Travel with a Beveridge

They don't have to be pretty to be historic

2012-01-27T23:07:00.003-05:00

The village of Webster, Pa., and its sister town of Donora, in the background, have qualified for listing on the National Register of Historic Districts. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

DONORA, Pa. – The Donora area defines America's rust belt with its history of blight and economic decline that began before big steel collapsed in the Pittsburgh region in the 1980s.

Webster, across the Monongahela River from the southwestern Pennsylvania borough, has a rough-and-tumble reputation, and its smattering of old houses disappears in a few blinks of the eye in a car's rear-view mirror.

"This town was once thriving," said Diane Martin, a former guide at a Donora museum dedicated to a deadly pollution event in 1948 that contributed to the demise of steel industry here.

"We are trying to make things happen," she said at the 3-year-old Donora Smog Museum.

She, along with members of Donora Historical Society, has new reason to hope for a better image, because state preservation experts believe these two towns qualify for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Districts.

"It doesn't have to be pretty to qualify," said April Frantz, a preservation specialist with the National Register program at the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

"We thought that, yes, there was a story there worth telling that it might be something viable as a National Register Historic District," Frantz said.

Webster, in Westmoreland County, is among the oldest settlements in the mid-Mon Valley, having been settled in the late 1700s as an agricultural center. Its economy shifted to boat building, iron ore manufacturing and coal before it was quickly overshadowed by Donora and its sprawling steel and zinc mills built in 1901 and 1915, respectively.

"Webster was an important town," said Charles Stacey of Donora, a member of the local historical society and retired Ringgold School District superintendent.

When the air turned acidic after the zinc smelters went into production, the farms and many buildings across the Mon disappeared as the fumes deteriorated clapboard siding, sickened livestock and killed much of the vegetation.

"As far as I'm concerned, Webster suffered more from the pollution than Donora did because that's where the wind blew everything," Stacey said.

Donora's decline was set in motion by the Donora smog of October 1948, which killed more than 20 people and sickened thousands over a Halloween weekend. The zinc mill was blamed, along with a heavy fog pattern that settled over the Northeast, and U.S. Steel eventually took responsibility for the tragic event, according to settlements in federal lawsuits filed by the victims and their relatives.

The smog became the deadliest air pollution disaster in the United States and the impetus for the first federal clean air laws after Webster residents launched an anti-pollution crusade.

The Donora mills began to shut down in the 1950s, and would, within a decade, become the first major steel operation to close in the United States.

The fact people still have a sustained interest in the smog story is yet another reason why the towns have preliminary approval to be eligible for the National Register, Frantz said.

"It was very dramatic stuff," she said.

She said the PHMC review of the smog story grew out of talks with the state Department of Transportation on the fate of the Donora-Webster Bridge, a century-old span listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

PennDOT closed the bridge in July 2009 because of a weakened deck and has indicated plans to reopen it, pending securing the money for repairs.

A listing on the National Register does not prohibit PennDOT from demolishing the bridge. However, it does require complicated negotiations with the PHMC that require consideration of alternative plans before federal money can be spent on tearing it down.

Stacey said he is among those who want to see the bridge restored and reopened, as its closure is adding more harm to the struggling local economy. The towns don't have a gasoline station or grocery store but do have residents who still would prefer the smog story not be told, Martin said.

Some of them didn't even want the smog museum to open in 2008 in time for the 60th anniversary of the tragedy, Martin said.

"They said, 'Let it die. No one wants to talk about it,'" Martin said. "A lot of people said it didn't even happen."

Donora considered the smog to be a "black mark" on its reputation, added Sandy Mansmann, a coordinator with Washington County History and Landmarks Foundation.

"For the young people who come out of the Valley, it's especially part of their history because their families were involved and they should know about it," Mansmann said.

The PHMC study of the towns is still under review, Frantz said in Feb. 2011.

It could take years for a nomination to the National Register to materialize. An eligibility determination, though, affords such districts the same federal and state protection as if they were on the register.The protection makes it difficult for public agencies to demolish such structures when using federal money for redevelopment.

(This article first appeared in February 2011 in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.)

Dinner a go-go

2012-01-21T00:16:00.003-05:00

Here's how it worked tonight in the dead of winter when six friends who live in close proximity decided to hold a progressive dinner card party:

First stop was hors d'oeuvres, which included humus topped with pine nuts, pictured above, along with sliced sausage, grapes, cheese and a wonderful warm crab and artichoke dip. I dig artichokes. Some of you might have already heard about my artichoke dream. It was a great way to get the party started.

At each stop along the way we played a hand or two of this fun, complicated card game known as hand and foot. And then it was off to the next house.

The second course featured a salad, bruchetta and a different twist on Italian wedding soup, which changed up the ingredients by adding white beans. Delicious.

The main dish at the next house was a baked Rachel sandwich with a most-excellent apple sauerkraut on pumpernickel. Superb.

Then we moved to the final destination for desert starring a lemon and white chocolate cheesecake by Hollyday Cheesecakes. If you live in Pennsylvania's Mon Valley and haven't discovered her deserts it's your loss. It was served with an iced decaffeinated chamomile tea blended with a bottle of V8 V-Fusion Mango Smoothie.

And then everyone - except for me because the last house belongs to me - slid their way home in a dangerous ice storm.

"I think this would work better in the summer," one of the guests remarked.

Wilted retail

2012-01-16T18:59:00.000-05:00

This dry water garden can be found inside Washington Mall in Washington, Pa., which is still open with just a handful of retailers. Click here to view a slideshow of other decay that I have photographed in my travels.

A 1900 view of a beloved courthouse

2012-01-12T00:19:00.000-05:00

By William E. McElroy

WASHINGTON, Pa. - The Washington County Courthouse is constructed in the Italian Renaissance style of architecture, and has a frontage on Main Street of 188 feet, by a depth of 108 feet; its height from the pavement to the top of the dome being 150 feet.

It is constructed of Columbia sandstone from Cleveland, South Carolina granite, iron and steel, brick and cement; is entirely fire-proof and contains 54 rooms.

The main building extends 108 feet from east to west - through the vestibules, the area under the dome, and the semi-rotunda in the rear.

From the north and south sides of the area extend the two main wings, which contain the principal courtrooms on the second floor.

In the northeast, northwest, southeast, and southwest corners, between the main building and the main wings, are the secondary wings, which contain the county departments in the basement and first floor, and the offices of the court officials on the second floor.

The main feature of the entire building, and the key which practically controls the entire plan, is the location of the courtrooms.

This idea has been taken from the court buildings of the Old World, the Capitol at Washington, D.C.,.,.,., and elsewhere throughout the United States, and has been adopted as the modern courthouse arrangement by architects of worldwide reputation.

Between two massive square and deeply paneled sandstone pillars, which stand on the inner edge of the Main Street sidewalk, immediately in front of the center of the building, rises a flight of eight granite steps.

The pillars are each surmounted by a sphere, and ornamented with four handsome bronze bracket lamps which project from the sides.

These granite steps lead to a semicircular platform of granite forty-four feet long by twenty-four feet wide, which forms the pavement under the portico and extends to the main entrances of the building.

The upper edge of this beautiful semicircular portico is adorned with a balustrade, beneath which is a heavy cornice ornamented with corbels, and a plain frontal supported by four massive monolith sandstone columns 36 feet high, resting on granite bases, and finished with chaste Scamozzi capitals.

Beneath the portico three handsomely arched doorways with elaborately carved lintels, between which swing massive.

Honduras mahogany doors, give entrance to a marble-lined vestibule, within which another pair of doors, leather-covered and studded with brass, lead into a second vestibule, also marble-lined. From this second vestibule the main corridor, which surrounds the central area under the dome, is reached.

The central part of the front of the building, which contains the main entrances, is 74 feet high, and projects six feet from the remainder of the structure.

Rising above the portico it is surmounted by an elaborately molded entablature, having in its center a rose window of colored art glass.

On either side are square buttresses, on whose summits rest two allegorical terra - cotta groups of heroic size, representing "Justice" and "Liberty," forming an admirable support for the entablature in the center.

Those portions of the front which adjoin the buttresses, and which are composed of the secondary wings of the building, are slightly in recess. They are heavily paneled, and finished with a handsome corbeled cornice, surmounted by an elaborate balustrade railing.

The north and south corners of the building project to a line with the central portion, and on the front sides are surmounted by finely molded entablatures, which rest on two 36-foot pilasters, inside of which are columns of the same size, ornamented with Scamozzi capitals, while the upper edge of the northern and southern sides supports a carved sandstone balustrade railing.

The two main wings, in which are located the two principal courtrooms, extend north and south seventy feet from the main building, facing Beau Street and Cherry Avenue.

On the Beau Street side a handsome doorway, with heavy sandstone lintels and massive mahogany doors, leads into the basement through a vestibule lined with Italian marble, having heavy leather brass-studded doors. Artistic bronze lamps project from either side.

This doorway is surrounded by a balcony, along the front edge of which runs an ornate stone railing. From this balcony spring four 36-foot monolith columns with Scamozzi capitals, which at the top of the second story support a heavily carved cornice adorned with corbels. Above the cornice rises a superb frontal Surmounted by an elaborately carved and molded entablature.

The south main wing is approached from Cherry Avenue by a flight of seventeen granite steps, which rise between two massive sandstone pillars adorned with bronze lamps similar to those in front of the main entrance.

These steps lead up to a magnificently carved doorway having heavy mahogany doors, which give entrance to the first floor through a lofty vestibule lined with Italian marble, having an inner pair of doors covered with leather and brass-studded.

The front of this wing is also adorned with four monolith columns with Scamozzi capitals, a superb frontal, and elaborate entablature.

The secondary wings on the northwestern and southwestern corners project 10 feet on the western side, and between them rises the semi-rotunda-shaped rear of the main building, which extends 13 feet beyond the wings.

The entire rear is constructed of heavily paneled sandstone, finished at the edge of the roof with a deep corbel-ornamented cornice surmounted by a handsome balustrade railing. The roof is entirely composed of red Japanese tiling, with heavily leaded gutters.

The central part of the main building, between the vestibules, the semi-rotunda in the rear, and the two wings, is 70 feet square. On the outside corners of its walls, rising above the roof of the building, are four highly ornamental cupolas twenty-five feet high, whose terra-cotta domes rest on sandstone Ionic columns.

Within these four cupolas rises the base of the dome 32 feet above the roof.

It is graced with an elaborately decorated cornice, and contains 12 windows. Above this cornice the dome itself springs to a height of 26 feet.

It is divided into twelve segments, between which gleam rose and paneled sky lights of art glass.

From the summit of the dome rises the cupola 16 feet high; on the top of which rests a heroic statue of George Washington 18 in height.

The material of which the dome and its accessories are constructed is composed entirely of terra-cotta, and it rises six feet above the inner dome which overhangs the area in the center of the building.

From the floor of the third corridor to the top of the statue the distance is 94 feet, and it is just 205 feet above the pavement of the basement beneath.

The courthouse is furnished with every convenience necessary for the comfort of those either employed or having business within its portals.

Aside from the main stairway, it is provided with a large hydraulic passenger elevator, which is situated to the right as one enters the front of the building, and runs from the basement to the third floor. It is provided with a very handsome and ornate car composed of antique bronze.

In the northeast and southeast corners of the building are located flights of iron and marble stairs, which lead from the basement to the second floor; while on the western side two additional flights lead from the second to the third floor, on each side of the Orphans' Courtroom.

In the basement on each side of the room devoted to public meetings are situated two large and commodious toilet rooms, one for the public and the other for the courthouse employees. The walls of these rooms are lined with Italian marble, and the plumbing is the best that can be had in the country.

In other portions of the building private toilet rooms are provided, which are finished in the same rich and complete manner.

The courthouse will be heated with hot air, and the facilities for doing so are of the most complete description. Immense galvanized iron ducts extend under the floors, over the ceilings, and throughout the walls of every room and corridor in the building. They all center in the sub-basement, which is located in the rear of the building, immediately beneath the "People's Meeting Room" in the basement.

Here is placed the machinery which warms the entire building, and entrance can only be obtained to it through a tunnel under the grass plot back of the building, 75 feet long, which opens into the engine room of the county jail.

In this sub-basement are located two immense Sturtevant fans, 10 feet in diameter, which are driven by two 53 horsepower engines. These fans draw the cold air from the outside of the building and force it through tempering coils of one-inch pipe filled with live steam. After passing through these coils, which contain 15,650 feet of pipe, 7,825 feet to each fan, the air, now very hot, is received by two immense galvanized iron main ducts, each one nine feet long by 30 inches wide, and by them distributed throughout the walls and floors of the building, eventually entering and warming the different rooms.

In addition to these two mammoth fans, there are situated on the top of the main building, under the base of the dome, two other Sturtevant fans seven feet in diameter. The provenance of these fans is to draw all the foul air from the different rooms, thus insuring perfect ventilation.

The courthouse will be lighted exclusively by electricity, and has been wired in the most complete manner. The current at present will be obtained from the local lighting company; later, however, two dynamos will be placed in a room adjoining the engine room in the basement of the county jail, in which is now located the hydraulic machinery which runs the courthouse elevator.

The principal entrance to the courthouse is on the eastern side of the building, facing Main Street, under the imposing portico which adds much stateliness to its appearance.

Three doorways, the center one being the largest, adorned with elaborately cut-stone cornices and frontals, and hung with massive hand-carved mahogany doors, lead into a vestibule lined with Italian marble 40 feet in width, whose arched roof rises 20 feet above the white marble floor below.

Inside this vestibule a second one is entered, also white marble lined, and having its ceiling studded with ornamental and highly colored rose foils, from the interior of each of which an electric light gleams.

The main corridor is now reached, and a sight breaks upon the eye of the visitor which can scarcely be equaled in this country.

Before him rises a graceful stairway; on either side stretch away vistas of Italian marble corridors; while above him, supported by 12 immense pilasters, interspersed with Roman arches, hangs the majestic dome, with its jeweled art glass and frescoes in colors and gold.

When one stands here in the subdued light of the dome, mellowed and tempered as it falls from above; when he examines the exquisite finish of his surroundings, the brasswork, the bronze, the gleaming stretches of marble, together with the brilliant colors, and the gold, which seem to warm all into life - he cannot but feel proud that Washington County is the owner of a building unsurpassed in any other country this side of the Atlantic.

The base of the dome, 40 in diameter, rests on the massive Corinthian capitals of 12 immense pilasters, which rise from the basement to the rotunda on the third floor. These pilasters are composed of white Italian marble on the first floor, and of Sienna marble between the second and third. Their capitals are gorgeously frescoed with bright colors and gold. From these capitals spring twelve Roman arches on the third floor, forming the rotunda, whose outer faces are richly gilded.

