Big Sewickley Creek Bridge 1917: "Longer to complete than did the building of the Panama Canal"

 

Big Sewickley Creek Bridge
From Allegheny Co. looking north into Ambridge, Beaver County
1917
credit: Allegheny Co. Dept. of Public Works

About the photo above:

Streetcar tracks crossed the bridge in 1917. The dark building just above the photo's center and the first building on the right were on the part of Beaver Rd./Beaver St. that leads into Ambridge from the bridge. To the dark building's left is a home that I think was on Bank St. and the backs of some buildings in the 300 block of First St. The dark building and all buildings to its left have been razed. The tall building farther up the left side of the street must be the S. P. Kristufek Department Store. If you enlarge the photo enough, you can see a horse standing next to the Kristufek store. And, above the first utility pole on the right, a carriage.

The nearest building on the right is still standing; Hark's Place bar is now there, 70 Beaver St./Rd. Beyond that, the building with all the porches was one of the infamous "Crackerbox" tenements that stood on the hill above Merchant St./Beaver Rd., razed in 1960.

Far in the background are homes in the 100 block of Merchant St. And behind them, the domes of Holy Ghost Orthodox Church, 210 Maplewood Ave.

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Long before Ohio River Boulevard connected Ambridge with Allegheny Co., the small Big Sewickley Creek Bridge provided the connection.

The Economy Centennial was being celebrated when Ambridge's June 6, 1924, Citizen* newspaper noted on its front page: 

an important milestone in the history of Ambridge...the beginning of the end of the work on the Big Sewickley Creek bridge between Ambridge and Fair Oaks, which has been a bone of contention between two counties, a street car company, residents of three boroughs and tourists of 48 States for a number of years.

Because that very morning, a contractor had started pouring concrete in the bridge's road bed and expected the work to be completed "in about two weeks."

Even though the bridge is only about 200 feet long, that same Citizen article claimed it took "longer to complete than did the building of the Panama Canal and has cost enough to build a bridge across the Ohio River."

The history of the bridge's construction is murky. The Citizen article said Allegheny County records showed a bridge at the site    "[96] years ago" according to a construction inspector, who said he had found a 1828 "road view plan" showing a bridge at the same location.

However, the inspector's history was questioned by John Frederick (Fred) Knoedler, who was a non-Harmonist caretaker of Old Economy and its property both before and after the Harmony Society dissolved. Knoedler said that according to Harmonist records, "the Economites drove through the creek to get to Leetsdale" during their early years in Economy. But, he says, "much later," there was a bridge across the creek when the Harmonists had pastures on both sides of Big Sewickley Creek. Knoedler remembered "wire gates hung from the bridge to keep the [Harmony Society's] cattle from going up the creek." 

The Citizen also said that "during the youth of John Duss," who was born in 1860, the bridge was condemned, and Duss designed an arch under the bridge to strengthen it. "The original arch still stands, but is is now encased in concrete."

A 1906 G. M. Hopkins & Co. map shows a narrow bridge in that spot. Eventually, the bridge was raised and the walls heighted to accommodate street cars.

Then, during the WWI years, a decision was made by some entity to further widen and rebuild the bridge. Beaver County's commissioners claimed they had no money for such a project. So Allegheny Co. undertook the work on its own. I believe the photo above shows that reconstruction project. 

But the work did not go well. In fact it went so wrong that The Citizen said:

The [whale] may have swallowed Jonah, according to tradition, but no one who ever had any thing to do with the Big Sewickley Creek Bridge from that time on would believe that Jonah was anywhere but right handy to that bridge. His hoodoo seemed to be always present.

What was supposed to be a one year project took two. Twice high water moved the derrick. Once all the bridge's "large stones were washed down the creek, requiring lines to be tied to them to 'snake' them out of the creek." 

Even after the construction project finished, problems continued when the streetcar company said it wouldn't pay to move its tracks. So in 1923, the two counties agreed to do the job themselves. But then, after the contractor had moved one of the tracks, he claimed that he didn't have enough money to finish the job. And the work dragged on and on into the spring on 1924--bad weather didn't help. But finally--finally--the bridge construction appeared to be nearing completion.

But wait, there's more!

If you enlarge the photo at the top, you can see what appears to be the back of a carriage, and near that carriage, part of a sign peeking out on the right side of a pole. And if you're like me, you thought, "I wish I could read what that sign says. 

