I’d Never Heard of Pitcairn.
At some point while I was partying with my friends at college, Larry moved. He escaped the one-room studio apartment with lice in the mattress and moved to Pitcairn, a tiny old railroad town nestled in a valley on the east side of Pittsburgh.
Larry had grown up in Pitcairn – meaning sometime before 1986, he’d lived there. I didn’t know if he’d lived there for 30 years or two, but he sure knew his way around Pitcairn.
“It’s the only place in Pittsburgh that has more bars than churches!” he told me gleefully. I’m not sure if he was proud of his knowledge, or excited that he’d chosen a borough I’d truly appreciate.
I never did count the bars and churches.
I was a bit concerned that Larry’d moved out of our one-room apartment without consulting me, although I didn’t mention this. Wherever Larry went, I went.
But I’d never heard of Pitcairn.
Larry called our new home the Pitcairn Hotel, so I got excited. I envisioned a long roadside motel with chairs outside the rooms where we’d chat, smoke and drink with other residents. I’d been admiring these types of hotels as I zipped past on the highways for nearly all my life, and wondered what it would be like to stay there.
The thought of living in a roadside motel was almost as exciting as living on the beach and eating raw potatoes or – my other dream – living in a trailer park with my own little patch of land. (I’m still trying to get that trailer.)
But Larry said only that he was staying with his brother, Danny, who was 23 years old. I didn’t even know Larry had a brother, and now I’d be living with him.
And Danny was practically my age.
So one weekend Larry rode me “home” to see my new apartment and my new hometown.
We leaned around a corner and it loomed ahead: a two-lane road with buildings on the left, a single gas station on the other, and a patch of gravel where Larry pulled over into blackness.
I didn’t see any ranch-style motel; in fact, I didn’t see anything resembling lodging at all. There were a couple of buildings, brick or cement – it was hard to see in the dark – and – hallelujah – Barry’s Bar.
“Welcome to your new home!” Larry smiled. “This is Pitcairn! Ya ready for a drink, Baby?”
I was busy lighting a cigarette. “I’m always ready,” I told him.
“You can leave your brain bucket on the bike; Pitcairn’s the safest fuckin’ place in the fuckin’ world.”
I put my helmet on the back rest and followed his gallumph across the street.
Barry’s Bar was small and dark and reeked of stale beer and cigarettes. My boots stuck to the floor as I walked toward the bar and its handful of stools.
Larry threw his leather jacket on the stool, and flopped on top of his jacket. I did the same.
“Hey Man,” Larry said, rubbing his hands together for warmth. “Two Miller Lites pleeeeease!” Larry smiled as if adding “please” was just plain silly.
Barry’s Bar didn’t look like the kind of place where people often said “please.” It looked more like the kind of place where people often said “shit.”
“You got it,” said the bartender, an old man of 30 or 60 whose name, I learned later, was Barry.
Larry slid me a quarter. “Play us some songs, Baby.”
Well at least there’s a jukebox, I thought.
I had no idea that I lived just steps away.
