IN THE LATE NINETEEN-FORTIES, Ambridge Pennsylvania -- sixteen miles northwest of Pittsburgh -- was literally a company town.
Though the area had first been 'settled' in the early 1800s, it had remained unincorporated until 1905, when the American Bridge Company -- a pioneer in the use of steel in construction -- bought the land and formed a township named after itself.
Just abreast of the Ohio River, the site was also along the main line of the Pennsylvania Railroad, and the steel and iron products manufactured there were easily shipped off to points around the world even as immigrants poured in by the thousands to work the blast furnaces. It was Ambridge steel used to span Oakland Bay and the Verrazono Narrows, and it was Ambridge steel that sent the Chrysler and Empire State buildings towering upwards.
And it was in Ambridge that Norman Spang and John Chalfant situated their iron pipe mill, which is where Pete Hildebrand worked the graveyard shift, and fancied he saw something odd flying in the sky.
This diary is moving to its new home at Saturday Night Uforia and will post on January 24, 2012.