Threatened Mon River bridges admirered

A few people who attended the Historic Bridges Conference in Pittsburgh last weekend admire the Charleroi-Monessen Bridge, a closed span that is under threat of demolition. Meanwhile, major improvements to Locks and Dam No. Four continue in the distance.

By Scott Beveridge

DONORA, Pa. – The aging Donora-Webster Bridge appears to be in better shape than many spans its age in the United States, a group of bridge experts agrees.

“This bridge has a coat of paint on it,” said Luke Gordon, a construction inspector from Michigan who visited the historic span Saturday with other bridge enthusiasts. “It’s 10-times better than most I’ve seen.”

Organizers of the Historic Bridges Conference in Pittsburgh included weekend stops in southwestern Pennsylvania at the Donora-Webster Bridge and the similarly built, nearby 103-year-old Charleroi-Monessen Bridge because both of their futures are uncertain.

Outside of Allegheny County, the bridges are among just four Pennsylvania through-truss, pin connected spans still standing along the Monongahela River. The others are in Point Marion and Brownsville, and all are on the National Register of Historic Places because they were pinned together using technology borrowed from the Pennsylvania Railroad.

But, within a year the Charleroi-Monessen could be demolished. A new bridge would then be built on the same site if the plan clears the scrutiny of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. The Point Marion Bridge will be gone, too, after a new replacement span opens in November.

“Bridge heritage is at risk,” said Eric DeLony of Santa Fe, a retired chief engineer for the National Park Service who also attended the bridge conference.

He was among a dozen such experts attending the conference who toured the 101-year-old Donora-Webster Bridge. Some took photographs, while others said they admired its graceful lines.

The span became the first toll free bridge to open on the Mon, allowing the older community of Webster to share in the new wealth of Donora after a sprawling steel mill opened within its borders. The bridge was originally painted black for the coal in Webster’s hills and gray for the smoke that billowed from the mills.

The bridge also stood alongside the infamous Donora zinc works, which contributed to a 1948 smog that killed at least 20 local residents and became the catalyst for America’s first clean air laws.

“Donora, probably more than any other town, has the history as to why people would want to come see this bridge,” said Todd Wilson, a civil engineering consultant from Pittsburgh who helped to organize the conference. “This bridge was here and it did play its part in that story.”

It appears the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation has done a good job maintaining this bridge. It’s guard rails were not attached its main vertical beams to protect the superstructure from damage by vehicle accidents, Gordon said.

However, there is speculation PennDOT will begin scrutinizing this bridge after it completes the historical review process on the Charleroi-Monessen Bridge that has been closed to traffic since February. The closure of that span followed an inspection that discovered a badly deteriorated pin joint supporting a deck.

People in the struggling Mon Valley towns need to band together to save these historic spans if there is any hope for the area to become a historic tourism destination, said Nikki Sheppick, a historian in Charleroi.

“If we don’t keep these assets, we’re dead,” Sheppick said during the conference stop in Charleroi.

Monongahela, Time Was

Several of these photos are included in a slide show at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7, 2009, at a National City bank branch, 318 W. Main St., Monongahela, Pa. The event celebrates the 40th birthday of the Noble J. Dick Aquatorium, an unusual park on the banks of the Monongahela River. Admission is $5, with proceeds benefiting the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce. Reservations are not required.

The straight-laced guitar man

Harold Weaver, a gentleman and musician who taught scores of kids to play guitar in Monongahela, Pa., is shown, seated, second from left, in this photo taken in the 1920s.

By Scott Beveridge

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – Harold Weaver was barely noticed in his hometown of Monongahela for decades, even though he taught more than 18,000 kids how to strum a guitar.

He accomplished that by quietly walking his students through their lessons in the basement of an old apartment building in the southwestern Pennsylvania city’s downtown, almost until the day he died in September 1997.

Occasionally, people would see him nod a smile while he climbed the stairwell from his studio to the sidewalk on Main Street, and dropped out of sight.

“I just wanted to play,’ Weaver stated in an article that appeared in 1996 in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa. He told its reporter he never smoked or drank alcohol before or after he got his first gig at age 18.

That job didn’t last long because his mother, Susan, sent the police after him to keep him away from musicians who partied too heavily. He immediately obeyed her, borrowed 20 cents and to caught the next streetcar home.

