Back to the 50's--The Woods

     

Our Woods--1955
Mom's writing
Not as inviting in the winter ☃⛄

     When TV was in its infancy, no internet, cell phones, video games, kids had to make their own entertainment.  We were fortunate to have a magical playground right behind our house--The Woods.  

Ours at last!!--Mom's writing
Dad out front getting ready to plant some grass

     We moved into a housing plan called North Hills Estates in 1950 when I was only three.  Estates is somewhat of a misnomer, the residences were houses, not mansions.  The allure of the woods began when I was in elementary school.  Of course it was always behind our house, it simply was not a place I explored as a youngster.  

Steigerwaldt's back yard today
There was no fence in the 50's
Our path down would have been to the left of the small pine tree
Thank you Zillow

     Then came the day when my neighborhood bestie, Ruthie, and I made our way down the steep slopping hillside behind the Steigerwaldt house.  That became our pathway over the years into our enchanted playground.  At the bottom of the hill a creek trickled through.  Usually, it was not too full of water, unless we had a torrential downpour, although there were a few deep spots.  This area was a valley.  Our street, Washington Drive up the hill on one side and Harden Drive up on the other.  

     It never occurred to me that this area had any name other than the Woods.  When I was blogging about Washington Drive, and did a deep dive into the history of the area, I was surprised to find an old map with the plans for development of North Hills Estates.  Our house was just a lot.  The woods actually had a proper name, Thompson Drive Park.  The creek, nameless, was a feeder stream into Girtys Run at the corner of Rochester Road and Evergreen Heights Drive almost to Babcock Boulevard.

   The creek supplied an endless amount of play.  There were a few deep areas that Ruthie and I would step into and splash around to cool off in the summer.  Slowly flipping stones, looking for aquatic life provided thrills.  There was usually some form of crawfish that backed up when we uncovered them.  Frogs, salamanders, turtles and very small fish, probably minnows, hung out in the cool creek.  We would even visit the creek in winter and skate on the icy surface in our boots.  

     Day tripping in the woods, Ruthie and I would spend entire days down there.  We set up a camp downstream on the creek.  It was past a hill that we named violet hill.  In early spring the area was covered in lovely purple violets.  We picked baskets full, made small violet bouquets tied with ribbon and sold them to neighbors for a nickel.

     Our camp had a fireplace, a dirt ring enclosed by stones.  We would pack food and cart it down the hill and along the creek to our campsite.  Often we had a fire and made hot dogs and s'mores.  As far as I knew, no other neighborhood kids went as far as we did nor did they know of our camp.  So many summer days were spent at our private camp, eating, talking, playing board games and just exploring.  Two girls just having fun.

     The younger boys in the neighborhood, primarily my brother and his friends, had their area the opposite way along the creek--toward Thompson Drive.  Their hideouts were up on the hill.  When Ruthie and I would wander up that way, they would occasionally "bomb" us with pulled weeds, roots and dirt still attached.  Bombs away.......

     I can admit at now age seventy-five, we would sneak cigarettes down there.  Smoking at elementary school age!  All of our parents smoked, so lifting a couple out of their packs was not a problem.  Later in life, I learned that my brother was also doing this.  😀

     There was a time in 1985, when my sons were young, that we, along with my Dad went to Washington Drive to visit the Steigerwaldt's.  I took my kids down the, now over grown path, into the Woods.  We did not get very far.  The markers were long gone and frankly my boys were not interested.  

     There are few photos, only memories.

     I have lucked out finding current pictures of The Woods out on Zillow.  Primarily due to the fact that at the back of both the Steigerwaldt and "our" old property, decks have been built overlooking the woods.  Areas behind both properties have been cleared; however the depth of those beloved woods can be seen behind the fencing.

Additional Blogs on Flipside

745 Washington Drive Where My Childhood Memories Live

 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2022, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser



Back to the 50's--Hiland Presbyterian Church

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     As I have mentioned in the other Hiland Church blogs, that it was an integral part of our lives when we lived on Washington Drive (1951-1961).  Dad was on the Session and Mom was involved in a Circle and was an actor with with The Hiland Players.  We kids annually wanted the perfect attendance award.

