I was in the bank the other day and stumbled into another person's reality.

At the table with the pens, I saw the discarded stub from someone's paycheck. This woman worked 41 3/4 hours in "housekeeping" that week at $7 an hour. So she grossed $292.25 and took home $223.71 after taxes.

I scratched down the numbers because I wanted to remember how hard she worked to get a fraction of my pay. If she'd had my opportunities and luck, she'd have a heavier paycheck for much less sweat.

Yeah, I know. As Dad used to say, dem's da breaks. But I keep thinking about the difference between my numbers and hers because it's the Allegheny County story writ small. We've sorted ourselves nicely by economic class, and the names of the 130 municipalities give us a way to talk about it while pretending we don't.

Tell someone you live in Cranberry or Braddock or Fox Chapel or McKees Rocks or Pleasant Hills or Bradford Woods, and the listener can box you by class. We like to think that a municipality's fortunes are mostly based on the efficiency of its government, but it's more a factor of the income of its residents. And we keep getting farther apart.

McKees Rocks is a place that struggles. So when the Rev. Regis Ryan called to say his civic group had bought an old furniture store on the borough's main street for $260,000, and had plans to make it a cultural center, I had two thoughts.

First, that's great. Second, that isn't going to help the tax base any.

I'd met Ryan nine years ago, when he opened a little library on Chartiers Avenue. That is part of the county system now, giving McKees Rocks access to a world of books. The cultural center will be down the street, in the old furniture store once owned by Mayor David Hershman, the political boss of The Rocks for almost three decades, ending in 1969. That only makes this sweeter. Ryan's activists and the politicians never have gotten along.

As we walked through the musty, ancient 22,000-square-foot building, I asked him what would happen there, and he said, "Every time we have a meeting, we have three more ideas."

Arts classes, crafts, ethnic dancing, music classes, stuff for seniors, stuff for kids -- Ryan could see it all as we walked the three floors. I told him it looked like too much room.

"It won't be," Ryan said. "In a year or two, it will be filled. It will be all taken."

Don't bet against him. Focus On Renewal, which Ryan heads, has been filling in blanks in The Rocks for three decades. With more than a hundred employees, it provides medical and dental services, runs a credit union and thrift store, offers drug and alcohol counseling, teaches adults to read and pass high school equivalency exams, and operates a senior citizens high-rise and a van service.

This cultural center is crucial to a long-term revitalization plan that includes the eventual rerouting of Route 51 traffic to restore Chartiers as a two-way street. Taris Vrcek, 34, a third-generation resident of The Rocks who heads the planning commission, sees this as the catalyst for reviving the main street and luring the culture commandoes that have led turnarounds in such places as the South Side, Lawrenceville and Millvale. This wouldn't be possible without state and federal grants and Point Park University. The university's Patricia Moran, of Mt. Lebanon, who grew up in public housing in McKees Rocks, already has performing arts students teaching children what there is to love about theater and dance inside a local church.

But there is another side to this. Bill Beck, borough secretary, has to deal with a dwindling tax base. The borough just raised the property tax rate from 6 to 8 mills. With cops to pay and streets to pave, the borough would prefer tax-paying buildings on Chartiers Avenue.

If we build this, that will come, say the believers. McKees Rocks will become a place of more opportunity, more realized potential. Sometimes you need to make your own breaks.