Lincoln Avenue Memories: 1950s Road Trips

 

Kathy, Flora, Debbie Kowinski on vacation 1959.  I took the photo.

Our family trips were mostly local, to visit relatives, my parents’ old friends and occasionally new friends, especially from my father’s workplaces when he worked for Singer.

me and my grandfather Frank Kowinski in 1954,
likely my First Communion

 In the early 1950s, we might make these trips in the Singer truck, especially to Youngwood, but also to the other side of Greensburg to visit my father’s brother Bill Kowinski and his family on Steck Street, or to United to visit his sister Beatty and her family, and his father, who all lived in the house where Walt grew up, or to his brother Bugs and his family, who lived in a newer house behind the old family home.

  On these trips to United, I enjoyed seeing the coke ovens burning high on a hill as we left to go home.  I did not enjoy so much the early years of going to the outhouse.  But I recall playing quietly at the edge of a closet—probably at Bugs’ house—while the adults played cards and talked, and I learned a little of my father’s life before he was married, which he never talked about in my presence.  One of his brothers was reminiscing about young Walt driving around looking for work, even down in West Virginia, sleeping in the car, washing his socks in gas station rest rooms and hanging them on the car window to dry while he slept.

 Among those we “visited” in Greensburg were Aunt Pearl (Prosperina Iezzi Romasco, my Severini grandmother's sister) at 243 West Pittsburgh Street, and her daughter’s family upstairs: Jenny, her husband Tom Butina, and their two daughters, Mary Jane and Jennifer. (They would later add two sons: Thomas, Jr., and Lewis.)

 We also visited with families of people my father worked with at Singers.  I remember Jimmy Leone and his wife.  A farther trip took us to Ronnie and Reenie Welch (I think Kathy remembers their acquarium.) 

Dick W., me, Walter at Rehobeth 1955

We had a series of used cars (usually Fords) in the mid to late 1950s.  One was a used early-fifties Ford colored brown, which my father had repainted an odd shade of beige (it was called “desert tan,” he said.)  When we went to Federalsburg, Maryland, to visit my Aunt Toni (my mother's sister) and her Wheatley family, or the Wheatleys came to Pennsylvania, my father and my Uncle Bill Wheatley would have genial debates on which car company was better.  My father favored Fords, while Bill Wheatley championed Chevrolets.

  The first time I was old enough to be aware of this car trip to Federalsburg , my parents tried to settle down my impatience with the long drive by telling me that when we got to Chesapeake Bay, we would ride on a ferry boat. (Federalsburg is on the Eastern Shore.) When we got to the Bay we discovered that the new Bay Bridge had opened, replacing the ferries. I was very disappointed.  (So this was 1952 or shortly after.)

Dick W. and me 1955

 But our trips to Maryland in the summer usually included a day at Rehobeth Beach, the first place I experienced ocean waves.  I also made the trip to Maryland by bus, once with my grandmother, and spent about a month in Federalsburg in 1957 or so.  My parents and sisters drove down to pick me up, and in addition to the cookies she made for the trip, Aunt Toni gave me a box of old science fiction magazines that probably had belonged to Uncle Bill Wheatley. I read them avidly all the way home, while just as avidly devouring the cookies. 

Carl & Rose, Walt & Flora with Severini
baby, perhaps after a Baptism 1957.
The first family photo I was trusted to take.

We also drove to places called Butler and Evans City, where my Uncle Carl Severini and his family lived. Once or twice our family and Carl’s family visited Aunt Rose’s mother at the family farm.  I remember the barn and the bales of hay, but was surprised that there was remarkably little to do for fun on a farm.  Years later, I visited Aunt Rose’s mother when she lived in a small house on Grove Street in Greensburg, next to the ball field, and across the way from where my mother—and my Uncle Carl-- had lived as children on Stone Street. 

 

I also went on a few road trips of sorts with my class in school.  These “field trips” were mostly to Pittsburgh, to visit the Carnegie Museum and see the dinosaurs, or tour the Heinz plant and come out with the souvenir every western Pennsylvania child for many years will recall: the pickle pin.

 Our school must have gotten a special deal on certain religious movies, for we got on the school bus to see them on a school day.  The first was The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima, in first grade.  My grandmother had already seen it, and she told me the entire story.  I didn’t mind—she was a great storyteller, and I recognized scenes she had described. 

