Water Under the Bridge: November 2019

Monday, November 25, 2019

Alma Mater. June 27, 2019

June 27, 2019

Alma Mater

My grandson, Ian McCance, has just finished his junior year in high school, in Fort Collins, Colorado, and is beginning to think about college. So far he had visited three universities in Colorado – Colorado State University, Colorado University, and Northern Colorado University.

This month’s agenda included a trip to my alma mater, Penn State. I was happy to accompany him, his sister Claire, and his mother on this trip.

Although I enjoyed my years at State College immensely and was originally a strong supporter of the school, we gradually became estranged as the years passed. Our first disagreement involved football tickets. For a number of years a Fall trip to a football game with our friends Dick and Mary White was an annual treat for my wife and me.

We seldom went for Homecoming or any really “big games”; for us it was a pleasant social experience with good friends. One year we were advised that tickets were no longer offered for individual games. If we wanted to go to a game we had to purchase season tickets for all five games. Obviously the University had converted a sporting event into a business opportunity. My attempt at a logical, courteous complaint was brushed off; I haven’t attended a Penn State game since.

For me the demonization of Joe Paterno following the Sandusky scandal was even more serious. I was a Sophomore in 1950 when he and Rip Engle arrived, and I joyfully followed his career. I became convinced he was the ideal coach, as interested in the overall development of his players as he was in winning games. His positive impact on the University was unparalleled. Nothing I have learned since has changed my mind. It is impossible for me to condone the way his legacy has been treated.

Nonetheless I approached the trip with a positive attitude and was rewarded with an enjoyable experience. The drive up route 22 and then I-99 was nostalgic, despite the fact that high speed divided superhighways have replaced the winding country roads of the 1940s. The fact that we were staying at the Nittany Lion Inn reinforced the nostalgia; it certainly is a marvelous example of old time elegance and modern convenience.

We started the formal tour in an auditorium in the Shields Building, on the east end of campus, with a sophisticated presentation that focused on the merits of choosing Penn State as one’s alma mater and the intricacies of the application process. I viewed it from the perspective of a representative of a competitor, based on my long involvement with the University of Pittsburgh.

One thing that surprised me was the presentation’s emphasis on the ability of Penn State graduates to easily find employment after graduation. The sales pitch seemed to be that of a vocational school rather than an educational institution. I still think that acquiring a well-rounded education is an objective as important as preparing a student for finding a job. Perhaps that is no longer true at “public” universities.

I also was surprised at the complete lack of acknowledgment that Penn State is part of the Big Ten conference. I was not a fan of State abandoning its traditional rivalries with schools in Pennsylvania and neighboring states when they joined the Big Ten. At that time there was a lot of talk about the academic advantages of establishing a relationship with the Big Ten universities. Apparently that is just one more example of replacing sports with business.

We then split up into individual groups of about a dozen each and were assigned a tour guide. I commented to Sara that, at Pitt, the guides had to be like hockey defensemen (skilled at skating backwards) because they had to walk backwards while talking to their groups. Sure enough, our guide immediately announced that she had walked backwards into a signpost, two days earlier.

Sara reported that she thought the enthusiasm and capability of the guide made a big difference in the visitor’s long-term impression of the school, citing particularly a young man at Northern Colorado who was an excellent ambassador for his school. I felt our guide was of that category as well.

Our first stop was in the Intramural Building, one of her favorite spots. It was especially interesting for me, as one of our Senior Design teams had just done a hypothetical design of such a facility which will be built at Pitt in the near future. I am enthusiastic about providing opportunities for students to work out and play pickup games, to participate rather than be spectators at games in professional arenas. The Penn State facility was outstanding, much more ambitious than the one Pitt is planning.

We then walked west along Curtin Road all the way to West Halls, a distance of about a mile. This prompted me to recite an “old days” story. When I was a sophomore, living in the Nittany Dorms, I had an 11:00 o’clock “Phys Ed” class in Rec Hall that ended at Noon. I then had to trek a mile back to my dorm for lunch, switch into my ROTC uniform, and dash back to the Armory, another three quarters of a mile.

Our walk on Curtin took us past the Creamery, prompting Claire to make us promise to return there in the afternoon. It is refreshing to realize that such a simple tradition is still extremely popular.

