Memories of growing up in Steubenville

Apr 19, 2023

May 16, 2023

FAMILY TIME — Members of the Ulasiewicz family enjoy a moment with Santa Claus in 1958. The are, from left, Mark, Gwyn, Greg and Bo, author of this month's feature.-- Contributed

(Editor's note: The following remembrance was submitted by Alex "Bo" Ulasiewicz Jr., whose family helped to deliver the Herald-Star from their home at 1429 Belleview Ave. His mother, the late Tillie Ulasiewicz, served as the girls’ basketball and track coach from Catholic Central High School from 1973 through 1987, and is a member of the CCHS Sports Hall of Fame.)

From staff reports

The Steubenville Herald-Star newspaper ran a special about the time of the planned bridge demolition where local residents could submit their favorite story that had a connection to the Fort Steuben Bridge. The construction of this steel suspension bridge was completed in 1928. The explosive demolition was performed on Feb. 21, 2012. I think it is appropriate that I submit my story beyond the demolition and story submittal date because my father, Alex Ulasiewicz, could infinitely put up with any inconvenience in order not to have to pay for repair and replacement parts for anything.

Unfortunately, I did not see any of those stories. My favorites would have been about things that happened below the bridge, on the river. Like the time the Delta Queen Paddlewheel was scheduled to pass through our town probably in the early 1970s. Pop piled our family into the Buick Skylark to meet all the town's people as they parked their cars on the Ohio side of the river along state Route 7, just upstream of the Fort Steuben Bridge. There were cars and people as far as the eye could see waiting to experience a river transportation gem, from a previous time and place, coming from upstream after having left Pittsburgh heading to mystical New Orleans.

One of the stories that my father would tell has to do with crossing the Fort Steuben Bridge over the Ohio River from Steubenville into Weirton. It comes from a simpler and much more innocent time. We only heard this story years later.

First, the background. Anything mechanical that my father owned could rarely be operated by anyone other than him. For a foreign user, it always took a special talent and a fine attention to detail, that would have to be gleaned from the perspective of my father's eye, for the thing to operate.

Our Front Yard

We lived on Belleview Boulevard, the fourth house from the Ohio Street corner on the hillside of the street. The front yard had steep slopes that dropped down to three different-sized terraces. There were 36 steps up from the street level just to get to bottom of the eight steps leading up to the front porch. That's almost as many steps on Bright Angel Trail. I don't mean Angel Trail in Steubenville that led from the LaBelle hilltop to downtown Steubenville, but Bright Angel Trail that leads down the Grand Canyon. In Steubenville, everyone called the trail to downtown Steubenville the Angel Trail. But Pop always called it Bright Angel Trail. Only years later did I learn what Pop already knew — that Steubenville's Angel Trail was most likely named after the Grand Canyon's Bright Angel Trail. Nobody — especially the mailman — ever used the front steps and porch to visit. If they did, we knew they were definitely strangers. My father still required us to shovel those steps and the street-level sidewalk every time it snowed even though we knew no one would ever use them — especially during or after a snowstorm.

Lawn Mowing

Our front yard was too dangerous for kids to mow. We were warned that it would be easy to lose your footing and slip underneath the lawn mower housing and the blade would have disastrous consequences with feet — that is if we could ever get the lawn mower started. The choke and throttle had to be set at just the right point in order to have a chance of getting the mower to roar to life. Where that point was, I had no idea. I could only rely on trial and error — and luck — to get that machine running. Then, too, you couldn't pull the starting rope all the way out to its stopping point. There would be too much trepidation in having to report to Pop that the pull rope just separated from the flywheel and would need to be reattached.

In order to mow those steep slopes, Pop attached two I-bolts at the base of the mower. A long rope tied to the bolts enabled the mower to be lowered down the slopes, yanked back up then lowered again by rope to mow the next strip of grass. There was no requirement to hold the handle because there was no safety feature like today's automatic shut-off lever. This was way before any safety apparatus came on lawn mowers. As years passed and Pop's mowers bit the dust, Pop did lament how the manufacturers were against him. He needed a mower with the spark plug in the rear of the engine. Almost all lawn mowers nowadays have the spark plug in the front. While lowering a mower down the steep hill with a rope, the mowers with spark plugs in the front would sputter and die when oil would rush and pool in the front of the engine and drown out the spark.

