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.

Up on the Lowdown

Microsoft Word

 by Robert Giles

“Who’s that at the door?”

“It’s Mary, Mom.”

“I’m not going to get a thing done this evening. Oh, alright, Bobby, let her in.”

“Hello, Bobby. Where’s your mama?”

“In the kitchen…. Mary’s here, Mom.”

Mom led Mary into the living room and sat her down on the sofa.

“Bobby, put the kettle on.”

I went to the kitchen and put on the kettle. Then I hurried back to the living room to hear what Mary had to say. Mary was always up on the lowdown.

Mary was still inquiring about Grandma’s health.

“Is Grandma still taking that sassafras tea I gave her?”

“Oh, yes, well she’s feeling a little better,” Mom fibbed.

“You know, when you get old you get blue. There’s no escaping it. Sitting by the window all day in a rocking chair doesn't help. A little bit of that tea will fix her up, poor thing.

If that doesn't help, let me know and I’ll give her some ginseng. Deedee found a new bunch up in Kingerski’s Hollow the other day.”

I went to the kitchen and poured two cups of Maxwell House for Mom and Mary. I put a little extra sugar in Mary’s, just the way she liked it.

“Speaking of Grandma, sitting in that rocker has got to affect her innards. She doesn't get bound up does she? (Mary didn’t like to use the word “constipated”.)

“Why no, she hasn't complained of it, not that she would. She doesn't like to complain.”

“That’s how old folks are. Why complain? Things could always be worse.

Did I tell you about the enema I gave old lady Butnik? Mildred says I saved her life. The old lady was backed up like the Aswan Dam and just wanted to die. Mildred didn’t know where to turn.

A person feels like if they go to a medical doctor for an impacted stool, they will just get the brushoff. ‘These things take time,’ they will say. Well sometimes Mother Nature needs a little help.”

I piped in, “Did you give her some of that “Big Thunder Prune Juice”?

“Why Bobby, that might work. I’m not familiar with that brand. Mildred did try some prune juice for a couple of days.”

“If prune juice doesn't do the trick, have her swallow a stick of dynamite." (I was thinking of a Daffy Duck cartoon.)

“Why you little half-baked potato, I do think you’re making fun of me. You know, I've put spells on little boys before. You wouldn’t want me to put a hex on you, would you?” Mary’s sharp nose threatened from between her pink cheeks. I could swear her left eye turned from blue to green and back to blue again.

“Bobby, either be quiet or go read a book”, Mom commanded.

Mary continued with her story. “You know, it would have taken maybe three sticks of dynamite - Oh, I’m as bad as the boy. An impacted stool is no laughing matter. I tell you old Mrs. Butnik was standing on a banana peel at death’s door. ‘Please help, whatever you can do’, Mildred begged me.

‘You’re my angel of mercy.’

I’m no angel but I do know a thing or two about helping my neighbors when they are in trouble. I got out my bladder and hose and squeeze bottle of glycerin and took charge.

We got old Mrs. Butnik up on the toilet – you know it wasn’t hard because she is just wasting away.

She jumped about two inches off the seat when I did the insertion so I knew she was alive. When I finished, we left her there. Mildred and I started a little game of pinochle while we waited.

I know you want to hear me describe the explosion, Bobby, but it wasn’t  like that. But imagine what would happen if the Aswan High Dam suddenly collapsed.

'Don’t flush that toilet', I yelled. Too late, Mildred flushed it while I was helping her mother back into bed.

I’m afraid there was an overflow and Mildred’s plush turquoise rug got ruined. I don’t know why people feel that have to pretty up a bathroom like that anyway.”

In another hour or so, Mary exhausted all her topics. We all caught our breaths.

Then it was out the door and up the street. Well, not all the way up the street. Mary had a few more neighbors to call upon before she reached the end of the block.

I don’t think Mary ever actually put a curse on me but if she did, it would explain a lot.

Gun Crazy

Microsoft Word 

by Robert Giles

When a bullet, for the second time, went right through the garage door, the boys decided to take the gun down to the river for further testing.

Chuck had built a successful crossbow and decided to convert it into a gun. I won’t give you a blueprint. All he needed was a bow string, a piece of spring steel, the end of a two-by-four, a narrow gauge iron pipe, and a short steel rod. And bullets. They were easy to get from one of our friends. There were a lot of sportsmen in our neighborhood.

Soon we were on the wall overlooking the Ohio River. It was about a third of a mile wide. On the other side was the Jones & Laughlin Steel Works.

Chuck held the gun “stock” to his shoulder, pulled back the bow string, secured it, and pressed the trigger. There was a tiny splash where the bullet struck the water, about a hundred yards off.

We took turns, everyone achieving the same result. It was pretty slick.

“Why don’t we find a target to shoot at?” someone asked. “It doesn’t take much skill to hit the river”.

We looked about for something to shoot at. Behind us was a railroad embankment. Across the tracks was the Ohio River Boulevard. There were no trees suitable for hanging a target.

“We better not risk it. We came down here to keep out of trouble.”

