Nazi Saboteurs had Big Plans for Pennsylvania’s Horseshoe Curve Train Track

Nazi saboteur Richard Quirin kicked off his shoes, sat back in his New York City hotel room, and lit up a Lucky Strike, one of the American cigarettes he had missed so much while he was in Germany. He intently studied his map of the Altoona, PA region and his target: the famous Horseshoe Curve on the Pennsylvania Railroad.

If all went well, he would soon retrieve the explosives that he and his fellow agents brought ashore from the submarine and buried in waterproof bags on a Long Island Beach. He would pack them into the extra large suitcases he bought in a shop in Brooklyn, and travel by rail to Altoona. There, he would strategically plant and detonate them destroying a unique and vital American transportation line that, since 1854, served as a key link for freight and passenger trains traversing the Allegheny Mountains.

Richard Quirin

Quirin was part of a 1942 German plan to destroy important American infrastructure and manufacturing sites like locks and dams on the Ohio River, hydro-electric facilities at Niagara Falls, Alcoa aluminum plants, and Horseshoe Curve. The mission was called Operation Pastorious.

His target, Horseshoe Curve, is an engineering marvel that has fascinated railroaders, passengers and tourists who journeyed to the region to see monster trains pass by ever since it was opened before the Civil War. East and westbound trains traverse the curve that bends around a dam, a lake, and two ravines. For every 100 feet, the tracks at the Horseshoe Curve bend nine degrees with the entire curve totaling 220 degrees. The curve is 2,375 feet long and, at its widest, about 1,300 feet across. People on a train rounding the curve can look out one side of their windows and see cars in the same train on a parallel course.

During World War II, troops, munitions, and war products from hundreds of manufacturers were transported on the Pittsburgh to Philadelphia line. More than 50 passenger trains a day passed over the curve with a similar number of freight trains.

Operation Pastorious planners targeted the curve for destruction to disrupt rail traffic and America’s East Coast war effort. But the best laid plans of secret Nazis often went awry. Quirin never got to finish his smoke or further study his attack map. Unbeknownst to the German, two of his co-conspirators turned themselves in and ratted out the other agents. Before Quirin could get started on his Horseshoe Curve attack, or even finish that cigarette, the FBI knocked on his door. Operation Pastorious was snuffed out like Quirin’s Lucky Strike once the G-Men burst in and took him into custody. He and seven other German agents were tried. All were convicted and six, including Quirin, were executed in the electric chair.

So Horseshoe Curve remained a vital artery in the nation’s wartime rail transportation network, safe from the saboteur’s explosives and Hitler’s grand plan to destroy America from the inside. The line survived the war, the switch from steam to diesel engines, and changes in the way Americans move their people and freight. Passenger trains dwindled with the advent of air travel and 18-wheelers took a chunk out of the freight business once interstate highways created quicker more direct connections.

View from the park at Horseshoe Curve

However, if you stand today in the clean well-groomed park that sits in the middle of Horseshoe Curve, you would have a difficult time believing that there could be even more rail traffic than there is today. Every 15 minutes or so, seven days a week, huge diesel engines pull massive trains in both directions around the rails that seem to encircle close-up observers.

Engineers blast their whistles and wave vigorously at the tourists who ride the short steep funicular from the parking area and museum below or take a set of long steps to the observation area/park. Instead of boxcars, coaches, and dining cars, today’s engines pull mostly flatcars loaded to capacity with aluminum containers that, not long before, sat on the decks of Trans-Atlantic ocean freighters. They are mostly Chicago bound from ports on the East coast.

According to Norfolk Southern Railroad, the current owners of the line, 111.8 million short tons of freight are moved over Horseshoe Curve every year. Amtrak’s Pennsylvanian between Pittsburgh and New York City rumbles by once a day every day. Freight trains roll around the curve at 30 miles per hour. Freight trains make it at 41 miles per hour.

Amid the noise of the trains and the playful yelling of visiting children who are fascinated by the appearances of the huge engines, it is difficult but not impossible to imagine the magnitude of the building project that made it all possible.

For three years, beginning in 1850, a 450-man work crew, made up almost entirely of Irishmen who fled the starvation caused by the potato blight in their home country, used only picks, shovels, and horses pulling flatbeds called drags to shape the mountainside to accommodate the railroad. The work had to be backbreaking, insufferably hot in the summers, and incredibly cold in the winter. They were paid about 25 cents an hour for a 12-hour day.

John Edgar Thompson

John Edgar Thomson, a civil engineer and industrialist, was the designer of Horseshoe Curve. He eventually presided over the Pennsylvania Railroad’s growth into the largest business enterprise in the world in his day and was famous for his technological and managerial innovation. Andrew Carnegie, who started his career as a clerk with the Pennsylvania Railroad, was such a fan of his old boss that he named his sprawling steel plant in Braddock, PA after him—the Edgar Thomson Steel Works.

