gat

I shouldn’t say nobody had money in Monongahela, but it’s accurate to say nothing was
expensive. Beer was the town passion, more a religion with the men, and a big glass cost only a
nickel, the same price as twelve ounces of buttermilk or a candy bar three times heavier than the
modern sort. Bones to make soup were free. Beyond movies—twelve cents for kids—commercial
entertainment hardly existed. There were a few bowling alleys at a nickel a frame, Redd’s Beach
(a pool at least ten miles away where swimming was a dime), and a roller-skating rink I never
went to.
Where society thrived was in hundreds of ethnic social clubs and fraternal organizations up and
down the Valley: the Moose, the Elks, the Oddfellows, Mystic Knights, Sons of Slovenia, the
Polish-American Society, the Russian-American Club. These were places for men to drink and
talk cheaply except on Saturday night when ladies could drink and talk, too, alongside their men
and have a dance. Sometimes with even a live band to give snap to the joint.
No kid in Mon City reached for the "Events and Activities" page of the papers because there
wasn’t one, nor were there any special kid places that people of all ages didn’t frequent. When the
men weren’t playing bocce at the Italian Club, kids were allowed, passing first through a barroom
reeking of unpasteurized stale beer. No special life was arranged for kids. Yet there was always a
full menu. Just spying on the adult world, watching people work, and setting out on expeditions
to explore filled whatever time you wanted to spare. Until I got to Cornell, I can’t recall anyone I
ever knew saying "I’m bored." And yet in New York City, when I moved there, hardly a day
passed without someone crying loud and long about ennui. Perhaps this indicates some important
marker we’ve missed in our modern search to make private worlds for children—the constituents
of meaning have been stripped away from these overspecialized places. Why a child would want
to associate exclusively with children in a narrow age or social class range defies understanding,
that adults would impose such a fate on kids strikes me as an act of madness.
The greatest fun was watching work at construction sites, watching freight trains unload or coal
up, studying lumberyards at work, seeing gas pumped, hoods lifted, metal welded, tires
vulcanized, watching Johnny Nami cut hair, watching Vito fill chocolates. Best of all was trailing
Charlie Bigerton, the cop, on his rounds without his catching on. When kids around town pooled
data about Charlie, we could recreate the police patrol schedule accurately enough that violating
wartime curfew was like taking candy from a baby.
Sitting In The Dark
At 213 Second Street we lived over the printing office Granddad owned, the Zimmer Printing
Company. "Since 1898," his swinging sign read. It was located only a block and a half from the
green river west of the streetcar tracks on Main. In between river and streetcars was the
Pennsylvania Railroad right of way and tracks which followed the river down to Pittsburgh. Our
second floor bay window hung over the town’s main intersection where trolleys from Charleroi
and Donora passed constantly, clanging and hissing, all lit up in the dark night.
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