Pittsburgh Archives - From a Rocky Hillside

Click here for Part 1 of this trip (Reno to Pittsburgh).

I’d arrived early in Pittsburgh on Friday, March 31. I dropped my stuff off at Bill and Mike’s apartment. Bill and I had shared the apartment the year before I took a year off for my western adventures. I spent much of the day around campus. I checked in with teachers, especially Ron Stone as I was doing an independent study with him on Reinhold Niebuhr. That afternoon, I met Linda, whom I had met the previous spring when I preached at First Presbyterian in Cumberland, Maryland. We had written back and forth a few times. She had invited me to her family’s cabin in the Laurel Highlands. It was a nice place, and she brought dinner that evening. We enjoyed a fire and spent Saturday hiking.

On Sunday, she drove me to Butler, where I preached at Covenant Presbyterian Church. I had worked as a student assistant at Covenant for my first two years at seminary. It was good to see Steve Hamilton, the pastor who’d been my mentor for two years, and many of the people who had become close during my time there.

Photo of the steeple on Covenant Presbyterian in Butler, PA and Steve Hamilton — Covenant’s steeple and Steve

Linda dropped me off at the seminary that afternoon. While there wasn’t any romance in our time together, I had a nice weekend. But the pleasant weekend became tainted when I realized Carolyn had tried to call me at Bill’s apartment several times. While I was honest and we had discussed our relationship evening when I left Nevada in August, I recognized she was hurt, and we were more serious than I realized.

I had come to the seminary for Jane Dempsey Douglas’ lecture series on the changing views of the imago deo (image of God). She drew heavily on her book, Women, Calvin, and Freedom, which I purchased and would read on my way back to Nevada. During my time there, I had lunch with Sue Nelson, my advisor at school. She’d just published Beyond Servanthood: Christianity and the Liberation of Women. I purchased her book and had her sign it. It’d also read it on the return trip, a trip in which my reading was every bit as deep as it was on my first leg.

As I was enjoying lunch with Sue and other classmates, Barry Jackson, another professor, hunted me down with an urgent message to call Ken Hall at Hill Presbyterian Church in Butler. Somehow, Ken heard I was in town and wanted to meet. As this was in the days before cell phones, Ken knew Barry and thought he might be able to find me. Ken was the moderator of the Presbyterian Church USA. In the two years I worked in Butler, I had only meet him one time, but I had worked with his youth minister on a few activities between our two churches.

Ken was elected as moderator at the 200^th General Assembly held the previous June in St. Louis. As a seminary student, I was there working for the Office of the General Assembly. The moderator was elected on Saturday. On Sunday, everyone attended different churches in the area. Then we came back together Sunday night for the moderator’s reception. There, with a group of seminary students from around the country, I waited in line to meet him. When I approached, I stuck out my hand to shake his as I started to introduce myself again. But before I could, he yelled, “Jeff, I didn’t know you were going to be here.” Then he pulled me close for a hug. I was shocked that he remembered me with the 1000s of people who were present. The other seminary students were impressed.

I excused myself and went back with Barry to his office where we called Ken. He wanted to know if I could come up and visit, but he was only free that afternoon. I borrowed Bill’s car and drove to Butler for the second time in two days. We spent an hour and a half talking. He asked me to get him a resume. His associate had left, and they were interviewing for another. But he suggested if they didn’t hire one, he would be interested in hiring me during my senior year to fill in the gap. While they would hire someone that summer, it was good to contact Ken again.

Ken and my path would cross several times at General Assemblies over the years. Afew years later, he went to work for the Presbyterian Foundation. Nine years after our meeting, I was a pastor in Cedar City, Utah. Having just built a church, I looked for someone to preach a dedication sermon. I invited Ken. He did a wonderful job.

On Tuesday night, I played basketball with a group from seminary whom I’d played with for the previous two years. Afterwards, I went out with a group of friends to one of our favorite watering holes in Shadyside, “The Elbow Room.”

As that party broke up, three of us who were visiting Pittsburgh decided we should visit a real Steel City place. John White, who had moved to Princeton, had been the director of admission who recruited me, and Karen, another former student, whom I barely knew, but who’d come back from the lectures, and I headed out to the “O” for hot dogs and more beer!.

