For one W.VA. Justice of the Peace, Justice Really was Blind

Justice, as doled out by one man in Moundsville in the early 1960s, really was blind. One chilly night near Christmas, I was lucky enough to observe that he was also unexpectedly compassionate.


Chester Burk lost his sight as a child, grew up in Marshall County, held a series of jobs associated with the West Virginia Penitentiary, made lots of friends, and, at some point, became one of the County’s two elected Justices of the Peace – an office he held until he became too ill to do the job in his 70s.


Along the way, he became friends with my Grandma, Lizzie Minns, who was also blind. Every week, my Mother, Mabel, drove my Grandma and me in the old Rambler from our home in Elm Grove to Moundsville for our usual Wednesday night visits with “Uncle Chester,” his wife, “Aunt Jessie,” who was also blind, and “Aunt Alma,” Jessie’s sister who lived with the blind couple. Their home was in a very old block-long apartment complex on 9^th Street about where a Dairy Queen parking lot is today. My Mom would later describe Chester and Jessie as very frugal, serious, and conservative.


“I’d hate to have him throw the book at me,” she said one time years later.


Being older than me, my brother Terry was permitted to skip out on most of these visits thanks to a busy schedule of school and social events in Wheeling. Sometimes, he would take me to the Strand Theater a few blocks away, where we watched old Vincent Price horror movies until Mom picked us up.


But most times, I sat on the floor in the corner of Uncle Chester’s living room and played with a couple dozen plastic toy soldiers – the contents of a beat up old crinkled paper sack they kept just for me behind a bedroom door. The adults engaged in the lost art of general conversation on a range of topics from President Kennedy’s election to local news events.


I always thought it was funny that Uncle Chester chain-smoked a brand of cigarette called “Chesterfields.” He sat in his designated yellow chair and, between long deep drags on his cigarette, he would cup his left hand under his cigarette-bearing right hand in a futile effort to catch falling ashes. The brown carpet, in a near perfect semi-circle around his favorite chair, was dotted with tiny burn marks from the ashes that evaded his attempts.


It was usually a quiet evening that was topped off with strawberry ice cream – a cone for me and tasteful little bowls for the adults. But, sometimes, I got to watch as Uncle Chester responded to his own kind of “bat signal” and jumped into action as Moundsville’s “Squire Burk” – justice of the peace.


It always started with the sound of an annoying but effectively loud buzzer that signaled Uncle Chester that it was time for him to assume his other identity as Squire Burk in the Spartan office he maintained next door to his apartment. Aunt Alma oversaw the forms and paperwork for the proceedings and acted as a kind of bailiff by administering the oath to witnesses, so the buzzer meant she was off to work too.


I would tag along like a meek little church mouse following my legal heroes as they moved through the kitchen, into the dining room, and then through a bedroom where a simple door led into the justice of the peace office. There was a spacious back room set up for formal proceedings. It had a big oak desk, rows of chairs facing the desk, and a big orange bench against the wall. But the action always occurred in the front room where there was a desk for Alma with an old beat up typewriter, an older worn padded chair where Squire Burk sat, and a kind of counter space where police presented people who were in custody. Chairs lined the back wall of the room. There were cigarette burns on the linoleum floor around where Squire Burk sat.


I never ventured into that front room while proceedings were under way. Instead, I took a seat on the big orange bench in the other room where the lights were never on. That’s where I listened intently to the drama played out in the next room.


The cases often were violence-related – bar fight losers swearing out assault and battery warrants on their successful attackers were common. But, there were also drunk drivers, speeders and general moving violation defendants brought in by tall WV State Troopers in their forest green uniforms and “Smokey the Bear” hats.


It was like listening to an episode of Judge Judy 40 years before that show hit the airwaves. Law enforcement would present its case. The defendants would plead their side of the story with Squire Burk halting their digressions and talking back inconsistencies. Alma kept short hand notes which she would type up later. Finally, Squire Burk would render judgement which usually involved a fine if law enforcement’s story was more compelling than the defendant’s.


One Christmas, in the early 1960s, from my secret perch on the orange bench in the darkened room, I got to see what official kindness on the lowest rung of the West Virginia judiciary looked like, courtesy of Squire Burk. It was a cold mid-December evening long before domestic violence was a commonly-discussed issue or shelters were available to help women in crisis. State Troopers brought in a crying, disheveled woman who they found wandering in Moundsville. She was distraught and there was a big black bruise under her left eye.


“We do not believe this woman to be intoxicated and she isn’t seriously hurt,” a Trooper explained to Squire Burk. “She does appear to have been beaten. She has bruises and needed assistance to walk up your front steps. We stopped by the emergency room and they said it’s nothing serious. We know her husband because we have responded to calls to the house before.”


“Why did you bring her here if you aren’t seeking charges?” Squire Burk asked, lighting a Chesterfield with a Zippo lighter.


“Honestly, we thought you would know best what to do,” the Trooper responded.


“Young lady, do you wish to press charges against anyone?” Squire Burk asked.


“No sir,” she answered in a barely audible whisper.


“Do you want to go home?” he asked.


“No sir,” she responded more aggressively.


“Where do you want to go?” he asked as a cigarette ash dropped to the floor and created another burn dot in the linoleum.


“I don’t know. I have no money.”


Squire Burk lowered his voice and turned toward Alma who was taking notes.


“Alma do you have the number for that woman from the church who said she could help in these types of situations?” he asked as he smashed out his smoke in an old standing ash tray.


“Yes sir,” she responded. “I have it right here.”