     Located on a hillside along Perry Highway, the historic building was within walking distance of our house. I have vague memories as a young child going to Sunday School in the church building and that there were small rooms behind the sanctuary, and perhaps in the basement.  We were members when the Fellowship Hall was built.  All church school was moved there and with the huge hall, numerous events were hosted there.  

Dr. Harry William Pedicord

     

     Dr. Harry William Pedicord was at the helm the entire time we attended.  An energetic, charismatic man, church life was busy and all week long.  I have read an interesting article written in The Pittsburgh Post Gazette in 1961.  Dr. Pedicord was involved in theater when he attended Washington& Jefferson College.  He translated that love of theater into church life at Hiland.  

I think this was my last year in Bible School
1958--5th grader going into 6th in the fall

     Every summer there were two weeks of Bible School. At the start of every day, Dr. Pedicord would open school with a prayer and songs. I can still see him, now some 65 years ago, standing up front leading a rollicking song version of "The Books of the Bible." As an adult, I am certain that he made up the song and the lyrics. 😃 Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy.... I can still say them decades later.

    I attended from first through fifth grade.   Frankly, the religious foundation laid at Hiland, was the basis of me minoring in religion when I was in college.

     My mother was very involved in The Hiland Players.  I believe there may have been two performances annually.  Selling tickets to the shows somehow unhappily fell into my domain.  I absolutely hated going from door to door trying to sell those tickets.  The other church members who were actively involved in the shows became close friends of my parents.  Oddly, none of them had children.  They became the crowd that would gather at our house on Christmas Eve every year to eat, drink and set up our gifts.  I know they all have made Hiland Cemetery their final resting place.  

     Pancake Dinner.  Racially inappropriate, Aunt Jemima was there.....and she was my Sunday School teacher in black face.  When boomers harken back to the good old days, this is not a good old days picture and yet, sadly, it was so accepted.  I do not believe that any Black families lived in the area.  

     We moved to a new house in 1961 and became members of a new church.  The youth leader there was personally involved, with other ministers, on marches in the south.  It was in the new church, I moved into a more progressive thought process (a child of the 60's).  I wonder if Hiland also acknowledged the social and racial issues of the 60's and addressed them.  Both areas in the North Hills of Pittsburgh where I grew up were very white.  My high school was still not racially diverse when my youngest brother graduated in 1973.

     Twelfth Night is covered in another blog.  The burning of the Christmas trees beside the church building out back and then the celebration in Fellowship Hall.  Huge frosted spice cakes with twelve gold crosses baked inside.  The lucky finders kept the cross for a year, then returned it to be cleaned and baked into the next years cakes.  I would starve myself so I could eat cake.  The last year we attended Hiland, before our move, I finally got a cross.  To this day, spice cake is one of my favorites.  

   

My neighborhood friend and I at Crestview
Seriously, I wore a dress 😁

      I imagine my week at Camp Crestview was a springboard of Hiland Church.  My first camp experience and week away from home was at a Presbyterian Church camp in Slippery Rock, PA in 1957.  Ruthie and I attended for two years 1957 & 1958.  Pleasant memories.  We slept in cabins, each cabin had a daily duty i.e., kitchen duty, setting and cleaning tables in the mess hall, cleaning the pool in the morning, etc. Each cabin set up a campsite, which Ruthie and I certainly had experience 😃.  Evening vespers were held every night at the individual cabin campsites and at the end of the week, there was a large site for the final night vesper.  It was at camp I first had cooked cereal.  Although it was pretty lumpy and thick, I loved it and still is a favorite winter breakfast.  Also, it is my first remembered crush on a camp counselor. LOL    

     I was confirmed at Hiland.  Took the classes, passed the test and became a member.  I was now able to take part in the monthly communion church service and was a member.  

     At some point in time, my Father must have switched his church membership back to Hiland.  In 2004, my brothers and I spent Easter with Dad and Edna and we attended Easter Sunday service at Hiland.  It was soothing to be back in the sanctuary.  

     The beautiful stained glass windows, the white painted pews....nothing changed.      

     When I attend a church service, it is in a Presbyterian Church.  The hymns and liturgy take me back to the church of my youth.  It is very comforting and familiar.

     ********************

     My brother, Jeff, emailed me this last night.  I had never seen it before.  A gift to my parents from Dr. Pedicord.

