<div dir="ltr"><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>May as well do some reading about Pittsburgh on these frozen evenings. <br><br></div>FIRST ON THE list is "Rocco's Funeral". For those of you who haven't heard, Rocco was a member of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police K-9 Unit. He was killed in the line of duty last week. Here is the story from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette:<br>
<br><div class="">Pittsburgh Post-Gazette</div>
<div class="">
<p>The funeral for Rocco, the Pittsburgh police dog that died last week
from a knife wound he suffered while trying to apprehend a suspect, will
begin at 11 a.m. Friday at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and
Museum in Oakland.</p>
<p>The service is open to the public, but priority seating will be given
to law enforcement officers and their families. Cameras will not be
permitted at the service, which is expected to last until about 1 p.m.</p>
<p>Rocco's handler, Officer Phil Lerza, originally asked that the
funeral be closed to the public but changed his mind after numerous
calls and emails and an outpouring of support from the public.</p>
<p>"The tremendous show of support has deeply touched the Lerza family
and the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police," said a prepared statement from the
police bureau.</p>
<p>Friday morning, Pittsburgh police officers will gather at the
bureau's canine training academy on Washington Boulevard in Highland
Park to form a processional. About 10 a.m., they will leave the academy
in a procession to Soldiers & Sailors. The police bureau has not
announced whether Washington Boulevard, Fifth Avenue or side streets
will be closed during the trip to Oakland.</p>
<p>Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is unable to attend the funeral. He issued this statement Thursday:</p>
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<div style="text-align:center;font-size:small"><strong>STATEMENT OF MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO</strong></div>
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<p><span style="font-size:small"><em>In a private ceremony at 6 p.m.
today in the Mayor’s Office Mayor William Peduto presented the flag of
the City of Pittsburgh to Officer Phil Lerza and his family, and
delivered the following remarks in honor of fallen K-9 Officer Rocco:</em></span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">When a Pittsburgh officer dies in the line of duty, it is customary to present the family with a flag of the city.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Officer Rocco was a police dog who
died defending three uniformed officers, and his family was that of Zone
Five Officer, Phil Lerza.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Officer Lerza was one of the three
policemen Rocco died defending, and he was himself injured while
capturing the fugitive who killed his partner Rocco.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Because of a long-standing commitment to a loved one, I must be out-of-town during tomorrow’s memorial service.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">But I did not want to leave without
first paying my respects, and the respect of our city, to Rocco and to
the good people who became his family during the time he served us.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">The night Officer Rocco died, I went
to the Veterinary Clinic and stayed with Officer Rocco, the Lerzas, and
the police officers who gathered to be with a comrade on his final
watch.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">There were many older officers, big, tough veterans, men and women accustomed to seeing hard things.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Not a single one of them left that
clinic without a leaking heart, torn by both grief and admiration, and
with eyes filled with tears in a city that soon joined them in their
grief when the word of Officer Rocco’s passing was announced.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Pittsburgh showed its soul that
night, a soul that shines with compassion, and recognizes the good not
only in every human, but in every being.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Not every dog proves a perfect match for the job of protecting others.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">The combination of control and courage needed in a canine officer are not found in every dog.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">But Rocco measured up in every way.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">He faced an assailant's knife without
hesitation, without retreat, and with a loyalty that reached beyond
mere "trait" and well into the realm of character.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">There are 5,000 known species of mammal, but Rocco showed us why only one of them is known as man's best friend.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Rocco came to us from a breeder in
the Czech Republic. Like so many others in our city, he had his origins
in another land, and his heart in Pittsburgh.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">It was a Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera, who spoke of dogs as our last link to paradise.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">He said: "They don't know evil, or
jealousy, or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious
afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it
was peace."</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Rocco is now at peace, and we can only pray that the old saying is true - that all dogs go to heaven.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">Surely, with Rocco there, Heaven is a safer, happier place.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">I am sorry that my plans must take me
away from the city tomorrow, but please know that Rocco, the Lerzas,
and every man and woman who protects our city will be in my thoughts and
prayers.</span></p>
<p><span style="font-size:small">So, on behalf of the citizens of
