Chilly scenes of yinzers

Greetings from Pittsburgh, the Switzerland of Pennsylvania--who knew?

Somehow, despite the promise of pleasure in doing so, I'm nonetheless managing to avoid discussing the elections and the departure of dear ol' Donald Rumsfeld and instead focusing my neurons on my current travels to Pittsburgh, Steel City, the gateway to, um, Ohio, where I am currently visiting as part of my ongoing World Tour 2006, Gainfulemploymentpalooza. It's two, two, two conferences in one this go 'round, so I'm here for a solid week of business, followed by a couple of days of pleasure, visiting my good friend Fouchat, who relocated here from Texas two years ago.

I'm not quite sure why I ever fuss about my job (and, trust me, I do--early and often) because I feel like most times I'm rarely there, instead attending some conference or meeting in another farflung, exotic locale--New Orleans, San Antonio, Frankfurt, Germany, and, well, Grantville, Pennsylvania, apparently the center of the known universe for all meetings by Pennsylvania government and non-profit agencies. Those of you who form part of the Grantville-noscenti will independently verify this fact, I'm sure.

So far, I'm enjoying Pittsburgh, at least the little I've been able to see. In part, this "lack of vision" is due to the fact that I've been in meetings from morning until evening for the last three days, with two more days to go. In part, however, the abundance of clouds and fog in this very hilly city are generally blocking the view of all there is to see and do--not only physically (it's intensely foggy at 8:30 am, do you know where your Duquesne Incline is?), but also psychologically.

Oddly, for me, a man with a blog, I find myself feeling a little timid at this conference, hesitant to venture too far afield, as if I step toward the banks of the Monongahela, the Allegheny, or the Ohio rivers, I'll fall down a hole into a strange Wonderland--or an abandoned smelter. I'm neither feeling depressed nor too introspective (hasn't this blog proven that point by now?), just a little shy, a little quieter than usual. And I can't help but think the shyness and timidity are due in part to the Lost Horizons feeling I get by being high in the Alleghenies during a very chilly, misty, and did I mention? rather dreary week.

Back east toward Harrisburg, this week it is apparently warmer and rainier with heavy thunderstorms, more like early fall and the transition from a warm and moist clime to a dry and cold one. But sometime on Sunday, soon after I passed through the Kittatinny Tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I crossed into a world where cold weather commands, an almost-winter replete with ghostly, naked trees on mountainsides, their dessicated skin cells--that is to say, their leaves--blowing across the roadway, and a disorienting, yet somehow protective, miasma of fog, clouds, mist, and drizzle enveloping my Subaru as it hurtles over the macadam toward Pittsburgh, like a teal-colored bullet against the backdrop of a sad, gray dueling ground. In other words, the full late November doldrums that we know and experience melancholia over in the Northeast has arrived, and at that moment, I found myself racing forward to greet it.

* * *

This Wizard of Oz in Reverse Effect (traveling from a world of color to one of black-and-white) continues upon arrival in Pittsburgh, as I travel up the Monongahela Incline one evening to Mount Washington, one of Pittsburgh's premier neighborhoods. In this era of gumstuck bus seats and graffitti-fitted subway cars, the Incline is quite a cool method of transportation. It consists of a three-compartment carriage, each compartment higher than the next, that through a system of cables, electricity, and gears travels at a 35-degree angle up Mount Washington. It sort of looks like a coal bin traveling in reverse, going up the face of a mountainside to its peak instead of down into the bowels of the earth. Which is somewhat telling as Mount Washington was once known as Coal Hill and served as a working-class neighborhood for German and other European immigrants who flocked to the city during its 19th-century industrial expansion.

But instead of thinking about smelting and schnitzel, I'm reminded more of something from a James Bond movie--On Her Majesty's Secret Service, if I recall correctly--where James (played by short-timer George Lazenby) travels to Blofeld's secret lair on the top of a jagged peak in the Swiss Alps in a funicular-styled railway car. (At least, that's how I recall it.)

The effect at the top of Mount Washington is similar, I would like to imagine. I gaze at a foggy, misty, even mystical Pittsburgh skyline from an observation deck that juts out over the cliff's edge. I even experience mild vertigo as I near the deck railing, the vantage point being so steep and severe.

As I walk around Mount W. in the growing dark and fog, I admire the architecture of the homes and apartment buildings, some of which remind me of Swiss chalets and European ski lodges, neither of which I've experienced firsthand, but which I've seen enough of on TV travelogs and, oh yeah, James Bond movies. Some of the apartment buildings and homes are perched cliffside, offering staggering, panoramic views of downtown. Other houses have steep rooflines and pale, cottagey facades with windowboxes underlining and overbrowing their eyes to the world. Wry looks, wrinkled faces. The buildings struggle to climb streets like paved over ski slopes, only at the peak to promptly descend with luge-like swiftness, rickety and out of control, to the bottom of the hill. When the roads are coated with snow, I can't imagine trying to stop quickly for a light or a car crossing the intersection, not at least without 4-wheel drive, snow tires, and (nevertheless) a bumper crunch somewhere along the way.

