Pittsburgh day 2 in photos
10/02/2007 12:51 PM
Hello all, here's the conclusion of my Pittsburgh
report - written from back in Maine. If you're
reading this, you might as well start from the post
below it (Pittsburgh day 1 in photos), to
go in the proper sequence.
Now that I'm back home, I'm just absorbing and pondering the many inspirational moments of my weekend, some of which are captured here on film.
I began my day with a long-awaited trip to Homestead. I had planned to drive east through town, and then take the Homestead Grays Bridge (recently renamed as such) directly south into Homestead, which sits just across the Monongahela River. But Pittsburgh's Great Race, a 10 K road race that results in a lot of streets being closed, was on. So I drove through the South Side. These billowing stacks made me think of the days of the Homestead Works, when Pittsburgh really was the steel city. Not sure what these stacks were exerting themselves for, but they added much to the atmosphere.
Homestead was a steel building town directly south of Pittsburgh. Actually, it's a part of Pittsburgh, which I didn't fully realize until visiting. I found the place to be eerily silent on a Sunday morning. Apart from this beautiful mural on the side of ta building, there was precious little there commemorating the town's historic past. Still, I felt particularly energized while walking its main drag, and peering around corners.
This sign seemed to capture the spirit of Homestead today somehow.
Walking up West Street, I made my way to the old Homestead Grays field, which is actually located just over the border in Munhall. I'm not sure just when exactly the Grays started playing here, or when they stopped (though in their heyday in the late 30s and 40s they were playing a lot of their games either at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, or Washington's Griffith Stadium), but I know at some point they stood upon this field. Perhaps the stands have been rebuilt since then, or perhaps not - they're not in such great shape. The Grays got their start in 1913, and in the early days consisted mainly of steel workers from the nearby Homestead Works, the factory for Carnegie Illinois Steel.
This fence made me think of something I recently read in Buck Leonard's autobiography (The Black Lou Gehrig). When Buck was seven, he would go to the local ballpark in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and peep through the cracks at the Class B white team as they played. Of course he wouldn't have been allowed entrance to the park. (Who got the last laugh? Buck was inducted to the Hall of Fame alongside Josh Gibson in 1972 (only Satchell Paige beat them to the Hall, but Josh and Buck were the first two never to have played in the majors to be inducted).
The field was deserted for the entire length of my visit, except for a fairly large school of Canadian geese that I only gradually became aware of. Then, at some point, it hit me - I was in the presence of the spirits of the great men who played astounding baseball on this very field in years gone by. As soon as this concept took hold, I could not shake myself free of it, and spent the rest of my visit in awed contemplation. I wanted to talk to the spirits, but as I approached them they walked, rather determinedly, away.
Might a young Josh Gibson have once sat upon this bench, eagerly awaiting his turn to pummel a ball?
After my encounter with the spirit geese, this house struck me as being rich with significance.
Next, after checking out of my hotel, I stopped at the Heinz Center, which includes the very nice Western Pennsylvania Sport Museum. These Pittsburghers are absolutely wild about sport. As Rob Ruck explained to me, there may be no other place in the country where sport plays such a role in building community. When I was in the airport later in the day waiting for my flight, I heard groups of people from all directions simultaneously bursting into applause. Why? Because the "Stillers" had done something right on the tv, that's why.
Then it was on to Allegheny Cemetary, where such notables as Andy Warhol and Stephen Foster found their final resting place. I didn’t have time to look for them, however. This picture is from the perspective of Josh Gibson’s grave, which is buried high on a hill in the cemetary’s section 50. That’s my rented red SUV in the distance.
Here’s Josh’s grave. Despite his being listed on findagrave.com, and also despite a sign pointing the way to his stone, I still had difficulty finding it. Josh lies beneath a rather nondescript flat headstone, with the concise inscription “Legendary Baseball Player.” He is in a row with three other graves, the names of whose occupants are not familiar to me – perhaps they bear no relation to the great slugger. In my research the day before, looking through old Pittsburgh Couriers I found a 1979 article entitled “Why? Josh Gibson Worth Only a Stone.” The author, Philip Harrigan, bemoans the fact that despite his great accomplishments, Josh is buried without any pomp, in an almost hidden corner of the cemetery – which during his visit was rather unkempt to boot. Harrigan does some investigating, and comes up with a startling possibility. He finds a sales counselor for the cemetery’s Mausoleum who explains “[section] Fifty was an emergency type situation. When somebody dies and you have no funeral property, a lot is sold on behalf of the family in the emergency section….[Fifty’s] always been an emergency section for blacks.”
