SQUIRREL HILL

Squirrel Hill

Squirrel Hill. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Pictured above is the infamous "blue slide" from Frick Park.) "Squirrel Hill" always sounded so silly to me. It is hilly. There are loads of trees and squirrels, gray squirrels mostly. I grew up in Squirrel Hill. I read somewhere that the neighborhood was once a farm called “Squirrel Hill”, then I read somewhere else that it was a Native American hunting ground known for an abundance of squirrels. History is never really right, is it? It’s just stories passed down and added to, like that little word game we played in a circle as kids, adding words to change the arc of any story.

What I never read anywhere was that my childhood neighborhood would ever be a part of history. Certainly not stained and haunting history, sad antiquity, that of a mass murder. A massacre. Not only in my neighborhood, but in God’s house. In a temple. A synagogue. A schul. Generations from now, who will tell the story of Squirrel Hill and who will care?

Our family moved there when I was five. My elementary school was right around the corner and across the street from my beloved grandmother, so I was very cool with school. As a teenager, when I went to high school somewhere else, I did have to walk uphill and in the snow, just not precisely 2 miles as the comics today tell it, changing the arc of that story too.

We wore galoshes. Plastic stupid rain covers that looked like Baggies for our boots or shoes. Moms made us do that and we listened to our moms. We got wet. We didn’t ALL win or always get a trophy. We actually played at each other’s houses and we never worried that studying or playing or praying could get us killed. Because until President Kennedy was killed when I was in Miss Siverman's 3rd grade class, I didn't know what "killed" was. Walking home that day, everything felt different.

Our house was the last in a row of houses, next to a very high hill, almost a mountain really, when we moved there. My friends and I climbed up in that mountain where woods and lots of trees and animals were fun and extra exciting to explore. The mice and snakes and dirt, not so much and my mother couldn’t have been happier when a hospital moved that mountain away and built their tall building half into our backyard, so it seemed to me. With a white fence to separate us off, and forever close my access out of my tiny yard with two cherry trees. I hated it. I missed my mountain.

Still, Squirrel Hill pretty much didn’t change other than that. There’s a lingo and a tempo and a certain step around that everyone seems to accept, learn, pass on, expand into.

“Are you going upstreet?” That phrase meant walking Murray Ave., and then up Forbes, even though only a small portion was actually up a hill. Shopping at Little’s shoe store, mandatory. (The only thing one can still do today.) Clothes at Newman’s, a family owned store with wooden floors from one hundred years ago that creaked. Fancy banks (It’s the land of Mellon, don’t forget), a post office with that certain smell and faces of fugitives from anywhere except Squirrel Hill; Mineo’s Pizza (best in the world), bakeries galore, including Waldorf, Rosenbloom’s, Silberberg’s…bakeries every few feet when walking upstreet.

Predominantly a Jewish neighborhood then, delis and bakeries ruled most corners in Squirrel Hill. I was good with that! On my way to school, I'd walk by Rosenbloom’s each morning where the bakers stood by the open back door having a break and a smoke and I’d inhale the baking bread smell for half a block before I’d see the crusty baker men. Besides, Rosenbloom’s sold Gems. Dark chocolate ganache dripped thickly over a dome-shaped moist chocolate cake. Pure magic.

The memories of childhood are magic for many of us. My first horse, Whiskey was his name, at Schenley Park Stables. The stables burned down when I was 12. It was a horrible fire. Today, tennis courts cover the memories. My first scary sled ride with my father down a hill at Frick Park. My first serious kissing, with a boy in a Corvette, at “Lover’s Lane”. (It was all about the car.)

Pinball machines. Food. Friends. Drive-in movies. Sidewalks. Courtesy. Smiles. Sanctuary. We were civilized. We weren’t scared. We were Squirrel Hill. We also weren’t known anywhere else, weren’t popular ... or unpopular, for that matter – just a little unknown neighborhood secluded among parks, part of Pittsburgh, but with a distinct utterly unappreciated, at least by me, flavor.

