The Great Thanksgiving Snowstorm of 1950

 ". . .in those years around the sea-town corner now, out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve, or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six."

--from A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

 

                                         Pulling cousins Larry and Jean around on a sled, 1948.

Wherever you live, there's probably a weather event that stands out in your memory: a hailstorm, a tropical storm, a flash flood. For many who live in the northern states, it's a snowstorm that people remember. My family remembers the Halloween blizzard of 1991 in Minnesota. Three feet of snow fell overnight, clogging up the roads, trapping people in their homes. I remember slogging three blocks to the local grocery store on snowshoes. It took many days to clear the streets and alleys of Minneapolis of snow, and what was on the ground stayed until March.

 

                                    Downtown Minneapolis during the blizzard--Photo by NWS

The other snowstorm that is etched in my memory--but one that is a childhood memory--is the Thanksgiving weekend snowstorm of 1950, dubbed "The Great Appalachian Storm" by the National Weather Service: 

"One of the most damaging and meteorologically unique winter storms to strike the eastern United States occurred on Thanksgiving weekend 1950. After it was over, as much as 57 inches of snow blanketed the central Appalachians (with locally up to 62 inches at Coburn Creek, WV) and one of the most widespread and damaging wind events ever recorded over the Northeastern U.S. made the Great Appalachian Storm of 1950 the costliest storm on record up until that time. . . .A unique feature with this storm was the wild temperature gradient produced as the arctic airmass wrapped southeastward around the low, while warm air from the Atlantic was pulled northwestward. Case in point, Pittsburgh, PA received 30.5” of snow and recorded temperatures in the single digits while only 200 miles to the north, Buffalo, NY enjoyed temps in the 40s and recorded no snow at all."

Map of snowfall totals for the November 22-28, 1950 storm. Colored shading represents 10-inch increments. Image credit: From Northeast Snowstorms Vol. 2 , Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini.
 

                                    Streetcar stuck in snow, Pittsburgh, 1950. Photo by Walter Stein.

The storm began in the Carolinas and tracked northwesterly into the Ohio Valley, reaching Pittsburgh on the day after Thanksgiving. People knew it was a bad storm from news report from West Virginia and Kentucky. But we really had no idea how bad it was until it hit.

On Thanksgiving my parents and I walked the two blocks to my Aunt Estella's house for dinner. My cousin Grace, Estella's daughter, who was an adult at the time, remembers it as being a big feast, with an extra table set up to accommodate the guests. What I remember is what followed the next day. 

On Friday evening the snow began to fall. The wind howled all night long as the snow fell. The next day we woke up to an astounding sight: everything covered with a thick blanket of snow. We had snowstorms, when, for a day or so, we kids could sled down the James Street hill. Then the trucks would come and spread cinders and ashes, and that was the end of that. Usually, the snow would be melted in a few days.

But this storm was different. I recall looking out the front door--which was blocked with deep snow--and seeing white everywhere. As my dad began shoveling from the front door to the sidewalk, other neighbors emerged. People were in shock, wondering how they were going to get out of the neighborhood. The snow was way too deep to sled. The official Pittsburgh snowfall total was 30.5", still the record.

                                        People digging out cars on our block of James Street.

Pittsburgh and the river towns around it didn't have a lot of snow removal equipment. No snowblowers, no winter tires. If you had to get around when the roads were snow-covered, you put chains on the tires. I recall only two times that Dad had to do this. After this snowfall, however, no one was going anywhere. Stores were closed. The streetcars weren't running. The main arteries were clogged with snow. People couldn't get to work, or in some cases, get home from work. Estella's husband David couldn't get to his shift at the Homestead Works, only a mile down the hill from their home. 

 As neighbors on E. James Street were digging out Saturday afternoon, Dad got out his camera.

 Our house is the one just over my left shoulder

                                                          Sliding down the front walk

It would take days of shoveling and plowing for residents to be able to move around the city. Much to the delight of many children, schools were closed all the next week. We never got "snow days" in Munhall, so this was quite extraordinary. We lived only a block away from Woodlawn School, where my dad taught. He could get to school, but few other teachers could.

As in Dylan Thomas's A Child's Christmas in Wales, some Munhallers who were students at the time have vivid recollections of this storm, but it's in vignettes:

--Nancy: I was three and I remember the snow was taller than I was. Maybe I remember that because I’ve been told so, but I honestly feel like I remember looking up at the snow from the shoveled pathway.

--Joe: We had about three feet of snow at our home.  A few days later, we heard that a store was opened on Whitaker Way.  My father and I made the trek with me on a sled for a few essentials.

--Richard: Lived on 14th at that time. No cars or trucks coming up the hills. My dad loaded me and my sister on a sled. We then went down to 8th Avenue as there were delivery trucks traveling there. We got the bread butter milk and eggs . Me and my sister held on to bags as my dad toted us back up the hill.

Barbara: I was living in Whitaker, and Dutch Ackerman, our mayor provided families with milk and water. And we were sledding down Spur Road!

Wayne:  As I recall the street cars even stopped running. My cousin Donna and I were sled riding on West Street near 16th avenue!