My experience of the grave site was somewhat different than Harrigan’s. I found it to be extremely peaceful and quite beautiful, although I agree that the humbleness of the actual marker and its seemingly unprivileged (though it was at the top of the hill) vantage seemed at odds with Josh’s historical stature. Still, having visited the near freak-show that is Jim Morrison’s grave at Pere Lachaise in Paris, I was somewhat grateful for Josh’s seclusion in Allegheny. I didn't have a chance to compare Stephen Foster's grave - and it's too bad, since Foster died in even worse financial straights than did Josh. I wonder if they've done right by the writer of "O Susannah!"
A bunch of yards closer to the main road stood the more impressive headstone of Gus Greenlee and his wife Helen. How interesting that Gus, who stole Josh away from the Homestead Grays in 1932, only to have the basher abandon him in ’36 for the warmer climate and better working conditions of Puerto Rico, should be reunited with Gibson in death. I have a soft spot in my heart for Gus, the great numbers man who was everybody’s friend and a pillar of the community (despite gaining his livelihood from illegal doings).
With a little time on my hands before my evening flight back to Maine, I called Sean Gibson to ask for the address where Josh Gibson grew up. Over on the North Side, not too far from PNC Ballpark and the Mattress Factory (an installation museum), I found the corner of N. Charles Street and Brighton Rd. Sean tells me the house isn’t there anywhere, but there was this house – I couldn’t tell if someone was living in it or not. But it had character, and I let my imagination take hold, envisioning a ten-year-old Josh, out smacking balls with sticks on the front sidewalk.
A little further up Charles Street, as Sean said I would, I found Josh Gibson Drive, near a rather new housing development. Sean told me that despite the fact most people think that’s where Josh grew up, it wasn’t quite the actual spot.
Standing at the end of Josh Gibson Drive and
looking back towards Charles Street, I saw a young
black boy going into a pitching windup. I thought,
this is just too cinematic. If the movie were to end
here, we’d see the young boy pretending to be a
major leaguer, hearing the crowd and letting the
pressure and joy of it course through his body. And
we’d understand just how different the world of
possibility awaiting this youngster was than that
which stood in wait for another young ballplayer, who
played in these Pleasant Valley streets some eighty
years ago and also dreamed of greatness.
Well, sometimes Hollywood Endings are kinda satisfying, you know? This one worked for me.
Now that I'm back home, I'm just absorbing and pondering the many inspirational moments of my weekend, some of which are captured here on film.
I began my day with a long-awaited trip to Homestead. I had planned to drive east through town, and then take the Homestead Grays Bridge (recently renamed as such) directly south into Homestead, which sits just across the Monongahela River. But Pittsburgh's Great Race, a 10 K road race that results in a lot of streets being closed, was on. So I drove through the South Side. These billowing stacks made me think of the days of the Homestead Works, when Pittsburgh really was the steel city. Not sure what these stacks were exerting themselves for, but they added much to the atmosphere.
Homestead was a steel building town directly south of Pittsburgh. Actually, it's a part of Pittsburgh, which I didn't fully realize until visiting. I found the place to be eerily silent on a Sunday morning. Apart from this beautiful mural on the side of ta building, there was precious little there commemorating the town's historic past. Still, I felt particularly energized while walking its main drag, and peering around corners.
This sign seemed to capture the spirit of Homestead today somehow.
Walking up West Street, I made my way to the old Homestead Grays field, which is actually located just over the border in Munhall. I'm not sure just when exactly the Grays started playing here, or when they stopped (though in their heyday in the late 30s and 40s they were playing a lot of their games either at Pittsburgh's Forbes Field, or Washington's Griffith Stadium), but I know at some point they stood upon this field. Perhaps the stands have been rebuilt since then, or perhaps not - they're not in such great shape. The Grays got their start in 1913, and in the early days consisted mainly of steel workers from the nearby Homestead Works, the factory for Carnegie Illinois Steel.