The “O” stood for “The Original Hot Dog Shop” or “The Dirty O”. The was a long-established hot dog place in Oakland section of Pittsburgh, on Forbes Avenue. When they started, they were across the street from Forbes Field. They witnessed the Pirates World Series win in 1960. By the time we arrived, the Pirates had long moved to Three River Stadium. Across the street from “the O” stood the University of Pittsburgh’s massive library was across the street.

John dropped me off at Bill and Mike’s apartment at 1 AM. I had just long enough to shower and catch a few hours of sleep. Bill took me to the train station at 5 AM the next morning.

It was dark when I boarded the train for Washington. I took my seat at the back of partly filled car. Soon, I fell asleep as we pulled out of Pittsburgh in the dark and ran up the Monongahela River. An hour and a half later, I woke as the train worked its way over the Allegheny Mountains.

The morning was gray. I headed to the lounge car for coffee. When I came back, others were stirring in the car. I grabbed some food from my bag. Then, two blonde hair and blue eye kids popped up from the seat ahead of me. Aaron, the boy was seven and Ashely, the girl, four. Sleeping in the seat across from them was their mother, Karen. As I drank my coffee and ate fruit and a cinnamon bun for breakfast, they played peak-a-boo from behind the seats. Soon, they were drawing pictures for me. When their mother woke, she told them not to bother me. I assured her it was no bother. We spent much of trip to Washington, playing and talking to the three of them.

Karen, a single mother, was taking her kids to see the capitol. I learned she’d been divorced for a few years and worked in the layout department for the Grand Rapids, Michigan newspaper.

At this time, the Capitol Limited which ran from Chicago to Washington, DC, was a single deck train. Today, it’s a double decked train, like the trains in the American West. With everything on one level, the lounge car had a dome section where you could have a better view of the mountains. The four of us experienced that for a while that morning, before giving up our seats for others to enjoy. When we arrived in Washington, we went our separate ways.

Early that afternoon, April 5, 1989, I left D.C. on the Silver Star, heading south. That night, my parents picked me up in Fayetteville, North Carolina. We spent the night at my grandmother in Pinehurst, before driving to Wilmington the next day. It was a short trip. I spent time with my parents and saw my grandmother, my brother and his two kids, as well as a few friends. I even went for out to Wrightsville Beach Friday night. Then, late Saturday night, April 8^th, we drove back to Fayetteville. The agent looked at my tickets and commented, “you’re going the long way home.” At 12:50 AM on Sunday, I boarded the train for Philadelphia, the first stop on a long roundabout trip back to Reno.

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Other train trips

Danville to Atlanta, 2020

Coming home to Pittsburgh, 1987

Doubly late to West Palm Beach, 1986

Riding on the City of New Orleans, 2005

Edinburgh to Iona, 2017

Riding in the Cab of the V&T, 2013

Bangkok to Seim Reap, 2011

Riding the International: Georgetown to Bangkok, 2011

Malaysia’s NE Line: The Jungle Train, 2011

Coming Home on the Southwest Chef, 2012

Two weeks ago, in a sermon, I told about the “duck parties” held at seminary. Today, I am posting a story about some nonsense that occurred during my first term at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. Other recent posts include memories of Professor von Waldow and Dean Mauser and his secretary. Good memories.

My only experience in dorm-living was my first year in seminary. I boarded on the third floor of Fisher Hall. I stayed in the dorm to save expenses as I still had a house and mortgage payments when I left for seminary (I sold the house soon afterwards).

Across from my room was Ken, a student from Japan. A language whiz, Ken spoke several Slavic languages but needed work on his English. We did our best to help, but who among us will forget the day he asked a visiting professor from Prague a question. Unable to get his question across in English, he switched to Russia or Czech or something strange and the professor answered him in an equally strange tongue. The rest of us sat around witnessing a firsthand example of glossolalia.

The view behind the seminary from 3rd Floor Fisher, January 1987

Down the hall, to the north, was Keith. A United Methodist student, Keith also managed the school’s hockey rink. When not in use, the hockey rink served as the hallway for third floor Fisher. Being from the South, hockey was something new to me and I did my best to avoid the games.

In the room next to mine, to the south, was Jim. Unfortunately, he dropped out before the two of us could finish what would have been a best seller: “A Theological Drinking Guide to Pittsburgh.” Having been used to living in a house, and with nightly hockey matches going on outside my door, getting out to the local bars around Pittsburgh (many within walking distance) was an escape and a way to maintain sanity.

