Category: default || By jt3y

Whenever he's too busy to write, Mark Evanier posts a picture of a can of Campbell's Cream of Mushroom Soup. Since I'm Hungarian, I'm posting a picture of canned goulash instead. I don't know if you can buy canned goulash in any of the stores around here or not, and frankly, I don't want to know.

Besides, I'd rather have instant chicken paprikas, which you also can't buy in McKeesport. And yet if there ever was a market for instant Hungarian food (and there isn't) you'd think the Mon-Yough area would be that market.

Oh, well. We don't have a bookstore or a fancy coffee shop either.

In addition to work deadlines, which are looming over me like a giant can of goulash, my free time has been spent redesigning the Pittsburgh Radio & TV Online website, to which I have contributed over the past seven years.

Founded in 1998, PBRTV predates blogging by a few years, but that's what it's really been. Now, editor/founder Eric O'Brien has made it official. With the help of my former Serra classmate Tom Schroll, PBRTV has migrated to a Dutch (!) content management system called "Pivotlog."

While I'm more familiar with blog software like Movable Type and WordPress, Tom says Pivotlog has more features and tighter security.

It definitely does have some real flexible publishing options, though trying to interpret the instructions (some of which were obviously written by non-native English speakers) hasn't been fun. (Actually, I'd love to be Dutch, "wooden shoe"? Ha! I slay me.)

So, go check out PBRTV if you haven't looked at it for a while. It's not often that two Serra grads get to help out a Vincentian grad like Eric, but we products of the Diocese of Pittsburgh's rapidly diminishing educational system have to stick together.

. . .

In other business, last week I asked if you remembered the physician who had his office in the little red brick building at the Elizabeth Township end of the Boston Bridge, and which pharmacy was located next door.

The correct answers are "John's Pharmacy" and "Dr. Raymond Wargovich," and the trivia questions were correctly answered by none other than Alert Reader Jim Wargovich of Massachusetts. I think he liked Boston, Pa., so much that he wanted to see what the other town with that name looked like:

Raymond Wargovich was my father. He originally had his practice at 911 Huey St. in McKeesport (the corner of Huey and Versailles). His office was part of our house. We moved to Elizabeth Township in 1969.

I went to Holy Trinity School (now closed almost 37 years ago) until 1969. One of my classmates at Holy Trinity was Thomas Hose (now infamous!).

It is fun to go to your website to see what's going on in McKeesport. I visited McKeesport in 2005 with my wife and kids to show them where I grew up. I warned them that it wasn't going to be pretty. I expected deterioration but was shocked by how much deterioration there was.

Too bad things don't turn around. Crime seems to be the biggest factor. Yet I was amazed how much nicer the area was without all the steel mill pollution that I remember as a kid. Can McKeesport be salvaged?

Your website is very useful to us "ex-McKeesporters" who like to see what's happening at their old hometown from time to time.

Well, you're welcome and I'm glad you find it useful! As for "what's happening" in the old hometown, we'd like to think some good things are happening after a long period of bad things.

Jim's reaction back in 2005 is not atypical, but he also makes another good point ... the area is much nicer without all of the pollution. (Pollution meant jobs, too, so that's a mixed blessing at best.)

"Can it be salvaged?" I like to think it is being salvaged, but we need more people to take a chance on McKeesport, Duquesne, Glassport, West Mifflin and the rest of the Mon-Yough area. We need owner-occupants to replace absentee landlords, and small businesses to take advantage of tax incentives and low real estate costs. Locate here instead of Cranberry and Murrysville!

With respect, I think the "crime" perception is exaggerated, especially when people are being abducted at knifepoint at the Waterworks Mall or shot to death in Baldwin. (No one ever says Baldwin and Fox Chapel have crime problems.)

We do have a lot of loafing and loitering, which every urban area has. We need activity to offset that, and that's where enterprising people have to step in.

. . .

Speaking of enterprising people, here's one now. As Margaret Smykla reported in the P-G, John Yost is trying to get a movie studio launched in Glassport. This has been tried in the area before with mixed success (notably in Trafford), so I wish Yost rots of ruck, but at least he's trying. Visit his website; the company's called Mogul Mind.

. . .

Finally, "Matt H.," one of the Interweb's leading apologists for Picksberg Mayor Opie "Luke" Ravenstahl, has endorsed candidates for Allegheny County Common Pleas Court at his blog, Pittsburgh Hoagie.

It's always been fairly pointless for newspapers to endorse candidates, but when a semi-anonymous blogger endorses political candidates, we've achieved an entirely new level of futility, thanks to the Internet.

I might as well start endorsing canned goulash. Come to think of it, isn't a can of goulash is running for West Mifflin Borough Council? Everyone else is.