Well, wish granted. Because there's another photo! And while the photo was focused on the bridge's stone arch, it shows more than that.

Big Sewickley Creek Bridge
from the Allegheny County side of Big Sewickley Creek
1917
credit: Allegheny Co. Dept. of Public Works

First, an enlargement of the sign: 

Ambridge speed limit sign
Merchant St. near Valley Rd.
1917

About the photo above:

The sign says "Ambridge Borough, Speed Limit, 15 miles per hour." It appears to have stood about where the "Welcome to the Borough of Ambridge" sign is now, just north of the intersection of Valley Rd. and Merchant St.

An enlarged photo also shows a tailor's signs painted on the windows of the building with the awning, now Hark's Place.  I think the left window says "Merchant Tailor." The one on the right window says "John [last name I couldn't read], Tailor."

The sign on the side of the one story wooden building says "Favorite Cigarettes." While there are more signs on the side and on the front, I can't make them out. 

Could the house on the right side of the photo, above those two buildings, have been on Valley Rd.? And the houses on the very top of the hill on Glenwood Dr.?

And towards the right side of the photo, a man wearing a hat is standing, looking toward the photographer. And us.

_____

Thanks to Debby Rabold, Bell Acres Borough's historian, for sending me the two photos above. Debby has also written about the Ambridge-Leetsdale Big Sewickley Creek Bridge and provides a somewhat different history of its construction than the one written in The Citizen. She also has included some early photos of that bridge. Here's a link to Debby's article: "Big Sewickley Creek...Early Bridges," which also includes information about other bridges that cross Big Sewickley Creek. 

_____

* The Citizen's June 6, 1924, article was republished in the March 21, 1939, Daily Citizen. The latter did correct several typos in the original article, including that a bridge was at the site "6 years ago." That befuddled me at first, because I knew that the bridge had been built before 1918. In 1939, the bridge was referred to as the "Ambridge-Fair Oaks Bridge."

In 1945, a unicorn came to Ambridge

During the first week of September 1945, a traveling exhibit of rare and odd animals came to Ambridge, and the unicorn surely had to be the rarest of all.

An ad for the show featured a beautiful, classic unicorn as depicted in folklore, with a horse-like head and a large horn on its forehead. Wow! And skeptics say they didn't exist. It looks pretty happy too. Of course "It's real. It's alive!!" Who would want to see a fake or dead unicorn?!

Animal Oddities Exhibit ad
Daily Times
September 3, 1945

Although whoever sketched the unicorn for the announcement below, featuring the rare creature, did an awful job! Why, the unicorn almost looks like an ox or bull with a single horn, nose-ring included.

Animal Oddities announcement
Daily Times
September 4, 1945

Still, rest assured, exhibit-goers would see the unicorn of myth. From the announcement:

Among the unique animals to be shown is the Unicorn, which dates back to the wanderings of the barbaric tribes before civilization. The single-horned animal, shown here, is greatly sought after for its wonderous powers of magic and medicinal values. The miraculous horn is always described as growing on the brow of a "beast so glorious, so virtuous, so beautiful that heaven granted the earth only one specimen at a time."

Now would an ox or bull fit that description? No!

Although there was only one unicorn on earth in September 1945, if you came to the field at 17th and Merchant Sts. in Ambridge, you could see it! Only 25¢ (plus tax) for adults; 10¢ (plus tax) for kids!

If the magical unicorn wasn't enough, there were 100 more "living curiosities" in the exhibit, including Belgian Bob, the world's largest living horse.  And Nebcurhah, "The 3000-year-old man from the Valley of the Kings in Egypt." No mention of he was still living or not.

Animal Oddities Exhibit ad
Daily Times
September 6, 1945

Lest you think that the ads might be making stuff up about the animals in the exhibit, here's  a photo of Lone Star, the world's largest living steer.

Lone Star
World's Largest Living Steer
Daily Times
September 5, 1945

The text under the photos said:

Beaver Countians will have the opportunity of viewing, "Lone Star" (pictured above) world's largest living steer, 9 feet tall and weighing around 3,000 pounds, showing with "Animal Oddities" exhibit, on transcontinental tour with the earth's strangest living oddities, now located on the showgrounds at 17th and Merchant streets, Ambridge.
   This unusual exhibit is on display through Sunday, September 9th in a large tent, and included in the oddities is the world's largest living horse measuring 19 1/2 hands, along with 100 other rare animals.
   Included in the exhibit are strange animals featured in "Believe It or Not", by Robert Ripley.

