Fading Glory of Oil City, Part 1: Churches & Public Buildings

My hometown, Oil City. Take a good look at the skyline.  When you approach the town from afar, the first thing you see is St. Joe's double spires. They look just a little sinister.  Many Western Pennsylvania towns have a redbrick Catholic church presiding over them from the upper reaches of some hillside.  They're called "Mother Hens." New Bethlehem--where my other grandparents lived--had St. Charles presiding with only one tower, but in the same redbrick German style. 

Of course, the majority of the population in these old industrial towns was always Catholic--mostly Italian, Polish, Irish, and South-German.  Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were enticed to this area and fed like so much fodder to its factories and the industrial plants.  St. Joseph's Church was the original Catholic parish in Oil City, and it's located on the more working class North Side of town--which is where I'm from. 

Back in the 1970s, The Rolling Stone reported on 3 suicides in Oil City--all were young men who belonged to St. Joseph's Church, and all died within a month of each other. They all three were seeing the same therapist, too.  (This is an odd detail in the story because mental health therapy was not yet normalized in these industrial towns in the 70s--especially not for men.)  I'd hate to be the priest who had to do all three of those funerals. But back in those days, St. Joe's still had a convent attached to the church and probably had three or four priests...

And this?  This was St. Stephen's Catholic Church, on the wealthier Southside.  It got closed down in 2020, and all of its members were sent to St. Joe's.  Neither church has any parking at all, and St. Joe's is set back in a rundown residential neighborhood.  Sucks to be a Catholic in Oil City--or anyone living on one of the steep, narrow streets where all those Catholics park on Sundays.  25 years ago, a man in a long brown hooded robe, with a staff, asked me how to get to St. Stephen's.  He was making a pilgrimage to this now-abandoned church.  Why?

The Episcopalians have a tidy little Anglophilic church on the more-fashionable Southside, of course.  Their only weekly service is at 9:30 on Sundays, which makes me wonder if they're reduced to sharing a clergyperson with another parish... I've never been inside this building, but I think it would be worth a visit.  I like Episcopalianism--with its glorious Book of Common Prayer--but they will try to make you think that they're the only alternative for progressive Christians. 

This is 2nd Presbyterian Church, also on the Southside.  It was always a church for the wealthy, when I was young.  I know their current pastor and like him pretty well.  I mean, we're all inveterate dorks, you know that, right?

Prominent men in the history of the town and region--including the Seneca Chief Cornplanter.

Oil City's central post office is a pathetic little garage-like structure.  The old post office is now the Venango County Museum, pictured here.  It's got its own understated grandeur... I've never been inside!

And this?  This is the public library.  I went inside today to get a library card.  I had not been inside this building since I was about 15, when I decided that I wanted to remain a Christian but did not want to be an evangelical anymore.  I borrowed three books: one about Episcopalianism, one about Lutheranism, and one about Presbyterianism.  

Winter Scenes Along the Upper Allegheny

This is US-62, where it follows--and occasionally hugs--the Allegheny River, way up north. To think that I paddled this stretch of the river on Independence Day, when it was 2 degrees cooler than the surface of Venus.  

It could be the wintry setting for the novel Ethan Frome, or it might just be the Ice Planet of Hoth--from The Empire Strikes Back. I've had my eye on this abandoned farmhouse for years. It sits right on Route 62, just above the river. Sadly, it belongs to the US Forest Service, which is letting it fall into ruin, and it has No Trespassing signs clearly displayed. The barn that served this erstwhile farm sits across the road and very close to the river. The Forest Service seems to be using it as a bat sanctuary. I understand that the beleaguered Allegheny National Forest cannot be in the business of restoring historic buildings, but this is just such a waste. Can you imagine living in a place like this, overlooking the river and its wooded hills? 

Everything feels like it's made of snow and ice. Actually, as I recall, the village church figured prominently in Ethan Frome's tale...less so in the Star Wars Trilogy. 

My well froze up at the house up north. The friendly folks from the local well service came out and got it going again. They said that in the winter, you need to bury the opening in a mound of snow like an igloo--seen here--to keep the wind chill from reaching the warmer water below.

