Monongahela Cemetery turns 150 with music

MONONGAHELA, Pa. – You don't often get a chance see a band performing in a graveyard.

And not every city has one as beautiful as historic Monongahela Cemetery, which celebrated it's 150th anniversary today with a performance by Too Many Tubas.

The band based in Finleyville and made up of musicians from across Southwestern Pennsylvania performs "Gettysburg" under the direction of Rich Pantaleo, a former music teacher in the Ringgold School District.

Oddly enough, the cemetery is holding a picnic tomorrow to honor the past when families actually packed lunches and spent the day in the cemetery off Route 88 in Monongahela.

This photo sparks a memory of a great family physician

             (Photo from the Kenneth Weight collection at Charleroi AREA Historical Society, Inc.)

By Scott Beveridge

CHARLEROI, Pa. – It wasn't the cool 1964 Mercury Comet that leaped from this old photograph taken decades ago in the town where I was born, but, rather, the top name on the door of the building in the background.

This address at 520 McKean Ave. in Charleroi, Pa., was the practice of our beloved family physician, Dr. Eugene E. Costa, the guy who welcomed me into this world at the local hospital's deliver room in 1956.

I remember him fondly, though, for his blunt bedside manner.

A typical office visit would begin with my complaining about pain in my joints.

He usually replied with the question, "How much coffee are you drinking?"

"Probably too much," I'd reply.

He'd tell me to cut back on the caffeine before asking if I was still smoking cigarettes.

"No, I gave them up in 1980."

Then he'd inform me that I was eating too much rich food.

"Really?"

"Well," I remember his saying next. "You are fatter than you were the last time you were here. You have the hives again."

He was right. He always was right. He gave me an injection of something and a prescription and in a few days I was myself again.

The last time I visited Dr. Costa was in the mid 1990s, when the health-care industry really began its so-called "revolution" long before Obamacare would become a dirty word among this president's advisaries.

He told me back then my health-care provider no longer accepted him as a participant in my plan and I'd have to seek out an insurance "approved" physician. Maybe it was something about his age. I'm not sure.

"So you are retiring?" I asked, disappointed at his announcement.

"You retire from a job. You don't retire from a profession," he said.

He kept his office open for several more years before hanging up his white coat.

And, for the next decade, it seemed as if everyone I knew was complaining about rude, overworked staffs at their doctors' offices and being treated there as if they were part of a cattle call hurried through the necessary steps to get a diagnosis or a prescription refill.

Dr. Costa was the kind of physician who knew and seemed to care about his patients, and they didn't have to first show proof of medical insurance before reaching his exam room. His fee was affordable.

 I miss him.

Harry's, a razor worthy of praise

Harry's delivers a month's worth of great shaves at affordable price. (Scott Beveridge photo) 

By Scott Beveridge

Lately I have been finding all kinds of excuses to avoid shopping in big-box stores.

It's not the stores themselves, or the mostly Chinese products they stock, but it's the rude and inconsiderate shoppers they attract that annoy me the most.

You know who you are; the lazy ones who leave their empty shopping carts in the stall where they parked their SUVs or people who block the isles with their unruly kids and belongings while they gab away or stare too long at the toilet paper selection.

When I am there I catch myself with clenched fists mumbling expletives under my breath until returning to the peace within my Ford sedan.

One of the ways to avoid this frustration, as most shoppers know, is to pay more for your groceries and household supplies at competing stores.

And, then there are such innovative companies as Harry's, which make the online shopping experience fun, affordable and, thankfully, rewarding.

I stumbled on the company selling stylish razors last month while reading the briefs in a GQ magazine.

It credits Harry's products to the same group of friends who gave the world Warby Parker, a company supplying botique eyeglasses at highly competitive prices.

Intrigued by what I had read in the magazine, I went to Harry's website and ordered a shaving kit known as The Truman with a white handle to match my bathroom. For $15, it provides a month's worth of shaves, and arrives in a stylish package delivered free of charge at my local post office. Better yet, you can sign up for automatic delivery of its German-engineered blades, which cost just $1.88 apiece if you buy eight at a time.

