More Untrue “Facts”

So, folks seemed to like the piece I did awhile back on stuff that lots of people believe is true, but is actually…um, not. So, here are some more untrue “facts”.

The Island of Manhattan was not purchased from Native Americans for $24 dollars’ worth of beads. In fact, there’s no historical record of exactly what was exchanged for the island, but its value was 60 guilders, which is about a thousand dollars. Staten Island was purchased for the same amount. Oh, and the Native Americans weren’t likely “selling” the islands, but probably “renting” them, as they didn’t believe things like land could actually be owned. No matter how many beads you might be offering in exchange.

Julius Caesar was not born by Caesarian section. Caesar was a natural birth. The term “Caesarian section” does not originate from Caesar’s birth, but rather from the Lex Caesarea, or “law of Caesar”, which stated that a child was to be cut from the womb if the mother died in childbirth.

Isaac Newton’s theory of gravity was not sparked by an apple landing on Sir Isaac’s head. But. There was an apple involved. Newton himself related the actual story to his biographer. He’d been sitting in his family’s garden when he’d seen an apple fall from a tree and hit the ground. This got the scientist thinking and the theory of gravity resulted.

Speaking of inventors, Benjamin Franklin never suggested that the national symbol of the United States be the turkey. The story comes from a misinterpretation of a joke contained in a letter to his daughter Sarah. In said letter, Franklin complained about the bald eagle being considered as the new nation’s national symbol and said that the proposed drawing of said national symbol looked more like a turkey. Franklin went on to joke that the turkey might be a better choice. And, thus, the myth was born.

No, William Howard Taft, the 27^th President of the United States, did not become stuck in the White House bathtub. Taft was, no doubt, a heavyset man, topping 350 pounds, but, when he became president, he actually special ordered a bathtub large enough to sit four grown men, so, even the president, at his heaviest, had plenty of room in said tub. The bathtub myth resulted from another incident, which occurred after Taft left office. The former president was visiting New Jersey and apparently caused a tub in his hotel room to overflow and the water leaked into the first floor dining room.

Walt Disney’s body was not cryogenically frozen after his death in 1966 so that he could be brought back to life once technology allowed it. In fact, no one had ever been cryogenically frozen at the time of Disney’s death. The first person to be frozen after death was one James Bedford and that procedure took place in 1967. Disney’s body was cremated and his ashes scattered. As for Bedford, his remains are still frozen…and waiting.

The Puritans did not board the Mayflower and head to the New World seeking religious freedom. Seriously. See, in 1593, the Protestant separatists left England for Holland so that they could practice their religion freely. Because, Holland allowed religious freedom. So, why did the Puritans get on a ship and sail across the Atlantic? Because Holland allowed religious freedom. Not just for folks like the Puritans, but for Catholics, Jews, and atheists, too. And, the Puritans couldn’t have that. So. It was off to the New World, where they could make sure that religious freedom only applied to their religion.

During the Cold War, there was never a “red phone” connecting the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union. First, some history. The impetus for a more direct line of communication between the two countries was the Cuban Missile Crisis. As possible nuclear war loomed, each message from one was taking about six hours to be received and decoded by the other. And, those delays weren’t helping an already very dangerous situation. After the crisis, the two sides decided a more direct method of communication was needed. But. There was no red phone, despite its prominence in movies like “Fail Safe”. The technology that existed at the time made a direct phone link impossible. Instead, the “red phone” was really nothing more than a teletype. As technology advanced, the connection improved, but, again, there was never a red phone. And, there still isn’t.

Now to some dictators. Hitler did not create the Autobahn. In fact, he had absolutely nothing to do with it, as the Autobahn was already in existence in 1931 and Hitler didn’t take power until 1933. And, his buddy Mussolini did not, as is often stated, make the trains run on time. Fascist propaganda made many claims about all the great things Il Duce accomplished, this among them, but the fact is, Italian trains didn’t run any closer to schedule during Mussolini’s time than they had before or did afterward.

Many Colonial era homes in the South had unattached kitchens, and the myth is that the reason for this was the fear of house fires. However, homes built in the North during that same time had attached kitchens. Were Northerners not afraid of fires? The real reason for the unattached kitchens in the South has to do with the difference in climate of the two regions. Kitchens generate a lot of heat, and, in the days before air conditioning, heat was a problem much of the year in the South, so separating the kitchen from the living quarters was a way of not adding even more heat to an already hot home. Meanwhile, in the North, where it gets chilly for much of the year, the added heat generated in the kitchen was welcome in the house.

