“Water Under the Bridge” is a column written by historian John F. Oyler. It appears weekly in the Bridgeville Area News, a TribTotal Media publication, as well as in a more expanded form on his blog.
About the Author: Aside from being Bridgeville’s foremost historian, Dr. John F. Oyler is also an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he teaches classes in civil engineering.
Water Under the Bridge, Copyright © 2016-2020
I have just finished the two weeks of the year that the sports fan in me enjoy the most – the running of the Iditarod. When my friends ask me why I am addicted to this event and not the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the NCAA basketball tournament, my reply is “Why isn’t everyone?” Indeed, the Iditarod has many unique characteristics. Anyone who loves dogs must be interested in seeing how these magnificent canine athletes perform in sub-zero weather over a week and a half in a race one thousand miles long. Anyone interested in the outdoors must…
In these days of real-time electronic communication, the role of the daily newspaper has nearly vanished. I fondly remember the excitement of receiving the Post Gazette every morning and the Sun Telegraph in the evening (I talked my parents into subscribing to the Tele because they carried “The Lone Ranger” comic strip). In addition, my father usually picked up a Pittsburgh Press and read it on the train on the way home from work. The Digital Information Age changed all that, and many newspapers ceased publication. When the Post Gazette made the partial (currently hard copies are delivered on Thursday and Sunday) transition to an online service, I maintained my…
February is behind us, the Vernal Equinox is just two weeks away, the daffodil bulbs have pushed their shoots up through the mulch in my front yard, and the Pirates are playing Spring Training games in Florida. Never a better time for a baseball story. My brother mentioned Andy Oyler and the shortest home run in baseball history in a recent weekly newsletter, prompting his daughter Becky to send him a copy of a children’s book entitled “Mudball” which is loosely based on that story. We have been aware of Andy Oyler for most of our lives, primarily because our…
In homage to Black History Month, the Bridgeville Area Historical Society welcomed retired Mt. Lebanon High School history teacher Pete DiNardo last Sunday to discuss “Underground Railroads – Myths and Realities”. Mr. DiNardo graduated from Georgetown University in 1987 with a major in History, then earned a Master’s in History at Pitt. He recently retired after 27 years of teaching at Mt. Lebanon High School. His knowledge of African-American history is impressive, as are his skills as a communicator. His primary message was that our conventional ideas about the Underground Railroad are probably incorrect. Rather than being a massive, well-conceived network…
On December 17, 1944, five hundred and fifty heavy bombers took off from the Foggia complex of air strips in Italy on a long-range mission to destroy Nazi oil refining facilities in the Odertal region of Silesia. Included in the armada were twelve planes of the 727th Bomb Squadron, including a B-24 Consolidated Liberator nicknamed “Sloppy but Safe”. Shortly after dropping their bombs, the two lead bombers of this squadron collided, with the propellor of one cutting off the tail of the other. The tail-less plane then plummeted to the ground. One crew member managed to parachute to safety; the other…
The cardinal rule for general interest columns is “Never discuss politics, religion or sex.” This week I will bend the rule a little by attempting to understand some of the economic aspects of our current political upheaval. The one thing about which my polarized friends at both extremes seem to agree is the necessity that we do something about the annual federal deficit and the ballooning national debt, neither of which makes sense to us micro-economists. We agree they are problems, but don’t understand them well enough to have rational solutions, so we leave that to the macro-economists. We micro-economists make…
Last week’s column on the Chartiers Valley School District jointure got me wondering about the numerous schools that existed in the Bridgeville area in the early years. The principle of free public education for children in Pennsylvania was not mandated in Pennsylvania until the State Legislature passed the “The Free School Act of 1834”. Prior to that, wealthy families hired tutors while the rest of the population relied on informal one-room schools staffed by itinerant teachers supported by the families whose children they taught. There is a report of such an operation, the Higbee School, close to the current location…
This month the Book Club is reading David Halberstam’s Summer of ’49, (subtitled “The Classic Chronicle of Baseball’s Most Magnificent Season”). My initial reaction to the selection was negative. “Nobody cares about baseball anymore. And certainly not in January”. Wrong in both cases. The gentlemen in the Book Club all were enthusiastic about the Pirates last summer, until the Buccos imploded. And, thinking about baseball in the dreary days of winter dates back a century to the days of the “Hotstove League”, when small town fans would gather at the pot-bellied stove in the village store and talk about seasons past…
Among my Christmas gifts this year was a “Bird Buddy” Smart Bird Feeder. My immediate reaction upon seeing the name on the box was the obvious “But what about the dumb birds?” Apparently, we have been feeding them for years, now it’s time to cater to the intelligentsia. At any rate, it has been a big hit so far, both with me and with my feathered clients. Feeding the birds has been a tradition with my family as far back as I can remember. When we lived on Lafayette Street, we had a feeder at the edge of the garden,…
During the summer of 1916 my father worked as part of a survey crew for the Cumberland Valley Railroad (CVRR). The CVRR began operation in 1837 and immediately became a success serving the prosperous Cumberland Valley. Initially linking Harrisburg and Chambersburg, it eventually extended south to Hagerstown, Maryland, and on to Winchester, Virginia, and the Shenandoah Valley. During the Civil War it was a popular target for the Rebels, with significant raids in 1862 and 1863, followed by the burning of Chambersburg by Rebel General John McAusland in 1864. That summer my father had just completed his Sophomore year at…