Civil War re-enactors rock the trumpet

U.S. Civil War re-enactors of the 105th Pennsylvania Regimental Band known as the Wildcats perform at the Senator John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh in conjunction with a May 2011 visit to the city by the Pennsylvania Civil War Road Show. Most members of the drum and bugle corps are from the Indiana, Pa., area, where the regiment was recruited. (Travel with a Beveridge video) 

Mother

Author unknown


The sound of your voice,
The light of your smile -
These are the things that
Make life worthwhile


The touch of your hand,
The warmth of your cheer -
These are the treasurers
I count most dear


The soul of goodness
The heart of your worth -
I wouldn't give these
For half the earth


(Found on a May 13, 1951, card from the Oder of Owls, Monongahela, Pa.)

A mansion tour of a different sort

This is an old photo of a Monongahela River ferry used in the early 1900s below the downtown area known as the Neck in Brownsville, Pa. The image is among a collection of rarely-seen photographs of the historic Fayette County borough, some of which will be on display in an upcoming mansion tour. (BARC photo)


Talk about an unusual way to welcome the public into a creepy old mansion awaiting a clever redeveloper.


The Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp. is inviting the public to tour an exhibit of old local photographs two days this month inside the rundown Rose Mansion it recently acquired in a donation.


The rarely-seen old photos are part of a collection of more than 1,000 donated by former resident Bill Patterson, a retired educator in Erie. The shot will feature those of Brownsville's historic Northside and of the once-booming downtown district known as the Neck.


The mansion has an interesting history, which was told in the following recent article in the Observer-Reporter:


By Scott Beveridge, Staff writer
sbeveridge@observer-reporter.com


BROWNSVILLE, Pa.  – The back door barely hangs on its hinges at the stately and historic Rose Mansion in Brownsville.

Lead paint peels from interior walls and fallen ceiling plaster coats the floors in this landmark built in 1873 along the National Road as Monongahela National Bank.


Yet there is hope the building will be returned to its original luster among members of a local revitalization group, which has received the building in a donation from the Rose family heirs.


"With the right amount of care and money ..." said Kasandra Ward, a Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp. board member.


"It's a worthwhile project because it has a lot of historical value," Ward said in February 2011, when BARC members toured the house to brainstorm ideas on how to open its doors to the public for the first time since 1903.


BARC wants to organize an exhibit of old photographs at the house, timed for Pike Days May 21-22, to show people how the place looks before restorations begin.


"We're doing this so we can actually get people interested in this house ... take a peek inside," Ward said.


The house contains eight large rooms with nearly 20-foot ceilings and an addition in the back with several smaller rooms. The stone and red brick facade boasts 10-foot-tall Italianate windows.


Sam Rose converted the building into a house about a century ago, also he also headquartered nearby his moving company, said BARC Executive Director Dennis J. Cremonese.


It remained occupied until the early 2000s, when Rose's son, Peter, died, Cremonese said.


BARC is seeking bids from companies interested in performing marketing and feasibility studies on the best reuse of the house in Fayette County, just across the Lane-Bane Bridge from West Brownsville.


One option under consideration, he said, is converting the house into a bed-and-breakfast. However, BARC needs a solid plan before it can obtain grants to perform renovations, which are expected to cost between $350,000 and $750,000, Cremonese said.


"First, we have to figure out how we are going to clean it," Ward said. "There is rubbish everywhere."

Blake Fisher, an AmeriCorps VISTA worker assigned to Brownsville Area Revitalization Corp., left, and Maren Meszaros, a California University of Pennsylvania intern, tour the historic Rose House BARC has received in a donation and is about to restore on the National Road. Observer-Reporter. 

(The house will be open to tours from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. May 21, and noon to 4 p.m. May 22. The $5 admission will help BARC in its efforts to pay for community development.)

Barbershop singers

Members of the Mon Valley Chordsmen, a barbershop chorus south of Pittsburgh, perform "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," an historic African-American spiritual. The chorus is shown at Rehoboth Presbyterian Church in Rostraver Township, Pa. Stay with it until the end to catch the "Elvis moment."

God Bless America

That old college anxiety

The dingy trailer I called home in 1977 during my junior year at Indiana University of Pennsylvania.

By Scott Beveridge

INDIANA, Pa. – Normally I return from a trip to the college of my youth feeling a bit sappy, remembering the many good times and friends lost to the passing decades.

That didn’t happen Thursday when I went back to Indiana University of Pennsylvania to speak about the challenges of  modern print journalism, and how the jobs held by reporters and editors are being reshaped by the social media revolution.

That day gave me anxiety as if I had swallowed a big pill of college anxiety while walking around the respected Indiana, Pa., campus, whose cramped dormitories have been replaced with hotel-quality rooms and suites.

It might have been a case of the jitters about speaking in public that made me feel a bit nervous. But the 34 yers that have passed since I attended IUP oddly left me feeling as if I was remembering the student life of someone else.

Sure much has changed since I left the school in the winter of 1977. Other new buildings have been construction, while some of the older halls have been remodeled. A glass atrium now connects the two old theater buildings at the south edge of the Oak Grove.

It lost a few old-growth trees to severe storms a year ago, but the small park hadn’t changed much in the center of the campus.

Except last week a small group of co-eds were fencing on a concrete patio while other students created colorful sidewalk chalk art under the mighty oaks. In my day, it was more common to pass professors there smoking marijuana with their students while campus security looked the other way.

I’ve always begun my journeys to IUP with a drive past Poets Village to revisit my first apartment there in a boring building with paper thin walls. The public housing with light, drab, olive green  vinyl siding was brand new when I moved there in the summer of 1975. Without a car, I would hitchhike to school some days or walk or travel there on my three-speed Huffy Red Baron bicycle.

Nowadays students enjoy the luxury of having shuttle buses to travel the five miles from the college to Poets Village or the hotels and shopping plazas that since have been developed in that area.

I then leave to see if the dingy trailer where I called home my junior year survived time on its concrete blocks behind the Long John Silver’s seafood restaurant on the outskirts of the small town. The white shack with ruby red trim hasn’t changed along a gravel road off Pine Street, but didn’t look this time as if it had current occupants.

A friend remarked in a comment under a photo I immediately posted of the place on Facebook that it “looks like maybe you had to go outside to change your mind.” It was so small that I could park in bed and touch all four walls of my bedroom with my arms and feet.

I was happy, though, to live so close to that fast-food restaurant where, for less than a buck, I often bought for dinner greasy cornmeal hush puppies with extra crisps that fell off the fish in the fryer.

We gave definition to poor college kids. Memories of the poverty and living in a trailer park might have helped to form the basis of my having felt anxious this trip rather than mixed sentiments of happiness and sadness.

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