Here's the Allegheny River, as seen from the bridge in Tidioute. I've never seen it frozen solid like this. I was tempted to try my luck at walking out onto it, but memories of a recent backpacking trip to West Virginia prevented me. (Falling through the ice is a terrible thing.) Lake Erie is frozen solid, too, which I never would have believed. The downhill drive into Tidioute was a little harrowing on narrow, slippery roads.  

There's no shortage of abandoned farmhouses along the river. This one is visible from the bridge, and is located on the edge of Tidioute, where it sits above the river on US-62--just like Ethan Frome's house, above. I'm learning how hard it is to maintain an old house. My Pittsburgh house is currently being bat-proofed and cleansed of all guano for THOUSANDS of dollars. But truly, how could anyone have the heart to walk away from such beautiful places as these?

A Bird's Eye View

 

My younger daughter (20) is afraid of birds. She will run away if one lands near her or flies too close. It can be a weird and amusing phobia, especially now that birds are my new passion. But when I sent her this photo of a tufted titmouse at my birdfeeder in the North Country, she said, "This is not a terribly offensive bird. It has some whimsy and joy." I saw my first red-breasted nuthatches on this trip north. I wonder why you only see them in the winter? 

Most of my Christmas and birthday gifts this year were ornithological: bird books, a bird jigsaw puzzle, and of course this popular little gadget, "BirdBuddy," the voyeuristic birdfeeder that takes photos of visiting birds, and which you can even livestream to your phone.  I may never get any work done again. This is a birdfeeder that you have to charge like a cellphone. Who ever would have believed that we would see a day when you have to plug in your book (Kindles), your cigarettes (Vapes), and your birdfeeder...and when an unhinged lunatic in the White House is willing to go to war over Greenland and because he didn't get a Nobel Peace Prize?

Snowbound: Street Parking in Pittsburgh in the Snow

 

This is Highland Avenue in the Highland Park neighborhood of Pittsburgh. A snowy street scene, so what? Take a closer look, maybe click on the photo to enlarge it. People have saved their on-street parking spots with folding tables, one of which has been knocked on its side. But there's a little convertible sportscar buried in the closest snow-mound. It's buried deep, too, in heavy snow tainted with road salt.

I always think it would be nice to keep my country place up north and maybe have just a small condo in the city, probably here in the East End. But if you live in the city, you have to get off-street parking. The snowplow is like death itself; it is not impressed with your credentials. It does not discriminate, and all come to stand before it powerless in the end. The snowplow doesn't care if you drive a $50,000 sportscar or a motorized wheelbarrow; it buries all vehicles equally.  

Pittsburgh Theological Seminary Revisited

In January, 2002, I took the train out from New York to visit Pittsburgh Theological Seminary as a prospective student. I had already applied to Princeton Seminary and been turned down. It surprises most people to learn that Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, founded in 1794, is actually older than Princeton Seminary, though both institutions started out in log cabins. Our original campus was in the countryside all the way out by Aliquippa. (For an old post about that location, click on this LINK.) The current campus was built in the 1950s on the grounds of the old Lockhart estate, from which many of the beautiful trees remain, especially the grand copper beeches and gingkoes--which the Lockharts brought to Highland Park from China in the late 19th century. Mr. Rogers graduated from this school and was actually an ordained Presbyterian minister.

Much has changed here since that January day two and a half decades ago, when I first laid eyes on this place. But these snowy scenes are almost exactly as I found them on that day...at the so-called "Epiphany Event," which was an open house for people considering enrollment in a divinity school. Pictured here is the library, which is a first rate research facility with archeological specimens, scrolls,  and shards of Phoenician pottery, and ancient texts in a labyrinth of climate-controlled rooms in the basement...most of which are off limits without special permission. It also has stacks and stacks full of arcane journals in German and French that no one ever, ever touches, not to mention less academic magazines and books.

Today, business called me back to the old alma mater, though I felt strangely ill-at-ease there. I have wonderful memories of my three years in seminary, but revisiting the campus today did not cause me to feel nostalgic. I just wanted to do my thing and go. For that reason, I didn't get a lot of photos.

It's a beautiful atmosphere, very conducive to pondering the big questions of life, meaning, faith, death, mystery, wonder...all the stuff you do at divinity school, while learning ancient Hebrew and how to baptize a slippery baby without dropping it. (I've never lost a baby, but don't ask me about the divorce rate of the couples I've united in holy wedlock....)

