Hangin' with Queen Ceres

West Virginia is the most festival-crazy place I have ever lived.  It seems that every weekend, there's some kind of local event going on--especially this time of year, when many towns have harvest festivals celebrating whatever the local crop is.

But my favorite, hands down, is the Preston County Buckwheat Festival, which has taken place in Kingwood, the Preston County seat, every fall since 1938.  Kingwood is about twenty miles east of Morgantown, straight up a narrow, twisty two-lane road.

Preston County takes this community event seriously:  the county schools are closed for the duration of the festival, since so many kids are participating in one way or another...showing livestock, preparing crops or baked goods for judging, or marching in one of the innumerable marching bands in the area.

Friday is always children's day at the Buckwheat Festival, and so the midway swarms with preteens and teens out of school for the day, scoping out the rides, games, food, and each other before the day's big event, the kids' parade.  

You have never seen a parade with so much royalty:  there's Queen Ceres and King Buckwheat, of course, but there are also innumerable princesses, junior princesses, and Little/Tiny/Baby Miss Valley District, plus visiting royalty from near and far.  No one, it seems, reaches adulthood in Preston County without having been some kind of festival princess or attendant.

King Buckwheat. After I took this photo, he blew me a kiss.  Swoon!

Queen Ceres

For me, the highlight is always the buckwheat pancake feed at the Kingwood VFD Hall.  It's a huge building, filled end-to-end with banquet tables, and for eight bucks you get a KVFD plate loaded with all the pancakes you can eat, two enormous pieces of homemade sausage, and a half pint carton of whole milk.  Butter and syrup are on the shared tables, and in the past, I've actually seen Queen Ceres herself--tiara and all--busing tables, pouring coffee refills, and bringing extra pancakes to diners. 

We don't get there every year--often the weather is chilly and rainy.  But today could not have been a more picture-perfect day to go:  72 degrees with bright, warm sunshine.  

That, and discovering that one of the prizewinning goats was named Katniss, made it a perfectly lovely day out.

Katniss is the goat on the other side of the fence--the one you can't
see very well.  Camera-shy, just like her namesake.

Merry Strip-mas!

It's been a long, long semester, but yesterday we managed a quick trip up to the Strip District in Pittsburgh to do some Christmas shopping.

The Strip is crowded and lively on any Saturday, but especially during the holiday season!  And in addition to the usual seasonal decor, there are some distinctly Pittsburgh-y touches.

Tables full of greenery

Tables full of Italian cookies

Ceiling full of piñatas at Reyna Foods

"Si se puede, Steelers" sign at the taco stand outside Reyna--where a mile-long line kept us from indulging. (Google Translate says this means "If they can, Steelers":  surely there's a better translation?)

Festive holiday-themed Terrible Towels...and of course, the ubiquitous breast-cancer pink Terrible Towel

"Andiamo, Steelers!"

Outside of the amazing Penn Mac.  We didn't even try to go to the deli side on this trip--people were packed in there like sardines

Huge lines waiting to check out at Penn Mac, where we got several kinds of pasta, three-grain risotto, dried canellini beans, shallots, and other goodies

"Ritorna presto":  we most certainly will.  There's always a great reason to come back to the Strip.

Pittsburgh Step Trek

Yes, I know:  long time no blog.  What can I tell you?  The semester started.

However, today we did get out of town to participate in an event I've been wanting to check out ever since we saw a story about it on Rick Sebak's WQED show "It's The Neighborhoods":  the Pittsburgh Step Trek, put on by the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association:  a 3.5 mile walk up and down the hills south of the Monongahela River that includes 1,815 of the public steps that run along and cut between the twisty roads of the neighborhood.

A chilly, rainy morning in Morgantown didn't bode well for an outdoor adventure--but by the time we got up to Pittsburgh early this afternoon, the sun was out, there was a lovely cool breeze, and it turned out to be a total Chamber-of-Commerce, photo-op kind of autumn day.

The walk was a challenge, to say the least...but totally worth it for the amazing views of downtown Pittsburgh and the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, and for the intangible "Pittsburghness" of the whole event, for lack of a better word.

First ascent:  these stairs up from South Side Park to Mission Street...

...past the now-closed Church of St. Josephat, built in 1916 to serve a largely Polish parish, as the language of the cornerstone and the war memorial attest.

Then up 143 steps for some spectacular views of downtown across a weirdly jungle-y landscape...

And then lots more steps and lots more spectacular views.

Cathedral of Learning at the U of Pittsburgh in the distance

One of the highlights of this year's tour was its path through an area called "The Hollow," home to the city's Slovak community in the early 20th century (according to the guide, the Pittsburgh area is "home to more Slovaks than any other area in the United States").