Seriously, this is the best razor I have used in my entire shaving life. I mean this razor cuts so close it almost feels as if it might remove a thin layer of skin along with the facial stubble, and it requires a steady hand and concentration. One blade gave me eight clean shaves, and it probably could have delivered more of them by the time I opted to replace the blades.

And then, you get a followup email from a company representative promising to help deliver to you all your shaving needs, an employee who doesn't come off as a robot at a computer and even politely returns your emails.

Best of all, I actually now look forward to shaving and feel better, too, knowing I'm helping to reduce fossile fuel and taking one small step to save the post office.

(Note: This blog does not accept invitations to write about or endorse products. It just occasionally publishes this sort stuff about things worthy of praise, such as Sour Patch Extreme Soft & Chewy Candy.)

Nice guy Musial a no-show in "42"

An illustration created when a bridge was renamed after baseball legend Stan "the Man" Musial in his Donora hometown. (credit: Badzik Printing)

By Scott Beveridge

DONORA – The venerable Donora Mayor John Lignelli asked me the other day if Stan "the Man" Musial was mentioned in the new movie "42" about Jackie Robinson and the racism he experienced after becoming the first black man to play Major League Baseball.

I replied to the 91-year-old mayor by saying the movie was really good, but that Musial, a native of Donora who played 22 seasons for the St. Louis Cardinals, didn't show up in the movie.

Disappointed, Lignelli said Musial should have been mentioned in the movie as being among the first white ballplayers to endorse Robinson after Robinson broke the color barrier when he debuted in 1947 for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

As it turns out actor David Stanbra had been cast in the roll of Musial, however, his scenes ended up on the editing room floor to shorten the film, the actor stated on his Facebook page.

That's a shame, even though there are differing versions of the story about the day Robinson, a first baseman from a sharecropping family in Cairo, Ga., made his initial appearance on the baseball diamond in St. Louis.

It has often been written that Musial refused to join his teammates in their threats to refuse to play on the same field with Robinson, although, Musial would deny such a strike was ever considered before he died Jan. 19 at age 92.

Often remembered as the nicest man to have ever played baseball and one to have avoided controversies and scandals, it's easy to conclude that Musial mostly stayed out the debate and possibly could have done more to encourage integration in baseball.

He's often been quoted as having said he didn't like "rough and racist" talk in the clubhouse and did earn Robinson's respect.

Lignelli, who developed a long friendship with Musial, said the ballplayer became a "regular guy," while playing sports as a youth in the Mon Valley steel town alongside black children, including Buddy Griffey, the father and grandfather of baseball greats Ken Griffey Sr. and Ken Griffey Jr.

The color of a man's skin "didn't make a difference to him," Lignelli said.

The movie "42" released April 12 has met with mixed reviews and criticism from some uber baseball fans who feel it didn't bring anything new to light about Robinson.

For a fan, like me, who went to the theater without much knowledge about Robinson, it came as somewhat of a shock to hear so, so many racial slurs directed at him on the playing field, especially the verbal abuse lodged by Phillies manager Ben Chapman.

That, in itself, was enough to cause me embarrassment to belong to the same race as Chapman.

Agent 99 visits Pittsburgh museum highlighting 1968

Actress Barbara Feldon reflects in her hometown of Pittsburgh on the time she spent in the 1960s as Agent 99 with actor Don Adams on TV's "Get Smart." (Scott Beveridge photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH, Pa. – TV's wildly popular 1960s situation comedy "Get Smart" began as a cartoon about the famously handsome fictional spy James Bond, said Western Pennsylvania native Barbara Feldon, who starred as the show's beautiful and witty CIA Agent 99.

Then the spoof that aired from 1965 to 1970 morphed into an extreme satire on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and some of the foolish things its agents were doing in a decade when a paranoid America dealt with the Cold War, Feldon said Saturday during a speaking engagement at Sen. John Heinz History Center.

"Everybody was spy conscious," Feldon, 80, said at the event in Pittsburgh timed for the center's special exhibit, "1968: The Year that Rocked America." 

The exhibit highlights a tumultuous year that saw assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy also welcomed an explosion in zany pop culture.

