Writer passes down her grandmother's love of printed words

John Irving's "The World According to Garp" was a life-changer for this Pittsburgh-area journalist.

“Books are uniquely portable magic.” - Stephen King

By Amanda Gillooly

My grandmother was particularly proud of her vocabulary.

She often said that while her Depression-era childhood didn't afford her an opportunity to even finish grade school, those circumstances never stopped her from getting an education.

Peg Crowe cuddles Amanda Gillooly

No, Peg Crowe was a lifelong learner – and her teacher of choice was literature.

Gram was the type of woman who kept a Woman's Day magazine on the dining room table and a Louis L'Amour book on her bed stand.

She was never, it seemed, without a book.

“There's always something to learn,” she would tell me. “Read. Read anything.”

Although she never forgot a birthday or holiday, the best gift she ever gave me was a love for reading.

I received the gift of sorts when she found out that my second-grade teacher had placed me in a remedial reading course.

After that, it was on.

Trips to the grocery store became scavenger hunts for words on labels.

I will always remember the Kmart in Moon Township as the first book store I came to know – every weekend she would pick up a L'Amour book and allow me to pick out one to read as well.

And for an hour each night before bed on the weekends we would read.

By the second half of the year, I was no longer a sub-par reader and had been placed in a class with other kids with “normal” skills.

By the time I was in third grade, I was in the advanced reading class.

I eventually grew out of the R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike novels and moved my way into more adult books.

“The Long Walk” by Richard Bauchman and “The World According to Garp” by John Irving were life-changing experiences for me – and were a form of solace during pre-teen years living with a troubled parent in rundown, roach-infested apartments.

To this day I pack too many books on vacation, I have too many piled on my coffee table and I admit I push especially good reads on anyone who isn't familiar with them.

There are several books (think “A Prayer for Owen Meany” and “Different Seasons”) that I seek out in used book stores just so I can give them away to friends who have never read them.

Alas: I've become a book pusher, just like my grandmother.

Just ask my nephew, Nicholas.

At almost 10, he likes to describe himself as a “gamer.”

Hopefully, by the time I'm done with him, he'll change that to “reader.”

Nicholas is in third grade—and much smarter than I ever hoped to be at that age.

His reading and comprehension are just fine (there's nothing remedial about Nicholas), but it bugs the hell out of me that he thinks of reading as a chore, as something you do when you CAN'T play video games.

I want him to seek books out. I want him to have the experience of waiting in anticipation for his favorite author's new book release, and know how it feels to finally check out the cover art on the way home from the store.

At 33, I still do that (In fact, tomorrow marks the release date for Stephen King's new novel, “Dr. Sleep” (a sequel of sorts to “The Shining”).

I am happy to say that Nicholas is getting there.

A few weeks ago, I needed to stop at the venerable Kmart to see if the book section had the second installment of a popular new series I am pretty much addicted to.

While I scanned the titles, I noticed Nicholas pick up a book nearby and read the blurb on the back.

Within a few minutes, he walked up to me and said, “Aunt Mandy, look, they have that book you were telling me about, 'The Lightening Thief.'”

I know a chance when I see one, and I know better than to let one pass me by.

So I said:

“Cool! Here, I'll buy it for you. After you're done reading it, you can give it to me and I will read it, too. Then I will buy you the second one.”

When I visited yesterday, he told me he was more than halfway done with the books.

And he likes it.

Peg Crowe would be proud.

Amanda Gillooly is a Pittsburgh-area freelance writer. The former editor of the Canon-McMillan Patch, Gillooly has also worked as a reporter with the Observer-Reporter, the Beaver County Times, the Valley Independent and the Innocence Institute of Point Park University. Her work has also been seen in the Tribune Review and the Pittsburgh Post Gazette.

Come in, grab a beer and go home with a growler

As many as 11 beers are featured on the taps at Full Pint Brewing near Pittsburgh. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

NORTH VERSAILLES, Pa. – With Halloween approaching, fans of a Pittsburgh-area brewery are “getting stoked” about its label featuring a zombie whose skin is turning blue while clutching a brown bottle of beer.

Preorders were already huge in late August for Full Pint Brewing Co.’s Night of the Living Stout, a label inspired by the classic 1968 horror movie of a similar name filmed in and around Pittsburgh.

“It’s crunch time,” said Jake Kristophel, head brewer at the business along Route 30 in Westmoreland County near North Versailles Township.

