FLOOD AND FUN ON YOUR TV: The Apollo Bridge fled the scene at 4:25am on St. Patrick's Day, its partner-in-crime, the Kiski River. It was an ugly greeting and a rude awakening for Apollo, courtesy of the 1936 Flood. The Kiski's outburst leapt out of its banks and into the streets of Apollo. Businessmen in suits tried to clean up while other men navigated the "Miss Kiski" rowboat down Warren Avenue. Cars were slid around the area, tossed like so many toys. Whole houses were on their sides, as if someone had built them that way. To make matters worse, the next Saturday, the town still cleaning up from the flood, it snowed. But five years later, Apollo not only survived but also thrived, just in time for its 125th anniversary. Businessmen, now in shirts and ties, smiled for the camera and waved. Bands and Boy Scouts marched in parades. Fireworks signaled that, for that day at least, life went on. And William Pauley was there to catch it all--disaster and celebration--on 8mm film today preserved, courtesy of the Apollo Historical Society, on video you can buy.

FLOOD OVERWHELMS FIGHT: It was devastating--water was everywhere. The 1936 Flood had ballooned the Allegheny River into a mini-lake, and now the raging waters had carved a new channel around the dam at Braeburn and demolished the small town. The Federal Government sent over 500 men to try to close it, in hopes of preventing further damage, as well as saving the railroad tracks, which included a turntable for the railroad cars to turn around on. They valiantly fought to block the new stream with sandbags, keeping the water in the river. Railroad cars, weighed down with heavy loads, were placed on the railroad track to try to keep it from being twisted and ripped up. But the torrents of water that ravaged the Alle-Kiski Valley were too much. All efforts failed. The roaring rapids washed the ground away, and the tracks and loaded railcars simply disappeared, swallowed by the angry, rushing river. The railroad turntable was swept away, and the Braeburn steel mill suffered massive damage. Nine homes just vanished, along with the Post Office. The town's hotel survived, however, according to Irene Karrs in "Braeburn", a local history of the town. Driftwood stacks littered the inside of the building, which was filled with two feet of mud. But Karrs also notes that though it took months to rebuild, the entire town "came together" for the challenge, with some even taking in now-homeless neighbors.

TALES OF EARLY EDUCATION: According to Francis Harbison, author of "Flood Tides Along The Allegheny," the first teachers in the Freeport/Natrona area were not always reputable characters, but neither were the students. Long before public education, during the first 25 years of the 1800s, there were little requirements to be a teacher, and low pay was the reward. Some teachers in the area were excellent; others not so excellent. Harbison tells of one who may have been a heavy drinker subject to suffering the results the next day. One day during class, his snoring convinced one boy the teacher was sound asleep. The boy snuck up to the teacher (whose arm had fallen by his side with his hand open) and dropped a red-hot coal into his hand. What supposed to be a joke became no laughing matter but one of severe pain. Every boy in the school got a beating because the boy would not confess and no one would squeal on him.

EDUCATION TALES KEEP ON COMING: Another Natrona/Freeport area teacher around the early 1820s was given the "barring out" treatment by his class. Apparently, "barring out" was when the teacher was locked of the schoolhouse by barring the door. He tried climbing in a window, but the schoolboys beat him back with hickory rods (which no doubt had been used on them.) Finally he climbed on the roof, and blocked the chimney with his coat, causing smoke to back up and effectively "smoking out" the students, who obviously hadn't figured out they would have to one day come out and face the music! Yet another teacher sought to teach manners to the students all the time. If a kid passed him on the street and didn't bow and greet him properly, or use "Sir" and "Maam" when they should, he gave /them/ the rod--and not as a present!! Maybe the punishment explains why area students are so well behaved today…

THE LAST LAUGH OF BELL: This game at Forbes Field was for all the marbles: the 1943 WPIAL baseball championship. The Charleroi team was having a nice laugh at the expense of their opponent. The other high school team was too poor to have its own uniforms, so each player wore his own baseball uniform from his own hometown. Charleroi was playing against a team with uniforms emblazoned with Tinsmill, Brownstown, Salina and Truxall rather than the high school name. But Lewis Palmiscno scored, hit a triple, and pitched a shutout against Charleroi. A minor league ballplayer later in life, he helped give his Bell Township squad the last laugh. According to Bell Township's 150th Anniversary book, "Our History", the contest was won 10 to nothing by the Salina High School Baseball team.

