Sometimes, driving amid the concrete and billboards, I forget what a beautiful part of the country this is. Or once was. Or could be again.

Then I come upon a garden planted by the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, a splash of color no painter could duplicate, and I'm grateful not everyone in Pittsburgh is a cynic.

A few people actually get past the griping and do something. I met some the other day. Inspired by the conservancy flower beds, they've spent the past few years volunteering on one of the more soul-deadening stretches of the commuting landscape, trying to provide eye candy at every stoplight.

The 2¹/_2-mile stretch of Banksville Road, used by tens of thousands to commute daily from the South Hills, is one of those Anywhere, U.S.A., strips that can make our country look like Generica the not so beautiful.

But if you look more closely, you can see a change coming, too. A tireless few, largely from Mt. Lebanon, have seen to the planting of hundreds of trees and thousands of flowers, and have spread countless gallons of paint. They also say a waterfall on the west side of the Crane Avenue stoplight is not out of the question.

"It's all due to Carol's desire to make an ugly road beautiful," Nancy B. Smith told me from the back seat as Carol Knox, founder of Blitz on Banksville Beautification -- or BBB -- drove us around.

I'd met Smith, Knox and Charlie Carroll in the parking lot of the Days Inn, and by then I'd already seen some of the group's work while making a U-turn at the intersection with Crane Avenue. Along the retaining wall on the big road's east side was an elaborate, 75-foot piece of ironwork, a sweet swirling punctuation mark on otherwise vapid concrete.

Knox showed me photos of the concrete wall, which even by Rust Belt standards had been aggressively ugly. She said she had to go from PennDOT to city to Allegheny County officials before she could even find someone who admitted owning it.

Knox, a caterer from Mt. Lebanon, knows enough to carry ginger snaps when she's lobbying government officials. With the help of her cookies, she persuaded the county Public Works Department to repair the wall.

Then some BBB volunteers stained it.

Then John Walter, owner of Iron Eden in Bloomfield, agreed to install the ironwork last summer for whatever grant money could be found. Why?

"The main arteries going into this town, face it, are butt-ugly," Walter said.

Sen. Jack Wagner was able to get a $5,000 grant from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development, and one look at Walter's ironwork suggests that $5,000 is a fraction of its worth.

Much of what Knox and her allies accomplish is done just this way, stretching a dollar until George Washington screams, getting people to do more than they thought they would, with either sweet cookies or sweet talk, whatever works.

As we drove further we came upon a woman expertly stenciling a red brick design on another blank wall. Sue Kellam took a break to tell me that Knox cornered her in a grocery store more than a decade ago for another project, and she has found herself among the coterie of volunteers ever since.

Knox says her friends have begun to duck her in grocery stores. She handed me a three-page typewritten list of all the government officials, merchants and concerned citizens who have blitzed Banksville for the better.

Most of them will have to wait for their reward in heaven, but I have to mention Howard Stein, of Mt. Lebanon, who is said to whack weeds while wearing bright yellow waders so drivers can't help but see him.

"We have one wonderful weed whacker," Knox said.

Stein is in for that phrase alone.

If in the near future you see someone jack-hammering a traffic island on Banksville to drop topsoil and mulch, know that this group has checked another wish from its list.

I can only hope that somewhere, along a bleak stretch of Route 51, someone is reading this and wondering, "Why not here?"