The One Word Answer

Whenever I meet someone and they find out I'm not from around here, the question inevitably comes up, "So, what brought you to Pittsburgh?"  Of course, the true and comprehensive answer to that question would keep them there for hours and is way more information than they want to know.  After all, they are trying to make polite conversation, not learn my life's secrets while standing in the grocery store checkout line. That being understood, the conundrum is to take the complicated reasoning why anyone makes a move like I did, uprooting my entire family from our home, all our friends and our jobs to a place none of us knew all that very much about really (trust me, what we see as tourists is a mere surface scratch to what any city is about), and boiling it down to a succinct yet sincere answer.  I've managed to do it.  I reply:

SPORTS

Many of you who are reading this migrated from my original blog and have heard this story ad nauseam.  I apologize to all of you in advance, and I'll try and keep it brief, but I was raised to be a football fan.  My father, before he joined the Army Air Corps (yes, that long ago), coached football to intermediate aged kids (think junior high).  He loved the sport, even though he would never coach it again, and it was an integral part of our lives.  My parents had season tickets to the Montana State University Bobcats, he watched television all Saturday and Sunday afternoons, they threw parties where friendly betting on games was an expected part of the festivities.  He didn't raise me to be a Steelers fan per se, even though my parents were both from Pennsylvania.  I came to that on my own. But he did desperately want me to feel that same passion, and it was hard not to fall in step.  That one stuck.  The hunting and fishing, which was the big reason they lived in Montana, did not.  Not for his lack of trying with those two things as well.

Not only did it stick, I took it to a whole other level.  I think, if I'm honest with myself, I might not have been such an obsessive Steelers fan if I hadn't lived in Texas.  I wore it like a badge of "otherness" that I was always proud of.  I have to confess, it was devilish fun walking down the ramps of the Astrodome after beating the Oilers, watching all those dejected faces of the home crowd while shouting "Here We Go Steelers, Here We Go!"  Beating the Cowboys was twice as euphoric.

My daughter is excited to show you the joys of personal hygiene articles being transported in clear bags

But I'm not one dimensional.  I love hockey too.  I came to it much later though.  Ironically, Montana when I was growing up was not a big hockey state.  Skiing is the winter sport that reigns there.  Maybe because they're both expensive sports and Montana is sparsely populated, so having to travel to find competition wasn't in the cards for most schools, already doing it for football and basketball, I don't know.  All I know is almost everyone skied.  Hardly anyone played hockey more than a pick up game on a frozen pond.  Once I got to Texas, forget about it, the game has no real traction there.  Try going to a Stars game.  I did a few times when the Pens were in town.  There were more of us in the stands than Dallas fans.  Which is too bad really.  It's such a beautiful arena.   So, I was a confessed band-wagoner until one night a few years ago when, already in Pittsburgh for a Steelers game, I went to a Pens game the next night.  I've told this story so very many times that I'll spare you the details once more, but thanks to both the Penguins and the legendary Martin Brodeur, who stopped everything the home team threw at him for a 5-0 shut out, his 104th, and caused my jaw to literally drop in awe, I jumped off the wagon and was fully invested in the band.

Ironically, this man played a huge part in my becoming an avid Penguins fan.  Thanks Marty!

But the boys in Black and Gold (tannish) keep me as one.

At any rate, the time came to decide what to do with the rest of my life.  I had always thought I'd go back home to Montana some day.  But Bozeman was out and had been for a long time.  Land prices, thanks to a lot of celebrities coming in and buying land in and around the area, are Big Sky high, but wages and job opportunities are not.  Missoula was on the radar as a next-best alternative.  College town, large enough to actually have a symphony, built right up against the mountains.  With modern technology, you can be any kind of sports fan any where these days.  Then one day I read an article about cities to avoid due to jobs lost.  Missoula was listed in the top five!  In the country. And it's not that big of a place to begin with.  So, that was the end of that.  If I moved there, I wouldn't be able to find work there.  Then it hit me!  Like a bullet.  Of course!  Pittsburgh.  Why watch sports on satellite or an iPad when I could be in the stands?  Maybe bump into a player at Walmart or Home Depot (as it happens, I've never done that - we don't exactly live in the same zip codes).

