Local Dispatch: It's hardly polite to be outside Pittsburgh
-
David Conrad: "Know your place." -
The actor/author's boyhood Pittsburgh home.
Share with others:
My dad died last month. This has nothing to do with that.
What I have to tell you is how I pulled up in front of my childhood home the day of the funeral and the woman who lives there now stepped outside, looked at me and said, "Are you OK?"
I said, "No, my dad died."
She tilted her head. "You used to live here?"
"Yes."
"Do you wanna come in? I'm just going down to the market, but no rush, come on in."
And she proceeded to let me walk around her home, asking if I needed anything, asking who had lived in what rooms, what doors to the porch we had used, and was my mother the one who planted the perennials, and how has it changed? All the time smiling and encouraging me to stop when I needed to, cry if I had to, she said,
"Please. Go upstairs. Which room was yours?"
My brother's very sick. He has cancer. He's now blind in one eye and has to live in the hospital one week a month. Every time Phil goes in there's a chance he won't come out. This has nothing really to do with that.
What I want to tell you is we played golf his last day before going into the third chemo round. A course in San Diego, out in an old olive grove that's now a casino. We signed in as a twosome, wanting to just spend the time together, but the course pairs you up with others if they need to. When we arrived at the first tee, there was a guy waiting for us.
"Hey I'm your third wheel, 21 handicap. Sorry"
"All good, we're serious amateurs."
"Where you from?"
There's that question I love so much. When we said "Pittsburgh," he gave the appropriate answer.
"Git 'aht!"
He's a doctor named Mike who grew up in McKeesport and lives with his family now in Lancaster, Pa.
Laughter, handshakes all around. Where'd you go to high school? ... What's your other brother's name? ... Oh, really, I worked at National Tube summers to pay for school. ... Etc, etc, et-Western Pa-cetera.
No carts. We walk. It was a good morning of golf.
Until the 10th hole. We'd stopped at the lunch shack after the ninth. Phil's working with one eye and compromised balance, so his game is nowhere near good. He's a little slow. But his short game's great and he putts like a champ.
First Published April 24, 2011 12:00 am