Even though it was unsafe for us to mow our own lawn, as a neighborly favor it was OK to mow the elderly Italian Mr. Caranfa's yard just three doors down. His yard was almost as steep as ours but with more rose bushes and sunflowers to mow around. Plus, after the job was finished, Mr. Caranfa always asked, "You want sangwich?"

"Sangwich" was spicy Italian sausage on a hard roll with homemade Italian marinara sauce that was still simmering on the stove. The perks of this job were pretty tasty. When Pop would get home, he would ask, "How much did Mr. Caranfa pay you? Five dollars. That's way too much. Next week you cut his yard for free."

It's hard for a kid to say, "No" to five dollars and a sangwich. So next week Pop would ask again, "How much did Mr. Caranfa pay you?" Not always, but as much as I could, I used Mr. Caranfa's lawn mower. It was designed for the general public to operate.

Back Door Lock

As I said, no one uses the front door. Everyone comes through the alley and uses the back door. The small, back-porch has glass storm windows for the winter which are replaced with screen windows during spring cleaning. The bottom corner of the porch's west wall has a brick-size opening to the outdoors for water to drain while cleaning and hosing down the porch. A wooden brick, cut for the opening, keeps critters out.

The backdoor lock is mechanical and temperamental. You don't simply turn the key to lock or open it. The brass lock mechanism with two buttons was hand-chiseled into the door frame immediately below the bolt. Its operation was similar to old-fashioned buttoned light switches. Push one button to lock and the other button to unlock. To lock the door, in theory, you would push the lock button and close the door. If you didn't hear a click, the door did not lock.

Opening the lock and door was an altogether different story. For three of the five kids, it took a college education plus a great deal of life experience to be able to open the lock correctly. A skeleton key was hidden either on that wooden block on the back-porch floor or it was hidden in the rafters on the bottom section of the two-story detached garage. I believe the secret was to turn the key, lift up hard on the doorknob, pull the door to you, then away from you all at the same time. This didn't always work, and the skeleton key got a little bent which further hindered the opening operation. I am not sure how many years it took Mom, Tillie, to learn this trick but it took her many years of explaining and demonstrations for me to get the knack of it. Mark and Matt developed good common sense and could figure it out. We could have left the key in the keyhole, daring thieves to give it a try. They surely would have given up in utter frustration.

Garage Door

The barn-style doors on Pop's two-car garage rolled on an overhead steel bar. For some reason there were no stops at the end of the track. Luckily, only one section out of three usually slid off its runner if allowed to open too far. The whole door did not fall to the floor like the bedroom closet door on the Green Acres television show.

Television

Our black-and-white television had its own quirks. Matt, the youngest, was the designated remote channel changer. Matt had to get up and change the channel when directed, usually under protest. We only had five or six channels: 2 (KDKA-TV), 4 (WTAE-TV), 7 (WTRF-TV), 9 (WSTV-TV, now WTOV-TV), 11 (WIIC-TV, now WPXI-TV) and 13 (WQED-TV.) Of course, they are mostly odd-numbered stations with KDKA being one of the few stations east of the Mississippi River beginning with a K. The channel dial had to be positioned somewhere between 7 and 9 to get channel 9 reception. When the vertical hold quit holding and the picture started rolling, we each took turns stomping a foot on the floor to jolt the vertical hold into grabbing the picture again.

It would take an Act of Congress to call Eddie Ricci to come over and replace a tube and adjust the television. The old set-top rabbit ears were eventually replaced by a fancy rotating antenna secured to the chimney. Only Pop knew which direction to face the rotating antenna for the best reception for each channel. I am not sure how Pop knew this because he rarely watched television except once in a while to see the news. Pay for cable TV? We kids knew that would never happen. We didn't even think about it and didn't even miss not having cable television. Cable television wasn't part of our world.

Pop had an uncanny knack for knowing when his kids broke the six-foot rule of proximity to the television radiation zone. The radiation output threat was real to Pop. But we kids were mesmerized by the magic of television and were inexorably drawn to scoot-in close. Pop's sixth sense would kick-in. He knew when we were too close. He would walk into the TV room blocking our view to re-establish the six-foot rule.

Boat Motor

Pop's Johnson 20-horsepower motor on the runabout boat at Lake Austin was a very close relative to the lawn mower. We could pull each other water skiing around the lake for hours — or be trying to start the motor for the first time of the day. Greg pointed out Pop's amazing sixth sense in knowing when there was a problem with the boat or motor.

