Category: default || By jt3y

After reading yesterday's Almanac, former colleague and Alert Reader Vince sent along this photo of him meeting former U.S. Rep. Jim Traficant while in elementary school.

"I'm the one in the pink shirt," Vince says. "I have lots and lots of hair!"

Like your Almanac editor, and Jim Traficant, Vince is now somewhat follically challenged, though he's had the courage to shave the rest off. Another former colleague, Dave Copeland, did the same thing, and he looks pretty good.

I keep clinging to the notion that if I only have the rest of my hair cut really, really short, no one will notice that my hairline starts about six inches above my eyebrows.

Also, I fear that if I shave my head, I'll look like a giant thumb.

I don't intend to go the Rudy Giuliani route --- parting my hair at my neck and combing it over. Nor will I emulate Traficant and put a remnant on my head. But I am going to cling to my remaining follicles until the bitter end.

In local news, the former McCrory five-and-10 store on West Main Street in Mon City burned down yesterday morning after apparently being struck by lightning. I lived for about a year directly across the street, above what is now a pizza shop, while I worked for the Observer-Reporter.

Monongahela is a great city, by the way --- one of the undiscovered little gems in the Mon-Yough area. A wonderful waterfront, an honest-to-goodness main street that you can walk, a good little town park with a gazebo. I love living near Our Fair City, in neighboring North Bittyburg, but if I worked south of Picksberg, I could easily see living in Mon City. (Irwin and West Newton would also be high on my list.)

And Mon City, for all of its other charms, also holds a rare distinction: It's one of the few communities I can think of where Fourth Avenue intersects Fourth Street. (You could, as they say, look it up.)

I actually looked at an apartment above the McCrory building, but not for long. The realtor gave me a key and sent me down alone. I opened the outside door to find a pile of moldy mail and spiderwebs covering the stairway to the second floor. I instantly knew I wouldn't moving there, but I decided, for giggles, to continue upstairs and check out the apartment.

The kitchen had last been updated in Franklin Roosevelt's second term and most of the paint had peeled from the walls and ceilings; little chips and flakes littered every horizontal surface. The windows, which offered a lovely view of the railroad tracks, were decorated with about 200 dead bugs in various states of decomposition.

I returned to the real estate office and gave the lady the key.

"It's a nice old building, isn't it?" she said.

"Well," I said, biting my cheek, "it's interesting. It needs a lot of work, though. A lot of work. It needs to be completely cleaned and repainted, for one thing."

"We might be willing to make a deal," she said. "In fact, you seem like a nice guy. I'll bet we could let it go for $300 a month, plus utilities."

I politely declined. But considering what I was being paid at the time by the newspaper, I might have moved there --- if the landlord had paid me $300 a month.

Anyway, I have no idea what the upstairs of the old McCrory building looks like after this massive fire, but based on Scott Beveridge's report in the O-R, I don't think a coat of paint is going to do the trick now.

Maybe some other time, I'll tell you about the apartment that I did end up renting --- the one across the street from McCrory's. Particularly about the night they installed new pizza ovens downstairs and decided to "test them out."

I toured U.S. Steel's Clairton Coke Works a few years ago, and let me tell you, there was less smoke there than in my living room that night.

. . .

To Do This Weekend: Speaking of the Monongahela area, you can see the stars come out at Mingo Creek County Park, Route 88 near Finleyville, when the Amateur Astronomers Association of Pittsburgh hosts "Summerfest" at the new Mingo Creek Park Observatory. Visitors can use the observatory's two giant telescopes, one 24 inches, one 10 inches. Campers will also be setting up additional telescopes nearby to observe the "new moon." And, I suspect, they'll be leading a sing-along of "Rain, Rain Go Away." Many events are planned tonight, tomorrow and Sunday, and food is available. Call (724) 348-6150. ... Closer to home, the McKeesport City Carnival wraps up tomorrow night at Helen Richey Field, Renziehausen Park. Ride all night for $10. Visit the recreation committee's website for details.