Columbus Monthly / December 2011 / Invasion from the east

 Email  Print

Invasion from the east

Ohio Valley folks have brought their nicknames, love of the Steelers and peculiar culinary favorites to the big city.

When transplants to Columbus from the Ohio Valley, a strip of hardscrabble along the Ohio River, cannot explain a phenomenon unique to the area, they will shrug and say, “It’s a Valley thing.”

Case in point: A young woman recently attended Ohio Valley Night at Gresso’s Bar on South High Street. She had a major jones on for a Valley original—DiCarlo’s Pizza—but by 9:30 pm it was long gone, devoured by the 150 other Ohio Valleyians who had started to line up for the world’s greatest pizza three and a half hours earlier.

She started to pucker up, tears filling her eyes.

Those unfamiliar with DiCarlo’s might say, “It’s pizza, for God’s sake. Get over it.”

But a former Valley resident, such as myself, would understand perfectly. “Yeah. I get it. It’s DiCarlo’s. I’d cry, too.”

It’s a Valley thing.

Once upon a time, the migration to Columbus came from southern Ohio, where the three Rs were Readin’, Ritin’ and Route 23. Today, it’s Ohio Valleyians who are heading to the big city on I-70 from Steubenville or Wheeling, West Virginia, or any of the adjacent burgs. Need proof? Go to any sports bar in town when the Steelers are playing.

The move began a few decades back when the steel mills started to sputter. When they were booming, Weirton Steel and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel alone provided 60,000 jobs in the Valley, and there were thousands of other ones supporting those operations.

Today, there are, oh, six jobs left in the Valley.

If you ask a Valley Boy or a Valley Girl why they left, they’ll tell you, “Great place to grow up. Great people. No jobs, man.” (By the way, it’s perfectly fine to use those descriptions, although you shouldn’t confuse one of our ladies with an omigod California Valley Girl ’cause our girls could scratch their eyes out in two seconds.)

The Valley we loved has been decimated and people are heading west. Fortunately, we didn’t find anything in Zanesville and kept coming until we hit I-270.

This emerging population has fortified Steelers bars, increased attendance at the Columbus Italian Festival, spurred Ohio Valley Night at Gresso’s and prompted the creation of the Ohio Valley Club of Columbus.

While the migration has been impressive, to many Central Ohio natives it’s been more like an invasion of funny-talking folks who refer to groups of people as “yunzguys.” It’s like one of those horror movies where you suddenly realize you’re in a room with thousands of spiders, but not as hairy, well, except for Dino Tripodis, but I digress.

Tripodis actually is the exception to the rule. Most transplants moved to Columbus because they couldn’t find work at home. Tripodis moved west after he found a job in the Valley.

Long before he became a standup comedian and co-host of Sunny 95’s morning Dino & Stacy & Shawn & Stacy Again Show, he was a longhair from Steubenville toiling at the blast furnace for Weirton Steel. “After two weeks of working around that blast furnace, I couldn’t get to college fast enough,” says Tripodis, who left a vapor trail for Ohio State University.

Tripodis offers a simple explanation for the fascination with the Valley. “Steubenville is the center of the universe,” he says. “That’s a fact. Give me six degrees of separation and I can bring anything in the world back to Steubenville.”

George Kademenos. . . .

Now, there’s a great Valley name. Kademenos. We were a stewpot of colorful names reflecting various nationalities, including ones recognizable to sports fans—Mazeroski, Havlicek, Niekro. And, of course, there was a certain famous Rat Packer known in the Valley as Dino Crocetti (that would be Dean Martin to everybody else). If you’re hanging around Valley folks, you’ll also notice that very few are called by their given names. Everyone has a nickname: Oogie, Gigs, Creature, Polio, Boots, Tweet, Mugs, Doobie, Diesel and so forth.

But I’m getting off track again.

Kademenos is from Wheeling and came to Columbus by way of OSU. He is the founder and president of the Ohio Valley Club of Columbus, which he started in 2008 as a way for the transplants to socialize and network. The club has more than 300 members and meets quarterly, rotating at three restaurants operated by former Ohio Valleyians—Gresso’s, Bel-Lago and the Wyandotte Winery. The Smokey Bones on Polaris Parkway used to be in the rotation, but got dropped when the manager (here’s another dandy Valley name, Dino Galaotos) left for another gig. Yes, we’re a cliquey bunch. Get over it.

“If you’re from the Valley, you have this strong sense of home, of community,” Kademenos says. “It makes a big city feel like a small town when you’re with people that you can share similar experiences. We lived in different towns up and down the river, but we all ate at the same restaurants, shopped the same stores and hung around together.”