WAR: It was after worst attack on America ever, and the war didn't seem to be going well. It was in the news everywhere. All around her in Leechburg, Marleen could see its' effects. People hung flags in their windows. Boys in her school, Leechburg High, were joining the military as soon as they turned 18. Her own brothers were now overseas fighting strange nations. Families often received the bad news that a loved one had died. One of Marleen's friends was told during school that her sister had lost her husband in the war. But she saw people in Leechburg rise up and meet the challenge, even when things got worse--and things did. Many more from Leechburg died. Soap, meat, gas, coffee and sugar were hard to find; if you did find them, you needed special ration coupons to buy them. People saved paper, metal and other things for collection drives for use in the war effort. Her own mom even saved cooking grease for the war effort, and others brought theirs to add. Marleen's days in high school, all four years, were filled with activity and sacrifice to help out the war effort: war bonds, savings stamps, knitting to make items for veteran's hospitals, and in her senior year of 1945, no senior trip, no senior dance. But not long after, the war was over. Six years later, Marleen met a woman with a tattooed i.d. number on her wrist. She'd been in the death camps in the enemy nation. The woman had lost her husband in the gas chambers and she'd been next to die. But the Allies had freed her camp first. Now in America, she was doing great. "Freedom had given her a new life," writes Marleen Shick Kolvachik, in her story about her World War Two experiences in Leechburg. You can read about it in the March-April 2004 issue of "The Lookout", the Leechburg Area Museum And Historical Society Newsletter.

THREE-TON ROCK 'N ROLL: It was a three-ton lump of coal--wait, that's no lump, that's a mountain! So unusual, it was put on display at America's Centennial celebration in Philadelphia in 1876. It had made its way there from the Pittsburgh Exposition, where a coal company called Doak and Kier had exhibited it. What was it doing there, and how did it get to Pittsburgh? According to Plum's history, "Where Wild Plum Trees Grew", a gentleman from that day named August Miller noted that a team of eight horses brought it to Pittsburgh from Plum! The coalminers of Doak and Kier had pushed it up on rollers, out of the depths of the earth at the Plum Creek coal mine near today's Universal Road in Unity.

PUT A LID ON IT!: Ever opened bottled water, jar, soft drink, or can with an aluminum cap? Next time you do, think New Ken's Alcoa Research Lab, where it all started. Formally called by the industry term, "closures", aluminum closures were first developed in the 1930s at the New Ken lab. The first big customer to use it was the maker of the "slowest ketchup in the west"…H.J. Heinz. They used it to make a nice seal on ketchup and sauce. The new "closure" was known as a "goldy" for the special gold color that was used, according to Alcoa Closure Systems International's website. The company not only still exists today but also sold over 68 billion closures around the world in 2003.

BUILDING ST. MATT'S: With the help of the first Arch-Abbot in America, Fr. Wimmer, clay was brought from a hill near Saltsburg called Chestnut Knoll and used to make bricks for a new building in Saltsburg. Wimmer, who founded Latrobe's St. Vincent Seminary, only oversaw the construction of two of those kinds of structures, according to the Spring 2000 issue of Canal Chronicles. This one in Saltsburg also included a unique aspect in its assembly: the nearby Tunnelton canal had huge carved rocks left after its completion, and they were used for creating the new project's foundation. Completed in 1847, it is now among the oldest churches in Saltsburg. Located at the corner of Cathedral Street and Washington Street, it is known as St. Matthew's Church.