“Young lady,” he said turning again to the frightened woman at the counter. “I am going to direct these Troopers to give you a ride to a place where you will be safe for tonight. Then, I want you to come back here tomorrow at, say 3 p.m. so we can talk about your situation.”
He stood, dug his hand into his left pocket and produced a $20 bill.


“Take this for incidentals you may need. We will make a call and they will be ready for you when you arrive.”


The two troopers exchanged approving glances and the young woman struggled for words. Alma wrote an address on a piece of paper and handed it to the troopers.


“Go now, rest up and we will see how things look tomorrow,” Squire Burk ordered as the troopers and the woman shuffled out the door.


As we passed back through the bedroom, dining room, and kitchen and entered the living room where my family and Aunt Jessie still sat chatting next to a giant Christmas tree, Squire Burk became Uncle Chester again. There was no discussion of what had just happened. No explanation of the young woman’s plight ensued.


“I just don’t know about that new school levy,” Uncle Chester said, picking up the conversation he left when his Justice of the Peace duties called.


On the way home, I couldn’t help but relate what I observed.


“I though you said Uncle Chester was kinda cheap,” I blurted out to my Mom and Grandma’s mortification. “Wait till you hear what he did.”


Note: Under the old justice of the peace system, justices received no salaries. They were compensated by the costs assessed against the losing party in civil cases and against criminal defendants who were convicted. In the early 1970s, the system was ruled unconstitutional and in 1974, voters approved the establishment of the magistrate system. Now, magistrates are elected, but they are paid a salary and are subject to the discipline of the Supreme Court.

Western PA Distillery Delights Visitors with  Hand-Crafted Fancy Moonshine 

All I knew about moonshine and the people who made it came from old movies and television shows—black and white images that conveyed the general idea that making strong illegal liquor in odd-looking secret copper contraptions and then transporting it to customers over remote back roads in beat up souped-up sedans was dangerous work done only by poor, rumpled, cranky mountain people.

Oh sure, I may have had a snort of a clear smelly liquid at a WVU football tailgate that someone claimed was moonshine, but by and large, I was a moonshine neophyte, unaccustomed to the new fangled ways of 21^st Century distilleries.

Then, I visited the totally legal and fun-loving McLaughlin Distillery near Sewickley, PA where a tall gray-haired ex-Marine named Kim McLaughlin made me a warm Apple Pie Moonshine with whipped cream and a sprinkle of sugar cinnamon for my sipping pleasure—a far cry from the little brown jug of cartoon lore. 

I also enjoyed a Not Your Momma’s Joe Coffee Moonshine and was tempted by other samples called Hokie Pokie Moonshine, Cranberry Moonshine, Pickle Moonshine (yes, it’s flavored with pickle juice), and M.G.R.T.A. Moonshine before realizing that it might be best to throttle my enthusiasm.

The humble home of McLaughlin Distillery

There isn’t a lot of signage on the highway to help you find the little cabin-like building in the woods that houses McLaughlin Distillery. On the ramp leading into the building is a friendly sign with the greeting: “Welcome you glorious bastard.” Just beside the door is another simple hand printed sign that adds gravitas to the whole endeavor: “McLaughlin Distillery World Headquarters.”

Kim and his products were in great demand on the day we visited. He greeted each customer and quizzed them about their likes before recommending and then serving up tastes of his product line. The bottles were neatly lined up with classy labels and colorful presentations on the big tasting bar and on a nearby display table.

A veteran dairy farmer from northern New York State, Kim spent time in Western Pennsylvania working the oil and gas industry. When the industry slowed, he took advantage of the timing to convert his hobby into a business and McLaughlin Distillery was

Distiller/Cooper Kim McLaughlin welcomes all visitors

born. The woman at the tasting bar said Kim worked all the time, welcomed visitors with open arms, and would be happy to give us a tour explaining, “He’s as Irish as he can be.”

She was right. Kim happily took us up a couple of steps into a very rustic and unique work room where he proudly told us what was going on in four extremely large stainless-steel barrels filled with a bubbling yellow stew-like concoction.

It was corn mash, fermenting along at a happy clip where a simple single-celled organism we call yeast was doing all the work in the initial step toward making Kim’s product. The mash is a mixture of water, corn meal, sugar, and yeast. Fermentation is a metabolic process that consumes sugar in a yeast-induced chemical breakdown that creates alcohol. Boiling water started the mixing process but now, having been cooled at an appropriate rate to promote proper fermenting, the mixture was left to its own devices. It gave off a strong pleasant aroma that’s hard to describe along with a mild radiating heat.

The mash

“That’s alive,” Kim said holding his hand over the contents. “You can feel the heat coming off it.”

The mash will do its thing for four or five days before it is strained by Kim’s pal Jim and and loaded up in a towering copper contraption. That’s the still that separates alcohol from other components. The still heats the solution, condensing it. Then, alcohol-rich vapors are released as a high strength liquid that drips from the end of copper tubing at the top. Next, Kim goes to work adding flavors that provide the color the clear moonshine liquid, depending upon what is added.

But the moonshine in all its variations, is only part of what Kim McLaughlin is up to in his rustic little Pennsylvania building. He also makes bourbon and other whiskeys that require an altogether different skill. To become bourbon, the alcohol from the distillery must be aged in special barrels. In McLaughlin’s case, they are barrels made by the distiller himself from oak wood harvested from his property in upstate New York. That makes Kim an official “cooper,” someone who makes barrels out of steamed wood bound together with hoops. The cooper industry once thrived in North America but not so much any more.