The entire line between Altoona and Johnstown, including Horseshoe Curve, opened on February 15, 1854. The total cost for that 31.1 miles of track was $2.4 million or $80,000 per mile. Eventually, so many trains were using the line that three additional tracks were added by 1900.

The engineering and historical significance of Horseshoe Curve was recognized in 1966 when it was designated a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was designated a National Historic Civil Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Civil Engineers in 2004.

Any trip to see the big trains at Horseshoe Curve should include a stop at the Railroaders Memorial Museum in Altoona, where, at one time, more than 1,600 people were employed at the Pennsylvania Railroad’s sprawling repair, maintenance and locomotive construction facilities.

As the museum makes clear, Altoona was a town built by railroaders for railroaders and its displays offer a rare glimpse into a transportation industry that has all but vanished. It disappeared partly because today’s diesel train engines do not require the frequent maintenance that the old steam engines needed. The museum does a great job of explaining how locomotives were refurbished by first dipping them in their entirety in a vat of lye; how 80-inch drive wheels for train engines were cast in maintenance shops; how crews called “gandy dancers” built and maintained 26,000 miles of track, tunnels and stations; and why wreck crews remained on alert for frequent accidents.

Visits to Horseshoe Curve and the museum at Altoona are worthwhile day trips for folks interested in trains past and present, transportation history, or a visit to a famous candy factory—

Altoona is home to Boyer Brothers Inc., makers of the famous Mallo Cup. They make more than 2 million Mallow Cups a Day. And yes, they operate a candy factory outlet.

Click on the video below to see what it is like when a big freight train comes through Horseshoe Curve.

The Illusionists: An Amazing Show Worthy of Praise

He was scruffy and scary, covered in tattoos with his head shaved on the sides but with long wild hair on the top. Earrings, odd makeup, chains and leather clothing rounded out the ensemble. He less called for a volunteer from the audience than he did demand one. He called himself The Anti-Conjuror.

Another wore a turn-of-the-century white linen suit and collar with geeky round glasses and sported a blond crew cut. He boasted of inventing unique feats of illusion and so called himself The Inventor.

A third was a well-dressed Korean man in his 20s who had an exotic “smarter than you” look on his wrinkleless face and fascinated the audience without speaking a word as he produced hundreds of ordinary playing cards from thin air and made them do whatever he wished. He was The Manpulator.

Then, there was the painfully thin young Italian who scoffed at locks and handcuffs, especially while locked upside down under water performing the Houdini-like water chamber escape. He called himself The Escapologist.

A long-haired head-banger repeatedly jeopardized the life of his assistant by shooting arrows at various targets she held aloft. Sometimes he faced the opposite direction and used a mirror to see his target. He was billed as The Weapon Master.

An ordinary looking young British man shocked the audience by being at one place one second and then disappearing and reappearing across the theater the next. His moniker was The Deceptionist.

Rounding out the troupe was a glitter-wearing fast-talking gay joker who stole watches, performed parlor tricks and served as the comedic host of the overall event. He was called The Trickster.

Together, the seven performers are traveling America for a show called “The Illustionists” that began with a successful run on Broadway. We saw the show in Morgantown just before they moved on to Pittsburgh’s Heinz Hall for a four-show stand April 22 and 23.

Never having seen an illusionist show in person, I was captivated. On television, there’s always that grain of doubt and skepticism nurtured by the knowledge that editing and special effects just might play a part in the show. In person, those factors are absent and you can truly appreciate the sophistication that each performance requires to produce the desired befuddlement of the audience.

Several of the performers developed true humor-infused characters while others never uttered a word. The Anti-Conjuror (Dan Sperry) , did both. He did three separate sets throughout the evening. During the first two, he wordlessly amazed the audience with illusions involving birds and candy; yes, a piece of candy. Later, playing off his intimidating look, he played the dark impatient con man, shouting threatening yet funny instructions at his volunteer victim from the audience. He also did some gross-out tricks that involved some blood-letting.

The Escapologist (Andrew Basso) pelted the audience with effective braggadocio and dramatic showmanship in a thick Italian accent before attempting his Houdini-like escape from underwater bondage as a digital clock ticked off the time.

The Weapon Master (Ben Blaque) looked like he could have been in a heavy-metal band. He used a crossbow with a scope to hit a variety of odd sized objects from the grasp of a traditional female assistant. He spoke no words and let his weapon do the talking, culminating in a fairly intricate and impressive endeavor involving an apple like a high tech William Tell.

The Manipulator (Yu Ho-Jin), standing straight and elegant, never spoke a word as he worked with what seemed to be a never-ending supply of playing cards in a slight of hand display the audience never saw coming. He made quite a mess on stage that someone had to sweep up after the curtain closed.

The Deceptionist (James More) was another silent performer who did some remarkable “now you see him…now you don’t” illusions that had folks scratching their heads in amazement.

