[PRCo] Charleroi etc.

[Fred Schneider]

Went out yesterday afternoon to photograph some sites on the interurbans
... to use for "now pictures" to compare with "then pictures" that we
will be hanging in the 2003-2004 exhibit at PTM.

I came away very depressed.  Washington County is essentially two
counties ... a wealthy one and an impoverished one.  One looks around
Peters Township where Ed Lybarger lives and we find wealth ... expensive
homes ... shopping centers ...  young people.  That is where some of the
wealthy from Pittsburgh move because property taxes are lower.  But I
was nosing around some other places like North Charleroi, Monongahela
and Donora and I came away with the recognition that today those areas
are populated with old people waiting to die.  I had a quick snack in
McDonalds in Monongahela ... everyone in there ... the help and the
hangers on ... appeared to be at least 65 years of age, and perhaps the
average was closer to 75.  There were homes in a lot of those towns that
have open or broken windows ... no one there.  The last house on the
street next to Bridge One in North Charleroi ... house was dirty ... no
marks in the snow from a week before ... old rusty car in the backyard
... it will probably stand until the borough tries to auction it off for
back taxes, gives up, and hires a contractor to demolish it.  I must
have gazed at dozens of homes like it in the Mon Valley.  Across the
river where the big Wheeling - Pittsburgh steel mill used to be is a lot
of empty ground.  There is no place to work today unless you choose
Raleigh, Durham, Charlotte, Dallas, or Houston, and move out.   I'm
reminded of Harold Geissenheimer's comments about all the good people
who lived in that part of the world.  One by one, the end comes and
there is no one taking their places.  And you thought the words "ghost
town" applied only to mining towns in Nevada, Colorado, or Montana!