Weddings and Anniversaries 2

Now I'm hoping that whatever was wrong with my computer is going to be OK.

Weddings and funerals evoke strong emotions and these emotions can't be categorized, I believe. At a funeral I went to several years ago I put my arms around one of my relatives and said, "I love you." Of course I do love him as a member of my family but this hadn't happened before. You can attribute this kind of thing to having looked at the death of a loved one right in the face.

Weddings bring this on also. I recently went to Pittsburgh for the wedding of somebody I love and respect immensely. While there I met up with a friend from my adolescence, someone I hadn't seen or talked to for more than 40 years. She was so happy to see me and I was happy, too. We had a glorious conversation through the loud talking at the reception. My new/old friend is married to a lawyer who was one of only three Jewish boys who attended Swissvale High School. Meeting Maury--the husband of my friend--brought forth some new thoughts and a question and an answer.

All of my family lived in Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh until 1963. Then, my father got a new job with more money. We lived in a little house on Shady Avenue Ext. and I think he probably wanted to move. Instead of moving within Squirrel Hill, however, he made the decision to buy a house in this strange little neighborhood called Swisshelm Park. If you can picture Forward Avenue intersecting with Beechwood Blvd and crossing there, Forward Avenue turns into Commercial Road. Then Commercial Road plunges down, down, down, winding crazily. There is one turn in it, before Swisshelm Park can be reached, that I always called Dead Man's Curve, from the Jan and Dean song. My undying thanks to the boys I dated who bravely took on this challenge in the Pittsburgh winters.

There was only one Jewish family living in this strange outpost. I always thought that people looked at us like we were another species, but I was lonely and a bit paranoid. My sister was going to Swisshelm Elementary School, that was certain. However, I begged and pleaded with my parents not to make me attend the Swissvale schools. To me that was equal to death. I already had a bunch of friends at Allderdice. My parents finally agreed but there was this one question; how was I going to get there? There was no transportation, no school buses. At the beginning of 8th grade I was able to get a ride to the top of Commercial Road with a kindly neighbor; however my mother was working furiously behind the scene, confronting the Pittsburgh Public School District and lobbying for a school bus to run between the two places before and after school. And she got it. I had to watch the time carefully because there was only one bus and if I missed it I was stuck. Thanks, Mom.

Later on I learned that the 61B bus--which ran along Forbes Avenue-- stopped in Swissvale and my mother made a deal with me; if I was forced to take the 61B, I could call her from the drugstore in Swissvale and she would come and get me after school there.

Why am I writing about bus schedules on my blog? It was a difficult arrangement, us living in Swisshelm Park, this decision having been made by my father. Why did he do this? What motivated him? So I met Maury at Harold Marcus' wedding and asked him that. And he said: Living in Squirrel Hill, tightly packed with Jewish people who are related to each other so intensely--it's not always pleasant for people who like to have some space. AHHHHHH. Now I knew. This was my father, exactly. And I'm glad it all happened the way it did because of course we didn't know this then, but my father died in 1968, so he got what he wanted, a bit of space between him and Squirrel Hill.