Growing Up in Wheeling: Woodsdale Homes

If you lived in a castle in modern times you would wonder what all the things in the castle used to be used for.  Growing up in a house built in 1914 on Poplar Ave in Woodsdale you would notice the artifacts of...

Growing Up in Wheeling: Employment in Woodsdale

When I was young there was a strange concept floating about. Children worked for money, it did not fall out of the sky as is currently the case. My first income was from selling trash. In the old days God d...

Growing Up in Wheeling: The Woodsdale Hill

World War II ended.  Soldiers returned to our beloved country.  Those soldiers settled down and immediately started reproducing.  That meant that there would be another generation born to pick up arms.  Woodsda...

Growing Up in Wheeling: The Woodsdale Mafia

I was a pretty good boy and a good student at Woodsdale until I joined the mafia in the seventh grade. Magic happened when the kids from Edgington Lane, and Washington Avenue were mixed into our sedate group. T...

Learning to Drink in Wheeling

Somehow we all got introduced to the ancient evil of alcohol. In Wheeling most likely it was beer. Way back in the old days, which would have been the late and mid 60's Wheeling had a great system for creating ...

The Power of Intense Fragility

* Title attributed to E. E. Cummings The other evening I attended a musical program at Wheeling Jesuit University. Looking up from a table of delicious desserts after the performance, I saw Mary Hamm across th...