My junior and senior years I lived in one of the West Halls, Hamilton. My dorm room was on the ground floor, looking out at the sidewalk separating Hamilton Hall from the fraternity Phi Gamma Delta. I kept the window unlocked so my close friends could sneak in easily. It doesn’t appear that that is possible today.

I stuck with the tour three fourths of the way back on Pollock Road, bailing out at the HUB (Hetzel Union Building) for coffee and a muffin and the opportunity to visit the Book Store. When they finished the tour, Sara, Claire, and Ian joined me for lunch in Pollock Commons, the dining hall for a complex of dormitories in that area. The contrast between that facility and the dining halls of my era is dramatic; Pollock Commons was easily as upscale as the “downtown” restaurant we had eaten in the previous evening – the Federal Taphouse.

The only negative thing I learned on the tour was that students had to buy tickets for football games and that tickets for Seniors, purchased online, sold out in three minutes! Still one more example of mistaken priorities.

After lunch I decided to risk a visit to the Civil Engineering Department, which is still located in the building it occupied seven decades ago. I found the main office and inquired “Who is responsible for entertaining antique alumni?” The lady there was sympathetic and eventually introduced me to Dr. Shelly Stoffels. She and I hit it off well, probably because I was interested in their Capstone projects, which are remotely equivalent to our Senior Design Projects.

Their projects are single discipline – Structures, Geotechnical, Transportation, Water Resources, and Environmental – and offered only in the Spring term. She showed me posters of several projects, each of which had three or four students on a team. Their final presentation process is a massive poster session with about sixty teams involved. She reported that they are in the process of switching to a two semester, six credits program in three areas – Structures and Geotechnical; Water Resources and Environmental; and Transportation and Infrastructure.

Our model would not work in their situation. We have forty or fifty students a term, twice a year; they have over two hundred once a year. I am satisfied that our Seniors have an experience that is an order of magnitude more rewarding than theirs. The advantages of multi-discipline teams, full life cycle projects, and the colloquium presentation process are considerable.

When I asked Dr. Stoffels if she knew anyone at Pitt, she laughed and said “Do you mean, other than Julie”? She had assumed I would realize that she and Julie Vandenbossche, both being pavement specialists, would be colleagues. Turned out we are both members of Julie’s Fan Club.

We had a pleasant drive home the next day. We stopped at the Horseshoe Curve and were rewarded by watching two trains go through; it is still a thrill to see the whole curve filled by one long freight train. A late lunch at Dean’s Diner fulfilled another revival of a decades long tradition.

It was a very enjoyable trip and I suspect my estrangement from my alma mater has been reduced significantly.

Remembering Dick Rothermund. June 20, 2019

June 20, 2019

Remembering Dick Rothermund

Seventy-five years ago each summer the epicenter of activity for us teenage boys living on “Hilltop” was the side porch of the Rothermunds’ home on Chartiers Street. Bob, Dick, and Ron were always in the midst of organizing some exciting activity.

It might be touch football or one hoop basketball on Lafayette Street, or softball in Crums’ field. One summer we were more ambitious; we organized the “Hilltop Hellcats” and trudged down to the high school to play baseball against “Wagners’ team” eaxh day. Our uniform was a black ball cap, with “HH” emblazoned on the front in chalk. If we ended up with more runs than our opponents, we declared victory. If they scored more than we did, we found an excuse and declared “This game is being played under protest!”

When the weather was bad we played board games – “Mr. Ree” (a predecessor to Clue), “Foto-Electric Football”, or our favorite, “All Star Baseball”. In the summer of 1948 eight of us modelled the American League with each of us taking a team and playing a round robin schedule. My team was the St. Louis Browns, the worst team in baseball. I crowned myself Manager of the Year when I managed to come in seventh.

Dick was my age and my best friend throughout high school. When we were in grade school he was in the other homeroom, but once we got to seventh grade we began to have classes together. Dick possessed all the skills I lacked. He was a good pianist, a fine singer, an excellent dancer, and a skillful basketball player.

When we were Juniors, sixteen years old, we had dates for the Junior Prom, access to our parents’ automobiles, and no drivers’ licenses. We began a weekly schedule of failing the drivers’ test that was terminated just a week before the Prom when I finally was able to pass.