Above these Roman arches, and from each corner of the area, spring four other arches, each with a span of 40 feet. The facades of these arches are richly frescoed in colors in the renaissance style, on a background of pure gold leaf, and have a large rose medallion in their center, which is also richly decorated.

From the top of these four arches, which form its base, springs the dome, 64 feet in height from the third floor.

The dome is very richly frescoed, and is divided into twelve sections of brilliantly colored art glass, which terminate in a rose skylight in the center. It is one of the handsomest pieces of work in this country, and presents a brilliant appearance at night when illuminated.

Looking down to the first floor from the rotunda the sight is one of unrivaled beauty; the massive pilasters, with their varied marbles and gorgeous capitals; the rich bronze balustrades, marking the lines of the different floors; the rich coloring of the frescoes; and the grand stairway winding down through the center of the area all form a harmonious whole.

The grand stairway is a unique feature of the building.

It rises from the first floor from three different directions-the east, the north, and the south. Each flight is 12 feet wide, and consists of 16 steps. These three flights meet midway between the first and second floors, ending on a broad platform, 12 feet wide and 26 feet long. From each side of this platform two more flights of 16 steps ascend, one toward the northern, the other toward the southern wings of the building, and reach the second floor immediately in front of the two principal court-rooms. Another flight also descends from the first floor to the basement.

The framework of this stairway is composed of bronzed iron, and the steps are of white marble. The balustrades and railings are massive, and of elaborate design, ending on the platform in four richly ornamented newel posts, which stand at its corners.

Rising above the top of each newel-post is an artistically designed electric standard seven feet in height, composed of antique bronze matching the stairway, and upholding 12 electric lusters.

Descending the stairway from the first floor of the building the basement is reached, where a number of the county departments are situated, occupying the north, west, and south sides; the east side being furnished with rooms, which will principally be used for storage purposes.

The walls in the basement are sand-finished, and tinted an olive-yellow in graduating shades from the sub-base, growing lighter as they reach the ceiling. They are ornamented with a graceful Grecian border in gold, and the woodwork is all composed of antique oak.

In the northeast corner is situated the coroner's and surveyor's office, immediately adjoining which is that of the building superintendent. The county superintendent's office occupies the entire northwest corner, and he is also provided with a comfortable private office.

On the west side of the building, and immediately below the treasurer's office, is a large room, semicircular in form, which will be used as a public meeting-room. It is provided with two handsome entrances, and will accommodate about 500 people. On either side of this room are two public toilet rooms, deeply wainscoted with white marble. The auditors' quarters are located in the southwest corner of the structure, are handsomely finished and provided with every convenience.

Along the east side of the basement are four large rooms, provided with vaults, which will be used for storing the county records and other important papers.

Three corridors extend around the 40-foot square area in the center of the building, corresponding to the different floors, and each one is finished in a style distinctively its own.

The one on the first floor is 12 feet wide and 20 feet high. Its walls are composed of Italian marble, and its highly frescoed and vaulted ceiling is studded with electric lights, which gleam from richly decorated rose foils.

Doors on one side of this corridor give entrance to the different county departments, while the other is open to the area under the dome.

In both wings of the building, and in the rear of the grand stairway, on the first floor, are situated the convenient quarters occupied by the principal county departments, opening out upon the corridor.

The walls of these departments are sand finished, and colored a medium green, which graduates into a much lighter shade on the ceiling. They are ornamented with a red and gold egg border, and are finished with a broad piece of Italian marble at their base. The floor is laid in white marble, and all the doors and other woodwork are composed of heavy antique oak, while light is supplied by many handsome old brass and silver-gilt electroliers in the ceiling, each of which contains a cluster of three incandescent globes.

On the immediate right of the main entrance, and occupying the northeast corner of the building, is situated the prothonotary’s office.

This room is supplied with handsome counters, the most approved filing racks, desks, and a capacious vault. The furniture is composed entirely of iron, painted a dark green color, picked out with gold, the desks and counters, however, being supplied with antique oaken tops.

Next to this room is that occupied by the clerk of the courts, whose windows look out on Beau Street. This is also handsomely fitted up with counters and desks of the same fireproof material.

In the northwest corner the county commissioners have their quarters, which consist of one large room and four smaller committee rooms, from which a spiral iron stairway leads down to a large transcribing room, immediately below in the basement. The furnishings are of the same indestructible character.

Immediately back of the main stairway on the west side of the building, and occupying a large semicircular room, is the office of the county treasurer and his private retiring room.

A handsome carved antique oak doorway leads into this room, which is divided through its center by a counter composed of solid brick, faced with iron, and ornamented with a gold and green design, which supports an elaborate railing of antique bronze. In the rear is an immense fire and burglar proof vault. As in the other rooms, the furniture is of iron.

Adjoining the treasury department on the south are the sheriff's quarters, a large, well-furnished room, containing a large vault and a snug private office. From the main room an iron circular stairway leads down to a large room in the basement immediately beneath, containing an immense fireproof vault, where articles levied upon will be securely kept. This room will be used for the holding of sheriff's sales, and also by the jury commissioners in the drawing of jurors.

In the southwest corner are situated the main and private offices of the county register, which are large, commodious, and handsomely furnished.

To the left of the main entrance, and in the southeastern corner of the building, are the large and well-appointed offices of the county recorder, which are supplied with every convenience in the shape of counters, desks, and filing racks, all of a solid and indestructible character.

The corridor on the second floor is 12 feet wide and 18 feet high, its walls being wainscoted one-half their height with a delicate shade of Sienna marble, ornamented with pilasters, while the coloring of the remainder and the ceiling is of a warm shade of yellow. The ceiling is paneled in square sections, in contrast to the arch-shaped ones of the first and third floors, each section containing four rose foils holding electric lights, and is beautifully decorated in fresco.

The railing between the massive pilasters, which runs around the edge of the central arena, is composed of handsome and elaborately molded balustrades of bronzed iron, in the form of miniature columns. From this corridor, in the center of both its northern and southern sides, massive and intricately carved doorways of antique oak lead into the two principal courtrooms, which occupy the north and south wings of the building.

The color scheme of the rooms in the northern wing of the building on this floor is red and yellow, with all the plaster enrichments picked out in green, red, and gold; that of the southern wing is green, yellow, and gold. The sub-bases are all composed of Alps green marble and the woodwork of antique oak.

Passing through the ponderous carved doors on the north side, so perfectly balanced that they yield to the lightest touch, one enters courtroom No. 1, where Judge J. A. McIlvaine will preside.

The first impression is one of loftiness and grandeur, which rather increases than diminishes after the first view.

The woodwork, which lends a touch of impressiveness to the apartment, is composed of heavy dark Flemish oak, and harmonizes perfectly with the rich mingled coloring in reds, yellows, and gold. The architecture is distinctively Grecian.

This apartment is 60 feet long, 40 feet wide, and its ceiling rises 32 feet above the white marble floor below. A sub-base of Alps green marble runs around the foot of the walls, above which is a three-foot dado of red Numidian marble.

Extending above this dado, and one-third the height of the walls, is an elaborately paneled and carved wainscoting of solid Flemish oak, which is surmounted with a massive hand-carved cornice of the same material. Above the wainscoting, the walls are sand finished and paneled in red and yellow pilasters between the six windows, which light the room on the east and west sides.

The space above these windows is occupied by handsome rectangular transoms filled with colored art glass, separated from each other by the gorgeously colored Corinthian capitals of the pilasters. A deep cornice ornamented with corbels connects the walls with the ceiling.

The north and south walls are sand finished in solid red with graceful renaissance borders.

Running around the four sides of the ceiling is a. deep panel enclosing 50 highly colored and gilded rose foils, the center of each holding an incandescent light. In the center of the ceiling is an immense circular panel which surrounds an artistically designed and colored skylight, composed of eight circular sections grouped around a central one.

On either side of this central panel, which has an inner circle of 16 electric lights, and extending across the ceiling, are two handsome rectangular ones, richly ornamented. The colors used in the decoration of the ceiling are very rich, yet so harmoniously blended that the general effect is a most pleasing one.

Aside from the 50 incandescent lights and the circle of 16 in the ceiling, the apartment is illuminated by 16 handsome silver and old brass brackets, which extend out from the heavy wainscoting and hold three globes each, one bracket beneath the base of each pilaster, and one on either side of the entrance.

The bar, whose floor is laid with varicolored vulcanized rubber tiles, is partitioned off from the rest of the room by a heavy railing of Flemish oak, ornamented with elaborately carved balustrades, which extend across the center of the apartment.

Railings of like character also enclose the desk of the clerk of the court and the seats of the jury. The judge's bench is plain, elegant, and massive, graced on either side with an antique bronze electric standard holding three incandescent lusters.

Across the north end of the room and back of the judge's bench extends a most elaborate piece of cabinet-work, in the form of a screen, rising in the center nearly to the ceiling, and composed, like the rest, entirely of dull-polished Flemish oak. The central part is composed of a large panel with an arched top, on each side of which rise two fluted columns, whose handsome Corinthian capitals support an imposing entablature, magnificently carved.

Handsome entablatures, smaller in size, cap the windows on each side of the bench, and the intervening spaces are artistically paneled and carved.

The effect produced by this piece of work lends a grace and dignity which thoroughly harmonizes with the blended colors and rich molding of the apartment, and stamps it as the conception of a master mind.

Courtroom No. 2, in which Judge J. F. Taylor will preside, occupies the southern wing of the building, directly opposite court-room No. 1.

The decorations and molding in this room are identical with those of No. 1, with the exception that green is the prevailing color used, instead of red, and the woodwork is composed of solid polished Honduras mahogany.

A handsome antique oak door in the middle of the west corridor leads into courtroom No. 3, which will be used as the Orphans' Court. This courtroom is semicircular in shape, and is 44 feet wide, 35 feet long, and 18 feet high. The walls are surfaced in Alps green marble, above which is a three-foot dado of Sienna marble.

From this to the ceiling they are sand-finished, the color scheme being old blue, yellow, and gold, with the decorations in the renaissance style. The ceiling is of an olive-yellow shade, divided into eight longitudinal panels, from which project twelve old brass and silver electroliers, each holding three incandescent lights, while projecting from the walls are six brackets, three on each side holding two electric lights apiece. The woodwork is composed entirely of polished Honduras mahogany.

The room is divided across the middle by a heavy and richly carved mahogany railing, enclosing the bar, which is laid with different colored vulcanized rubber tiles.

The judge's bench is composed of the same beautiful wood, and immediately in its rear rises a handsome piece of cabinetwork carved in the Romanesque style of architecture. The center is occupied by an alcove, on each side of which rise fluted columns, supporting a finely carved frontal.

These three court-rooms, in beauty of design, fineness of finish, delicacy of color, and completeness of detail, stand the equal of any of similar size elsewhere throughout the country.

On each side of the two courtrooms, corridors lead from the main one, on which open rooms provided for the use of the court officials, members of the jury, attorneys and their clients. The entrances to these corridors are furnished with leather-covered swinging doors studded with brass.

In the northeast corridor is situated the office of the district attorney, which is 22 feet long and 17 feet wide. The walls are colored in golden tones, and it is provided with a handsome fireplace of red Numidian marble, having a carved antique oak mantel.

The next room is one devoted to the use of witnesses, and is also handsomely decorated.

In the northeast corner is located the chamber of Judge J. A. McIlvaine, which is exceedingly handsome. The walls are heavily wainscoted in mahogany panels four feet above the floor, and thence to the ceiling are covered with burlap decorated in tapestry ornaments, after the Renaissance style, in green and russet. The ceiling is colored an olive yellow, with an egg cornice around its edges, picked out in green and gold, and has a handsome antique brass chandelier depending from its center, holding five lusters. The doors and window frames are of solid mahogany, surmounted by elaborately carved consoles.

On the west side of the room is an elaborate fireplace of verd antique marble, having a handsome mahogany mantel resting on two fluted Corinthian columns.

The first two rooms in the northwest corridor are designated as jury rooms No. 1 and No. 2, and in the northwest corner is situated the grand jury room, which is 22 feet long by 20 wide, and provided with an anteroom.

The prisoners' room is the first in the southwest corridor, which is followed by a handsome marble-lined toilet room and jury rooms No. 3 and No. 4, while the room corresponding to the anteroom of the grand jury is devoted to the use of the court crier and tipstaves.

A convenient lawyers' waiting-room, having a handsome red Numidian marble fireplace and antique oak mantel, is on the first room on the southeast corridor.

Next adjoining is a ladies' waiting room, supplied with a toilet and other accessories, while the chamber of Judge J. F. Taylor occupies the extreme southeast corner, and is similar to that of Judge McIlvaine, with the exception that blue is substituted for green in color effect.

On the north side of the corridor on the second floor, and directly over the main entrance, is located the court library. This room has an elaborately carved entrance of polished oak, supplied with heavy doors of the same wood.

The interior woodwork is of Honduras mahogany, and the doorways and windows are surmounted with heavy carved consoles. The walls are surrounded by a sub-base of white marble, above which reaches a three-foot mahogany wainscoting, deeply paneled.

They are sand-finished, the color scheme being green and gold, with the frescoing in the style of the Italian Renaissance. The ceiling is paneled in fawn color, and adorned with 12 old brass and silver electroliers, each holding three incandescent lights.

At each end of the room, which is 48 feet long, 40 wide, and 20 feet high, are placed magnificently carved fireplaces of pure Italian marble. The shelving is entirely of iron, colored a dark green touched up with gold.

On the south side of the library is situated the librarian's room, the walls of which are decorated in Pompeiian red, having a gilt egg border, and a ceiling of fawn color; while on the north side is the court reporter's room, which is decorated in golden tones, the walls having a graceful Grecian border in plain gold.

The third floor is reached by two flights of iron stairs, inlaid with white marble, which lead upward from each side of courtroom No. 3, on the west side of the building.

The corridor on the third floor is really the rotunda on which rests the base of the dome. It is 12 feet wide and 14 feet high, with walls colored in golden tones, above a white marble sub-base, and decorated with a Grecian border in gold. The ceiling is divided into squares with Roman arches, each square having four electric lights.

The side toward the central area is composed of 12 massive Roman arches, between which extends an ornate scroll-work railing of bronzed iron.