Surely, if Lone Star was that big, the unicorn was real!

Haunted Byersdale

Used by permission of the artist.

by Robert Giles

Some of the old timers who put up their own homes on top of the hill in Byersdale must have built without benefit of plumb or level.

I’m talking about the houses just beyond the water tower where the road straightens out just before the dogleg to the left. They were all jammed in cheek-by-jowl, like row houses. Maybe they held each other up. Or perhaps the thick tangle of woods on the hillside kept them from rolling over backwards into Legionville Hollow.

That row of six or seven houses always seemed to be holding on for dear life.

I may exaggerate. It is one particular pair of houses I remember from fifty years ago. The others suffer from guilt-by-association.

I delivered the morning paper to the occupants of the two houses. The two families were related and shared a single copy of the Post-Gazette.

There were two brothers – one married and one a bachelor. The bachelor lived with his mother. When it came to paying for the paper, I collected from the married brother; but if he and his wife were absent, I was instructed to call on the bachelor.

The bachelor seldom spoke. The mother I saw only once.

In autumn the days shortened. It was dark when I got home from school. I delivered papers in the morning but did bill collection in the evening. Who wants to get out of bed at sunrise to do business with the paperboy?

That stretch of road wasn’t my favorite place. There was one streetlight. If you looked closely you could spy out a bat or two circling the water tower. Beneath my right shoulder were the black depths of the hollow. The pavement was neglected and broken away at the edges.

I shuffled through a cover of fallen leaves. The night air was frosty.

I turned onto a boardwalk that forded the frozen ditch in front of my customer’s front porch. The house sat right on the road. It was just a few feet over the ditch and onto the porch. There was no room for a lawn. The two houses were separated by a gap of twelve inches. The families shared a single porch as well as a single newspaper.

The decking of the porch gave perceptibly with each step. I felt as though I was aboard an old ship that was groaning in a heavy sea. One false step ...

I approached the door. It seemed no one was at home. There was one dim light on, back in the kitchen. I knocked once, then a second time. I waited. No one answered. I walked over to the bachelor’s door.

I knocked at the second door. I knocked again, then a third time, more forcefully. I turned to leave. Just then there was an answering knock – more aptly, a tap, slowly repeating and becoming louder.

I looked into the small window high up on the door. A creature with a thousand legs scurried across the glass.

I peered in. Tap … tap … tap. A figure in black came toward the door. The room was unlit. I could see that the figure held a cane.

Slowly, slowly, slowly towards the door it came. The knob turned. The door opened wide. Before me was an ancient head in a heavy black babushka, its owner clad in widow’s weeds. Someone had dressed for a funeral thirty years before and had never undressed.

The apparition looked at me blankly as it opened its mouth to utter something unintelligible in a foreign tongue.

It was time to screw my courage to the sticking point. Screw courage.  I turned and fled.

The Dead-End Swing

If Roy wasn’t a jagoff he wouldn’t have jumped like he did onto the Tarzan swing beneath the Legionville Bridge.

Couldn't he see there were already two kids holding onto the rope? They were swinging out over the pit under the north end of the bridge. Below them was a whole bunch of broken concrete that some chiseler had left scattered on the ground when he replaced the deck.

There was an open sewer line down there. It always stunk.

We saw that Billy was scared bad. You could tell by the way he clung to Dave’s waist. The rope swung back towards us like a pendulum beneath a cuckoo clock.

Roy landed high up on Dave’s back, missing the rope completely. How did he think Dave was going to hold on? Dave was the strongest kid in the neighborhood but Roy must have weighed two hundred pounds.

What was he thinking? A big fat zero. To think you have to have a brain.

Three kids were taking a ride and only one had a grip on the rope. Something had to give. Roy may have panicked and started to kick. Maybe Billy was trying to grab the rope to help Dave. Anyway, something made Billy lose his grip. He started to slide down between Dave and Roy. Dave tried to grasp him with his legs in a scissors lock to save him, like the way The Flying Wallenda had saved his partner on the high wire.