Dick, Bob Baldwin, Leonard Styche, and I easily gravitated into a clique. By the time we were Seniors we were well in control of student activities. Bob was President of our class; I was Vice President; Dick was Social Chairman; and Leonard was President of the Student Council. Socially, culturally, and intellectually we functioned as a unit, a unit that disintegrated when we each went our separate ways off to college.

Dick studied Industrial Engineering at Pitt, graduated Summa cum Laude, and took a job with J & L Steel in Cleveland. He was drafted a few months later and ended up spending a year and a half in the Army in Japan, an experience he enjoyed more than I did my similar assignment.

After we returned from the service, our friendship was renewed. I frequently played golf with him and Ron. Their golf game was an order of magnitude better than mine, but they always were willing to put up with me.

Dick and I also shared an appreciation of jazz and occasionally would spend Saturday evenings enjoying it. The Suburban Room in Dormont was a good place to hear Harold Betters. Even better was the Point View Hotel in Brentwood where Tommy Turk and the Deuces Wild performed.

The Rothermunds had a summer cottage at Van Buren Point on Lake Erie; Dick ended up owning it in later years and moved there for the summer as soon as the weather began to warm up. In 1960 my brother and I spent a very enjoyable weekend there with the whole Rothermund family. I am sure golf was our excuse for visiting, but spending a weekend with the family was a real treat.

Dick and I drifted apart after I got married and had no time available for weekend golf or Saturday night jazz clubs. Fortunately however, after one of our high school reunions, Sam Capozzoli suggested that we local alumni of the BHS Class of 1949 get together regularly for brunch.

This was a great idea and soon our group had grown to nine, with Dick a prominent member. We met religiously on the first Wednesday of each month and had a great time reliving our youth and resolving the current problems facing society. Late in the Spring we would bid Dick goodbye as he left for his cottage, and welcome John Rosa a few weeks later when he arrived from Arizona for the summer.

The ‘49ers Brunch Club has shrunk with the passing of Don Schullek, Ray Fagan, Jack McGrogan, and Dick. Fortunately a handful of other BHS alumni – Alfred Barzan, Russ Kovach, Dale DeBlander, and my brother – have been recruited to swell our ranks a little.

Fifteen years ago Ray Fagan suddenly announced “Fellows, we are now the Seventies Club”, in recognition of our advanced ages. It was an easy transition from that appellation to “the Octogenarian Brunch Club” ten years later. The day after Dick’s Memorial Service the Octogenarian Brunch Club officially celebrated his life and our memories of him.

It was indeed my privilege to be Dick’s best friend when we were in high school. My memories of him are precious; I regret that I was not a better friend to him after we became adults.

The Whiskey Rebellion. June 13, 2019

June 13, 2019

The Whiskey Rebellion

For its May program meeting the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed back one of its favorite speakers, Todd DePastino, and was rewarded with an entertaining presentation on the Whiskey Rebellion. His talk turned out to be an excellent complement to the Society’s recent “Second Tuesday” workshop which focused on George Washington’s role in that significant event.

Mr. DePastino is a legitimate historian, gifted with the ability to place specific events in context with the overall trends in history when they occurred. In this case he described the Whiskey Rebellion as merely one event, albeit a very relevant one, in a long term class struggle in the early days of our country.

He described three major schisms in the society of the brand new nation that called itself the United States, schisms which to a certain extent have survived until today. A major division was between the rich and the poor. He reported that most of the settlers were debtors, with high interest mortgages held by wealthy creditors in the big cities in the East.

According to the speaker, between 1783 and 1791, a third of the settlers in Western Pennsylvania lost their farms due to bankruptcy. This is a surprising statistic, one that is seldom mentioned as a root cause of the Whiskey Rebellion. It is well known to be the basis of Shays Rebellion in 1787. There is no evidence of this in our local Chartiers Valley history; perhaps it was more prevalent along the Monongahela, the epicenter of the dissent.

A second schism was rural versus city, particularly the newly prosperous cities on the Eastern seaboard – Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. It was fed by the frontiersmen’s complaints that the new government was rigged to benefit the city dwellers and that it ignored their needs – protection from the Indians, transportation infrastructure, etc. It was an uncanny prediction of today’s “red states vs. blue states” concept.