McLaughlin shows off his cooper skills

Kim showed us how the wood strips are assembled and bound, lids are carefully carved and fitted, interior portions are charred to give the aging liquor unique flavor, and a hole made in the side for access. The typical U.S. bourbon barrel that big time distillers use is 53 gallons. McLaughlin’s are much smaller and are used only once to age his whiskey products.

The little loft area over McLaughlin’s workshop is lined with racks of the little barrels and vital information along with a unique name is scrawled one each round barrel’s top. For example, one barrel

Still on the left and some aging barrels to the right

carried the hand-written name “Shaylee Grace” along with instructions that it should not be opened for 21 years. Shaylee Grace is Kim’s granddaughter.

Although he didn’t talk about it during our visit, Kim also makes vodka and has plans for even more products. He describes his operation as a small batch craft distillery where each spirit is crafted to perfection by hand. There aren’t any hulking machines or a big staff. In fact, his web site boasts that volunteers do a lot of the work in the intricate operations, but only under his close supervision.

Moonshine’s image has come a long way since that old movie, Thunder Road, when Robert Mitchum drove a souped-up 1951 Ford sedan with hidden moonshine past inept local police and rival big-city gangs to speed the product to market. Moonshine’s reputation has come miles from the stereotype images of grizzled

Appalachian hill people with toothless smiles and old-fashioned muskets defending their hidden stills against the interference of pesky Yankee revenuers. Now, it’s a respectable business and guys like Kim McLaughlin are taking it to a whole new level.

You can find McLaughlin Distillery at 3799 Blackburn Road. Sewickley, PA or on the web at www.mclaughlindistillery.com.

Anger of the Stupidly Dead

Barney Kimble’s death was quick and relatively painless. A staunch opponent of the “click it or ticket” approach to forcing people to wear seatbelts while in their automobiles, he practiced what he preached. But, he never preached being propelled through the windshield of his pale blue ’92 Subaru and smashing his skull against a utility pole. It happened in a rainstorm, after an evening in a bar, and involved a deer. But, that’s not important anymore.

Now, Barney frequents an establishment where he made all new friends—the Purgatory Bar and Grille, known as the PP&G to its patrons, “the stupidly dead.” It was a simple concept, really, and one that Barney, never one to overthink the hereafter, had never even contemplated when he was alive. The PP&G was a holding room for folks who died under stupid circumstances. With some notable exceptions, most weren’t bad people—they were just involved in stupid situations that ended their lives.

At the PP&G, you could find the young, the old, the famous, and the infamous from all walks of life from all over the world from every period.

Over there in the corner sat the pitiful Calvin Coolidge Jr., the 16-year-old son of old “Silent Cal,” the 30^th President of the United States. Young Cal’s stupid mistake was playing tennis at the White House without wearing socks. The tremendous blister he suffered became infected, and, well you know what happened before antibiotics were invented.

At the bar, in full armor no less, leaned Phillipe Marquard, a humble soldier in the French Army of 1540 who, through a spectacularly noisy act of stupidity, spawned the Shakespearian term “hoisted with one’s own petard.”  A petard was a cubical wooden box jammed full of gunpower and used to blow off the doors and gates of enemy strongholds. Sent to fetch a petard from a dark arsenal tent, young Phillipe set a torch ablaze so he could see which petard to use. You don’t need more information.

Ricardo Espinoza, originally from Ecuador, sat playing cards at a table and hoped desperately for his luck to change. Ricardo became a patron of the bar and grille after he searched for a good Wi-Fi connection on his phone and leaned out too far on his fifth-floor balcony. He never got the connection he was looking for.

Sammy Kim Park ordered a Mountain Dew from the bar while playing with a fidget spinner. Sammy’s mistake was playing a video game called Star Craft for 50 hours straight. He died of dehydration and heart failure.

Allan Pinkerton, the famous 19^th century founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency sat cleaning his fingernails with a dangerous-looking dagger. In Chicago, Pinkerton had been walking his wife’s dog when he became tangled in its leash and then tripped over a raised crack in a sidewalk. Upon impact with the ground, he severely bit his tongue, which became infected with gangrene. It led to his demise. He didn’t talk to the other patrons.

You get the idea. They were all members of an exclusive club— “the stupidly dead.”

These and other patrons of the bar took an immediate liking to Barney, who told a good tale, fell for their practical jokes, and expressed the proper amount of empathy when people told him how and why they died. All that changed as suddenly as that deer appeared on the highway the night he went airborne through the front of his Subaru.

The payphone on the wall of the bar rang one evening as a precursor to Barney’s fall from grace at the PB&G. Isadora Duncan, the famous dancer, answered it. She was a patron because she died of a broken neck in 1927 when she chose to wear a scarf that was so long that it caught on the rear axle of her car. The other departed souls watched her eyes get big as she listened intently to the speaker on the other end of the call. She hung up the phone and turned to face the rest of the room.

“That was the guardian upstairs,” she said, the anger building in her voice. “Barney, he wanted me to let you know that your appeal was successful. There are some new Libertarian members on the board who decided that refusing to wear a seat belt was a right, not an act of stupidity after all. Plainly, you are NOT one of us.”

Widespread muttering ensued among the stupidly dead and angry eyes flashed Barney’s way.

“Wait. You have no cause to be angry with Barney,” acclaimed lawyer Clement Vallandigham shouted. Clement defended a man in a murder trial in 1871 and accidentally shot himself in the courtroom while demonstrating how the victim might have shot himself. Clement’s defense was more effective than he expected. The defendant was acquitted. Clement was not so lucky.

