Jeff Goldblum was determined to do it right. He'd brought along a copy of Edgar Lee Masters' "Spoon River Anthology," to let its poems help shape his feelings as he retraced his childhood through Pittsburgh and West Homestead.

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Actor Jeff Goldblum is suffused with memories outside his old home, now owned by MaryAnn Zilko, left, in West Homestead. At right is Goldblum's fiancee, Catherine Wreford, his co-star in the CLO's upcoming "The Music Man." Click photo for larger image. Audio (MP3 format) of comments by Jeff Goldblum and fiancee Catherine Wreford as they drive through West Homestead and Goldblum recalls walking to the Walnut Street School there. Download MP3 players for Windows or Mac machines: Real Player Microsoft Windows Media Player WinAMP

For Jonathan Houghton in Masters' poem, the sounds of crow, cowbell and wagon wheels summon up a vision of himself as a boy; for Goldblum, it was distant train whistles and the smell of grass. Though he left Pittsburgh at 17 and has been back only to visit his family (his mother, Shirley Tyson, remarried since his father's death, lives in Shadyside), those early years have stayed green in his well-nurtured imaginative life, recurring often in his dreams.

This trip down memory lane came a month ago. Goldblum, 51, was in Pittsburgh with his fiancee, Catherine Wreford, 24, to meet with Pittsburgh CLO for preliminary rehearsals of "The Music Man," in which they star starting Tuesday as Harold Hill and Marian the Librarian. But this would be no simple stroll: Goldblum, Wreford and I set out from Downtown in a sedan with a driver for a three-hour assault on memory.

Following behind was another car with a two-man film crew, while a Post-Gazette photographer waited ahead in Homestead. The crew was starting work on a documentary about Goldblum, but that lay in the future. Goldblum's mind was on the present and the past.

We started for the Pittsburgh Playhouse, where Goldblum first saw plays at age 7 or 8, circa 1960. " 'Beauty and the Beast' is what I remember," he said, and "Hansel and Gretel."

He was met by producing director Ron Lindblom and building manager David Vinsky, who led Goldblum on his search for memories. "This was the lobby I would have come into," Goldblum said, but the Rauh Theatre didn't stir his memories. The larger Rockwell Theatre did.

He remembered Bimbo Q. Clown (played by David Newell, later Mr. McFeely on "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood"): "He would have sat here," said Goldblum, leaning against the front of the stage, "saying, 'now the lights are going to go down and now the curtain is going to go up.' I was riveted! [Afterward] I came out to the lobby, jiggling up and down [from the excitement]."

"He still does that," Wreford chimed in, describing taking Goldblum to see "Fiddler on the Roof" on Broadway and his jiggling in his seat, practically dancing along with the music. When she took him to see "Gypsy," he bawled.

"I'm often affected for a long period thereafter," said Goldblum. "I was sensitive." Wreford said she's learned to give him a half-hour to himself after a movie.

Although she had previously been in Pittsburgh only to star in the 2002 tour of "42nd Street," Wreford has her own Pittsburgh connections through many graduates of the Point Park and Carnegie Mellon musical theater programs, including Megan Sikora (who "took me under her wing" in "42nd Street").

Standing outside the Playhouse, we heard a train whistle. "Do trains sound like that other places?" Goldblum asked. "Like zzzz-oooo? A lonesome-hollow, plaintive sort of thing?" The sound took him back to "sitting in my bed in West Homestead." Hearing train whistles then "was very evocative of the promise of poetry and the future."

'An alien creature'

Steve Mellon, Post-Gazette Jeff Goldblum and Catherine Wreford get a taste of Homestead's past at the Waterfront. Click photo for larger image.

The first adult shows Goldblum remembers were at the Nixon. "'Beyond the Fringe' was the first sophisticated, adult thing. I remember getting sweaty, thinking, 'I'm going to jump up and get involved in the show!' I didn't, but it was a close thing. I was stagestruck. We used to see live shows at the Leona Theater. There's nothing as powerful as live theater, the innocence and poetry of it."