Dave tried his best but down Billy slid. It all happened in a second though it seemed like forever plus one day. Everything was quiet except for the wheeze of the rope against the steel of the bridge.

Billy grabbed at Dave’s foot but it was bye-bye Billy. He went down like a load of bricks. Luckily Billy missed the concrete - he landed feet first between two huge chunks.

Couldn't those highway contractor bastards pick up after themselves?

Billy’s legs buckled, then his ass hit, then his back and shoulders, finally his head. Everything bounced as it hit the clay.

We looked down. Was Billy dead? What would we tell his mother?

Frieda

We took a shovel and a galvanized steel container down into the woods to dig some topsoil for Dad. “Get some good black earth”, he instructed.

We descended the path that cut across the steep hillside of the hollow. About half way down the ground leveled out, down by the “gold mine”. That was where we were going to dig for dirt.

The “gold mine” was perhaps a stone quarry back when the Harmony Society owned the land. Maybe they dug into the hillside poking around for minerals. Who knows? (Farther up the hollow in Economy Park was a “silver mine”.)

We looked for a spot a good distance from a large tree. We wanted to get twenty gallons of dirt quickly and go home. We didn’t have time to fool with tree roots.

My brother called out, “Over here. Someone may have already loosened the dirt.”

We dug down about two feet, filling our “bucket” with light, friable earth containing lots of naturally composted oak leaves and mast.

Just then the shovel struck something hard. Chuck reached into the hole. He pulled out a skull and a jawbone.

“There’s a whole skeleton down there, he exclaimed. Maybe someone was murdered.”

It was too small to be an adult. Maybe it was a child. The skull was narrow and elongated.

“Why this must be a big dog, like a collie.”

Just then something made us all look up the hillside toward Anthony Wayne Drive. On top of the bluff stood Old Mike, glowering at us through the trees.

“Christ almighty, I think we just dug up Frieda,” Chuck mumbled beneath his breath.

Frieda was Old Mike’s beloved pet.

Six Ghouls in an Olds 88

One evening after dark Mom sent me over to the Isaly store for a half-gallon of milk. When I came out of the store and headed up the alley, a big car pulled up alongside me.

The man at the wheel rolled down the window. There were six men in the car.

I wasn’t savvy enough to know that six men in one car always meant trouble. Still, I got a little nervous.

“Hey kid, is this where the girls are?” the man asked.

“Do you mean in the hotel?” I asked, puzzled at the man’s question.

“Yeah, in the hotel, you know …” The man’s voice trailed off and he began to wink at me. He moved his arm as though giving me a nudge even though I was outside the car and three feet away.

“Yeah, I guess there are ladies in the hotel. I’m not allowed to go in.”

A man in the back seat started to laugh. “Let’s get out of here, the kid’s still a virgin”, he said. They all started to laugh.

When you put your finger on a phonograph record, everything slows down and gets distorted.

“Haw, haw, the kid's stilllllllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaviiiiiiiiiiiiiiirgin,” someone cackled again as the car pulled away.

I told Mom what had happened when I got home. She turned almost as white as the milk I handed her.

“You stay away from that place, you hear me. Stay out of the alley.”

One thing about moms – they always order you to do the impossible.

Miracle of the Fishes

My brother and I were fishing for catfish down at the old lock wall when we noticed that the water below us was teeming with tiny silver minnows. We put down our rods to make a survey.

The minnows seemed to be coming from the stream that flowed into the “lock” from a tunnel that led back to the swamp that pooled just below the Byers plant.

Those minnows must have taken a shine to swamp water. There were millions of them.

Dave had an idea. “Let’s go home and get Dad’s seine out of his fishing tackle. We’ll get some big plastic buckets too.”

Soon we were back at the river properly equipped with minnow gear.

We waded into the stream. We wore our tennis shoes to protect our feet from glass and metal. 

Our feet sank in the muck. Soon the water was cloudy and we couldn’t see the minnows. We could only feel them bumping into our bare legs, hundreds at a time.

Dave instructed me to go upstream and walk towards him as he held the seine across the run.

All of a sudden he raised his net. There must have been ten pounds of minnows thrashing about inside the seine, their silver sides reflecting the sun. We scooped them into our buckets.

“This is way more fun than catching catfish.”