The Inventor (Kevin James), to me, was perhaps the least entertaining. He was obviously the senior member of the group and his illusions centered mostly around making a folded napkin levitate and dance around as if by…well…magic. He also did a mad scientist opening bit that seemed to be more flash than substance.

The Trickster (Jeff Hobson) was the ringmaster of all the mayhem. He was one-part comedian and one-part magician, pulling hapless volunteers from the audience for quip-laden bits that always ended up with a well-executed illusion. He got serious for his introduction of the Escapologist but kept the rest of the evening light and humorous.

The show was complimented by an overhead big screen that gave the audience a closer look at the goings on and an on-stage camera operator kept the action well framed.

Four of the seven performers in the traveling show were featured in the Broadway version which opened in November 2015 and closed in January, 2016. The original cast included Adam Trent as the Futurist, who has attained a great deal of exposure as a solo act both before and after the Broadway show; Raymond Crowe as the Unusualist; and Jonathan Goodwin as the Daredevil.  They were replaced by the Escapologist, the Inventor, and the Weapon Master for the road version. There is no explanation of why the lineup changed.

The entire show was only about 90 minutes long, as opposed to the two hours of the Broadway version. The show seemed to fly by--another sort of deception that comes from good entertainment. Tickets were not inexpensive, but if you have never seen top illusionists at work and you like to laugh and be entertained by some of the best in the business, this show is for you.

Bedlam, Torture, and the Sweet Outcomes of the 

Amateur Swim Meet

Pictures don't do justice to the bedlam of a swim meet

On fall and winter Saturdays when most Americans watch football, shop, relax, do yardwork or pursue other activities, thousands of young athletes, their parents, grandparents, and fans pack into swimming facilities all over the nation for day-long swim meets that are bee hives of athletic activity, centers of social interaction, and hot spots of retail commerce. Who knew? 

To uninitiated casual observers like me who had no idea this kind of thing went on, amateur swim meets represent an almost invisible subculture. These confusing conglomerations consume the time and attention of entire families, support a surprising range of entrepreneurial endeavors, produce as many tears as smiles among young participants, and look like an incomprehensible mass of organized chaos. Until our granddaughter became involved with a swim team, I was clueless about how many products, terms, issues, dreams, and sheer numbers of people were involved in these events that occur in pools all over the nation.

Our granddaughter began her competitive swimming career in the pools of Pittsburgh in indoor events held in regional high schools. The first struggle involved with attending one of these marathons is finding a place to park. That’s when the enormity of the events first set in for me. The events attract hundreds of swimmers, their parents, friends, and other family members who gobble up limited parking spaces early in the morning. Late starters like me can look forward to a long cold walk.

Some meets charge a nominal fee for people to attend. Volunteers, usually moms, sit at tables to collect admission. Invariably, they have a child with them who insists on handing you your change and stamping the back of your hand with a glob of black ink thus branding you as okay to pass in and out. Too often, they perform those duties with their own candy coated sticky gooey hands imbuing your own hands with the same condition. Once inside, after washing your hands, the challenge is to secure a “heat sheet”—a thick collection of stapled pages containing a dense list of swimmers’ names, their best times in each of the four events they may be participating in, and a schedule of events, heats, and lanes in which they will swim throughout the meet. These heat sheets are, of course, for sale only.

Whoever arranges the heats and events is an evil diabolical genius to folks like me who are used to sports like football and basketball that get you in and out in a set amount of time. Somehow, it always turns out that your swimmer participates in one event at say 9 a.m., and then has nothing to do until their next event at like 2 p.m. Since I’m really only interested in my swimmer’s events, that means I have nothing to do for hours either and that’s the hardest part the whole endeavor.

The bare footed swimmers usually hang out with teammates at some designated location while wrapped in damp towels but families are condemned to fritter away the idle hours in the school cafeteria where snacks like hot dogs and pizzas are available along with something else I never encountered before swim meets entered my life—the “walking taco.” It’s a small bag of opened Frito corn chips in which a chili-like concoction has been poured. The eater of this treat then uses his or her fingers to fish out bits of the messy yet crunchy snack.

Cafeteria calm before the swim meet storm

The cafeterias are usually filled with parents patiently trying to fill the empty hours. One activity they reluctantly and often ineffectually pursue is placating the younger siblings of competing swimmers. Their patience with the whole affair is more seriously limited than geezers like me. For that challenge, parents look to their overstuffed book bags for games, toys or anything else they had the foresight to pack in defense against whiny children who just want to go home. As a result, the room is littered with unread Harry Potter books, board games, playing cards, I-Pads, and other weapons employed in the battle against slow moving clocks.

The admission charge, snack bar, and sale of heat sheets are just the beginnings of the mini-economy that exists at these events. A great deal of money changes hands at a traditional swim meet. There’s usually an area where parents and grandparents can shop for swim suits, goggles, caps and other accouterments for their swimmers at premium prices by a range of vendors. Then, there’s an area where tee shirt and sweatshirt entrepreneurs have set up shop. For a hefty fee, they will emboss any piece of overpriced clothing purchased from them with clever swim sayings or swim team logos. Then, there are candy sales people who will deliver the selected candy along with a personalized message of best wishes to individual swimmers, again for a fee. At some meets, photographers can be commissioned to snap specific swimmers in action. It’s a murder’s row of wallet drainers for hapless well-meaning grandparents.

