian once owned by a prominent local family.

But the best is yet to come:

When completed over the next several years, the coal preparation plant will have the capacity to process 10 million tons of coal a year.

The plant will create a massive industrial complex in what was an otherwise sleepy country landscape, (township supervisor Scott) Finch said.

"It was a beautiful place," Finch said. "I know we can't stop it and the country needs the coal."

They call the people taking the plumbing and the siding and the mantelpieces from the houses "thieves." They call the coal operators "businessmen." Try to keep that straight, OK?

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"And daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg County,
"Down by the Green River where Paradise lay.
"Well, I'm sorry my son, but you're too late in asking:
"Mister Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

--- John Prine, "Paradise"

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Muhlenberg County's almost 500 miles from Prosperity, Pa., but somehow, it seems much closer.

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And finally, remember when that dingbat columnist from Denver slagged off Picksberg, and all of the yobbos wrote him nasty letters?

The same thing happened in Baltimore to a columnist at The Sun, Susan Reimer, when she had the temerity to write nice things about Picksberg:

On Super Bowl Sunday, I wrote what I thought was a sweet, sweet Valentine to my hometown, Pittsburgh, which happened to have a football team in the big game that day.

I expected the same response from my readers that the column generated in me: I was weeping sentimental tears by the time I finished writing it. ...

"I hate to stomp on your hometown pride, but people who aren't from Pittsburgh think it's the armpit of America," wrote one reader.

And that was just the beginning. There were perhaps 50 e-mails waiting for me, and most of them advised me, in the most unpleasant terms, to go back where I came from.

"And take your pathetic family with you," read one.

Another reader warned that it was not smart of me to have my picture run with that column.

The problem? Pittsburgh is in the same football division with Baltimore's Ravens, and readers expected me to have switched allegiances when I switched my driver's license.

Nice to see that Charm City, U.S.A., hasn't lost its touch.

Come home to Western Pennsylvania, Susan. We'll be nice to you. We don't have good crab cakes, but we make a mean fried fish sammich.

You can probably get some cheap land soon down in Washington County, too, just as soon as the coal company's done grinding through the layers underneath.

Lots of people love Pittsburgh, but how many people get to live in an actual pit?

Sure, it will be several feet lower than the rest of the terrain, and the walls of your house will crack and shift all the time, and your utility lines may break on a regular basis, but what the hole, it's home!