The Newtown Pentacle

Monday

– photo by Mitch Waxman

The title of today’s post is from another one of the idiotic aphorisms which swirl about, within the brain box of your humble narrator.

‘Do what you say’ is fairly obvious, but ‘say what you do’ needs a bit of explaining. I think it’s important to – out loud and to the crowd – say when you’ve ‘effed something up, rather than performing some aggrieved martyr act intoning that you are an innocent whom ‘something bad just happened to,’ as a defense mechanism.

There’s a reason I’m starting this post with all of this admonition, Y’see…

I really ‘effed up on this one, and could have gotten seriously hurt.

We’ll explore my stupidity, committed here at the edge of Pittsburgh’s Mount Oliver section, over the next couple of posts. My ‘mea culpas’ need an audience, after all.

Meanwhile… welcome to Mount Oliver.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Despite the usual preparations – for some dumb reason, when I was dropped off by a cab at the start of this walk, I scuttled off in the completely wrong direction.

I had even been gazing at a map that morning, before I left HQ, and considered the path I accidentally ended up on and said ‘no way.’ My rejection was based around a long stretch of high speed road with zero sidewalks which I’d have to navigate.

Of course, that’s exactly the direction which I stupidly headed towards, without realizing it until it was far too late to change my course.

Oh, unhappy act.

This street I was walking along in Mount Oliver is called Mountain Avenue, if you’re curious as to where all this played out.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Steep as the name would imply, when walking on some of Mpuntain Avenue’s rare sidewalks, nearby an intersection, there was some sort of city step action going on. There mostly weren’t any sidewalks, forcing me to just walk on the side of the road, which is actually kind of normal for Western PA. – to be honest.

As a note – Mountain Avenue is a local, and fairly low volume, street. My problems were still ahead of me.

Crap.

It was right about at this point that I had realized my mistake, and the direction that I was heading for. If you were in Pittsburgh and overheard blue language and angry ‘cussin’ in the vicinity of Mountain Avenue and Becks Run Road, on the afternoon of the 13th of April… yeah, that was me.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Becks Run is an urban waterway.

As established in the past, Pennsylvania uses the term ‘run’ for flowing but not terribly deep waterways which other municipalities would call a ‘creek’ or a ‘stream.’ It’s fuzzy, the naming convention.

Haven’t been able to discover what differentiates a waterway being called a ‘run’ as opposed to a ‘creek’ or a ‘stream.’ River, yeah, that’s volume and depth based, but ‘run’?

Like nearly all urban waterways in Pittsburgh, Becks Run flows in an engineered manner around a series of residential and business properties, which are found along a roadway named for it. A lot of traffic from the South Hills area gets focused along this particular roadway, as it’s sort of the gateway to get out towards Homestead, where a retail Mecca called ‘The Waterfront’ is extant, and where one of the local Costcos is found.

Big draw, lotsa traffic, the Waterfront.

– photo by Mitch Waxman

After turning onto Becks Run Road, a roadside memorial was encountered. Have no idea what sort of tragedy occurred here, but it was likely caused by a pickup truck driver, and it was obviously deadly.

Seriously, the pickup truck guys seem to think that they’re driving in indestructible Batmobiles or something. Drifting along the road at speed, playing games with other vehicles, tail gating…

Somebody tells me ‘a car got hit by a train nearby,’ my first response is going to be ‘did the pickup’s driver survive’?

Anyway, this post is all about my own stupid decisions, not somebody else’s. Bah!

– photo by Mitch Waxman

Noticed this dead thing on my way. To me, it looked like an Eagle while ‘in the field,’ but one of my buddies insists that this is likely a dead Hawk of some kind. Any opinions? Here’s a full body shot, and one of its particularly wicked looking foot. Whenever I try to say what kind of a bird that a bird is, I get it wrong.

Leave opinions in the comments, if you’ve got one.

Back tomorrow with more… and… the horror…

---

“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle

Buy a book!

“In the Shadows at Newtown Creek,” an 88 page softcover 8.5×11 magazine format photo book by Mitch Waxman, is now on sale at blurb.com for $30.