Nadine: 

My cousin was born during that storm. Baby and Mom came home on a sled.

 

 

 

When I look at this photo, I'm reminded of what it felt like to wear woolen clothing in the winter. It was warm, but when it got wet, it got heavy and could chill you to the bone. When I came inside, I'd take off my coat, hat, and gloves and hang them by the radiator, hoping they'd dry off before I went out again.

 

As children, we weren't aware of how the storm affected millions of people from the Carolinas to New York to Vermont to Canada. All we knew is that it was the most exciting, magical, awe-inspiring weather event we had ever experienced. We'll never forget it.

 

Maxo Vanka and the Art of Social Justice

“Justice will not be served until those who are unaffected are as outraged as those who are." --Benjamin Franklin

                                                              Maxo Vanka, Self Portrait

When I was in Pittsburgh recently, I attended "Saints and Steelworkers," a talk at the Bost Building in Homestead by Gavin Moultin on the Catholic workers' movement in the early 20th century. Moultin focused on the design and construction of St. Paulinus Catholic Church in Clairton, done solely by its parishioners. It's a fascinating story of a priest and congregation who chose to build a church that represented the workers who worshiped there.

                         St. Paulinus Catholic Church, Clairton, PA--Photo by Gavin Moultin 

But during the presentation, my eyes were repeatedly drawn to a print of a painting that hung on the wall behind Moultin, the image of a figure in a gas mask holding a sword in one hand and the scales of justice weighted down with gold coins in the other.

                                                  

After the talk I asked one of the docents about this painting. She told me it was the work of Maxo Vanko, some of whose drawings and paintings were on exhibit at the Rivers of Steel Gallery in the Bost Building, "Gledaj! The Gaze of Maxo Vanka" "Gledaj! The Gaze of Maxo Vanka". She told me that I could see the painting itself, which is one of the murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church in Millvale, and that the church gave talks on the murals on Saturdays. So I hied myself to Millvale the next morning, a Saturday, to visit St. Nicholas and learn more about the Vanka murals.

Looking around the sanctuary, I was stunned by the anti-war, anti-capitalist imagery of the Vanka murals. I can think of no other church, Catholic or otherwise, that displays such anti-establishment imagery--for example: Mary attempting to stop carnage on the battlefield; a ghoulish "capitalist" sitting at a table laden with food, while a crippled worker lies on the floor in front; mothers weeping over a son fallen on the battlefield; Jesus's side being pierced by a soldier's bayonet on a battlefield.

 

                    "Mary on the Battlefield" 1941

                                                                 "The Capitalist" 1941

 

       "Croatian Mother Raises her Son for War" 1937

                        
                                           "Christ on the Battlefield" 1941

Maxo Vanka's biography is as interesting as his art. He was born in Croatia in 1889, an out-of-wedlock son of an Austrian nobleman. Like Hemingway, Vanka, a pacifist, served with a Red Cross unit in Belgium during WWI. By 1920, Vanka was working in Croatia as an art professor and artist who was involved in efforts to shape a new national identity based on folkloric and ethnic traditions. In 1931 he married Margaret Stettin, the daughter of a Jewish surgeon from New York City. By 1934 the threat from the Nazis was clear, and the Vankas emigrated to New York.

In 1937 Vanka was commissioned by Father Albert Zagar, another Croatian immigrant, to paint murals in St. Nicholas Croatian Catholic Church that would have meaning for the immigrant workers who were his parishioners. In 1941 Zagar brought back Vanka to do another set of murals. (Read the whole story here: "A Gift to America: Maxo Vanka and the Millvale Murals" ("A Gift to America: Maxo Vanka and the Millvale Murals").

When I visited the church, scaffolding obstructed the view of the figure in a gas mask, but I learned that it is titled "Injustice" (shown above), a companion piece to "Justice" on the opposite end of the wall. Vanka's murals are powerful, arresting images, so unlike the conventional representations of saints and Biblical figures shown in most church artwork. 

                                                "Justice"--Photo by Pawsburgh Photography
 

Remarkably, one mural includes a Methodist man (at left of the Christ figure), a patron of the church who employed many of the congregation.

                                                          "A Simple Family Meal" 1941

Murals depicting workers and work in industrial Pittsburgh proliferated during the Depression, so in that sense, the St. Nicholas murals are not unique. Supported by Federal grants, these murals were inspired by the radical labor culture of the city, for example, those in the atrium of the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oakland. But Vanka's murals are unique in that they are in a church, not in a public space like a museum or courthouse. Father Zagar should receive credit for being, as Vanka put it, the “only priest in 100,000 who [was] courageous enough to break with tradition, to have his church decorated with pictures of modern, social significance.”

Vanka's murals are not pretty, nor are they intended to be. They are striking, powerful images of the violence that the forces of greed wreak on common people.  

On Labor Day, I salute Maxo Vanka for his skill and Father Zagar for his vision in creating these extraordinary murals that capture so powerfully the immigrant worker experience.

                  "There is no wealth but life." --John Ruskin, Unto This Last 1860

 

             The Sanctuary of St. Nicholas Croatian Church--Photo by Pawsburgh Photography

[You can see all of Vanka's murals on the website "Save Maxo Vanka" at vankamurals.org.]