“Let’s just shoot up the rest of the bullets and go home. We can always go target shooting in Legionville Hollow.”

The box held about two dozen more bullets. We aimed a little higher to make it more interesting. What harm would it do to shoot up the Ohio River?

A booming voice came across the water –

“Please. Hold your fire. Do you want to kill someone?”

Evidently someone at Jones & Laughlin was using a bullhorn.

We didn’t have to be coaxed. We dropped the gun and the bullets in the weeds and lit out for home. Just as we got to the top of the stairs where the locktender’s quarters once were, we heard a police siren.

It was time to go underground. We went down into the basement of the ruined building and crouched out of sight.

We heard several sets of footsteps overhead. They trailed away in the direction of the river. About ten minutes later they were again overhead.

“You don’t think they’re hiding in these ruins, do you?”

“You want to go down there and find out?” One of the policemen was standing over the entrance hole. It looked like he would find it a tight fit. He didn’t want to risk it.

“They’re probably in the woods by now. Let’s head back.”

We tried to figure out what had gone wrong. “Do you think those bullets were skipping all the way across the water like a pebble on a pond?”

Some years later I was working at the J&L steel plant. An older worker and I were on the river bank. I pointed across to the old lock on the Legionville side. “That’s where we fished and played when we were kids – right over there.”

“Some knuckle-heads were shooting a gun from over there once. They probably didn’t know it but the bullets were flying all around here. We took cover. We were afraid to lift our heads. The shooting didn’t stop until the foreman got on his bullhorn. Crazy.”

He turned to me as though struck by a sudden insight. “That wasn’t you, was it?”

Flutterball

by Robert Giles

Chuck practiced his new pitch for hours. He was always inventing something.

He called it the “Dying Swan”. My other brother called it the “Butterfly”. I remember it as the “Flutterball”.

It had a high arc like in slo-pitch softball. It was agonizingly slow. It did a little dance or jig as it descended chest high at the upper limit of the strike zone.

I may be entering deep water here, but there was something geekish about the way Chuck delivered a flutterball. He sort of tip-toed forward on the mound and held the ball in a loose slack-armed way and released it with just his fingertips. He turned his face skyward as the ball inched toward the plate.

I have to say that is the proper way to deliver a flutterball, maybe the only way. After all, Chuck invented the pitch.

I still remember the unveiling of Chuck’s new pitch in an actual game. By chance my brothers and I all were on the same team. We usually played six to a side. We only needed two neighborhood kids to round out our squad. I forget who had the honor.

The other side had the Stolar brothers, Dicky and Bobby, and Art & Bobby Floro. Rick Supak and maybe Tommy Pappas completed the opposing six.

That day it was pretty much the Giles Brothers versus the neighborhood – an alignment that may have occurred only on that one fateful day.

Six-sided baseball requires modification of the usual rules. The batting team provides the catcher – in this case someone unprotected who functions only to return the ball to the pitcher. The “no right field hitting” rule is invoked to eliminate the need for a second baseman and right fielder. (In the rare instance of a left-handed batter, the fielders shifted rightward and a “no left-field hitting” rule applied.)

Contravention of the “no right-field hitting rule” or its corollary resulted in an automatic out.

Back to the game. We were in the ninth inning and the Giles Brothers had a one or two run lead. So far Chuck had not employed the flutterball.

Just when we thought we had the game on ice, the neighborhood boys began to make a little noise. There were runners on first and second, and Dicky Stolar was coming to the plate.

Some of you may remember that Dicky lettered in three sports at Ambridge High School – baseball, basketball, and golf (I may be wrong about golf – maybe that was his younger brother, Bobby).

Anyway, to my memory Dicky Stolar (or “Rich” or “Fuzzy”) was the finest athlete to ascend from the ash of Byers Field. Art “The Hammer” Floro trails in second place (sorry, Art).

So there we were on the diamond in Byers Field, the batting team threatening, and Byersdale’s home run king at the plate. Even before high school, Dicky was an imposing figure (he was in seventh or eighth grade at the time of our game).

All of a sudden Chuck changed his delivery and threw a flutterball. Dicky swung way out in front of the pitch. Strike one.

Dicky recovered his composure by striking home plate several times with his bat.

He may have anticipated that Chuck would change up on him by showing some speed on that second pitch. If so, he miscalculated. Along came another flutterball. Another mighty swing. A second strike.

Dicky pulled his cap down on his forehead and rummaged in his pocket for a handkerchief. He stepped from the batter’s box to blow his nose.

This time he would wait as though set in concrete for that pathetic pitch to arrive in his power zone. “Patience, Strength, Discipline,” Dicky prayed silently.

In floated the pitch, fluttering softly although the air was still and breathless. A dust devil ascended as Dicky swung his bat.

The ball made a tiny “plop” somewhere behind home plate. Dicky had struck out.

The Three Sams

Microsoft Word

by Robert Giles

About 1965 my friend started calling me “Sam”. I guess he got tired of “Bob”. Maybe he just liked making up names. He called his mother “Babe” and his father “Uncle Joe”.

I figured turnabout was fair play. We started calling one another “Sam” and almost forgot our true identities.

