A very welcome visit by my younger daughter Sara and my grandson Ian McCance has me wondering if indeed the isolation we have all experienced for the past many months will finally end. They live in Fort Collins, Colorado. Normally I see them three or four times a year; this time it has been a long eighteen months. During that time Ian has graduated from high school, enrolled at Colorado University at Boulder, and fought his way through two semesters of a hybrid education in his Freshman year.
Family is easily our highest priority. We spent the first two days of their visit with Beth, Mike, and Rachael before they left for a week’s vacation on Ocracoke Island. Ian and Rachael have a special bond, being the eldest of my grandchildren and have been best friends since they were tiny. In the same vein, we met my brother Joe and his wife Pauline for dinner at DeBlasio’s one evening and then went to their home for dessert. Lots of fun catching up on the activities of their four children and six grandchildren. Our kids’ and their kids’ ages interleaved; they all grew up together.
The ten days they were here went much too quickly. One day we went on a good old-fashioned road trip. Our ultimate destination was the Frank Lloyd Wright house, “Kentuck Knob”, near Farmington. En route we detoured once to drive through Brownsville so I could take my own pictures of the Monongahela Railroad Union Station. Its potential renovation was the project for my Senior Design team at Pitt.
We also were able to visit the Dunlap’s Creek Bridge, the oldest cast iron bridge in North America. I last saw it over forty years ago when I participated in a ceremony in which it was designated a National Civil Engineering Landmark. Soon to be two centuries old, it is still in use on the main street in downtown Brownsville.
Our first stop was for lunch at the Summit Inn, where Route 40 finally reaches the top of Chestnut Ridge. This has long been a favorite spot of mine; my wife and I came here on Memorial Day Weekend several times when we were first married. The view from the verandah looking northwest is spectacular. Locals claim you can see Pittsburgh on a clear day.
Kentuck Knob is a few miles on the other side of the ridge. Constructed in 1956, it was one of Wright’s last projects. He designed it for Mr. and Mrs. I. N. Hagan, owners of Hagan’s Ice Cream in nearby Uniontown, based on his “Usonian” design concept. Usonian houses are characterized by being single story dwellings without basement or garage, frequently L-shaped, with radiant-floor heating, clerestory windows, and flat roofs with cantilevered overhangs. They were designed to be constructed from native materials and frequently to be built into a hillside.
The Hagan House has a hexagonal core which contains the kitchen. A long, narrow living room leads from a massive fireplace on one face of the core. It has a built-in sofa with two shelves above it the full length of one wall. The opposite wall is floor-to-ceiling glass, with French doors leading to a covered terrace. The terrace extends indoors at the core, providing a dining area.
The other wing leads from another face of the core. It contains three bedrooms, each with its own bathroom. The walls are of local fieldstone, with imported red cypress for all the exposed woodwork. The shallow sloping roofs are covered with copper. Like most Frank Lloyd Wright houses, the furniture (except for the sofa) is exotic and totally impractical.
In many respects there is more to be learned about Wright’s design philosophy here than at Fallingwater. The house cost $96,000 in 1956, equivalent to about one million dollars today. Its 2000 square feet of area is about double that of his initial Usonian homes.
After a brief stop at Ohiopyle to “look at the falls”, we attempted to find another Wright site, Polymath Park near Acme. Arriving there too late for entry, we headed home via I-70 and I-79, past the massive construction zone at the Southern Beltway interchange. A big adventure for me – the farthest I have been from home since last summer.
Sara inherited her mother’s love of hockey and the Penguins; Ian is at an even higher level. We watched four playoff games and were satisfied to see the Pens come away with two wins. Ian selected a Number 35 Tristan Jarry Penguin jersey for his birthday present and was disappointed when it failed to bring good luck in the fourth game.
Ian is interested in theater arts, so we arranged to spend an evening at the Little Lake Theater and give him exposure to community theater. The show was “Shirley Valentine”, a well-acted one person play about a forty-eight year old housewife who leaves her boring husband to start a new life as a waitress in a restaurant in Greece. Having been a boring husband myself, I was not enamored with the plot. It is great to see the Little Lake come back for its seventy-third season; I remember going there in the 1960s.
Another highlight of their visit was my going shopping, at Barnes and Noble and at the Market District, for the first time in over a year. They also helped me move all of my wife’s house plants outside for the summer and to plant annuals on her grave in the cemetery. These are seemingly small chores which have become more difficult for me recently.
And now I am alone with my cat. Caputi has a special affection for Ian, spent most of the time sitting on his lap. Let’s hope their visit is indeed a harbinger of better things to come and that what we perceive as a light at the end of the tunnel is not the headlamp of an oncoming locomotive.