Speaking of the Colonial era, most men of the time did not wear the famed powdered wig. Only the wealthy and powerful did. Why? Because such wigs were not exactly the kind of thing you wanted to be wearing if you were doing the typical physical work of the time, farming for example. And, they were also very expensive, so only people of means could afford them.

Spices were not used to mask the taste/smell of rotting food in the Medieval Era. This myth likely results from twin facts, food spoiled much faster in those days due to lack of refrigeration and spices were much prized in Medieval Europe. However. Spices were very, very expensive during that time, far too expensive to be wasted on spoiled food…and, using them might have made said food more palatable, but it wouldn’t have protected people eating that food from getting sick as a result of doing so.

You know all those people who leaped to their deaths from the windows of skyscrapers on Black Tuesday, the day of the Wall Street crash of 1929? Yeah. They didn’t. The crash may have begun the Great Depression, but it did not set off a wave of suicides, and, in fact, exactly two people leaped out of windows to their deaths after the crash…and one may not have been doing so due to the stock market.

OK, now to the Old West, and I’ll demolish some cherished myths. Cowboys didn’t wear cowboy hats. Seriously. Few in the era wore the hats that became associated with the cowpokes of the era thanks to the movies. Instead, the most popular headwear of the time was the bowler or derby. Again, seriously.

But, whatever they had on their heads, those guys in the Old West did a lot of gun fighting, right? No. They did not. Gun fights were very rare. Few men actually wore the kinds of holsters associated with the movie and TV gun fights and exchanges of fire were few and far between. In fact, the classic “quick draw” gun fight was almost non-existent, with only two cases having been documented in the entire “Old West” era. And, not a single person in the history of the Old West was called a “gunslinger”. That term comes from a movie. Folks handy with a pistol were actually called “shootists”. (So, yeah, John Wayne got that one right.)

But, how about bank robberies and other violence? There were lots of robberies and violence, right? No. Gun-related killings in frontier towns averaged fewer than 2 per year (and, the most famous Old West firefight, the gunfight at the OK Corral, claimed only three lives). Oh, and in the entire era, there were exactly 12 bank robberies. Twelve. In 41 years.

Those 300 Spartan soldiers who held off the Persian army at Thermoplyae? Um. Not so much. Now, here’s the true part. There were 300 Spartan soldiers and they held off a much larger (perhaps as large as 100,000 men) army for three days. But. Those Spartans were just part of a much larger army.  In fact, the army opposing the Persians numbered about five thousand not 300.

Catherine the Great did not die on the toilet (so, no, it did not collapse under her great weight), nor was she crushed to death while attempting to have intercourse with a horse. These stories were spread by the queen’s many enemies after her demise, which, by the by, was much more prosaic. She died alone in her room of a cerebral hemorrhage.

During World War II, Japan was not deterred from invading the continental United States by private firearm ownership. This myth comes from a quote erroneously attributed to Admiral Yamamoto, one there’s zero evidence he ever uttered. The real reasons Japan didn’t invade are much simpler, the country didn’t need to do so to accomplish its war aims, and, even if it had wanted to, it didn’t have the needed resources.

Again, it’s all true. Or, in this case, false.

My Kingdom For A Pencil

If you’ve read this space before, you know I like telling stories about how things used to be and, in some cases, how ridiculous things used to be, and this is one of those stories.

It all happened in junior high and was caused by absolutely Draconian rules that made no sense to me then, and make even less sense to the current version of the teenager who could only shake his head and wonder what the adults who thought up this nonsense were thinking. A policy and a practice, both of which were, frankly, lunacy.

The policy involved limits on when students were allowed to visit their lockers. Unlike in high school, when locker access was permitted at any time between periods, in junior high, this was verboten! Instead, there were specific times at which locker access was allowed. And, what all the labyrinthine rules came down to was this. You could go at the beginning of the day, before lunch (which was, of course, the middle of the day), and at the end of the day. And that was it.

Now, while that little schedule might make some sense to someone who was looking at it on paper, anyone who took exactly one minute to see its effects in the halls could have immediately told you it was the height of lunacy. Because, by limiting locker visits in this manner, what the administration forced students to do was to take everything they needed for their morning classes and, in these pre-backpack days, haul it around with them for three hours. That first period book that you didn’t need after 8:45? Oh, you’d be carrying it right up until lunch time, when you could go to the locker and dump it.

Of course, when you dumped all the books you needed for your morning classes, well. You’d better make sure you grabbed everything you needed for the afternoon. Because, remember, you couldn’t go back to your locker until the day was over. So, you’d have that eighth-period book with you for hours before you needed it, just like you had the first period book for hours after you needed it. Brilliant, no? If, of course, the aim here was to have 90 pound thirteen-year-old girls carrying seventy pounds of books. For, of course, no earthly reason whatever. 

