Holding on for dear life in Pittsburgh

We traveled to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania a few months ago to visit some old friends.  I wanted to see these friends, but was not particularly interested in seeing Pittsburgh.  I had formed ugly images of this city in my head:  owned and ruled in the recent past by steel and coke barons Carnegie and Frick; rogues getting rich under a grimy blackened sky; scrooges paying slave wages to workers who died tired, young, and hopeless.  I imagined an industrial wasteland inhabited by poorly educated, economically depressed, semi-literate, armed and dangerous Neanderthals. 

Why would anyone still live there after the steel industry went away?  Why would this god-forsaken place continue to have a National Football League team and why did their home field used to be called Three Rivers Stadium?  If this stadium was surrounded by three heavily polluted rivers, did Steelers fans worry about them catching on fire like the Cuyahoga River did in 1952 Ohio?  Did local insurance companies thereby deny life insurance policies to Pittsburgh Steelers season ticket holders? 

I’m exaggerating of course.  I just had this vision of a failed and boring industrial town.  A place not as bad as say, Detroit (another city I hadn’t visited), but bad enough that it would never make my bucket list…if I even had one. 

I was wrong.  Pittsburgh has done a makeover.  It has culture, curious shops, a charming “old town”, interesting architecture, beautiful gardens and parks, and renowned educational institutions.  The view from our friends’ home high on a cliff overlooking the city and the rivers was spectacular.  I saw fisherman on these rivers.  People seemed kind-hearted and friendly.  The food was surprisingly good.  I had one of the most delicious tacos I’ve ever eaten made by a street vendor in Old Town…and I’m a taco connoisseur from the West Coast where Mexican food is everywhere.  I didn’t expect this in Pennsylvania of all places.  It’s a beautiful state and Pittsburgh is a great town.

Pittsburghers are fanatic sports fans.  Big time. We were there during football season and it seemed as if everyone wore Pittsburgh Steelers colors and logos.  The craziness was appalling…but impressive.  I could live in Pittsburgh, if they had decent weather, palm trees…and the San Francisco 49ers.

I’m only talking about Pittsburgh though because I just finished a book written by a Pittsburgh native about growing up there.  The book is:  An American Childhood, by Annie Dillard.   You will enjoy this book if you appreciate beautiful and insightful writing.  It is non-fiction about a woman’s childhood so it is not an exciting novel.  I had never read a book about a female’s childhood, that I can remember anyway, so that alone was a bit new for me.  Personally, I am very interested in what people think, or believe, or know, about the answers to these questions about our lives: Who are we? What are we? Why are we? Where are we going?  Annie Dillard is very very awake.  I thoroughly enjoyed her perspective and remarkable prose.

At the end of the book she asks a question.  The question is one you’ve undoubtedly heard or thought of sometime in your life:  “What would you do if you had fifteen minutes to live before the bomb went off?”  This time around I gave this question some serious thought.  All I’d want, I decided, would be to put my arms around the people I love, say I love you, and just hold on.  That’s it.

© Steve Stewart and See Next Rock, 2013