[PRCo] Happenings In Pittsburgh

[Herb Brannon]

May as well do some reading about Pittsburgh on these frozen evenings.

FIRST ON THE list is "Rocco's Funeral". For those of you who haven't heard,
Rocco was a member of the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police K-9 Unit. He was
killed in the line of duty last week. Here is the story from the Pittsburgh
Post Gazette:

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The funeral for Rocco, the Pittsburgh police dog that died last week from a
knife wound he suffered while trying to apprehend a suspect, will begin at
11 a.m. Friday at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hall and Museum in Oakland.

The service is open to the public, but priority seating will be given to
law enforcement officers and their families. Cameras will not be permitted
at the service, which is expected to last until about 1 p.m.

Rocco's handler, Officer Phil Lerza, originally asked that the funeral be
closed to the public but changed his mind after numerous calls and emails
and an outpouring of support from the public.

"The tremendous show of support has deeply touched the Lerza family and the
Pittsburgh Bureau of Police," said a prepared statement from the police
bureau.

Friday morning, Pittsburgh police officers will gather at the bureau's
canine training academy on Washington Boulevard in Highland Park to form a
processional. About 10 a.m., they will leave the academy in a procession to
Soldiers & Sailors. The police bureau has not announced whether Washington
Boulevard, Fifth Avenue or side streets will be closed during the trip to
Oakland.

Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto is unable to attend the funeral. He issued
this statement Thursday:
  *STATEMENT OF MAYOR WILLIAM PEDUTO*



*In a private ceremony at 6 p.m. today in the Mayor's Office Mayor William
Peduto presented the flag of the City of Pittsburgh to Officer Phil Lerza
and his family, and delivered the following remarks in honor of fallen K-9
Officer Rocco:*

When a Pittsburgh officer dies in the line of duty, it is customary to
present the family with a flag of the city.

Officer Rocco was a police dog who died defending three uniformed officers,
and his family was that of Zone Five Officer, Phil Lerza.

Officer Lerza was one of the three policemen Rocco died defending, and he
was himself injured while capturing the fugitive who killed his partner
Rocco.

Because of a long-standing commitment to a loved one, I must be out-of-town
during tomorrow's memorial service.

But I did not want to leave without first paying my respects, and the
respect of our city, to Rocco and to the good people who became his family
during the time he served us.

The night Officer Rocco died, I went to the Veterinary Clinic and stayed
with Officer Rocco, the Lerzas, and the police officers who gathered to be
with a comrade on his final watch.

There were many older officers, big, tough veterans, men and women
accustomed to seeing hard things.

Not a single one of them left that clinic without a leaking heart, torn by
both grief and admiration, and with eyes filled with tears in a city that
soon joined them in their grief when the word of Officer Rocco's passing
was announced.

Pittsburgh showed its soul that night, a soul that shines with compassion,
and recognizes the good not only in every human, but in every being.

Not every dog proves a perfect match for the job of protecting others.

The combination of control and courage needed in a canine officer are not
found in every dog.

But Rocco measured up in every way.

He faced an assailant's knife without hesitation, without retreat, and with
a loyalty that reached beyond mere "trait" and well into the realm of
character.

There are 5,000 known species of mammal, but Rocco showed us why only one
of them is known as man's best friend.

Rocco came to us from a breeder in the Czech Republic. Like so many others
in our city, he had his origins in another land, and his heart in
Pittsburgh.

It was a Czech-born writer, Milan Kundera, who spoke of dogs as our last
link to paradise.

He said: "They don't know evil, or jealousy, or discontent. To sit with a
dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where
doing nothing was not boring - it was peace."

Rocco is now at peace, and we can only pray that the old saying is true -
that all dogs go to heaven.

Surely, with Rocco there, Heaven is a safer, happier place.

I am sorry that my plans must take me away from the city tomorrow, but
please know that Rocco, the Lerzas, and every man and woman who protects
our city will be in my thoughts and prayers.

So, on behalf of the citizens of Pittsburgh, with gratitude and humility, I
present this flag of our city to the Lerzas - Rocco's family.

END PG STORY

Rocco's funeral will probably be one of the biggest funerals held in
Pittsburgh in recent times.

NEXT ON THE reading list is PATransit and the ice storm yesterday morning.
When I worked at PAT it was common, during an ice storm, to run a couple
cars on the lines with "ice cutters" attached to the trolley wheel. These
"ice cars" would be run whenever needed no matter what time of day or night
and on all lines. Apparently the current management of PAT has forgotten
that frozen water is a perfect insulator and will not allow the current to
pass from the overhead wire into the motors. Yesterday morning the entire
rail system was shut down, because of ice on the overhead,  until around
10AM. Around 10AM what PAT called "limited service" was started on the Red
Line. The Blue Line didn't get up and running until much later and full
service took several hours to get running. Where did these people learn how
to run a railroad?????