A third factor was the general concept of the frontier. The settlers in this area were adventurers, a different breed from the “establishment” folks on the other side of the Allegheny Mountains. They were eager to see Ohio and Indiana become available for settlement. They wanted the Mississippi River to be made accessible for them to ship goods to New Orleans. No one in the new government seemed to have any interest in helping them.

Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton’s Distilled Spirits Tax was the final straw when it was passed by Congress early in 1791. To the settlers west of the Alleghenies it appeared to be specifically intended to punish them. The legislation favored large commercial distillers at the expense of the farmers who operated their stills a couple of months out of the year, converting surplus grain into a commodity that could be transported East and sold. It required payment in cash, a near impossibility in an area where all the trade was done by barter.

Mr. DePastino described the reaction on the frontier as being a replay of the days immediately preceding the Revolution when the Sons of Liberty performed violent, obviously illegal actions, while the Continental Congress provided a facade of responsibility. In 1791 it was the Mingo Creek Association burning barns and tarring and feathering tax collectors, while high level citizens’ committees met and presented the appearance of trying to work within the system.

David Bradford, who was the deputy attorney general for Washington County, was the leader of a faction advocating independence for the frontier settlements and the establishment of a new country – Westylvania. His ambitions were opposed by other prominent citizens, notably Hugh Henry Brackenridge, Albert Gallatin, and William Findley.

The speaker emphasized that the activities in this area were not unique; opposition groups cropped up all along the frontier – western Virginia, Kentucky, western North Carolina, and Georgia. From the very beginning Hamilton wanted to use force to establish the sovereignty of the federal government and concluded that Western Pennsylvania should be the site of this demonstration.

The events of mid-July 1794, which culminated in the destruction of Tax Inspector John Neville’s mansion, Bower Hill, finally gave Hamilton the excuse to carry out his plans. Militias from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia were combined to form an army of 13,000 men which marched across the mountains to Pittsburgh and convinced the locals that rebellion was a bad idea. An estimated two thousand rebels followed their leader, David Bradford, west and escaped arrest.

The concept of secession and forming a new country from the settlements west of the mountains persistrd. Bradford was only the first would-be emperor of “Westylvania”; General James Wilkinson and Vice President Aaron Burr each pursued similar ambitions in later years.

We local history buffs tend to view the Whiskey Rebellion as an extremely exciting series of local events with national significance. It is interesting to consider its place in the “Big Picture” and to realize that many of its aspects are still relevant today and still have not been resolved.

We have already encircled July 20 and 21 on our calendar – that is the weekend of “Woodville Market Faire” at Woodville Plantation, an eighteenth century market featuring entertainment, sutlers, and craftsmen. Rumor has it Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton will be there, collecting his onerous excise tax on whiskey!

The Historical Society’s final program for the 2018/2019 season is scheduled for Tuesday, June 25, 2019 at 7:30 pm in the Chartiers Room, Bridgeville Volunteer Fire Department. Cortney Williams will discuss “The 1927 Brinks Armored Car Robbery in Bethel Park, by the Flathead Gang”.

Where Go the Boats? June 6, 2019

June 6, 2019

Where Go the Boats?

“Where Go the Boats?” was of my favorites in “The Child’s Garden of Verses” when I was small, an early indication of a life-long fascination with creeks. “Away down the river, a hundred miles or more,other little children shall bring my boats ashore” appropriately describes the feeling all young children have whenever they are presented with the opportunity to play in a small creek.

Whether it be tossing rocks and creating splashes, or floating “Pooh sticks” under a bridge, or building tiny dams and bridges, children cannot resist creeks. One of the highlights of our family’s annual visit to my father’s home in Franklin County was playing in “Uncle Joe’s Creek”. It was just the right size, big enough for Joe and me to float toy boats down it and to simulate the battle of the Monitor and Merrimack. It is no surprise that I have become a lifelong amateur hydrologist.

I just finished reading “The River Why”, a delightful coming-of-age novel by David James Duncan about a fly fisherman on one of Oregon’s coastal rivers. In one episode, Gus, the protagonist, sets out to find the source of his mythical Tamanis River and eventually follows it to a tiny spring high on a Coastal Range mountain.