  

Additional Hiland Presbyterian Church Blogs on Flipside

 Advent at Hiland Presbyterian Church--Twelfth Night

Junior Choir at Hiland

Hiland Presbyterian Church--Ken's Memories

On the Web

The Hiland Presbyterian Congregation of Ross Township 

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2022, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser



Back to the 50's--745 Washington Drive Where My Childhood Memories Live

     

Dad busy putting in the grass out front
Mom's writing in the photo album

Front door
Note the North Hills Dairy box.
Every so many days the milkman would deliver bottles of
milk and I would go out and take them out of the box.
Occasionally I would trick the milkman and tell him
Mom wanted a bottle of chocolate milk ;-)

     

     This was my childhood home.....my parent's first house.  We moved here in the fall of 1950.  I do not know how much influence my parents had in designing this house or if it was built and they purchased it.  It was a small three bedroom, one bath house.  There was a basement and a one car garage.  When my folks moved in, it was a family of three.  In the fall of 1951, Dad was called into service in the Korean Conflict and was stationed at Camp Carson, Colorado.  At the end of December, Mom closed up the house and she and I traveled by train out west to Camp Carson.  Ken was born on the Army base on February 12, 1952 and we lived there until after my fifth birthday on May 1.  Mom, Ken and I returned to Washington Drive so I could begin Kindergarten at Perrysville Elementary School near our home.  Dad returned for a brief time in the summer of 1952 and then left for Korea.

     As I mentioned in a previous blog, family times seems to bring back memories.  So many of mine revolve around this house and street.....my elementary and junior high school years.  I decided to do a little background search on the property.  Whatever did we do before the internet and it's development over the past decade.  I plugged in Perrysville, Pennsylvania and was easily able to find maps and also a few answers to some nagging questions that have been hanging around in my mind for, whew.....many decades ;-)

     Well, here we are.  1906.  Hiland Presbyterian Church, my childhood church, listed on the map and Perrysville, Pennsylvania with numerous businesses and farming lands.  My childhood home was located in a 1940 plan called North Hills Estates.  Believe me, the homes there were NOT estates, just comfortable family homes.  The land in the 1906 map belonged to John Thompson and is listed as Lot 30.  Checking another map that takes the view down into the borough south of Perrysville, West View, John Thompson's land stretched down to West View.  A goodly majority of the Thompson farm was sold by 1940 to developers and it became North Hills Estates.

     Of course I had to do a little research into the Thompson Family.  I was not able to determine who John was or who he "belonged" to.  There was an early John Thompson who settled in Ross Township.  Perrysville was located in Ross.  It appears from an article I found, that the older Thompson lived in what is today Shaler Township. John and his wife, Ellen Davis, were the parents of fourteen children who lived to maturity.  (Cushing, Thomas, A Genealogical and Biographical History of Allegheny County, Pennsylvania,Genealogical Publishing Com, Jun 1, 2009, page  744).  The land on Lot 30 could be additional land formerly owned and deeded by John Thompson the parent or to his son, John Thompson.  

     There is a Thompson Cemetery (listed on Find A Grave as Oak Grove Cemetery) in Shaler Township.  Ross Township was at one time part of Shaler.  Later in life I lived off Thompson Run Road....again, same Thompson family.  And when living in North Hills Estates, one had to drive or walk down Thompson Drive to get to our street.  Odd that as we moved to our second home, we still were close to the pioneer Thompson family land.

     Moving ahead to 1940 and a map showing the development of a new housing plan called North Hills Estates.  The 1906 John Thompson Farm was across Perry Highway from Hiland Presbyterian Church and then ran south along Perry Highway.  Thompson Drive, named in honor John Thompson, former owner of the land, divides North Hills Estates.  The red star marks the lot that my parents purchased and in 1940, no house had been built.  As I mentioned earlier, I am not certain if our house was already built and my parents bought it or if they had some input into its design.  

     Of great interest to me was finding that the woods behind our house actually had a name....Thompson Drive Park.  This woods was my entertainment for most of my elementary school years.  We just called it "the woods".  Who knew it had a proper name....lol    I know every kid who lived on Washington Drive spent countless hours playing in the woods and in the creek that cut through it.  A little additional research did not give me a name for that creek....yet ;-)  however, I did follow it to Girtys Run.  Our creek appears to be a feeder water that flowed into Ginty's Run and eventually through Millvale and into the Allegheny River.  

