Dormont noticings
Wednesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
The Mobile Oppression Platform, as I’ve named the Toyota, was purchased and registered in New York State before we left. One last payout in tax to Albany, for me. State law here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania demands that resident vehicles be registered under their bureaucracies, and transferring the legal status of the vehicle – even between neighboring states – has proven to be surprisingly complicated due to having to handle the bureaucratic demands of two States and a large automobile manufacturer’s financing department. The long procedure was finally completed, and as the car is now wearing a Pennsylvania license plate, one had to bring the thing to a dealership for an inspection to scry its emissions and mechanical soundness. It’s a brand new car, so it obviously passed, but I still had to kill an hour or two. Luckily, just such a dealership is proverbially “around the corner.”
I did what I do when I’ve got time to kill, and walked around the periphery of the town I’m living in, called Dormont. There’s no such thing as a typical house here, according to my admittedly limited observations, but those homes pictured above are pretty typical and are likely in the 190-300k range. Unfortunately, they’re located along an arterial roadway and up the block from one of the worst McDonalds I’ve ever set foot in. I do like a McCoffee though, which is surprisingly decent as far as hot bean juice goes. Saying that – how do you screw up McDonalds? I used to work at a Burger King in high school, and I can tell you that it’s assembly line back in the kitchen. The only time you really have to pay attention is when your building the actual sandwich, everything else is timed and fairly automated.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I drive past these buildings just about every day on the tertiary arterial road which connects the two secondary arterial roads that define the larger neighborhood. The blonde brick one has the word “Hafer” in block type across its lintel, and an intriguing design element which I think I’ve seen before. I’ve found an old ad from 1971, hawking Carrier Air Conditioners, that lists “Hafer’s” in Dormont at this address as a store where you can buy one of their units. I’ve also found an announcement from 1919 that a C.A. Hafer had been awarded a valuable plumbing contract on a then new housing development. Hafer seems to be a fairly common name in Pennsylvania, incidentally, so there’s a lot of false positives. Curious.
At least I now have a leading question to ask when I pay a visit to the Dormont Historical Society. I recognize this sort of design as a mercantile building, and that three circled icon… it’s a tip of my tongue thing, one which I know I’ve seen before. Masons, Shriners, Odd Fellows? Something.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a chain of casual dining restaurants, of the sort which were called “diners” once, in the Pittsburgh area called “Eat’N Park.” It’s one of those not terribly healthy for you kind of menus – pancakes with bacon and eggs, or burgers and fries, or corn dogs, milkshakes and pies – but sometimes that’s what you want on a weekend morning. This outfit is pretty consistent from location to location with their branding, service, and food quality even though they’re found all over the geography in these parts. I’m told it’s a family owned company that’s getting ready for a growth spurt of new locations, and they’re observationally pretty popular.
Luckily for me, these dudes were fixing an illuminated Eat’N Park sign here in Dormont, just as I got stuck at a red light.
Back tomorrow with something different.
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Oliver Miller Homestead
Tuesday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I swear that I had no idea about this, when I parked the car. An errand had found me in the neighborhood of South Park, in Pittsburgh’s South Hills, nearby the neighborhood of Bethel Park. The spot I had chosen to park nearby is a water and fountain feature called “The Cascades,” which as it turns out hasn’t opened for the warm seasons yet. After meeting a family of Deer, I took a short walk and found myself at the Oliver Miller Homestead public museum, where American Citizens first took up arms against George Washington and the newly created United States in 1794.
This is, I’m told, where the first shots fired of the Whiskey Rebellion were let loose. For those of you who didn’t pay attention in high school history class, or fell asleep during the endlessly boring lessons about the Articles of Confederation in 10th Grade, allow me to summarize our country’s very first tax revolt in a somewhat modern vernacular.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Back in the day, the fledgling United States was drowning in debts which the Rebellion had incurred in pursuit of chasing the British Crown away. President Washington signed into law a tax on distillates like Rum and Whiskey. Agriculture enthusiasts had long been in the habit of distilling excess or surplus grains like rye, barley, wheat, and even corn into liquors. This is an old European trick, preserving summertime calories in a manner which could also coax the party spirit out of people. Also, in the days prior to the Germ Theory of Disease, your best bet to sterilize the water you were about to drink was to add a bit of the good stuff to it. They didn’t know that’s what they were doing, of course, but it was. Clean drinking water is one of the technologies seldom pointed to as creating the modern era, but there you are. This practice of adding a shot’s worth of an alcohol drink into your water is why rum or whiskey were a part of soldier’s rations right up to the 20th century.
To pay down the National Debt of $54 million, (current worth of that number would be $1,476,850,909.09 today) Washington and the list of famous names he worked with in Congress enacted the Whiskey Tax. To say that this went down like a lead balloon with the Frontier types (Lewis and Clark left for their journey to the west from Pittsburgh, literally the last outpost of European Civilization in those days, until you got to the Spanish holdings) in Western Pennsylvania and the Ohio Valley is a bit of an understatement. Many of these “Frontiersmen” had actually served under Washington during the rebellion.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s a great account of the conflict which led to the Whiskey Rebellion becoming a shooting war in this post at Mt. Lebanon Magazine. Suffice to say that a tax collector came here to the Miller Homestead on July 15 in 1794. That drew a crowd, which soon became an incensed mob, and the Tax collector and Sheriff had to run for their lives. By the time that the Tax collector – one John Neville – was able to summon army troops to help him enforce the law, that angry mob had transformed into a Rebel Militia. Things went pretty much as you’d expect at that point, with trained soldiers on each side shooting at each other and farm buildings burning down.