The brew pub opened in 2009 as a collaborative effort of four men who worked in the beer business and decided to partner their skills at Full Pint, which has grown since its founding to produce nearly 8,000 barrels a year.

“We all worked in little brew pubs and decided to come together,” Kristophel said.

In a marketing move some are calling brilliant, the brewery launched a new label in August named “Pittsburgh Dad,” whose online sitcom featuring a blue-collar father with a heavy “yinzer” accent has made him a local celebrity.

“He actually came to us and asked,” Kristophel said, adding the actor otherwise known as Curt Wootton now has his photo on the label of a Full Pint Kolsch, a German-style golden stout.

“He wanted something on the lighter side,” Kristophel said.---- This business with a barroom and production house is tucked away off a short alley at 1963 Lincoln Highway.

On an afternoon in mid-August, Kristophel is “mashing out” the spent grain from a stainless-steel brew tank to separate the wort, which becomes beer during fermentation.

Three employees are nearby, bottling and casing brew for the market on the company’s one production line. It takes them an hour to fill a palate and three hours to cap 15 barrels, said Desiree Siroisi, who also handles the restaurant’s food preparation.

Small independent craft beer brewers are known for giving their beers offensive names, and that extends to the menu at Full Pint. For example, a ham and provolone panini is named the “Hot Dago,” a term some Italians consider derogatory.

Kristophel said he learned the art of making beer while working under a head brewer at a different pub.

“I brewed one batch of home brew and really enjoyed it, so I begged the head brewer to teach me, and that was it.”

Another popular beer brewed here is Chinookie, made from hops of the same name grown in the Pacific Northwest, which give the brew a hint of a grapefruit taste.

“It’s just the character of the hop,” Kristophel said.---- The Wet Hop variety of Chinookie sees an infusion of fresh hops after fermentation to bump up its rich, heavy flavor.

“I think people want something that tastes good. It’s hard to stay loyal to one thing because there are so many choices out there,” Kristophel said.

Full Pint can be purchased across Pennsylvania, in Ohio and Florida, a state with many Pittsburgh transplants and Steelers bars. The company hopes to expand and relocate to a larger building closer to Pittsburgh.

The pub, which offers as many as 11 different taps, is open from 5 to 9 p.m. Monday through Wednesday, 5 to 11 p.m. Thursday and Friday and noon to 11 Saturday. The hours are subject to change if the bar is empty after 9 p.m.

“Come in, get a beer, some food and a tour and go home with a growler or six pack,” Kristophel said.

Jake Kristophel, head brewer at Full Pint Brewing Co. near Pittsburgh, mashes out a tank while visitors enjoys beer in the adjoining brewpub. (Scott Beveridge photo)

(This story first appeared in the Observer-Reporter's Living Washington County magazine)

Camping in-style in South Jersey

The rustic cabin where I spent four nights vacationing this summer outside of my comfort zone. (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, NJ – A party of at least nine people and their yapping dog moved in next door into an identically-small wooden cabin designed to sleep four where I spent the first week of September just north of Cape May, NJ.

Thankfully, this large group arrived about the same time I would check out of the otherwise quiet Ponderosa Campground in Cape May Court House, wondering how they would all fit in that pine box smaller than your average motel room.

I couldn't help but notice the bumper sticker on their vehicle, either, which read, "Worry about your own damned family."

"They must get a lot of dirty looks," a friend replied via text message after I mentioned this discovery that Friday on my smartphone.

Yes. I stepped outside of my comfort zone for this summer vacation by choosing to bed down in a campground. I mean you're reading about a guy who prefers a clean hotel room, crisp sheets and a great view when he travels.

However, at $40 a night during the off-season along the South Jersey Shore, a cabin here with a bathroom with a shower, a small refrigerator and air-conditioning called my penny-pinching name.

And, other than it having an air-conditioner that made a racket and occasionally spit pellets of frozen condensation, the place was comfortable. It was especially quiet, too, that Monday through Friday after most tourists and beachcombers here had already headed north for the approaching winter.

This campground also was less than a 15-minute drive to my destination of Cape May, NJ, America's oldest resort town discovered by Henry Hudson in 1609, and later explored by Cornelius Jacobsen Mey for the Dutch West India Co.

Cape May is a gorgeous town boasting many rows of pretty, meticulously-restored Victorian-era houses, whose gingerbread adornments provide a great opportunity for a good house painter to never go without work.