Oh, I asked. I asked some teachers and even some administration officials (politely, in both cases), exactly what the point of the locker policy was. I asked again after I found out that no such policy existed at the high school, querying said adults about why the high schoolers could visit their lockers between every class if they so desired, but we had to play pack mule all day and spend the first three minutes of every class period trying to stuff all the books we didn’t need for the class under our seats. I asked. But never got an explanation.

There were some mumbles about students being late for classes if they went to their lockers after every period. Another suggestion was that it would cause “confusion”. But, since there were no problems with students being late for first and fourth periods, when locker visits were allowed, and society didn’t break down into a combination of “The Purge” and “Escape From New York” during either of those times, neither explanation held much water. Fact was, there was no good reason we couldn’t be permitted to go to our lockers after every class. We just weren’t. And, that was the way it was. Because the administration said so. And, yes, I’m still bitter. But, I digress.

There was no good reason, but the policy was in place and it was enforced, so you lugged a bunch of stuff you didn’t need around all day. Along with the stuff you did need. Like your pencil. Yeah. We’re getting there.

The next link in the little chain of events wasn’t so much a policy, but a practice. The school district issued you a pencil every nine weeks. New marking period? New pencil. Making a pencil last nine weeks was quite the trick, and most of my classmates of the female persuasion didn’t try. They brought in their own. Some of my friends? Oh, we were going to use exactly one pencil for the entire marking period. So. You could imagine what our pencils looked like as the nine weeks approached their end. An inch long with the eraser long gone. One among us actually got a blister on the inside of his thumb as a result of the hard metal that formerly held his eraser rubbing there, as his pencil was now so tiny it didn’t even clear his hand.

And if we needed to erase something? (And, trust me, we did.) Well, in the last, say, three weeks of the marking period, we tried to use what was left of the eraser…which was nothing. The result was usually a graphite smudge over which we’d write the correct answer. (Or, what we imagined the correct answer to be.) Other times, the result was a hole that the metal where the eraser used to be tore in the paper. One would think a teacher might take us to task for, basically, ripping holes in test papers every time we had to erase, but none ever did. And, I suspect the reason for that is that “practice” I mentioned above.

There was absolutely no rule against a teacher lending a student a pencil should he or she lose or forget his or hers. (Or giving him or her a new one when his or hers was basically a tiny blunt piece of graphite with a metal cap on it.) There was no rule. But, a prohibition against lending pencils might as well have been enshrined in the Constitution.

Ask one of our junior high teachers for a pencil, and your request would be met first with shock and then with derision. “You came to my class unprepared???” Um. No. See. I had a pencil somewhere in this seventy-pound pile of books and notebooks, but, it’s not here now, so… “YOU are responsible for making sure to bring all the proper materials to my class!” Well, look here under my desk. Here are the materials for your class and all the other classes I have this afternoon, and, oh, yes, here are my gym clothes, because I’ve got to carry those around, too… “So, I’m not giving you a pencil. See if you can borrow one from someone else!” 

This, of course, led to the next bit, which was the poor blighter with no pencil having to look sheepishly around the room to see if one of his classmates would lend him a pencil. In most cases, someone, usually of the female persuasion, would hold up a pencil and it would be passed up to the unfortunate. Then, would come the final salvo from the teacher. “If you’re now finished interrupting my class…” Well, you know, teach, we could have avoided this entire dog and pony show if you’d have just pulled one of the two dozen brand new pencils you have in your desk out and given it to me. But, yeah. All done “interrupting”. So, you go on and teach and I’ll sit here thinking of ways to fill your car with sludge from the sewer plant.

Exchanges like these, unnecessary as they were, did have the intended effect on most of us. We were careful to make sure we didn’t forget our pencils, lest we be berated by our scandalized teacher. But. The combination of the locker policy and the unwritten rule about lending pencile were about to combine to create an incident that would cause absolute bedlam. And. I. Couldn’t. Have. Loved. It. More.

If you were in junior high with me, you remember the cubbies outside the lunch room. If you weren’t, this was a wall of shelves where you could, before lunch, put that big pile of books you had to carry around, so that there’d be, you know, room on the lunch table for, um, lunch. So, on the way into the cafeteria, most everyone would place their books and other materials in the cubbies, then go and eat.

The next piece of this is supposition on my part. I have no idea if the perpetrator or perpetrators of the incident had been pencil shamed, but, my guess is, they had been. Or were about to be. Because, someone, while one of the three daily lunch periods was underway, went into those cubbies and took every single pencil and all other writing implements contained therein. And, as there had to be 150 kids at lunch at that time, they got quite the haul of pencils.