This too has a familiar feel; when we were young, an annual rite was to follow the small creek in Cow Hollow through the Indian Tunnel under Mayview Road a couple of miles to its source just before you get to Morrow Road. I presume the creek still exists; Google Map labels the area “Ravine Park”. The Upper St. Clair Township website describes it as “10.51 undeveloped acres near Mayview and Morrow Roads”. It also shows the stream running past Morrow Road, with its source near Mayview. Looks like we never went far enough.

It was a special treat to hike up Cow Hollow in the spring when there were tiny waterfalls at the end of each intersecting gully, a miniature version of Yosemite Valley or the Columbia River Gorge.

Another memorable expedition was up Coal Pit Hollow, tracing its creek to its source. We would go down Chartiers Street to Dewey Avenue, and then follow the railroad south to the place where the creek runs under it (now Bursca Drive). At that point we would follow the creek west, cross the Washington Pike, and enter the hollow. It runs several miles to the southwest, almost to Hickory Grade Road. Today the creek passes under I-79 in a culvert after skirting the edge of Hickory Heights Golf Club; I am not sure a hike up it would be as much fun as it was seventy-five years ago.

Finding the source of Chartiers Creek was well beyond our ambitions. If we can believe today’s maps the source is southwest of Washington, Pa., very close to Route 18, perhaps two miles south of Lone Pine Golf Course, in a small wooded area. Sounds like a good excuse for a trip down that direction this summer.

Less than half a mile west of the Chartiers Creek source is the source of Tenmile Creek which wanders south sand east through Prosperity, Amity, and Marianna before entering the Monongahela at Millsboro, then rejoining Chartiers Creek seventy five miles downstream at McKees Rocks.

Once the protagonist of the River Why found the source of his river and realized how insignificant it seemed, he concluded that “source” was an improper name for it. After all, the source of a river is the sum of all its tributaries, plus the rain that falls into it. Consequently the source of Chartiers Creek includes Cow Hollow Creek, Coal Pit Run, and even the tiny stream in the woods where I live.

Our stream is indeed tiny; between rainstorms its flow is of the order of magnitude of perhaps one gallon per minute. Its floodplain is four or five feet wide, with a tiny rivulet meandering back and forth across it. Despite its size it is a magnificent hydrologic laboratory, demonstrating a wide variety of open channel flow phenomena in a few hundred yards.

The path that neighborhood children take to elementary school crosses the stream near the bottom of our one-sided dead-ended street. At this point the stream passes through a twenty-four-inch diameter culvert about twenty feet long. Recently the municipality elected to combat erosion and over-wash by installing an ugly collection of concrete wing-walls and rock-filled gabions at the entrance to and exit from the culvert, a jarring contrast to an otherwise attractive natural site.

Upstream from the culvert the stream presents a perfect example of meandering, with the classic gentle slope on the inside of each curve and the steep cliff on the outside, albeit at a miniature scale. Initially it is difficult to imagine a trickle of water like this carving out the bank and undermining major trees, but seeing the stream after a heavy rain is a completely different story. It is fascinating to observe the way the actual course of the stream changes with each storm.

Downstream from the culvert the stream begins to cut a deeper gully as it cuts its way through each different stratum of rock it encounters. According to geologists, the surface rocks in this area are of the Pittsburgh formation of the Monongahela group of the Pennsylvanian system of the Paleozoic era, deposited about three hundred million years ago. They are characterized as “shale and claystones”.

Several transitions from harder to softer strata have produced lovely little waterfalls. One is “as straight as a string” across the creek bed, with water flowing uniformly across its edge and then down its vertical face. Another is the classical rainbow shape with a narrow stream being discharged at its center and cascading wildly to the pool below.

One relatively straight stretch of the stream appears to be flowing on pavement, a wide smooth surface of rock with transverse joints at regular intervals. The downstream end of this stretch is another tiny waterfall terminating in a bed of sand and rock fragments. During the “dry season” the stream disappears completely as it is absorbed by the aquifer beneath it.

Geologists date the creation of our current landscape to the Tertiary Period of the Cenozoic Era (beginning sixty-six million years ago). We presume that, at that time, most of this area was a nearly flat peneplain about twelve hundred feet above sea level and that our current topography is the result of erosion in the years since then. That length of time does make it credible that such a tiny creek could carve such a deep valley.

When I finally get my time machine perfected, one of my first trips back in time will be to Uncle Joe’s Creek”. I hope my brother and I will be able to locate our old toy boats.