hi i'm def johnson and i'm the special population supervisor with the peterson ship park and recreation department in the last year i have had the special joy of working with senior citizens in peter's township that we would get together today to get some memory to talk about what it was like years ago in peter's township and i think that before we get started i would  like to ask each of you to say something a little about yourself how long you've been in peter's township and maybe a little bit of information about where you lived when you first arrived in peters so start over with a ceremony well i hear my parents moved to tears township when i was ten years old we moved in over on belle drive right across from the entrance to the middle school they hide the bell telephone building we my father built a house there in nineteen thirty two and thirty three i guess it took longer to build them and we moved in on march thirty first one nine hundred fifty seven i'm sorry nineteen thirty three so that means i've been here fifty seven you in this in the same house for a hundred and well my mother still living in the same house but it's been in the same family for one hundred five years and  thing about being elderly we find that we don't exactly remember everything but i do right where you've been and the peters township for what thirty six years old we've been here forty one years forty one laurie oh that's right and i was thirty six whenever we moved that's right and where you live on pleasant ave there's been quite a bit of changes of course i think the elephant alice would know a lot more of one of the street was extended to one up but over the hill and so on but going back to the family we have four boys and one girl and they're all going on our own because  three of my attend the carnegie mellon the brian the youngest was getting shorter kashkari it went to the university of pittsburgh captive of course went there for one year and then she decided to go to new york but at any rate there are seem to be prospering and the two of us are mostly at home at the present time talk why don't we start with those of you that went to school up in political township a few of you dia i'd be really interested to hear some stories about where you went to school and just anything you can remember the house and still standing on his road and anyway even when i started to make murray school well i want to backtrack a little bit because we moved in march at that time peter's time to let the elementary school out on april thirtieth and of course in the fourth grade at clifton school we had to go till the end of may so my father made arrangements for me to travel with charlotte right back and forth to clifton school until the end of the semester or the end of the year and the kids at school and clifton thought i was crazy because i did have a chance to get out in april thirtieth and there i was going in the next from home when i started this grade and mcmurtry school at that time it had twelve grades in one building probably about two hundred fifty people in the entire developing now you have high school classes that are bigger than that  school at the crossroads and it was a one room schoolhouse with a coal stove in the center of it you went outside for the bathroom and from drinking water and there was one teacher there and it had been a grades but when i started it was five grades and there was two of us in first grade and a lot of times there was one of which with me and it i just sat on the to just laugh to read and we walked home for lunch in the winter we could take our sleds to school one sled ride at lunch time because we had an hour for lunch and we all had responsibility at school and you were responsible there were boys that really were responsible to bring the coal in to put the flag up there was no doubt we didn't have a janitor  and i'll tell you one thing the teachers back here they were really really carting good to you as they were how i mean how are they different that they might be not well i mean the looks it was only like two in each grade and sharing their own data so we gave you something to keep you busy while working with the older classes and we always would listen to what was going on in the other class everman as they call it of that was a very fine method of transportation as everyone has found out when he goes to the south hills and there complain about a lack of parking they should have kept that right away open went to washington you know he went all the way to washington to care for me as bargain and started it what was the four thirty in the morning or five and it ran till two thirty in the past midnight can you imagine every half hour every half in it was right by the nursing home you know distress of the residents to the cemetery and then so what are you going to do that was prime lamb too there was a court lawsuit over that but the residents lost on that i'll bet you've seen a lot of beautiful prime farmland only go on the descent into housing developments and i'm just trying to think of some of the current housing areas down just about road and you'd look across the area always apple trees in the spring they were all you know full blown it was beautiful and we always said that well adam and eve took over after and but i know mr jarman had waited something like twenty one years to secure that piece of property and he had a worker his name was peter i  his last name but his name was peter peter did most of the work he was a but when they were winding nineteen showing that there was nothing there and there were two homes that they moved and they're located over crushing the fire hall and now and there was absolutely nothing in there the macdowell form and i hope and felt my goodness when did when did shopping start there the shopping centralized at the at erie as compared to say the dairy bar area will probably only come of the highway going through well in me there was always the store at the crossroads i have a picture of  restaurant and a service station and nineteen forty nineteen went down past our house there and that's when it changed in the change to this and this is a picture of before the bank building this is what it looked like after right on the corner of snyder in just this is still very beautiful farmland out here well i remember when we were first married we lived through my son lives just down the road there was a from that house on the farm here and then i think finally one or one of our younger sons would send school it went through the third grade and fourth grade they came over to make money elementary but i think look at all there was making a walkway from way out on top of the hill mary and dr marion drive to this school and what we objected to primarily is because pleasant avenue wasn't accepted as a peter with us if there was a hole we went out there with a shovel and we fell that him so at that time we were already getting angry at the school board so when they had a meeting we had mentioned to them i says which one of you gentleman took the trouble to walk are enough of that and i made enough news that well let's change the subject a little bit i am i work with senior citizens and i also work with teenagers in the township and i would be really interested to hear what teenagers do for