“I presented Barney’s appeal. Choosing not to abide by what could very well be an insipid law that infringes upon his freedom is not, in itself, an act of stupidity. He doesn’t belong here not because he didn’t die stupidly, but because it was a stupid law that made him do so.”

But, the stupidly dead did not agree, and they started to turn on old Clement too until he told them he only took Barney’s case because he lost a bet on a PB&G dart game.

One by one, they turned their backs on poor Barney. No one spoke to him, smiled his way, or even acknowledged his presence from that moment forward—except for Adolf Frederick, the departed King of Sweden who had a special favor to ask of Barney.

Adolf left life in 1771 after consuming a meal of lobster, caviar, sauerkraut, smoked herring, and champagne, topped off with 14 servings of his favorite dessert.

“My dear Barney,” Adolf began. “Might you see your way clear to do me the favor of sending us some roasted goose when you move on to the next station? We can’t get it here and, although it has only been 246 years, it seems like forever since I’ve had a decent leg.”

Barney, deeply hurt by the reaction of his new friends to his good news, remained stunned.

“Wait,” he said ignoring Adolph’s request. “You can’t be angry with me. None of this is my fault. I’m not stupid. I’m a freedom fighter against unfair regulation.”

Qin Shi Huang the first Emperor of China who died in 210 B.C. after taking mercury pills in the belief that it would grant him eternal life, just rolled his eyes.

“That’s not how it works,” said Basil Brown, a health food advocate from England who, in 1974, drank 10 gallons of carrot juice in ten days causing an overdose of vitamin A and a nasty amount of damage to his liver. “You made a stupid choice like everyone else here and you can’t cloak it in politics.”

“The hell you can’t,” barked Adolph Hitler who was a patron because he was…well…Adolph Hitler.

“That’s enough,” said Sergey Tuganov. Sergey had bet two women $3,000 that he could keep them happy all day in the sack. His mistake was taking a whole bottle of Viagra to assist him in his challenge. He died 12 hours later of a heart attack. He always claimed he won the bet.

“Barney, whether you died stupidly enough to be one of us or not, you sought a reversal of your stupidity ruling and are no longer a patron of this establishment. No one recognizes your rights here. Good day sir.”

Barney waited a long time for the Hereafter Lyft service to pick him up for his next destination. During that time, the patrons ignored him.

Gina Lalapola, an Italian stripper who suffocated inside a sealed cake while waiting for a bachelor party to commence back in the 1990s, risked the wrath of the stupidly dead when she whispered a special request to Barney as he waited by the door.

“Please sir,” she said. “Can you put in a word for me? I don’t belong here either. It wasn’t my fault. How could I have known I couldn’t breathe inside that cake? I’m not a baker. I’m not stupid. I’m an artist.”

Barney just shook his head and went outside to meet his ride.

Dodging Snippy Dogs and Dealing with Cranky Doltish Husbands: a Delivery Boy in the 1960s

Even with my limp, I could always outrun a yappy little dog like a Chihuahua or a Pug, and a Dachshund was a piece of cake to evade. But, I knew I didn’t stand a chance with bigger breeds like German Shepherds or any of those Retriever types. As a pint-sized delivery boy in the orderly little suburban neighborhoods of a medium sized city in the mid-1960s, it was in my best interest to know my breeds and my own limitations for making it to safety.

The little dogs issued more noise than danger, although their needle-like front teeth nips could inflict painful little pinches at ankle level. The big dogs gave you a growl of warning before their lunge and that was usually enough to get me started on a dash for safety either behind a gated fence or beyond the reach of the chain that often restrained them. Sometimes, when there was no fence and no chain, I had to awkwardly scurry all the way back to the safety of our 1961 Rambler as fast as my chubby little legs would allow. Somehow, they never caught me, but they sure did scare the snot out of me.

Most of those critters probably meant me no harm. They were just doing their job of protecting their owners’ territory when I innocently walked into their domain. But then, I was only doing my job of delivering a host of household products to the homes of the housewives who ordered them in response to telephone calls from my blind grandmother, Lizzie Minns.

Today, telemarketers, poll takers, and scam artists interrupt dinners, destroy weekend morning sleep-ins, and generally annoy the hell out of families to the point where most of us don’t even answer our land lines anymore. But in the 1950s and 1960s my Grandma had the field mostly to herself.

Every day, and for hours at a time, Grandma and my Mom, Mabel, sat at the kitchen table and followed a routine. Mom sat on one side with a “Criss-Cross” phone directory opened in front of her. It was a directory that listed telephone numbers by street and house number followed by the name of the resident. That way, everyone on a street could be called one-by-one, street-by street, and neighborhood-by-neighborhood. Grandma sat on the other side of the table with the fingers of her right hand strategically placed in the holes of the telephone rotary dial and the heavy black telephone receiver held tight against her ear. Mom would read out the telephone numbers loudly and slowly and Grandma would dial. When she dialed the final digit, Mom would call out the name of the person that went with the number.

I will never forget Grandma’s prattle when the recipient of the call answered because I probably heard it a thousand times before I was old enough to go to school and on summer afternoons all the way through my childhood:

“Hello, I am Elizabeth Minns, a blind person selling products made by the blind. I have brooms, mops, tablecloths, ironing board covers, pillow cases, mattress covers, floor mats, liquid cleaner, and handmade tea towels made of unbleached muslin. I am calling to see if you need any of these items.”

