[PRCo] Knowing the neighborhoods

[Bob Rathke]

Fred,

I continue to be amazed at how often I meet people who have lived in Chicago
all their lives, but have no idea of the areas just a few miles beyond their
neighborhoods.

I've lived here since late 1983, and I think that by early 1984 I had
studied the street maps and I had a good idea where neighboring towns were
located.  I even went out and visited some of these neighborhoods, just to
see where they are and what they look like.

Yesterday I had a meeting with a business professional in the Loop who has
lived here nearly all his life, but he has never been in Union Station, nor
does he know exactly where it is located.

I still remember the New Yorker I met when I was living in Manhattasn in
1968.  I told him that I was from Pittsburgh, and he replied, "Isn't that in
the Poconos?"

Bob 3/4/05

-----------------------------
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Fred Schneider" <fschnei at supernet.com>
To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 5:55 PM
Subject: [PRCo] Re: 94 Sharpsburg - 62nd Street Bridge


> Back in the late 1960s I spent a miserable two years teaching in a public
high
> school in the Lancaster area ... best thing I ever did was leave and find
> something I loved to do.  One of my impressions during that period is that
most
> of the kids I worked with considered a long vacation trip to be a Saturday
> journey to the Delaware Park Race Track in Newark, Delaware.  The teacher
of
> Pennsylvania history had never been west of Harrisburg ... you should have
heard
> him trying to pronounce Monongahela.
>
> And when I was awaiting the ship for Germany in 1959, the army detailed me
to
> the finance office at Fort Dix to type up payroll vouchers for those chaps
> coming back home from Europe.  I was stunned.  Most people had no interest
in
> seeing Germany or France or wherever it was we had placed them.  We were
paying
> almost every one of them (somewhere over 90 percent) for every single day
of
> vacation they accumulated while in Europe.  (I let them pay me for zero
days
> when I came home.)
>
> Railfans are an odd lot in more ways than one.  Few "normal" people I've
met had
> the comprehension of maps that the average railfan does.  Isn't it great?
>
> Bob Rathke wrote:
>
> > Many people in Pittsburgh have never left "their" side of the river, let
> > alone travel out of the state.  So, some people on the South Side would
> > never know that Brady Street was on the other end of the South 22nd St.
> > Bridge :-)
> >
> > Bob 3/4/05
> >
> > -----------------------------
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Derrick J Brashear" <shadow at dementia.org>
> > To: <pittsburgh-railways at dementia.org>
> > Sent: Friday, March 04, 2005 10:44 AM
> > Subject: [PRCo] Re: 94 Sharpsburg - 62nd Street Bridge
> >
> > > On Fri, 4 Mar 2005, John Swindler wrote:
> > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > Interesting.  I never heard it referred to as the 22nd St. bridge,
but
> > then
> > > > I lived in the East End.  I would tend to link a numbered street
with
> > the
> > > > strip district and routes 87 and 88.
> > >
> > > South 22nd st, but that's commonly left out. Remember the 10th st
bridge
> > > goes from 2nd Avenue at the Armstrong Tunnels to the South Side.
Really it
> > > is the south 10th St bridge. Some old maps still call the new bridge
the
> > > 22nd St Bridge. Of course, 22nd St is *next to* the bridge, but...
> > >
> > >
>
>
>