Civic Arena Opens

It is not called the Civic Arena anymore, and it does not even open anymore; but being a child of the sixties, I can remember when it was shiny and new and looked like a space ship had landed in downtown Pittsburgh. I was thirteen in 1961 when the Civic Arena opened, and one of the first events that I attended there was an Easter Sunrise Service.

Since I finished making my Easter suit at some ungodly hour Saturday night, burrowed in the walk-in closet where my mother kept our sewing machine, I was bleary-eyed but glad to be up early Sunday morning for the community service. The magnificent and unique steel lid opened slowly--panel sliding over panel--as the sun rose. The choir and all the congregation sang Easter songs to the open air.

It was a quarter to two in the morning and a Caterpillar front-loader was lifting mounds of snow and dropping them into a dump truck. This activity was going on across the street from my apartment, and since I was up anyway reading The Pioneer Woman Cooks, I didn't mind the noise.

 

I looked out the window--it was like watching Tonka Trucks. As soon as one truck was filled and spilling over, it pulled away and another arrived. It is February in Pittsburgh, and my municipality is efficiently removing 21" of snowfall.

This is what makes people dream of Marco Island. This is why residents of Pittsburgh take their two weeks of summer vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina or on a Delaware beach and bring back family portraits posing on the sand dunes to stack up on desk tops and office bookcases.