On the east side of the corridor immediately over the court library is situated the quarters of the bar association. This room is entered through doors of antique oak, which lightly swing in a heavy doorway of the same material. The walls are sand-finished and colored a rich Pompeiian red, adorned with a handsome egg and frescoed border, while the ceiling is of a light ecru shade, from which hang two old brass and silver electroliers, having a cluster of six incandescent lamps each.

At each end are two beautiful fireplaces, composed of Mexican onyx, on either side of which stand two fluted Ionic columns of antique oak, which support a hand-carved mantel of the same material.

On either side of this room are placed anterooms decorated in the same style.

Directly across the building on the west side and above courtroom No. 3 is situated a large semicircular room, which will be used by the historical society. The walls of this room are of a dark green graduating into yellow on the ceiling, which is heavily paneled, and contains nine electroliers, each containing three incandescent lamps.

William E. McElroy was a Philadelphia native who wrote this piece for The Observer newspaper, now known as the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa., to appear Nov. 17, 1900, the day the courthouse was dedicated. He attended the University of Pennsylvania and took great pains to document the measurements of this grand building, as well as the locations of its bathrooms. It's reprinted here for the sole purpose of creating a digital copy of his take on such a grand, historic building.

Warm crab dip with golden mushroom soup

2012-01-02T16:14:00.000-05:00

My contribution to the 2012 New Year's Day dinner was a warm crab dip inspired by Cynda, who posted one on Cooks.com that calls for a can of golden mushroom soup.

It's a great addition to the appetizer, expect some folks don't expect to see chunks of brown amid the white small crab meat. But after defining the brown spots as mushroom pieces, everyone there went crazy for the dip.

Here is what I did with the recipe:

1 8 oz. package package of cream cheese, softened
1 16 oz. can crab meat, drained
1 10 oz. can of golden mushroom soup
2 cups grated sharp cheddar
1 medium white onion, finely chopped
1 tbsp. minced garlic
1 tbsp. butter
Enough olive oil to cover a 10-inch stick-proof skillet
Fresh ground pepper, to taste
Fresh ground chili pepper blend, to taste
Tabasco, to taste
Pinch celery salt
Pinch of dill
Pinch of sea salt
2 tbsp. of mayonnaise
Juice of one lemon

Over low-medium heat, melt the butter with the olive oil and then sauté the onion until it is translucent with the garlic. Add the cream cheese and allow it to melt into the mixture. Add the remaining ingredients, saving the cheddar for last. Don't overcook the crab.

Serve warm with tortilla chips.

Outhouse humor

2011-12-28T22:37:00.004-05:00

The outhouse behind my house. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – People often scrunch their noses and offer strange glances when they find out there is an outhouse on a back corner of the lot that also holds my house.

The reactions typically are followed up by their asking the same question: "You do have an indoor bathroom, too?"

I roll my eyes, usually cite the calendar year and reassure them my century-old house is equipped with the luxury of indoor plumbing.

It's impossible to know for sure why the former owner, Reggie Bakewell, decided the keep the outbuilding, even though it had fallen into disrepair and onto is side when I bought the property Webster, Pa., in 1987.

My best guess is that Bakewell, a steelworker, held onto his outhouse because he didn't trust his indoor loo to always function. His potty had been connected to an old brick-lined cistern without an outflow drain in the front yard. When the retrofitted septic tank filled, it backed up with each toilet flush into the bathtub until Bakewell could find a honey dipper to remove its contents. (Thankfully that problem since has been corrected)

The outhouse didn't become a priority for me, thought, until the adjoining property owner stormed over one day in the early 1990s and demanded I removed it from her property.

A preservationist at heart, I asked a good friend to help me right that ship and we put it back together the best we could. I then padlocked its front door because we didn't replace the floor and there is a long drop to the bottom of that concrete-lined pit. However, I did hold onto the double seater with yet-to-be-fulfilled plans to restore the interior.

Over the years the small building has become the butt of many jokes, a conversation piece, especially at Christmastime, when I string it with colored lights and hang a wreath on its front door.

And friends rarely miss an opportunity to give me all-things-related-to-outhouses as gag gifts.

My other "outhouse" collection has increased to include calendars, Christmas ornaments, a night light and even a liquid soap dispenser shaped like a privy.

A good friend surprised me one birthday with a creative outhouse birdhouse he built from weathered wood.

However, the pièce de résistance arrived this Christmas Eve in the form of a present from a great friend whom I've know since elementary school.

She gave me the novelty Santa's outhouse toy, shown below, that, with the press of a button, it's tiny holiday lights shine to the sounds of St. Nick passing gas and making silly comments about pooping.

A Christmas sugar fix fulfilled

2011-12-24T14:07:00.002-05:00

Gummy eggs on a plate, sunny side up, definitely do not qualify as old-man candy.

Neither does a three-quarter pound cherry Gummy Bear.

That settled: Have a sweet holiday.

(The goodies were found at Katie's Kandy, a newer store at 609 Amity St. above the tracks from the Waterfront shopping Mecca in Homestead, Pa. The old-town section of this former steel town is making a slow comeback, thanks to clever business folks such as Katie.)

New Year's Resolution

2011-12-18T13:06:00.002-05:00

Ben Hardt and Kelly Tobias, accompanied by New Shout, preform "New Year's Resolution" at the WYEP Holiday Hootenanny 2011 in Pittsburgh, Pa.

Winter Winds

2011-12-16T12:40:00.000-05:00

Mark Dignam and Brooke Annibale, accompanied by the Panther Hollow String Band, perform "Winter Winds" at the WYEP Holiday Hootenanny 2011 in Pittsburgh, Pa.

This concert features great local musicians who alway puts me in the holiday spirit.

The nearly lost art of flocking Christmas trees

2011-12-10T22:03:00.002-05:00

Mike Joseph of Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in Monessen, Pa., explains the Christmas tree flocking process at his family-owned business. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

MONESSEN, Pa. Last week I was interviewing a corporate executive from the Richmond, Va., area when, while making small talk, we discovered we had both grown up in the same region on the Monongahela River Valley.

He in Brownsville, Pa., and I, in Webster, a small Westmoreland County village 19 miles north of his Fayette County hometown.

Then he surprised me by saying he would drive five hours this way the next day to purchase a live, flocked Christmas tree at Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in nearby Monessen.

"They're hard to find. You can't purchase them anywhere in Virginia," he said.

I hadn't seen or thought about such trees since I was a kid in the 1960s, when they were sort of popular and sold fluffy white or in pastel shades of pink and blue.

So yesterday I went in search of Joseph's, about four miles south of my house, a business I was familiar with only in name. I went there with my aunt to see its flocked trees and also purchase a regular fresh-cut tree for my living room.

The GPS app in my Droid inaccurately took me to 921 Rostraver Road in nearby Belle Vernon, past a Walmart and an Eat'n Park. A quick smartphone check there on Google maps directed me back to Monessen to a street entrance that had long ago been allowed to become overgrown with grass.

A little exploring on the hill there eventually put me on Rostraver Street and en route to Joseph's, a business sandwiched between houses in this decaying former steel town neighborhood.

Mike Joseph immediately greeted us and showed us his perfectly manicured trees grown on the family farm in Uniontown. It didn't take much urging for him to show us into the barn to see the flocked trees.

"People, if they've never seen it before, they think it's something new," Joseph said.

The flocking business, though, has been around since the 1930s, he said.

He went on to explain these trees are sprayed with ground cotton and rayon, mixed with water and glue, materials that swell when they dry over the course of two days.

When dry they are beautiful and sell for about $160.

What's even more beautiful about this business is the friendly customer service. Joseph and his father quickly bound my tree with cotton fishnet and tied it on the roof of my car.

It's no wonder Joseph's has survived decades in business, even in an area with devastated downtown business districts and big box stores breathing down its back.

The family defines all the reasons why it's good to shop local.

More examples of flocked pine at Joseph's Nursery & Garden Center in Monessen, Pa. (Scott Beveridge photo)

A Twitter and business marriage success story

2011-12-05T22:27:00.005-05:00

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – Chris Dilla has jokingly referred to herself as a #mediaho on Twitter because of all the press attention she receives for her shrewd skills in the restaurant trade.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with Twitter hashtags they are a way to separate conversations from the pack on that social networking site.

Dilla would probably chuckle and if another web junkie used #socialmediaho in a reference to her since the Pittsburgh online market is flooded in a good way with her brand.

The owner of Bocktown Beer and Grill locations in North Fayette Township and Monaca, Pa., gets it. Social media is free to use and its positive impact on sales is undeniable. It's also helped to land her story in every local print market from the Observer-Reporter in Washington, Pa., to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and even a mention in Forbes.

Tweeting about her craft beers helped this self-made businesswoman experience a 20 percent increase in sales at her first bar during the throes of America’s great recession in 2009. While much of that success is due her restaurant’s good food and beer, it’s also a result of her ability to keep her customers interested and interacting with - or about - Bocktown via Twitter, Foursquare and Facebook.

“I’m not just telling them what the soup of the day is, I’m also reaching out to them with interesting links to craft beer, localism,” Dilla said in September, while presenting at the sixth PodCamp Pittsburgh, a popular conference on social and new media at Point Park University.

“Twitter brings real conversations. Everytime they are out there talking about Bocktown, Bocktown, Bocktown, I am thrilled.”

Many folks come to this event looking like deer stunned by headlights, pressured by their employers to join these online conversations to keep their jobs. Other attendees who have been tweeting since the dark ages of 2007 attend to keep up with new trends or to simply re-energize.

Dilla advice there is worth heeding.

“Don’t be spouting on Facebook about something you should be handling in person,” she said.

She once fired an employee for complaining about the boss on Facebook. The two shared 50 mutual FB friends, and, of course, the bitching quickly got back to Dilla, even though she had been blocked on Facebook from seeing that former worker’s postings. Big Duh.

She’s admittedly has made blunders, and one of the biggest came in the form of her telling a vagina joke on her business Twitter feed when she meant to post it under her personal identity.

“Don’t be afraid. You will make mistakes. There’s always the delete key," she said.

And she follows back those who follow Bocktown on Twitter.

“If it’s a one-way street, it will not work for you.”

Meanwhile, Dilla signed up for Google alerts to make sure she knows each time someone mentions Bocktown on the Internet.

“I link back to it. It’s a great resource. You can do every bit of it from a smartphone.”

And for those hashtags, she abuses them, but in a creative way.

She uses them to express her opinions while also hiding key words like Walmart from spambots.

She also urges her employees to find their voices on Twitter, to join the conversation, increase business and, ultimately, their tips.

“Twitter is the new television. We’re doing a better job on Twitter than some of the major news organizations,” Dilla said.

Old, fragile glass Christmas ornaments fetch high prices

2011-11-29T10:27:00.002-05:00

This antique German Christmas ornament can be yours for $120 at a Washington, Pa., antiques and collectibles mall. (Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

WASHINGTON, Pa. – Pennsylvania's famous five-and-dime retailer F.W. Woolworth single-handedly defined the decor of the American Christmas tree on a lark.

He purchased a $25 box of German blown-glass ornaments in the 1880s to see if they would sell in one of his stores, only to witness them disappear in two days.

He went on to make a substantial fortune of $25 million by importing and selling the ornaments produced in Lauscha, Germany, inexpensively and mostly one at a time, according to the 2004 book, "Pictorial Guide to Christmas Ornaments & Collectibles."

"Then after World War II no one wanted to buy from Germany," said John Taylor, a Peters Township, Pa., antiques dealer of collectible Christmas ornaments.

Today, glass ornaments made in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s are highly collectible, and sell for as much $500 apiece.

Taylor has one such hand-painted decoration shaped like a clown selling for $120 at Black Rose Antiques & Collectibles in Washington Crown Center mall in North Franklin Township.

"They are so expensive because they are so fragile," Taylor said.

Buyers at auctions have been known to pay $20, he said, for one of the ornaments, even when half of it is broken.

"I'm seeing some crazy things."

These ornaments are rare, "hot items" for a number of reasons, said Inez Gilotty, owner of Main Street Antiques in Monongahela.

"So many get broken. Collectors are picking them up," she said, adding that many relatives keep them when estates are being settled.

"It's very slim pickings. We're not even finding them in houses now," Gilotty said.

Those who are now dying in their 70s and 80s, she said, leave behind Christmas decorations they collected in the 1950s, such things as large, red, plastic bells with lights and aluminum Christmas trees. And those items also are highly collectible.

"They are looking for something like Grandma had," said another Peters Township dealer, Jim Kairys, who has been selling Christmas ornaments at Canonsburg Antique Mall.

"Christmas sells year-round," Taylor added.

America really has the town of Lauscha to thank for antique glass ornaments, Kairys said, because it once was known as the glass Christmas ornament "world capital."

It produced 95 percent of these decorations sold around the globe until 1940, when the war decimated much of Germany.

The town's glassmakers originally made kugels, or large glass ball window decorations, witch balls and garden panoramas. Someone eventually suggested they would look good, much smaller, hanging on candlelit Christmas trees, Kairys said, drawing reference from "Pictorial Guide to Christmas Ornaments & Collectibles."

The first known order for such Christmas tree kugels arrived in 1848.

"A lot of this stuff had mercury in it to make colored glass," Taylor said. "The coloring is on the inside. Just don't drink from them."

(This article first appeared in the November/December 2011 Living Washington County magazine published by the Observer-Reporter)

Panic, condemnation and redemption follow the deadly 1948 Donora smog

2011-11-22T20:39:00.001-05:00

Pollution from unsightly mills didn't stop Donora, Pa., from hosting elaborate downtown parades in the early-to-mid-1900s. (Donora Historical Society photo)

By Scott Beveridge

DONORA, Pa. – Nothing seemed out of the ordinary in smoggy Donora, Pa., the week before deadly air pollution would kill 19 people there in one day in late October 1948, and lead to more deaths in the coming days.

As Halloween approached Donora police Chief Pykosh issued an angry rant in the local newspaper after pranksters had scattered coal furnace ashes about town.

"Fun is fun, but when it becomes a downright nuisance, then it's time to get tough," Pykosh stated in The Herald-American before announcing the borough's Halloween parade would be postponed until Nov. 1 if the weather left it unfit for the march.

That Friday, Oct. 29, the newspaper appeared to have made no mention of the putrid air that had already begun to settle over the town along the Monongahela River Valley about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh. The Halloween parade went off as planned that weekend, even though fewer participants showed up because of the smoggy weather.

The dead were lining up by the end of the day Saturday, and two locals hospitals were overflowing with patients complaining about pneumonia or heart-related symptoms, the newspaper finally reported two days later.

On Monday, the newspaper announced borough council had called an emergency meeting the previous evening to call for an immediate survey of the problem by the U.S. Public Heath Service.