THIRD ON THE list is short story fiction, about Pittsburgh, with streetcars
mentioned in the story lines. I have selected three excerpts from three
different books. These books are very interesting especially if one really
gets the "minds' eye" involved in the reading process. You will become a
part of the story.

Story 1--Excerpt from "Out of the Furnace" by Thomas Bell. Setup: This
novel tells the story of Pittsburgh and the growing steel industry from the
standpoint of the immigrant workingman and his family as they struggle to
achieve dignity and economic justice. The book spans the years 1881 to
1937. The location is Braddock and the neighboring mill towns.

1915--The second summer after his father's death Johnny got a job selling
papers. The boy who had the Sixth Street corner, which was good, also had
an equity in the Corey Avenue corner a block west, which wasn't so good. He
stationed Johnny in front of the drugstore there--the only other corner was
occupied by the Corey Avenue School--paying him half the profits to yell,
"Press, Telly, Sun and Leader!" from mid afternoon until seven every day
but Sunday. Johnny yelled himself hoarse and at every opportunity boarded
the passing streetcars; by custom newsboys were permitted to ride free. He
liked that. He liked it even better in summer, when he could go swinging
magnificently along the outsides of the open cars, but he was wise enough
to keep that a secret from his mother.....

Another night a man came out of the drugstore as a streetcar approached;
buying a paper he dropped a coin to the sidewalk. Johnny all but dislocated
his neck with helpfulness, but was careful not to move his left foot until
the man, swearing disgustedly, had boarded the car and the car was out of
sight. The he picked up the coin, a dime. It was exactly the price of the
swimming trunks he needed; his mother had offered to get him a ticket to
the pool in the Carnegie Library building as soon as school was out if he
promised not to go swimming in the river and furnished his own trunks. But
when he got home that night the wish to surprise and please his mother
impelled him to put both dimes, the one he'd earned and the one he'd found
under his shoe, into her hand. Her praise was sufficient recompense for his
sacrifice, and the next day, on his way to work, he stopped off in the
five-and-ten at the foot of Library Street and stole a pair of trunks.

Story 2--Excerpt from "Duffy's Rocks" by Edward Fenton. Setup: Timothy
Francis Brennan, a 14-year-old boy of the 1930's, has made a weekly ritual
of a Saturday trip to Pittsburgh from Duffy's Rocks, an industrial
community suffering through the grayness of mill smoke and the Great
Depression. One Saturday he is forced, by his grandmother, to take along
Mary Agnes, his 13-year-old cousin. They go, naturally by trolley car.

He called out, "Here comes the streetcar now!" and started to sprint to the
car stop. Mary Agnes forgot about he stockings and panted after him. The
door clattered open. All the seats were already taken, so they had to stand
on the platform, holding onto the poles.

They rode in silence, Mary Agnes looked resentfully at Timothy, while
Timothy looked out through the soot-streaked glass. He stared at the small
frame houses, all exactly like his grandmother's, with their gritty
curtains stretched across the front windows. He stared at the skimpy bare
trees, at the grime-layered store fronts, at the shabby beer parlors on
every corner, their entrance doors clotted with unemployed men. In the
center of almost every block there stood a church with its blackened brick
parochial school, exactly like St. Bridget's where he and Mary Agnes went.
They all flashed past as the streetcar clanged downhill.....

As the neighborhood receded, Timothy's heart bounded higher. Soon they had
even left behind them Kolb's Used Car Lot where, week after week, the same
automobiles stood. None of them ever seemed to get sold, in spite of the
huge banners that stretched across the entrance: No Reasonable Offer
Refused! Easy Terms Arranged On The Spot!

After that, the railroad tracks cut across the street. Now the faces of the
unemployed men on the sidewalk were black. He looked out for the mysterious
store front which had all its windows painted over in yellow, purple and
red, with a sign over the doorway: African Church of the Pentecostal
Brotherhood. Come to the Refreshing Spring and Be Saved!

Once past the Colored church, Timothy knew that he was really on his way.
There was still more than half an hour's ride ahead of him, uphill and
downhill, winding through a grubby string of industrial towns exactly like
Duffy's Rocks, all grown together into a shapeless suburb. Each hid its
rows of gaunt, gray, company houses like dingy wash on the line, and stores
whose shabby windows denied the hope that prosperity was just around the
corner, and more churches........

He was on his way: off to the adventure that waited for him. The whole
week, to him, was a trough between his Saturdays. It was the thought of
them that made it possible to endure all those dreary weekdays which led up
to them. For the moment he even forgot that this time Mary Agnes was with
him, secured to his side like a block of cement.