I first met Jean at the Baden Little League field on the bleachers sitting near the end - second row down from the top. She held a cherry Popsicle. Sam already knew her. His attentions were romantic.

She was watching her little brothers play for my old team. I think Jean’s Dad was the coach. Jean’s Dad had played semi-pro baseball in his youth. So had her uncle – he had almost made it to the big leagues.

I don’t know who won the game.

Jean was pretty. She had brunette hair worn in a popular style – cropped short at the back of the neck but with plenty of body up top, bangs in front and two sharp points swinging at you from the area of her ear lobes.

Jean had no trouble with conversation and always had something interesting to say. She noticed right away that my friend and I called each other “Sam”. We couldn’t satisfactorily explain why. She didn’t press the question – she just had one request.

“Why don’t you call me “Sam” too? That would be cool.”

It sounded cool to us too. That’s how we became the three Sams.

“Sam, what do you want to do tonight?”

“I don’t know, Sam, what do you want to do tonight?”

We frequently had the same problem as Ernie Borgnine and his friend in “Marty”. We didn’t know what we wanted to do.

“Let’s go up over the hill and see Sam.”

We headed up Dearborn Street and down Essex and through the Guttison Homes to the “projects”. That’s where Sam lived – in a neat concrete block house above the little league field.

If Sam was home, she would usually come out and the three of us would sit on the steps that led down to the sidewalk along Harmony Road. There was a railing made from metal pipe along one side of the steps. It was a short flight – maybe a half-dozen concrete steps.

We would sit there and talk until after it got dark.

“You know that song of Howling Wolf’s – ‘Smokestack Lightning’? Sam asked. “I wonder if he was singing about those flashing lights on top of the smokestacks.”

“Maybe. There’s a steel mill on the south side of Chicago near where Howling Wolf hangs out. I bet they have the same kind of smokestacks and lights at the South Side Works.”

The lights flashed back and forth in a zigzag fashion – “They sure do look like little lightning flashes”.

“They have to put those lights on smokestacks because they are so tall that airplanes might crash into them. Even in the daytime sometimes there is so much smoke a pilot might not see them.”

“I like the way he starts to howl in that song. Oh, wha hoo, hoo.” Sam tried in vain to sing like Howling Wolf.

“Well, I better go home. “Fang” doesn't like me sitting out here with boys even in the daytime. She says it “doesn't look nice”. “Fang” was Sam’s name for her mother.

Sam’s taste in music was a little different than ours. She really liked Jan & Dean and the whole California surf thing.

One time we went inside and she played a new album she had by a guy named Rod McKuen. Rod read or sang his poems in a flat voice reminiscent of Chet Baker, the jazz trumpet player and singer, himself a chilled-out Californian. The poems were accompanied by the recorded sounds of the Pacific Ocean. It wasn’t surf music, it was the surf itself.

Sam knew I liked poetry so she insisted I take the album home which I politely did. I found I would go right to sleep by the third cut in on either side. There was something about the squawk of seabirds that made me drowsy.

I did like one song of McKuen’s – I’m not sure if it was on Sam’s album – “Jean” – the theme song from the movie “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie”.

Jean, Jean, you're young and alive
Come out of your half-dreamed dream
And run, if you will, to the top of the hill
Open your arms, bonnie Jean

I’m not sure how the lyrics related to Miss Brodie’s story, but that is true of a lot of movie theme songs. Maybe they don’t want to give away too much of the plot.

I liked the words to that song though – very romantic – maybe that is the link to Jean Brodie. But I don’t think she was so much a romantic as an eccentric – really daft in that understated British way that lulls you and keeps you guessing. All that stuff about her “prime” – she was over-the-hill and couldn’t see it - until her favorite young disciple betrayed her.

I started to date one of Sam’s classmates at Mount Galitzin Academy. The other Sam was going steady with a girl in our class at Ambridge High School. We still hung out with Sam as much as we could. We stayed friends.

Sam laughed when we told her about going to the North Park skating rink. A girl named Jane had invited the other Sam along on her skate date even though he had broken his ankle and was on crutches. Sam invited me in turn – he had to have some company sitting by the ice in his cast, didn’t he? What better company for someone lame than someone who didn’t know how to skate?

Imagine how surprised the guy was when Sam and I climbed into the back seat of his car? I don't think he spoke one word all the way out to North Park. I'm sure that was his last date with Jane.

Why she just didn’t say “no” to the guy in the first place I’ll never tell. She must have been afraid of him.

Sam was always developing sudden crushes on boys – it may be a pathology endemic among girls that attend convent schools. One night she asked us if we knew the good-looking guy who worked at the Isaly store in Byersdale.

“You mean the athletic-looking guy with the wavy dark-brown hair – a little bit shy?”

“That’s him – who is he?”

“That’s my brother.”

Sam asked my brother to the prom at Mount Galitzin. We double-dated. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. For one thing, it solved my transportation problem. My brother had his license.