To capitalize on the buzz 1968 has been generating, the staff at the Heinz center on Saturday hosted dealers with Pittsburgh Vintage Mixer who specialize in selling mod collectibles ranging from Pyrex Ware to vinyl records.

The dealers who spread their wares across the first floor reported good sales from customers who stood in lines that stretched out the front doors of the museum at 1212 Smallman, and brought inside young faces that otherwise might never have visited this attraction.

In the seventh-floor library, Feldon drew 200 fans eager to hear the former model discuss her life and acting career.

She said her costar Don Adams, AKA as Maxwell Smart, was all business during their time together on the show, and that they didn't become close friends until years after it was cancelled.

Adams felt uncomfortable at around her because she was a lot taller than he, forcing her to slouch and use her crossed ankles as support to stand in order to make them appear to be the same height in screen.

"I was the only actress in Hollywood with callouses on my ankles," joked Feldon, who was born in Butler County and graduated from Bethel Park High School.

She also graduated from Carnegie Tech and soon relocated to New York and the opportunities in offered young actors in search of stardom.

Pittsburgh, today, "is much more cultural" than it was in the early 1940s, she said.

"I was ready to leap off that diving board and see the world."

1968 exhibit starts out with a bang

The entrance to the 1968 exhibit at Sen. John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh plants visitors in a typical living room of the time with TV news about the Vietnam War playing on a TV near a helicopter used in that war. (History Center photo)

By Scott Beveridge

PITTSBURGH – A recording of legendary journalist Walter Cronkite reporting about the Vietnam War in 1968 plays on an old television in a living room decorated with mid-century furniture just inside the entrance to a new museum exhibit visiting Pittsburgh.

A 20-foot Bell UH-1H Huey helicopter actually used in the war is parked nearby in “1968: The Year that Rocked America” at Sen. John Heinz History Center, serving as a shocking reminder that Vietnam played out in nearly every house in America at the time.

“The Huey helicopter is literally in the living room. It starts out with a bang,” said Brady M. Smith, a communications manager at the museum at 1212 Smallman St. in Pittsburgh.

Heinz History Center is hosting through May 12 the traveling 8,000-square-foot display created by the Minnesota Historical Society about the explosive year that saw the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, free love, the civil rights and women’s movements and quirky pop culture.

The 1960s remind people today of hippies, but that wasn’t the case because most men then were still wearing buzz cuts in a culture that outwardly seemed “still in the 1950s,” Smith said.

“The whole notion that so many terrible things happened at the same time as the counterculture was gaining momentum,” he said. “1968 was when the transition started to happen. It’s an interesting year when you consider it as a whole.”

Another television reporter of the era featured in the exhibit, Mike Wallace, offered a fitting description of the year when he said “1968 just cracked the universe open for me” while giving his oral history in 1983 at Columbia University.

Wallace was a graduate student in 1968 at the New York school and participated in anti-war and civil rights movements, which he called “profound forces that transcend that moment.”

The Vietnam War reached a violent milestone that January with the surprise North Vietnamese attack known as the Tet Offensive on what should have been a cease fire on the Asian country’s New Year celebration.

Among the displays are televisions that show clips of such popular television series of the time as “Dragnet,” “Family Affair” and “Star Trek.” There is one dedicated to the Nov. 1, 1968, debut of George Romero’s cult classic “Night of the Living Dead” at the Fulton Theater in Pittsburgh.

A poster advertises Virginia Slims cigarettes, marketing them to women

with the slogan, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

The show would not be complete without Pittsburgh’s contribution of a life-size figure of a young Fred Rogers in the year that saw the national launch of his “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” and the set he used in the show.

“That set is donated to the History Center now,” Smith said.

The exhibit ends on a positive note paying tribute to the Apollo 8 mission where astronaut William Anders in December 1968 sent back the world’s first Earthrise images from deep space while reading from the Bible’s Book of Genesis.

Among the memorabilia on display are peace, love and happiness artifacts from a time when people wore their buzzes like badges of honor. (Scott Beveridge photo)

The exhibit, “1968: The Year that Rocked America,” runs through May 12, 2013. 

This article first appeared in the March/April issue of Living Washington County magazine, a publication of the Observer-Reporter.