1966 Talbot

Dave's posting caused me to pull out my copy of the 1966 Talbot. I was the Business Editor and the only Green Valley Drive/Farmview Drive senior. However the other years are amply represented. I have even kept the typos.

Thompson Odyssey To Green Valley Drive

6902 Merton Road, Ben Avon
I apologize because I got a little side tracked with this posting but once I started it sort of took on a life of its own.

Merton Road was nearly as idyllic as Green Valley Drive. It is the last street in Ben Avon before Ben Avon Heights and was a short somewhat isolated street of about 15 homes in 2 sections. It is where we lived before moving to Green Valley Drive. I had my friends on the street (Rick Wessner who is now a famous silversmith and Barry Sutherland) and off the street (Ralph Sapp, Barry Haughin and John Warren). That first summer on Green Valley Drive, I know that I went to visit Rick Wessner and that Ralph Sapp came out to visit me.

My parents built the Merton Road house after our house on Clearview Road

Tom and Trish at 233 Clearview Road 1952

got to be too small (Ellen was soon to be on the way) and after our friends, the Bergerons, moved to Birmingham. My dad’s company, Vulcan Materials (formerly Vulcan Detinning), had slowly been shifting its operations from Neville Island to Birmingham, Alabama which is why the Bergerons moved. They had the house kitty-corner to ours and they had kids that matched Trish and I in age plus a few more. The whole family missed them greatly.

Merton Road is also more urban than Green Valley Drive. We walked to the school at Woodlawn and Dickson (about 6/10 of a mile) for first through fourth grades. Across the street from the school was the Presbyterian Church that we attended that has since burned down. Beside the church was the Trimble’s house which is famous for 2 things: it was used as the location for the movie Lorenzo’s Oil and the home of Mark Trimble, Trish’s Mini-Cooper driving one-time boyfriend. Imagine first graders walking to school now! Now imagine my fourth grade teacher, Miss Logan. She also taught my father in elementary school! In fifth grade we had to travel to the elementary school in Emsworth which was just over a mile away. Plus we had to come home for lunch because there was no cafeteria. Ralph and I had many diversions on the way home from Emsworth after school; Lattschalls (?) Drug Store with its huge array of penny candy, a bar on Center Avenue where we could buy 2 pretzel sticks for a penny and the soda fountain at Espy’s. If the weather was really bad, we could take the street car most of the way but it was too expensive to do every day 4 times a day. I also used to take the street car into the North Side on Saturday mornings by myself to the Buhl Planetarium to take astronomy classes. And people wonder why I have traveled so much.

However, the real reason for the move to Green Valley Drive was that my Dad had taken a job at Edgewater Steel in Oakmont. The drive was a long one from Ben Avon. My dad had a car pooling buddy that drove a very cool Volvo P1800 sports car who was one of the chemists in the mill but even that did not help. The downside of the move is that now my parents were both farther away from their parents. Despite that, my parents bought the house at 3912 Green Valley Drive for $23,900! It seems like we moved in over Fourth of July weekend 1959 with the help of all of my parents’ friends. Roger Bachman provided a truck as well as muscle. The men unloaded the truck and placed the furniture and the women unpacked the boxes. It seems like everything was mostly done in one day giving plenty of time for partying.

Now it appears that our house is no longer even there and that the house that was the Landig’s and then the Shug’s has the 3912 number. Our lot seems to have a large garage on it now. I will have to check it out when I visit in August.