In fact, I was supposed to return here for a Chatham Baroque concert last Saturday, but I lingered too long in the North Country and missed it. I see that they rearranged the otherwise attractive chapel for that concert and still haven't put it back together--leaving the altar and pulpit and baptismal font all pushed into corners, as if they didn't belong there...

This is a master's level institution; you need a bachelor's degree to enroll. I graduated in 2005 at the age of 35. It was common in those days (and may still be) for "second career" people to go to seminary. We had 350 students back then, and there are fewer than half that number today. In fact, a lot of rooms that once hummed with life and activity now sit silent, heated, and unused--like this place, which used to be the campus bookstore and convenience store, where they also sold clerical vestments and parish registers--the dorkiest general store of all time.

I don't worry about this school's fate; it's endowed to the tippy-top of its tallest spire, which bears a rooster, not a cross. It doesn't need many students to keep on doing what it's always done. This horrific mosaic is still standing right where it's always stood, a good example of late 20th century liberal Protestant art. There's a lot more to photograph--parlors with fireplaces, lecture halls, rotundas with marble floors. It's a cool place, and most people never get to see the inside. I'm glad they've started hosting Chatham Baroque; at least the public gets to see inside the chapel.

Winter Birds

The windchimes on the birdfeeder work great: no squirrels but plenty of birds. I love seeing their tiny footprints in the snow beneath the feeder. Worrying about the winter birds recalled to mind a song that I'd heard by Loreena McKennitt back in the 90s. Turns out it's a traditional Irish song:

Oh, Bonny Portmore, I am sorry to see

Such a woeful destruction of your ornament tree

For it stood on your shore for many's the long day

'Til the long boats from Antrim came to float it away

Oh, Bonny Portmore, you shine where you stand

And the more I think on you, the more I think long

If I had you now as I had once before

All the Lords in Old England would not purchase Portmore

All the birds in the forest they bitterly weep

Saying, "Where shall we shelter, where shall we sleep?"

For the Oak and the Ash, they are all cutten down

And the walls of Bonny Portmore are all down to the ground

An Icy Calm Before an Arctic Storm

I love winter. I really do. I mean, I love all the seasons, and winter has exceptional beauties. See how the bare trees stand out against gray skies, how the sun makes a faint appearance through the clouds and branches, casting a pallid light that seems to emanate from everywhere at once. See how the snowy mist among the dark tree trunks makes the world feel...alluring, mysterious, full of possibility. You could almost picture a moose emerging from the mists...or a band of Vikings.

What I don't like about winter is the fact that this ridiculous animal that I've been left to care for--this dog--refuses to go out in the cold, and when I pick it up and put it outside, it makes a great show of limping, but it won't wear the dog shoes I made for it or the dog coat I fashioned out of a Dollar General hoody. (I was not meant to be an animal keeper.) Also, I don't like the fact that, as a people, we've forgotten how to drive in the winter. Sensationalistic weather reporting scares people and makes them drive even worse. I don't recall many subzero days when I was a kid--in the 1970s and 80s. Those are a result of climate change--polar icecaps melting and releasing arctic air, as I understand it. But winters in those days were consistently cold, in the 20s from mid-December to mid-March. All in all, I like winter. If you go outdoors, you have the whole world to yourself. The wintry woods was so beautiful yesterday that I bundled up, took a bag-chair, and went outside to sit in -4 degrees...just looking at the skies, and the trees, and the snow.

Temps the next few days will be well below zero, and we might get a foot or two of snow. Everyone seems to think it's going to be catastrophic, and it would be if you were unhoused. I worry about the electrical grid; what happens if we lose electricity? I have no other means to heat the house. We tried to reopen one of the 8 fireplaces in our Pittsburgh house, but it was going to cost too much. The winter storm is supposed to hit tonight around 7pm, so alas, I need to hurry back to the city...back to a house where Jack Frost never paints ever-changing, monochromatic tableaux on the windows. As a kid, I truly never believed in Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. All it took was a December visit to a Five & Dime Santa Claus to convince me that the whole thing was a hoax. I must have been 5, and I remember it right well. (C'mon, a cotton ball beard?) But I also remember marveling and believing that Jack Frost had come in the night to make icy art on the windows. He captured my imagination in a way that the other mythical beings did not.