Polite banter often ensued and if the customer had questions, Grandma was ready. She had memorized all the prices for each of the products and was well versed about the factory where they were made in Pittsburgh. If there was a sale, Grandma would repeat the order and my Mom would write it down.

On Wednesday mornings while my brother and I were in school, my Mom would gather up the week’s orders and go down to our basement where our little inventory was kept in racks my father made a decade earlier just before his fatal heart attack. She would collect all the products for delivery and set them aside so that when either my brother, Terry, or I would come home for lunch we could quickly load them up into the trunk of our Rambler.

After school every Wednesday, our big bronze Rambler would be sitting outside our schools with Mom behind the wheel and Grandma in the back seat. We would tumble out of our respective school buildings and hop in to do our two to three-hour after school delivery jobs as a family. Terry and I would take turns as Mom would hand us the product and a hand-written receipt with the total price written on the bottom. Terry or I would then head to the designated house, warily watch for dogs, knock on the door, and execute the transaction. We were always disappointed when the customer needed change because we had to schlep back to the car where Mom kept a change box on the front seat.

There was the dog challenge, like when the customer would open the door and a noisy little mutt would bark and try to get at me. “Oh don’t worry, he doesn’t bite,” the customer would often say. But, the dog always seemed to be dead set on proving that advice incorrect. I always survived these encounters but only after my little seven-year-old nerves were put through the ringer. Another obstacle we often faced was the cranky husband who didn’t know anything about any mop or broom delivery and was reluctant to execute the transaction without the wife around to make sure it was okay. It was not infrequent that we were sent back to the car with undelivered product in hand after a husband had informed us that he would not be “bamboozled by some little boy.”

Being well schooled in my Mother and Grandmother’s aversion to all forms of alcohol and the bad behavior that sometimes went with it, I was always shocked (and a bit curious) when I was dispatched into one of those shot and a beer-type bars that dot urban neighborhoods to make a delivery. For example, apparently, the bar tender at a bar called the Trophy Club was a loyal customer and old family friend. About once a year, always in the daytime, I gingerly entered the mysterious establishment with a broom or mop in hand to execute the traditional transaction with Mom watching closely from the car out front. The muttering conversation and laughter among the men at the bar always ceased when I made my appearance and they gazed with surprise in my direction. It seemed like Bob Prince was always calling a Pirate game over the radio when I timidly approached the man in the white apron behind the bar and the smell of spilled beer, cigarette smoke, and chili dogs mingled in the air. He would always smile, take the little receipt from my outstretched hand and spin around to open the cash register. He would place the money in my little hand and wish me a wonderful afternoon before I scampered out the door and back to the Rambler.

Every month or so, if sales had been good, we got a treat when our Wednesday work was done: we stopped at Burger Chef for 15-cent hamburgers.

Every couple of months, our inventory ran low, which required a long trip to the Skilcraft factory on Craig Street in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh where scores of blind people manufactured the products we sold. Before the days of the Interstate highways, Mom and Grandma drove over a treacherous stretch of U.S. Rt. 40 and Rt. 19 to Pittsburgh, some 54 miles away. Timing was important because they had to be back in time to be home before Terry and I got out of school. But, in the summertime, Terry and I got to go along and see what went on up there.

Mom always skillfully backed the Rambler up to the Craig Street loading dock—sometimes between two hulking tractor trailer rigs—and opened the trunk. Then, she and Grandma got out and led us inside to meet with a stern-looking man named Mr. O’Toole who seemed to run the place and started the paperwork to fill our order. He was tall, lanky, and wore flannel shirts and khaki pants. He was completely bald and wore little steel-rimmed glasses. He frightened me with his frank no-nonsense approach but he always proved me wrong by the end of the visit with his kindness and curiosity about my school life. Sometimes, he would even give me a Clark Bar.

The rolling metal on metal sounds made by the red Pittsburgh trolley cars as they moved over the rails embedded in the brick streets, and the sparking noises that their electrical connections made on the overhead lines that gave the big vehicles power were always in the background of our visits to the Skilcraft factory.

The place smelled wonderful, if you like the smell of straw and hot

rubber. On the upper floors, blind men and women were at work cutting, bundling, and stitching straw to make brooms. On another floor, workers used big hot machines to cut old automobile tires into long strips that were then fashioned into doormats.

Terry and I got in trouble there one hot summer afternoon. There was this big orange shoot that workers used to send bundles of brooms down to the loading dock. Terry had always told me how much he wanted to go upstairs and take a ride down that shoot. One day, we did it. It was much dirtier than we anticipated and

Mom was very unhappy with our untidy and disheveled appearance.

Mr. O’Toole was very unhappy with our irresponsibility in tempting fate.

Some of the sightless workers who were expecting brooms at the foot of the shoot were unhappy with our sudden and unexpected arrival in place of their products. When told of the escapade, Grandma just gave us her quiet little smile and an admonishment to not do it again.

All those Skilcraft products and the jobs they represented for blind people were the result of the Wagner-O’Day Act signed by

President Roosevelt in 1938. That legislation directed the government to purchase products manufactured by blind Americans. The National Industries for the Blind was created and after World War II, when it was decided to sell the products to the commercial market, a brand name, Skilcraft, was established. The Pittsburgh factory was one of 62 workshops established nationwide. Grandma and Mom never called it a factory. They called the Pittsburgh location “the shops.”

