The Valley

It was a quiet summer day; taking a break from our playing, we lay in a field and watched the clouds floating by.  We were fortunate, for near our house began an undeveloped area that we referred to as “the woods”.  Other undeveloped areas in our community had names, but we referred to our place as simply “the woods”.  On an early summer day it was a child’s delight; we could be Robin Hood, Tarzan, or any of a hundred characters.  We could play softball, or football in one of the clearings in the woods.  School had been out for less than a week and the joys of the long summer lay ahead.

Suddenly the air was pierced by shouting voices; women’s voices; mother’s voices.  It was Monday, washday, and in our state of play we had not heard the muffled boom that preceded these cries.  Down across the valley floor we could see a rust colored cloud rising from one of the furnaces of the Cary Furnace Works of U S Steel.  The conditions that resulted in such an event were to be revealed to me later in life, but at this age it meant one thing.  Run home as fast as you could.  The clothes drying in the back yard had to be taken from the line and brought into the house, all of the windows and doors had to be closed.  Then we would wait until the cloud had passed over.  The windows would be reopened, the clothes line wiped with a wet cloth, and the clothes rehung.  There was no need for instructions; from an early age you knew what was needed.  This was a minor hazard of living in the Monongahela Valley at that time.

The steel mills that lined the river banks on the valley floor were the dominant characteristic of the landscape.  They were even more.  These massive engines of American industry were the blessing and the curse of everyone in the valley.  They provided employment and they destroyed the environment.  People had an intuitive knowledge that living there was not good for one’s health; but the pay was good.  One thing was certain in the valley, those behemoths along the river bank would always be there.

The steel mills assaulted every sense.  Their presence dominated the valley regardless of your location or view, and the output of the smokestacks resulted in an atmosphere that was assaulting to the eyes and the nose.  Fresh air, when you were in an area that had it, was a jolt to your sense of smell.  One could be sleeping in the back seat of a car on a late night return home, and know that you had reached the valley by the smell of the air.  It was a combination of coal dust from home furnaces and the discharge from the mills.  There was an old joke that you couldn’t trust air you couldn’t see.

As children we would try to hold our breath as we rode on a bridge crossing the river.  The rivers were the sewers of the valley.  In them flowed the sewage from all the communities of the valley.  Along with this flowed the industrial pollution from the mills along the river bank.

The sounds from the mills were a 24 hour 7 day cacophony.  Underneath was the endless hum from electric motors, gas engines, steam engines, the rolling of trains, etc.  This was overlaid by the many bells and whistles, each with a meaning in its own locale, but together just another part of the chorus.  Finally there were the solo sounds; the blast when an open hearth furnace was tapped, the boom of the blast furnace which preceded the  rust colored cloud, and others.  We were unaware of most of these sounds, they were part of our environment.  Visitors would wonder how we could live, let alone sleep, in such a world.

You could feel the mills in the vibrations that accompanied the sounds.  If you happened to be riding near a mill as a crane moved the 300 ton output of an open hearth furnace, you could feel the earth tremble.

If you were outside for a long period of time, or when the rust colored cloud passed, it was better not to moisten your lips.  This would result in an attack on your sense of taste.  The valley left no sense unconfronted.

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You could not be in the valley and be unaware of the mills.  The total assault on your senses made it impossible to ignore them.  They formed the character of the valley, and of its people.  They stretched as far as one could see.  From our hillside overlooking the valley it was one continuous vista of smokestacks.*  South was the Carrie Furnace Works of U S Steel, the origination  point of our washday excitement.  Across the river was Munhall, on days when the wind was from the north it lay directly in the path of the rust cloud.  If the wind was from the south, Rankin would bear the brunt of the cloud and we would catch its final settlings.

Scanning eastward along the river bank you saw the structural steel plant of Bethlehem Steel; further east the Edgar Thompson Works of U S Steel.  Across the river further east was Duquesne Works of U S Steel, and beyond it the coke ovens of the Clairton Works of U S Steel.  Beyond that were others but their stacks were not visible to us.

Looking westward along the river bank, across the river was the sprawling Homestead Works of U S Steel, the infamous Homestead Works of union history, and from our viewpoint on the hillside, the largest of the mills on view.  Further to the west, around the bend in the river were the Hazelwood, South Side and Second Avenue mills, of Jones and Laughlin, together they comprised the Pittsburgh Works, which was the last of the large mills within the city limits of Pittsburgh.

Mixed in with all of the major facilities were other large complexes which existed to provide products to the steel mills; Mesta Machine, MacIntosh Hemphill, Dravo, etc.  Finally there were the smaller forges, machine shops, and specialty finishing mills, which existed to support or augment the large mills.  Each contributing its smokestack output, resulting in a continuous river of smoke.

This was my valley.  Where the noonday sky could be as dark as midnight, and street lights were often required for the entire day. Here a winter snow had to be enjoyed as it fell, for falling with it, or after it, was the never ending gray of that world.

This was my valley, where I would be the fourth, and last, generation of my family to go into those mills, to live in an environment dominated by the mills along the rivers.  Spanning those four generations the mills were constant and constantly changing.  The lives of those living in their shadow were constant and constantly changing.  That world, dominated by the massive mills that seemed to be eternal, would end; the lives of the mills would end.

The gray valley, with its polluted air and polluted rivers would see a rebirth.  Where oil soaked debris flowed, water skiers now play.  The noonday sky needs no man made lighting.  Yet, the people who lived in that world are present in their children and their children’s children.  The character of a people so forged lives on, even if the world that forged it is gone.

I see my valley now, still not totally comfortable with its rebirth.  The price of that environmental rebirth being the loss of the jobs the sprawling mills provided.  I think of my grandfather’s words during the long strike of 1959.  We stood on our hillside, and looking out towards Homestead, I commented on the clear view of the river winding from Homestead around the bend to Pittsburgh.  I noted that we could see the high level bridge that crossed the river from Pittsburgh to Homestead.  I had never seen that bridge from our hillside.  My grandfather looked at me and said, “when you see that bridge, people aren’t working”.  

I look at my valley now and it is hard to remember how gray it was.