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3. Where I(t) Started
- University Press of Mississippi
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1 IIEIE l(l) SUITE) Masontown, Pennsylvania Located about seventy miles south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela River, this southwestern Pennsylvania town has a long history. Area mounds reveal the presence of ancient inhabitants who antedated by thousands of years the native tribes that were established when the first Europeans arrivedin the area.Area placenames refer to old Indian settlements and battles of the French and Indian War in our colonial history. George Washington, John Mason, Albert Gallatin, and Edward Braddock all trafficked here. In the early 1900$ the burgeoning coal industry turned Masontown into a boom- { 8 } WHERE l[T] STARTED { 9 } town with several large mines dug into the surrounding hillsides, with Bessemer coke ovens reddening the night skies in the valleys at Nemacolin and Gray's Landing, and with coke-filled barges riding the muddy Monongahela waters to steel mills in Pittsburgh. In tribute to the main industry, the local newspaper, the Klondike Bulletin, sported a rectangular piece of coal as the logo in its banner—depicted as a glistening crystal, not a grimy lump. The region's annual festival crowned a young beauty as Coal Queen. While this industry supported thousands of families—many of whom came from the British Isles, southern Europe, and the Slavic countries—there were serious costs to pay.Mining was both hard and dangerous work. Besides risking their lives to occasional, disastrous explosions, workers also contracted respiratory diseases. Working the cokefields was also exhausting labor: workers endured intense heat, raking red-hot coke from gaping oven mouths.All workers and their families suffered through periods of lost work during, for example, the stagnated economy that followed WorldWar I and the generalstrike in1922. At the time ubiquitous smoke, ash, and coal dust were simply aspects of the landscape, not fully understood as environmental and health hazards. [54.225.35.224] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 21:52 GMT) { 10 } WHERE l[l] STARTED Built on a series of hills and long, low bottoms, Masontown numbered aboutfivethousand inhabitants when I was growing up there after World War II. The coal boom was slowly but inexorably going bust, turning Masontown into a quiet, if not yet economically grim, hamlet. Yetin the fall of 1948,the place brimmed over with civic pride that carried the town through a week of sesquicentennial activities. The celebration's publication of a one-hundred-page memorial booklet —edited by Aunt Sally and two of her teacher friends—featured a summary of the town's history, dozens of pictures, and lists and lists of notable people, athletic teams, and community groups. My paternal grandfatherwas a pit boss in the mine. My maternal grandfathersupervised the machine shop in the Ronco mine, until he disputed the Frick Coke Company management practices and set out on a long, successful career as a businessman, local politician, and civic leader. Dad and Mom eloped on December15,1940,keeping it secret until the following summer. Years later, Mom told us that she sat at Gram's deathbed that winter, wanting so earnestly to tell her grandmother that she WHERE l[l] STARTED { and Dad had married, but feeling that she couldn't possibly risk it. Having been unable to share her joy with the grandmother she loved so much bothered Mom always. Neither did she tell her mother, although Grandma Wright later said she had suspected it when Dad gave Mom a four-piece, mahogany bedroom suite for Christmas. When Mom's picture appeared in the newspaper in June, the article about "the charming bride" stated that the couple's friends and families were "quite surprised" to learn the news. While Mom lived on army bases with Dad for short periods of time over four years of marriage, she really never left her family home. So, when Dad went to Europe in the fall of 1944, my mom, my older brother, my twin sister, and I lived at the Wright family home at 201North Main Street with Pop and Grandma Wright. Dwelling there, as well,were my aunt Rose and two first cousins whose father, my uncle Tom,was overseas, too, in an ordnance division in France. The Wright home wasn't your typical bungalow. According to family lore, the Wrights had outgrown a small house at the north end of town three decades earlier. In 1916 Pop erected a two-story, brick building two blocks north of the town center, on the foundation of the town's first mill. The 11 } [54.225.35.224...