Now, you can imagine what happened when lunch ended and everyone came out to grab their books out of the cubbies. Students quickly noted the missing pencils and it didn’t take long for everyone to realize what had occurred while they were blissfully eating their “gravy train” (our term for ground beef and gravy over whipped potatoes). Of course, there wasn’t a lot of time to stand and commiserate, as the clock was ticking toward the start of the next class period.

Please now imagine exactly what happened when that class period started. Virtually everyone in the class was now without a pencil. (Virtually. Because, I had one. Most days, after my final morning class, rather than put my pencil among my books, I shoved it in my pocket to make things easier during the midday swap of the morning books for the afternoon books. And, on the day in question, I hadn’t thought to remove the pencil from my pocket and place it, with my books, in one of the cubbies during lunch. So. While we were all eating “gravy train” and someone was light-fingering all the pencils, mine remained in my pocket. Thus, when fifth period began, due to nothing more than my absent-mindedness, I was the only one in the class with a pencil.)

I don’t remember which of my classmates first broached the subject of needing to “borrow” a pencil with the fifth-period teacher. I do remember that the scandalized teacher began bloviating, but she was quickly preempted by several other classmates asking to do the same. The teacher’s head nearly exploded before the class could get out the explanation. “How could you all have lost your pencils???” And, we all deserve credit, since no one shouted, “We didn’t lose them, they got stolen, because your stupid policy doesn’t allow us to keep them in our lockers while we eat!”

The explanation eventually came, however, and, when it did, the teacher understood that everyone was in the same boat, penciless. UNPREPARED for her class. She also understood that she faced a stark choice…either teach a class in which exactly one of the twenty-five students could take notes or break into her store of valuable No. 2s. She grimaced and relented, grumbling about how, as “young adults”, we needed to learn to take better care of our things, and passed out pencils to the entire class. Even me. And, yeah, I took my gift yellow Ticonderoga and stuffed it in my other pocket. And, at the end of the day, I put it in my locker for safekeeping.

The other pencil? Well. That one remained in my pocket the rest of the day and every day thereafter until it was replaced at the end of the nine weeks. The replacement? Right back in the pocket. All through junior high and high school. There was always a pencil in my left front pocket.

What happened to the hundred-plus pencils and other assorted writing implements that were stolen in the “Great Pencil Theft of 19something”? I have no idea. I asked around, but, everybody was Sergeant Schultz. No one knew anything. No one saw anything. But, somewhere in the school was a locker absolutely filled with pencils…that would still be useless to the owner if he lost one during the time when locker visits were forbidden.

Gone Fishin’

It’s strange to say that I’m not sure what motivated us (read: La Soeur and me) to want to go fishing for the first time. Strange, because, looking back on it now, there were no two people on the face of this planet who were more transparent and predictable than La Soeur and me when we were little kids.

Back at the time, I thought Mom and Dad were verging on geniuses. Now, don’t get me wrong, they were both plenty smart, but, to the little kid version of me, their intelligence was almost supernatural. They knew what we were doing. They knew what we were thinking. They knew what we were thinking of doing! I didn’t see how it was possible. But, the explanation, as it so often is, was simple.

We were transparent. And, we were even more predictable. Mom and Dad knew just how we’d react to any given situation. They knew how to motivate us. They knew how to demotivate us. And, they knew exactly how to handle us.

One of the favorite tricks is what I now call the carrot and nuke. No, it’s not like the carrot and stick, because it wasn’t an either/or thing. It was going to be both. See, there were things we hated to do, but that we had to do, things like going to church, going to the doctor (where it seemed like we always got a shot despite assurances from whichever adult was taking us that we weren’t going to get a shot this time) or visiting certain relatives. (And, it wasn’t that we didn’t like the relatives, we did, what we hated was the boredom that often resulted at those particular houses, which were occupied by older folks with no kids. For a few minutes, it would be fun, and, then we’d be sitting around bored while adults made adult conversation. Yeah. No fun at all.) So. The carrot and the nuke. Or. More properly, the nuke and the carrot.

Now, I have to digress slightly. (This is paragraph five and we still aren’t discussing fishing!) Mom and Dad knew how we’d react to any given situation. And, if they figured we’d react badly, they usually used two different methods to handle us. The first was “ignorance is bliss”. They didn’t tell us where we were going until the very last minute. It would be a nice summer day and we’d be ready to go out and play and Mom would say, “No, you can’t go out now. We’re going to the doctor’s in a few minutes…” And, sometimes, we didn’t get even that much warning. Grandma was famous for taking us to one of those relatives’ houses where we’d be bored in five minutes or so. And, when she’d tell us we were going, we’d complain. So, she just wouldn’t tell us. We’d pile in the car and start going and, soon enough, we’d be pulling in. “Hey!” So. “Ignorance is bliss”. And, then the nuke and the carrot.