We sat and made plans to open a bait store. Why pull night crawlers from the grass when we could scoop up a thousand minnows with one sweep? We calculated we would need two 50-gallon aquariums.

I put my arm up to my elbow in one of the buckets. It was all squirming flesh. “This is what a doctor must feel when he opens up someone’s belly and probes around for an appendix.”

“Yeah”, Dave agreed, “it feels just like life.”

What happened to our bait store?

We returned to the river many times to catch “shiners”. We never again caught more than a handful.

What came first: the chicken or the feed?

20 Baby Chicks Free,
Wall's ad,
The Daily Citizen, May 1, 1959

On May 2, 1959, Wall's feed and seed store at 507 Eighth Street gave the first 75 purchasers of 25 pounds of Larro Surechick, a chick starter feed, 20 free chicks. But "bring your own container."

So, even if you didn't already own chicks, Wall's would give you 20, and as you raised them, you'd return to Wall's (hopefully) to buy more chicken feed. Clever marketing.

It wasn't that uncommon back then for Ambridge area folks to raise a few chickens on their property.

I still remember the sharp smell of what I supposed was fertilizer in the Wall's building.

The Wall's business has closed, but the building remains. I don't know what the building is currently being used for or what's planned for its future.

Former Wall's feed and seed store building,
507 Eighth Street,
June 23, 2013

Child Labor

Microsoft Word

by Robert Giles

I sell the morning papers sir my name is Jimmy Brown ... Everybody knows that I'm the newsboy of the town

From the song “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy”*

“Well, if it isn’t Jimmy Brown, the newsboy. Anyone got a dollar?”

On top of the hill in Byersdale lived a family that loved hillbilly music. I delivered their paper. When I rang the bell to collect, they always had the phonograph going – Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, the Carter Family.

The paper route was handed down through my family. My sister was the first of us to deliver the Sun-Telegraph. No one called her “Jimmy Brown”. Mr. Shimrak over at the Isaly store used to tease her by calling her “Abe Lincoln”.

It took a certain amount of “grit” or “gumption” for a young girl to manage a paper route in 1956. My sister had more than her share of those qualities.

Mr. Shimrak must have been impressed. He gave Linda a job in his store, the first of a succession of Giles kids to clerk for the Shimraks. The clerkship at Isaly’s became a family tradition, just like delivering the newspaper.

I learned the newspaper delivery business helping my older brothers. My turn came when I was twelve or thirteen.

If I remember correctly, the “Sun-Telly” was an afternoon paper like the “Press”. About the time I inherited the route, it was bought out by the “Post-Gazette”, a morning paper, and became for a short while the “Post-Gazette & Sun-Telegraph”. This was too much of a mouth-full, and soon the “Sun-Telegraph” name was history.

One thing did not change – the “Post-Gazette” was and always would be a morning paper. I had to learn to get up every morning by 5:30 am.

I’m not sure now how it came about but we also delivered the “Press” on Sunday mornings.

I slept in a bedroom with three other brothers. So as not to wake up everyone, my mother would set the alarm clock in her room and come and rouse me. After a while I got into an “early to bed and early to rise” routine and did not need an alarm clock.

I had a knack for being able to sleep through all the inevitable horseplay that arises when four young boys are confined to a small room.

Once I was shaken awake by two older brothers.

“Bobby, you slept in. Mr. McBroom left your papers on the front porch a long time ago. You better get up.”

In a panic, I got dressed and ran down the steps and out onto the front porch. Where were the papers? The porch was empty.

I came back inside and glanced at the clock. It was one o’clock in the morning. Mr. McBroom wasn’t due for another four hours.

Another time my brothers put my hand in a bucket of water while I was in a deep sleep. They wanted to test something one of them had read – that the water would induce in the subject a need to get up and urinate.

I did not disappoint them. On my way back from the bathroom, I heard the sound of brotherly laughter.

The economics of the newspaper delivery business were not good. I suppose that is the reason that children got the job. The newspaper girl or boy got maybe a fraction of a cent on each weekday delivery – several cents on the more costly Sunday edition.

I was old enough to do the math. I had around fifty customers so I made about $3.75 per week – about $30.00 in today’s dollars - provided I could collect all the money I was owed. If I failed to collect from just one customer, my profits were reduced by the entire amount I didn’t collect, or a little more than 25 percent. I had to pay the route man whether I collected from all my customers or not.

