Country bumpkin has fun in the city

A country bumpkin has more fun in the city than anybody because it’s so unfamiliar.

During three days in Pittsburgh, I saw more people than I’ve seen in the past three months.

All those men with big noses, all those women with round cheeks, with names like Dombrowski and Kowancki and Carlucci and Czarowicz —speaking with a western Pennsylvania twang. What a kick in the head.

On the streets and in the stores downtown, I got to watch, got to listen. I went to Kauffman’s to ride the escalators, eight floors of them. For at least the first three floors, I could smell the perfume department, dozens of expensive scents blending into something not much better than Blue Waltz.

Feeling the steps rise and flatten under your feet is such a cool sensation I did it over and over. Coming down once, I saw a teenage boy browsing in the handbag and scarf department holding hands with two girls. They all seemed perfectly happy with the arrangement.

Upstairs in the coats department, a black sales lady sang Christmas carols.

“Are you singing to yourself?” I asked her.

She was. She loves Christmas.

The dozen or so people working in the window of Dunkin’ Donuts on down the street didn’t seem quite so happy. It looked to me as though they were making gingerbread houses in a kind of low-key, sit-down assembly line. I guess I wouldn’t be all that cheerful rolling out chimneys all day either.

Who knows what they were thinking in the Pennsylvania Culinary Institute? It’s another place with windows on the street. At least 20 guys in whites and tall hats milled around, so many I couldn’t count them accurately. They moved so much I never did figure out all that they were doing, but nobody was doing it alone. If they knew it was Christmas, you couldn’t tell.

I’m not sure about the old black lady outside the window, either. She was bundled up against the cold, walking with a cane, carrying a sack of pamphlets and saying to passersby, “Would you like a tract?”

When we all said no, she gave us looks that said, “Well, I know where you will spend eternity!”

The next woman I saw looked close to eternity already. She couldn’t have been more than four feet tall. She was wrapped in a heavy coat with a shawl over her head, pulled open just enough to expose her face. She coughed with every step. And she was smoking something without filters.

Even the Salvation Army bell ringers were interesting.

I saw a pair on the corner. The woman wore a long black coat, a red Santa cap and screaming pink gloves. She was hopping around, holding the red bell way over her head, ringing and ringing, while she talked to the man. He was white haired, conservative in a tan trench coat, and never moved his feet or lifted his bell higher than his waist. He just flipped his wrist occasionally. He looked cold.

Cold as it was, I still lost track of my coat. Left it at my friends’ house when I came home. They said they’d send it to me, but I think I’ll leave it where it is.

Might want to go back soon as I warm up.

nnn

Contact Sara Pitzer at spitzer@salisburypost.com .