Pittsburgh, with gratitude and humility, I present this flag of our city
to the Lerzas - Rocco's family.</span></p>
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</div><br></div>END PG STORY<br><br></div>Rocco's funeral will probably be one of the biggest funerals held in Pittsburgh in recent times.<br><br></div>NEXT ON THE reading list is PATransit and the ice storm yesterday morning. When I worked at PAT it was common, during an ice storm, to run a couple cars on the lines with "ice cutters" attached to the trolley wheel. These "ice cars" would be run whenever needed no matter what time of day or night and on all lines. Apparently the current management of PAT has forgotten that frozen water is a perfect insulator and will not allow the current to pass from the overhead wire into the motors. Yesterday morning the entire rail system was shut down, because of ice on the overhead, until around 10AM. Around 10AM what PAT called "limited service" was started on the Red Line. The Blue Line didn't get up and running until much later and full service took several hours to get running. Where did these people learn how to run a railroad?????<br>
<br></div>THIRD ON THE list is short story fiction, about Pittsburgh, with streetcars mentioned in the story lines. I have selected three excerpts from three different books. These books are very interesting especially if one really gets the "minds' eye" involved in the reading process. You will become a part of the story.<br>
<br></div>Story 1--Excerpt from "Out of the Furnace" by Thomas Bell. Setup: This novel tells the story of Pittsburgh and the growing steel industry from the standpoint of the immigrant workingman and his family as they struggle to achieve dignity and economic justice. The book spans the years 1881 to 1937. The location is Braddock and the neighboring mill towns.<br>
<br></div>1915--The second summer after his father's death Johnny got a job selling papers. The boy who had the Sixth Street corner, which was good, also had an equity in the Corey Avenue corner a block west, which wasn't so good. He stationed Johnny in front of the drugstore there--the only other corner was occupied by the Corey Avenue School--paying him half the profits to yell, "Press, Telly, Sun and Leader!" from mid afternoon until seven every day but Sunday. Johnny yelled himself hoarse and at every opportunity boarded the passing streetcars; by custom newsboys were permitted to ride free. He liked that. He liked it even better in summer, when he could go swinging magnificently along the outsides of the open cars, but he was wise enough to keep that a secret from his mother.....<br>
<br></div>Another night a man came out of the drugstore as a streetcar approached; buying a paper he dropped a coin to the sidewalk. Johnny all but dislocated his neck with helpfulness, but was careful not to move his left foot until the man, swearing disgustedly, had boarded the car and the car was out of sight. The he picked up the coin, a dime. It was exactly the price of the swimming trunks he needed; his mother had offered to get him a ticket to the pool in the Carnegie Library building as soon as school was out if he promised not to go swimming in the river and furnished his own trunks. But when he got home that night the wish to surprise and please his mother impelled him to put both dimes, the one he'd earned and the one he'd found under his shoe, into her hand. Her praise was sufficient recompense for his sacrifice, and the next day, on his way to work, he stopped off in the five-and-ten at the foot of Library Street and stole a pair of trunks.<br>
<br></div>Story 2--Excerpt from "Duffy's Rocks" by Edward Fenton. Setup: Timothy Francis Brennan, a 14-year-old boy of the 1930's, has made a weekly ritual of a Saturday trip to Pittsburgh from Duffy's Rocks, an industrial community suffering through the grayness of mill smoke and the Great Depression. One Saturday he is forced, by his grandmother, to take along Mary Agnes, his 13-year-old cousin. They go, naturally by trolley car.<br>
<br></div>He called out, "Here comes the streetcar now!" and started to sprint to the car stop. Mary Agnes forgot about he stockings and panted after him. The door clattered open. All the seats were already taken, so they had to stand on the platform, holding onto the poles.<br>
<br></div>They rode in silence, Mary Agnes looked resentfully at Timothy, while Timothy looked out through the soot-streaked glass. He stared at the small frame houses, all exactly like his grandmother's, with their gritty curtains stretched across the front windows. He stared at the skimpy bare trees, at the grime-layered store fronts, at the shabby beer parlors on every corner, their entrance doors clotted with unemployed men. In the center of almost every block there stood a church with its blackened brick parochial school, exactly like St. Bridget's where he and Mary Agnes went. They all flashed past as the streetcar clanged downhill.....<br>
<br></div>As the neighborhood receded, Timothy's heart bounded higher. Soon they had even left behind them Kolb's Used Car Lot where, week after week, the same automobiles stood. None of them ever seemed to get sold, in spite of the huge banners that stretched across the entrance: No Reasonable Offer Refused! Easy Terms Arranged On The Spot!<br>
<br></div>After that, the railroad tracks cut across the street. Now the faces of the unemployed men on the sidewalk were black. He looked out for the mysterious store front which had all its windows painted over in yellow, purple and red, with a sign over the doorway: African Church of the Pentecostal Brotherhood. Come to the Refreshing Spring and Be Saved!<br>
<br></div>Once past the Colored church, Timothy knew that he was really on his way. There was still more than half an hour's ride ahead of him, uphill and downhill, winding through a grubby string of industrial towns exactly like Duffy's Rocks, all grown together into a shapeless suburb. Each hid its rows of gaunt, gray, company houses like dingy wash on the line, and stores whose shabby windows denied the hope that prosperity was just around the corner, and more churches........<br>