Of course back then the word “deadbeat” wasn’t in my vocabulary. I was as naive as any other kid in his early teens. Adults were intimidating. If they said they didn’t have a dollar in the house and couldn’t pay me, who was I to argue?

I had a collection card for every customer. There were little squares with dates on them that you tore off and gave a customer when he paid. (The receipt system was later supplanted by an even more unsatisfactory way of keeping accounts – punch cards. The customer had a card, the paperboy another. The boy punched both cards to acknowledge payment.)

Imagine how eager people were to keep their punch card on hand for the paperboy - not very. If they couldn’t find a dollar, they certainly couldn’t find a punch card.

Some people went for a month or two without paying. “Mr. Cooper, you owe me $8.00.”

“What, that can’t be!”

“Well, here is your collection card and you can see I haven’t punched it for eight weeks.”

He would then argue that I had forgotten to punch the card. (Or maybe I had glued the chads back in the holes.) With someone like that, my only recourse was to cease delivery, refuse service.

I had much more luck collecting from the wives. There were some exceptions, but most had scruples about taking advantage of children.

One lady I won’t name had me pick up a carton of Pall Malls at Isaly’s on collection day. She always gave me a dime for my trouble and let me look at her tropical fish tanks while she scrounged for the cigarette money.

People would see me lugging the Pall Malls and ask me when I was going to switch to a filtered brand.

Once in a while a customer would pay me with the pennies he had emptied from his pockets and collected in a mason jar. He didn’t like to carry small change but it was OK to pay the paperboy by the pound.

We've got to keep those pennies in circulation.

I carried the papers in a standard canvas newsboy bag with the Post-Gazette logo. Fifty papers were pretty heavy for a twelve-year-old. The shoulder strap bit into my clavicle. I had to walk with my weight shifted to the side away from the sack with one hand underneath the bag to give it support. I didn’t start up the steep Byersdale hillside until I had lightened the load by first delivering to customers on the bottom streets.

The Sunday papers were even heavier. Mr. McBroom didn’t have enough space in his station wagon for all of them so he delivered the “funnies” and the weekly magazines and supplements Saturday night. The rest of the sections came Sunday morning.

I had to sit and put together the two sections before delivery. One of my brothers helped with the Sunday delivery until I got older and stronger.

I found that most of the dogs in Byersdale had some private resentment against the exercise of a free press. With them I was about as popular as the mailman. You had to watch out for those little terriers that came out of nowhere when a customer opened the door.

“He didn’t bite you, did he? He never bites.  Ronnie, get back inside … That will only hurt for a little while.”

Way back of the hill was Short Street, the last street before you came to the woods. Short Street was notable for the smell of raw sewage and the large hound that was tied in one of the yards. Every delivery to that neighborhood was an assault on my nose and ears. There he was – the “Hound of the Baskervilles”, baying himself hoarse and straining at his chain. 

All that stood between me and death by dog bite was a frail ribbon of rope. I walked a little faster.

Neither snow, sleet, rain nor hail kept me from my appointed rounds. A new snow was fresh and lovely at six o’clock in the morning. The other stuff I was not so keen on. A downpour could strike pretty suddenly.

There were newly-weds starting out in a small house on Essex Avenue. The Mrs. was quite pretty – I was beginning to appreciate that sort of thing. I arrived at the door in a thunderstorm, wet to the bone, to collect.

“Look at you, you’re soaked - where’s your umbrella?”

She invited me in and gave me some towels to dry off. I protested that I would get her sofa all wet but she insisted that I sit down while she made me a cup of hot tea.

Her husband and I chatted a bit. The tea was ready. We all had a cup while we talked about where I lived and went to school.

The rain had slackened, but they loaned me an umbrella to carry, just in case. Off I went.

I can’t remember their names but I do remember that act of kindness, over fifty years later.

Was it worth my while to deliver the newspaper? I had to miss out on several camping trips when I couldn’t get someone to take my route for me. I had to go to bed early and wake up early. I had to work about twelve hours per week. I made just over thirty cents an hour ($2.40 today).

On the other hand, I had money to buy clothes and snacks and presents on Christmas. That was better than nothing.