My brother had started dating someone else and never reciprocated Sam’s attention by asking her out on another date. Just as suddenly she got moony over one of the basketball players on the Ambridge High Championship Basketball Team. He wasn’t a starter on the team.

“Why do you want to go out with a second-stringer?” we teased. Besides they weren't champions yet – they had quite a few games to go. “That guy may end up a nobody on a second-rate team.”

Sam was undeterred. Once she made up her mind, she was tenacious. She had to have her champion.

I think Sam and the second-stringer did wind up dating for a while. We weren’t jealous. We had girl friends of our own.

Another thing Sam could never let go of was her surfer-beach-Pacific Ocean dream. She loved the Beach Boys. Sam and I were R&B devotees. We tried to turn her and she did start to dig a little Stax and Motown, only to revert to form when something new blew in from the west, like “The Endless Summer”, a movie about a bunch of surfers who traveled the globe searching for the “perfect wave”.

Somehow Sam cajoled us into taking her to see the movie, which was more a “mockumentary” than a real movie. I have one thing to say about “The Endless Summer” – it did seem endless. Once you’ve seen one hotdogger hang ten all the way in to shore riding the crest of a gnarly wave, well, who wants to see that again? Paddle out, surf in, don’t wipe out and live to do it over again.

Besides, wasn’t that quest-for-perfection hook already used in “The Glenn Miller Story”.

Sam’s Dad lost his job in perhaps the first mill closure to hit contemporary Ambridge. She was studying to be a nurse. The other Sam and I had started college. I guess things were pretty shaky at Sam’s house until her Dad landed a new job.

We still managed to get together once every couple of months. Sam would be home on weekends. Sometimes we rode back to school with her on Sunday evenings, her mother at the wheel. It was a long time back and forth in the car.

We got to know “Fang” pretty well. She wasn’t so bad, really.

The next thing we knew Sam had a nursing job in Pittsburgh. The other Sam was in the Military Police, of all things – out in Fort Collins, Colorado. I was about to take a job in Baltimore.

We weren’t surprised a few years later when we heard that Sam had moved to Hawaii. She had made it real. When she seized on an idea, like I said, she was tenacious. I don’t know for sure if she ever climbed on a surf board, but I bet she did.

Me, I never go near the beach. All that water. It’s worse than a desert.

The Jewel Tea Man

by Robert Giles

“Let me show you my wares,” the Tea Man said to Grandma.  He laid out his catalog along the length of the kitchen table. The separate parts were foldered in shiny plastic like you might use to organize cards and photographs inside a billfold. Of course, The Jewel Tea Man’s catalog was too large for the average purse or back pocket.

He unzipped and unfolded it in a single graceful movement.  He did it as quietly as a professional deals a deck of cards.

The Tea Man sidled over in the direction of the refrigerator, turned about, and fixed his eyes on Grandma's.

“Do you see anything you like, dear?”

Grandma let out her breath as though she had never seen pictures of towels and curtains and bed linens before.

“Dora, is there anything you can use?” Grandma asked her daughter-in- law, as if trying to divert the Tea Man’s gaze.

“No, the first time Mr. Gardner was here, there was nothing that I needed or had the money for.”

“Please call me “George”? I like it much better than Mr. Gardner.”

The Tea Man had turned his attention back to Grandma. In Grandma, he perhaps saw someone of more refinement - someone who could appreciate and afford “nice’ things.

For a moment he admired Grandma’s silver hair and the economical way it was arranged atop her head. The tortoise-shell combs above her ears betrayed a normal dose of human vanity.

“I have some lovely cotton print aprons you might like.”

“Why yes, I believe I could use a new apron, George.” Grandma didn’t sound one-hundred percent comfortable pronouncing the Tea Man’s first name.

 “I hope you haven’t noticed how shabby this one’s gotten. I do all the readying up after dinner and I help Dora with the dishes. I try to keep the kitchen looking just like my own did up at Summit.”

“Summit Township, isn’t that up around Saxonburg? I used to have some customers out that way.”

Grandma and George were still talking about places and people they both knew in Butler County when I got up and left the kitchen.

The Tea Man sold three aprons and a can of air freshener on that first visit. Of course, he didn’t have the aprons in his truck. He had to put those on order. He promised to bring them on his next visit, in one week.

The Tea Man looked a little scary to a small boy. He had a heavy black beard which he shaved as close as he could, leaving a mere shadow. He probably kept a razor in his truck and freshened up in the afternoons. His suit was like the ones you see on the men in the church choir, slightly rumpled by his days on the road. He had a flashy wide neck tie.

His hair was combed straight back but was fluffy and buoyant. There were streaks of grey at his temples. He had a widow’s peak, like the old guy on “The Munsters”.

His fingernails were brushed and shiny. He smelled nice. He was light on his feet and moved like a dancer. He had a dancer’s body.

Who was it that played the older detective on “Law and Order” – Jerry something or other? I understand that women found him irresistible. I’ll have to take that on faith. Anyhow, a picture is worth a thousand words – the Tea Man looked like Jerry (the actor).

A wee bit sleazy. Too smooth in a bumbling sort of way.

When he brought Grandma the aprons, he laid it on thickly.

