Did You Know?
Did you know that there are 36 bridges that cross the Monongahela River?
There are only five other rivers in the entire United States that have more bridges over them than the Monongahela.
The Mississippi River has the most (133) rivers; the Allegheny River, by the way, has 44 bridges.
I wonder, though, where the Mon ranked back in July of 1819, when plans were underway to build the bridge over it between Brownsville and West Brownsville.
According to the July 28, 1819 edition of the Gettysburg Republican Compiler, “The whole of the United States’ Road unfinished between Uniontown and Washington, has been contracted for by Messrs. J. Kincaid, James Beck, Gabriel Evans, John Kennedy and John Miller; the east side of the Monongahela to be made for 6,900 dollars per mile; and the west side for 6,400 dollars.”
According to the article, that left only $285,000 for the building of a bridge over the Mon.
The first bridge was made of wood, and it was completed in 1831. It was replaced by a truss bridge that was completed in 1914.
The Lane Bane Bridge was completed in 1960.
You can’t help but wonder how George Murphy felt when he spotted a monstrous rattlesnake near Wharton Township in August of 1913.
According to the Aug. 28, 1913 edition of the Uniontown Evening Genius, Murphy was “above the old furnace and watering his horse” when he came across the 58 inch-long reptile.
The article said Murphy put his whip around the snake’s body and he managed to grab the snake by the throat. He took it to town, where he killed it and had it skinned – perhaps (and this is my conjecture) provided himself with enough wallets to last him for a generation.
Here’s an unusual local “record” I discovered in the Feb. 29, 1908 edition of Uniontown’s Daily News Standard.
“The oldest person in the United States is the claim made for Mrs. Eliza Burchfield, who is 96 years old today (Saturday, Feb. 29), and is observing her 23rd birthday, and having been born Feb. 29, 1812, and having a birthday only once in four years and missing the year 1900 which was not a Leap Year,” said the front page story.
But there was more. “Mrs. Burchfield is a true Leap Year lady, having been born on the extra day of a Leap Year, married in a Leap Year, her husband died in a Leap Year, and she hopes to live until another Leap Year (1912) and round out a full century of existence and celebrate the centennial of birth,” it was reported.
This year, CBS sent out memos to all of the participants involved in the 55th Grammy Awards, asking them to dress with a certain degree of “modesty.”
My how things have changed.
“Not Only Do They Wear Garters, But They Insist On Showing Them,” was the in-your-face, front page headline newspaper readers saw when they opened their Feb. 8, 1921 editions of the Uniontown Daily News Standard.
“Even though, slightly, the glory of the Pittsburgh feminine knee is being dimmed,” said the lead paragraph.
Women’s knees, in the 1920s, were not only being exposed, they were being highlighted with all sorts of adornments.
Oh the humanity.
“Not content with possessing the loveliest knees in the world, the girls of Pittsburgh are now adorning them with various ornaments that are supposed to add to their pulchritude.” (Pulchritude: Noun, \p?l-kr?-t眉d,-ty眉d\ physical comeliness)
What followed was a dissertation about the new use of garters, and the apparent disappearance of corsets.
It was clearly established that garters had been used for a long time, but in year’s past, they’d covered knees, that were, in turn, covered by skirts that “literally swept the sidewalks.”
These garters were in full view, and, for some curious reason, they deserved front page attention.
Things, they may have changed. But that article, as well as that recent CBS memo have one thing in common. They’re both about what women wear, but they ignore (ignored) the kinds of clothes men wear.