We were kids. As much as we enjoyed the occasional Pittsburgh supply trip adventures, we hated the Wednesday delivery days. Sometimes, we complained and Mom would raise a finger to her lips to shush us so Grandma wouldn’t have to hear it. Later, when Grandma would be out of the room, Mom would explain it to us.

“This is Grandma’s livelihood and our family’s livelihood,” she would say. “This is how we put food on the table and how Grandma maintains her independence. We don’t ask much of you boys. She depends upon you to help with the business. I don’t think it is too much to expect. It’s only one day a week.”

Then we would remember Grandma surprising us with some little treat or another or recall how she would come up with an unexpected five-dollar bill that she would slip us when we needed school supplies, were getting ready for a field trip, or just needed funding for a bus ride in town for a movie and shopping. We thought about our warm comfortable little home and our plain but tasty and nourishing meat and potatoes dinners.  All those comforts and kindnesses—edible and material—were all made possible by that little business that she and Mom worked on almost every day and we worked on just one day a week.

We were poorer than we realized but because of Mom and Grandma’s attention to that little business, we always had what we needed.

Looking back, it was worth our Wednesday evenings and it was worth dodging snippy dogs and putting up with cranky doltish husbands. It didn’t really require much of an effort on our part, and it really didn’t last very long in the grand scheme of our lives.

Our childhood delivery careers contributed to shaping our work ethic and our ability to hack our way through successful lives of our own. That’s why we ended up grateful for the experience—as well as the cakes and pies.

An Old Ohio River Barge Boat Cook Brings a Musical Gift of a Lifetime to a Fledging Wheeling Musician named Griffith

She was a feisty old river woman who we called Aunt Ruth even though she was no relation. She spent years as a cook on barge boats that plied the Ohio River from Pittsburgh to ports in Kentucky and Illinois. When she returned from many of her sometimes-week-long river trips, she had the odd habit of bringing us chicken livers. One day, she also brought my brother, Terry, the offer of a special gift, but first, he would have to earn it in her family’s court of music.

Apparently, chicken livers were not so popular among the men who operated Ohio River barge boats. So, as Aunt Ruth prepared chickens to feed the men, she collected the livers in little plastic cottage cheese containers. Somehow, she had the impression that someone in our house would eat them. My Grandma always smiled politely and accepted the container before rushing into the kitchen to temporarily squirrel them away in the refrigerator. On one visit, Aunt Ruth heard Terry strumming away on a little learner guitar.

“Terry, that little tinker toy ain’t nuthin,” she said in a voice that sounded like Marjorie Main, who played Ma in the old Ma and Pa Kettle movies of the 1940s.  “I got a real guitar that’s been in the family a long time. You come up to the house next weekend and maybe we can see if it fits you. Now it ain’t much so don’t get too excited. No one has played it since cousin Jimmy back during the war. But, there’s no sense in it gathering dust if you think you can put it to use. But, we will have to see.”

Not long before this productive little visit from Aunt Ruth, Terry had decided to transition from his first musical instrument – the marimba – to the guitar. The reason for the switch was his growing interest in the folk music phenomena that was sweeping the country and his determination to use his voice as well as his hands to make music. As always, our blind Grandma played a key role in the transition by financing a new very cheap little learner guitar.

It was 1963. I was nine. Terry was 16. We were being raised in Elm Grove by two widows, our Mother, Mabel, and our Grandma, Lizzie. We were one of those many families who didn’t have much disposable income, but, thanks to sound financial management by Mom and Grandma, Terry and I never realized it. Our Great Depression-seasoned elders knew how to pinch a penny as well as how and when to splurge.

We never had a fancy high fi or record player. Instead, we had a U.S. Library of Congress-issued “talking book.” That’s what the government called the compact rugged little mono speaker record player they gave free to blind people so they could subscribe to books and periodicals on vinyl records. Grandma was, frankly, too busy to listen to it. So, she let us keep it in the bedroom we shared on the second floor of our little Columbia Avenue Cape Cod. That’s where I was awakened every morning to the static-infused flat-sounding strumming and harmonies of the Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary and fell off to sleep every night to Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs. 

I kind of absorbed the music through various states of sleep. But, Terry was ingesting it with all his attention. He wasn’t just listening, he was figuring out how to play it himself.

He had been pecking away at the beginner’s guitar and was becoming quite proficient, all without lessons. Before long, instead of the Kingston Trio, I was hearing Terry sing “scotch and soda… jigger o gin…oh what a spell you got me in…oh me oh my” as I fell off to sleep clutching my stuffed animal du jour.

The weekend after Aunt Ruth’s most recent chicken liver delivery, we piled in the old Rambler and Mom drove us up Stone Church Road to Aunt Ruth’s house someplace in the country. It was a hot afternoon. When we arrived, a dozen or so of Aunt Ruth’s relatives were relaxing on the grass and in lawn chairs under the shade of big old oak trees. They were laughing, talking and sipping ice teas. 

Not long after we settled in with them, a group of men came out of the small little house nearby carrying guitars, a banjo and a mandolin.

“Did you bring your little tinker toy?” Aunt Ruth asked Terry. “Good. Get it out and sit down there next to my boy Bobby. Just join in.”

This was not, by any means, one of those big bluegrass jam sessions you sometimes see in the movies. There was way more strumming than picking and the music they played were plain old country standards. Friends and family joined in to sing “Let Me Call You Sweethart,” “You Are my Sunshine,” and “The West Virginia Hills.” Terry, his eyes glued to the left hand of the man named Bobby who played a beat-up old guitar, strummed along and duplicated the simple cords he saw the others play.