There was a sort of tacit agreement in our house. Dad would feed us and keep a roof over our heads but we had to do our share. He never gave us a nickel to spend. I always thought he was free of guile but now I see a man with a plan. If his purpose was to teach us to stand on our own two feet, he succeeded. 

I never stopped to weigh the pros and cons and reason it all out – mostly I did it because my brothers did it, it was expected of me, and it was a good feeling to have a little money to jingle in my pocket.

On collection day, I often stopped at the little grocery at the top of Anthony Wayne Drive and plunked down my own coin for a dime bag of Snyder’s potato chips and a bottle of ginger beer. I sat on Mrs. Batch’s wooden steps and sipped and ate and studied the sumac berries that grew on the opposite side of the road. Soon the existential gloom would lift and I would descend the hill toward home. 

After four years, I sold my route for $25.00 to another Byersdale “Bobby”.

I had turned sixteen. I went and got myself a work “permit”. I was old enough to make real money.
_____

* If you need something to lift your own existential gloom, don’t have a beer and chips – listen to Jimmy Dale Gilmore’s version of “Jimmy Brown the Newsboy”. It has enough bounce to levitate you up near the ceiling. I couldn’t find it on YouTube but there are other versions of the song there. (The Flatt and Scruggs version is disappointingly slow.)

Turn up the volume. If it turns out you just can’t stand bluegrass, you may have to try a different color.

A Royal Visit

Wiki Images

by Robert Giles

So you read about this lion had killed a man with his paws
But Samson got his hand in the lion's jaws
He rid that beast until he killed him dead
And the bees made honey in the lion's head

From the song “Samson and Delilah (If I Had My Way)”
Reverend Gary Davis

Turkey Time

Microsoft Word Illustration

by Robert Giles

Thanks to YouTube, everyone can enjoy the cluck and cackle (and gobble) of our favorite bird, the turkey. Listen to the haunting sounds of the woodlands - Turkey Sounds.

A long time ago, we were playing basketball on the court in Byers’ Field when our attention was arrested by a short, high squawk, or “putt”.

“That sounds like a turkey,” my brother said in hushed tones. We stopped dribbling and passing and shooting and listened. Sure enough, there it was again. “Putt.”

It came from the north towards Logan’s Lane. In those days, Logan’s Lane was just a narrow unpaved road that led from Duss Avenue down past Hill Cemetery* to the tracks of the Pennsy. It came to a dead end at the railroad tracks. Route 65 had not yet been cut through.

I’m not sure why Logan’s Lane was there. I suspect it provided access to a passenger depot on the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne and Chicago Line. There is a "Logan Station" in the right spot on an 1877 map of the Ohio Valley.

We liked to pick the blackberries that grew on either side of the lane and on the grounds of Hill Cemetery, which for decades until the 70s was neglected and covered with high grass and brush. Local legend had it that the canes were fertilized by the graves of the dead. To our unsophisticated minds, that accounted for the lushness of the berries.

The lane and cemetery were also great places to pick elderberries.

So you get the picture. Byers’ Field over to Logan’s Lane and beyond was a lot wilder then than it is today. It even harbored a few turkeys.

My friend had a Russian grandfather that he called “Deedee”. (When she was alive, he called his Russian grandmother “Baba”.)

Deedee foraged all over Legionville Hollow and Byers’ Field for mushrooms (he had learned in his native Carpathia to distinguish the safe ones from the poisonous - we cautious eaters contented ourselves with the canned variety).

One day Deedee brought home something marvelous. It was a large box trap made of wood painted forest green. On the trap was a metal plate engraved with the words “Property of State Game Commission, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania”.

Of course, Deedee couldn’t read English (and maybe not Russian either), so he didn’t know he was stealing from the state. I presume he did know he was taking someone's property. I’m not sure what he wanted to do with the trap.

So what was the box trap doing out there by Logan’s Lane? Evidently, the State Game Commission had released a turkey or pheasant and had forgotten the trap (another shocking instance of government malfeasance).

We boys went in search of the turkey that had interrupted our basketball game but couldn’t spot it. Turkeys are wary of basketball players on the hunt and smart enough to elude them.

What is the point I am trying to make? Readers of my post “Small Game” were disbelieving that people actually hunted in Byers’ Field. After all, within gunshot range was a busy highway (old Route 88) and a populated village.