“My, you ladies sure have this kitchen looking spic and span. Why, it’s cleaner than a whale’s backbone. It smells so fresh as well – isn’t that air freshener nice?”

He didn’t stop for Mom or Grandma to answer; he just charged ahead. Mom leaned on her broom. Grandma sat transfixed.

“These aprons are just your color. You’re so attractive – I hope you don’t mind my saying that. When I meet a pretty lady, I just have to blurt it out. I hope you take it the way I intend – I just want to let you know you are the most beautiful person on earth – next to my own dear wife of course.”

On that second visit the Tea Man sold Grandma a small set of dresser drawers. She already had a nice dresser but I guess it’s true that she needed one, as she explained, just for her support hose and girdles and all that other stuff she hid down deep.

I heard Dad asking Mom what Grandma needed with a new dresser – that’s why I knew how Grandma had explained her sudden need for one. I would have never been bold enough to ask her directly.

Grandma seemed a lot more pleasant after the Tea Man started visiting. When I played checkers with her, she no longer hated losing. She didn’t accidentally on purpose upset the board just because I had her cornered. Sometimes she hummed along with a song on the radio while waiting for me to move my piece.

She did look nice in her new aprons, and wearing the earrings she hadn’t had on since Uncle Gene and Aunt Ada’s fiftieth wedding anniversary. Uncle Hal had told her on the way out of church that they made her look like a gypsy – right in front of everyone.

It was a cruel thing to tease Grandma. I knew she hated it even though she would never give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her vulnerable.

I didn’t mean to tease her when I asked her one morning – “Grandma, what are you all dressed up for? Is the Tea Man coming?”

She looked stricken – right away I knew I had said something childish.

“Bobby, why must you always nose around in other people’s business? Go on, get out of here. Run off.”

Week after week she seemed to have a sudden need for things she had done without all her life. The Tea Man kept calling.

And then one day maybe Grandma heeded the voice that repeated in her ear –

“Don't you know little fool, you'll never win.  Why not use your mentality, come on step up to reality.”*

That’s what I would like to think – that Grandma realized her flirtation with the Tea Man was that and nothing more. She didn’t flinch. She stepped up to reality. Like we all do.

Dad always said that Grandma pinched a penny so hard she could make Abe Lincoln recite the Gettysburg Address backward. Maybe she just didn’t want to part with any more money. Or maybe her bedroom had reached its limit of junk.

The Tea Man had a love that was as large as his sales territory. It was a big love but it was a conditional love. When Grandma stopped buying, he stopped selling. It takes two to tango.
_____

* From the song “I've Got You Under My Skin” by Cole Porter.

Beautiful River

Dredge and Barges in Ohio River, Beaver PA (Google Earth)

by Robert Giles

Sunova Beach

The big sign in the sand at Crows Island was perhaps the first thing we looked for when church let out. From where my Dad parked up on Dippold we could see it clearly – “Sunova Beach”.

Crows Island was opposite Baden near the Aliquippa shore. The channel on the Aliquippa side was narrow – maybe sixty feet wide. About 1964 or 1965, the LTV Steel Company filled in the channel and raised the height of the island about ten feet. That was the end of Crows Island. LTV built a new steel mill on top of it.

Before that, it was just a long, flat sandy dune. I don’t remember there being any trees – maybe a few scrubby ones. There was some Joe-Pye weed, sumac, and cattail. The island was uninhabited. There was a makeshift shed on “Sunova Beach” that served as a dressing room for bathers.

From the Methodist Church, the beach beckoned. There was about forty feet of clean white sand down to river’s edge. The beach was maybe fifty yards long. Frequently we would see one or two motor boats anchored and sun worshipers on towels or chaise lounges.

I don’t remember when we hatched our plan but it might have been during a ride home from church.

My brother Chuck and his friend Larry found an article in a magazine showing how to make a raft with lumber and Clorox bottles. The “bottles” were actually plastic gallon jugs.  The idea was to make a deck from light lumber and then string the Clorox bottles beneath and along the sides. The bottles would provide enough buoyancy to float the deck and two passengers.

We calculated we would need about thirty Clorox bottles with caps. The guy who wrote the magazine article must have done a lot of laundry.

Not just any empty bottle would do – we had to have the caps too. Even if we got the whole neighborhood involved, it would take all summer to collect enough. After some deliberation, we decided to relax our standards. Any large plastic jug would do even if it didn’t bear the Clorox logo.

I think it was about then that soda pop started coming out in liter jugs. We knew that a liter was smaller than a gallon, but OK, what the hey – 2 soda pop bottles were roughly equal to a Clorox jug.

By late July we had collected the required flotation devices – what would we do for lumber?

There was a truck park on Duss Avenue next to Jan’s Bar. There were wooden skids lying about. No one would miss one.

“This is awfully heavy. It’s water-logged from being out in the rain. Weren't we supposed to use light lumber?”

Free lumber was too good to pass up. Besides it was already nailed together into a deck of sorts.

Hauling the heavy skid with bottles attached all the way to the river was impossible.  We decided to take the component parts there separately and construct the raft on the river bank.

