“Dillonvale is a village in Jefferson County, Ohio, United States. The population was 665 at the 2010 census. It is part of the Weirton–Steubenville , WV -OH Metropolitan Statistical Area .”
– Wikipedia
I have been up too long this morning. I have no idea why- I managed to stay up almost to 2200, but my eyes popped open at 0200, then closed as I entered a REM dream which featured a very strange interlude as a young military aide to the current Commander-in-Chief that was so un-nerving that I gave up on sleep.
I made the coffee and cruised right to the end of the internet and back hours ago.
I am full up with the various issues of the day, and will not trouble you with them here. What a time to be alive!
Which brought me to the matter that had been nagging at me for days now. One of my pals was as pissed off, generally, about just about everything. There is a lot of that going around, as you know, and he took refuge in going back over some Depression-era family stories.
You can imagine where that all came from; the up side of it was that we are survivors, and will probably survive what is coming. The down side is that it is going to suck.
Anyway, I was typing a response when I realized that I could not recall the specifics of several stories that Big Mama told me in the year preceding her death at the age of 87.
I had thought she was born and raised in Bellaire, a little river town so bedraggled that it was selected as the hometown of the sadistic transvestite murderer Buffalo Bill in the Jodie Foster film “Silence of the Lambs.”
(The State of Ohio re-routed the course of its Rt. 7, and tore out the on-ramp to the bridge, the second longest cantilever structure on the Ohio River. Built in 1925, the bridge was the route for Buckeye commuters to the steel mills in Wheeling. No one is doing that any more).
We have a long history with Bellaire, all of it sad, since the only reason to be there is to bury people on the Catholic or Protestant cemeteries. The most famous landmark, now that the Glass Factory is shuttered, is the Bellaire Toll Bridge, which closed to traffic in 1991 and is no longer connected to the Ohio side of the river.
Anyway, during the period of Dad’s long decline, I often sat with them in the assisted living complex of Potemkin Village and watched television and talked with her. Raven, at that point was not capable of speaking about anything in particular, but Big Mama was waxing lyrical about another Ohio town in which she had lived.
Writing back to my pal the other day, I realized I might have just hit the beginning of my own long decline.
I could not for the life of me recall the name of the place Big Mama talked about. I must have written it down somewhere, right? I mean, for Christ’s sake, that is what I do. But I realized there is no Google search for Mother’s memories, and if I lost the notes or mis-filed them in the digital attic, it could be gone forever.
In the moments of wakening this morning, I found it. Dillonvale.
(Bird’s Eye view of Dillonvale, around the time my Grandfather Mike worked on the Silver Plate RR.)
I had successfully gone most of my life without a single thought about Dillonvale, Ohio.
I knew that Great-Great-Grandfather James enlisted in the Union Army in 1861 at Steubenville, and Mom grew up in Bellaire, and I thought that was about the extent of it. But these stories were from the time after the Crash in 1929.
Grandpa must have lost his job; the young family of the Doughboy had to move in with the Grandparents, and that was in the little village of Dillonvale.
(Dillonvale also produced coal. I am just glad Grandpa Mike worked on the railroad shoveling it.)
Mom had the thoughts of her girlhood very much on her mind, and really enjoyed recounting things. Maybe it was because the present was burning away for her, leaving the deep memory exposed. Maybe it was because there was no future, or so little of it left that it was worth troubling with. Her thoughts circled around her grandfather, the son of the Civil War veteran. That is Pop, who I have only seen in one dim and ancient copy of an old photo.
He was married twice, I understand, his first wife having died of consumption or something. His second wife was a certain Mrs. McDermott, who everyone hated- I am not certain about who “they” were, but that is how Mom’s story went.
Mom firmly believed that Pop was Santa Clause, because she heard him laughing downstairs on Christmas Eve, and got a peek of him with the few gifts that the little family could afford.
Mom went to school there through the third grade, I think, and where she suffered that awful burn that resulted from an accident that happened while she and her sister Hazel were playing with matches.
Mom fell off the porch in pain and surprise, which put out the fire, which was good, and she recalled that the house was near the church.
I have not been able to track down the church or the house, thought it may be one near St. Adalbert’s Catholic Church at 39 Smithfield Street.
Grandfather Mike could walk to work at the Depot on Railroad Street, and he worked there to work as an engineer, presumably until he could get on his feet and move his family out into their own place in Bellaire.
(Dillonvale is momentarily disturbed as a coal train blasts thru the central business district. The engine is a powerful S-1 Van Swerigen Berkshire-class steam locomotive, built by the American Locomotive Company (ALCO). This engine weighed in at 461,000 pounds and could easily pull a freight train over the road averaging 60 mph. Original art by Robert West.)
Google Street View tells me the village is typical of the small working-class towns located in this part of the Ohio Valley. The house to the left in the picture is typical of the architecture of the region. A look at the Realtor pages for the village this morning suggests this one might go for $57,000.
I do not think I will be moving there. But along with the recollections of a village whose name I almost forgot, I found the notes about Great Aunt Bernice, who was married to famed Pittsburgh football star Miller Munjes. According to Mom, he drew a lot of water back in the day, though Bernice wound up divorcing him, which raised some eyebrows at the time.
I also have a scrap of a note about Aunt Barbara- I assume this is the charming Great Aunt Barbara I met in Wheeling years ago, a woman with sparkling blue eyes and the memory of Grandpa Mike as fresh as if he had just stepped out for a beer. Mom said with a little wonder that they sometimes went to visit Barbara in the Big City of Wheeling.
The name “Eddie Schwab” written down, too, but I have no idea who he was. I imagine I will drive up that way sometime and check it out, since it is half-way to Detroit, where I occasionally have business. Or maybe I will forget again and the whole story will flow down the brown water of the Ohio, and eventually out to the endless sea.
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
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