A pocketful of cornhole bags
A pocketful of cornhole bags
and a bridge full of doom
Oh, you thought we were going to get away with no winter this year?
How adorable are you? Winter, you see, eventually comes for us all and I can pretty much guarantee that a few days ago Winter took a look at its dismal snow production numbers in Pittsburgh this year and said, “Guess I better get up and go to work if I want to get that end-of-year bonus.”
I expect a hideous February and a March that will last 73 days. What? I checked my math. It is 190% correct because math isn’t real. But it’s okay. At the end of our long, dark, cold gray winter stands Andrew McCutchen in a Pirates uniform welcoming us with a smile and open arms.
All will be well.
Also, after today’s inch of snow, my father had to pop into the family text chat to be as Pittsburgh Dad as possible:
Sure, Jan. Just like I only had three channels to watch when I was litt—
Wait. I only had three channels to watch when I was little! I need to text my kids real quick.
Let’s talk!
1. The last slave?
First, let’s get into a little bit of Pittsburgh history! Maybe you’ve seen this making the rounds on “The Socials” as the olds think the kids say.
This was news to me! And really it’s a fascinating factoid we can tuck into our pockets and pull out at parties*. This is him at age 106 in 1968 as seen in the Press … OFFERING CHEWING TOBACCO TO ALLEGHENY COUNTY HEALTH OFFICIALS.
He was born into slavery four years before Emancipation, and then spent a few decades working on his father’s farm. He first visited Pittsburgh in 1881, began working here in “about 1892” and fully moved here in 1920 at age 59. He had five wives. NOT ALL AT THE SAME TIME! He just lived so damn long he had to keep getting remarried. He played amateur baseball as a catcher (“When I was in there, nobody ever made it to second”). As an elderly person, he became known to East Liberty as “Uncle Pete of Continental Street.” Allegheny County Health Officials took Peter under their wing in 1968 after “discovering” him and his deteriorating living conditions. They convinced him to move out of his crumbling home on Continental and provided quality-of-life assistance to him. He died at age 110 on September 22, 1972, a month before his 111th, after injuries sustained in a pedestrian accident around August 1. Of the people who have claimed to have been born into slavery, he died last. You can visit his grave at Restland Memorial Park in Monroeville and maybe leave him some tobacco.
I will caution you that the tweet wording is easy to misunderstand. It sounds like Mills was the last baby born to an enslaved person prior to Emancipation. The slaves were freed* in 1865. Peter was born in 1861. Obviously one of the millions of slaves gave birth to a child in that four-year stretch.
What it really is: Peter Mills, in 1972, was the last STILL LIVING American born into slavery. Any other child born to a slave between Peter’s birth and Emancipation would have been anywhere from 106 to 110. So life-expectancy probability says he likely outlasted them all by getting to nearly 111. If you look at the sources used to make this claim on Wikipedia, the language used is that he was “the last known survivor of legal slavery in America.” A Wikipedia editor, likely trying to differentiate this from working slaves, added “born in” and that’s where the confusion comes in.
We also can’t say he was the last living freed slave, because at age 4 during Emancipation, he likely would not have been working as a slave yet as that normally began once they turned 8 or 10. Therefore, the claim of “the last surviving slave” belongs to someone else. It’s worth pointing out that had Emancipation not occurred at that point, Peter had a 30% chance as an upper-South slave-born child of being taken from his parents and sold to the deep South as a slave once he was at a workable age.
So this is just a little note to be careful how you interpret historical information. You’d be surprised how many times people get things wrong. In fact, I saw a report saying this very Peter Mills died at age 72 because the person looked quickly and grabbed the year and used it as the age, shared it and boom, you’re at a party saying, “Did you know the last living slave died at age 72 in Pittsburgh??”***
I hope you’ve enjoyed this history lesson by Professor Gi-
HEY! The bell doesn’t dismiss you; I dismiss you.
Also, next time I go to the doc for a physical I am 100 percent offering him a cigarette just to see his reaction. And I don’t even smoke.
* This goes without saying but I am HELLA fun at parties.
**They weren’t freed. Not in the sense of the word that means real freedom. They remained subjugated by a failed Restoration, Black Codes that could get them “indentured” to a master, and labor contracts that essentially left many still enslaved to land-owners. These are the things easily proven by the historical record that your kids aren’t being taught in schools and now everyone is shouting about CRT (which has nothing to do with this but everyone thinks it does) and so it’s unlikely that your children will ever learn this stuff in schools. Teach them this one yourself please. Fill the gap. There are lots of resources out there to help you, like this one.
*** Again. HELLA FUN AT PARTIES.
2. He’s baaa-aaaaaaack!
I’m trying to sound Poltergeist-y but I think it’s giving sheep? Oh well. I can only be so cool.
As I mentioned above, Andrew McCutchen is back in Pirate uniform and I am so so so so happy. Will it make a difference in our losing loserdom? Probably not much. Will the team on the whole still suck donkey omelets? Heckin’ yeah. Do I care? Heckin’ I don’t. Will the season be more fun with him? Heckin’ it will.
I will sit in the sun. I will watch this man take the field. I will cheer. I will scream my head off every time his bat effectively connects with the ball or every time he chases down a difficult catch. And I’ll probably do it in one these shirts because this is Pittsburgh and we are nothing if not completely on top of unlicensed sports merchandising.
