Christmas in Homestead Past

A few days ago I got a phone call from former Munhall neighbor George Couvaris, who is now living in Florida. (He happens to have been born on Christmas Eve on a Greek island ).  We reminisced about old times on Wayne Road and Eighth Avenue, where George and his wife Carol had a restaurant.  Before he hung up, George said, "You know, I could not have chosen a better place as my new home than the Homestead area.  We had such a wonderful sense of community in those days.  Everyone on the Avenue knew everyone.  If someone needed help, it was there. We worked hard, but got satisfaction from it.  I think many people really miss that today."

Of course, that's true, not only of Homestead, but other towns and neighborhoods across North America. It got me thinking about my childhood Christmases in Homestead.  Some memories stand out:
     
         The decorations on Eighth Avenue--garlands strung across the street with lighted plastic bells.. Our cocker spaniel Buffy knocking over the tree not once, but twice, chasing the train around underneath. . .Candlelit Christmas Eve services at St. John's Lutheran Church, with a large creche surrounded by evergreens to one side of the altar. . .The bells in the numerous Homestead churches pealing together at midnight. . .My father driving around in a Santa Claus suit, creating a sensation among the kids who sighted him. . .Visits to all the aunts' and uncles' homes on the Day, each one short and sweet.

St. John's Lutheran in 1976 (photo by G. Edward Busch)

And then there were the memories of the older generations, the stories that were repeated each year: During the Depression, my mother ripping up a newspaper and giving it to her young brother Bernie as a "jigsaw puzzle."  He burst into tears. . .My Great-Grandfather Busch drilling holes in a broomstick and inserting twigs in it to make a tree. (One of the first artificial ones?) They were too poor to buy a real tree for their eleven children.

There are also images of those long-ago Christmases.  One I like to hang up in my house every year is the one taken of my grandfather, George Busch, on December 23, 1937 in the Homestead Machine Shop.  Grandpap is standing to one side, admiring the tree. American flags "fly" on the railing around the tree, while behind the tree a sign warns workers about safety concerns .  It suggests the pride the machinists, many of them immigrants, took in their work and in being Americans. 

     These stories and images are literally long ago and far away now.  It's easy to indulge in sentimentality about the "good old days", which for many involved backbreaking labor and a constant struggle to stay afloat financially.  Nevertheless, it's important to recall the good part of these times:  the joy in community--working, playing, dancing, and singing together.

May we all recapture some of the pleasure derived from simple gifts in these turbulent and alienating times. Let's join the angels in Luke, singing, "In terra pax hominibus, bonae voluntatis" ---"Peace on Earth and goodwill to all."


  

Some Things Never Change

Homestead Works Mill Gate, 1983. Photo by Trilby Busch

As a native of the steel town of Homestead, Pennsylvania, I've witnessed the decline and fall of the American steel industry.  I remember the smoky town of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, US Steel's flagship mill belching toxic fumes and raining grit onto its inhabitants. I remember my mother's family store, Katilius Furniture, and their customers, honest, hardworking millworkers and their families.

Franklin Elementary School, Munhall. Sixth grade class. 1955

Today, that huge three-mile long riverfront site is inhabited by a gigantic shopping mall, featuring national and international corporate stores and restaurants. Gone are Katilius Furniture, Levine's Hardware, the H&H Restaurant, and just about every other small, locally owned business (with the notable exception of Mantsch's Blue Bonnet Bakery). Many of the younger folk who work in the stores at the Waterfront have no idea that an enormous, sprawling mill once stood there, turning out beams, girders, slabs, and other finished steel products.

I became obsessed with the '92 Strike through my father's stories of his grandfather's death--and father's rise to become boss of the mill Machine Shop. In 1999, the year after my father's death, I began this fictional recreation of Homestead in 1892.  For many hours of many days I "lived" in Homestead Past, using my memory of the town and mill during my childhood to reproduce the town my Grandfather Busch knew.

Coincidentally, the week after I declared a polished draft of the book finished, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and his Tea Party cohorts began their work of dismantling collective bargaining rights for state workers.  Soon after, Tea Partiers in Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania (groan), and other states followed suit.

Some things never change.  Corporate greed always finds a way to reach into the pockets of the middle-class, be they white- or blue-collar workers. Sometimes it's done by wiring systems (like banking) to funnel profits their way; other times (as in Wisconsin) they buy elections to wire the legal and political systems.

Either way, the result is the same:  They win, we lose.