<br></div>He was on his way: off to the adventure that waited for him. The whole week, to him, was a trough between his Saturdays. It was the thought of them that made it possible to endure all those dreary weekdays which led up to them. For the moment he even forgot that this time Mary Agnes was with him, secured to his side like a block of cement. <br>
<br></div>Soon he would be able to see the river. Then the bulk of the skyscrapers would loom ahead of him, shining through the grit-filled-air. And after that he would be downtown He pressed closer to the window, but just then some broad Slovak ladies got up. They clutched black oilcloth shopping bags in their chapped hands, and their faces under their shawls were steamy and red. They surrounded him, blocking the view. He could only tell when the streetcar was crossing the river from the way it lurched and from the sound of the wheels rattling on the bridge. After that the car began to empty. But there was no sense in sitting down now. Suddenly he grabbed Mary Agnes by the sleeve. "Come on. We're getting off here" She jumped down, plunging after him into the crowds that clogged the intersection.<br>
<br></div>The great world, Timothy thought: this was it! He turned, lifting his face eagerly toward it, ignoring the people who had to jostle him in order to pass. There was not much smoke today. Everything was clear in the cold winter air. His eyes drank in the streets filled with traffic and lined with vast office buildings. He knew the name of every single one of the glittering granite buildings of downtown Pittsburgh. All around him, in every direction, they stretched: banks, department stores with their enormous crystal display windows, theaters. A sea of preoccupied faces milled in and out of them. Every Saturday he felt the same surge of wild exhilaration. It was all there. Andi it was all his !<br>
<div><br></div><div>Story 3--Excerpt from "Miners Hill" by Michael O'Malley. Setup: A trip by trolley in the 1940's to Kennywood for Irish Day is described in Miners Hill. The main characters in the book are the members of the Riley family, Mick and Birdie (parents) and their children, Pat, Tony, Mary and Kathleen.<br>
<br></div><div>The morning was bright, white-lit, shot with melon-colored gold light, like all good picnic mornings. Something in the air, all sorts of things in the air: the gaiety of expectation, a happy tense jiggling nervousness, a sky that promised glory and a green-cool afternoon. There was the wild anxiety to be off, to clank off rocking in a big rattling orange trolley car, grinning importantly from the window because of the sign that said 'Chartered'. There was the opulence of that 'Chartered' sign, and the shouting crush of the passengers--the portly Irish housewives and their picnic baskets bulging, and the huge men, broad backed, the Irishmen, laughing and greeting each other, roughly touching their big callous hands, surprised and embarrassed by their joy, by their desire to embrace one another.......<br>
<br></div><div>The Riley's arrived early at the schoolyard on Main Street where they were to board the chartered trolleys. Mick and Uncle Miles went off to get the identification tags.......the rest of the family sat down with Birdie on the stone steps of the school, near the heavy black wrought-iron gates, to await the coming of the cars.<br>
<br></div><div>The long line of chartered trolley cars, bells clanging exuberantly, hove into view on Main Street, and the children around them began to clap and shout. As the cars approached, Bridie's anxiety increased. "Tony! Where's that child? Oh, Holy Mother o' God, every time I go one one o' these picnics I swear I'll never set foot on another. Ye know", she said to Pat, "he gets it from yer father---yer father don't worry himsel' about nothin' atall, so Tony don't either. I could throttle the both o' them."<br>
<br></div><div>The first of the trolleys had drawn up opposite the gate, almost throbbing on the tracks in its eagerness to be off, the other cars lined up impatiently behind it, and the Irish poured down the steps and into the street and up the high steel steps, past the smiling motorman, and in the car they rushed to be seated, threw open the windows, shouted to each other and the crowd outside, and heard the hiss as the doors clumped shut and the gong clanged twice, and they were off in a great surge of cheering, the huge steel wheels of the car rumbling smoothly louder on the rails, the trolley above flashing sparks from the wire, and inside the smell of sweat and of the old straw seats and acrid sharp oily smell of the motors below.<br>
<br></div><div>Like I said, if you really get into the story line you will find yourself in old Pittsburgh and will see the sights, feel the movements and most of all, see yourself as we were.<br><br></div><div>FINALLY THE FOURTH ITEM on tonight's happenings is the current television ad being run by Citizens Bank. Several Citizens Bank employees are in their branch break room. The bank customers have suddenly started giving gifts to the Citizens Bank employees because Citizens doesn't charge a lot of fees. Two of the employees appear wearing sweaters with "No 1 Banker" on the front of both sweaters. Another employee turns, looks at the two sweater guys and says, "Youins can't both be number one bankers." This, after all that every school in Allegheny has been doing for years to curb the corruption of the English language in the Pittsburgh area and this bank gets it started again !!<br>
<br></div><div>That's all folks......hope you enjoyed reading about Pittsburgh. A photo of Rocco from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is attached.<br></div><div><br><br></div><div><br><div><div><div><div><div><div><div>
<div><div><div><div><div><br><br><div><div><div><br clear="all"><div><div><br>-- <br><div dir="ltr"><div><div><div>Herb Brannon<b><font color="#888888"><div>In Pittsburgh............<br></div><div>.................A City And<br>
.........A State of Mind</div></font></b></div></div>Let's Go Pens<br></div><br><br></div>
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