The Fourth of July: Carnegie Steelworkers' One Day Off

The world was watching 131 years ago as the management at Carnegie Steel in Homestead locked out their workers in response to a strike threat from unionized workers. On the Fourth of July in 1892 the mill was shut down. Andrew Carnegie, the mill owner, was off at his castle in Scotland. He left the managing of the lockout to Henry Clay Frick. Frick was more than up to the challenge.

The press swarmed into town. Townspeople had picnics and celebrated, but a pall hung over the town as everyone was on tenterhooks waiting to see what would happen next. Tensions increased until three days later, the dispute exploded into a day-long gun battle between workers and company-hired Pinkerton Guards. The Pinkertons, trapped on barges on the Monongahela River, inevitably had to surrender. It was one of the very few union-company conflicts of that period that ended in a worker victory.

                                  A Naval Salute on the Fourth, 1893 (Library of Congress)

The Fourth of July was an important holiday. For many years, it was the only day during the entire year that Carnegie Steel gave the workers off. Otherwise, they toiled seven days a week in round-the-clock shifts to keep the finished steel rolling off the production line. In 1890 the average worker received about $10 a week, just above the poverty line of $500 a year. It took the wages of nearly 4,000 steelworkers to match the earnings of Andrew Carnegie.

 

        The Pennsylvania Milita entering Homestead

The workers' victory was short-lived. On July 12th, the Pennsylvania Militia of the National Guard marched in and took over the mill. A few days later, the Homestead Works slowly began restoring production using replacement workers. 

It had been a pyrrhic victory for the workers. In his book "Steelworkers in America: The Nonunion Era," labor historian David Brody notes that the daily wages of the highly skilled workers at Homestead shrank by one-fifth between 1892 and 1907, while their work shifts increased from eight hours to 12 hours. 

When journalist Hamlin Garland visited Homestead in 1893, he found a dirty, depressed town with a haggard, overburdened work force: 

"A COLD, thin October rain was falling as I took the little ferry-boat and crossed the Monongahela River to see Homestead and its iron-mills. The town, infamously historic already, sprawled over the irregular hillside, circled by the cold gray river. On the flats close to the water's edge there severe masses of great sheds, out of which grim smoke-stacks rose with a desolate effect, like the black stumps of a burned forest of great trees. Above them dense clouds of sticky smoke rolled heavily away."

 "They wipe a man out here every little while," a worker told Garland. "Sometimes a chain breaks, and a ladle tips over, and the iron explodes.... Sometimes the slag falls on the workmen.... Of course, if everything is working all smooth and a man watches out, why, all right! But you take it after they've been on duty twelve hours without sleep, and running like hell, everybody tired and loggy, and it's a different story."

Workers watch as a foundry ladle prepares to pour molten iron into ingot molds at Carnegie Steel Company's Homestead Steel Works. (Homestead Steel Works, by B. L. H. Dabbs, 1893-1895)
                                                       *               *               *               *

William McQuade, a plate-mill worker, commented, "We stop only the time it takes to oil the engine," a stop of three to five minutes. "While they are oiling they eat, at least some of the boys, some of them; a great many of them in the mill do not carry anything to eat at all, because they haven't got time to eat."

Garland's guide through the Works was a former mill worker. Witness this exchange as they stopped to watch a worker:

" That looks like hard work," I said to one of them to whom my companion introduced me. He was   breathing hard from his work.

 " Hard ! I guess it's hard. I lost forty pounds the first three months I came into this business. It sweats the life out of a man. I often drink two buckets of water during twelve hours; the sweat drips through my sleeves, and runs down my legs and fills my shoes. "

 " But that isn't the worst of it," said my guide; " it's a dog's life. Now, those men work twelve hours, and sleep and eat out ten more. You can see a man don't have much time for anything else. You can't see your friends, or do anything but work. That's why I got out of it. I used to come home so exhausted, staggering like a man with a ' jag.' It ain't any place for a sick man--is it, Joe ? "

        ---from "Homestead and its Perilous Trades--Impressions of a Visit" Hamlin Garland, McClure's Magazine, June 1894.

If one is to judge by the traffic on U.S.roads, the fully loaded flights, and the number of "no vacancy" signs at resorts and campgrounds, Americans still enjoy the Independence Day break from their labors. Today, very few of the workers at The Waterfront shopping area built on the site of the Homestead Works even know that one of the largest steel mills in the world once stood there. Most of the restaurants and stores are open on the Fourth. If they know about the July 6th battle, it's likely because they learned it in school.

It's rather ironic that in the 1890s, the holiday that celebrates U.S. independence from Britain highlighted  the workers' slaving away at the mill on the other 364 days. For most of the workers, it probably was a day to catch some needed rest before their next shift started.

Have fun on the Fourth and enjoy your day off, America. It wasn't always like this.

"The Stars and Stripes Forever" John Philip Sousa, 1894

"The Stars and Stripes Forever" John Philip Sousa (1894) played by the U.S.. Navy Band