But, this place is a tourist trap that appears to draw mostly white people with deep pockets who like to purchase over-priced merchandise in shops by the sea. 

I also found the locals in the towns up and down these beaches to be a bit snobby, similar to old-school Bostonians.

Yet, the area is worthy of a visit for the relaxation and beaches it offers, and, if, for no other reason, than to sample the Centennial India Pale Ale brewed by the 2-year-old Cape May Brewing Co.

An elegant painted lady along Stockton Avenue, one of the most-beautiful streets to be found in Cape May, NJ. (Scott Beveridge photo)

Baked ham and eggs on portobello with asiago

Baked ham and eggs on portobello with asiago (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

Baked eggs were a thing while I was growing up in the 1960s and then they disappeared from our diet.

Maybe it was because they were boring, served hot without any other sources of flavor in a baked-egg bowl after it sat in an oven for about 15 minutes. 

Flash forward and the baked egg has returned, reinvented and dripping hot with other ingredients.

There are baked eggs with spinach and bacon cooked in hollowed out russet potatoes, baked eggs in cups in ham cups and baked eggs in bread slices.

The other day I noticed a Facebook post about eggs baked in portobello mushrooms, decided to give that a try today and thought the end result made for a delicious late Sunday brunch.

The most time consuming step in this simple recipe is cleaning the mushrooms.

Ingredients

4 portobello mushrooms
4 large eggs
1/4 cup grated soft asiago cheese
4 thins slices of a good deli ham
olive oil, enough to coat mushrooms
salt and pepper to taste
2 pinches parsley flakes

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Remove stems from mushrooms, use a spoon to scoop out their gills and brush off as much dirt as possible from the tops. Do not run under water. Use hands to coat both sides of the mushrooms with olive oil, dust with salt and pepper and place them stem-side down on a baking sheet. Bake for about 10 minutes. Set aside to cool.

Turn mushrooms over, nestle a slice of ham into bowl, top that with raw egg trying to not break the yolk and sprinkle with more salt and pepper and some parsley. Return to the oven for about 20 minutes. Meaty mushrooms may require a longer baking time.

Sprinkle cheese on top while they are still warm and ready to eat.

A little fairy tale house

The new Storybook House in the Bookworm Glen at Pittsburgh Botanic Garden. (Photo courtesy of the garden)

OAKDALE, Pa. - A new miniature house on fieldstone at Pittsburgh Botanic Garden is rather cute.

It will house oversized laminated fairy tale books in the Oakdale, Pa., park's Bookworm Glen.

The garden in development completed the building in time for 500 children due to visit in late July and early August to hear retired schoolteachers read such stories, said Kitty Vagley, its executive director.

"I could not resist sharing this photo of our latest addition to the Eastern European Woodlands," Vagley said.

Pittsburgh is lucky to finally have its first open-air public gardent.

In 1998 it signed a 99-year lease with Allegheny County for this property along Pinkerton Road near Settler’s Cabin Park to transform 460 acres into the nation’s first public garden on an abandoned mine site. A year later, the group invested $200,000 in the plan and would eventually earn a $5 million state grant to redevelop the site.

It's home to a rare meadow where hundreds of dogwood trees grow, and no one is quite sure how they got there.

Not only have these trees survived coal mining and natural gas drilling, but they also warded off a fungus that has killed many of their like in Southwestern Pennsylvania, said Jerry Andres, a volunteer who cares from them.

“Our dogwoods seem to be perfectly healthy,” Vagley told the Observer-Reporter this summer. “That is what Mother Nature did for us. What was not unusual 30, 40 years ago is very rare today.”

The garden is open at this time only for special events and periodic “peek and preview tours” led by guides along the Woodland Garden trails. For more information, call 412-444-4464.

Family WWII history declassified, discovered in an email from France

The same plane in which my uncle would survive a crash during World War II lands next to a Flying Tiger during one of his Flying the Hump missions to China.

By Scott Beveridge

The wind was calm with clear visibility when a C-46 U.S. Army Air Forces plane left Mohanbari Airport in India Aug. 4, 1944, destined to deliver gasoline to China to assist in its defenses against Japanese invaders during World War II.