I’m not sure where we saw that one, but we saw later films like The Ten Commandments and Ben-Hur at the Warner Theatre in Pittsburgh, which converted to Cinerama in 1953.  (This was a huge curved screen with a central image, flanked by two smaller outer images.)  With the travel time (more than two hours round trip) and the epic length, we were permitted to bring a lunch into the theatre.  My memories of The Ten Commandments are flavored with the taste of a cold scrambled egg sandwich tanged with Miracle Whip, and eaten in the dark. 

 

Debbie, me and Kathy 1959

I can recall a few vacation road trips, apart from the drive to Federalsburg.  By the time we got a used black station wagon, we took a vacation to upper New York state (including Niagara Falls) in conjunction with Carl and Rose, and their daughters Susan and Shirley.

 Since my family took vacations in this direction two consecutive summers (probably 1959 and 1960), my few memories are mixed up.  But I do remember a morning outside the motel where we had all spent the night, and the girls (including my sisters Kathy and Debbie) were attempting to share a bench.  One of the Severini girls told her sister to “shuft over” to make room.  I remember it because even at the time I thought it was a clever combination of “shove” and “shift.”

 I seem to recall that the day after one of our visits to Niagara Falls, my mother was ironing clothes in our motel room with the radio on when the news announced that a seven year old boy had fallen over the falls and lived.  He was rescued by people aboard the Maid of the Mist, the tourist boat we’d watched cruising near where the falls came crashing down.  The event happened—he was the first and perhaps only person to survive going over the falls unprotected—but I can’t guarantee my memory of how I heard it is accurate.

 On one of these trips, we visited Kowinski relatives in Winooski, Vermont. On that trip or the other, we crossed into Canada, as far as Montreal.  We visited a famous shrine there.  I bought an ice cream bar with the label in French, and ate my first French fries with the vinegar in a bottle next to the ketchup in the restaurant booth, feeling very exotic (even though the same combination was available at Oakford Park.)  

Mountain View

 Apart from running through sprinklers and splashing in tiny inflatable swimming pools in the back yard, getting wet in summer required road trips.  The Oakford Park swimming pool, ten or so miles west in Jeannette was one such destination.  We would go when our families went, or maybe the Cole brothers older sister, Patty, or later in a group from school.  It was all that was left of a defunct trolley amusement park.  In the other direction, east of Greensburg, the Mountain View Inn had an outdoor pool, which may have required a membership.  I was sent there a lot one summer in the late grades.

 A bigger trip was to Keystone, a lake on the state park. Though it was named after the coal company that had built the park, I always thought it appropriate for the many stones you could stub your toes on under the water.  The Coles took vacations at the bigger Conneaut Lake, the Commonwealth’s largest glacier lake, but I don’t recall that we ever went as a family.  But we did have those occasional days at the ocean at Rehobeth Beach.

Summer meant baseball and in the late 1950s, it included a few trips to Forbes Field in Pittsburgh for a Pittsburgh Pirates game.  I first really became fanatical about following the Pirates in 1958, -59, and of course the great championship season of 1960.  My father took me to several games, both night and day games, and I believe my Uncle Carl took me once, along with my visiting cousin, Dick Wheatley.  As I recall, we had seats high above home plate.

 Forbes Field was in the Oakland section of Pittsburgh, with the Carnegie behind it and the University of Pittsburgh across the street.  It was a classic ball park which opened in 1909.  Babe Ruth hit the last two home runs of his career there, in the same game. While he was in Pittsburgh he stayed at the Schenley Hotel across the street, the structure that later became the Pitt student union. 

Roberto Clemente flies for the Pirates

At various times in its history, the Pittsburgh Steelers, the University of Pittsburgh Panthers football team, and the Homestead Grays baseball team of the Negro League all played at Forbes Field, as well as the Pittsburgh Pirates.

The ballpark in the 50s was a center of activity, with vendors of all description outside.  The businesses across Forbes Avenue included Gustine’s, the bar and restaurant owned by former Pirate star Frankie Gustine.  The walls inside were lined with autographed photos of baseball and other sports greats.

 
On one afternoon I remember, the Pirates allowed kids down on the field before the game to meet the players.  They were in a ragged line, and I headed for my favorite, Roberto Clemente.  I shook his hand but was a bit embarrassed that he wasn’t looking at me, and appeared bored.  But the next player was Bill Virdon, the center fielder and later manager. He wore rounded glasses. He looked me in the eye as he shook my hand and said, “Hello, son.”

