Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

Saturday morning I got up in my hotel in downtown Pittsburgh (formerly the Hilton, now … who knows …), and went and retrieved the car from the self-park, to start my day of uncovering the mysteries of Pittsburgh. I lost my ticket, but the maximum was $20 and I was going to have to pay that either way, because the car had been there from 1:30 Friday afternoon, until 8:30 Saturday morning. I got the whole story from the parking lot attendent, Kenny, just another bit of proof that in Pittsburgh, casual acquaintances are immediately ready to tell you their life story. This isn’t a life story, but my fave bit of overheard conversation was Friday morning. I went for a little walk around downtown, to get coffee before my conference and to see what was left. Hornes is a medical building, Kaufmann’s is a Macy’s, and U.S. Steel has sold most of their building to UPMC – University of Pittsburgh Medical Center – so the blood red CorTen steel skyscraper says UPMC instead of steel. ‘Course the Steelers have used U.S. Steel’s original logo since the 1960s.  Anyways, while I was out walking I went past two large, burly, middle-aged guys, and one was asking where a third guy was. The other one said, “He’s back – he’s here”. And the first one said, “Why are you being so mean to me today? You know how sensitive I am.”

I started by driving to Highland Park – I took the Blvd. of the Allies to Oakland, then Forbes to Morewood to Highland – to discover that after all the urban renewal that reconfigured East Liberty when I was a kid, created a big circle, that you weren’t supposed to drive through, they’ve made it even easier to drive through. Where Sears used to be, across from Peabody High School, is a Home Depot. They’re building a new Target on what used to be Penn Circle, across from the Shakespeare St. Giant Eagle, and there’s a Trader Joes and a Staples on Penn, and National Biscuit Company is now Bakers Square – empty but fixed up to be offices and retail. Some book I read set in Pittsburgh talked about the warm bread and cookies smell from NBC – that’s what I remember from late nights out walking in Shadyside and Point Breeze when I lived there.

I parked in the Park, walked around the reservoir – what struck me the most was the restored stairs – they were always crumbling and pitted from acid rain when I was a kid – and even up to the 1990s. I walked through the neighborhood  to my parents’ house, and looped back to the park on Highland Ave. by way of a coffee bar that’s where Marcus Pharmacy used to be. I crossed the Allegheny on the Highland Park Bridge – it’s all fencing now, no more green leafy railings – and went to my mom’s favorite Deli, Labriola’s, and then to the Waterworks Mall wine store.

I headed back over the bridge – and don’t know what was going on; maybe the Halloween party at the zoo? but the traffic was all backed up, so I took Washington Blvd. back to East Liberty, and then headed to Point Breeze, to Homewood Cemetery to visit my parents’ grave – more on that in the next post. Then lunch with a guy I knew in high school – like he said we went to different high schools together. And our families went skiing at the same small resort, Hidden Valley, outside of Pittsburgh.

I went to Oakland to see the Steelers show at CMU – and then I walked down Flagstaff hill, and decided that the tiles my dad bought for my kids at Phipps Conservatory were inside a paid part, so I didn’t go in to take a picture of them. Back through Oakland a bit more, past the original Carnegie Library, decided it was too late to go into the art museum, but I browsed earrings at the gift shop a bit. I drove to Squirrel Hill, and sat in a Starbucks and uploaded my iPhone pictures until it was time to go visit Isaac & Anna on Polish Hill. My last Pittsburgh adventure was driving down Herron Hill to Liberty to go back downtown to the hotel via Liberty Ave. – almost the strip district.

It was so emotional being there – it seemed like every spot was so packed with memories of my parents, and me & my brother as little kids and teenagers, my (now grown) kids as little kids… I’m exhausted. And I didn’t sleep all that well in my 4 nights at the no-name hotel.