A transfixed visitor finds a new city worth a love story

[yortsed snacilbuper]

The Pirates game ends and we make our way out, flooding into the night across the Clemente Bridge. I pause, surrounded by a sea of black and gold.

When I pictured Pittsburgh before arriving this June, I saw rust: coal barges, steam stacks and long-forgotten train tracks. As a nomad raised in the jungles of Java and markets of Seoul, the daughter of a diplomat, what I knew of the city (and largely, America) was restricted to worn pages of a history textbook. And there, I figured, its allure would remain.

But those piercing whistles still ring clear, and the city glimmers brighter than its industrial past would suggest — more silver cloud than steel.

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[JayhawkSD]

1. Ah, yes, the Steel City of old

Back in the sixties, when I was a minor executive for a steel company and was flying very frequently, my secretary routinely booked my flights and knew that I preferred Delta Airlines. I called out my office door one day to tell her that I needed to go to Pittsburgh and she said okay and she would get me a flight. Shortly later she called in to me to say that, "Delta doesn't go to Pittsburgh."

"I don't blame them," I told her, "Just book me on whoever does."

She told that story to every visitor I had for the next several months. I have been there more recently, though, and I know it has turned into a very lovely city.