The whole "Gstaad in Pittsburgh" motif is overwrought perhaps, much like my writing in this post. To be honest, today I couldn't tell you whether those cottages with windowboxes actually exist on Mount Washington or if those are memories from my stay last October in Gelnhausen, Germany. Nevertheless, I ended the evening with some après-ski cheese fondue and a glass of Riesling at the Melting Pot at Station Square. All that was lacking from this cozy version of the Geneva Convention was a gentle snowfall, a toasty fire, and Tobias Grünenfelder by my side, feeding me s'mores.

* * *

And then the next night, TBS shows The Wizard of Oz on TV. Coinkydink? I think not. It just furthers my Swiss Miss(ter) Instant Cocoa fantasia on Pittsburgh, methinks.

* * *

Contributing to the stranger in a strange land experience, my friend Fouchat and I go for breakfast at a downhome diner in his neighborhood, an area that, despite the presence of Fouchat and his significant other, the Artist Formerly Known as, well, the Artist, and their lovely hand-crafted bungalow, remains decidedly, perhaps even defiantly, working class. This is factory worker country. If I were to send back my eggs to the kitchen, I'd half-expect a labor uprising and a few choruses of "The Internationale" sung by the wait staff. It's just that I can't figure out where these factories are anymore in the newly glassy and glam Pittsburgh.

The diner itself, though, is fine, not strange in the least; it's just the walk to the diner that is a little uncomfortable. On our way, we pass two people. The first, a woman, is bringing home groceries in a cart. Fouchat, being the friendliest New Yorker you could ever meet, greets her with a pleasant "good morning," a greeting that she ignores. I repeat the greeting, but still nothing, not a flinch, not a tick, not a glance in our direction or a clutching of the purse. Bupkus--I figure this lady is either Botoxed or flatlining. "Maybe she forgot to turn on her hearing aid?" Fouchat offers when she is out of earshot.

The second, a man seemingly without a purpose or any contemporary fashion sense, reacts similarly to Fouchat's friendliness. There's a brief flicker of eye movement, but his face remains passive, his lips as pursed as the clutch on the woman's handbag.

This is odd to me. Heretofore, I've found Pittsburgh fairly friendly. Fouchat and I were in the Strip District the other day (it's not what you think; it's full of food glorious food--delis, bakeries, coffee and tea traders, etc.--rather than that other delectable consumible, cheap sex) and were greeted warmly and chumily by biscotti sellers, espresso makers, fudge retailers, pasta providers, and more. Granted, we were buying, but the merchants obviously enjoyed their work and were happy to offer samples, answer questions, and joke around with us. Everyone had a good sense of play, which, to me, is practically all that separates us from the savages. That and San Pellegrino Chinotto sodas.

So what gives with the blue collar blues back in Fouchat's township? Are we invisible? Are we trees falling in the woods and not making a sound? It is another foggy and misty morning in the 'Burgh, so perhaps we've landed in Nicole Kidman country in The Others, i.e., we see dead people walking around, who are unable to tell us that perhaps . . . oh, go rent the movie.

Walking down the street, Fouchat and I are hard to miss, representing a veritable Queer Mod Squad--one black, one white, one bald, with me offering the twofer deal. How can they not see us?

And therein may lie the rub.

* * *

The Mysteries of Pittsburgh are enhanced by the "yinzer" dialect, practically a language (Romansh, anyone?) unto itself. I could elaborate but as you can see from various Wikipedia entries, others have done it before me and to a more exacting and informative degree.

For most of the week, though, I feel like I'm surrounded by a flock of rather loud, somewhat excited ducks quacking, such is the sound of the Pittsburgh accent to my ears. (Editor's note: Snappymack, you native of the 'Burgh 'burbs, for the record, you never sound like this to me.) But these are ducks that are anthropomorphic, taking on human form. They go to work, ride the "T," cheer on the "Stillers" (Ben and Jerry? No, the football team, silly!), and aim for a coronary with the delicious sausage, provolone, french fry, and coleslaw sandwiches offered up at Primanti Brothers, with three locations to serve you, hopefully all of them near hospitals. (Sorry for the weird pic; I did the best I could with what was offered copyright-free on the Wiki.)

Human, duck, whatever, all that quacking kind of blows the Swiss theme I've got going on in my head. Even the sound of cowbells, yodeling, and that horn from the Ricola commercials on the soundtrack to a scene of mountain lasses in dirndl skirts and lads in lederhosen couldn't rescue my delusions of Heidi from Revenge of the Duck People.

Still (and I mean "still," not "steel," which is how they pronounce "steel" in Pittsburghese), the fantasy of living under Swiss Confederation in Western PA may be gone, but the hope of a sassier, more satisfying life in Pittsburgh lives on.

Go Stillers! Go West! Go me . . . back to Pittsburgh, first chance I get!