At some meets, a busy volunteer will keep track of the events and occasionally update a white board in a corner of the cafeteria by writing out the number of the event under way so that parents and swimmers can keep track of their next appearance. Other events require parents to gather courage and poke their heads into the chaos of the pool area for a visual assessment every now and then.

The pool area is where the greatest bedlam occurs. There is usually a bleacher section packed with discarded winter coats, swimmers’ equipment bags, glazed-over observers who are between events and are too zoned out from boredom to succumb to the cafeteria’s charms, and super-intense swim fans who are supercharged and glued to the action. It must be some sort of unofficial requirement that at least 90 percent of the people in the stands be engaged in loud conversation. The constant conversational buzzing that results, combined with the horns signaling race starts, the swimmers lined up to compete while chatting on the pool deck, a disembodied voice making incomprehensible announcements over loud and fuzzy-sounding PA systems, and coaches and parents shouting instructions and encouragement to their swimmers in the pool make for an overwhelming noise attack to sensitive ears. It also looks like no one really knows what is going on but, strangely, they really do.

Very serious swim meet officials

There’s a host of volunteer swim meet officials lining the pool. These are folks, many of whom are festooned with headset communication devices, stop watches, clipboards and ultra-serious looks on their faces, are trained to watch each swimmer in each event. They keep a close eye out for swimmers who pull or kick into the wall during the backstroke; use a flutter, dolphin or scissors stroke or kick during the breaststroke; or push their arms forward under instead of over the water surface in the butterfly; or any other number of other possible infractions. If they spot a violation, swimmers are disqualified or “DQed.” For my first few meets, I though DQ had something to do with frozen custard. 

There are timers for each lane. There’s also a long table at one end of the pool where more officials scribble something down on stacks of papers and some poor soul charged with entering all this information onto a computer program sits in focused silence.In all this noise and chaos, it is a miracle when the swimmers know it is their turn to swim. Swimmers usually write the numbers of their events, heats and assigned swim lanes on their arms in ink after consulting with coaches at the beginning of the day. Young swimmers like to also write clever sayings on their backs like “eat my bubbles.”

After each race, results are posted on the scoreboard—for about 15 seconds before the next race begins. Swimmers usually have to ask the timers for their results or wait till they are posted on some hallway with slippery wet floors in the vicinity of the pool after a computer prints them all out. Shaving time off each race is the ultimate goal of each swimmer so they can improve their seed in the next meet in which they participate. Some swimmers emerge from the water gleeful. Others squirt tears of disappointment. Coaches console and congratulate as needed. Then it’s off to the waiting area for a couple hours until the next event.

The long wait as done in California

California style - long jacket and Uggs

After our granddaughter moved to California and resumed her swimming career there, I got a taste of how it’s done in warmer environments. All swim meets out there are held outside. Sometimes, during the meet I observed, the temperature was in the 40s for the swimmers’ morning warm ups. There isn’t any school cafeteria to kill off the hours of waiting so instead, parents haul in camping chairs, sleeping bags to lay on, coolers, backpacks full of towels, snacks, and electronic devices and erect tailgate canopy shelters to spend the day under. At the Far West event in Pleasanton, CA, just outside San Francisco, there were acres of canopies in the grass area outside the pool. There were food vendors and retail sales areas with a swimming focus and the traditional lack of parking. The chaos was the same, it was just outdoors so the noise wasn’t quite as disorienting. There seemed to be a bit more fashion involved in California. Between swimming events, young swimmers there seemed to prefer wearing full-length coat-like garments accentuated by those winter boots called Uggs.

If you want to see your swimmer at a California meet,
you have to work your way through this.

But, there were no bleachers and if you wanted to see your swimmer in action, you had to do your best to gaze through the noisy and constantly moving lines of coaches, officials, fellow observers and swimmers waiting for their next event.

Happy relay swimmers (our granddaughter far right)

Whether it’s Pittsburgh, California, or even Iowa or Maine, these swim meets are grueling tests of endurance for the swimmers and their coaches who practice almost every day, and their supporters who battle the chaotic conditions and hours of inactivity that surround the events. 

But, when your swimmer emerges from the blue water made choppy by the splashes and strokes of non-stop competition and beams with satisfaction over a performance that erased a half-second off her previous time, your frustration  over the boredom, inactivity, parking woes, and irritations over obstructed views melts away and is replaced with a glow of love and pride. That makes it worth the bedlam, boredom and challenge.

We Watch Forever

They had a party at our prison last night and they thought we couldn’t see.

