AN ODE TO PITTSBURGH/ERS
Few, if any, can wax poetic over Pittsburgh like the great Dr. Sam Hazo, a former professor at Duquesne University, brilliant poet/essayist and humanitarian. Though The Immaculate Jagoffs of Pittsburgh –read more and/or buy at Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Immaculate-Jagoffs.../dp/B0BKYF6J7Y –is mostly-comic, the novel takes a turn for the serious when Dr. Mazzo (some may see a resemblance to Dr. Hazo) is asked why he never left the city for New York, Paris–doesn't he ever get bored by the 'burgh?
“The myth of Pittsburgh,” he said. “My family came from Lebanon–to Mt. Lebanon, where I was born, where I was raised, where I was educated. Except for the Army, I’ve never lived anywhere but here. But where? Where is this Pittsburgh I’ve heard about all my life? I know the Jewish delis–pastrami to die for–of Murray Avenue in Squirrel Hill. What do they have to do with the perogies of Bloomfield Tavern? And what does that have to do with the family of turkeys I see on my walks at Gifillan Farm in Upper St. Clair? And what do those turkeys have to do with the prisoners in orange jumpsuits I see smoking and sweeping in the courtyard of our baroque, perhaps operatic jail, not a pen’s throw from where we sit? And what do those prisoners have to do with the intense–almost terrifying, really–freedom I experience on Mt. Washington at night, looking down at the rhyming bridges and the impossible river arithmetic of 1 plus 1 equals 3? And what do those rivers have to do with the white shirt from my schoolboy days I keep in my attic–a white that will never again be white, memories of the steel factories’ black smoke–I say black, contextualizing memory–but back then it was invisible, it surrounded us, it was our air. What is dirt, when you never have clean? Factory: a place that makes facts. And what do those factories have to do with Roberto Clemente, complaining of every muscle in his body, stretching his neck in the on-deck circle until you could hear it crack–then cracking two doubles, stealing third and making a throw from the right-field corner you can’t see, the ball is going so fast–you see it leave his hand and then hear the gentle pop as it goes into the catcher’s mitt, like a bird returning to its nest? And what does our majestic–dare I say mythic?–Clemente have to do with magically modest Fred Rogers, and the intentionally plain Fred Rogers with the casually ornate Syria Mosque? And what do the Carnegie Museums, those lush, flourishing farmlands of history and culture–what do they have to do with the town of Carnegie, sprinkled with aluminum-covering-brick homes, like a confused librarian, hiding her beauty behind big glasses and baggy sweaters? And what does the town of Carnegie have to do with Frick Park, where–after hiking there for years and years–I found myself not a month ago absolutely, thoroughly lost–and perhaps would still be there, had a nine-point buck not suddenly shown itself to me; it winked at me–I swear this to you on my very soul–and I followed it for twenty minutes, until suddenly there was the parking lot…”
Mazzo opent iz eyez and staret dahn Scan, who shivert.
“So tell me: Where is this Pittsburgh of lore? If I can’t find it–how can I be bored with it?”