[PRCo] confidentially to Matt Barry

[D Brashear]

(not really)

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1664469628768&set=a.1664463908625.54400.1748082272&type=3&theater

is Wilmerding. Doesn't look like it today but it was one of like two places
where the terrain and density was about right, and I knew Trafford's loop
because I used to catch the bus a few feet from it daily.

Here's a shot looking the other way from loop level instead of off the old
viaduct. note the building on the left of this shot. It's the same building
beside the loop in the other.

http://www.pittsburghtransit.info/1466wilmerdingloop.jpg

Man, Wilmerding looks like it was so much more vital before, but I guess in
the postwar era everyone moved to the surrounding hills.

I had occasion at the beginning of August to meet Grateful Fred's wife
Dona, and upon hearing I grew up near Turtle Creek, she asked about her
childhood home. We panned around a map and could find no streets in Turtle
Creek that fit. Then pictures followed. I guessed perhaps Wilkins or Penn
Hills. Then she remembered her plan name: Penn Ridge. I found houses that
looked about right but the terrain didn't match her memory. A name of a
school - Morrow - and we knew we were about in the right place (the new
Penn Hills High School is on the site today). Anyway, some more pictures,
her brother's memory, and a topographic map from USGS Historical and we
knew which house it was: I had been within a few houses of it once we had
the name of the plan!

Anyway, everyone after the war was happy to get their plot of land so their
kids had somewhere to play. I get it. I grew up in it. I lived in it. But I
am in my 40s, I have no kids, and I lead an active adult life. So for me,
old Wilmerding would be a better deal than old Penn Hills (Penn Township,
at the time). Hence my urban life now.

Funny how things go.

-- 
Daria



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