[PRCo] Re: Why so quiet?

[Fred W. Schneider III]

Shucks.  I thought that is why God made rivers.

My Dad never liked spending money ... he was one of those kind who paid
cash for his cars.  He also paid cash for houses.  (Depression /
Carnegie Tech mentality.) I was 16 and my sister 11 before he sprang for
a local swimming pool membership.  We used to go to Saltsburg on Sunday
afternoons to swim in the river.  And I remember that ooze between my
toes.  Didn't know what it was then and I don't want to now.

I had a very distant and now long dead cousin ... last name Rebele ...
wrote the original NFL Rulebook.  He was quite an athletic sort.  Used
to swim in the rivers.  He would start at Manchester and swim across the
Allegheny, around the point, and across the Mongahela to the Southside,
and then turn around a swim back.  I thought that was quite a feat until
I realized the river was probably so filthy in those days that he could
get a real good grip on what passed for water.

The youngsters have no idea how bad it was.  I remember leaving
Pittsburgh on a cloudy day on a Charleroi interurban.  As soon as I got
th South Hills Junction, the sun was out.  Late in the day, I left the
sun as I plunged back into the trolley tunnel.  And when I came out onto
Smithfield Street it was cloudy.  Guess what folks.  It wasn't cloudy. 
And it wasn't good for breathing either. 

Happy New Year.


ROGER Jenkins wrote:
> 
> The latest Railfan Railroad Mag . says that the under river line to new
> Pittsburgh Stadium will probably be a tunnel bore under the river
> instead of a casson type drop in sectional tube due to the fears that
> sediment stirred up will be heavily polluted with heavy metal toxic junk
> from up-stream industries that used to dump their crap into the river !
> A more costly way to get things done here !