We took turns carrying the skid across Byers’ Field and down over Route 65 and across the Pennsy tracks. Additional hands were needed to drag the bottles. Trailing clouds of Clorox jugs, we must have made quite an impression on passing motorists. Some demonstrated their appreciation by honking their horns.

There were seven of us. The raft was designed for two. Our friend Alex contributed two truck tire inner tubes. Another kid had a life preserver from his uncle’s rowboat. We all planned to sail.

Finally we were at the launch point – the mouth of Legionville Run. We attached the large bottles to the bottom of the skid and tied the liter bottles around the rim, all according to specification. Everything was secured with plastic clothes line.

We were ready to launch. Chuck and Larry stepped onto the raft. They were in about three feet of water. Almost immediately, the raft began to sink, not all the way to the bottom, but below the surface.

Maybe the lumber was just too water-logged from lying out in the truck park.

We could see that our vessel was not sea-worthy. What to do? We still wanted to get to Sunova Beach.

My brother, as usual, had a plan. Why don’t we just tie the Clorox bottles around our chests and float over that way. Who needs a raft?

“You guys who were going to share a truck tube can use bottles too. That way we’ll all have our own individual floats.”

Chuck tested his Clorox bottle “vest” in the shallow water at the mouth of the run.  It worked.  Decked out in Clorox bottles and perched grandly atop truck tubes, we kicked and floated all the way to Crows Island, about a half mile down river.

Behind us, the abandoned skid bobbed ignominiously in the waters off Legionville Run.

We sailed all the way down the back channel and around the north end of the island and back upriver to Sunova Beach.

Sunova Beach looked a heck of a lot better from the Methodist Church than it did close up.

We landed briefly, but by then we were so tired and dirty and sunburned that we just wanted to go home. We headed straight across to Baden and walked the railroad tracks back to Byersdale, minus the bottles. We left them tied to the base of a willow tree.

Who knows -- the evidence of our grand voyage may still be there today on the Baden shore.  Islands and steel mills may come and go but Clorox bottles are forever. 

It makes me want to holler "Sunova Bleach!"

The Swimmer

It was a regular thing for the old guy to pull over by the railroad tracks and come down to the river to swim.

Sometimes we wouldn’t see him dive in - we would just hear his body hit the water. Other times we would see him pause atop the flight of concrete steps that led up to the ruins of the old lockmaster’s quarters, surveying the river as though looking for approaching traffic. Or we would see him down on the lock wall, taking off his clothes.

He wasn’t old “old”. He might have been in his fifties. His crew cut was thin and white around the ears. The hair on his chest and legs was also white. Over all, he was red and brown, with tinges of white.  He wasn’t what I would call overweight. He might have played football in high school.

If he worked in a mill, I would guess foreman. If he ever hung out in a bar, it was because he owned it.

He was always fifty yards away. He never came down to say hello or ask how the fishing was. Sometimes he would nod in our direction if we waved.

He always came to the surface about thirty yards from the river wall, facing backwards toward shore, treading water smoothly, showing only his head. He swam like a seal or other sea creature, effortlessly. When he finished his backstroke, he went into a breaststroke that was just as slow and regular. His arms and legs never cut the water. We just saw the back of his head, moving slowly away. He swam so noiselessly there were probably times when he came and went and we didn’t even notice he was there.

If a tug came along, he would bide his time until boat and barges passed, bobbing in their wake when his route was clear. For a second he would disappear entirely behind a wave, then reappear and disappear at regular intervals until the river calmed.

Calm – that’s the word I would use to describe the swimmer.  It might take him twenty minutes to get to his destination and twenty minutes to get back to shore. No wasted energy.

I don’t think I ever saw him swim all the way over to the western shore – he just went three-quarters of the way over and back. Forty minutes – I guess that was the goal he had set for himself.

On a really hot day when the fish weren’t biting we would be tempted to jump in ourselves. But the water was oily. There was always something scuzzy floating on it. Besides, it was over our heads. What if we swam out too far and couldn’t get back?

I liked to swim but I was a noisy, nervous, splashy swimmer. I couldn’t go the distance. I was almost in high school before I swam all the way out to the diving platform at Brady’s Run Lake or tubed over to Crows Island.

I still think of the old guy. He knew what he wanted to do and did it, patiently and masterfully. He didn’t seem to need people – at least he didn’t go out of his way to be social. He didn’t mind solitude. He didn’t spend a lot of time thinking - he just went in head first. Once he was in the water, he didn’t waste any motion.

Incredibly, he always seemed to climb out of the water as clean as when he went in – but who could be sure? He was always fifty yards away. 

Out on Teeter-Totter

The first time I went down to the old lock wall I was seven or eight. My oldest brother Jim took me. He showed me where the high school boys had carved their names into the stone.

The wall stretched from a point close to the mouth of Legionville Run all the way to Teeter-Totter, a distance of about 200 yards. The wall was partly submerged, even in those days. The north end near Legionville Run was under water. If you took off your shoes and socks and rolled up your pants you could walk the wall, even though it was under water. It was a foot or two beneath the surface. You had to walk a straight line or you might step into deep water.

