Well-worn path leads to success in life
My grandfather, two uncles and my dad were all engineers on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad. Dad had just become an engineer when he was in a terrible hit-from-behind train wreck and suffered a broken back.
The path that lead them to these jobs started at the bottom of our backyard. It was a well-worn path that curved and U-turned and returned on itself to cut the steepness. Then it twisted its way to the bottom of that Appalachian hill and ended up in front of the store owned by our neighbors, Frank and Estelle Black. Black’s was a prominent store which had carried the family name for a least a generation.
I don’t remember that much about Black’s store except that all roads and all paths led there. I do remember that it was constructed out of the same, sturdy, light yellow brick as their house at the top of that very same path, and that house was right beside my grandparents’ home, directly across the alley.
I also remember that the Blacks catered to railroaders from the three railroad towns of Dawson, East Liberty, and Dickerson Run. They sold all types of meats and groceries along with striped, bib, Levi’s overalls. They also sold big railroad-style cloth and gray leather gloves that covered not only the owner’s hands but also the bottom of his sleeves. Black’s also carried those thick, ankle-sized, rubber bands that went around the bottom of those bib overalls. Those rubber bands were there to keep the bottom of the pants firmly attached to their heavy duty high-topped work shoes.
At a time when a lot of people didn’t own cars, Black’s general store had a panel delivery truck that looked like a modified version of a PT Cruiser. Frank and Stella were good people, and because of that, when they were sick, my mother, brother, and I always helped them with their chickens in the big chicken coop next door.
After Frank died in 1958, the store closed and never reopened. Its time had come and gone as had the railroad. In her later years, Stella became somewhat of a regionally famous evangelical preacher who went from town to town holding crusades. I never knew nor saw that side of her, but I remember my parents describing her preaching in movie theaters in the Pittsburgh area. They compared her to Kathryn Kuhlman, a much better known born-again, evangelical preacher of that time.
OK, back to the path. In the summer this was our walking route to bible school and church because it led directly down to our rickety, old wood and steel bridge. The bridge that crossed over Fayette County’s Youghiogheny River to Dawson.
It wasn’t unusual for us to see the railroaders walking up and down that path swinging their black metal lunch boxes as they headed to the Dickerson Run railroad yard to start their shift. Because the path was only wide enough for one person at a time, you had to carefully choose your step-out-of-the-way spots so as not to catch poison ivy, get stung by a bee, or impaled by the prickles from blackberry bushes when we acquiesced the right away to an adult.
Every once in a while, we’d stop, motionless as we waited for a sunning snake to slither out of the way, and if waiting didn’t work, we’d encourage its exodus with warning shots from stones.
The happiest memories of that path were usually when we were heading up the hill after church, after buying penny candy at Blacks, or when we knew that our Italian grandparents might be waiting for us at home. We laughed, we sang, we joked, and sometimes complained, but it was our egress and our access to other worlds and other realities as the giant coal-fired train engines puffed by below us.
Nick Jacobs of Pittsburgh, PA is the International Director for SunStone Management Resources and the author of the book Taking the Hell Out of Healthcare.