Now who wouldn't want to sit in the stands for a game like this?

And so, if you meet me and ask me what I'm doing here, that's the answer you'll get.  It's overly simplistic to be sure.  But it is true.

Greetings from the Sub-Burgh

I am celebrating my third anniversary of living in my quaint little post-war red brick house in the North Hills just outside of Pittsburgh, PA.  Ironically, I rolled into town from Texas just two days before the Steelers left for Texas to play the Packers in the Super Bowl.  I also drove east in the dead of winter after having lived in the south for all of my driving life.  Looking back on it, I have to wonder what madness took hold of me that I had to move here when I did.  I am quite sure the poor crew of three young movers who had to haul my mountain of stuff in for me in a driving snow storm wondered the same thing in less polite terms.  But it had actually been a long, complicated affair to plan a relocation of this magnitude.  I was nothing if not determined. Yet, really, I had no idea what I was getting myself, and later my family, into:  I had never lived here before.  I had visited many times.  I had loved the Steelers all my life and come to love the Penguins just as deeply.  But knowing and appreciating how Sidney Crosby controls the puck while flying down the ice does not mean you know anything about the city he plays for.  I would find that out.

But, three years on, here I am and here I shall remain, looking out on a scene of snow not unlike the one I saw the day I first pulled into my driveway.  I am one of the newcomers on the block.  There are a few of us, sadly in most cases replacing prior residents who were simply too old and frail to live on their own any longer.  But, they gave it their all, like the two ladies who live in little post war red brick homes next to me (not together, they both have their own home, mind you).  I always get mixed up which is which, but one of them has lived in her home 56 years now, and the other one 55.  Sometimes I marvel at that; they have both lived right where they live now for longer than I have been alive.  And, for the record, I am no spring chicken.  Those ladies are my idols.  I want to be just like them if I ever grow up, fiercely independent and refusing to let their age and aches and pains defeat them.  But that's Pittsburgh for you.  People here, I have found, are endowed with a steel spine, and it seems to be bolted firmly into the ground, rooting them here.  I am considered a bit of a novelty among many of the small circle of people I actually know because I was born in New Mexico, grew up in Montana, moved to Texas (much more on that subject to come), and then chose to move here.  For many people around here, just moving from one of the 91 little neighborhoods to another one is a Pretty Big Deal.  I hired a contractor last year who had never been to my township even though he had been born and raised in the city (if you ask the natives where they are from, by the way, they'll list the name of their particular neighborhood, not the larger city).  I liked him.  A lot.  He did great work, was super cheap, but clean and orderly and friendly.  But he was clearly not comfortable in my Irish Catholic suburban neighborhood.  He never came back.  He liked working where he knew the area and the people better.  It's one of the many things I've had to come to know and accept about this place.  And that's the journey I've been on the last three years...learning this new and unique world, which is so very different from where I've ever lived before.  I thought it might be fun to take you along with me on that ride, whether you are from here or have never had the pleasure of seeing this place I drove blindly to.

Make no mistake about it:  I love this city.  This is my home, both by virtue of my address, and by the space it occupies in my heart.  But, like any relationship, there is a learning curve and some bumps along the way.  Pittsburgh and me, well, we're no different.

What brought me here, you ask?  That's a long story.  I'll enjoy telling you about it.  I hope you enjoy reading it.

In closing, I want to dedicate this inaugural post to the person you'll come to know as My Lovely Philly Friend and her husband who just welcomed their first child, Future Pirates Fan, a few days ago in the middle of this arctic blast, which is much, much worse in Philadelphia.  If not for them, I'd probably still be getting lost on a regular basis.  They shared their own love for this wonderful place and really opened it up for me.  Many of the stories I will tell are stories I couldn't have experienced without their help.  Congratulations, and I can't wait to get my hands on that beautiful baby of yours!