None of these are ads, two of them are actually licensed, and if you’re interested:
No Hits ($30 tee, $55 hoodie)
Pierogi Power ($32 lol)
Cutch ($32 lol also)
Crawfords shirt ($18.19 that’s more like it)
Hodgepodge ($24.99)
F.R.I.E.N.D.S ($24.75)
Ted Lasso ($27.99)
When did t-shirts get so expensive? I can get ten shirts for $13.99 in the Strip somewhere. I haven’t spent thirty dollars on a shirt … ever? I see a sweater in Marshall’s (damn it I need to go check if I’ve yinzer-added an S to a name. Hold. Marshalls. It is Marshalls. No apostrophe.) that costs more than $24.99 and I’m like, “Is there a five dollar bill tucked in the sleeve by chance?”
I’m not cheap; I just do NOT spend money on clothes. I spend my money on pigeon poison.
What?
Eff them birds.
3. The Shield: Yinzer Edition
Am I thinking the right show? The Shield. Corrupt police chief? Well, we’ve got that here locally now that the chief of police in Greensburg was arrested on a bunch of charges related to distributing illegal drugs. Not to go all Stefon from SNL on you, but this story has everything: abetting, confidential informants, distribution, ridiculous-sounding bad-guy-speak, recorded phone conversations, West Coast connections, paying for drug transactions with CashApp like some kind of doofus, and … corn hole.
The complaint cites a recorded conversation between the source and Denning at an Oct. 8 corn hole tournament in Ellwood City. At the event, the complaint indicates, Denning gave a set of corn hole bags to the source, allegedly to make up for the source losing money through a $500 purchase of drugs that weren’t delivered by an additional out-of-state supplier for whom Denning had vouched.
“Imma figure out a way to get that dude,” Denning allegedly messaged the source about the undelivered drugs.
HOW MUCH DOES A SET OF CORNHOLE BAGS COST?!? Let me go loo-
You can get 12 for $10 at Party City. Dear federal officials, I don’t want to tell you how to do your jobs, but, have you maybe cut open these particular cornhole bags? I’m just saying. Like the sleeves of my Marshalls sweaters or the golf-course coffin of Ivana Trump*, maybe there are some treasures to be found in there.
Anyway, this guy looks exactly what I thought he’d look like BECAUSE I WATCHED THE SHIELD and that’s how I know about things:
Hard to tell them apart, right?
The difference is that only one of them thinks cornhole bags are a form of street currency.
And you better believe Cornhole Currency is my new band name. We play polka at Pittsburgh weddings and our fee is access to the cookie table. We’re basically rich.
In cellulite. But also cookies.**
* BOOM! Politics!
** Please pretend I inserted “allegedly” every fourth word in this story thanks but yeah, he’s going to jail
4. “All right, yeah, this whole bridge collapsed”
Jonathan Silver of the Tribune-Review has done some stellar work on a long-form story recently published about the collapse of the Fern Hollow Bridge. Because no one was killed, Pittsburgh did what we do and we latched on to the humor of the thing. The ridiculousness. And the fear that it could happen to another bridge while WE are on it.
In this piece, we hear from those who were on the bridge when it fell and let me tell you, it sounds exactly how you imagine it would feel … terrifying.
There had been a bang and an impact, as if something had struck the pickup. Then the Perrys were falling.
To Velva, it felt like the truck kept rushing down through the blackness.
“Why haven’t we stopped?” Velva wondered aloud.
“The bridge fell,” answered Tyrone.
It wasn’t like the abrupt, stomach-churning dip of a roller coaster or the white-knuckling shock of airplane turbulence. It was more like a visceral bodily confusion — perpetual motion that wasn’t ending.
Can you imagine this mid-air conversation? Just “Hey, why are we moving like this?” “Oh, yeah, seems the bridge fell, ergo, right now? We are also falling.” Then boom.
How surreal. Also, Fern Hollow was first given a poor rating in 2011. Ten whole years before it fell. It held on for a decade for someone to do something before it finally gave up. On the whole, our state’s bridges are rated D+. Even the worst student in the class can usually do better than a D-plus! Can we at least shoot for a C-minus? Can I run for governor on that platform? “Montanez for Governor! The leader for our C-minus future!” You bet your ass every single day I’m in office will be Infrastructure Day. And Donut Day. And Yoga Pants Day (men too).
It’s a great piece that not only gets to the human heart of it all, but also makes you realize how lucky we are that no one died, and how we sure as hell had better start paying attention to all these bridges with a poor rating because it is literally an unavoidable fact that another will collapse if nothing is done.
And my God if I am on it, you will hear me screaming in your nightmares forever.
5. Map update!
The Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen map has been a big hit! I’ve received dozens of emails from those just wanting to share that they love the project and those who have suggested one or more items for consideration. Right now I have about two dozen suggested artifacts to investigate and research to see if they are a good fit for the map. I’ve already added three:
The Westinghouse atom smasher in Forest Hills, the old Peabody High School columns and statue in East Liberty, and the Coca-Cola billboard clock (you know it as the Duquesne Light clock or some other commercial brand after it was repurposed).
Hit the map or the artifacts page to find out where you can see these remains in real life today! And be sure to check out this great article about the project. A snippet:
“I always take it back to the steel mills, and the steel industry collapse,” she said. “I think that’s why our culture is holding on to the past because it was just ripped away from us so quickly, our entire economy just collapsed out from under us. Entire towns were built around that industry, families, legacies, and then it was just taken away. I think that’s why as a culture, we’re constantly not letting the past go as easily as other cities.”
Give it a read! And keep those suggestions coming.
6. Until next time …
I’ll see you back here next week. Until then, be kind, remain kind, be good, do good, and for every bridge you cross in the great City of Pittsburgh …