 That didn’t affect my admiration for Clemente as a player and a man—but it did endear Billy Virdon to me, who I already liked for his speed in the outfield.  More than a decade later, I saw Clemente get a hit in one of his last regular season games, against the Mets in New York.  I was so fanatical about the Pirates that I can still recite the 1960 starting lineup, with pinch-hitters.  For a long while I could reproduce their batting stances.

 I believe it was the last of the ninth or possibly the tenth inning of a night game, when the Pirates got a runner to second, with Roberto Clemente coming to bat.  We had been standing, and now the crowd around my excited but somewhat sleepy self took a long breath and started to sit down, because everyone knew that Clemente seldom swung at the first pitch, or if he did he swung wildly, so both his batting helmet and his hat fell off.

 But this time Clemente swung at the first pitch and made solid contact.  Everyone immediately stood up again so I couldn’t see the ball.  By the time I saw what happened there was white dust in the air down the right field line, from the ball hitting the chalk mark on the wall that demarcated the foul line.  Clemente had hit the wall with a bullet, the runner had scored, and just like that the game was over, a dust cloud floating up through the lights as if a cannon had been fired.  A few minutes later, we were walking across the field itself to the Exit Gate,  looking for the exact spot the ball hit. 

 I closely followed the 1960 team to its National League pennant (no playoffs in those days.)  They would play the New York Yankees—they were my favorite American League team, loaded with greats. For me that especially meant left-hand pitcher Whitey Ford, though it was the wind-up of the Pirates' Harvey Haddix I ended up adopting in Pony League.

 The Pirates set up a lottery for World Series tickets—anyone could send in a check for two tickets and if your envelope was chosen, the check would be cashed and the tickets sent to you, though you didn't get to choose which game. Unbelievably, I won two tickets to the sixth game.  By then, the Pirates were up, three games to two.  They could have won the Series with a sixth game win.  My father and I went on a special bus leaving from  Greensburg.  I was skipping school (all World Series games were played in daytime), but then, a priest who was one of my teachers was also on the bus.  It was all very exciting, but the game itself quickly became painful.  The Pirates were totally crushed.  

The next day was the seventh game, now considered one of the greatest games in baseball history. Bill Mazeroski’s home run won it in the ninth. I watched the moment on TV in a big classroom with the Central High football team When the Pirates beat the mighty Yankees, they won their first world championship since 1927.  The city, the region, went absolutely nuts.  

 

me on a family visit to the Highland Park
Zoo in Pittsburgh 1954.

In these years my father drove to Pittsburgh on Route 30, the Lincoln Highway, which wound through various communities along the way.  A highlight for me was crossing the George Westinghouse Bridge in East Pittsburgh, with the factories far below.  If we were headed towards downtown (or out to the airport), we would pass the steel mills, their tall stacks belching fire and smoke.  But if we were going to Forbes Field, Route 30 took us directly into Oakland.

Some school picnics (and family outings) were to Idlewild Park but the best school picnics were to Kennywood Park in Pittsburgh. The roller coasters in the 50s were amazing: the Racers, the Jack Rabbit and the Pippin (later the Thunder Bolt.) The Caterpillar was not exactly a coaster, but it had a reputation: when the cars were covered, couples could kiss.  It later moved to Idlewild before disappearing. 

An early trip to Idlewild 1947

Without air conditioning at home, my mother employed strategies her mother learned in Italy for hot spells: keep the house dark behind drapes against the sun in the daytime, circulate cooler air at night.  People also spent more time on their porches.

 Sometimes as a relief from heat, or just as inexpensive family entertainment, we also took local recreational drives as a family: “going for a ride.” In the 1950s, Route 30, the main east-west road, was lined with mostly rolling hills and farms, and “counting the cows” was a game.  The first highway businesses I recall, apart from car dealerships (my father liked to “price cars” as recreation), were frozen custard stands.  I saw my first live rock and roll combo perform on the roof of one.  

Occasionally we made an expedition to a drive-in theater: the nearby Odin, the Highway drive-in and the Blue Dell on Route 30, or the Rustic out towards Mt. Pleasant, though there were several more around.  These were the classic drive-ins with the speaker boxes you hung on the partly open car window.  The shows were always double features, with a nice long intermission for the concession stand, and the periodic announcement over the ads on the screen: “The next show starts in x minutes!”  I believe the program strategy was to start with a family friendly movie, and show the dramas that appealed to parents later.  I remember I tried to stay up for the likes of “Peyton Place” and “Pal Joey,” but usually fell asleep.