Even with grandma’s trick, eventually, we were going to figure out where we were going. So, Mom and Dad had a method of dealing with that. “Well, you have to go, but, if you do and you’re good (fat chance, foolish mortals…), then we/you can…” Yeah. The nuke. Going to the doctor’s. Getting a shot. Going to visit one of those relatives. But. The carrot. “We can go for ice cream!” “I’ll make pizza!” “You can get that comic book.” So, we were still getting nuked, but, our charred remains had something to look forward to after the mushroom cloud. And, after a fashion, it actually worked.

Now, “ignorance is bliss” worked better, but, again, it was limited. Sooner or later, we were going to find out. But, that carrot had its effect. Yeah. We were almost certainly getting a shot today, but, tonight, Mom was making homemade pizza. It almost made the shot worth it. But. I digress. Fishing. (Finally!)

I don’t remember what motivated us to want to make that first fishing trip. And, that’s strange, because, usually, only two things motivated us to want to do anything for the first time. One, one of our friends had done it and talked about how great it was. Two, we’d seen someone doing it on television and talking about how great it was. That was, pretty much, it. So, it was probably one of those two things. But, the mists of time cover which, if either, it was. What those mists cannot cover is who took us and what happened.

My Uncle Roy was one of the best people who ever walked this planet. And, that is no exaggeration. A Korean War vet and POW, he was huge, 6’4” and 260. And, he was also the strongest man I’ve ever met, in every sense of that word. But. Despite the size and strength, Uncle Roy was anything but intimidating to little kids. He was fun and funny and he’d talk to you and make jokes with you and get you laughing. And, he’d tell funny stories and do whatever he could to make you happy. Like I said, one of the best people who ever walked this planet. And, it was Uncle Roy who took us fishing the first time.

And, like my inability to remember why we wanted to go, I also don’t remember who bought us the fishing poles. Not sure if they were a gift (and, if they were, well, that answers the question about our motivation for going) or if we’d badgered Mom into buying them for us, but, they were the typical “little kid” plastic fishing poles. Then again, they were fine for our uses. We weren’t going after marlin or anything. And, in fact, our chances of catching anything were right up there with Billy Gardell’s in a fitness competition. Well. Not quite. We were going to catch something. But, I’m getting ahead of myself…

The site of the first fishing excursion was one we’d return to for several others, Canonsburg Lake. And the time was going to be…fairly early on Saturday morning. Because, even as little kids, we knew you needed to get up and get out early if you were going fishing. And, this didn’t bother one of us. And, the other was La Soeur.

If you’ve spent some time in this space before, you probably know that one of us was a “morning person” and the other was, well, not. I had no problem getting up for things, because, I had no problem going to bed at a reasonable hour, unlike La Soeur, who, once, at 2:30 in the morning, with Guntown dead quiet and all the TV stations off the air, looked over at me as I headed for the sack and said, “You’re not going to bed…” as if scandalized by the very idea! I responded, “No, I’m going to go run laps around the yard. Good night!” But, I digress.

Getting up early was no problem for me. For La Soeur, it was Goldbach’s Conjecture. I still remember that morning clearly. We were up, again, fairly early. This wasn’t “crack of dawn” stuff. But, it was far earlier than La Soeur liked to rise (noon, preferably, though exceptions were made for cartoons…grudgingly and grumpily made, but made). This, however, was even a bit earlier than normal “cartoon wake up time”. And, unlike a normal “cartoon” Saturday, La Soeur could not huddle under a blanket with about five pillows and watch the early shows in sort of a fugue state. No, we were going to be dressed and out of the house in the cool morning air. I loved it. La Soeur…was…um…there.

I can still remember climbing into Uncle Roy’s car and heading off to the lake. The trip seemed to take forever. At least for me. I suspect it went quickly for La Soeur, as that fugue state was in evidence the whole way. We got there and I hopped out of the car into that cool air and couldn’t wait to get started. And, at that point, the one distaff member of our party started to come around. She was excited about fishing, too! This was going to be great! (Narrator: This was not going to be great.)

Since we were little kids, Uncle Roy baited the hooks and gave us strict instructions on casting. Nobody wanted a fish hook in the face or eye. He demonstrated the technique, and then everyone backed away as I tossed a hook into the water. Hey. Back away. Because it was my first cast ever. Since, I am not The Nephew. (Narrator: Here comes another digression.)

Back several years ago, La Soeur was dealing with a back issue and complaining that the grass at her house was getting high and she couldn’t cut it with her bad back. My wife helpfully volunteered me for the job. So, off I went to the same lot I used to mow as a teenager. Of course, it would be easier this time, since there was a house in the middle of it. Or. So, I thought.

