[PRCo] Re: Wilkinsburg

[Fred Schneider]

You are pulling out other memories.

There was this very young boy whose father took him up on the platforms at
the Pennsy station in Wilkinsburg ... probably after the war ... and this
lad was so scared by passing steam engines that he ran into the platform
waiting room from which point he could observed from behind the safety of
glass.  I guess I was about six or seven years old.

Dad was a closet railfan and model builder.  In fact he received a letter in
1933 telling him of a new model railroad magazine.  The letter asked him to
subscribe.  The writer suggested that dad pay in cash for a subscription
because Al Kalmbach's bank charged 3 cents to cash a check.  Dad lead me
into places that most fathers don't take their railfan sons because he had
his own latent interest.  Some of those places were the Pennsy facility at
28th St., the B&O Glenwood shops (the Baldwin Sharks were new then), and the
B&LE and Union yards.  Somewhere around here are his negatives of slag being
dumped from on a mountain ... out where the Pleasant Hills shopping mall is
today.  Those negatives also show a Union RR steam engine.  But, damnit, he
only took me to Kennywood once.

He was  upset with me one afternoon because I wanted to go off on my own and
take trolley pictures.  I didn't find out until later that he really wanted
to take me to the burlesque house on Diamond Street.  Harold mentioned it.
Dad frequented it when it was still on 6th Street (before the 1936 flood).

And this brings me to one last memory.  Who would argue that some of the
greatest smells in Pittsburgh emanated from Diamond Market?  For some reason
I liked the smells of the fish market.  Strange?  But I also liked what was
very much a Pittsburgh tradition ... granulated sugar donuts.

And what ever happend to Frank Butts' negatives?

Harold Geissenheimer wrote:

> Greetings
>
> Fred was right about Wilkinsburg.
>
> I stayed at the Penn Lincoln Hotel in the late 1940's.  I was introduced
>
> to the hotel by Frank Butts, bus system owner and one of the founders of
>
> the CERA.  We met in Pittsburgh to discuss my managing Taylorville (Ill)
>
> Transit which he owned.  I decided to finish college.
>
> I had Saturday dinner in Wilkinsburg when I went to Sat afternoon
> movies.
>
> The PRR station was nice.  I think more trains stopped there after
> they closed East Liberty.
>
> Another town down the drain.
>
> Harold Geissenheimer

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