Perhaps that flavor was Jewish. It’s positively the part that put Squirrel Hill on the permanent map of forever now. Because of the irrational hatred of one angry man for a people, Jewish people, based on their beliefs and faith, friends of mine had to die one day in Squirrel Hill a month ago. People I knew. People everyone knew who grew up in Squirrel Hill. We didn’t want to be famous. And no neighborhood wants to be famous for this. For a hate crime, a mass murder, unexplainable pain the community forever has to adjust to again, just like that day I walked home from 3rd grade in a daze. 

We were friends with the Simons’. My parents knew the Simon parents and they had four kids and we had four kids – and they had an oldest girl and three boys just like we did and you know how things were back in the days of civilized behavior, right? The cherished days before technology and crazy took over and made all of us question the meaning of man. Computers and crazy people have us all under control now. We have to undress, redress, turn around, empty bags, and watch over our shoulders everywhere we are. (And do bring something to wipe your feet off after inspection.)

We did holidays and vacations with the Simon family. We ate at their house, they ate at ours. Bernice Simon was a kind woman, a nurse, who spoke softly and kindly and I liked her just for that alone. Her husband, Sylvan, also a soft soul, which at the time was not so fashionable for a man. He liked to kid around, played with all of us kids and always had a smile, something I still envy.

Shelly (Michelle) Simon was my friend for many years. Oddly, it was with Shelly that I went on my 1^st cruise ever, a Carnival cruise. I got sick and hated it and it would be a couple decades before I found a peculiar calling to actually consider working on cruise ships, albeit never again Carnival, by choice.

Anyway, we all grew and scattered, as families do, and lost touch a long time ago. I moved to Florida, later, Atlanta.

Decades passed, I travel the world ... then the Tree of Life massacre put Squirrel Hill as center of the Universe. I knew I would know someone. I just knew. I was fearful like thousands of others, waiting for the names to be released. Then, waiting for the photos. 

They astonishingly looked exactly the same to me. Bernice and Sylvan Simon. A tad aged, older, wiser, wearier, but not one iota sweeter. Syl still had that same smile, Bernice still glowed; they still touched each other just as I always remembered they had, holding hands, always, always touching warmly in love – that’s what I still saw – sweet as ever. Like it was yesterday.

But today, they’re gone. So are the brothers I knew. The dear sweet brothers everybody at some time or another saw around Squirrel Hill.

Anybody who ever grew up in Squirrel Hill lost somebody they knew or knew somebody who lost somebody else.

To find anything to be grateful for in grace is the hardest part of all. I guess that they went together, Bernice and Syl Simon… it’s all I have to hang on to as far as grace. They always clung to one another and God somehow made it that these beautiful people, parents and grandparents, were able to cling their way on to whatever eternity awaits their souls stolen while in prayer. They would not have made it alone and I thank God they left as they lived, together and touching.

What I never appreciated at all was how lucky I was to have grown up in a place like Squirrel Hill. I only always wanted out. Many of us did. We wanted to be anyplace except Pittsburgh. To see the world. Make a mark. To matter. A few stayed. It’s so different there now. The bakeries and delis gone, dissolved into new demographics, pay to park everywhere, congestion, confusion, modern mayhem.

But I can still walk up Murray and remember. I can turn onto Forbes, I can still savor Mineo’s pizza, walk a few more blocks and after a week had passed last month, I finally felt brave enough to do just that. I walked past the stores and landmarks. Past a few streets and beautiful gardens in front of houses I’d seen since I was a child. I walked to the Tree of Life Memorial that looks like so many memorials we sadly see on TV every day, except this one is in my neighborhood. Now it’s come home. And I’m not okay with that. Not one bit.

I didn’t appreciate the Squirrel Hill I had. And now it’s gone. Everybody knows its name now.

Squirrel Hill.

In loving memory of Bernice and Sylvan Simon

Just Another Lori Story