A panic had set in that Sunday, when a light rain had begun to clear the air. However, another fog began to roll in while the borough council meeting was underway, prompting fears it "would cause additional suffering," the newspaper article indicated.

Many people were already blaming the deadly air on the U.S. Steel zinc plant hugging the Mon River.

Charles Stacey, president of the local board of health, opened the council meeting with a strong indictment on the town's zinc and steel mills.

Stacey complained about reports the company had not modernized its mills since 1915, and he announced "it should go out of business" if the allegations were true.

Meanwhile local physician William Rongaus appeared at the meeting showing signs of fatigue and stress, and he "bluntly described the deaths of the 19 persons as murder."

"In my opinion," Dr. Rongaus declared. "I believe something should be done about smoke coming from the mills. The fumes are killers. They are silent killers."

Pittsburgh's health director, I. Hope Alexander, was by then warning of a pneumonia epidemic in Donora as a result of the smog.

"Right now the air in Donora has a heavy concentration of sulphuric acid plus some of the volatile compounds of zinc," Alexander stated in a Nov. 1, 1948, newspaper report by the United Press.

"The smoke from the zinc works at Donora is of a very toxic variety," he further warned borough residents.

The deadly smog story, though, had by the following Wednesday dropped off the local newspaper's front page above the fold - even though it had already made national headlines. Elsewhere the newspaper reported funeral rites would be held that day for three smog victims. Meanwhile, it also reported a North Carolina resort had offered an all-expense paid escape from Donora to fresh Southern air to 50 Donora residents.

Ironically, it only took the U.S. Health Department just five days from that deadly Saturday to declare the mills hadn't contributed to tragedy.

"There was no evidence found that will incriminate any one particular plant as being the source of the atmospheric contaminant over the weekend," Dr. Duncan W. Holaday of the health service's industrial hygiene division announced at a news conference in the borough on Nov. 4, 1948.

Holaday said there was no one in town that weekend to sample the air when the smog was at its worst, and he also declared the air safe to breath after the resumption of mill production, the Donora newspaper reported.

Of course, we know more than five decades later that either Holaday had been misled or he was participating in a cover-up in the days after what became the nation's deadliest pollution event.

A 2008 review of federal court archives by the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa., uncovered evidence suggesting the company had taken air samples that weekend. However, the results of the internal testing of that air were never made public.

(This story is part of an continuing series of essays, "The Gamble on Donora Steel," which can be located along the right sidebar of this blog.)

Where a Montana man likely was wrongly executed

2011-11-21T12:28:00.002-05:00

A hangman's noose is prominently displayed inside the Bozeman, Mt., Pioneer Museum, a grim reminder of an execution that took place here when the building served as the county prison. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

BOZEMAN, Mt. – A hangman's noose is the feature attraction inside a Montana museum devoted to America's Western expansion.

And this gallows executed just one man before the Gallatin County Jail was vacated and converted into the Pioneer Museum in Bozeman by the county's historical society, said Ann Butterfield, its assistant director.

"A hanging did take place here," Butterfield said, while leading a September 2010 tour of the redbrick, Bastille-like structure built in 1911.

While the prison was designed to be the best jail in the West, it took only 10 days after it opened for six prisoners to escape through an underground tunnel once used to transport prisoners to the courthouse, according to the book, "Bozeman and the Gallatin Valley: A History," by Phyllis Smith. The escapees reportedly fled town on a train, and four were captured and returned to their cells.

But the death of the banjo-playing murder convict Seth Orrin Danner is probably the most famous story haunting this museum at 317 W. Main St.

Danner met his death here at 8 a.m. July 18, 1924, after his wife, Iva, led investigators to the victims' shallow grave. She told authorities her husband had killed John Sprouse while the two fished, and, when he returned to camp, he strangled the man's wife, Florence, after crushing her skull with an axe, the Bozeman Daily Chronicle reported in February.

The newspaper, which publishes some of the funniest police reports, went on to report that Iva Danner, while on her deathbed seven decades later, confessed to shooting and killing the pregnant Florence Sprouse after the woman caught her husband and Iva having an affair. The scorned woman had gone after Iva Danner after killing her husband.

So it's quite possible an innocent man was hanged in the prison, which mostly served as a drunk tank until a new one was built in 1982, Butterfield said.

The historical society saved a handful of the jail cells for visitors to see and experience their cramped conditions when the prison housed 40 men and eight women.

One prisoner who passed through the place scrawled "I love you" on a floor, while others drew images of marijuana leaves on the walls. Another wrote, "I've been framed," inside a cell.

The exhibits here include an assortment of ladies' hats, a 16-pound ball and chain, rifles and even the Model A Ford driven by a local funeral director, Howard Nelson, who bought the car new and never parked it until just before his death in 1988, Butterfield said.

This is a destination not to be missed by travelers who pull into this part of Big Sky Country.

The rich dine while the poor suffer

2011-11-17T12:46:00.003-05:00

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – The biggest surprise find when I purchased my century-old, 10-room house was that the former owner was willing to accept a $4,000 sale price.

People have always been shocked to hear that a house would sell so cheaply, and then some would follow that up with a question about what antiques came with the place in 1987.

The fixer-upper was somewhat rundown, but there was little else inside but three decades of dust crusting the floors and baseboards. The previous owner, who was well into his 80s, had sold the contents at auction prior to listing the property in Webster, Pa., with a Realtor.

The only real treasure discovered was a newspaper spreadsheet from a Sunday, Sept. 10, 1933, publication of The American Weekly, which boasted the greatest circulation in the world.

It was found, along with other pages from 1933 newspapers, underneath crumbling asphalt linoleum that I was throwing away from a bedroom. The back page boasts the ad, above, for Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.

It seemed odd to me because the ad features a well-dressed couple relaxing at a restaurant during the heart of the Great Depression, when money was scarce. They were staged being served by a smiling black waiter, an obvious statement on racial inequality of the time.

It also made me wonder about how the steel mill boss who owned the house could have afforded new floor covering in a depression, while also adding an adjoining room to his house. The remodel was to create a second-floor apartment for his son, who had taken a wife.

Meanwhile, the front page of the newspaper was devoted to new publications of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York about the pastimes of the ancient Egyptians. The newspaper was distributed coast to coast in all Hearst Samily newspapers. Inside were printed adds for Royal Baking Powder, A-1 Sauce, Quick Elastic Starch, Pyrex nursing bottles, Lacross Nail Polish and Log Cabin Syrup.

The MOMA book were even made possible by a donation from Charlotte M. Tytus of Asheville, NC, in memory of her son.

So unlike the mental pictures we have today of the poverty of that era, some people in the United States were still spending money for newspapers, books and household supplies while others were suffering greatly.

A homage to Dunkard Creek

2011-11-16T10:51:00.000-05:00

If you have the time check out this new art exhibit before it moves on Dec. 8 from California University of Pennsylvania. It's well done.

Click here to read the story. That link will disappear next month.

A gunner's survival in Nazi territory

2011-11-11T21:47:00.001-05:00

Alex Antanovich Jr. is shown at a World War II unit reunion decades after his incredible wartime survival story.

By Scott Beveridge

Allied air assaults over France and Germany during World War II were seeing their greatest successes in the last week of May 1944.

The daylight bombing raids were targeting strategic German-held railroads to cut off enemy supply lines, while others were pounding the French coast to drive back enemy forces.

Nearly one thousand heavy bombers were flying the missions that also were aimed at airfields and chemical and fuel stations.

The B-24 Liberator, LONI, carrying a crew of nine, however, did not fare so well. It crashed on May 30, 1944, near Rheine, Germany, after three of its four engines failed and the entire crew had bailed from the plane.

Eight crew members were captured and held by the Nazis as prisoners of war.

Meanwhile, U. S. Army Air Force Sergeant Alex Antanovich Jr. of Cokeburg, Pa., evaded capture.

He would be led by civilians to members of the antiwar movement in Holland, where he was fed, clothed, and sheltered for the next ten months.

“I was in constant fear,” said Antanovich, recalling his story that had the makings of a suspenseful war novel.

His plane had taken off that day at 6:53 a.m. from Mendlesham, England, carrying fifteen, five hundred pound bombs.

More than eighteen thousand B-24s, their wingspans spreading a 110 feet wide, had been produced in Detroit, Michigan, by Consolidated Aircraft Corporation for the war effort.

They created the largest air fleet of its kind at the time.

Antanovich, who was then 21 years old, had been trained to fire all of the plane’s ten machine guns. World War II bombing crews faced some of the worst dangers in combat.

“They were shooting at us,” he said, while discussing his military experiences when he was eighty-two years old.

“You could lose your life on takeoff. You’re loaded down to capacity. There’s no place to hide.”

He had received his training at Blythe Army Air Base in California. His crew used LONI to fly to England, following a route over Florida, South America, Africa, and Wales.

The crew called itself the League of Nations Inc. because its members all hailed from different ethnic backgrounds.

They gave the plane its identity by combining the first letters of the crew’s nickname.

Antanovich entertained himself on the flights to England by watching the lights in the cities at night.

“I was going to fight a war.”

Little else was on his mind.

He had only been in England for a month and on four previous missions to Germany when his plane crashed.

It dipped from formation with two of its engines smoking before it reached its primary target.

Other members of the 34th Bombing Group flying in nearby planes then lost sight of LONI; no one reported seeing any parachutes. The sixty-six-foot-long plane’s legacy was cut short before an artist had the time to paint its name on its side.

“When the pilot said to bail out, I was in the tail of the plane. The pilot said to throw stuff out to lighten the load. A short time later, the tail gunner who stayed on the intercom said: ‘Bail out,’ and away he went.”

Antanovich was afraid to jump from the plane, having never done so before during his military training.

“Why jump if you may never have to?”

Being the last one left in the tail of the plane, Antanovich looked over the bomb bay to see what the pilot and copilot were doing, hoping they were gaining control of the flight.

The copilot was readying for his jump, and Antanovich knew he had no choice but to do the same thing.

“I went to the Lord.”

He believed in God, but was not an especially religious soldier.

“I asked the Lord for help. I got a warm feeling over my body. I walked right over to that escape hatch and away I went. I lost my fear.”

Over the course of the next several days, nearly everything Antanovich did went against what he was taught to do in the event he became missing in action.

When he regained his bearings on the ground, he realized he had become separated from his crew.

He had been told to run in such a situation, and to keep on the move for twenty-four hours.

“I went deeper into the woods and covered my parachute and started running.”

He came upon a house, and went in another direction, only to spot another. At that point, he went into the thicket and decided to attempt sleep.

“I thought, ‘Where am I going to run to?' If I kept running, I could have gotten killed.”

Several hours later, he awoke to the sound of a boy pumping water and decided to start walking again.

He found himself back where he hit the ground and hid the parachute. He made the right move because he stumbled upon a friendly stranger while walking across a bicycle path. He whistled to get the man’s attention, asking him in French if he spoke that language.

The man shook his head, no.

Antanovich then asked him if he spoke English, and again, the man shook his head, no.

Antanovich pulled out a pocketbook that was part of his survival kit and designed to translate English phrases into the German language.

He used it to inform the stranger that he was hungry, and in exchange, was given a handful of sugar.

He also learned he was near Rheine, Germany, after showing the stranger one of the maps from the gear he carried. He was forty miles west of his B-24’s target and twenty miles east of Germany’s border with Holland.

“I said: ‘I’m American."

The stranger, who turned out to be a Prussian, then flapped his arms in the air as a signal that he understood Antanovich was an airman.

The man then pointed Antanovich in the direction of German-held Holland.

Antanovich set his compass and walked the remainder of the day and well into the night.

Tired and weary after nightfall, he decided to make a bed of pine needles under a tall pine tree, where he slept his first night in Germany.

Antanovich was unarmed. He understood that German troops were killing American soldiers on sight because the country was quickly depleting it resources.

The Germans barely had enough supplies to care for their own soldiers. He had no idea just how much danger he was facing on his first full day in enemy territory.

That same day, one of Hitler’s shadow men, the Reichsleiter Martin Bormann, approved criminal combat methods under a German lynch law.

By doing so, Bormann gave his seal of approval to mob justice, instructing German civilians to kill any Allied soldiers they encountered.

The next morning, Antanovich came upon railroad tracks and decided to follow them straight toward Holland.

That could have been seen as a mistake, as well, because German soldiers were guarding the rail lines. He ducked for cover into the woods upon spotting a man in the distance.

That was when he stumbled upon a man and woman milking cows, a couple who helped him to reach safer quarters.

“I said I was an American and I was hungry.”

The couple gave him a sandwich; his only food in two days. They took him to to a house and introduced him to an English-speaking woman.

“She said: ‘I know a man who knows a man who knows where to find the underground.’”

The woman made a telephone call before escorting him by bicycle to a crossroads to meet another contact.

“She said she didn’t want to see him or him to see her.”

His survival kit also contained silk maps of Holland, France, Spain, and Belgium, as well as three cigarettes.

He had been advised to hold on to his belongings. But instead, he gave everything away to those who helped him along his way, except the maps of Holland and Belgium.

“Anything I had they asked for, I gave it to them,” he said. “I had a full pack of Camels. They told us not to smoke American tobacco because it was sweeter smelling and (the enemy would) recognize it.”

He even shed his Army Air Force uniform for civilian clothes as a disguise after reaching the underground.

His journey eventually took him to the home of Otto and Elisabeth Montagne on the outskirts of Hengelo, Holland.

They were among many anti-Nazi couples in that area who secretly shielded Allied soldiers who became separated from their units.

Their visitors usually stayed in their home for three or four days until plans were made to return them to England, through France, Spain, and Portugal. Spain temporarily held such MIAs as illegal immigrants before sending them to Portugal and England, Antanovich was told.

That escape route, however, was closed after Allied forces stormed Normandy, beginning June 6, 1944, in what became the largest amphibious invasion in history.

Antanovich’s parents, Alex and Mary, received word on June 16, 1944, from the War Department that their son was missing in action.

His younger brother, John, was part of an Army Air Force B-17 flight crew serving in the United States.

During his time in Holland, Antanovich was hidden in 16 different houses; some for a few hours and others for a month or two.

He found himself sandwiched under trapdoors on occasions when German troops searched from house to house, looking for railroad workers to help them reopen supply routes.

The Montagnes shared their home with him and three other soldiers for seven months.

Mrs. Montagne provided them with clothing from a nearby textile factory, giving them identical dark blue shirts with vertical stripes to identify them to others involved in the antiwar movement.

The men even wore wooden shoes and distinguishing hairstyles and mustaches to appear as local residents.