After an hour or so, Bobby, who was no boy but rather an old man who must have been his 30s, clapped Terry on the back as a kind of gesture of approval.

“Let’s take a little walk inside,” Bobby said. “It’s Terry right? You done just fine Terry.”

Inside, Terry watched Bobby walk to a door that he assumed was a hall closet. His host opened the door, bent over and disappeared into cavernous blackness. Soon, he heard Bobby muttering to himself and saw books, boxes, old articles of clothing, tennis rackets and dozens of other objects come flying out of darkness.

A full three minutes later, Bobby arose out of the storage nightmare with a smile on his face and a worn old guitar in his hand. He held it out to his young guest.

“Here you go young man,” he said. “Sorry there’s no case.”

Terry took the old instrument and ran his hand over the smooth old mahogany finish swiping away a decade or so of dust in the process. It was a 1937 Martin R-18 archtop. It had steel strings and two big “F” holes like those found on violins instead of the more common one big round sound hole. Its neck was discolored from frequent use and the wood between the frets was burrowed and uneven from years of work.

There was no backstory provided about the guitar or how it found its way into the storage closet. All we knew was that it belonged to some guy in Aunt Ruth’s family who played it during World War II and apparently abandoned it with her.

It had a great deal of character and, after a long tuning and adjusting period, it produced a mellow sound that was as smooth as honey. Terry was in love at first sight.

The old Martin became his constant companion. It went to school, to friends’ houses, on our family trips to Buckhannon and Romney—anywhere where Terry could play it. He learned more and more songs, like “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin in the Wind,” “Tom Dooley,” and “Where Have all the Flowers Gone.” He honed his vocal skills with voice lessons and gained polish and experience by performing complex solos in the church choir. 

By 1964, he formed his own little folk group called the Columbia Singers with fellow Triadelphia High Schoolers Tam Mallory and Bill Lang. Lang and Mallory were a year older and when they graduated, Jan Worthington and Eric Ackerman stepped in. The tough little Martin played on.

His senior year at Triadelphia in June 1965, Terry agreed to provide guitar accompaniment to a girl who sang “Michael Rowed the Boat Ashore” for the senior talent show in addition to performing with his trio. The show was a big success. Even I was impressed as I sat on those hard-wooden fold-up auditorium seats where someday I would suffer through biology lectures and pep rallies during my own high school career. Everyone was invited back to our house for snacks and a post-show mixer.

Terry was late arriving. He had a separate ride and we were already home in the little house’s living room with several of his classmates awaiting his arrival. The doors and windows were open to fight off the early summer heat. We heard a car pull up, a car door slam, and then a horrible crushing splintering sound before a period of silence.

When Terry opened the squeaky wooden screen door and walked inside muttering obscenities for the very first time in front of our Mom, he sadly held out the old Martin. Its sides were shattered into dozens of pieces. There was an audible gasp in the room. Terry, explained that in his haste to join the party, he forgot all about the tree stump in front of the next-door neighbor’s house where his ride had let him out of the vehicle. He tripped, fell on the guitar hitting the sidewalk, and smashed it.

The party never really got going after that. The people dispersed early, Mom and Grandma cleaned up, and I went off to bed. As I lay in my hot dark bedroom I could hear my brother through the open window as he sat on our rusty yellow metal glider in the darkened back yard under a stinky chestnut tree. He picked and strummed a slow mournful song on the old wounded Martin that I couldn’t quite make out. It’s honey smooth sound was now a rattling tinny noise. Mom said later it was like Terry was having a funeral for an old friend.

We kept the Martin in the basement for a couple of years where it gathered dust. Eventually, Terry found a man in Elm Terrace who could restore it. He had it in his workshop for many months. When it came back, it was whole, but there were mismatched pieces of wood in it that replaced parts that were lost in the accident. The Martin just never played or sounded good again. Eventually, Terry put it in a cheap case and stored it away.

The night before he left for the Army in 1971, Terry gave me the Martin in the hopes that I might learn to play on it, but mostly as a keepsake amid the uncertainty of the times. I never learned how to play guitar, but I kept the Martin for the next 35 years before giving it to a friend who collected and displayed old instruments. It seemed a worthier fate for an old friend than banishment to basement storage rooms.

The old Martin was just old wood and strings, but it brought much pleasure and left its mark on the people who played it and the people who heard it sing.

Fifty-two years later, Terry plays on at renaissance festivals as "The Irish Troubadour" and in restaurants, bars pubs, and other venues throughout the Pittsburgh area, showing the skills honed on the humble old Martin and preserving songs of the past and interpreting the tunes of today.

Grandma’s   Rocker: A Baby

Boomer’s Downsizing Dilemma

They are taking away my grandma’s rocking chair tomorrow and it feels like an old friend I’ve known all my life is going away to live with strangers.

The decision to give it up was a tormenting struggle involving memories, guilt, sentiment and, finally, the reality of the need to move on.

It’s just a piece of old wood held together with ancient glue and a few screws added here and there over the decades to reinforce weakened spots.

It always speaks when people settle into the well-worn seat with a series of loud creaks and cracks but settles down into a predictable and pleasant squeak when the user adopts the proper rocking motion to engage the nicked-up old rocker rails for their intended purpose.

The once-smooth old brown arms look and feel like the deeply veined hands of an old woman with grooves, indentations and pock marks left behind by more than a century of rubbing, tapping, and scratching by friends and ancestors of all ages who took comfort in the big old rocker’s character and functionality and rested their arms on its arms.

