Memories of Donora

SEPTEMBER 13, 2022

Part One: Introduction

            I grew up in Donora, a post-industrial town most known for a 1948 smog disaster. It’s referenced in an episode of the Netflix show The Crown. That’s what I hear. I haven’t seen it. There’s a museum dedicated to Donora history in the town, and it’s no-joke called the Donora Smog Museum. 

            When I think of the locations that mattered most to me in Donora, I think of my house, my maternal grandparents’ house up the street, the big, orange and black Donora sign (which has since been replaced by a cleaner, more modern-looking orange and white sign), Donora Elementary Center, Our Lady of the Valley Church and the skating rink. 

The skating rink was the fun one. It was a fixture in my life from the age of four or five until I was a tween or young teenager. 

Parents often enrolled their preschoolers or kindergartners in morning activities there. For one game, we held a huge, multicolored canvas in a circle and whipped it up and down. For the other, which I remember better, we planted our butts on square-shaped plastic seats with wheels and crab-walked around playing sort-of-soccer with a big bouncy ball. 

In the evenings, the skating rink would go dark with multicolored lights, and kids and teens would actually skate. Most used the skates with chunky wheels in each corner, but the spiffy kids used the skates with a set of “blades,” a set of thinner wheels in a straight line. I never used the blades. I skated pretty slowly and fell a lot, but I had fun. I have a distinct memory of accidentally skating the wrong direction and getting politely corrected by an adult employee keeping watch. 

This was a popular spot for birthdays. I have another distinct memory, of being in third-grade at my friend Ryan’s birthday and hearing a random kid make fun of my blue Ocean City, Maryland ballcap. I told my friends about it, laughing, with a chip on my shoulder. Laughing off a rude comment from an older kid made me feel mature. 

I've been thinking more and more about Donora and of Carroll Township, a nearby town where my family moved when I was in sixth grade, and of other parts of the Mon Valley, a collection of towns along the Monongahela River by Pittsburgh, because I’m writing a novel that takes place in a fictionalized version of the Mon Valley, called the Meierton Valley, named after my wife’s maiden name. I often think about how it felt like there was nothing to do in the valley, but there was. I have distinct memories of things to do. Some of those things were dull, like the Sheetz runs and the trips to Walmart to simply walk around. But other things were fun, like laughing off an attempt at bullying at a skating rink in third grade.  

Part Two: Soccer

            When I was in kindergarten, I played soccer in Donora, and this one year period represented the first and last time I found myself on a sports team. I remember just six things from my entire time playing soccer: 

1. I kicked a ball from one side of the field to the other, aimed perfectly at the goal, and my dad put his hands on either side of his head and opened his mouth in excitement that his son may have scored by far the most amazing goal of the season, maybe in the team’s entire history, but by the time the ball made it to the goal, it lost so much speed that the goalie stopped it like a cheetah chasing a sloth. 

2. During practice, Sarah and I ran toward the ball, racing each other to be the first to kick it, and we slammed into each other’s noggins. 

3. Whenever I felt tired or hot, I’d run off to the side and say I needed a break, drinking a juice box until I felt like going back, and sometimes, I did this even when I didn’t feel particularly tired or hot. 

4. I had a #2 pencil with me in the car on the way to practice and admired just how perfectly sharp it was, fantasized writing with it, and my dad says, “are you gonna stab Caleb with that,” referring to the bully of the team, and then, perhaps getting a bit nervous, told me he was just joking. 

5. To entertain myself, sometimes I’d skip and jump around on the soccer field, during a game, and my grandmother, smiling, told me she was watching and saw me do “all sorts of stuff” on the field. 

6. “Do you want to do it one more year,” my mother said, “if you do one more year, you get a trophy,” and I said, “no, that’s okay.” 

Part Three: The Laundry Chute

            As a kid, the laundry chute in my paternal grandparents’ house just outside of Donora in Carroll Township fascinated me. 

            The simple fact that one could go to their master bedroom’s bathroom, open a little door and drop some clothing that one could then find downstairs in the laundry room blew my mind. This was magic. 

            I grew up with plentiful television shows and movies with houses that contained secret doors, hidden behind bookcases or triggered by the press of a secret button or simply integrated into walls that could be pushed to reveal an opening, as I’m sure everyone reading this did. This happens so often in media that I have to imagine this is a common fantasy for kids and kids-at-heart. 
            This laundry chute seemed to me to follow in the legacy of these secret passages. Of course, I fantasized that the chute was quite a bit bigger than its foot or two interior, large enough to transport a tall child, perhaps also outfitted with colorful plastic and bright lights and dramatic music, potentially one with a trip that went much deeper than the laundry room that took paths that zig-zagged and looped merely for the pure fun of it, maybe somewhat like the pole that takes Batman and Robin to the batcave. 

            This thrilled me so much that I still think about it more than a decade later, and it fills me with more excitement than leaving Pennsylvania does. I still get giddy thinking about that laundry chute in my grandfather’s house and feel nothing when I think about the various nick-nacks my grandparents collected from trips they took around the world. I could fantasize about exploring the streets of New York City (where I’ve never been) or the beaches of the Caribbean (where I’ve never been) or really just about anywhere outside the country (where I’ve never been), and I could probably get myself to feel something, but I wouldn’t feel as much as I would if I just thought about exploring that laundry chute. 

            Moving out of my parent’s house coincided with my family’s decision to sell my late grandfather’s house. We made a few trips to his house to find pieces of furniture and household appliances and pictures and mugs for my then-fiance and I to take to our new apartment. When we stepped into his bedroom, I told my mom about my love of the laundry chute. She seemed to vaguely remember it. We looked around in their bathroom and bedroom and could not find it. Had my grandparents gotten rid of it? Could we simply not find it? Had I simply imagined it the whole time? 

            My father informs me that they got rid of it. “I think when they remodeled the bathroom, the workers put new tile/flooring over that,” my father tells me in a text message. “cool 😎 that you remember that.”

- Matt Petras