(warning, a Yinzer is a term for a native pittsburgher. we are called so because we say 'yinz' for the second person plural, a pittsburgh version of y'all.) on the bus with kathy jo All right, so I'm not a grunge kind of Jo. I'm the corn-fed yinzer-mother of a hyperactive eleven year-old boy, Leo. I need quiet music like the Counting Crows that quells the desire to sucker punch certain people I see on the bus. Take for instance the picturesque couple hovering against the back of the driver's seat. They're dressed in your avant-garden variety garb and are looking at the rest of us like we eat dog meat. I was having a great ride just looking at rain-washed sidewalks and slick, black puddles of rainbows glistening up from empty parking spots. Mt. Oliver is so beautiful. So spent it has to be honest. There's art in every scar around here. Oops. Yinzer art is pop-culture trash. It won't be called high art for at least twenty years. La la la and then Mr. and Mrs. Punk-adelia come aboard. I'm sorry, but I can't help having a grudge against artsy types in tattered clothes who look at me with that "you're disgusting but I feel sorry for you" smirk. What were those two doing up here anyway? Suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fashion? Community service revamping store windows ~ retribution for committing an image deviation while in the bohemian South Side, in front of everyone? I have to make fun of them. Being in their presence increases my scagdom exponentially. I don't look bad next to large Italian women with full beards, but those two look like fugitives from Planet Perfect. Makes me feel like I'm from Planet Scab-Eater. And I bet they think they're Sid and Nancy 'cause they have to take a bus to The Beehive. Leather jackets on an 86 degree day. That's high on the fashion dedication scale, though. Hey, maybe the beautiful people really don't sweat. Maybe that's why they can wear leather shoes without socks and not reek. We're winding down South 18th Street. She says it looks like Budapest, only filthy. Gross! She spat as she spoke. It ain't that bad. I remember Grammie wiping the pretty rusty-pink soot off her porch railings twice a day. And this chick thinks it's filthy now? Okay, so maybe Pittsburgh is "lame" in the respect that we don't have nightclubs that'll deny you entrance if you drive up in a Cavalier. But I hate feeling pressure to act like my ancestors came over on the Mayflower when in fact my grandparents met and rode streetcars in South Oakland. Their row house on Ward Street, that's been in my family since 1906, is for sale. I spent weekends there when I took acting lessons at The Playhouse. I was just a little Jo, GI Joe they called me (but never to my face). At night, fresh from prayers and full of giggles, I tunneled under endless layers of blankets on Grammie's bed. Wow. I'll never sleep in that house again. My mom said the college students destroyed Oakland. Bastards. I fucking love Pittsburgh. I wish Lollapa-do-me's would let us yinzers be. Besides, they owe us. Generation grunge copied vintage yinzerian fashion. Shit, we quit bathing long ago. When Cappio-drinking thrash bands were making their First Holy Communions, we were tying flannel shirts around our waists to actually wear at barrel parties. Mill hunkies, the original yinzers, weren't happy unless they were suffering properly. So they had huge families. Their kids were forced to wear orthopedic looking shoes that would never, ever wear out. All clothes had been worn before, in public, by older siblings. The eldest of each sex didn't suffer this humiliation but since they were "examples," they got whacked constantly. At bedtime, girls had their long, knotted hair pulled out by Mother's impatient comb and were smacked for crying. And when the first and last full moons of summer appeared, screaming boys were tied to chairs in the driveway and strangled with a sheet while Father, armed with a set of over-heated buzzers, shaved their heads. That same hair cut'll cost you thirty bucks these days. But I gotta admit, knowing that the same kind of clothes we were beat into wearing are hanging in Kauffman's, makes me feel like anything's possible. Funny bastards. Gotta love 'em. Hey, the couple got off without me noticing. The bus is all mine and I feel cute again. The sun bursts slowly through the clouds, tickling my eyes as we cross the Tenth Street Bridge. I'm bathed in a giggling warmth. The world is my bus pass. I see construction workers with sweat-shined, blue-collar bodies. Oh how I do love this city. Guys still pull up to the busstop and ask me if I wanna drink a case. Not a beer, a case. Oh, young Zeppelin fan, get thee to a nunnery. Being a yinzer is falling in love while rolling around in the soft, unmown grass of a spring cemetery, never knowing how steep the hills are 'till you're at the bottom. It's watching Hamlet on HBO and feeling stupid 'cause you think it's boring. It's knowing that bleach smells like order, that the scent of Lemon Pledge means company's coming. It's tube socks and loafers. Tube socks and sandals. Tube-sock sandwiches with Miracle Whip on Wonder Bread. It's envisioning heaven like a cartoon. Andy Warhola's grave is on a treeless hill above a T-rail junction. Sitting there, you have a view of a tune-up shop and slag dumps. It makes the "art world" seem so suddenly irrelevant. And yet sacred. I think his fans should thank us for putting the museum here so they're forced to see Pittsburgh. Forced to acknowledge the influence on his work, even if they don't have enough class to admit it. And forced to see the sad innocence and iron integrity of one of The American Dream's first abandoned daughters. But she's gaining on her former glory. Only this time she's smart enough to be proud. And suspicious. We have to make sure riverboat gambling is run outta Dodge before sundown. That there industry's intentions ain't honorable. It'd make a whore out of that grande old broad ~ South Side. At least the steel industry was willing to marry her . . . Get thee on a bus. e-mail me at kk3z@andrew.cmu.edu and I'll send you a recipe for Yinzer Stu. copyright 1994 kathy jo kramer