Things soon progressed to the point that George Washington, President of the United States, assembled an army of 12,000 soldiers and was personally leading them – as a General – towards Pennsylvania. You can read all about it here, but you should have paid more attention to it back in 10th grade.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Thomas Jefferson repealed the Whiskey tax in 1802 when he became President, and he blamed all the bloodshed and trouble in the region on his rival Alexander Hamilton, who had pushed Washington and Congress into accepting fiscal reality regarding the debts.
The Miller property was colonized in 1772, and the original deal here was a log cabin on a farm with several “out” buildings – a barn for the animals, a house for the slaves, etc. The log cabin was replaced in 1830, and the modern homestead building is called a “Stone Manse.” This is a protected historic place, and when the surrounding South Park was opened in 1931, the Miller Homestead was turned into a public museum.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I observed several other small structures, including the cabin above and a “spring house” which hosted a large basin and fresh water bubbling up into it from below. The site was closed when I visited, but a humble narrator crossed the boundary while trying to save a butterfly from a predatory bird. That’s my story, sticking with it.
This was all just lucky serendipity for me, incidentally. As mentioned, I had no idea this was here, and somehow I made a beeline for it.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
South Park is pretty amazing, actually. There’s an animal preserve section nearby this spot which has Bisons living on it. Pictured above is a barn, which struck my fancy enough to take a picture.
Back tomorrow.
“follow” me on Twitter- @newtownpentacle
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Nothing but blue skies
Monday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
That’s the Homestead Grays Bridge pictured above, spanning the Monongahela River. I don’t have much to say about it other it was lit up all pretty like on a recent Sunday afternoon when I was passing through. The last week has been pretty much overcast or super rainy here in Pittsburgh. Annoyingly so.
At any rate, one managed to get out and about a few times last week when it wasn’t raining or dire.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
An errand of a somewhat pedantic nature, actually a series of such errands, found me nearby something I’ve been wanting to take a gander at – Pittsburgh’s South Park. It’s another one of the mega massive public amenities hereabouts. I was in the neighborhood and had an hour or so to spare before needing to head back to HQ, so I picked out a random destination within the 2,000 square acre urban park to aim myself at.
When I pulled the Mobile Oppression Platform into a parking lot, a big pile of deer were roaming about. They stuck around for a few minutes and posed for pictures before scampering off into a wooded section.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
There’s an actual traffic roundabout in the park, something very common in Europe but not so much in the USA. As it turns out, the random spot I chose to pull the car over has an enormous “historicity” to it, but I’ve always been lucky when it comes to stumbling across places with an interesting past.
More on all that tomorrow, at your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
another archive one today
Friday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Captured the one above back in December, right about the time we moved from NYC to Pittsburgh. This is just east of the Strip District, where a few old mills and railroad warehouses have been converted over to theatrical production. There’s a movie and tv production industry here in Pittsburgh, and operations seem to be centered around this area. I was lucky enough to be driving through at sunset.
Back next week.
“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.
get off my lawn
Thursday
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I haven’t had a bagel in a little over 4 months, which is a realization that has just set in. Other existential horror which I can offer today involved a pulled muscle in my left calf, an injury which occurred just yesterday when I was running up a hill to get into position to photograph a passing train. Neither of these conditions explain why I’m showing you archive shots today. What can I tell you? A daily schedule is hard to maintain, even after all these years of doing so.
The good news is that the Pittsburgh analogue of “Open House NY” has announced a bevy of tour opportunities which I greedily ordered tickets for at the beginning of the week, and so has the “Rivers of Steel” outfit at the Carrie Blast Furnace. I’ve got boat tours to attend!
– photo by Mitch Waxman
I’ve been working on learning a few things the last few weeks, notably trying to perfect the capture of time lapse footage. It’s so boring shooting this sort of thing that I’ve decided to start bringing my old camera out with me when I’m capturing time lapse images just to have something to do while the 2-3 hour long process plays out on the “good” camera. The problem isn’t capturing the sequence, instead it’s about perfecting the formula by which the images can smoothly transition from day to night without looking like a scene from Blade Runner.
I’m currently getting close. I’ve got the process more or less figured out in terms of the technical and “in camera” stuff. So far, what I’ve doped out through trial and error involves setting several menus to “auto” which is anathema to me normally. A recent moment of realization involved restricting the auto ISO settings to a narrower range than the one I use normally. Once I can reliably produce smooth video time lapses, then I can start getting “creative” with them.
– photo by Mitch Waxman
Another major distraction I’m dealing with involves a new desktop setup back here at HQ. Wiring it up correctly is a bit of trial and error thing these days, since equipment manufacturers seem to no longer host actual manuals or support documents on their sites. It’s a real pickle, and my desk is currently a mass of loose wires leading to and from other boxes of wires and circuit boards which aren’t doing what I want them to do. This is annoying.
Back tomorrow with something fresh, at this – your Newtown Pentacle.
“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.