Soon he would be able to see the river. Then the bulk of the skyscrapers
would loom ahead of him, shining through the grit-filled-air. And after
that he would be downtown He pressed closer to the window, but just then
some broad Slovak ladies got up. They clutched black oilcloth shopping bags
in their chapped hands, and their faces under their shawls were steamy and
red. They surrounded him, blocking the view. He could only tell when the
streetcar was crossing the river from the way it lurched and from the sound
of the wheels rattling on the bridge. After that the car began to empty.
But there was no sense in sitting down now. Suddenly he grabbed Mary Agnes
by the sleeve. "Come on. We're getting off here" She jumped down, plunging
after him into the crowds that clogged the intersection.

The great world, Timothy thought: this was it! He turned, lifting his face
eagerly toward it, ignoring the people who had to jostle him in order to
pass. There was not much smoke today. Everything was clear in the cold
winter air. His eyes drank in the streets filled with traffic and lined
with vast office buildings. He knew the name of every single one of the
glittering granite buildings of downtown Pittsburgh. All around him, in
every direction, they stretched: banks, department stores with their
enormous crystal display windows, theaters. A sea of preoccupied faces
milled in and out of them. Every Saturday he felt the same surge of wild
exhilaration. It was all there. Andi it was all his !

Story 3--Excerpt from "Miners Hill" by Michael O'Malley. Setup:  A trip by
trolley in the 1940's to Kennywood for Irish Day is described in Miners
Hill. The main characters in the book are the members of the Riley family,
Mick and Birdie (parents) and their children, Pat, Tony, Mary and Kathleen.

The morning was bright, white-lit, shot with melon-colored gold light, like
all good picnic mornings. Something in the air, all sorts of things in the
air: the gaiety of expectation, a happy tense jiggling nervousness, a sky
that promised glory and a green-cool afternoon. There was the wild anxiety
to be off, to clank off rocking in a big rattling orange trolley car,
grinning importantly from the window because of the sign that said
'Chartered'. There was the opulence of that 'Chartered' sign, and the
shouting crush of the passengers--the portly Irish housewives and their
picnic baskets bulging, and the huge men, broad backed, the Irishmen,
laughing and greeting each other, roughly touching their big callous hands,
surprised and embarrassed by their joy, by their desire to embrace one
another.......

The Riley's arrived early at the schoolyard on Main Street where they were
to board the chartered trolleys. Mick and Uncle Miles went off to get the
identification tags.......the rest of the family sat down with Birdie on
the stone steps of the school, near the heavy black wrought-iron gates, to
await the coming of the cars.

The long line of chartered trolley cars, bells clanging exuberantly, hove
into view on Main Street, and the children around them began to clap and
shout. As the cars approached, Bridie's anxiety increased. "Tony! Where's
that child? Oh, Holy Mother o' God, every time I go one one o' these
picnics I swear I'll never set foot on another. Ye know", she said to Pat,
"he gets it from yer father---yer father don't worry himsel' about nothin'
atall, so Tony don't either. I could throttle the both o' them."

The first of the trolleys had drawn up opposite the gate, almost throbbing
on the tracks in its eagerness to be off, the other cars lined up
impatiently behind it, and the Irish poured down the steps and into the
street and up the high steel steps, past the smiling motorman, and in the
car they rushed to be seated, threw open the windows, shouted to each other
and the crowd outside, and heard the hiss as the doors clumped shut and the
gong clanged twice, and they were off in a great surge of cheering, the
huge steel wheels of the car rumbling smoothly louder on the rails, the
trolley above flashing sparks from the wire, and inside the smell of sweat
and of the old straw seats and acrid sharp oily smell of the motors below.

Like I said, if you really get into the story line you will find yourself
in old Pittsburgh and will see the sights, feel the movements and most of
all, see yourself as we were.

FINALLY THE FOURTH  ITEM on tonight's happenings is the current television
ad being run by Citizens Bank. Several Citizens Bank employees are in their
branch break room. The bank customers have suddenly started giving gifts to
the Citizens Bank employees because Citizens doesn't charge a lot of fees.
Two of the employees appear wearing sweaters with "No 1 Banker" on the
front of both sweaters. Another employee turns, looks at the two sweater
guys and says, "Youins can't both be number one bankers." This, after all
that every school in Allegheny has been doing for years to curb the
corruption of the English language in the Pittsburgh area and this bank
gets it started again !!

That's all folks......hope you enjoyed reading about Pittsburgh. A photo of
Rocco from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police is attached.







-- 
Herb Brannon


*In Pittsburgh.............................A City And .........A State of
Mind*
Let's Go Pens



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