I got there and pulled out the mower. I started filling it with gas and felt the gas dripping on my foot. What the…the fuel line was cleanly cut in half. Well. That was going to be a problem…wait. There was a second mower. I tried that one. After spending twenty minutes trying to start it, hey, I could cut some grass.

Now, if you’ve ever cut grass with your average gas-powered walk-behind mower, you know that, if the grass is too high, it’s going to be quite the job. The grass chokes the mower, threatening to stall the engine again and again. And, that’s exactly the situation I found myself in on the day in question. Over and over again, the mower choked and threatened to stall. Until, about five minutes before I’d have been finished, it did stall. I pulled the plug wire and flipped the mower, determined to clean the grass out from around the blade. But, it wasn’t grass I found wrapped around the blade. It was fishing line. So, I spent some time clearing all the nonsense, got the mower started back up and finished the job. But, I had questions.

When I returned to Mom’s house, where La Soeur and The Nephew were, I first asked about the mower with the cut fuel line. (“That one doesn’t work.” No. Really?). Then, I asked about the fishing line. Nephew: “I like to practice casting off the porch.” Me: “You cast a fishing line into your yard?” Nephew: “Yes. It’s fun.” Me: “If guys in white coats pull up in front of the house, run. But, that still doesn’t explain why there were 30 feet of line in the yard…” Nephew: “Sometimes, the line gets stuck…” Me: “And…” Him: “And, I just cut it.” Me: “And leave the line lying in the grass?” Him: “Yep.” Me: “You are the mayor of Lazytown!” (Narrator: Digression over.)

Back to the first fishing trip. Hey. Not bad. The hook went into the water and no one lost an eye. Then, we all backed away as La Soeur did the same. Again, not bad. Uncle Roy then put his hook in the water and we were fishing, gang. We sat down on the bank and did what fishermen do. We waited. Two of us did so patiently. The other was La Soeur.

Now, as I’ve mentioned before, we both had gnat-like spans of attention when we were little kids, but, on this particular day, fishing held my interest, but not La Soeur’s. Soon enough, she was digging into the lunch Mom packed for us. (Which was just as well, because we were going to be long gone before lunch time.) And, soon after that, she was lying curled up on the bank asleep. But. Not before the crowning moment of the morning.

Nobody was catching anything, but, we kept trying. Carefully casting and working the lure (worms, nothing fancy) around the water like Uncle Roy showed us. Until, a frustrated La Soeur reared back and cast…hooking a bridge in the attempt. Yeah. Like her son would later, we cut that line. Though, I’m betting it didn’t get caught around anyone’s lawn mower blades.

Soon thereafter, with La Soeur having eaten her portion of the lunch and now sleeping on the banks of the lake, Uncle Roy suggested it might be time to head home. I protested a little, and we stayed for a couple of additional casts before calling it a day. We gathered up the equipment, woke up La Soeur, and headed back to the car.

Soon enough we were back home and “changing out of those filthy clothes”. (No matter where we were or what we’d been doing, we always needed to “’change out of those filthy clothes” when we got home, at least according to Mom, mainly so we could get another set of clothes filthy.) And, that first fishing trip was over. Not only hadn’t we caught anything (save the bridge, and that was a “catch and release” situation), we hadn’t even gotten a bite. But, I’d realize later that none of that mattered.

For me, fishing that first day had been fun, not just because it was something new to do, but because it gave me a chance to spend time with Uncle Roy and to spend time relaxing on a pretty morning at the lake. And, that experience stuck with me. We went fishing a few more times as kids, but, when I became a teenager, it became a regular thing on summer vacation. Not every week or anything, and, certainly not on the first day of a season, but several times a summer, when there wasn’t much to do.

We never rented a boat. We never got any serious equipment. I got a nicer pole and some lures and such and a tackle box where I could keep extra line and hooks and other odds and ends you might need, but that was the extent of it. We’d go out, cast our lines, and relax in the quiet, and just be.

A few years ago, I got a random call from the state game commission. They were doing a survey about hunting and fishing and asked if I could spare five minutes. I could. And, when the questions got around to fishing, the gentleman asked, “Do you fish?” I explained that I used to fish, but I’d stopped, because life was a little busier now, and I didn’t have the time. I could hear the smile in his voice when he said, “Well, we hear that a lot. Good news is, when things slow down for you, we’ll be here.” And, that’s good news, indeed.

Century III

So, have you seen the video taken at the now-abandoned Century III Mall? If not, check it out. It’s cool, and creepy and, mostly, sad to take a look at what’s become of the place since it shut down a while back. And, that video got me to thinking. And, thinking leads me to blogging. (Hey, it’s right there in the title, people.)