This rotten stone hell where we walk in darkness forever is not as it was when I faced the hangman in 1932 or as it was when my companion in eternal misery met his end in the electric chair 27 years later. Both of us thought that death would free us from the horror and unforgiveable conditions of the West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville, West Virginia. We were wrong.

My name is Harry Powers. My companion inside these walls is Elmer Brunner.  I came to end in this madhouse of pain because I killed people, lots of people. I lured women, and sometimes their children, into my trap in a town called Quiet Dell with promises of romance and marriage. Instead, I dispatched them to the next world, confiscated their money and belongings and dumped their remains in shallow graves. Elmer was far less sophisticated. He murdered an old woman in a botched home burglary in Huntington. His biggest mistake was using a claw hammer to do the deed and leaving it behind, bloodied and marked with his fingerprints.

I remember the cloudy cool morning of March 18, 1932 when they marched me up the scaffold, draped a hood over my head, placed the noose around my neck and dropped me through a trap door. I thought it would end my travails. Instead, I was still there and watched helplessly as the guards brought me down, a doctor proclaimed me dead and my body was stuffed in a bag and hauled away for burial in a nearby unmarked grave. But, I remained and have remained stuck inside these huge stone walls of silence and pain ever since that moment when the rope did its worst to my earthly shell.

Elmer has a similar story to tell but his end came in 1959 in a rugged wooden chair that was connected to an electrical power source. They gave him a 1,600-volt surge of power that killed his brain and a second that fried the rest of his internal organs. He recalls it vividly and now walks these grounds at my side silently watching all that happens here.

Elmer and I are not the only tortured souls that walk these grounds. In all, 94 men were executed here and many more were slaughtered by fellow inmates, killed themselves or died from disease or at the hands of ruthless guards. Like us, many of them remain, silent, undetected and tortured by an eternal sentence to walk these grounds and watch the odd behavior of the living who use our tomb for entertainment and amusement.

When they erected these massive stone walls in what they called the gothic style in the 1870s they put in turrets and battlements that made the prison look like a castle. I guess they wanted people to think they were safe from the evil men entombed inside.

Over the years, we watched prisoners defeat internal locks and wander freely to torture, abuse and kill each other.

We watched them gamble, fight and rape in the “Sugar Shack,” the underground room where most people now fear to even enter.

We watched the state cram 2,000 prisoners into a prison built for half that number in the 1960s and all the suffering and violence that resulted.

We watched 15 prisoners escape in 1979 and kill an off duty state trooper on the street outside in the process.

We watched them riot in 1986, kill three of their own and get the state’s governor to come in to negotiate.

By 1995 they finally moved all the living prisoners out and we had little to watch.

We were astonished when they began to use these rotting old halls and cells to train cops and guards about how to handle prison riots after the living prisoners were moved out. They came in with all their modern weapons and tactics and practiced how to subdue make believe rioters who were hired to play the rolls of evil men.

More astonishing still to us was when they began to give children tours of our prison. Now, they use the sites of our misery as a Halloween joke and laugh with glee when they pretend to lock each other in our old wretched tiny cells.

Through all that, we watched—and, we watch still.

Last night, hundreds of people came in through the old North Gate where our earthy remains were once removed from the prison for burial. They came in for a massive alcohol infused party that they called a steak fry.

As moonlight reflected off razor wire atop fences inside the weathered stone walls, they rolled massive charcoal grills into our old prison yard.  People grilled thick juicy steaks by the glow of flashlights where men once traded cigarettes for simple comforts.

Odd loud music erupted from the big open building they built in the later years of the prison as a cafeteria and then modified to be a teaching facility and party room for hire. 

There were kegs of beer set up where men used to be fed slop on metal trays.

Intoxicated young people danced and sang with their arms in the air and their voices raised in song where men were once humiliated and abused.

And we watched.

The people we watch will never know the terror, fear, and death that once dominated these grounds. It is all locked away in little-studied public records and in the fading memories of the few men who survived this particular brand of hell. But it also survives among those of us who wander this site undetected, unremembered and unknown forever.

In the Tradition of "See Something, Say Something": Avoid this Movie

I fully realize that the 21^st Century bywords “see something say something” pertain to something quite more serious than movies. But, I was witness to something so horrendous over the weekend that I feel compelled to “say something” as a warning to unsuspecting Coen Brothers movies fans everywhere. Here it is: “Avoid at all costs the train wreck of a movie now playing in theaters called “Hail Caesar.”'

I am an unashamed fan of Joel and Ethan Coen’s writing and directorial work. “O Brother Where Art Thou?”; “Raising Arizona”; “Miller’s Crossing”; and the remake of “True Grit” are truly among my favorite movies of all times. Their writing credits for other major films like Angelina Jolie’s “Unbroken” and Steven Spielberg’s “Bridge of Spies” have also left an unforgettable mark on fine movie making. How then, can the mess of “Hail, Caesar!” be explained?