When Wreford was growing up in Winnipeg, Canada, her parents were involved in a Gilbert & Sullivan group. So as we drove on, she gave us a little bit of "Little Buttercup" from "H.M.S. Pinafore."

"She sings me to sleep sometimes," said Goldblum, radiating pride. "She's so domestic. She'll knit the whole company scarves before she's done. She's a funny hybrid. She's show-bizzy, but she's also Canadian, old-fashioned, domestic. She's been cooking me breakfast, lunch and dinner. And we have a vegetable garden in the back which she planted."

It will be Goldblum's third marriage, Wreford's first.

As we drove past the Carnegie Museums, Goldblum remembered, "Dad took me to art classes for several years. We'd go through the dinosaur exhibition."

Next stop was the Kresge Theater at Carnegie Mellon, where Goldblum spent 1967 and 1968 in the summer precollege program. "We had classes with Edith Skinner," Goldblum recalled, giving the name of the legendary speech teacher its proper awe. He still does the voice exercises she taught.

He recalled other teachers -- Baker Salisbury, Bob Parks. "I loved Jewel Walker," the great mime teacher: "I went back to high school in West Mifflin in whiteface and gave a mime demonstration." He thought about that for a moment. "I was a little bit of an alien creature there -- even to my family, even though my family had a feel for theater. When I came [to CMU] for the first time, with kids from all over the country, I felt at home."

Backstage in the Kresge, he looked at the names of CMU grads painted on the walls. He remembered letting the shower steam up each morning as he wished, "Oh, God, let me be part of all this."

Ted Danson, a regular student at CMU, was there in the summer. Goldblum remembered swelling with the feeling of belonging when Danson said, "Hello, Jeff," as he proudly introduced him to his parents.

We drove through Chatham College, where Goldblum attended the summer music camp for several years, starting right after the fifth grade. "Archery, arts and crafts, music appreciation, drama, tennis. I loved these woods -- we'd tramp around, read books. ... I used to pack a lunchbox. My sister went, too. We'd sit by the fish pond and have cream cheese and olive sandwiches.

"I'd roll down that hill!" he said, looking at the long slope below the chapel. The chapel itself was where he first performed on stage, in "a sort of Gilbert & Sullivan-like thing," "The Belle of the Balkans." Goldblum jumped on stage and people laughed and it was very exhilarating. I kept secret just how delighted I was by it. But my parents said, 'If you find something you love, that might be your compass.' "

'The arts have changed my life'

Goldblum plays piano in a jazz group in L.A. That started in Pittsburgh, where he studied piano with Tommy Emmel and then Frank Cunimondo -- "left-hand chords, improvisation. The arts have changed my life." Later, he took jazz dance and tap from Mario Melodia. He remembers a festival performance when he was 12 or 13, where they had to change clothes in the same room with some girls. "And I remember some wide fishnet stockings and thinking, 'This is a good thing, to be in show biz!' "

We headed over the High-Level Bridge. "I remember this very well, like from a dream. ... I dreamed last night of my dad."

The huge Homestead Works are gone, of course, replaced by the Waterfront retail development, leaving behind a long memorial row of smokestacks. We stopped there. Goldblum pointed up toward the area where he grew up, then sang a snatch of the "Internationale."

Homestead itself was unfamiliar territory to the middle-class Goldblums. "My dad was the doctor who worked at Homestead Hospital and served people who worked in the mills. We were in the middle of it, but it was alien to us. I can only imagine ingots and Joe Majarac." Under the leadership of his best friend, Bobby Dee, he remembers playing a game called Mill, where they dug holes in the woods.

He pointed down a side street where they were once told prostitutes lurked. The crew needed a rest stop, so I suggested Chiodo's on Eighth Avenue. "It's not Kee-odos," Goldblum corrected, "it's Chi-odas. Chiodo's Tavern. It was famous, a place for adults."

Inside, the sports paraphernalia reminded him of the Steelers and Pirates -- "Pitt Stadium, John Henry Johnson, Big Daddy Lipscomb, Forbes Field, Clemente, Stargell." There were just two regulars at the Chiodo's bar, but one immediately said, "Hi, Jeff." Word of Goldblum's presence spread, and others gathered as if by magic. Pittsburgh keeps track of its stars -- and it doesn't hurt to have been in two of the highest-grossing films of all time ("Jurassic Park" and "Independence Day").

