T
I Love this P l a ce
he road to Alicia is marked by a small, off-kilter road sign on Rt. 88 along the straightaway through Cabbage Flats, near where the flashing light marking the intersection between Greensboro and Mapletown is about to come into view. I had to backtrack twice to find it the first time I went wandering into this bit of coal mining history that is still alive in the name Alicia. Three years ago I was on my way to meet Rodney Grimes who drove the coal train from the mine that CONTURA now owns in Kirby, to its Alicia Harbor on the Monongahela River. I was there to photograph the train for the 2016 50s Fest T-shirt design celebrating the region’s coal heritage along with its love of old cars. Rodney told me when he would arrive at the harbor and what a great shot it was! Rodney blew the horn, we waved and I hurried home to start drawing. He told me if I followed Alicia Road down to the river I would find a town with the same name, sandwiched between Alicia Harbor and the remains of the old Robena Mine harbor. But I didn’t go looking for it that day. I’m guessing W. Harry Brown had a wife or daughter in mind when he named his Fayette County Coke works Alicia. According to historian G. Wayne Smith, Brown came to Greene County in 1912 to “build a tipple in Grays Landing” and named the mine Alicia 2. The entrance would have gone straight into the exposed coal seam on the river bank like other mines of the day, a precursor of the boom to follow as investors formed companies and bought up individual operators like Brown. By the time World War I drove up the price of coal, Pittsburgh Steel owned Alicia 2. At some point a cluster of houses sprang up in
what used to be a cornfield but these were the early days and Alicia was not a big patch town like Crucible and Nemacolin. Men and boys walked to work from home back then, or pitched tents, built rude shelters, slept in idle coke ovens or boarded with local families. A look at the two streets of small bungalows in Alicia, each the same as the next, suggests that Pittsburgh Steel built some homes to rent to their workers when it purchased the mine and tipple back in the ‘teens. So what was life like in a small mining town on the banks of the Mon, sandwiched between two harbors? I took another drive this month to find out. Alicia Road makes a beeline across broad overgrown fields crisscrossed with chain link fences, cattle gates and abandoned roads. Kovach Road starts on Rt. 88 and connects with Alicia Road about a mile in, where long lines of neatly parked tractors and equipment in the field pay tribute to the machines that made the 20th century happen. Kovach Road ends there, but continues as a dotted line on Greene County maps. This is old Rt. 88 and it once had a covered bridge across Whitley Creek and came out between Sugar Grove Baptist Church and the intersection of Rt. 21. As the road begins to drop down, it slips under the railroad trestle that swings into Alicia Harbor on the right and the houses of Alicia emerge from the greenery. All the bustle of the 21st century fades away as I drive the few streets that meander in a loop of lawns, swing sets, swimming pools and houses. Some of these streets once went further, but time has turned them into driveways and dead ends. There are some remodeled homes handsomely situated by the river, along with those neat rows of bungalows and a scattering of two
Jerry Matthews and Beverly Pincavitch point to the remains of the Robena harbor.
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ALICIA, PA by Colleen Nelson
story houses with big chimneys from the coal burning days. It’s late afternoon and kids are riding bikes on streets where traffic is mostly ducks taking a stroll and parents coming home from work. Water Street tucks into the edge of the riverbank and the muddy Mon flows just a few hundred yards below. A boat dock beckons and you can just see the big steel pilings of Robena Harbor peeking through the trees. Then the street ends in a parade of plastic flamingos and a trio of barking dogs lets Mike Pincavitch know a stranger is here to ask him if this is his driveway or an alley to the next street up? It’s both! Meeting Mike in his garage doing custom work on a truck, with a smartphone full of photos of the designer cars he’s worked on is my gateway to meeting his equally friendly and energetic mom Beverly. We sit on her deck at the other end of Water Street and she tells me she lived in a log cabin down by that covered bridge until she was three years old and the family left here to find work. Her father Tom Medunick was out of work at Crucible Mine in 1948 when “we moved to Philadelphia. Dad had a brother there.” She remembers summer visits to Alicia to visit family. “Compared to Philly there was nothing to do! There were no streetlights and everybody went to bed early. I remember we caught fireflies before it got dark.” Other things she remembers are long gone, like the Mansion House at the edge of town that was a boarding house for workers. “My great grandmother Osceola Temple Tenant was a cook there. I loved her mincemeat pies!” Beverly, husband Frank and their four sons re-
Tractors dot the field along Kovach Road. GreeneScene Magazine •
JUNE
2019
