Logans Ferry native always will love town

Growing up in Logans Ferry Heights, a coal town on the outskirts of New Kensington in the late 1940s and 1950s, was for the most part, the absence of dreams.

My grandfather, with whom we lived, was a tipple foreman for Allegheny-Pittsburgh Coal Co. and, as thus, had a two-story house.

The upstairs bedrooms offered an impeccable view of New Kensington between the mounds of survival called 'Old Hill' and 'New Hill.'

In the pre-air conditioned nights, with no breezes in the steel screen windows, I went to sleep staring at the Ninth Street Bridge, now called the C.L. Schmitt Bridge. I listened to the engines and horns of the diesel trains hauling their wares up and down the Valley. It was miles away, but their sounds echoed all the way to Logans Ferry.

New Kensington represented to us what Pittsburgh represented to the people of New Kensington. The jewel in the horizon, an opportunity for escape. The longing whistles of those trains and the audible drone of the West Penn Power Plant put many children to sleep.

We didn't own a car and my summers found me floating on inner-tubes in the Allegheny River, staring at the sunset and wondering what was beyond Boquet Hill.

Mid-1963 found me in the U.S. Army Honor Guard in Arlington, Va., assigned to the Caisson Section. I participated in the funerals of President John F. Kennedy, Gen. Douglas MacArthur and former President Herbert Hoover. However, that's not what is important.

On my first burial in Arlington National Cemetery, and in spite of nervousness, the 'clop-clop-clop' of the painted horses hooves on the black-topped roadways took me back to Logans Ferry.

The 200 houses in Logans Ferry had a pathway that led to their coal mine entrance. It was referred to simply as the miner's path. It was rather steep, about 250 yards long and led from our community, downhill, to the mine.

There was a large shale overhang at the top of the path and there, as young boys, we sat and watched our fathers and grandfathers trudge after the sounding of the shift horn. Sometimes, six of us would sit upon the 'rock' and eventually hear the thuds of their work boots as they performed their final labor of the day.

Their clothing was amassed with oil, grease, and coal dust, their eyes and teeth the only remnants of white. Their eyes embodied those of combat soldiers. They limped, they never complained, but those thuds of work boots on a clay and shale hillside, I'll never forget.

We, as 10- and 12-year-olds, made a game out of trying to guess who the miners were. They rode with me for three years at Arlington. At the age of 14, we moved to New Kensington; that coal patch was a mile away, but it could have been 1 million miles.

As is the case with all high school-aged kids, life in The Valley in the early 1960s was about being cool and, somehow, getting to college.

I don't remember the availability of grants, so we only went to college if your family could financially support your endeavors; mine couldn't.

There was no class system for alpha males in New Kensington. New Ken-Arnold girls were, for the most part, well focused, clean cut satellites of their mothers.

The girls never seemed to settle below the future expectations of their parents, but the alpha males of our Valley blended like a cultural cocktail.

In public, many foreign languages could be heard throughout the Valley as the initial immigrants were very much alive and active. Everyone in the New Ken-Arnold area knew everyone's nationality, however it never became a barrier.

The smells of pollution that graced our city was never an issue. Those smells, like those of the work clothes of our fathers, ensured our survival.

High school found most of us pursuing companionship on Friday nights at Henry's, at the West end of the Tarentum Bridge, and on Saturday's at the Tarena, a roller-rink near the park in Tarentum. These two weekly events were our version of MTV.

We danced to the original introduction of 'Louie-Louie,' there were no wars, guys joined the armed forces to avoid going into the mills and factories, and the Beatles were on the horizon. A few friends perished due to alcohol-related antics, the local poolrooms flourished.

Our kings wore black cashmere coats and dark hats that did not access their eyes. But there was a sense of honor.

Our city, right or wrong, was struggling to survive, and there was a sense of team effort.

I miss your rolled-out awnings, your need for young men to bond by the Allegheny, the excitement of payday in your former department stores, and the indifference of classes that embodied our Valley in the '50s and '60s!

I know that speaking about the Valley is like speaking about an old girlfriend. When we meet again, you won't be the same; but I'll always love you!