The heart of the community was this place, the Kollar Club, more formally known as "The John Kollar Slovak Literary and Library Society."  Named for a famous 19th-century Slovak poet, the club is still in operation, "preserving Slovak language and culture, and serving as a venue for live music."

Have I mentioned how much I love Pittsburgh?  It's places like these that make this city such a remarkable place.  Many older, rust-belt cities may have places that used to house to ethnic clubs; in Pittsburgh, they're alive and well and thriving.

Then up another long flight of steps from The Hollow to Mary Street...

...with a peek into a charming hidden garden on the way...

...and back down some more steps...

...and up and down and up and down some more, until it started to feel a little Bataan-Death-March-like, and we wondered how on earth the steel- and glass-workers who lived in these houses and walked  to work in the factories on the river ever made it back up the hill to get home after a long day of work.

And we wondered where they bought groceries, and drank; presumably, back in the day, there were little corner stores and bars at the end of every block.  Now everyone seems to have a car, and they probably drive down to one of the many, many bars along Carson Street.

After we finished, we pondered having a drink ourselves, but instead went to Rita's Custard, also on Carson Street.  We figured we'd already burned off the calories.

Such an amazing city.  Such a great day out.  And such an inspiring story behind the group that organizes the event, the South Side Slopes Neighborhood Association.

Apparently, the group started up fifteen years ago after three homes were destroyed in a fire because a standard city fire truck wasn't able to get through the neighborhood's narrow, winding streets to reach them.  (Some of the homes in the area can only be accessed by the steps--there's no street access to them at all!)  As the guide notes, "they gathered data and succeeded at making the case for a smaller fire truck with a tighter turning basis.  The city adopted the new design, and now a number of smaller, more-able fire trucks serve hillside neighborhoods throughout Pittsburgh."

That's what I call successful community organizing.

At the Antiques Roadshow in Pittsburgh

When we heard that PBS' Antiques Roadshow would be taping a series of episodes in Pittsburgh this summer, we knew we had to enter the lottery for tickets.

Who knew it was so hard to get them?  Tom and I entered, as did my mom, sister, and brother.  On the day the lottery winners were announced, I checked the website and discovered I didn't get them.  Via e-mail, my sister and brother confirmed that they hadn't, either.  Then we heard from Mom:  she was a winner!  So she and her chosen guest would each be allowed to take two items for appraisal.

There was some dithering about who would get to go with her.  Among the siblings, we decided that Tom was actually probably the best choice, since he's the real antiques guy in the family.  And he had a couple of things he'd been wanting to find out more about:  a Dürer print that had belonged to his great-aunt Esther Mary, and a pewter tea caddy engraved the the date 1774 that he'd picked up at an auction in May.

Tom was also the person who suggested what my mom might take--an "archive," of sorts, of the couple of years she spent working as a hostess on the C&O Railroad after she graduated from college, between 1948 and 1950.  She still had her uniform (well, actually, it's been on display at the C&O Railroad Museum in Hinton, WV for many years), and she also had a set of publicity photos that were taken on a promotional run to the Railroad Fair in Chicago in 1948, showing her in the uniform.  She also had one of the original coloring books that the hostesses handed out to kids on the train, and a couple of other documents.

As her second item, she took along two Victorian scrapbooks that my sister found in the attic of a house she lived in about thirty years ago in Columbus.  Apparently, the original owners of the house had been a pair of sisters who were Ziegfeld girls in the early 20th century.

Waiting in the entry hall for the general appraisal.
The guy in front of us brought this giant Buddha statue.

The Roadshow organizers have the whole process down to a science, and the whole thing ran as smooth as silk.  The tickets specified an arrival time (10:00, in our case), and these were staggered every hour so that there wasn't a crush of people all at once.

After waiting in the initial line, we were assigned to the general appraisal tables, where people looked at what we'd brought and gave us tickets for specific areas (in Mom's case, "Rugs & Textiles" for the C&O uniform and "Collectibles" for the scrapbooks; in my case, "Prints and Posters" for the Dürer and "Silver" for the tea caddy).

Then it was into the convention hall, where volunteers escorted us to our first lines and explained the process:  you get in the line for your ticketed area, and then wait when you get to the front of the line to have your ticket punched and to be taken to your appraisal table.

The setup was much like a pinwheel:  the appraisal tables were inside a sort of tent in the center of the hall, and the lines kind of snaked out of gaps in the tent.  What this meant was that you really couldn't see any of the set or the "celebrity" appraisers until you got inside the middle, although there was a smaller taping setup outside the pinwheel, too.  (See a photo on the show's website here for a visual.)