Century III Mall was a big deal to the guys back in the day. I can still remember one member of the gang who was always singing the praises of the place and telling us how much more cool stuff they had there than in the malls that were closer to us in Guntown. And, it turned out he was not wrong.

Of course, in those days, we frequented (and, I use that term loosely…we weren’t at any of these places frequently…we were teens of the male persuasion…we didn’t hang out at the mall) the Washington and Franklin Malls, which were not far at all, and South Hills Village, a little farther, but, still, not exactly a long trip. And, now, time to digress.

South Hills Village was the first fully-enclosed mall in the Pittsburgh area and it opened in July of 1965. There were over 80 stores at the Village at the time of its opening, and one of them is still open today…Stephen’s Hair Graphics. But, that wasn’t the reason that, at one point, some of us began to kinda sorta frequent the Village. No, that was Sbarro.

Back in the day, before the Village opened its food court, there was a Sbarro on the first floor, and, every time we were at the Village, for whatever reason, well. It was pizza time. Eventually, however, our very infrequent trips to South Hills weren’t frequent enough to satisfy our Sbarro craving. So, we started making special trips.

If you’ve been here before, you know that, at one point, the gang I hung out with would, pretty much, go anywhere at any time for the right foodstuffs. And, Sbarro was definitely right in our wheelhouse. And, so it would happen. We’d be sitting around doing something and someone would say, “I’m hungry…want to get Sbarro?” And, then we’d drive 15 miles, passing, oh, two hundred fifty pizza places along the way to get Sbarro. Yeah. That was us. But, I digress.

South Hills. Washington Mall. Franklin Mall. These were the places we normally went when we had to go to the mall for some reason. But, that one gang member was all about Century III and, one day, when it was just the two of us hanging out, he said, “Let’s go!” And, I’m thinking, “Right now? Today?” And, then I remembered. This was us. So, yeah. He meant right now. Today.

I went and got some money (not that I expected to spend any) and we jumped in his car and took off. And, when we got there, I was absolutely stunned at the size of the place. (It was the third-largest mall in the country when it opened in 1979.) Built on a former slag dump, it was nearly 1.3 million square feet and had six thousand parking spots, six anchor stores and 200 stores total. And, if I thought the place was impressive from the outside, on the inside it was stunning. Beautifully done with tons of natural light and stuff happening absolutely everywhere.

Now, again, we weren’t “mall people”. We went when we had to. But, man, this place wasn’t just a place you went to shop. It was a place you went to experience. And, experience it we did. He dragged me all over the three (three!) floors, including to one of the greatest places you could have taken me at that point…Natale’s Sporting Goods. All three locations. Yeah. They had one on all three floors. And, all were heaven for a guy like me.

Why? Let’s remember, we’re in the wayback here. These were the days before the web and Amazon and stuff like that…the days before you could get pretty much anything you wanted with a click. You had to look for stuff, as we mentioned in the previous missive about book searches. And, if, like me, you absolutely loved sports-team logoed shirt and hats? Some looking was going to be required.

If you can remember those days, think back. Head to your normal department or discount clothing store in your mind and look at the shelves. If that store carried sports-logoed stuff at all, what teams were you likely to find in this area? Pirates. Steelers. Pitt. Penn State. Maybe West Virginia. And, that was probably going to be it. To go beyond the handful of local teams, you needed…well. You needed a store like Natale’s.

Now, when we went into the first floor location, I was impressed. There was a lot of gear, think a very nice Dick’s today. Not a ton of logoed stuff, but some. Far more than you’d find in most clothing stores. On the second floor? Even better. Now, we were getting into some shirts from teams you weren’t likely to find in this area. Not just nearby teams/schools like Ohio State or Cleveland’s sports teams. No, we had a bunch of different teams here. But, the real gem was the third floor. It was the smallest of the stores and also the best. It was shirt and cap heaven. Name the MLB, NFL, or NBA team, and you could get the hat or shirt…and not just one style, in most cases, several. And, colleges? Any big school you could think of. Heaven.

As you might imagine, the money I’d stuffed in the wallet was put to use at Natale’s. I didn’t just buy one hat, but three. Yeah, that depleted the savings quite a bit, but I didn’t care. The mists of time cover exactly which teams I chose that day, but I can remember proudly wearing those hats around the neighborhood and getting asked several times where I’d gotten them. And, responding, “You have got to see this place…” I meant Natale’s. But, I could have been talking about Century III itself just as easily.