Mrs. Montagne often walked with a cart great distances to gather enough food to feed her guests.

Food was being rationed, and each house was permitted to use electric lights for one hour a day. Two rabbits from the barn provided dinner for Christmas, a meal that also included cheese crackers and pudding.

Antanovich and his companions lived out their long days in boredom, either reading, holding conversations, or learning to speak Dutch.

They sometimes occupied their time by playing games of Battleship, using scraps of numbered paper as game pieces, or singing songs around a piano.

The Dutch liberation effort, meanwhile, began to intensify by March 1945.

Resistance fighters ambushed Nazi General Hans Ratter on March 6, 1945, and more than one hundred Dutchmen were killed in retribution two days later.

Antanovich spent that month hiding in a hut in the woods with an armed member of the Canadian Royal Air Force.

Hitler’s army was under attack from all fronts.

“You could hear the gunfire getting close,” Antanovich said.

By the end of the month, Allied forces were racing across collapsed German defenses. On April 1, 1945, they had German troops surrounded in the Ruhr basin, while British troops rolled into Hengelo that same day.

Antanovich was rescued by members of the Welsh Guard after walking arm-in-arm to freedom with a young Dutch woman.

He was taken to the Guard’s headquarters in Brussels before being sent to a U.S. military facility in Paris, France.

“I had no identification.”

He was later returned to England to be identified by members of his bombing group, only to find all of his possessions gone.

To his relief, he was told the other members of his air crew had survived German prison camps.

On April 24, 1945, his mother was told by the military that he was returned to active duty and being rotated back to the United States.

Following the war, Antanovich went home to rural Washington County and married the former Betty Porter. The couple had two sons, Alex and David, who died in childhood, and a daughter, Yvonne.

He worked as a coal miner in Beth-Energy Corporation’s Cokeburg Mine, from which he retired in 1985 after working in the coalfields for twenty-four years.

He said it was amazing to be part of such a great generation, one that witnessed serious hardships and major triumphs.

“The men of today will never compete with, compare with what we went through. We went through the Great Depression. We saw the TV come in. When I was a kid, farmers were working with horses ... the doctor would come in a horse and buggy.”

Antanovich also began attending church after returning home from the war.

One day while reading the Bible, he came upon a verse in Psalms that states: “I sought the Lord, and he heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.”

He said those words offered him the best explanation for his surviving such a dangerous, incredible experience during the war.

(This story was written for a 2005 oral history project at Duquesne University, Pittsburgh.)

The Vietnam Wall, "It affects you."

2011-11-10T14:30:00.001-05:00

In honor of Veterans Day tomorrow, let's revisit a story from 2002 in the Observer-Reporter when the Vietnam Veterans Memorial marked its 20th birthday.

By Scott Beveridge

WASHINGTON, D.C. – An older man focuses on the name of a fallen soldier on the sprawling Vietnam Veterans Memorial and his lower lip quivers.

He begins to cry and disappears into a mass of tourists passing the somber, black granite honor roll otherwise known as "The Wall" in the nation's capital.

"People break down all the time," National Park Service volunteer Allen McCabe said last weekend, when the crowds here begin to increase in size each year as Memorial Day approaches.

"I'm still in awe of the emotion here, how tough it is for the vets to come to grips," said McCabe, 47, who wasn't old enough during the Vietnam War to chance being drafted for service.

This memorial seems to evoke as many different reactions as the number of names it contains, said park ranger Sonya Berger, who was born a year before Saigon fell in 1975 and 16 years after the first American died in Vietnam.

"There are a lot of different images," Berger said.

Some visitors, she said, feel like they are descending into a tomb as they walk down the slight hill and past the seemingly endless list of names of those who were killed or missing in action. The back of the highly polished granite is buried in the earth; a possible explanation for the impression that this is a graveyard.

"It's one of the quietest spots," Berger said, noting that the city's hectic Constitution Avenue is less than a block away, but no one can hear the traffic.

Still, it takes some Vietnam veterans three or four years to take the short walk from the street to the memorial and its 140, side-by-side panels, she said.

But these days, the place has gone from a grim reminder of the United States' only military defeat to a place for healing, she added.

When the honor roll was new in 1982, it drew first-time visitors who showed "a lot of raw emotion," Berger said. Since then, it seems to have lost some of its reverence, she said, as the generation that came of age during this war is now finding "some sort of closure."

Many of the 4.5 million visitors who are now drawn to the site each year were born after the war ended.

Some schoolchildren giggle along its narrow walkway and ask the obvious questions: "How many names are on the wall?" and "How do you find someone's name?"

Park rangers politely say the wall lists 58,235 names, which also can be found in location directories the size of big-city telephone books at both entrances.

But politeness isn't always the norm at what also has become the stage for political statements, even though its artist, Maya Ying Lin, was told not to make any in her design.

Berger said in the weeks before President Bush led the nation March 19 into the Iraq war, the memorial drew both anti- and pro-war demonstrators.

"It was probably my most interesting experience here," Berger said. Those who opposed fighting viewed the huge number of names on the wall as an argument to avoid another war, she said. At the same time, pro-war activists saw the honor roll as a source of military pride and heroism.

"It's still incredibly political," Berger said.

Other visitors, meanwhile, are haunted by the sight of a mirror image of themselves when they look between the spaces separating the names.

Jeanne Svikhart of Washington, D.C., said when she sees herself in the wall, it causes her to relive the past. "You don't want to go there," she said. "The power of the names. It personalizes all the individuals. It affects you."

Her companion, Kathy Potter of California, said she, too, looks at the honor roll "sort of not wanting to see myself."

"It's just very moving, said Potter, formerly of Pittsburgh. "Look at all these names. War is hell," she said before leaving.

A short distance from where the women pause, a group of U.S. Military Academy alumni places a wreath in memory of a classmate, Robert E. Olson of Wheeling, W.Va., who was killed in South Vietnam in 1970 when he was 19.

An unknown visitor earlier left a stack of five dimes nearby along the outer edge of the sidewalk on this rainy Sunday morning.

"Those dimes meant something to the guys who were over there," said William Miller, 69, a Vietnam veteran from Denver, Colo., who was with the West Point graduates.

"People are in a difficult situation (in war), in close combat out of the area, and they build bonds," Miller said.

Later in the day, another stranger places a bracelet once worn to honor those missing in action, broken in two pieces, over a sealed envelope in the small trough along the base of the memorial.

In all, nearly 25,000 keepsakes have been dropped off here in the past two decades, some before it even took shape.

A Vietnam veteran tossed his Purple Heart into wet concrete as it was being poured into the foundation, according to an exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History.

Others have left such items as a American nurse's white uniform worn in the war, a full-size Harley-Davidson motorcycle with a map of Vietnam sewn into its seat and a miniature replica of a bamboo prisoner-of-war cage, with mirror shards glued to its floor.

Park employees rarely see anyone leaving these tokens, as no one lingers in this sad place, said ranger Doug Demmon.

"I never see him, but one guy always brings barbed-wire wreaths," Demmon said. He said he will walk away for less than five minutes only to return to find dozens of things that were not there when he left.

One day, he said he was convinced he never took his eyes off the place but missed a person leave behind something highly unusual: an ancient Native American headdress.

It was placed in an odd pattern beside a dehydrated cat and bird and mice bones before its bearer disappeared in the crowd.

I gets weary from that ol' man candy

2011-11-05T14:19:00.008-04:00

By Scott Beveridge

My story about old-man candy began with a somewhat-spoiled 20-something female who once sat beside me in the newsroom.

It was Halloween season. I noticed bags of Goetze’s Caramel Creams in a convenience store and they reminded me of treats people tossed me along the Halloween parade route when I was a kid in Charleroi, Pa. With sweet memories of childhood innocence floating in my head, I decided to buy a bag of the confections and share it with my coworkers at the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.

“Don’t be bringing us old-man candy,” my young podmate said about five years ago as I placed the bag in the lazy Susan snack tray that had become the centerpiece of our gathering of four desks.

I remember saying something like, “How can you not like this stuff? I love them, but only when they’re fresh. And what the hell is old-man candy?”

Basically, it’s anything people might find in the candy dish at their grandparents’ house, she replied.

“You know,” she said. “It’s like when gramps says, ‘You better get in on this stuff before it’s gone,’ and when you look, it’s chocolate-covered raisins.”

I had just crossed into my 50s and had to admit the caramel creams dating to 1895 were over the hill. I was surrounded by much-younger colleagues, who have been accustomed to many, many junk food choices, items including the magnificant Sour Patch EXTREME Soft & Chewy Candy.

This guy grew up on Pixie Dust, red licorice and those gross papery flying saucers filled with colored sugar pellets.

However, for the record, the photos I have been posting of old-fart candy on Facebook have generated many comments from people who either love or hate the stuff. Those posts seem to have touched a nerve.

“Really??? Old lady candy??? I have those in my pantry right now. My kids and I LOVE those things,” commented a mother in her 30s under a photo of pastel pink and green mints produced Gene & Boots Candies.

Sorry Facebook, but I thought I smelled Jasmine perfume as I put that candy on the counter at work where we typically place free edibles. Some of that same candy was still there the next day, a rare occurrence when there is free office food.

I will leave you with one of the funniets posts, one offered by Jason Togyer

under a photo of Necco wafers.

It’s sung to the song, “Ol’ Man River,” by Jerome Kern, from the musical Showboat.

Old man candy

That old man candy

It must be somethin'

But I don't taste anythin'

It just keeps hangin'

It keeps on hangin' around

Younger folks want chocolate bars

Made by Hershey's and by Mars

They don't want peppermint twirls

Butterscotch wheels or root beer barrels

I gets weary

And sick of chewin'

That hard, tough candy

My teeth it's ruinin'

But old man candy

It just keeps hangin' around

A public memorial to aquatic life

2011-11-02T22:13:00.002-04:00

A new art exhibit could be likened to a traveling fish funeral.

The show features the works of 90 artists from the Pittsburgh and Morgantown, W.Va., regions who each painted one species of aquatic life killed in a widespread 2009 fish kill along a stream that straddles the Pennsylvania and West Virginia border.

And the exhibit, "Reflections: Homage to Dunkard Creek" is arriving next week at California University of Pennsylvania.

The portraits also feature crayfish, mussels and insects that were placed on the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources list of populations that dropped significantly during the pollution.

I'm not going to get into the debate here over to which environmental catastrophe caused the fish kill.

Cal U. is among nine sites that will exhibit the show sponsored by the Mountain Institute's Appalachia Program.

The university's office of academic affairs will host an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. Nov. 10 in Frich Hall. It will begin with a gallery talk by Ann Payne, of Morgantown, a member of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators and the artist who conceived and organized the project.

Curator for the exhibition on campus is Maggy Aston, assistant professor of art and design at Cal U. A work by Jordan Wong, a student of Aston’s, is included in the exhibition. His piece depicts the johnny darter, Etheostoma nigrum, a bottom-feeding freshwater fish.

Through a collaboration with the university’s departments of art and design, biological and environmental sciences, and music, the paintings will be viewed in an aquarium-like environment that includes glass display cases holding specimens with a sound track of bird, frog and cricket calls. A large, collaborative mural depicts water, nature and industry in the Mon Valley.

The opening reception is free to the public. The exhibit will be on view from 8 a.m.-9 p.m., Mondays through Fridays through Dec. 8 in the lobby of Frich Hall.

A cat in a pumpkin

2011-10-30T20:08:00.000-04:00

Happy Halloween

As you can see I know someone who is talented with a pumpkin carver. And the Internet always needs more cats.

The so-called witch's tomb

2011-10-28T16:38:00.003-04:00

This video promotes a story to appear Monday, on Halloween, in the Observer-Reporter about the tomb of Josephine Colvin at Monongahela Cemetery

The ghost of Dolley Madison ranks No. 1 in D.C.

2011-10-24T22:14:00.004-04:00

Binnie the unconventional ghost tour guide leads a group of tourists in July around spooky LayFayette Square in Washington, D.C. (Scott Beveridge photo)

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Former U.S. First Lady Dolley Madison is spotted more around the nation's capital than many of Washington, D.C.'s, elites, even though her body has been interred in Congressional Cemetery since her 1849 death.

"The city of Washington is just in love with Dolley," said a tour guide named Binnie, who leads paying visitors around supposed haunted sites near the White House. "She's one of the most prolific ghosts in D.C."

The nation first became enamored with Dolley when she served as First Lady under Thomas Jefferson. Her first husband had died three years into their marriage, leaving her alone to raise a son until she became the famous bride of James Madison, the nation's fourth president who authored the Constitution.

Binnie wears a long red period dress as she discusses Dolley in Layfette Square, where Mrs. Madison spent her remaining years after that son squandered their money and left her to charity. But, Binnie has an unconventional style, chattering away sometimes in ghetto lingo, while sporting a tattoo on her right forearm and a modern blue paisley cotton tote bag off a shoulder.

She admits her style is her own. She insists the history behind her stories actually happened.

While destitute, men delivered free baskets of food to Dolley, probably the same guys she helped to educate when they were children under her platform of improving the schools in poor, local neighborhoods. Her educational charity work defined the roll of the First Lady, Binnie explains while working for Washington, D.C. Ghost Tours.

Today visitors to Lafayette Square claim to see the ghost of Dolley Madison rocking on a porch at the pale-yellow Cutts-Madison House at 721 Madison Place NW, where she spent her final years. Others claim to see her headless ghost in town, staring from a window. Her ghost apparently also has been spotted roaming the White House gardens, becoming angry at the sight of a gardener merely plucking a rose.

People have reported witnessing so many ghosts in this part of town that it has become known as "Tragedy Square."

Bigfoot sightings have strange marriage

2011-10-22T23:01:00.006-04:00

Stan Gordon of Greensburg, Pa., discusses a spate of reported 1973 Bigfoot sightings in Westmoreland County while speaking at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

YOUNGWOOD, Pa. – There is infighting in two paranormal groups that have a strange marriage.

Bigfoot followers don’t like it when that creature is associated with UFO sightings.

“And visa versa,” Bigfoot expert Stan Gordon said today at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference at Westmoreland County Community College in Youngwood, Pa.

“The UFO people don’t want to connect a zoological creature with extraterrestrials,” Gordon said after speaking to a large auditorium packed with those with a fascination for the unexplained.

His lecture focused on a string of 1973 Bigfoot sightings and other mysterious events here in Westmoreland County, including some just down the road from this college.

The first took place near Greengate Mall in early August, when a man claimed to have had an unreal experience while shaving in his bathroom. It began with his smelling rotten cucumbers. He turned around to gaze at a window, eight feet off the ground, Gordon said.