Ever since coming across the first trailer for the film months ago, I awaited the release date of the movie with excitement and anticipation. The previews and even a few early reviews of the film I discovered described another spectacular movie exercise in comedy along the lines of my favorite, “O Brother.” The cast was promising: George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Ralph Fiennes, Jonah Hill, Scarlett Johansson, Frances McDormand and Channing Tatum among others including another personal favorite in a bit role, Wayne Knight—Newman of the old Seinfeld show. The trailers showed edited glimpses of slapstick genius and described a plot line that never materialized in the actual movie.

Only two vaguely humorous things occurred in the 100 minutes that my family and I were held captive in our local theater for a viewing of “Caesar.” The first was a bit at the beginning in which Wayne Knight appears as one of two hapless kidnappers out to bag movie star Clooney. Knight remains a gifted physical comedian given something to work with. The Coens would have done well to keep him involved with the rest of the movie.  The second almost funny bit concerned a roundtable discussion involving a rabbi, a protestant preacher, a Catholic priest, and a Greek Orthodox priest assembled by a movie studio exec to discuss and approve a movie’s depiction of Jesus Christ. After six or seven minutes of banter reflecting each man’s refusal to accept the religious tenants of the others, it wrapped with one holy man telling the studio executive: “Eh. I’ve seen worse.”

Too bad I can't say the same about this mess. From that point on the laughs were over.

The trailers described the plot like this: Somebody kidnapped a 1950s era mega movie star played by Clooney right in the middle of the filming of a new studio epic called “Hail, Caesar!” and only Hollywood’s biggest starts can find him. We helpless movie goers thought we were in for a slapstick unleashing of 1950s stereotypical movie stars for a funny search for Clooney’s character. Forget it. It never happened. Instead we got boring communist intellectual discussions by a band of blacklisted writers, a feeble minded Clooney struggling to comprehend, and a sprinkling of Coen versions of Hollywood stars who never actually got involved in the hunt for the kidnapped actor (except for a stooge-like cowboy actor who stumbles in on the plot).

The Coens wasted Hill, Johansson and others with only passing relevance to the action in dead-end unfunny subplots. They seemed to just be making up parts for their pals including Coen spouse Frances McDormand. There is a bit in the middle with Channing Tatum dancing with sailors that was a surprising change of pace for the action star and wasn’t horrible to sit through. The film sank lower and lower from there.

I was also offended that the editing done for the trailers did not reflect what eventually happened in the movie. The trailers were funny. Executed in the full film, they lost their edge and didn’t even elicit a chuckle. As a result, the only things funny about “Caesar” appeared in the TV commercials. Just one more reason movie goers should save their money.

I know, I know, film critics out there have been quick to tell we unwashed and uncouth folks in the hinterland that this is a Hollywood spoof that uses the awfulness of the 1950s movies portrayed in “Hail, Caesar” to make a point that the studio system was breaking down and the cold war and the red scare were influencing the way movies were made and presented. Okay. Sure. That’s probably all true but for goodness sakes, don’t wrap this in the mantle of comedy, put the Coen brand on it to make us think it is going to be good, then torture us with 100 minutes of pure drivel that, if it doesn’t ruin that tested Coen brand, sure tarnished it.

Apparently, I wasn’t alone in looking forward to this film. It was projected to earn between $9-11 million in its opening weekend. It made $543,000 during its Thursday night previews and $4.3 million on its first day. It grossed $11.4 million in its entire opening weekend finished second behind “Kung Fu Panda 3.” I will be keeping a close watch to see if and how much earnings plunge after word of mouth sinks a knife into this Caesar’s chest like Brutus in a bad mood.

Sitting through this mess was almost enough to put me off going to movies for a while. I usually don’t write movie reviews. I may never write one again. And, I will be more than cautious the next time a Coen Brothers movie comes to town.  But this time, I saw something and I had to say something.

A bit of Downton Abby in Pittsburgh’s “Millionaires’ Row”

From the street after dark, it was an impressive 110-year-old, limestone, three-story rich man’s monstrosity of a structure that loomed up from Fifth Avenue in Pittsburgh’s Shadyside neighborhood with a distinct air of bygone elegance. The first floor windows revealed glimpses of a busy Saturday night inside. Cars pulled up out front and valets rushed to remove luggage for arriving guests and take responsibility for disposing of vehicles. We switched off the navigation assistance that helped us find the Mansions on Fifth Hotel and pulled into the driveway to begin a two-night stay over the Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday holiday. It was interesting, fun, thought-provoking, and so expensive that a repeat visit will be highly unlikely.

For 25 years of the early 20^th Century, the massive structure was the home of one family – the Willis McCook clan. McCook was a prototype for today’s corporate lawyer. He specialized in mergers and acquisitions and made a fortune in the booming Western Pennsylvania of the early 1900s. His most famous client was Henry Clay Frick, the union-busting, hard-charging, coal and coke company executive who partnered with steel magnate Andrew Carnegie and cracked heads in the Homestead Mill riots. After the Homestead debacle, Carnegie blamed Frick for the carnage (even though at the time he went along with Frick’s decisions) and the two became bitter enemies. As Frick’s lawyer, McCook was in the thick of it. But, that’s another story.