Air command immediately lost radio contact with the pilot after giving takeoff clearance to the cargo plane also carrying Pfc. Thomas L. Beveridge of Charleroi, Pa., and two other crew members en route to yet another dangerous mission to fly 500 miles over the Himalayan Mountains and on to Chenyi.

Thomas L. Beveridge

It would take four days for the pilot, John D. Akers of Webster Grove, Mo., to carve his way out of the jungle to safety after parachuting from the aircraft to reveal the plane had caught fire and crashed.

And, it took yet another 24 hours for Beveridge, who served on the plane as a radioman, and the crew chief, Edward R. Cronk of East Orange, N.J., to return to civilization and report their copilot had lost his life, according to the official military report on the crash marked “secret” and declassified in 1973.

Thomas Beveridge was the younger brother of my father, James, who had many unanswered questions about this plane crash before he died in 2007 at age 84.

His kid brother would need to be coaxed to talk about the plane crash, and he revealed only some glossed-over details to relatives before he died in 1989 at age 64 in La Mirada, Calif., where he made his home and raised two children after being discharged from the military.

My father even went as far as to place a Freedom of Information request to the Army a few years before he died seeking the crash report, only to be informed it was destroyed in a fire at a military records warehouse.

Eventually, Brewenn Chausset, an avid collector of War II memorabilia in France, located the crash report at the U.S. National Archives after finding the name of 2nd Lt. Frederick E. Brownewell Jr. on a laundry stamp inside a service hat he acquired that once belonged to the officer killed in the incident.

Chausset, after finding photos I had posted on the Web of my uncle, sent me an email in January seeking help in searching for additional information about Brownewell to add to his collection. He also passed along the report and photos of the plane taken before it crashed.

His inquiry, though, did more to solve some mysteries of my childhood hero and uncle about his service in the China-Burma-India Theater, which was considered among the most dangerous places to be in the war.

Thomas Beveridge, who grew up with a fascination for airplanes and had many models of them hand-built and strung from the ceiling of his bedroom, lied about his age to enlist in the Army before his 18th birthday to follow my father into the war.

Standing 5 feet 9 1/2 inches tall and weighing just 138 pounds, the younger Beveridge was a perfect fit for “flying the Hump.” His small frame would have allowed a plane to carry more supplies President Franklin D. Roosevelt promised Chinese ruler Chiang Kai-shek after Japanese forces overran Burma in 1942, closing the ground supply line to Western China and leaving air travel as the only option.

In summer 1943, thousands of planes crossed from India to China, delivering nearly 3,000 tons of supplies to Chiang Kai-shek. By the time this service ended in 1945, there were more than 1,000 Hump fliers listed as dead from crashes or missing in action, according to the 2003 book, “The Burma Road,” by Donovan Webster. These flights in thin air over the mountain ranges, Webster wrote, were met with freak winds of up to 248 mph, turbulence that would flip over planes and sometimes cause them to suddenly drop thousands of feet within a minute.

In the 11 months Beveridge “flew the Hump” in 1944, ending in November of that year, he completed 97 round-trip flights, according to a brief mention of him in the 1998 book, “China Burma India, Where I Came In, Vol. II,” by Robert James Kadel.

Once on the ground following the crash, he met up with Cronk and they returned to the crash site to discover their dead comrade.---- They found themselves in steep terrain with leech-infested swamps and seemingly endless bamboo thicket, Webster noted in his book, and with nothing more than one ant-covered chocolate bar to eat. Beveridge dropped 18 pounds, his war records show, while he and Cronk used their machetes to carve a path to a stream and followed its direction to a friendly air command base.

An Army air jungle rescue unit consisting of one officer and three enlisted men who volunteered for the mission set out three months after the crash in search of the missing plane and copilot, along with eight natives to assist them in the journey. It took them five days to cut their way through the jungle and reach the crash site, the military report shows.

They found the plane on its side, missing a wing and engine that likely “burned on contact with gasoline drums exploding,” Intelligence officer and 2nd Lt. of the Air Corps Donald B. Kelly noted in the report.

The bones of one man were found near the rear door of the inside cabin, along with melted silver believed to have once been his flight wings. They buried the remains with military honors Nov. 17, 1944, with a cross marked “unknown soldier,” while also destroying confidential matter and using .45-caliber slugs to destroy the plane’s transponder. The Army would use his false teeth to eventually positively identify the remains as those of Brownewell.

Meanwhile, Beveridge went home, saving the ripcord to his parachute that helped to save his life.