A great place to grow up
Our address was the corner of Water and Maple streets in East Liberty. Well, the mailing address was Dickerson Run, but everyone who lives there knows it’s East Liberty. Liberty for short. Even the elementary school I attended had the name East Liberty Elementary carved directly into the large sandstone above the entrance.
The house we lived in belonged to Mom’s parents. My grandfather, an engineer on the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad, bought that house for $1,500 around 1905. We still have the canceled check somewhere. My folks bought it for $4,500 50 years later.
Not long after I was born, my grandad had a debilitating stroke, and my mom, dad, brother, and I moved into the house. Mom was the youngest girl with the youngest kids. Consequently, it fell on her to take care of her dad.
The house’s exterior featured asbestos shingles, asbestos paper wrapped the heating pipes in the basement, and although my dad never followed any sports, he selected Pittsburgh black and gold asbestos tiles for the floor in our television room.
My grandparents had raised eight children in that three-bedroom house which is why there was another little house connected to our back porch, the wash house. That’s where my grandmother washed clothes in big copper washtubs with a washboard. In the spring, summer, and fall, she and my mother would hang the clothes outside with clothes poles and clothes pins. In the winter, they’d hang them in the wash house or basement to dry.
An outside hand pump was installed that went directly into our well, and an inside hand pump attached to our kitchen sink. Aside from that, there was no running water in the house until I was about 11. That meant we kept chamber pots under our beds and had a very fancy three-seater outhouse.
Granddad and then Dad put in a garden every year that covered practically half of the yard, and we got enough vegetables from there to eat all summer. Then Mom and Grandma would can the rest in Ball jars. That would provide us with garden vegetables, fruit, and jellies all fall, winter, and spring. Before we moved in, they had chickens in another little shed.
Our coal-fired furnace resembled the one in “The Christmas Story.” It was in the basement with a coal bin beside it, and, like Ralphie’s dad Mr. Parker, we would often hear our father swearing as he fought to get clinkers out of the grates. Each year, a load of coal would be dumped outside the cellar window, and my older brother and Dad would shovel that coal into the basement. And at least once a year the chimney would catch on fire, and we’d stand outside with the volunteer firemen waiting to see if the house would burn down.
The main chimney running through the television room often was the source of arguments to see who got to lay on the backless studio couch. That chimney heat felt great on your back. In the mornings, we’d sit on the floor registers as Dad stoked the fire.
White cheese cloth covered those registers, and Mom removed and washed it often to get the coal dust out. She also took our rugs outside and beat the dust out of them with rug beaters every spring. Then she and Grandma would clean our wallpaper with what looked like green Play-Doh.
Dad was an insurance salesman, and right before he died, he had the entire house remodeled and bought a new car. We found out later it was all covered by insurance.
Score: Dad 1, Insurance Companies 0.
Even though we lived in three rooms upstairs and shared the kitchen for years until my grandmother died, it was a great place to grow up, play, and to feel the love of that house and the village of East Liberty.
Nick Jacobs is a Windber resident.