“He saw two large glowing red eyes staring at him,” Gordon said. “His dogs didn’t bark.”

Gordon later went to investigate this scene, and, he said, he found the “strangest three-toed footprint” in weeds behind the mall, which since has been demolished.

Such sightings went on for months, perplexing even the Pennsylvania State Police.

The most-convincing evidence came from animals – cats, livestock and especially dogs – by how they reacted to the sense and smell of things associated with this elusive, fur-covered animal with fangs, Gordon said.

“The dogs were like paralyzed in fear,” he said.

Some family dogs hid in fear under porches, he said, while others refused to eat for up to three days after those stories emerged and soon would make local and national news.

“State police even said you couldn’t fabricate that.”

Derry Township was a hot bed that year for those odd events, which included repeated Bigfoot sightings at two farms.

“For whatever reason this thing kept coming back at night,” Gordon said, adding that witnesses there also noticed strange lights and UFOs between hearing weird animal screams.

Elsewhere in Derry residents of a mobile home claimed to have seen a Bigfoot staring at them at their front door after opening it at the sound of a baby crying and scratching, Gordon said. The electric lights began to flicker inside that home. Later, investigators discovered the electrical supply line ripped out to the mobile home, Gordon said.

He moved on tell an equally strange story from near Kecksburg in Westmoreland about a nut-shaped metal object that crashed into a hillside. The U.S. Army showed up, along with a tractor-trailer, which sped off with the thing and supposedly took it to a military base under strict secrecy in December 1965.

“There is more to this mystery than meets the eye,” Gordon said.

Assorted Bigfoot sketches on David Dragosin's booth at the Pittsburgh Bigfoot & UFO Conference at Westmoreland County Community College. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Dark alley, Pittsburgh

2011-10-21T23:08:00.000-04:00

So tonight I wandered around Pittsburgh and noticed these mod places:

Brownsville mural, like a big wallpapering project

2011-10-19T14:16:00.003-04:00

Artist Jim Winegar of Graysville, Greene County, Pa., works on an informational sign for a new Brownsville mural with Juliana Gernot, 15, of Monessen, who is attending his summer art class at Douglas Education Center in Monessen. (Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

MONESSEN – Jim Winegar's most rewarding experiences teaching art involved prison classes attended by men, including some serving life sentences for homicide.

The convicts where he worked at State Correctional Institution-Fayette, were some of the best-behaved students the Graysville potter has ever worked with, "even though they were men who did some terrible things," Winegar, 63, said.

"They monitor their conduct. They have to earn the right to qualify for the art program," he said. "They conduct themselves better than probably most students I've had."

He oversaw their work on a large mural on cloth of Brownsville's historic cast iron bridge in a scrapbook design now adhered to a brick wall beside the borough's downtown Market Street parking lot. His job later was eliminated by state budget cuts.

That mural caught the eye of Brownsville resident Patricia DeConcilis, vice president of academic affairs at Douglas Education Center in Monessen. She decided to get Winegar involved in creating a second mural for her hometown this summer at the school in a program for teens ages 14 to 17.

"I just love that mural down there," DeConcilis said. "I feel we have a real pro here," she said, while Winegar and his new students worked on a mural depicting the steamboat Enterprise.

The side-wheeler launched at Brownsville in 1814 became the first to navigate the Monongahela and Ohio rivers to Louisville, Ky., and back. It also made the first round trip between Louisville and New Orleans, revolutionizing transportation in the nation.

"I think it's really good for the kids because they have something to show, take a friend, parent and say, 'Look what I did,'" said Bobbi Fine, a Washington tattoo artist who also teaches at Douglas.

"It's pretty amazing," added student Garrett Werner, 16, of Belle Vernon. "It shows one of the world's greatest inventions."

Winegar said he chose to do the murals in panels in a process developed at the State Correctional Institution-Graterford.

"This is the best practice," he said. "It's perfect for inmates who can't leave a prison."

The designs are enlarged onto a wall covered with the fabric, using an opaque projector, and then sketched onto the material. The thin material is the same used to stiffen shirt collars.
Ultraviolet light-resistant paints made in Culver City, Calif., are then used to create the art, which has a durability of at least 25 years after being glued outdoors and covered with sealant.

"It's almost like a big wallpapering project. It shrinks after it dries and looks as if it's painted right onto the brick," Winegar said.

The second mural now adorns a wall of a building at the entrance to Brownsville Riverside Wharf Park.

After receiving approval from the state Department of Corrections, the other one contains the names of eight prison artists, some of whom are serving sentences for drug or sexual assault convictions. Three of them, Tito McGill, Terry Kightlinger and Charles "Duffy" Linton, are serving life sentences for murder.

Eventually the town will contain a string of such murals, using the scrapbook theme of looking back on its history, said Norma Ryan, a member of the Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp.

Watch a video montage of the mural being hung.

(This article first appeared in the Observer-Reporter newspaper in Washington, Pa.)

Broken glasses

2011-10-13T22:08:00.001-04:00

DONORA, Pa. – The best asset of the Donora Historical Society is its vast collection of old photographs, and the one, above, now ranks among my favorites.

Like most of these images, this unusual portrait was captured by a man I have nicknamed the "mysterious photographer of Donora steel" because so little is known today about him.

And, nothing was jotted down by the photographer, Bruce Dreisbach, to identify the young black steelworker who posed for this photograph, or explain why the kid was wearing at the time shattered eyeglasses.

Brian Charlton, curator of the historical society's equally-unusual Donora Smog Museum, reminded me the other day when I noticed this photo that the photographer had worked in town during the 20th Century as a product inspector for U.S. Steel. It's possible, Charlton said, that Dreisbach used the image as a reminder for employees to wear safety goggles while on the job. It's anyone's guess.

Regardless, the society recently had 197 new prints made from the more than 1,000 glass negatives it inherited from Dreisbach.

They were produced by Photo Antiquities, a Pittsburgh museum dedicated to preserving vintage and antique photos.

I look forward to sharing more of Dreisbach's photos here, as soon as possible.

Pittsburgh Zombiefest 2011

2011-10-09T11:49:00.002-04:00

Monsters, sideshow freaks and Ghostbusters come together to form this video of the bizarre Pittsburgh Zombiefest 2011.

Zombie alert

2011-10-08T15:41:00.002-04:00

Chris Bane dresses as a mean, bloody Popeye today at Pittsburgh Zombiefest. Check back because I am going to be mashing and posting a video of more scenes from this crazy - cool party. (Scott Beveridge photo)

A clown, FBI agents and other newsmakers form an odd collection

2011-10-03T23:39:00.004-04:00

By Scott Beveridge

The business card of an “Experienced Gulf War Lab Rat” is the oddest in my weird collection of such items amassed during a 25-year career as a newspaper reporter.

It was given to me a few years after the first Gulf War ended in 1991 by a veteran of the conflict, Candy Sweet Lovett, who had given herself that title after undergoing numerous inconclusive medical tests for illnesses associated with the mysterious Persian Gulf War Syndrome.

“I have a listening EAR. Are you tired of the Runaround? Please know that I care,” the Silver Spring, Md., woman had printed on her card beside an image of a black rat.

Her story since has disappeared from the radar, as have the titles and occupations of some of the hundreds of people who have given me their cards during interviews.

I immediately plop them in the breast pocket of my dress shirt, beside a nerdy ink pen and my prescription sunglasses, to make sure I later spell their names correctly in the newspaper story du jour.

And then for reasons I cannot fully explain these business cards pile up on my desk because I refuse to throw them away. Eventually they end up beside others in small boxes stuffed in a desk drawer.

I’m not a hoarder. I try to convince myself this as a coworker at the Observer-Reporter rolls her eyes today while I prepare to take them home to confess this habit to the blogosphere.

Believe it our not on can easily walk around my house and even up the stairs to use the bathroom without tripping on stacks of newspapers and magazines. I don’t still own the same skinny jean I wore in college, either, or wash and store margarine tubs for reuse. My first transistor radio didn't survive seventh grade thanks to a jealous baby brother who destroyed everything I owned as a kid.

Yet I still have the business card of a car salesman who, in 2001, sold me a Ford pickup truck, which I retired eight years later with 200,000 miles on its engine.

Maybe I keep these cards to help remember people I meet professionally, those who I might need again for a source, or to contact about faulty merchandise.

I thought I was alone in having this kooky obsession until the television news magazine “Sunday Morning” put out a call about a year ago on Facebook looking for people like me who collect such cards.

I responded with a brief comment about mine.

However I neglected to identify on Facebook the names of the “important” people in my files.

Nestled in my box are cards bearing names of FBI investigators, academics, lawmakers and corporate executives.

One of my favorites came from George E. Barbour, a former city editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, a prominent black-owned newspaper that fought for civil rights. Another shiny gold one promotes David Van Deveer, a "fearless conjury" from Virginia who claims to have talents for knife throwing, unicycling, bullwhip artistry and, yes, comedy.

The aforementioned television news show hosted by Charles Osgood ignored my Facebook reply, much like I do the people who have given me these cards.

“Sunday Morning” has yet to even air a segment about the people who collect business cards.

I’m now thinking the TV producer who had that bright idea is using a different business card.

Social media app users approve this Thai place

2011-10-02T00:03:00.005-04:00

The popular shrimp red chili at Nicky's Thai Kitchen in Pittsburgh. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – A location-based social networking app had long ago convinced me that Nicky’s Thai Kitchen is an especially popular place to eat in the Burgh.

Some of the people in my circle of "friends" who use the mobile phone application named foursquare routinely check in there, sending my Droid X an alert upon their arrival to the Asian-style restaurant in Pittsburgh’s North Side.

One particular mysterious individual known by a gourmet-inspired username stops there so often the mobile website has appointed him the unofficial mayor of the place.

So today finally I venture to this kitchen at 856 Western Ave., knowing the food will be worth the drive into a tough neighborhood in competition with trendy preservationists who have fallen for its historic architecture.

Nicky’s is in a century-old redbrick townhouse whose first floor has been remodeled to accommodate a tiny, intimate dining room. Fresh yellow and purple daisies sprout from vases on the two rows of tables set in an off-angle floor plan. The walls are warmly painted in moss green and heavily adorned with Buddha statues.

Surprisingly my waiter is a tall, white American with a buzz cut. I am seated on this rainy, cold October afternoon beside a window overlooking the street, where he recommends a cashew chicken dish. I say I’m in the mood for shrimp.

“The shrimp red chili is one of our best sellers,” he replies.

“I’ll have that,” I say.

“On a scale of one to 10 how spicy do you want that?” the water asks.

I go for a five, preferring food I can taste over the fire sauce, and then select a small house salad rather than a sampling of soup.

The salad is rather small, but attractive with decorative cucumber slices nestled in slivered carrots and red onion, iceberg lettuce and a chunk of tomato all sprinkled with ground peanuts. It is perfectly drenched in a spicy pineapple dressing blended with a hint of garlic and ginger.

About 10 minutes later the entrée is served. I take one look at the mound of brown rice in the bowl and know I will be forming a long relationship with Nicky’s. The rice is so beautifully dark it has a purple cast, and becomes delicious swirled in chili sauce and coupled with forkfuls of stir-fried green and red peppers, onions and fresh mushrooms.

The dish is decorated with a small flower carved from a sliver of carrot and enhanced by just one of the creamy crab Rangoon appetizers that has helped to put this restaurant on the map. That is verified in one of the 26 foursquare tips, all of which are flattering.

“The tofu Phad Thai is to die for! I could eat it bunches,” states a foursquare subscriber named TLD, who uses a pink hydrangea for a profile photo.

I am a bit disappointed, though, to find only four shrimp in the bowl, but hey, it’s a lunchtime serving that costs $11.50.

And, this meal leaves the restaurant in a satisfied belly.

Nicky's is nestled in a renovated redbrick townhouse at 856 Western Ave., Pittsburgh. It has a second location in the area at 321 South Ave., Verona. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Credit the spoiled kids for better beer

2011-09-25T21:42:00.007-04:00

The beer library at the new Bocktown Beer and Grill in Monaca, Pa., is testimony to America's expanding taste buds.

By Scott Beveridge

Theoretically speaking I credit the refined taste buds of a new generation of spoiled consumers for the craft beer market boom in the United States.

This is a group of younger elites that grew up with potato chips in myriad flavors ranging from ketchup or dill pepper to sweet onion or cracked sea salt and ground pepper.

In my youth during the 1960s chip flavors were limited to plain, barbecue or sour cream and onion at grocery stores.

Meanwhile, America’s Industrial Age turned out steelworkers and other factory workers then who patronized the products of local breweries for no other reason than union workers produced their beer. Here in the Mon Valley, Pa., Iron City once enjoyed brisk sales in the bars outside the mill gates even though it tasted terrible.

Today’s young adults don’t seem to understand this fierce loyalty to brand. They prefer beer with flavor, whether it’s infused with pumpkin spice, chocolate and raspberry or coffee, over those sissy ultra lights or recognizable name-brand drafts typically poured at the smoky local joints where their grandparents once bellied up the bar. This I have been told in random polls of my younger colleagues in the newspaper business.

As for the older crowd, many of whom have been paying the college loans of these finicky beer snobs, it, too, has been gravitating toward this exciting new beer market.

Graying hipsters, like myself, are discovering unusual new beers brewed with cloves, flowers, hard cider or cucumbers.

Maybe this trend also is happening because of the "buy local" movement, which has been fueled by consumer concerns about where food is produced, and big corporations hurting small companies while draining the energy supply.

Or maybe it’s because the youngsters are onto something.

You can't always rely on spell-check

2011-09-23T13:08:00.000-04:00

It would appear by this billboard that a Mon Valley, Pa., sign company has decided to clone someone named Bill Boards and then market them to its customer base :)

Pass me the Twitter pill

2011-09-19T22:45:00.013-04:00

The Twitter feed typically trumps Facebook on my iMac on any given day. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

The other day I stumbled on the web upon five warning signs that someone might need intervention for a Facebook addiction and immediately thought of a certain female friend with a website to promote.

While she shall remain nameless here for a variety of reasons, she encouraged me to write this blog fodder about our conversation, thinking the babble was funny.

The warning signs went something like this: spamming your friends with too many posts per hour, posting so much about your personal life that you wouldn’t think twice to share a photo of your bloody finger after accidentally power-stapling it to a craft project, sharing big personal news there before telling the relatives - in person, Facebooking on your smartphone over drinks or dinner with friends and updating your status while behind the wheel of your car.

My friend in point has suffered them all.