     Lot 192 became 745 Washington Drive.  A house we lived in from 1950 until my parents built a new house in McCandless Township which we moved into in 1961.  Several houses on my street were already completed in 1940.  The house beside our lot belonged to the Woodward Family when we moved in.  Dorthy Woodward operated a dance school in her basement for many years and I was a member of her school during my elementary school years.  The Arthur's home was also already standing in 1940.  The Arthur's purchased their house from a previous owner since Joe Arthur and my Dad were in their freshman year of college in 1940.  

   When I was researching this blog, I decided to google search the address of our Washington Drive address and was happily surprised to see it recently sold and there was a zillow listing with PHOTOS!  Certainly there has been some updating over the decades; however most of the interior features remain.

Current look at the living room with the
same railing on the steps.

1957 Standing on the steps
Christmas

     A Hughes classic photo.  The three of us seated in front of the fireplace in the living room for a Christmas photo in 1956.

Living room showing the fireplace today.

          Photos showing the front of house when we lived in it and more recently.  Shutters are a nice addition.  Still deciding about the cover over the front porch ;-)

     Talk about a walk down memory lane.

North Hills Civic Association:  North Hills Estates A Brief History and Profile.

Zillow Listing:

http://www.zillow.com/homedetails/745-Washington-Dr-Pittsburgh-PA-15229/11441236_zpid/

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2016, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser



Back to the 50's--Perrysville Library

     Typical of Hughes Family holidays, we delve back into our childhood and for me, that means Perrysville, Pennsylvania and our first house at 745 Washington Drive.  This Thanksgiving was no different and since Thursday, I have been spending any free time I can gather, google searching for information, maps, a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g I can find on several topics.  This blog concerns the Perrysville Library of the 1950's.  My childhood library.

     Slim pickins on this topic on line.  A little research....a lot of memory.

     I attended Perrysville Elementary School for Kindergarten through sixth grade. That would be 1952-1958.  My neighbor and childhood friend, Ruthie Arthur, and I walked to school every day, were brownies and girl scouts, took streetcar rides into Pittsburgh from West View, played in the woods behind our houses, walked to West View to watch movies at the Gerard Theater, and on and on for the entire time we lived a door away from each other on Washington Drive.

Red marks the spot
Perrysville Library
Perrysville, Pennsylvania
From a 1940 map

 
     One of the places that Ruthie and I frequented was the Perrysville Library.  It was a quick walk or bicycle ride from Perrysville Elementary School or again, about a mile walk or bike ride from home

     The library was a very small building, somewhat hidden away from the bustle of downtown Perrysville.  There was a short alley beside the Perrysville Fire Department and a quick turn to the left behind the fire department was the location of the library. Inside the walls were lined with shelves, floor to ceiling with books. There was a children's section and I seem to remember I enjoyed Nancy Drew mysteries and the Bobbsey Twins series.

     Oddly, one of the books I remember taking out was Stowaway from a Mushroom Planet.   When I googled it, I remembered the cover; however, none of the story seemed familiar.  

     I have tried to capture a picture of the unique pencil with an attached date stamp. The librarian used it to mark the lending cards.  However, I did manage to capture an old library card which would be tucked inside a pocket that was attached to either the front or back cover of every book in the library.  I seem to remember that I did not sign the card.  The librarian would stamp the date loaned and then use the pencil to write my name as the borrower.

Have no idea why this is sideways.  Odd ;-)

     I was so impressed with the entire inner workings of the Perrysville Library that I decided to have a library of my own in my bedroom.  I had a collection of books and made and attached paper pockets inside the front cover.  Then took more paper and cut out library cards.  I must have gone to the local 5&10 and purchased a date stamp and stamp pad.  Voila!  The Linda Hughes Lending Library was born.  

     I did have one success.  I located a newspaper article regarding the Perrysville Library that was published in a local newspaper in 1962.  By then, I was in high school and had moved away from my childhood home near Perrysville.  

     This little library was a magical place for an elementary school girl of the 50's.  And what a delightful memory.

I WOULD LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU. All comments are welcome; however, if they are inappropriate, they will not be published.    PLEASE post your e-mail in the comment section if you would like to network about a particular surname or topic. I will capture it for my use only and not include it when I publish your comment.

© 2016, copyright Linda Hughes Hiser