Audio File
Transcript
I am Carol Brackett. I was born a very long time ago. My birthday is actually next week, August 3rd, 1955, and I was born in the Hill District, more or less. I was actually born in Montefiore Hospital, but I’ve lived in the hill most of my life. What was it like? It was pretty nice, actually. I mean, it’s a lot- I think it’s a little bit different now. When I grew up, I pretty much knew most of the people on my street and my block is pretty long. So I live at the bottom of the Hill. Whereas now, I don’t really know… I only know the people that live like right next door to me, right across the street from me. Neighborhood’s changed a lot. There were a lot more houses, I think. A lot of the houses have been torn down, like when people died. The older people died. The younger people didn’t or weren’t able to take the houses over, so a lot of the houses were torn down. My mother and my father grew up pretty much in the Hill District. My grandmother, the only grandparent that I ever knew, owned a BBQ restaurant on Roberts St. She also was a numbers- do you all know about the numbers they used to… Before there was the lottery, there were numbers. My grandmother had… I won’t say it was illegal because that’s well, I guess people played numbers in a different way, like now they have the lottery where you go and you go to Giant Eagle or wherever, and you say I want to play this number, and they give you a ticket. Back then, there used to be people that wrote numbers, and I don’t even understand it because I was pretty little when that was happening. They used to do that in my grandmother’s BBQ place. I mean, it was a different time. Like I’m- fortunately I think a lot of things that happen now, like people getting shot and that kind of stuff, when I was growing up, that really didn’t happen too much, you know, it was, it was like a different time. Like, we could go pretty much anywhere without being afraid. When the street lights came on, pretty much you had to be on your porch. Well, the other thing that was different about the Hill District, man, I think we had more businesses, there was a BBQ place that I could walk to from my house on Herron Ave., Boykins BBQ. There was a bakery on Herron Ave. Before there was like Target and, well, Target and Marshalls and all that, they used to have five and dime stores where you could go in and buy little odds and ends. There was a five and dime on Center Ave. There was a shoe shop on Center Ave. It was just a different kind of place. I love living in the Hill District because I always tell people I can be almost anywhere in 15 minutes. It’s pretty much true. I can get to Ross Park Mall. I can go to South Hills. I can go to the South Side. I can jump on the parkway and get to Monroeville. I think that that’s one of the reasons why the land in the Hill is so valuable, because we’re in a very good location, and I think that people really want the land in the Hill because it is in a good location, and so we have the ideal spot right here. As far as my least favorite thing about the Hill, I think one of my least favorite things is the impression that people have when you tell them you live in the Hill District. You know, like they can’t believe that because of the things that you hear on the news, you don’t hear all these good things on the news about the Hill District, you hear about shootings, you hear about those kind of things. But I still feel safe in my neighborhood. I wish that people would recognize that it’s gone down, but it’s on its way up. So, it was just, I think, more of a sense of community. I’d like to see that. I hope that the businesses will come back to the Hill. I know they’re trying real hard to make the Center Ave. active again. There’s a man by the name of Mark Suthers who bought one of the school buildings, and he has a theater up in the Upper Hill, and they also have the August Wilson House over here on Bedford, where they do some cultural stuff over there. I’d like to see the New Granada theater come back. So I always tell Marimba Milliones, I just hope to live to see the New Granada Theater open up again, and I hope that we can bring back some of the cultural things because the Hill District was like a place where there was jazz and…I liked my life. I liked the school. I liked my friends. I liked the Y. You know what? If I had it to do over again, I would say, and this is going to be corny, but school is so important. It really is. So do the best you can in school. I know this sounds corny. Do the best you can in school. Go to college or everybody doesn’t have to go to college. But you got to get a trade, whatever you decide you want to do, study it and be the best you can. Because if you get the best job that you can, or if you can make the best business, you don’t have to work for somebody. You can have a nice life. That’s my advice. Study as hard as you can. And I know it’s corny and it’s not fun all the time, but that’s really my advice.