Pechin Denbo Marina, Denbo, Pa

Found this on the pier in middle, date unknown

     It was a warm Friday morning, and I somehow managed to get an unexpected day off from work,  so I thought I'd take the long way home in celebration.    I got off the new road, then made my rounds through downtown Brownsville, as word on the street is they were in the process of ripping down even more buildings on the main drag, Market Street.  

View from the rear

     A few of the buildings look to be in the process of being gutted, and there is some revitalization on another building close by.   We'll be back to follow up on this subject, but I got bored with it today,  and had been meaning to stop by the little town of Denbo for a while.

     Now,  a few years back, I did a blog on the construction of the new Route 43 turnpike bridge,

 the bridge that was the final nail in the coffin of the Fredericktown Ferry, or more commonly known as Fred.

     Denbo is a small town along the Monongahela river, and once was home of the Vesta 6 mine,  which supplied coal to the mighty furnaces of the Jones and Laughlin to the north in Pittsburgh.  Vesta 6 shut down in 1946, and since then, it is just another patch town along the river.

    Sometime in the 1980's (unsure of these dates, not a whole lot of info out there, feel free to correct), Sullivan D'Amico of local Pechin's fame opened a marina from a former lumberyard on the main street through Denbo.  I'm no expert, but it looks like he used the existing Vesta structures for barge load out, as a part of the marina layout.   From what people have been commenting on our Facebook page, this Pechin's too, was also famous for its low food prices. 

     I'm not sure when it closed, but the signs on the marina show a 412 area code, and we haven't used that here since 1998, so maybe before then.   As I walked out on the big pier in the center of the below picture, I found these four postcards just laying in the middle of the catwalk, so I took that as a sign to do this post.


     I found an old article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about a fire truck auction at the old marina in 2006.  For those of you familiar w/ the Pechin name, you know what a hoarder  collector the man was.....

The same area today

 What follows are a bunch of pictures of the overgrown and abandoned marina today.  It's currently for sale, so who knows, maybe the 3 dollar steak dinner will return (thanx Jeff Mann for the reference).

The catwalk where I found the postcards

Alicia load out, across river

old boat ramp

Feel free to offer any memories, corrections to the blog....

     

Clean up on Aisle 2! Dunbar, PA's famous Pechin's!

 Danielle, Evan and I decided to do some shopping and the Laurel Mall flea market didn't disappoint.  D found some sweet new exploration footwear as well as some Spuds McKenzie glasses.  Evan scored a Stoney's tray and just wait 'till you see the gnarly purple carpet I'm getting for the Shaggin' Wagon!

 Anyway, while we were checking out the Star Wars toys and digging on the vintage vibe of Laurel Mall, we decided to pay homage to a local shopping mecca.  A place everyone has memories of, both good and,well.... Eating in the cafeteria was a rite of passage. Feed your family for about $5...really.  This was a place where you could buy groceries, shoes, golf clubs, a gun and beer all in one place...way before Wal-Mart!

 I'm of course speaking of the legendary Pechin's Shopping Village.  Located in Dunbar, Pa. near the Fayette County Fairgrounds, Pechin's was not just a store, it was an adventure!  Founded in 1947 as Pechin Grocery by Sullivan "Sully" D'Amico in a former train depot, the place was a staple for Moms and Grandmas in the tri-state area.  Pechins was famous for low prices and infamous for being janky as hell! But thats what made it great!   There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the location of goods in the grocery store.  I think they just dropped a pallet where there was room.  Maybe it was a brilliant way to make shoppers roll the entire wooden floor in search of what they needed, picking up items as they went? Nah, probably not.  Evan recalls "old timers" telling how you could see the creek through the holes in the floor.  The buggies look as if they were patched together from different stores and you NEVER,  I MEAN NEVER, went to Pechins on the first of the month!

 Every year, we would head to 7-Springs and stop at Pechins for beer.  The challenge was to eat $5 worth of food in the cafeteria.  Keep in mind...hamburgers were 20 cents, cheeseburgers 25 cents.  I never even came close...The food was actually pretty good. If I remember... those prices lived on until the end of the original plaza.

 Following the death of Mr. D'Amico in 2005, Pechins moved to the afore mentioned Laurel Mall. Occupying the former Montgomery Wards.  The store lives on, but with much less character.  A salvage company moved into the original site not long after and began the process of clearing out the shelves, cases and fixtures.  Then, on June 6th, 2006, a fire swept through the former shopping plaza destroying most of the buildings and nearby trucks and equipment.  We grabbed some pix of whats left, which isn't much.  Share your Pechins story...cuz we know you got one!!

Found this inside the resturaunt shot online...

The two pictures below, courtesy of Jay Miller...Just look how busy, and it was always like this.