[PRCo] Happenings In Pittsburgh

[John Swindler]

Of course we've heard about Rocco - even in Lancaster County.
 
As dad use to say "just a dog, but you grow attached".  They can become faithful companions.
 
http://www.post-gazette.com/local/city/2014/02/07/Funeral-for-slain-K-9-officer-Rocco-to-restrict-traffic-today/stories/201402070138
 
 
 

 
> From: hrbran at cavtel.net
> Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2014 23:19:30 -0500
> To: pittsburgh-railways at mailman.dementix.org
> Subject: [PRCo] Happenings In Pittsburgh
> 
> 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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