The wall emerged about 30 yards before you got to the first “lock”.

There were two “locks” along the wall. The first “lock” was the more northerly of the two. We called them “locks” but now I’m pretty sure that is incorrect – thus the quotation marks. There were perhaps two locks around the dam that crossed the Ohio until 1924, but they were on opposite sides of the river, one for northbound vessels and one for southbound.

Our two “locks” on the Legionville side were actually mechanical gates that controlled the water level in the one lock on our side of the river. Remnants of metal plate were all that remained of the gates.

A person looking across the Ohio could see on the Aliquippa shore the twin of the wall on the Legionville side. The two walls were all that were left of the dam that once spanned the river.

Why was the dam destroyed and replaced by a new one at Emsworth (Dasheilds Dam)?

The dam at Legionville stood at one of the busiest stretches of the river, athwart the miles-long J&L steel works.

A fleet of barges and tugs hauled minerals from one end of the steel works to the other. Every relatively short trip back and forth required a passage through the locks. The consensus was that this was too costly. Time is money.

The US Army Corps of Engineers was nothing if not accommodating. They fixed J&L’s problem and left behind an interesting ruin for our fun and wonderment.

The two sites on the Legionville side that we referred to as “locks” were good places to fish. Some boys liked to swim there. Once in a while someone drowned.

What I wanted to describe to you before I got sidetracked into all this lock business was the southerly portion of the wall (the Ambridge end). Just south of what we erroneously referred to as “the second lock” was the area we called “Teeter-Totter”.

Teeter-Totter referred to the southern-most tip of the wall. There was water on three sides of Teeter-Totter. Think of it as a man-made peninsula of crumbling concrete.

My brother helped me navigate out to Teeter-Totter on that first visit. Right off the bat I could see that the path was blocked by a small willow tree. Jim showed me how to grab a bunch of willow and lean out over the river while sidestepping along the first few feet of wall. Once past the willow, I could see that the wall was overgrown with poison ivy. Fortunately the ivy and the earthen bank on the left side quickly gave way to a back-water. There was water on both sides of the wall from there on out. On the right was the deep water of the river, on the left was the muddy shallow water of the inlet.

According to legend there were “golden” carp that inhabited the inlet. All I could see was refuse of every kind, floating on the slack water. In fact, everything that floated seemed to end up in the inlet – wiffle balls, soccer balls, beach balls, baseballs, softballs, rubber balls, wiffle ball bats, lumber, baby dolls, hula hoops, Christmas ornaments, artificial Christmas trees, plastic bottles, toilet floats, and bars of ivory soap.

The water was oily and shimmered with the rainbow colors you see on asphalt after a rain. The air smelled like heavy machinery.

All we had to do was turn ever so slightly to our right and there it was – the beautiful Ohio. Did you ever see a large body of water in motion that wasn’t beautiful?

The sun was descending and imparted a golden glow. You had to shade your eyes with your palm to look at it. Across the river was the J&L tin mill and seamless tube.

Everything looked fixed and permanent. A locomotive puffed along the track. A coal barge was unloading way up river where you could just make out the Ambridge-Woodlawn Bridge.

We stepped a little farther along the wall.

“Careful, Bobby, this is where it gets interesting.”

The concrete under my feet began to shift. Way out there on the point, the wall took a beating. The river was tamed but still had wild moments even the Corps of Engineers couldn’t manage.

The blocks on the surface of Teeter-Totter were slightly askew but still had a solid look. It was the more friable blocks below in the river that were eroded and unstable.

Did you ever walk up a seesaw and get to the tipping point and keep going and let the board pitch you forward to the other side? If you were agile or at least prepared, you could keep your footing. The unsure and unaware landed in the grass. Scaredy-cats backed off to contemplate careers as playground supervisors.

“OK, Bobby, when the wall shifts, just step forward onto the next block. You won’t fall in, I promise.”

Byersdale Tough

Wiki Images

by Robert Giles

I don’t know if this story is about “Harper” or “Mutzie”. In my head, I’ve got the two of them mixed up. They were older boys, born before The War.

Anyway, I don’t want to confuse you so let’s pretend it’s about Mutzie. If I’m wrong, correct me. (This is how I do things – I just give it my best guess and let the chips fly.)

In the fifties, people worried a lot about “juvenile delinquency”. There wasn’t much else to worry about. Mutzie wasn’t actually a juvenile delinquent; he just looked the part.

He was big and strong and always wore a tee shirt and had a pack of Winston’s rolled up in his sleeve. He had long, straight brown hair combed back in a ducktail. When he wasn’t smoking a cigarette, he was chewing on a toothpick.

He had a way of looking mean and tough – not like some crybaby from the movies – I mean Byersdale tough.

He had a nice car with white wall tires and skirts. It was robin’s egg blue and cream. He always kept it immaculately clean and polished. It had everything but a good muffler. He liked it that way. We always knew when Mutzie was coming down the hill.