“Check, check,” she responded in a text message before turning the mirror on me by asking if I knew what the warning signs were for Twitter.

She was well aware of my self-confessed love of Twitter, yet was I hesitant about reaffirming that in a list of its addiction warning signs.

Regardless, I Googled the Twitter addiction warning signs, found a list of 29 of them and wondered if those social media users thought they were so damned arrogant and narcissistic they created such a long list to exclude any of them from needing therapy.

I ran through the list, only to be surprised to learn I only met four or five criteria.

Yes, it’s true I hate it when Twitter fails, have become excited over a new followers and did the same when someone retweeted one of my tweets and included a link to my feed in my emails. Yes those things made the list.

However, I don’t have my Twitter ID on business cards, even though that might not be such a bad idea. Twitter won’t show up as the homepage on my browser, and I don’t search my username in realtime or play much with the follow Friday game.

However, I have other Twitter dependencies not on the list that might make a psychologist wonder about my level of dependency on my stream.

I’ve confessed to checking my feed before getting out of bed each morning to make sure WPXI’s Dave Bondy hadn’t tweeted breaking news that I needed to know about.

I’ve also have turned to Twitter for other such breaking news as the Central Pennsylvania flooding from Tropical Storm Lee earlier this month because it was not immediately available on television. During that disaster, a Twitter search took me directly realtime uploads of flood photos and even a video of an historic covered bridge being washed away by high water.

Sorry Facebook. I kind of like you, but that stuff didn’t show up on my news feed that day between my friends' horoscopes and updates on the games they were playing on your site.

I'd take my dose of Twitter any day over the buzz my friend gets from her Facebook.

Blame Canada for this awful shot of booze

2011-09-17T22:30:00.004-04:00

Pittsburgh podcampers raise their glasses to a toast with gross-tasting booze. Blame Canada. (Scott Beveridge photo)

PITTSBURGH – This drinking game came to Pittsburgh via Canada at one of the city's prior conferences for techies and social media geeks known as podcamp Pittsburgh.

And it has caught on, judging from the #pcpgh6 post-camp party Saturday after attendees left the conference at Point Park University and headed for a bar.

This way to a "good" drunk imported a few years ago by a camp attendee from beyond the northern border would be the 6-4-9 game, and it goes like this:

The host walks up to a bartender and orders everyone a shot made of equal parts of the sixth bottle from the left of the back bar, the fourth from the right and then the ninth from the left.

This year's offbeat mix at Bar Louie, Station Square, came in the form of a gross concoction of Southern Comfort, black cherry rum and raspberry vodka.

"It tastes like cough syrup," a few people exclaimed after downing that stuff.

"Dimetapp," others replied, referring to an elixir used to fight the common cold.

Pittsburgh, indeed, isn't a shot-and-beer town anymore.

However, I'm glad I passed on that free drink.

The large Hawaiian with attitude

2011-09-13T15:36:00.001-04:00

Reader Lori Wheatley passes along this clever advertising sign outside a Charleroi, Pa., restaurant, one she snapped in the days before the Pittsburgh Steelers lost in a big way to the Baltimore Ravens in their first regular season game.

Paolo's Pizza & Pastaria combined its name with that of Steelers strong safety Troy Polamalu and then topped it with ingredients associated with the Pacific state where many people mistakenly think the football star was born.

"After seeing this I realized how much this rather creative sign embodies the Pittsburgh spirit and true love for our team," Wheatley stated in an email.

Regardless of whether Paolo's staff knows how to spell Hawaiian, this restaurant at 411 Fallowfield Ave. makes some of the best pizza in the Mon Valley.

Liberty on my mind

2011-09-11T10:09:00.000-04:00

Aboard the ferry to the Statue of Liberty, February 2008.

"Thank you so much"

2011-09-10T12:22:00.000-04:00

An interesting tribute left behind at the Flight 93 National Memorial in Somerset County by a girl named Corrine.

Big bar adventures have become old, for me

2011-09-07T22:50:00.010-04:00

Melissa Arnold of Rockwood, Pa., appeared ready to take down Pittsburgh radio personality Mikey Dougherty, shown beside his cohost Big Bob Mason at an off-campus Karaoke party last month at California University of Pennsylvania. The opposite was true. She credited his online social networking skills for alerting her to the casting call for the upcoming Batman movie, in which she landed a bit part. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

CALIFORNIA, Pa. – It was a hot, late-August Saturday night and I was taking a staycation with nowhere to go in the Mon Valley.

So I decided to head to an off-campus bar at California University of Pennsylvania for what was about to become one of the biggest parties to hit the southwestern Pennsylvania college town in decades. (Well, maybe)

Pittsburgh radio personalities Mikey and Big Bob of 96.1 KISS-FM's The Morning Freak Show were on their Big Bar Adventure and about to host a two-hour Karaoke party there at J. Cole's Inn. It was information I had gleaned from Mikey's Twitter feed, which was ranked No. 1 this year in the region by Pittsburgh magazine.

His tweets can be hilarious.

You should read them, especially if you laugh at raunchy middle-school jokes about flatulence, hangovers or melting-down celebrities. Seriously, though, he's armed with enough connections to break sports and entertainment news in Pittsburgh on Twitter before it's noticed by reporters at the Burgh's big-city dailies or other media outlets.

These guys even got former President Bill Clinton on the telephone in November 2010, and then made national news after he joked with them about the McDonald's McRib sandwich's return to its menu and rapper Lil Wayne's release from prison.

But there in little California, Pa., their attention was fully on the college students and their singing to compete for a Coors Light Karaoke trophy. It featured a shiny aluminum can of the beer adorned with a fake silver microphone, surely a prize worthy of display and admiration in a college kid's dorm room or apartment.

Mikey, otherwise known as Michael Dougherty, appeared to dominate the show and microphone between extremely bad Karaoke performances.

"By eight o'clock it's going to be a disaster in here," he screamed into the mic before the overflowing, cheerful crowd.

Earlier I had taken a seat at a table, while Cee-Lo's catchy tune "F*#@k You," played over the speakers at a decibel seeminly louder than a fire house siren.

Tablefuls of students had gathered around me, gobbling pizza in a room where none of them could possible have engaged in stimulating, intellectual conversation over dinner.

On my table sat the large book of songs available for the singing.

Big Bob, AKA Bob Mason, walked over to say hello, as the more polite part of the act. He shook my hand and asked if I was planning to sing.

"No," I responded, and then realized I was the oldest person in the room, without revealing my role to him as a blogger.

Meanwhile, a young guy named Steve was taking the stage. He came with a group of guys celebrating his bachelor party and wearing a fake Mike Tyson tribal tattoo on the side of his face identical to the one also worn by actor Ed Helms in this summer's disappointing "The Hangover 2" movie.

I wanted to cover my ears when Steve oddly and sourly belted out "It's Raining Men," the 1983 hit song by the Weather Girls.

"It started good, but ended bad for Steve," said either Big Bob or Mikey. It was hard to identify the voice over all that noise.

A half hour of that "fun" was all I could take. I headed to the front door of the bar at 334 Third St. and to my sedan to return to the peace and quiet of my house.

It was four days before my 55th birthday, when I was about to become eligible for the senior citizen discount price admission to Kennywood amusement park in Pittsburgh.

It was long past the time for me to bring on the soft folk or jazz music, I decided on the leisurely drive home.

Donora; there is nobody here

2011-09-05T10:34:00.001-04:00

This slideshow accompanies a story in the Observer-Reporter. The link will only last about a month.

Hanging a steamboat mural

2011-09-02T22:52:00.003-04:00

Artists David Lesako, wearing the suspenders, and Jim Winegar, both of Greene County, Pa., hang a mural of the historic steamboat Enterprise, a project Winegar created for Brownsville, Pa., with Mon Valley high school students attending summer art school at Douglas Education Center in Monessen. The boat launched at Brownsville in 1814 became the first such vessel to successfully navigate the Monongahela, Oho and Mississippi rivers from the upper to Mon to New Orleans and back. (Photo montage produced by Scott Beveridge, Observer-Reporter)

And then the 911 call went silent

2011-08-30T22:15:00.014-04:00

A couple pauses Tuesday at the temporary overlook to the new Flight 93 Memorial in Shanksville, Pa., two weeks before it opens on the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – As the 10th anniversary nears of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Queda terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, many Americans seem to be recalling where they were upon hearing the news about the tragedies.

My story about that day begins with the drive to work at a newspaper in little Washington, Pa., while listening and laughing to the venerable Pittsburgh rock & roll station WDVE-FM's morning show.

The disc jockey broke in, saying a plane had just crashed into the World Trade Center as I traveled a few blocks away from my job at the Observer-Reporter.

My mind flashed then to an old photo I once saw of a B-25 that accidentally crashed in 1945 into the Empire State Building, and I mistakenly assumed something similar had just happened.

WDVE's next report a short time later that a second jetliner had struck another one of the Twin Towers as I pulled into the newspaper's parking lot sent me scurrying into the newsroom for more information.

My startled coworkers had gathered there around a television staring at its screen in stoned silence. I joined them before turning on a computer at my desk moments before the telephone there rang.

It was my mom, June Beveridge, on the line calling from Rostraver Township police department, where she worked as a clerk.

"Another plane just crashed in Westmoreland County," she whispered on the other end. "Are you OK?"

She was under strict orders not to leak police information to me because of my job as a journalist in neighboring Washington County.

The rule was off the table. Like most of us she was frightened. Like most mothers she wanted to be reassured her children were safe, especially because this terrorist attack played out before our eyes, too close to home.

I turned from our conversation to tell my colleagues about the fourth jet crash shortly about the time they watched on TV the third in flames at the Pentagon. They looked at me in stunned disbelief, and went back to watching CNN.

Moments later CNN announced the fourth plane had actually crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pa., in a county on the southeast side of Westmoreland.

Little did we know at the time that our newspaper probably received the first official report in the United States from my mother about that leg of the story.

Armed with the information, though, we couldn't do much with it in an era predating instant news reports on our website, Twitter or Facebook. Truth be told most people in America were helpless to the situation. Everyone seemed to have wanted to help. About all anyone could do was offer a hug or later donate blood for the survivors or sign up for the military to fight the subsequent and long war on terrorism.

Ten years later the story of the passengers and crew of Flight 93 that embarked from New Jersey to fly to San Francisco has become familiar to most Americans. Most of us now know they decided to overtake the hijackers, who selected to crash that plane in Somerset, just 20 minutes away from their attended target, rather than fulfill the mission.

Those Saudis were supposedly en route to destroy the U.S. Capitol while lawmakers were in session when that Boeing 757 rolled upside down in the sky 50 feet above ground before it crashed in a ball of fire, killing the 39 passengers and crew aboard the aircraft. The four hijackers perished as well, before having murdered a flight attendant during the ordeal.

The mistake about where that crash occurred is retold now in Shanksville as the National Park Service prepares to open a new memorial at the crash site this Sept 11 to the passengers and crew of Flight 93. The call came in from the plane to 911 over Westmoreland airspace from passenger Edward Felt.

The 911 transcript is in a notebook now in Shanksville detailing the confused responses from an unnamed dispatcher, who surely could not have been trained to receive such a disturbing call.

Felt used his cell phone at 9:58 a.m. near a rear rest room to place the call, according to the FBI report.

"Hijacking in progress," said Felt, a computer engineer from Matawan, NJ, and father of two daughters.

The dispatcher asked him for his phone number amid sometimes inaudible responses.

"Said plane is going down," the dispatcher stated.

The dispatcher then inaccurately announced the plane crashed somewhere over Mount Pleasant, a town in Westmoreland an hour's drive by car from Shanksville.

And then their conversation went silent.

Missing: poor kids in college

2011-08-28T22:16:00.004-04:00

Home away from home came in the form of a love seat for California University of Pennsylvania freshman Kody Wisilosky of Connellsville, Pa., not shown, above, to park in to study or play video games in his dorm. (Scott Beveridge/Observer-Reporter)

By Scott Beveridge

CALIFORNIA, Pa. – It struck me last week while reporting on move-in day at California University of Pennsylvania that I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to attend college as a freshman in 2011.

While watching today’s new high school graduates move mountains of belongings into Cal U.’s dorms, I also wondered how their displays of acquired stuff would have made a kid like me feel in 1974 on my first day at college, having come from a low-income family. I mean it took two vehicles in some cases Thursday to bring one new kid to the campus.

I went to Edinboro State College with barely enough beloingings to put inside a cheap, black Masonite footlocker my parents purchased the previous year at Hill’s Department Store as my Christmas present. I packed it the following August with my junk, including a coat that wasn’t warm enough for the upcoming winter, and went to Edinboro wearing shoes with holes in their soles and just enough money to pay for my first semester’s books.

That was all we could afford with mom and dad each earning a little more than minimum wage two years after he lost his skilled labor job at a steel mill, when it forever shuttered its gates.

Fortunately, though, their incomes qualified me for state and federal college grants that covered the entire cost of tuition and room-and-board my first term and a good portion of those costs for the next three years after transferring to Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

Those grants since have disappeared. On top of that, my less-than-stellar high school academic performance and college entrance exam score wouldn’t have been good enough now for acceptance into some of Pennsylvania’s state universities, which claim to have raised those bars on prospective applicants.

These things also made this newspaper journalist wonder if Pennsylvania and its public universities have squeezed out the poor.

That's a lot of food

2011-08-27T16:52:00.004-04:00

Scott Beveridge photo

MEADOWLANDS, Pa. – Jake Karp of Mt. Lebanon, Pa., above, sorts food today as it arrives to the Meadows Racetrack & Casino in North Strabane Township as the clock winds down on its efforts to break the world record for the most food collected in a 24-hour period.

The Great American Food Drive, which began yesterday at 8 p.m., had collected nearly 200,000 pounds of food by about 2 p.m. today, far short of its goal. The casino must collect more than 559,885 pounds of food by 8 p.m. to make the Guinness Book of World Records, organizers said.

"I feel pretty confident we are going to make it," said Ken Westcott, a former mayor of nearby Washington, Pa., and a member of the Washington County Food Pantry board.

Several tractor-trailer trucks had arrived at the casino with food and were awaiting the scales.

But the drive would need another four truckloads and additional donations to break the record, said Chris Plumtree, the pantry's coordinator of charitable giving.

"It's not about breaking a record, but about raising food to help people," Plumtree said.

UPDATE: The casino fell short of its goal, but did collect a whopping 431,000 pounds of donated food and marked a Guinness notation in a category now known as the Great American Food Drive. That record will need to be broken in the future by any other food pantry that attempts to break it, a casino spokeswoman said. The food collected in this drive will feed 10,102 families, she said.