Someone heard him mention Bobby Dee and said, "He was just in here." "He still comes here?" Goldblum asked, surprised. As we walked back to the car, Goldblum marveled about Chiodo's, "a breed and an atmosphere that don't exist anymore." Wreford was amazed to hear that Bobby Dee, a name she'd heard many times, is real, a figure of the present and not just the past.

With Goldblum pointing the way, we crossed into the heartland of his youth. He marveled at the railings and steps on the hilly streets, imagining us in a time machine, looking at little Jeff, age 5 or 6, on the way to the Walnut Street School, where he went K-6.

"That was Joe Jerry's candy store," he said excitedly, "with that great candy that wasn't retro then. ... This corner was Estok's, where I had lunch every day, a BLT and coconut custard pie or a cheeseburger -- Flo Estok's, a luncheon place with pinball machines."

Pinball brought back memories of Calhoun Junior High, where he spent grades 7-10: "Teenagers coming into their interesting years. I was separating myself out, getting my own identity." Today, Goldblum is 6 feet, 4 inches, well-muscled since he bagan working out in his 30s, but in grades 7-10 he was, he said, "a geek."

"Then in the 11th and 12th grades at West Mifflin North I stayed to myself and just planned on getting out."

'Kind of freaky to be here'

We started winding through a woodsy mill valley with old industrial buildings. Goldblum remembered exploring the woods with Bobby Dee. "We would climb up these trees and climb out on this blanket of vines for a far piece. It was magical."

Suddenly, we emerged from the woods into Calhoun Manor, a middle-class development, like a little slice of suburbia. "Patty Manning used to live there," Goldblum remembered, "my first girlfriend, although I didn't call her that. And here's Lynnwood Drive, my street -- there's my house, there, with the dark shutters."

It felt, he said, like "A Trip to Bountiful": "This is the most common location for my dream life -- this street, this house. It's kind of freaky to be here."

Memories swirled around -- kick the brick, stick ball, lightning bugs, the basketball hoop that's no longer there, the guy who came around with ("ding ding") ice cream sandwiches.

Goldblum pointed toward the nearby A (for athletic) Field: "I'd go and watch the men play softball. And Homestead would play football there. We'd put on dark clothes and crawl in these weeds to get in without paying."

He stood on his old street, excited, turning about, drinking it in. "I've never felt so free and expansive as when I learned to ride a bike," he remembered.

Out came "Spoon River": "And a boy lies in the grass ... and longs for what, he knows not." It continues, "Then thirty years passed, and the boy returned worn out by life."

Goldblum is far from worn out, with a young fiancee, a fresh musical comedy challenge, more movies in the works and a documentary crew on his tail. "That's not exactly me," he agreed. "I have more positive memories." He flipped to another poem, "Hare Drummer": "Do the boys and girls still go to Siever's for cider, after school, in late September? ... with the laughing girls and boys played I along the road."

As we stood in front of his old house, a comfortable brick built in the late '40s or early '50s, its owner, MaryAnn Zilko, came out. She met Goldblum when he and his sister took a more private memory trip a dozen or more years ago. Since then, her husband has died. Goldblum introduced Wreford and they told her about "The Music Man."

"My husband used to call me 'Marian, madame librarian,'" Zilko said. She and Goldblum and Wreford sang a snippet. Goldblum pointed at the window of the breakfast room, the setting of a recent dream. He pointed out the zoysia, a special hardy grass he and his father planted, and its scent triggered more memories.

A couple of neighborhood kids materialized, Kevin Ducar and Sean Brennan: "That would have been me and Bobby Dee," Goldblum said, sizing up their ages. Two more appeared, one Sean's brother, Ryan, who brought a "Jurassic Park" video for Goldblum to sign. Others gathered: "Welcome home!" someone called.

We heard another train whistle.

"When I'm ready to sell the house, I'll call you," said Zilko, waving as the sedan pulled away.