There’s a raised carved flower-like decoration on the top two corners of the rocker where users’ heads always rested. The one on the left a bit more discolored than the one on the right indicating that the chair’s most frequent user probably sat at a jaunty angle while rocking babies, knitting socks, or listening to 1930s-radio programs.

There are spindles on either side that provide additional support for the rocker’s old arms and a row supporting the chair’s back. They are all intricately carved long shafts of wood with grooves and flairs and bulbs of accents, except for one that indicates its replacement role with a non-decorative non-matching appearance. I always wondered what happened to the original it replaced. Was it kicked away by a rambunctious toddler being held and rocked by a parent or grandparent in a desperate struggle to induce sleep? Was it snapped off in one of the two-dozen moves the chair endured over its lifetime?  It is mystery never to be solved.

The chair has a colorful origin story. My grandmother, Lizzie Minns, was a little girl in rural West Virginia in the closing decades of the 19^th Century. She lost her sight in a battle with typhoid fever as an infant, but was an active child who learned early to expertly sew, knit, and bake. Her skills and optimistic disposition led to her becoming the favorite of many in her family. 

One of her uncles was the pastor of a local church. When he was reassigned to another church in another state, the congregation of his church gave the fancy brand-new rocker to him as a going away present. In turn, he gave the chair to his favorite niece, Lizzie, in tribute to her and because he didn’t have room in his new home for it.

The chair was a staple of my family ever since. My grandfather, Tom Minns, who was also blind, adopted it as his own once he married Lizzie. They moved it from one little apartment to another and it often became a fixture in the little grocery store/confectionaries he operated during the early decades of the 20^th Century.

A whole lot of rocking went on in that chair. My Grandfather Tom, rocked my mother, Mabel, to sleep in it. Years later, he rocked my brother, Terry, in it. Grandma Lizzie, rocked me in it. My Mother rocked my brother’s son and then my son in it. She even had the chance to rock her great-grand daughter in it once or twice.

In my childhood, the rocker had an honored spot in the dining room of our house where my grandma would sit in it by the hour as she read her Braille books, repaired our clothing with needle and thread, or crocheted delicate lace items. Her little wooden sewing cabinet sat nearby.

As a child, I often jumped into the chair when it became available and engaged my imagination to picture myself riding a horse like a cowboy as I rocked a little too hard and fast for Grandma’s taste. She couldn’t see me, of course, but she could certainly hear the accelerated rate at which our poor dining room floorboards rattled, accompanied by the rocker’s own protesting creaks under the strain of my full tilt gallop.

Long after my Grandma died, and knowing of my fondness for the old chair, my Mother made me very happy when she gave it to me one spring evening and for nearly a decade, it enjoyed a useful life in the living room of our home, providing extra seating during family gatherings, a place to sit whenever I searched for a book on a nearby set of shelves. We even rocked our own grandchildren a time or two while in its big friendly embrace.

But, eventually, we moved to a brand-new house in another city and the old rocker never did quite fit in its new surroundings where the decorative tone was “beachy” and all the furniture was carefully and successfully selected for form, function, comfort and placement.

After more than 130 years of being a part of my family, the rocker’s function and place devolved into a spot in our bedroom where we deposit all those decorative daytime pillows from our bed that we don’t use while sleeping, or a convenient place to park an article of clothing that we fully intend to hang up tomorrow. I can’t recall the last time I sat down in its old worn seat and just enjoyed it for its powers of comfort and tradition.

I resisted the first suggestion that we seek a new home for the old rocker. My Mother’s passing was too fresh and the memories too vivid. I was torn between two competing realities. On one hand, I had a great appreciation for a family heirloom, tradition, and memories. On the other hand, practicality dictated divesting myself of the old and the unused. Eventually, I realized that the rocker deserved to be more than an obstacle to be vacuumed around every week and with retirement on the horizon, downsizing is just around the corner.

To keep it in the family but out of my house, I reached out to my brother to see if he would be interested in being the keeper of this little piece of history and tradition. He didn’t have room. I called my apartment-dwelling son to see if he would take it in. He too was space restricted. I was partly relieved and partly frustrated.

I was determined not to put it in the annual yard sale or donate it to charity. Either of those options would leave me wondering if it would survive or be treated with the respect it deserved.

Finally, a friend touring our home spotted the rocker in front of our bedroom window—a lonely antique sitting unadorned and unused. She admired it and voiced her appreciation for its beauty and age. She demonstrated the kind of regard for history and tradition that would afford the old rocker a good home. After some thought and rationalization, I decided that she could provide the home for grandma’s rocker that I was seeking.

So, she’s coming to take it away tomorrow. I will not be rocking any more babies in it, or throwing anymore jackets over its back, or sitting in it just to gaze out the window, and neither will anybody else in my family. I’m trying hard to picture the beginning of a new life for the old chair—one that will include attention from someone with the appreciation of its character, and the skill to prolong its service with an occasional patch and repair.

Will it serve that new family for another 130 years? Unlikely, but I’m hoping it will be around long enough to make a few more memories for a few more parents, grandparents, and children.

I’m sure I’m not alone among baby boomers torn between respecting material items of the past and the need to finally move on. 

Our children aren’t interested in old things like our parents and grandparents were and like they wanted us to be. That’s okay. Times change. Many of us don’t live in one house for the final 30 years of our lives preserving the old and collecting new to pass on. We retire and we move away to warmer climates leaving the trifles of nostalgia behind. When that downsizing occurs, somebody gets stuck with the chore of letting go. This time, it was me.