This is the way Pittsburgh does it

2011-08-23T21:33:00.000-04:00

I'm sort of surprised this YouTube video of Fort Cherry High School quarterback Tanner Garry hasn't gone viral, given the cool tricks the Washington County, Pa., athlete performs with the pigskin.

Music on the Mon

2011-08-22T08:13:00.001-04:00

The bluegrass tune "Dance All Night With a Bottle in Your Hand" performed by Tiger Maple String Band at Nemacolin Castle in Brownsville, Pa., in a concert sponsored by Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp.

Fredericktown of yesterday

2011-08-19T08:07:00.004-04:00

If you're heading to Washington County Agricultural Fair this weekend set aside some time to stop in the historic stone John White House owned and operated by Washington County History and Landmarks Foundation. The organization has put together an exhibit of old photographs taken in towns along the Monongahela River Valley. The video, above, shows a number of them from Fredericktown, Pa.

"Dixie" on the banjo

2011-08-16T09:40:00.005-04:00

Harry Fisher of Fayette County, Pa., on the banjo and backed up by a nephew, Michael Fisher, performs this Civil War-era folk song at Charleroi Senior Center in a program sponsored by Charleroi Area Historical Society.

An open letter to Batman

2011-08-14T12:37:00.003-04:00

Batman's batmobiles known as Tumblers leave downtown Saturday after a film shoot came to a successful end along nearby Smithfield Street. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Dear Caped Crusader,

Things haven't been going so well since you showed up in Pittsburgh last month to begin filming "The Dark Knight Rises."

The Pittsburgh Pirates' winning streak came to an abrupt end after the Golden Triangle was transformed into Gotham City, dropping the home team from first place to fourth in the National League's Central Division.

Meanwhile, your movie director Christopher Nolan has dusted Downtown with fake snow, giving it the appearance of a bitter cold January day in the muggy heat of August. As if Pittsburgh's weather isn't already schizophrenic.

The traffic jams have been nothing short of sinister since your Batmobile known as the Tumbler began to speed along Smithfield Street. Just so you know, Pittsburghers have been calling this backed-up traffic, baffic, in your honor.

While the hottest Catwoman to date, Anne Hathaway, received a private tour of The Warhol, some downtown establishments have been starving for business because said baffic is scaring off customers. Holy Belgian Beer Batman it was even slow Saturday night in Sharp Edge Bistro on Penn Avenue.

There is only one way to make this up for all this commotion.

Please accept our invitation to hold this movie's premiere here in Pittsburgh before it hits screens across America in July 2012. We are sure something could be worked out at the ornate Heinz Hall to satisfy the glitz of Hollywood.

Sincerely,

Travel with a Beveridge

Cold signs in Downtown Saturday on sidewalks dusted with fake snow during filming of the newest Batman movie. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Left in a cloud

2011-08-12T10:14:00.000-04:00

Check out the humorous logo a couple police officers came up with in Donora, Pa., to put on T-shirts for the upcoming Donora Smog Run.

The 5K run/walk and 10K skate will be held Nov. 5.

James Madison hid his slaves behind his case for freedom

2011-08-08T22:22:00.010-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation in Washington, D.C., is rebuilding slave cabins, which once were shielded behind trees to the right of James Madison's Montpelier in the Piedmont of Virginia. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

ORANGE, Va. – The father of the U.S. Constitution left behind a conflicting legacy in terms of equal rights when it came to slave ownership.

As a young lawmaker James Madison argued in support of abolishing slavery, only to later seek a compromise on the issue to hold the young, divided nation together, said Mike Dickens, a guide at the fourth president of the United States' beloved plantation, Montpelier.

"He died knowing he failed," Dickens said while leading a tour on a hot, muggy July afternoon of the property in Orange, Va., undergoing intense restoration by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.

Dickens' tour focuses exclusively on the enslaved community here, where as many as 110 slaves lived at any given time to run the house and work the tobacco fields.

He begins with the murky story about Madison's grandfather, Ambrose, supposedly having been poisoned by three of the family's slaves six months after he acquired the property in the Piedmont of Virginia in 1723. While the science of proving cause of death then proved unreliable, one of the slaves died by execution, while two others would be convicted, too, only to be returned to the plantation and work there for the remainder of their lives.

"It raises all sorts of questions," Dickens said, including one about why slaves at that time would have even been afforded their day in court.

"These were real people," he said. "They had certain rights."

Years later, James Madison would plant an alley of pine trees on each side of his stately brick mansion to shield from view the buildings where his skilled slaves worked and also the tiny cabins where they lived. Montpelier's slaves bedded in six, two-room duplexes, which each measured 19 feet by 20 feet and slept 10 people, Dickens said.

Madison shielded the outbuildings, having stated his house did not "look tidy" sandwiched between them, Dickens said.

Meanwhile, Madison would write the draft of the U.S. Constitution in the second-floor library of the big house under the direction of America's founding fathers. He did so while reading books written in several languages on the topic of governmental policies sent to him from abroad by Thomas Jefferson.

He would later author the Bill of Rights after the First Congress convened in 1789, with a personal master slave at his side. On one trip to Philadelphia, he wrote home that his slave Billey "has been tainted by freedom" and argued in support of setting the man free.

Once freed Billey chose the name of William Gardner, went on to become a shipping agent and did business with the Madison family - while his parents remained enslaved at Montpelier. Gardner likely wanted to keep a good relationship with the Madisons to ensure his parents were treated properly on the plantation, Dickens said.

Gardner soon went missing at sea during a storm, and Madison "had enough decency in his soul that he wrote to Gardner's parents that he had perished," Dickens said.

He ends his tour in the slave cemetery, where tombstone are barely visible on grounds covered in periwinkle. He breaks off a piece of the green vine and says, quietly, that most slave cemeteries like this one are buried under the plant because its leaves break off in fours and resemble a Christian cross.

"Madison deserves some postmortem credit," Dickens said.

Madison authored the 14th Amendment, which states the federal government cannot take away a man's liberties without due process, he said.

"And he helped to form the U.S. Supreme Court, which used it to put an end to the Jim Crow era," he said.

If you go make sure to set aside time to also visit the nearby segregated 1910 Southern Railroad train depot, shown above, which has been restored by the Montpelier Foundation without changing its separate entrances for coloreds and whites. Its two waiting rooms, one smaller for black people, were required by segregation laws on the books in Virginia from the 1890s until the 1960s. And don't miss the freedman's cabin, either. It's one of just two such remaining log houses built by an emancipated slave in this state about the time of the Civil War. The house, shown below, was built by George Gilmore, a slave born at Montpelier after he was freed in 1865 during federal occupancy of the area.

Brahms' "Lullaby" with a little wine

2011-08-07T17:48:00.002-04:00

Take a well-deserved few minutes and relax to Brahms' "Lullaby" performed today by Washington Symphony Orchestra at the first Wine Jazz & Pops Festival at Mingo Creek County Park in Nottingham Township, Pa.

The event benefits the Washington, Pa., orchestra and Mental Health of Washington County.

The Ringgold Cavalry: A Civil War outfit of bushwhackers

2011-08-04T13:45:00.001-04:00

Surviving members of the Ringgold Calvalry gathered for this group photograph during a 1903 reunion in Fredericktown, Pa.

By Scott Beveridge

A patriotic fervor swept across Washington and Greene counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania after Confederate troops opened fire on Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, S.C., signaling the start of the Civil War 150 years ago.

Local men believed the Union Army would quickly prevail and the war would be over before any of them had a chance to fight, said Mark Tomazin, former president of the Washington County Historical Society.

"Everybody was revved up," Tomazin said.

Few could have predicted then that it would take the North nearly four years to regain Fort Sumter following the April 12, 1861, attack.

In the early months of the war, Capt. John Keys of Beallsville, Pa., petitioned Pennsylvania Gov. A. G.. Curtin to reorganize the Ringgold Cavalry, which formed on July 4, 1847, to enter the Mexican-American War. The fighting horsemen had taken their name from Maj. Samuel Ringgold of Washington County, Md., an 1818 West Point graduate who was killed in that war, and they were eager to serve again.

Keys was "anxious to do what he could (to) save the Union," Sgt. John W. Elwood of Coal Center wrote in his 1914 memoirs, "Elwood's Stories of the Old RinggoldCavalry 1847-1865."

But Curtin turned Keys down because President Abraham Lincoln was interested in recruiting only foot soldiers, Tomazin said. Some of the cavalry members were thought to have been too old for service, added John "Jack" Cattaneo, a retired Ringgold High School history teacher.

"They went over his head to Secretary of War Simon Cameron," Cattaneo said.

Cameron, who had befriended Keys' father while working as a contractor on the National Road, delivered his approval of the cavalry in a letter that arrived in Beallsville June 18,1861.

"It was read and reread until it was almost worn out," Elwood's book states.

By then, the area known today as West Virginia was being brought into the war, and Gen. Thomas Jonathan "Stonewall" Jackson and other Confederate leaders would soon have their sights set on destroying fertile farmland the Monongahela River valley. Those farms stocked the Union Army's food supply. From there Confederates forces planned to march north and attack Pittsburgh, which was a major supplier of soldiers and weapons to the North.

"The Ringgold left with farm horses and ancient weapons. They had to outfit themselves," Cattaneo said.

They had no uniforms or arms other than "flintlock horse pistols" and were required to supply their own ammunition, Elwood wrote.

Of the original cavalry of more than 50 men, fewer than a dozen went to the front lines. The reorganized cavalry left a large crowd of well-wishers in Beallsville only four days after Keys received the Cameron letter with 70 new recruits to serve in Grafton, W.Va., then part of Virginia.

The Ringgold probably never fought in any famous battle, although some of its members fought in the Battle of Gettysburg, Tomazin said.

Among the most famous campaigns the cavalry served in was Jackson's failed Romney Expedition to secure western Virginia. The campaign took place seven months after the cavalry formed, and it became known as Jackson's first major defeat of the war.

Jackson was forced back to Winchester, Va., mostly because of bitter winter weather. His troops were inexperienced. Many soldiers either deserted Jackson or froze to death, Tomazin said.

However, its members marched more than 375 miles in one campaign and traveled at least 800 miles on another, Ralph Haas wrote in his book, "The Ringgold Cavalry, the Rest of the Story."

Haas described the cavalry as an outfit of bushwhackers, or cold-blooded guerilla fighters.

Their mission mostly had them serving as scouts and guards protecting the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, Tomazin said.

The Ringgold also had numerous skirmishes with the McNeill Rangers, Confederate scouts known for plotting their killings, Haas wrote.

"They served long and hard," Tomazin said.

The two units fought so often that they developed a mutual respect across enemy lines, he said. The onetime enemies even attended each others' reunions after the war ended, according to Haas' book.

The Ringgold would end the war having lost three enlisted men to battle and 19 to disease. Keys, who died in Beallsville Nov. 10, 1863, was among those who succumbed to disease, according to Civil War in the East, an online reference guide to the war.

Four decades ago, Ringgold School District formed and took the name as a tribute to the cavalry.

"To me they were heroes," Tomazin said.

(This story first appeared in the Observer-Reporter)

A smart photo app

2011-08-01T23:21:00.006-04:00

Here are two examples of the fun I'm having with the Droid X picplz app, which allows users to pretend as if they are using a camera with special filters.

The top shot is the Washington County Courthouse in Washington, Pa., through the "The 70s" filter. The other shows the broken-down, historic Donora-Webster Bridge over the Monongahela River in Westmoreland County, Pa., in "high contrast monochrome."

I have to admit - even as a journalist who doesn't like highly processed photographs - this app is a pretty cool way to jazz up images. The only criticism I have for this app is that there doesn't seem to have a function to cancel an upload once it has been started. (For iPhone users the app similar to picplz is Instagram)

----------------------------------------------------------------

So I went experimenting again with this app in Donora, one of my favorite rust belt places to photograph, and came back with the following:

A fire hydrant atop freshly applied cement at McKean Avenue and Fouth Street, how it appears digitized in the "Russian Toy Camera" filter.

The long-closed Pennsylvania Liquor Store in the former Grand Theater in the 600 block of McKean Avenue. This is how it appears in the "Little Plastic Lens."

The Norfolk Southern rail line, north of the walkway on the Donora-Webster Bridge and run through "Instant Film."

The shuttered Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church at McKean Avenue and 10th Street, as seen through the "Russian Toy Camera" filter.

A village about to lose its identity

2011-07-28T15:59:00.006-04:00

Former Webster, Pa., Postmaster Bee Hodgson poses outside the old post office under a zip code facing extinction. (photographer unknown)

By Scott Beveridge

WEBSTER, Pa. – The news Tuesday about the U.S. Postal Service’s proposal to close the tiny post office in my hometown will likely lead to a new dateline on stories I write about the village.

The demise of the 15087 zip code as early as December has the potential of wiping the small Southwestern Pennsylvania town off the map. In all likelihood the few hundred people who call Webster their home will receive mail at their street addresses, with Webster being replaced on the envelopes by Belle Vernon.

It really doesn’t make sense for the federal government to keep open the 3,700 small post offices on the list for review if they are losing money. It especially makes sense to close them when the government is so heavily in debt and facing public demands for cutbacks in spending.

What doesn’t make sense, though, is the rational Congress has used in the past to establish zip codes.

For example, people who live in parts of Centerville in Washington County, Pa., have mailing addresses in Brownsville, Fayette County. Some of my neighbors in Forward Township, Allegheny County, receive their mail under addresses of Monongahela, a small city in Washington County.

It would make better sense to give people addresses in the municipalities where they reside. Sometimes I wonder if the people who made these decisions about postal logistics were using LSD during brainstorming sessions.

And if things proceed as they appear, the Westmoreland County village of Webster in Rostraver Township would next year be given an address associated with a small borough that doesn't even have a post office 10 miles away in Fayette County.

If you are having trouble following along it's understandable because this system of addressing is insane. It's no wonder Comcast and the electric and gas companies have trouble finding my house when those utilities black out.

The post office needs to catch up with the times. The privately owned FedeX and ups figured out this nightmare a long time ago, before global positioning satellites added better layers to finding destinations. And those companies do a great of finding my house to deliver things when I order products on the Internet.

What's even sadder for Webster is the post office is the last public door in town where residents can enter and mingle, exchange greetings and feel connected to a community, except for a fire hall and smokey bar.

And if the state Department of Transportation ends up demolishing the old, closed Donora-Webster Bridge over the Monongahela River, Websterians won't even be able to walk to a store to purchase a newspaper, quart of milk or loaf of bread.