To those doubters, I say that not only did people hunt there; the State Game Commission stocked it for hunting. 

We heard but never saw turkeys. Pheasants we saw quite a bit. Once in a while we would flush one as we walked through high cover from the softball field up to Duss Avenue. It is astounding to see a ringneck go vertical in the air right in front of you. It has all the color and music of a rocket launch.

After a fire, we would sometimes spot the remains of a nest in the charred stubble of the field (anyone for a cooked pheasant egg?).

There were plenty of rabbits – it would have been superfluous for the Game Commission to stock rabbits. 

Every fall we could sit on our back porch and see hunters and hear the sound of gunfire from Byers’ Field. I hoped they didn’t get our turkey.
_____

*Go to Hill Cemetery for a fascinating account of the Legionville encampment, tippling Legionnaires, and General Wayne’s bombardment of Crow’s Island.

Small Game

by Robert Giles

Pete Dinnerlein lived on the edge of Legionville Hollow just above the path we took into the woods. He liked to hunt. He had a beagle named Cody.

It was a July morning. My brothers and I were on our way to the other side of the hollow to pick blackberries.

I stopped at Cody's to say hello. As usual, he was chained to his doghouse.

In his fretful roundabouts, Cody had trampled away every blade of grass in the circle circumscribed by his chain.

In winter, he had a lawn of mud and ice. In spring, the lawn was merely mud. In midsummer, it was dry as dirt, which in fact it was. It was autumn that Cody lived for.

I didn't insult Cody by trying to pet him or scratch his ear. He was a working dog, and proud to be one. Pete had cautioned that affection would take the edge off his hunting instincts.

Cody made a sudden u-turn with his head and neck to attack an itch at the base of his tail.

His tormentor vanquished, he turned to me, as if to ask, "Why don't you hurry along and catch up with your brothers?" Cody let out a sneeze.

Suddenly autumn had come and Cody's long stretch of unemployment was over. Pete took him down into the hollow to exercise. Cody splashed through the creek. He chased squirrels up trees. He snapped at a dragonfly. He was a puppy once again. Rejuvenated. Reborn. Ready for the hunt.

Pete and his dog crossed Duss Avenue near the Legionville Bridge. Pete wore a red plaid jacket, green pants, and an orange cap. Cody, as usual, wore his tan and cream coat.

I ran to catch up. I didn't know if Pete would let me tag along - he never had before. Maybe I was old enough now.

Pete shouldered his shotgun. "OK, Bobby, you can come along. But do as I say. I would hate to accidentally blow your head off."

I said OK.

We walked along the roads of limestone slag that led through Byers' Field. There were a few stunted trees. Each one seemed to contain a red-wing blackbird, defending his territory. As soon as we stopped trespassing on one blackbird, we seemed to offend another. "Scold, scold. Keep out. Get going."

We crossed the Byers' railroad siding just at the top of the wooden steps leading down to the tracks of the "Pennsy". Beyond was the Ohio River. (The final stretch of Route 65 had not as yet been cut through to spoil the view.)

We didn't go down the steps. Instead we walked along the siding north toward Baden.

Cody had run off ahead. He stopped and snuffled the air on both sides of the track. Then he was off into the high grass to the east, his shoulders low and his tail erect. We watched the tip of his tail until he disappeared entirely.

The air was crisp, the sun was bright, a 20-gauge, a good dog, warm clothes, rabbits in the grass. Who could ask for more?

"He's on to something." Cody had let out a single sharp bark. Pete added evenly, "He'll turn it toward us in just a second. Stay back. Get out of the way. Now!"

About 40 yards away, a rabbit burst from the weeds. After him came Cody. He no longer wore an air of intent concentration. Somewhere in the grass, he had exchanged it for an air of noisy exhilaration.

He was level-headed enough to give Pete room for a shot. He had felt the sting of shotgun pellets once too often.

I heard a bang from Pete's gun. The rabbit tumbled toward us, moving forward even in death. He lay at our feet.

Quickly, Pete wielded his knife. In a moment, the insides of the rabbit lay on the ground, steaming in the cold air.

The dog had pined for this reward. He had earned it. Now it was his. The steam vanished.

Pete put the gutted rabbit in his bag and tied it to his belt. By then Cody was off in the brush looking for seconds.

One dead rabbit, one happy dog, one fine morning in small game season.