Roaming: a column | somewhere between observation and critique | art and sound and movement by David Bernabo
I’m driving through the borough of Donora, Pennsylvania, roughly 45 minutes south of Pittsburgh, famous for the Donora Smog of 1948, an air inversion that trapped air pollution from the American Steel and Wire plant and Donora Zinc Works, killing 20 people within three days and 50 more a little later and laying the groundwork for the 1955 Air Pollution Control Act.
The streets are largely empty, save for a police car that I see four times as I pivot from McKean Avenue, the road that traverses the commercial district, to the hilly residential lanes. A golden light falls on trees lining the neighborhoods, and a crisp, cold wind blows leaves around.
Much of this town was built in the early 1900s, after its incorporation in 1901. The architecture in the center of Donora is quite lovely—brick arches frame windows, as do keystones; names like Roth, Kane’s Bros, and Woodward are immortalized in stone atop buildings; and the occasional flick of modernism is visible in minimal paneling, glass, and flat roofs.
The reason that I’m idling outside of the now closed House of Nutrition is due to a podcast. Cement City. “Two journalists. One house. Three years. One American town.”
Sold! I love small town stories. In fact, I documented a few. Writer John Miller and I created the documentary film Moundsville, about Moundville, WV. And writer Amanda Page and I created Peerless City, another documentary, this time about Portsmouth, OH.
Full disclose: Erin Anderson, one of the podcast creators, producers, writers, and sound capturers is a friend, and I’ve been hearing about Erin and host/co-writer Jeanne Marie Laskas’s adventures in Donora for at least five years.
So here’s the premise: “Jeanne Marie and Erin wander off the highway into Donora, Pennsylvania, a dying town with a dark secret. They decide to buy a house. A solid concrete house. In a neighborhood called Cement City.”
Within the first two episodes, it’s hard to say where the story is going, but host Jeanne Marie has a punchy cadence that quickly moves the story forward and the casual conversations that Jeanne Marie and Erin have as they meet Donorans are charming. In fact, the first episode or two is almost a documentary about how to create a document of a place. How do you meet strangers? Well, just walk into a private members-only club. How do you find people to interview? Just talk to everyone you run into, ask them if you can record the conversation, and then point the mic in their direction.
By the third episode, the plot solidifies. [Mild spoilers ahead after the photo. Stop reading if you don’t want them.]
This is an election story. Not a Harris/Trump or Biden/Trump story, but a local election. There are council seats up for grabs and also the job of mayor. Through this election, Jeanne Marie and Erin are able to dissect the economics of Donora and the various political factions—mostly, everyone is a Democrat, but the candidates have different ideas for Donora’s future. There is a lack of jobs, a lack of amenities, and a lack of connection to other towns and cities. Aside from a Deus ex Machina in the form of the arrival of a big employer, Donorans seem to view local politics as the best way to engage the remaining community and build something out of what they have.
The podcast doesn’t dwell in the dire. There are sweeping bouts of optimism, of impassioned speeches and candid interviews, of small victories. These moments balance the sudden injections of blunt realities. And when those hard truths arrive, they are accompanied by an ambience, a sense of space or air that surrounds the words of Donora’s residents. Anderson and Laska let the tape roll and avoid over-editing, allowing the listener time to process the impact of a sentence or an event. Personally, I love this approach, because the residents often mention small details that convey big ideas and incisive truths about Donora, but also about other smaller Rust Belt towns and, perhaps, America’s struggling middle and working classes.
David Bernabo is an oral historian, musician, artist, and independent filmmaker. His film work has documented western Pennsylvania food systems, climate change, the studio practices of composers and artists, and the histories of iconic arts institutions like the Mattress Factory. He is most noted for Moundsville, a documentary co-directed with former Wall Street Journal writer John W. Miller, which screened on PBS for three years.
IG: @davidbernabo
Website: davidbernabo.info
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