One day my brother and his friend Steve let us in on a secret – someone had put sugar in Mutzie’s gas tank, causing the engine to seize. (They were quick to add they hadn’t done it.)

My sister and her friend Marlene asked me if I wanted to take a walk up over the hill to the playground. Sure, I loved to play on the see-saws. I was about seven years old.

Way up on top of Anthony Wayne Drive the three of us ran into Mutzie. He was working on his car. The engine was on the sidewalk in about fifty pieces. There was grease on his white tee shirt. His shiny brown hair was mussed.

All of a sudden he crossed the street and came toward us menacingly. He pointed his finger at me. “You’re the little bastard that sugared my tank, aren’t you?”

Marlene placed herself between Mutzie and me.

“That little boy is seven years old. What kind of an idiot are you? Have you any idea what you’re saying?”

Marlene proceeded to give Mutzie her lip. I forget most of what she said but that’s OK. I couldn’t print it here anyway.

Mutzie backed off. We continued our walk. I was still shaky. I think I was scared for three days afterward.

I think Marlene was the one who was “Byersdale tough”.


The Crib

The crib was put away in the attic after my little brother outgrew it and moved into the bed in the hall. It didn’t come out again until eight years later. It looked like any other crib – it was painted white.

The mattress was just thick enough and the springs were just strong enough. One side was adjustable – you could lower it to change a diaper and then raise it back up so the toddler wouldn’t fall out onto the floor.

I think it had two strings of wooden beads impaled on steel rods on the adjustable side. A child could find delight spinning them and moving them up and down. They may have been painted with bright primary colors but I don’t think they were – I just remember the shiny white paint (or was it a maple varnish).

My earliest memory ever is of being exiled from my parents’ bedside when my new brother came home from the hospital. It was time to move out of the crib and into a hostile world.

For my brother and me, it was the beginning of a rivalry.


The Sea of Legs

We were inside the big tent erected on top of the softball diamond in Byers’ Field. It was lit with strings of bare incandescent light bulbs. There were tables here and there with things to buy. Was this part of a carnival, or was it a flea market or rummage sale? I think it was part of a carnival. There were at least fifty people inside the tent, maybe even a hundred. It was a big tent.

I was about three years old. I held my mother’s hand as she guided me through a sea of legs, mostly the female kind.

My mother let go of me to look at something on one of the tables. I had to keep moving or I would be trampled.

Panic set in. Where was Mom?

I saw a pair of navy blue slacks. I felt relieved. I reached out and tugged on the slacks.

I looked up. It was a complete stranger.

Those first furry mammals that looked up into the face of a tyrannosaurus rex must have had a similar scare.

Freak show! That settles it - it must have been a carnival.

The Clover Farm Store

There was a neighborhood grocery where the Laundromat now stands across Dearborn at the north end of Watson Street. It was once the AM Byers’ company store but that was before I was born. I remember it as the Clover Farm Store.

Residents of Byersdale could run a tab there until payday. We kids went there for soda pop or penny candy or for a loaf of bread and lunch meat. The store was turned into a laundry after the Isaly store opened just down the street and ran it out of business.

We didn’t appreciate it at the time, of course, but that was probably our first brush with “the creative destruction of capitalism”.

There was a lady there called “Binger”. There also was a Mrs. Overholt. I don’t know if “Binger” was a last name or a nickname.

Anyway, Binger was nice to us kids, especially my brother, who was cute and had curly hair. One day at the dinner table my brother stunned everyone by announcing, “When I grow up I want to be a store lady like Binger.”

Ouch! He should have phrased that a little differently. The teasing and ridicule began and has not let up to this day. At our family reunions, someone will always ask him if he has become a store lady yet.

He has learned to deal with it – “No, I haven’t grown up yet.”

Good retort, bro. I haven’t grown up yet either.

Trains

Once or twice in the evening each summer, Mom would take us for walks down across Duss Avenue to the road in Byers’ Field where all the sixteen-year-olds practiced their driving. That road leads into another road and pretty soon we came to the AM Byers Company railroad siding. At that time of day there was never a train idling on the siding to block us.

Once we crossed the siding, we could see the Ohio River. We stood at the top of a high bluff that loomed over the Pennsy tracks and the ruins of Old Lock Number 4.

Once in a while there were coal barges tied up along the lock wall. They were interesting but not half as interesting as the trains. We had come to see the trains.

There was a wooden staircase that the carpenters at the Byers plant had built so that workers could go down to service the pump house that stood on the river bank with its foot in the water. (Maybe the water was cold and it didn’t want to plunge all the way in.)

We sat on top of the steps and took in the view. After a bit a train would come along. Sometimes there were two at once, one headed north and the other headed toward Pittsburgh.

Watching the trains was like a geography class. All those place names written on the sides of the boxcars. Even a small boy realized what a big country it was.

“What’s that train way across on the other side of the river?”

“That’s the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie. The ones in the steel plant are the Aliquippa and Southern. The four tracks on this side of the river are the Pennsylvania.”

“The Pennsylvania is the best, isn’t it?”

“Yes, Bobby, it’s the best of all.”