social recreation or for any type of entertainment dating practices or anything like that  four boys you'd think you'd have trouble but once they got it in their head that we had bought an old antique ford what was a thirty six so we have to fix that up to match it to make a run and then we were working in the machinist and my maintenance kind of  a trade at the steel plant we had all the tools the wrenches and you name it as you were cumulate through the years so naturally they got used to help in the work on the chorus and after they got one through from one car we did have a canteen at the school my senior year on saturday evenings and it was a place where you could go and dance and play games sort of like this cellar that they have now  it was there in the auditorium of the school and you could bring a friend but outsiders couldn't carry on or you know just drop in and you had to stay in there the whole time you were there until you went home i think really not too many people had driver's license when i was a same year so you just parents had to bring you are you going to catch a bus to go there and many of times i ride home with  to peter's township for our children's clothes did you make many trips to washington or was that too far away and never was closer but we went there for dog tags and paid taxes was perfectly happy to be able to walk to work every day even though i wasn't making much money and one morning i walked up to my dad service station in the secure german again who was up there and i met him for the first time and a couple weeks later dad came home and he said mr german said he has a job for you in pittsburgh if you want one when say about it well why should i travel to pittsburgh when i could walk down the mcmurray so finally dad persuaded me and i went and i saw about it they offered me seventy five dollars a month and that was a real mint on going to college to the pottery in canada burned to the telephone company down in mcnairy and you guys they went in and saw you know what they did and that was one of your career choices course and one of the periods i had two periods of the mac and one period i cooked for the cafeteria you didn't get paid for it that was your learning experience and he didn't react and that was the way the kids ate  because of the damage here it was very tiny but we made soup and putting and chocolate milk because it didn't come in containers them and that was our apparently you met every day then y know you got cheated because i got paid when i were no we didn't we were under that n y program national use association we got for fifty a month then you had to have to study periods one before and one yeah after the dance and we prepared the meals and we had to be there during the lunch period and then well it was always to lunch periods one for the elementary school in one place and then afterwards while you were cleaning in there but this was this had to do with your dad's income or something  a season you know from november thanksgiving on well they paid you a generous sum of five dollars a week however there was no such thing as a forty hour week we had to be there from eight o'clock or even earlier because it opened a date and we were still there usually it tell mine thirty in the evening can imagine what we brought our own lunch and then even so i remember the the owner of the one that was  forgot i worked for that when i was in high school and i had to do the windows in the high school and correct papers and when i had to do the windows i was so embarrassed that i was washing if my first job was at the cleaners i was a relief girl in the afternoon and i got four dollars a week and then i paid for my transportation and the everything in the end i was at for two weeks and i was promoted it having it organized or started or something and they had a quilt judging and they had farm produce and cakes and jellies and all of this chickens you remember them and that they would have like i know they'd sell raffle tickets to defray some of the cost of it and my mother want to quell that was raffled off i have that quote today  it's a beautiful quote and i wish i knew who had made it but i don't and later they were when they built the elementary school they had a cooking program as part of the fair they had a cooking program down in the all purpose family cafeteria believe in the elementary school and that was the very first time i ever saw a microwave and they did a hot dog and was it was relocated from somewhere else down there it was made up from where it is where it was down further we never knew me moved it up closer to where the library is and i didn't remember the story behind where the scout cabin actually came from it was in the same area there when it was moved up a little bit now is that the same group that is now  maybe a bank go in with good business and the firemen showed their apparatus you know and demonstrated their yeah but it was a thing that we had every year and that was on and that was a lot of the activities at school to the junior and senior class could sponsor a square dance and we did progress but here we are at peter's township and nine hundred ninety i've lived in the area for twenty years and i've seen so much change that thinking of the things that you're talking about is mind boggling well i'm hoping that the youngsters really take heed and they have the coming years to contend with not like some of us like myself i'm talking about and what they don't realize if they don't conserve what the trees and the natural resources i shudder to think what the future might hold and i'm hoping that each one of them living in a chronic degree as great as united states is or should i you say was i don't know  should take heed that to preserve their country and as citizens of the country make sure that they maintain the try to maintain the air quality that trees of the things that nature has been has a been supplying us through the years naturally god is the creator of all and that's where we got to nature but one thing i have to say about one thing we did when we bought the lot over there on present there was a benefit because it cut down on the noise from the singing or wailing bridge and even now she can't hear so much of the highway even two hundred feet up from it and the trees must act as a barrier they do and that they convert our when we exhaust our air from our bodies and as i understand the leaves pull that in and create the oxygen tank so that's where the trees come  monroeville you don't see a pleasant sight to see too many business places of shopping centers and i think peter's township should stay more rural than you know there there it's ok i get giant oak snare everything that you probably will never get any shopping centers although the homes that are built next to the shopping center they're beautiful homes and if they put a shopping center where they're talking about now those people are going to be looking at the roofs with air conditioners on that angle be so nice but if you look you know from the hilltop you know  new all those new homes are it's close to china and their deaths are talking about put in a shopping center that parmer mcdonald's you know that's going to be terrible for those people that have those beautiful homes to be broken down on roofs and