There were many others on the floor, but the four of us played a prominent role in the “perfect storm” that just about got me booted back to the piney woods of North Carolina.

The room to my north, between mine and Keith’s, was empty. Keith read an article on Christian sexuality written by Rodney Clapp. Being a careful reader, what caught Keith’s attention was the author’s name. It seemed fitting a man whose last name was slang for a venereal disease would write on sexuality. Keith decided Clapp needed to be a classmate. He made up a nameplate for the empty room. “That’s Clapp’s room,” we’d tell people, he’s an esteemed alumnus from Pittsburgh and maintains a room here. A week or so later, Clapp’s pretend presence on campus took a strange twist.

Ken, who’d just arrived in American, became fascinated with a certain group of American newspapers generally found in the check-out lines at the supermarket. He read these papers religiously, trying to improve his English and learn about this strange country in which he was living. One day, at the local Giant Eagle Supermarket, he picked up a copy of the National Enquirer, or maybe one of the other tabloids. The lead article featured the story of an unnamed hell-fire preacher who spontaneously combusted in the pulpit. After his particularly fiery sermon, all that was left was ashes. It must be true. It was in print. Such an event should have certainly been studied in homiletics, but I don’t recall it being mentioned.

As no one had seen Clapp recently, it was logically assumed he was the unnamed preacher. Ken posted the article on Clapp’s door. Over the next week, letters from all around the world started appearing, in different languages, offering condolences to Rodney’s family and friends. Clapp’s deeds and misdeeds were recalled.

Around this time, for reasons I still don’t understand, had chapel duty. Normally first-year students were exempt, but for some reason I said I’d do it. I thought daily chapel would be the perfect setting for a “Rodney Clapp Memorial Service.” Somehow, word got out to the powers-that-be what was being planning. Dr. Oman, the homiletics professor, called me into his office and informed me there would be no faux funeral in chapel.

Disappointed at being unable to involve the entire community, we planned our own funeral. Although not a Protestant tradition, we included a wake. We could be ecumenical if it meant a good party. On December 2, 1986, after an evening of basketball (after all, we did have our priorities), a crowd of us gathered in the Fisher lounge for Clapp’s wake and funeral. In the center of the room, laid out like a casket, was the door from Clapp’s room. It was covered with letters of condolences and tokens of our love and adoration for him. Sitting on the top of the door was a plastic container holding some ashes someone obtained.

We gathered around Clapp’s remains and said our goodbyes. We read scripture. Chosen passages alluded to fire. Nonsensical tales about our experiences with Clapp were shared. Taking great liberty with the funeral liturgy, we replaced hymns with more appropriate music such as the Doors’ “Light My Fire” and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water.” Afterwards, as Clapp’s ashes floated out the window and across the lawn, we had a final toast.

Mourners paying respect at Clapp’s Memorial Service, Dec. 2, 1986

With the funeral out of my way, I still had to do my duty in chapel. A day or two later I stood before the crowd of students and professors and delivered one of those boring first year seminary student sermons. The best part of it were a few lines of poetry I quoted from John Beecher, whom I felt deserved an introduction.

The service was dreadfully serious until I was about halfway through my message. Before the service, Jim came into the chapel and took two fire extinguishers off the walls by the doors. Unbeknownst to everyone, he placed the extinguishers on the chancel, one on each side of the pulpit. As I was trying to make a serious point which I’m sure expressed some eternal consequence, someone in the row of students from Fisher Hall noticed the fire extinguishers. He began to laugh while pointing it out to the person next to him. Slowly, like a wave moving across the chapel, each student poked the guy next to him and pointed to the fire extinguishers. The laughter spread. Soon, among a crowd of somber Presbyterians, one pew laughed hysterically. I smirked, bit my tongue, and looked down at my notes. I knew if I looked out upon the gathered congregation, all would be lost.

I’m sure most of those in chapel that day, unaware of the joke that had been building for a month, felt those of us from Fisher Hall were downright rude. And they were right.

Tag: Pittsburgh

Pittsburgh to North Carolina, Leg 2 of my Transcontinental Trip

The Great Seminary Hoax of 1986