In the years that followed, Century III became a place we hit two or three times a year, one of them always being around Christmas. Because, I was one of those Christmas shoppers. I liked to do the shopping all at once and in one place. And, what better place than one with 200 freaking stores? In those pre-web days, there was no better one-stop shop than Century III. Eventually, though, things in my life changed and the regular sojourns to West Mifflin stopped. And, while my attention was elsewhere, things were changing at the big mall, too.

I remember the last trip to Century III as well as the first one. It had been several years since I’d been there and my wife and I were out in that area for some reason. I suggested we stop in. I wish we hadn’t. The place was a shadow of its former self. It was looking run down. There were empty storefronts. And the mall, which had been packed every single time I’d visited, was almost empty. We walked around for about half an hour or so, looked at one another, and said, “Let’s get out of here.”

On the way home, as you might imagine, the discussion revolved around what the heck had happened to what had once been a heavily-trafficked, very profitable facility. I found the answers later, as the mall was stumbling toward its eventual demise, but I’m not going to go into that here, because that’s not the point of the essay. No, said point is summed up more by the whole “while my attention was elsewhere” line. Because, you know, stuff keeps happening, whether you’re paying attention or not, and things that you might have always figured would be there sometimes…well…aren’t.

Here’s another example, one we’ve touched on in some previous blogs…Saturday morning cartoons. If you were an American kid of my generation, you grew up on Saturday morning cartoons. And, probably, like me, when you hit your teen years, you stopped paying attention to them. But, they were still around. And, you most likely figured they always would be.

You could do an entire blog (and, someday I probably will), on the demise of that tradition. But, it’s gone. And, while I knew it was gone and knew when it began moving toward its inevitable doom and knew the causes and all of that…and while none of it really mattered to me specifically, since I’d stopped paying attention decades before…well.

There came a Saturday morning when I was sitting with my niece and nephews, all young grade schoolers at the time, for a couple of hours. I can’t remember why, but, I do remember that they wanted to watch cartoons. We flipped on the TV and began scrolling through the guide…and it was just like that last trip to Century III. Oh, we found some cartoons for the kids to watch, and they enjoyed them, but, on the way through the guide, I noticed what the broadcast networks that we used to watch religiously every Saturday were offering. Yeah. “Let’s get out of here.”

I can also remember the days of roaming the radio dial. When I was a kid and a teen, before I got into the radio business, the medium fascinated me. There were so many different stations you could pull in, all doing different stuff. There were tons of different kinds of music on offer. I can still remember on some rare nights when I was having trouble sleeping, putting on the classical station. At the time, it played softer stuff in the wee hours, so I’d go to sleep to the instrumentals. I remember turning the dial and running into operas and jazz. And, I can remember the years of the three stations. Yeah. I’ll explain.

This was back in the old neighborhood, and there were exactly three radio stations the gang would listen to. One, WPEZ, played the typical FM rock of the day, mostly Top 40 stuff minus any of the softer or disco songs the gang hated. Then, there was WDVE, which played a format very similar to the one it plays today, though, at the time, said format was far more contemporary. And, finally, there was WYDD, the best and most progressive of the stations. You never knew what you’d hear on WYDD, and that was the fun of it.

Like everything else in the neighborhood, various members of the gang had their favorites. Some of the less adventurous stuck with WPEZ. The harder rockers loved WDVE. And, those of us who were really into music preferred WYDD. And, since the leader of our little gang was in the latter category, a sort of radio station hierarchy developed. WPEZ was acceptable, but at the bottom of the totem pole. WDVE was perfectly fine, sitting in the middle. And, the cool kids listened to WYDD. But, I digress.

We’ve talked before in the space about the decline and fall of terrestrial radio, so I won’t belabor the facts or the reasons here, because, again, that’s not the point of this blog.  I stopped paying attention after I left the business at the turn of the century. My radio listening, by then, had dropped to during the commute back and forth to work in the car. I knew about all the consolidation and such, but, again, I was looking away. Then, in the days following a previously-discussed incident involving me hearing the exact same thirty-year-old song being played on two stations at the exact same time, I started looking.

 I checked into the formats currently being offered on local radio. And, was just as stunned as I had been on that last trip to Century III. What the heck happened here? I mean, I knew what had happened, but, I still didn’t understand how we went from dozens of formats to about a half dozen. But, I do remember the reaction. “Let’s get out of here.” Yeah. I got a satellite radio subscription within weeks. And, much like Century III, I never went back again.

Now, let’s take this blog full circle, back to the video of the now-abandoned Century III Mall. There are tons of similar videos available on YouTube. And, more than one of them explores an abandoned radio station. My guess is, there are going to be plenty more of those available for exploration in the coming years. Because things keep changing. Whether we’re looking or not.