Roughly translated: Did you ever go to the Merriment on Wheeling Island? That place was awesome. (It was, until it burned down.) The Merriment was located on Wheeling Island and the first stop over the bridge when you had to be 21 to legally drink in Ohio, but only 18 in West Virginia. The Merriment was part of a Valley circuit of landmark bars that included the Alamo, Eagle, Lou’s Voo Doo, Max Club, Fogaletti’s, Figaretti’s and Johnny’s.

Kademenos says the club in Columbus has been a great way for Valleyians to meet and do business with like-minded people. While he can point to a variety of successful Central Ohio business types with Valley roots, all pale by comparison to the Big Kahuna of successful Valley business types—the late John H. McConnell. That’s right, Mr. Mac was a Valley Boy. The founder of Worthington Industries and the man who brought the Blue Jackets to Columbus and built the McConnell Heart Hospital had his roots in little Pughtown, West Virginia.

You’re welcome, by the way.

(Pughtown no longer exists. Somebody got a little uppity down in the Valley and changed the name to the more refined New Manchester.)

Johnny DiLoretto, who travels about Central Ohio every weekday morning for Fox 28’s “Good Day Columbus,” admits he longs for the Steubenville of his youth. “I miss that rich, ethnic heritage the Valley had when I was growing up,” DiLoretto says. “There were Poles, Greeks, Slavs, Italians, blacks. It created a great spirit. I think everyone who grew up in the Valley during that time feels a fondness for the area and the way things used to be. There’s also something about the geography—the hills and river—that acts like a magnetic pull for people. I think that’s why you see people from the Valley congregating together.”

(Tripodis and DiLoretto put on a show at this year’s Columbus Italian Festival, singing 13 Dean Martin songs to a tent packed full of Ohio Valleyians. The reviews were favorable, though the duo reportedly was so starved for applause they resorted to such tawdry tactics as yelling out: Let’s hear it for East Liverpool! How about it, Follansbee!)

Eric Gresak came to Columbus from Wheeling to attend Ohio Dominican University and became a schoolteacher. His dream, however, was to open his own restaurant, which he did at 961 S. High St. in 2007. His creation, Gresso’s, was named the best Steelers bar in the city by Columbus Monthly in 2009. (We’re also big Pirates fans, but after 19 consecutive losing seasons, we don’t talk about that so much.) Gresso’s is decorated with ball caps and football helmets from high school teams in the Valley. One Martins Ferry Purple Riders helmet has 40 signatures on it from former players who have stopped by the restaurant.

“Columbus is a great city, but it’s just not as friendly as the Valley,” Gresak says. “When you meet another person from the Valley, there’s an instant connection. I think that’s the primary reason people from the Valley gravitate to each other. There’s a sense of trust.”

Gresso’s is a magnet for Ohio Valleyians, not only when the Steelers play, but also on the last Wednesday of every month when it hosts Valley Night. Gresak drives to Wheeling to pick up boxes of DiCarlo’s and fish from Coleman’s Fish Market in South Wheeling. Coleman’s is another Valley thing. Every Catholic church and American Legion Hall that sponsored a fish fry had Coleman’s fish. Here’s another thing Central Ohioans don’t get: You eat Coleman’s fish on two slices of Wonder Bread. (To be honest, I never understood that, either. What would it hurt to put it on a bun? But I didn’t want to risk being ostracized by breaking with tradition.)

It’s the DiCarlo’s, however, that really puts the salivary glands on overload for Valleyians. Gresak buys the pizza cooked and covered in sauce, so all he has to do is heat and add cheese when he gets to the restaurant. He’ll bring 15 boxes and sell out nearly every time.

DiCarlo’s is Sicilian-style that you buy by the square. You can have anything on it you like, so long as it’s pepperoni and cheese.

 

There is hope of an economic boom in the Valley with the drilling of Marcellus and Utica shale for natural gas. Recent reports say it could bring thousands of jobs back to the region.

The possibility of a rebound prompts talk at the Ohio Valley Club of a reverse migration—thousands of pizza-stained wretches piling into their pickups and heading east. But the conversation goes something like this:

“Would you go?”

“Go back? To the Valley? Hell no, I’m not going back. There’s nothing there.”

True, that.

So, as long as we’re staying, we might pressure these sports bars to stop with this Yuengling obsession and carry a real Valley beer: Iron City.

It’s an acquired taste, like fish on Wonder Bread.

Robin “Tweet” Yocum is a native of Brilliant. His recent novel, Favorite Sons, is set in the Ohio Valley.