It’s possible Weaver’s tucked-away business and gentlemanly demeanor could explain why this city along the Monongahela River waited until the year before he died at age 92 to recognize him with its lifetime achievement award.

He hasn't been forgotten, though. A photograph of an all-black band in the 1920s with Weaver holding a banjo is part of a slide show that will be featured next month to celebrate another milestone in the historic town. The presentation will highlight Monongahela's best collection of photographs through the ages, including some that date to the Civil War era.

That gathering will mark the 40th birthday of the Noble J. Dick Aquatorium, an unusual park along the banks of the Monongahela River. A number of related events are planned before the arena with seats painted to appear like the American flag undergoes $1.3 million in renovations.

The slide show will begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 7, in a National City Bank branch at 318 W. Main St. Admission will be $5, with proceeds benefiting the Monongahela Area Chamber of Commerce. Reservations are not required.

Friday night football in Shovel Row

We lived in 1958-59 in one of the houses to the right along Shovel Row, shown in this photo circa 1895 taken during a flood along the Monongahela River in Charleroi, Pa. Photo courtesy of Charleroi Area Historical Society.

By Scott Beveridge

My earliest memories were born at age 3 on the wrong side of the tracks.

They come from 1958 while our family lived in a four-room, shabby duplex in Charleroi, Pa., beside an alley leading directly to the Monongahela River.

One involved a band of hobos that squatted on the riverbank, a story that came to mind after being shown last week the photo of Shovel Row, above, in the archives of the Charleroi Area Historical Society.

A few of the kids from the neighborhood sneaked down there one day and spied through the weeds on the homeless tramps gathered around a fire pit and drinking whiskey or moonshine in the mid-afternoon. Some were eating from tin cans while others hunched under lean-tos. The scene quickly scared me back home.

Mom hated that house from day one because it also was parked beside busy railroad tracks and she feared for the safety of her three young boys. Ours was a rental among a row of 10 double houses constructed in the late 19th century for workers of a nearby iron works that fed its shovel factory. Beyond, up the steep hills of the valley, sat the wealthy downtown district and mansions where the local merchants and bankers lived.

The Charleroi High School football field’s north end post was no more than 30 feet from the rear, second-floor bedroom window in our apartment. During each Friday night home game, we gathered at that window to watch the action on the field from what dad thought was the best seat in the stadium, especially because it was free.

Those in the paying seats of better means probably looked at us as white trash.

But it didn’t matter to us, especially one night when Charleroi’s Myron “Mike” Pottios kicked a scoring field goal and the ball bounced over the field’s tall wooden fence into our backyard. For a moment, it was almost as if a million dollars had fallen from the sky into our possession.

Pottios, a native of Van Voorhis, went on to be drafted in 1961 by the Pittsburgh Steelers and 12-year career in Pro Football.

In short order, we moved away from Shovel Row and the pesky, busybody landlady who lived next door in an identical clapperboard house.

Today, just two of them survive covered in vinyl siding, including the one where we lived. The stadium is still there, too, as is the brick shovel factory that became headquarters of the Model Cleaners dry cleaning company.

A business that deals in propane is situated closest to the river on land where the lower row of five worker houses once stood.

Trash is strewn around the path leading to the place where the hobos once sought shelter. The fire pit is still there in the center of a few concrete blocks that double as seats for the loafers who tossed their empty beer cans into the flames.

One two worker houses remain along Shovel Row in July 2009. We lived in the right side of the second duplex from the right.

A notch up from hillbilly grub

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – An unpeeled banana dusted with paprika and melted cheddar isn’t on the menu at Double Wide Grill, a restaurant in an old filling station in Pittsburgh.

But that’s what a server delivers on a recent Sunday afternoon as a joke to the bartender at the kooky 2-year-old business on East Carson Street in the Pittsburgh, Pa.'s, trendy South Side district.

“That’s why I love working here,” said the bartender named Carly, who bears a mild resemblance to Jennifer Aniston, but as a dark brunette. “Your foods up,” she said while passing the silly tapas to me and others while flashing her infections smile.

Of course no one else takes her up on that side dish, but there is plenty of other he-man food being passed around this joint, where auto is king.

The business at Carson and 24th streets will bring a smile to anyone's face. An old green pickup truck strung with Christmas lights is suspended above the bar while recycled chrome step bumpers double as foot rests.

