Wednesday, September 10, 2003

By Grace Rishell, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

On a January evening in 1958, a group of women gathered at Mollie Spiker's home in Collier to form a social club.

The club proved so successful that it continues to this day, and some daughters of original members now have joined.

The Hi Neighbor Club had two goals -- first for neighbors to get to know each other, and second, to have fun.

The decision on what to do when they assembled for monthly meetings was easy. They decided to do nothing, said Eleanor Kelly, 77, a founding member.

"We didn't play cards. We sat and talked about kids, babies, husbands, recipes. We stayed till 1 and 2 o'clock in the morning. It was great. People say 'What do you do at your meetings?' and we say, 'Nothing,' " Kelly said.

There were 20 present that first night, all residents of Cowan and South Cowan roads and Joyce Drive.

It was a modest neighborhood of ranch homes, neither poor nor rich, "just rich in kids," Kelly said.

Now a suburban area, it was then a rural landscape. The bus their children rode to Chartiers Valley schools "was nicknamed the country bus," Kelly noted.

Through the years, social occasions evolved that still are observed.

There's the Christmas party, where husbands are guests, a summer picnic, an annual covered-dish dinner and a monthly Saturday breakfast to honor members who have birthdays that month. A picnic last month at Settlers Cabin Park and a dinner-dance at a local restaurant celebrated the club's 45th anniversary.

While the group's goal was social, the friendships created over the decades forged a communal and economic network that buoyed members in hard times and good.

As children grew, hand-me-downs proliferated from family to family, and a shirt worn for one child's school picture might reappear two or more times later on class photographs of younger neighbors.

Pat McGrath, who's 65 and has been a member of Hi Neighbor for 38 years, recalled that "we and our husbands coached sports. Eleanor's husband taught kids to swim at the Salvation Army. Your children had many people to watch over them."

Husbands might help put on a new roof or work on car repairs for neighbors.

Some families vacationed together or camped out. Some neighbors served as Scout leaders.

"Everybody was in the same boat. You didn't have more than I did. You want to borrow a cup of sugar, come on in, or you can borrow the car to shop. We brought back things from the store for each other," Kelly said. "When someone passed away, we went [to the funeral home] in a carload.

Today, the homes have running water, but in the early days, there was no such thing. Each family had to install a cistern to catch rain water. If the weather was dry, "you'd call the township and they'd bring a 500-gallon truck and pump water into the cistern," Kelly said.

Amid their household duties and jobs outside the home, meeting nights were something the women looked forward to. "Laughter was a big part of getting together," McGrath said.

To ensure decorum, Spiker early on instituted some rules. Anyone who swore was fined a nickel. Kelly conceded she sometimes had to search her pockets for some nickels.

Spiker was opposed to members wearing slacks or shorts to meetings. Offenders were fined for such fashion indiscretions, but the dress code eventually was done away with.

The fine money went to make goody bags for the children at Hi Neighbor picnics.

Dues, now $2 a month, were 25 cents in the beginning.

The funds are used for small remembrances for people who are in the hospital or for floral arrangements when someone has died.

The rest goes for the yearly Ladies' Night Out, an event which changes from one year to the next, depending on who is in charge. It could be a baseball game or a theater outing to Ohio. The year Pat McGrath was at the helm, she took the group to a Squirrel Hill restaurant and a showing of "Dr. Zhivago."

Election of officers was a simple affair. Names were picked out of a bag. "You could be president for three years in a row, which has happened. Your name was in the bag, you're it," Kelly said. Occasionally women who were retired and had some extra time volunteered to keep their offices more than a year.

Kelly said one woman became angry when all three officers, president, secretary and treasurer, happened to be from Joyce Drive. She accused the Joyce Drive contingent of wanting to run the club. "She got over it," Kelly said.

The group continued to hold fast to their electoral process, and the dispute quickly was settled.

"There have been ups and downs but never a rift or anything long lasting," McGrath said.

"Many of us had jobs outside the home," said McGrath, a mother of six who taught in local schools for more than 25 years. "We showed kids it was possible to have a career and still be the center of a family."

Spiker passed away in 1981. The club she started remains strong but with fewer members. Current membership is 13, down from the original 20.

Kelly said interest is declining among some neighbors, noting that several on her street have not joined.

"There are more houses here now. Some have moved in, and it's not their cup of tea. I don't know what it is. Maybe they're more private," McGrath said.

Still, the tradition continues. Bonnie Hilf, daughter-in-law of Nancy Hilf, who joined in 1967, has moved into the neighborhood and joined. McGrath's daughter, Sharon, now belongs, as does Lynn Simeoni, daughter of the late June Simeoni, who became a member in 1958.

As the years have gone on, the club has "helped a hundred times over as people lost spouses" and neighbors were ill, McGrath said.

Kelly said many of the youngsters who were raised in the neighborhood but moved away "are coming back and saying 'I wish we had a neighborhood like this.' "

In 2075, descendants of the Hi Neighbor Club will get a peek into who their ancestors were and what life was like for them. The club in 2000 buried a time capsule on the property of member Carroll Soknich. It contains photos, letters, other memorabilia and advertising that shows the price of food items that year.

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