This fence made me think of something I recently read in Buck Leonard's autobiography (The Black Lou Gehrig). When Buck was seven, he would go to the local ballpark in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and peep through the cracks at the Class B white team as they played. Of course he wouldn't have been allowed entrance to the park. (Who got the last laugh? Buck was inducted to the Hall of Fame alongside Josh Gibson in 1972 (only Satchell Paige beat them to the Hall, but Josh and Buck were the first two never to have played in the majors to be inducted).
The field was deserted for the entire length of my visit, except for a fairly large school of Canadian geese that I only gradually became aware of. Then, at some point, it hit me - I was in the presence of the spirits of the great men who played astounding baseball on this very field in years gone by. As soon as this concept took hold, I could not shake myself free of it, and spent the rest of my visit in awed contemplation. I wanted to talk to the spirits, but as I approached them they walked, rather determinedly, away.
Might a young Josh Gibson have once sat upon this bench, eagerly awaiting his turn to pummel a ball?
After my encounter with the spirit geese, this house struck me as being rich with significance.
Next, after checking out of my hotel, I stopped at the Heinz Center, which includes the very nice Western Pennsylvania Sport Museum. These Pittsburghers are absolutely wild about sport. As Rob Ruck explained to me, there may be no other place in the country where sport plays such a role in building community. When I was in the airport later in the day waiting for my flight, I heard groups of people from all directions simultaneously bursting into applause. Why? Because the "Stillers" had done something right on the tv, that's why.
Then it was on to Allegheny Cemetary, where such notables as Andy Warhol and Stephen Foster found their final resting place. I didn’t have time to look for them, however. This picture is from the perspective of Josh Gibson’s grave, which is buried high on a hill in the cemetary’s section 50. That’s my rented red SUV in the distance.
Here’s Josh’s grave. Despite his being listed on findagrave.com, and also despite a sign pointing the way to his stone, I still had difficulty finding it. Josh lies beneath a rather nondescript flat headstone, with the concise inscription “Legendary Baseball Player.” He is in a row with three other graves, the names of whose occupants are not familiar to me – perhaps they bear no relation to the great slugger. In my research the day before, looking through old Pittsburgh Couriers I found a 1979 article entitled “Why? Josh Gibson Worth Only a Stone.” The author, Philip Harrigan, bemoans the fact that despite his great accomplishments, Josh is buried without any pomp, in an almost hidden corner of the cemetery – which during his visit was rather unkempt to boot. Harrigan does some investigating, and comes up with a startling possibility. He finds a sales counselor for the cemetery’s Mausoleum who explains “[section] Fifty was an emergency type situation. When somebody dies and you have no funeral property, a lot is sold on behalf of the family in the emergency section….[Fifty’s] always been an emergency section for blacks.”
My experience of the grave site was somewhat different than Harrigan’s. I found it to be extremely peaceful and quite beautiful, although I agree that the humbleness of the actual marker and its seemingly unprivileged (though it was at the top of the hill) vantage seemed at odds with Josh’s historical stature. Still, having visited the near freak-show that is Jim Morrison’s grave at Pere Lachaise in Paris, I was somewhat grateful for Josh’s seclusion in Allegheny. I didn't have a chance to compare Stephen Foster's grave - and it's too bad, since Foster died in even worse financial straights than did Josh. I wonder if they've done right by the writer of "O Susannah!"
A bunch of yards closer to the main road stood the more impressive headstone of Gus Greenlee and his wife Helen. How interesting that Gus, who stole Josh away from the Homestead Grays in 1932, only to have the basher abandon him in ’36 for the warmer climate and better working conditions of Puerto Rico, should be reunited with Gibson in death. I have a soft spot in my heart for Gus, the great numbers man who was everybody’s friend and a pillar of the community (despite gaining his livelihood from illegal doings).
With a little time on my hands before my evening flight back to Maine, I called Sean Gibson to ask for the address where Josh Gibson grew up. Over on the North Side, not too far from PNC Ballpark and the Mattress Factory (an installation museum), I found the corner of N. Charles Street and Brighton Rd. Sean tells me the house isn’t there anywhere, but there was this house – I couldn’t tell if someone was living in it or not. But it had character, and I let my imagination take hold, envisioning a ten-year-old Josh, out smacking balls with sticks on the front sidewalk.
A little further up Charles Street, as Sean said I would, I found Josh Gibson Drive, near a rather new housing development. Sean told me that despite the fact most people think that’s where Josh grew up, it wasn’t quite the actual spot.
Well, sometimes Hollywood Endings are kinda satisfying, you know? This one worked for me.
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