Growing Up with Clemente

Richard Peterson

Description

A post-World War II memoir of a childhood in working-class Pittsburgh"Alongside August Wilson and John Edgar Wideman, Richard Peterson is among the most evocative chroniclers of Pittsburgh, their colorful hometown. I loved Growing Up With Clemente for both its unnostalgic lyricism and its utter honesty." -David Maraniss, author of Clemente: The Passion and Grace of Baseball's Last Hero"Richard Peterson's memoir reminds you of Faulkner's assertion that man will not merely endure, he will prevail. For that's what Peterson has done, and he makes this story about the grandson of a Lithuanian immigrant-this quintessential American story-new all over again. It's vivid. Fascinating. Troubling. Sad. And finally satisfying. A triumph both in the living and in the telling. I read it in two sittings, fully in its thrall." -Kent Haruf, author of PlainsongPete Peterson's prose picks you up by the scruff of the neck and the seat of the pants and pitches you deep into a place and time that will hurry you back to your own coming of age. He is Pittsburgh to the bone and his writing-trenchant, crisp and painfully honest-reflects it. If you regard the place where you grew up as special, this book is for you. I commend Growing Up With Clemente to you with a writer's highest praise: I wish I'd written it."-Phil Musick, is a veteran Pittsburgh journalist and author of six books, including a biography of Roberto Clemente."An engaging, clear-eyed account of a working-class childhood in Pittsburgh, set against the backdrop of Roberto Clemente's storied career with the Pittsburgh Pirates. Peterson is forthright in his depiction of the limited hopes and expectations of working-class kids in what was then a toxic industrial landscape. Rich in period detail and sense of place, Growing Up With Clemente is above all a book about memory and about ambiguous memories nonetheless cherished, a revealing excursion into a time now gone." -Laurie Graham, author of Singing in the City: The Bonds of Home in an Industrial Landscape"I always enjoy Pete Peterson's writing immensely. His prose is consistently vivid, poignant, smart, and utterly without pretension. Growing Up With Clemente is no exception." -Jeffrey Hammond, Reeves Distinguished Professor in the Liberal Arts, St. Mary's College of MarylandGrowing Up With Clemente is a personal history of the hardscrabble life of Pittsburgh's South Side during the city's post-World War II renaissance. It is also the intimate story of an American boy who played baseball on the city's dilapidated playgrounds and rooted for his beloved sports teams while growing up and struggling in Pittsburgh's blue-collar neighborhoods. Though among the worst professional teams in the 1950s, the Pirates and Steelers still inspired the working-class dream of a life beyond the steel mills. And in the midst of it all was the towering, isolated figure of Roberto Clemente. Clemente would eventually become a symbol of pride, loyalty, courage, and sacrifice for a city that had initially rejected him and for a young boy who spent his youth looking for a hero but had to grow up before understanding Clemente's greatness.With sensitivity and eloquence, Richard Peterson captures a time and place easily overlooked or forgotten but important to understanding the significance of sports in shaping America's working-class character. Whether discussing race, sex, class, or any of the other larger issues of the world in which he grew up, Peterson conveys an honesty rarely found in memoirs. Growing Up With Clemente is an engaging read, sure to be a hit in both the literature and sports communities.

Sujets

• Béisbol
• USA
• History of sport
• États-Unis
• Baseball

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 20 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781612779775
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

David฀Maraniss,

scru of the neck and the seat of the pants

painfully honest—reects it. If you regard

฀Phil฀Musick,

Richard฀“Pete”฀Peterson

The฀Kent฀State฀ ฀ University฀Press

înally satisfying. A triumph both in the

Kent฀Haruf,

L฀ aurie฀Graham,

ŝ 978-0-87338-982-2

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Growing Growing฀Up฀With฀Clemente Up

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Clemente

Richard Peterson

Growing Up With Clemente

Growing Up With Clemente

Richard Peterson

The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio

© 2009 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 A ŝ ÉŝÉÉ Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 2008040102

ŝ 978-0-87338-982-2

Manufactured in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Peterson, Richard F.  Growing up with Clemente / by Richard Peterson.  p. cm.

ŝ 978-0-87338-982-2 (pbk. : alk. paper) ∞ 1. Clemente, Roberto, 1934–1972. 2. Baseball players—Puerto Rico—Biography. 3. Pittsburgh Pirates (Baseball team)—History. 4. Peterson, Richard F. I. Title.  865ç4548 2009  796.357092—dc22  [B] 2008040102

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication data are available.

13 12 11 10 09

5 4 3 2 1

For Anita: side by side

A 1951 Clyde Hare photograph of bridges looking up the Monongahela (courtesy of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh)

1 Chapter

Looking down from the observation deck on Mount Washington, visitors to Pittsburgh are often amazed at the beauty of my hometown.  In the clear sunlight, the spray from the fountain at Point State Park soars like the city’s renaissance spirit. In the background, skyscrapers, standing in tribute to Pittsburgh’s legendary industrial giants and the incredible wealth made from the bowels and hearths of western Penn- sylvania, form a Golden Triangle at the conuence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers. At night, the lights from the scene below sparkle like a rich diamond îeld. The glowing rivers, once avenues of commerce for the coal and iron ore needed for Pittsburgh’s îery steel mills, ow by like molten streams of gold.  A century ago, visitors to Pittsburgh saw an entirely dierent city. So much soot and smoke billowed from its mills that English novelist Anthony Trollope, on a tour of America, called Pittsburgh “the blackest place . . . I ever saw.” At night the îres from blast furnaces lit up the skies so dramatically that historian James Parton described the city as “hell with the lid taken o.” H. L. Mencken saw a Pittsburgh landscape “so dreadfully hideous, so intolerably bleak and forlorn that it reduced the whole aspirations of man to a macabre and depressing joke.”  I grew up in Pittsburgh in the late 1940s and 1950s. It was a time when clouds of smoke still darkened the city’s skies, and industrial slime and human waste turned its rivers into a poisonous bile. World War II may have saved the city from the Great Depression, but the economic recovery also increased the pollution that had been strangling the city for generations. The smoke and soot were so bad by the end of the war

1