When would Pop come down to the island where the boat was docked? He’d step foot on the island at the very moment when the person trying to start the motor at the back of the boat would be standing there with starting rope in hand, the rope separated from the motor. Oh, it's too painful to remember.

Buick Skylark Ball Joint

Across the street from Mr. Caranfa's front yard there used to be a bowling alley with maybe eight or nine lanes. The bowling alley had young men who would rack and reset the pins and lastly send the ball down the slope of the ball return. There was no automatic scoring back then. You knew how and kept your own score and paid for your games with the score sheet that you returned to the attendant along with your rented shoes. This manual method of accounting allowed you to get a couple of practice balls in before the first game.

But the Brandt Motor Co. bought the bowling alley and turned it into an automobile repair garage. The dealership was across the alley and fronted the top of Market Street hill. Their flagship brand was Buick. Pop's Buick Skylark would never see the inside of a dealership's repair shop. From the kids’ perspective, we’d rather it stayed a bowling alley because a bowling alley had vastly more worth and social value than a car repair shop even if we had trouble handing over 35 cents per game and a quarter to rent shoes.

The Tri-State Area gets lots of snow and inclement weather. The municipalities have an impossible task trying to repair potholes on the roads and alleyways. So, the cars take a beating. The Buick Skylark's left front ball joint had gone bad. It would inevitably hit a pothole and start to wobble, wobble, wobble. Everyone in the car felt the wobble. Pop knew how to fix that. He would jerk the steering wheel hard to the left, then jerk it back hard to the right; no more wobble, at least until the next pothole.

We took many trips from Steubenville to Weirton across the Fort Steuben Bridge. On rare occasions, we would go to Millsop Community Center to swim or watch Pop play handball. Mostly, we went to Weirton to shop at Jim's Value City. Across from Jim's was Picway shoes.

"You can get two pair for $5. Picway!" was their jingle and was made for Pop's ears. The kids waited in the car while Mom and Pop shopped. Mom knew all our sizes, not just shoe sizes, so we didn't even get to go inside the shoe store when the time came that we needed shoes. While we waited, Mark came up with a game that only a bored kid could devise. It was a game we only played in Weirton. We would be on the lookout for passing cars and whenever we saw a Jeep Gladiator, Mark yelled out, "Jeep Gladiator, duck!" Quickly, we all ducked our heads below the windows so as not to be seen by the phantom menace. When the Jeep Gladiator was gone, we continued our lookout. It was a good game that kept us from killing one another in the car's confined space.

All space on any bridge is at a premium for most drivers. The suspension cables of the Fort Steuben Bridge magnified the tightness and closed-in feeling while crossing the river. The bridge decking was asphalt paving which can develop potholes even quicker than normal roadways.

As young adults we would recount family stories and sometimes muster up the courage to give Pop grief about his unwillingness to let go of a dollar to get something fixed. Only then would Pop reveal the rest of the story about our trips across the Fort Steuben Bridge. He would tell with gusto about the left front wheel of that Buick Skylark hitting a bridge pothole and starting to wobble. Pop would jerk the steering wheel hard to the left initiating the fix. In that instant Pop could see the eyes of the oncoming driver get really big and see the driver thinking, "What is this crazy guy doing?"

I’m sure the other driver saw Pop as the Grim Reaper. Just as suddenly, Pop would jerk the steering wheel hard back to the right, completing the fix. Pop's passengers had no idea of the drama that just happened as we made our way across the river and into West Virginia.

When one has a wife and five kids to support, there's no use paying for a car repair when you are trying to survive by saving money for a rainy day. I am sure the oncoming drivers wouldn't approve with Pop's solution for survival.

Conclusion

More than once, Pop told the story of the errant ball joint while crossing the Fort Steuben Bridge. I enjoyed hearing the way he told the story and it was one of my favorites. How I would love to hear him tell it again without my embellishments. When Pop told this story, it stood on its own. Writing this story brought about many other treasured memories of growing up in Steubenville, from my perspective, telling the story of the bad ball joint couldn't be fairly told without including a few side stories.

This writing was cobbled together with scraps of facts taken from my distant experiences. Some of these facts may be standing on shaky ground. Plus a few facts may have been added without research; permitted by literary license. I am trying to keep that veiled curtain from dropping over my memories. With one brother gone to eternity along with Mom and Pop, and less and less reliving my common past with siblings, it is getting more difficult to keep that curtain from closing. Indulge me once again while I live in our connected past.

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