[PRCo] Re: Munhall this Morning

[Mark McGuire]

  My mother was a Perry High graduate in 1944. Someone in my family
still has the yearbook as mom is now deceased. Probably one of my
sisters. They save things like that. I remember looking through it
as a kid and laughing at all the "weird" hairdoos. She used to talk
about taking the trolley to Westview Park all the time. Wished she
could have taken a 4-year-old on a nostalgic trip before the line
ceased to exist.
  She married my dad soon after graduation and they eventually
bought a home on Killarny Drive in Castle Shannon. Once again close
to a trolley line. Wasn't everything back then?. It was her stories
about the "bridges" on the Shannon lines that eventually made me
go exploring at 11 or 12 years old. She never found out I did. I wish
I could tell her now. And thank both her and my grandmother for their
memories.
  I remember bits and pieces of the Italian Picnics they would take us
to. Very good time. Does anyone know where the Italian picnics were held? I'd like to know. I was too young to remember very much. I
certainly would not remember where they were held. Maybe somewhere on
the North Side????

                      Mark

-- Fred Schneider <fschnei at supernet.com> wrote:
Alas, its only a dream.   As much as we loved our memories, can we 
imagine what it would be like to have today's rush hour traffic mixed 
with trolleys on 5th Avenue or Forbes Avenue or even worse, how about 
West Liberty Avenue, or even worse than that, trying to get around the 
West End Circle when the parkway tunnel is closed in one direction?  Its 
been almost a half century since the shutdown of the Pittsburgh and 
Philly systems began!   It's a different world today.  Matt suggested 
that the sidings would probably not be overwhelmingly appreciated in 2004. 
I'll leave you with some old memories (and if you've heard them before, 
you know where the delete key is ...   These are not my own 
reminiscences from the 1940s and 1950s, but those from my parents.   
(Dad, by the way, was a closet railfan and a model builder.) 

My dad was an engineering student at CIT (now CMU) in the late 1920s and 
graduated in 1930. Mom commuted to CIT (Margaret Morrison) by trolley 
from the North Side every day.  That was back in the days when college 
kids didn't need cars.  They rode trolleys.  Those two met on Valentines 
Day 1927 and it wasn't long before dad got to know the owl service on 
routes 8 and the 60s / 70s, going back to school after visiting my 
future mother in the evenings.  I think he pretty much became a 
"fixture" at 3462 Delaware Avenue (off Perrysville).   Eventually the 
future mother-in-law suggested that he change his schedule and take the 
trolley back to school in the morning instead of the middle of the 
night.   Maybe she figured that would be a way to get the lights turned 
off downstairs at a reasonable hour.  I don't know.  Grandma either let 
him have a spare room free or rented it to him.  The move did let him 
commute to and from school with his squeeze.  He rode Pittsburgh 
Railways in the era of high floor cars (even some 3400s and 3500s were 
still running), trailers, gazillions of low-speed low floor cars, and, 
sorry Boris, not a single PCC.   To him a car in orange paint was 
unusual; most of the fleet would have been maroon.  And he remembered 
the swaying double deck cars from an earlier trip to Pittsburgh.   Don't 
we wish.  But he never owned an automobile until 1930 but he was able to 
borrow one from an aunt in the middle 1920s (assuming you could find a 
paved road on which to drive it in southeastern Ohio).     If they were 
both still living, he would be 97 and she would 95 today. 

My mother had a girl friend at Perry High School who commuted to school 
from Warrendale on the Pittsburgh, Harmony, Butler and New Castle 
interurban.  This would have been before the summer of 1927.  For those 
who are too young to relate conceptually, the rural children were often 
denied the luxury of a high school education.  If they or their parents 
felt it was important, they commuted or packed up and moved to a city.  
Manheim Township, north of the City of Lancaster, Pa., where I live now 
and where I went to school, did not have a high school program until 
1927 (first grads were in 1930).  The high school program came about 
because of a fire that burnt the previous junior high; it was 
reconstructed in a somewhat larger form.  My mother-in-law moved from 
her parents' home in the very rural southern Lancaster County to an aunt 
in the city so she could receive a high school education ... the years?  
1932-1935.   Wouldn't it be a treat to ride in on the interurban to 
Perrysville and East Sts., and then change to a city car to go up the 
hill to Perrysville?  Probably wasn't if you had to do it every day.  Or 
maybe you never gave it a thought because, like sitting in traffic 
trying to get past the Churchill exit on the Parkway East, it is just a 
way of life that we accept[ed]. 

The last thought was the 1930 PRC Sunday Pass which I found while 
reading an early how-to-do-it sex manual in dad's den.   I guess I would 
like to believe that, because he didn't get married until 1935, the pass 
was left there as a plant to see if I found it.   I never asked and 
neither did he question why it disappeared!

One more thought.  Karl Hittle and Howard Bierwith, who both worked in 
the PRC engineering shop at Homewood, were both old enough to remember 
the 6000 series double-deck cars.  They were trying to impress this 13, 
14 or 15 year old one day with tales from the crypt.  The one that stuck 
in my memory was the explanation of how the high school kids always ran 
up to the top deck, and with unified actions they could get the car 
swaying from side to side.  And then Karl remembered, if you were in the 
right seat next to a standing girl, she would fall onto your lap!  
Perhaps that is why I once read (accuracy not proved) that the 
double-deck cars were removed for safety reasons. 

Damn that curse.  All I can remember are orange, one-man, high-speed 
cars.   But I do remember waiting for a car in the rush hour on 
Perrysville Avenue, seeing a PCC coming, and backing off.  I really 
wanted a 5500. 

Youns have a nice evening.  fws

Matt Barry wrote:

>This morning, on the way to work, motorists took turns sharing one lane, 
>south-bound and north-bound, as street workers had dug up what seemed to 
>be at least 100 sq feet sections of asphalt in several places on West 
>Street in Munhall, near the Municipal building.  Exposed were the 
>single-track rails of the former route 65 Miunhall-Lincoln Place route, 
>seeming perfectly preserved along with the red brick paving surrounding 
>it.  I'm not sure how far down the workers were going to excavate, but 
>the work stopped short this a.m. right before the trackage would have 
>split into double-track at the old Homestead Hospital.
>
>I often think that a carline through Munhall from the old Muldowney Loop 
>to the new Waterfront shopping center would be a great addition to our 
>neighborhood.  I'm dreaming, I know.   But, even if it were something 
>possible and {ahem} acceptable by a large percentage of the residents 
>from Lincoln Place thru Munhall, to Homestead, I know that the old 
>single track with passing sidings would probably be a nuisance, perhaps 
>even a nightmare.   And personally, I'd find the overhead construction, 
>as it exists in Allentown, unattractive.   Single wire as it existed 
>through 1965 in Munhall is much more aesthetically pleasing, at least to me.
>
>But, it's only a dream.
>
>
>
>  
>