McCook and his wife, Mary, had 10 children and they all lived comfortably with a squad of servants and the family pooch in the big house he built in 1907 for $300,000. It had its own second floor chapel, a billiard room, library, nine bedrooms, third floor servants’ quarters, beamed ceilings, lots of dark rich wood paneling, fireplaces, engraved decorations, and impressive stained glass windows. Apparently, things were going so well that McCook built a smaller red brick mansion right next door for his eldest daughter, Bessie, as a wedding present. The main house became a focal point for social life on “millionaires’ row” as Fifth Avenue was known then. Formal dinners, parties and social events were all played out in the stately halls and the wide picturesque back terrace of the McCook Mansion.

Willis and Mary died in the 1920s and by 1939, the family’s fortunes went aground. The hulking house was eventually sold at a Sheriff’s sale for $28,000. The University of Pittsburgh had it for a time and used it to house university-affiliated military officers in training during WW II. Then another family bought it and it became a rooming house for Carnegie Mellon University artsy types. Legend has it that among the 500 or so CMU students who lived there over the next 50 years were actress Shirley Jones, actor/comedian/director Albert Brooks and the late actor George Peppard when they were all CMU students. A fire broke out on the third floor in 2004 that destroyed part of the roof and led to the structure being boarded up, abandoned and put up for sale.

Eventually, entrepreneurs Richard Pearson and his wife, Mary Del Brady, put together a financing package that allowed them to buy and renovate the McCook mansion and Bessie’s old house next door to create the Mansions on Fifth Hotel, which opened in 2010.

Cindy and I were not prepared for the mud when we pulled into the driveway of the mansion/hotel. The front and side lawn of the house must have once been covered with lush green grass with sophisticated landscaping. The need to accommodate the cars of hotel and dinner guests had taken its toll. It appeared as though some sort of gravel or other surface materials had once been scattered around the house to accommodate 21^st Century vehicles but it had long since worn away leaving messy shoe-splattering mud for patrons to navigate on their way toward the worn old mansion steps. Somewhere, Mary McCook cringed as we tracked pieces of the front driveway across the wood floors of the entranceway.

Upon entering the old home, we were struck by the beauty and craftsmanship of the fine old dark wood paneling and beams. The huge great room or grand hall that we entered from the front door was decorated with chairs and tables reflecting the early 1900s. There was a fireplace in the corner next to the entrance to the old billiard room that now serves as the facility’s bar room.  A gigantic staircase dominated the room and led guests to a landing where an impressive floor to ceiling stained glass window dominated the area. Off this grand hall were dining rooms that had once been the McCook’s library, sitting rooms and formal dining room.

In a nook to the right of the main entrance was a desk where we checked in and a “butler” (he looked remarkably like the valet) took charge of our luggage before showing us to our room. I had signed up for a room on the Hotel’s web site and, being unaware of the layout and arrangements, I must have unknowingly signed us up for a room in the mansion next door instead of the main house where we wanted to stay. Management was helpful and polite in explaining that while the main house was booked Saturday night, we could transfer over to a room on the third floor for Sunday night. Satisfied with the arrangement, we trudged back through the mud to our first room in Bessie’s red brick mansion next door.

The McCook-Reed Mansion as it was known, is a less dramatic smaller red brick home that was actually finished before the main house in 1906. It is ornate in its own way with plenty of dark wood accentuation on the inside, but far less intricate and expansive than old man McCook’s digs next door. We were assigned a room that Bessie had apparently kept as a first-floor parlor room. There was a fireplace, and indications of pocket doors on the outside wall of the room. Inside pocket door evidence was covered by the huge king size bed’s headboard. In addition to the bed, there was a flat screen television that didn’t work at first (we had to call for help), one chair with foot stool, one stand-alone wooden closet with drawers, one desk and one desk chair.

The whole house seemed dark and dusty. There were numerous cracks in the plaster walls of our room and beside one window leaned a tired-looking lone floral-covered ironing board. It seemed out of place perched against the wall there, but the just wasn’t any place else in the room to put it where it would be out of sight. The bathroom was great with modern tile floors, a big claw footed bathtub and a separate walk-in shower in addition to the other usual accommodations. After settling in, we headed out on foot to do some shopping on Shadyside’s main drag about five blocks away.

We had just returned to our room when there was a knock on the door, I thought it would be our “butler” delivering the sparkling wine and strawberries I ordered as part of our package. It was a “butler” but he brought an unwelcome message. The poor man had been sent by management to explain that the boiler in the McCook-Reed Mansion was on the fritz and there would be no hot water available for some time. He handed me a little slip of paper that basically said the same thing but it was signed “warm regards” by the management. He uncomfortably added that he wasn’t sure that the boiler would be repaired before morning.