Gas pump nozzles pull double duty as coat racks, and mirrors framed in car tires can be found in the rest rooms. Meanwhile, hubcaps line the ceiling and empty metal gallon-sized oil cans hang over the tables as chandeliers.

The menu is similarly as quirky. The “On Tråys” are loaded with beef, pork and chicken, and can be mixed and matched on build-your-own TV dinner-style metal plates. The hubcap potato discs with garlic and herbs would best complete each meal.

There are vegetarian selections, too, including that nothing food known as tofu. The unlikely vegan who might land here could also select a house trailer salad with sweet corn and avocados.

This restaurant in what was once a bland four-bay concrete-block garage is another gift to the city by Scott Kramer and Steve Zumoff, owners of the coffeehouse down the street where young bohemians with robins egg blue hair mingle with middle-aged nerds over organic tea.

It’s noisy at the Double Wide, though, and especially so on nice days when the garage doors are up and a fleet of Harley-Davidson motorcycles rumbles away from the neighboring biker bar.

This place and all of its hillbilly charm is a NASCAR fan’s fantasy. The only things missing are shots of moonshine and the smell of high-octane engine fuel.

Tales from the Whiskey Rebellion

By Scott Beveridge

Some of the better stories are hidden between the lines of David Froman’s eyewitness account of the infamous Whiskey Rebellion in the late 18th century in southwestern Pennsylvania.

Told in his memoirs, “Sim Greene and Tom the Tinker’s Men,” they reveal wonderful tidbits about the pioneers who settled the Monongahela River valley.

Froman had no idea steel would someday become king there when he first laid his eyes upon the lush forests in his new home. Later, some of his companions would encounter killer pirates downriver on the Ohio River while they traded their goods. Meanwhile, the faithful in these backwoods gathered for endless hours at tent revivals to worship the Lord, while others set about to exploit the natural resources they were discovering.

This author penned the book in a flowery prose, beginning with his following a group over the Allegheny Mountains in 1788 so he could establish the first schoolhouse in Elizabeth, the only town between Brownsville and Pittsburgh that had an established a system of streets at the time.

“Away it stretched until in the misty distance it seemed to merge with some clouds lying low along the western horizon,” he wrote about his first glimpses of the rolling green hills of America’s early wild west. “Long we stood on this farthest rampart of the great Appalachian chain feasting our eyes and feeling the thrilling power of the landscape.”

His party reached its destination from Philadelphia, having witnessed the migration of pack squirrels, averted a mountain lion attack and survived a fast-sweeping forest fire by hugging close to a small stream. He obviously had a fascination for the main character, Sim Greene, a colorful hunter, trapper and Revolutionary War hero who seemed to play a minor role in the tax revolt that became the first major uprising against the United States.

While Froman admitted that rebellion of President George Washington’s tax on Monongahela rye whiskey to pay down debt from the American Revolutionary War was dead wrong, his book leads one to believe he kept his opinions to himself while it took place because he was a good friend of the rebels. Had he been brave enough to speak out against the movement when it was in full force, the anarchists would have surely tarred and feathered him rather than permit him to tag along to their meetings and demonstrations. They had drawn a bitter line between their ranks and those who supported the new government.

While historians have long argued over whether the notorious Tom the Tinker was an individual or the character represented a group of protestors, Froman identified him with certainty as John Hollcroft of the Finleyville area. The farmer sneaked under the cover of night to destroy the whiskey stills of those who submitted to the tax, or posted warnings about how he planned to retaliate against the tax collectors.

After the tax fight was quelled, the men of Elizabeth built from a wood a marvelous schooner capable of carrying 250 tons of local goods down the Mon to New Orleans. Of course the ship, the Monongahela Farmer, was christened with a bottle of local rye whiskey and it completed its maiden voyage.

Froman wrote the book on his deathbed, and requested it to be published 50 years after his death so not to embarrass the farmers who fought the tax or any of their immediate heirs.

In the end, he resurrected the legacy of a friend – Harold Harden - who fled Elizabeth under the threat of arrest by U.S. marshals for his alleged participation in a tax riot. A rumor followed Harden’s escape that he had joined up with the pirates who hid out in a place called Cave-in-Rock that contained the many skulls of their victims. But, Froman eventually reported that the pirate under suspicion back home was actually the man's long-lost twin brother. The good brother, alas, had become a devout minister.

That tale left me wondering if this book, while it was hard to put down after all these years, should have been classified in bold print as a piece of nonfiction.