We were first escorted to the Textiles line to have mom's uniform appraised.  It seemed an odd choice, since she also had photos and other C&O memorabilia that accompanied it, and sure enough, the appraiser, Steven Porterfield, admired the suit and fawned over the photos but ultimately filled out a little referral card and sent us over to Collectibles.  (The beauty of the referral system is that you don't have to leave the inner sanctum and get back in line, but can go straight to the appraisal table.)

The guy there, Philip Weiss, was more interested in the uniform as a piece of railroadiana (yes, that's the real term), and said it'd be worth a lot more if it had a patch or something else that marked it more clearly as a C&O item.  Unfortunately, when the C&O cut the hostesses' jobs, mom was required to turn in her pins and patches...which she dutifully did, though after the appraisal she said she wished she hadn't been so ethical!  Weiss said the collection was probably worth somewhere in the $300 range to a railroad buff, but added that it was probably of more value as a piece of family history.

Publicity shot of Mom in her hostess garb, taken en route to the 1948 Railroad Fair in Chicago

Baby getting tired of posing; Mom looking nervous (as she said, "I didn't know from babies then!")

And honestly, that's what I found most astonishing about the whole experience--how gracious the appraisers were, even when they were telling you that your stuff was worthless, and even after they'd been being gracious for hours.  I have a feeling that's one of the requirements for being a successful Roadshow appraiser.  Another must be having a nose for a good narrative, because (as anyone who watches the show regularly knows), the thrill is as much about the story behind the items as it is about the items themselves.

For example, when I went through the silver line to get the tea caddy appraised, the appraiser, Reid Dunavant, asked how I'd come by it.  As I explained that Tom had bought it at an auction just a couple months ago, I felt like a total poser:  the tea caddy itself might be interesting enough, but my story was a real dog.  I mean, who cares about an item someone bought recently with the explicit idea that it might be worth something?

(Unless, of course, it's an 18th-century chair that you picked up for two bucks at a yard sale en route to the show, as in one infamous segment.)

The Dürer print, on the other hand, did have a good story:  purchased by Tom's great-aunt Esther Mary on a trip through Europe en route to Turkey in the 1930s, it spent a good decade or two stored in Tom's grandfather's barn until his parents found it and hung it on the wall.

A similar print had been appraised on the show several years ago for $40,000.  Since it's hard for a non-expert to tell whether it's an early printing or a modern one, it was the #1 item Tom wanted to get more information about.  And what more perfect marriage of great backstory and value if the piece turned out to be worth something?

Well, to make a long line story short, it wasn't.  When I got up to the appraisal table, I told the story to Nicholas Lowry*--known to viewers for his wild suits and cowboy boots--and he said, quite gallantly, "Ah.  One of my favorite images."

Then he whipped out his jeweler's loupe and looked at I-don't-know-what details in the print and told me, with great gentleness, "Well, it's not an original print.  But it's still a lovely decorative piece...worth fifteen, twenty dollars."

Yes, that's right:  I stood in line for two hours to find out that mouse-eaten thing was worth one Andrew Jackson at best.

Still, there were pluses to spending that much time in line.  I got to see a lot of other people's stuff, and hear more about how the show is made:  for example, they planned to shoot about 55 segments over the course of the day, around 50 of which will be aired on the three episodes from Pittsburgh next season.

And once inside the appraisal "big top," I got to see several segments being taped, or getting set up to tape.  A woman in line told me that she tried to talk to a guy who was seated on a makeshift set waiting to shoot the official TV appraisal of his item, and he waved her off, saying that he'd been forbidden to talk to anyone while he waited.  So mysterious!

Bottom line:  no one's quitting their day job, and no one's going to be on TV.  But there was a glimmer of fame to come out of it:  a photo of mom showed up in the "behind-the-scenes" slideshow for the Pittsburgh taping!

I'm not sure I'd go again, but if I did (and if you do), here are some tips:

• Don't take a print, poster, or painting unless you're ready for a long, long wait.  Bring a paperback or your Kindle if you're not the chatty type (no cell phones/texting are allowed in the appraisal hall).
• The shortest lines seemed to be for textiles, silver, Asian arts, and antiquities...but that might have just been when we were there.
• This should go without saying, but wear comfortable shoes.  I did see a few insane women in heels, presumably in anticipation of being on TV.
• Take snacks!  There was a concessions booth in the entry hall, but my understanding was that if you went back out there, you wouldn't be allowed back into the appraisal hall.  The woman in front of me in the prints and posters line hadn't even had breakfast and was about to pass out from hunger when the woman in front of her whipped a selection of stuff out of her purse:  a Hershey bar, a bag of Cheetos, and a package of cookies.  The hungry woman referred to her as "my angel" for the rest of our slow trip up the line.

Can't wait to see the actual shows when the new season begins.

*Interesting coincidences:  Lowry is a 1990 Cornell alum (Tom graduated in 1986), and has worked as an English teacher.