We were contemplating a morning without a hot shower an hour later when another knock came at the door. This time it was another “butler” in muddy shoes carrying a silver bucket with our sparkling wine and two glasses. I was about to ask about the missing strawberries when he reached into his coat pocket, fished around a moment and came up with a cellophane container that encased a big slab of chocolate fudge.

“Oh and here,” he said handing me the container. “They also sent you this. Enjoy.”

He accepted my tip and trudged out. I opened the bottle and poured us ample glasses but our attention was soon diverted to what sounded like two men bickering in the basement. We couldn’t quite make out the words, just the tone. It was coming up through the furnace register in the corner of the room and we came to realize it must have been the experts summoned to do battle with Bessie’s old basement boiler in an effort to restore hot water to the house full of guests.

The workmen were apparently successful. There was hot water in the morning, but our time in Bessie’s house was over. We packed our bags for our move to the big house and went next door for breakfast.

“We are here for the buffet,” Cindy told the hostess when we stepped inside the great room.

“The what?” came the reply.

“Breakfast,” I added.

“Oh, you mean brunch,” she concluded. “Follow me. You will be in the library.”

She led us to what had been old man McCook’s library which was now configured into a fancy eating room. There were books behind the glass in the built-in shelves of the ornate room. It would have been a nice touch if those books had been publications from the period, but instead it was an eclectic collection of books from Jackie Collins, pop culture biographies, late 20^th century history books, and smattering of bargain book fiction. A serious server poured us coffee.

“The buffet is open,” she said. “Please help yourself.”

It was a truly grand buffet – or brunch. It was fresh, hot and elegant. A gentlemen prepared omelets to order in the corner next to the ornate fireplace. A big table in the center of the great hall decorated with extravagant floral arrangements held silver platters upon which servers placed bacon, sausage, polenta with maple syrup, French toast, fresh fruit, bagels, pastries, cheesecake and a variety of other top notch specially prepared offerings that kept most patrons coming back for seconds.

It was difficult to converse in the serving area because just steps away, a massive baby shower brunch celebration had begun and everyone attending was talking at full volume all at the same time. The noise bounced off the heavy dark wood walls and around the room making a racket like a small gymnasium full of cheerleaders who were all belting out a different cheer. We scampered back to our table in the corner of McCook’s old library and enjoyed our food, relishing the relative silence.

When the bill arrived, it indicated that we owed $82 for the buffet—or brunch! Fortunately, Cindy recognized that we had been charged the mere mortal off-the-street riff raff price for the buffet—or brunch. As guests, our cost for the mealwould be only $62.

We settled up and headed out for a day-long set of cold weather Pittsburgh activity. When we returned late that evening, all our bags had been dutifully moved to new room. A very friendly and efficient front desk person showed us to our new room that she explained had once been the third-floor servants’ quarters under the McCook regime. We climbed the steps past the impressive stained glass, under the thick wood beamed ceilings and over thick decorative Victorian era carpets to the second floor. Bright and interesting artwork covered the walls of the second floor and each had a price tag offering the renderings for sale. Then, we went through another fire door and scaled a second more narrow set of stairs that opened on a wide and spacious third floor.

Our host unlocked a room door and led us into a suite. By then, we were panting too hard to speak but managed to convey approval of our newer grander surroundings with vague hand signals. The first room had original built-in wood drawers and a huge hutch that held the fully operational flat screen television. There was a large couch and a love seat and a big two-part leather footstool/coffee table in front of the couch. Three steps located beside the built-in drawers took us down into a large bedroom that held a desk, wing-back chair and ottoman and a full-size desk and desk chair. The modern, up-to-date bathroom was off the bedroom.

Could this have been where Shirley Jones or George Peppard rested their heads after a full day of doing actor in training things over at CMU? Before that, was it where the McCook’s exhausted butler retired to read Butler and Yeats after a hard day of pampering a large spoiled family? We were certainly warm, snug and comfortable. I had earlier mused that the old joint could be haunted. I slept like a rock. Cindy slept with one eye open and on the lookout for orbs, lights, creeks, moans, groans or other ghostly apparitions—sorry Cindy.

We checked out in the morning, paid the bill (our move to the big house cost us an extra $347!), and set out for home. Mansions on Fifth was an interesting experience. There are few chances to get an accurate glimpse of how the captains of industry once lived in America and the folks who restored the property completed their task successfully with love and care. They are to be congratulated for their vision, patience and hard work. But, I can’t say that I would return. The expense, about $600 for two nights and another $62 buffet—or brunch—was pretty rich for our taste. 

The McCook-Reed Mansion part of the complex still needs a lot of work before the price tag can be justified. But, if you would like to stay in what could pass for the Pittsburgh version of Downton Abby, the main McCook Mansion, don’t mind the jolting cost, and don’t mind getting your feet muddy, I can recommend it. There are few opportunities out there to live even for a weekend like a 19^th Century Pittsburgh millionaire.