Johnson: Too bad these nice people will be sad, butt . . .

By Bill Johnson, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published January 21, 2006 at midnight

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PITTSBURGH - I am getting out right on time.

They have figured out where I am staying. They are now recognizing me in the street.

On Friday, I retreated to a tiny, out-of-the-way bar in search of solace. I was there not one minute before a man staggers over, grabs my hand and blurts, "You're that guy on TV. The 'butt-ugly' guy!"

Let me tell you the extent to which news other than the Steelers happens in Pittsburgh - or, at least, news that its denizens truly care about.

I seem to be about it.

In a column Wednesday, written not more than five hours after I landed in Pittsburgh, I called this town "butt-ugly." I have been unable to live it down.

I have been on two TV stations and as many as three radio stations. Page 2 of the Post-Gazette here Friday was filled with little other than people calling me an idiot.

My e-mail queue, last I checked, contained more than 500 messages, most of them from Pittsburghers, and the bulk of them are certainly not printable here.

One arrived from Chris Dawso, owner of Jack's Bar, a popular South Side drinking spot. He said he is going to Denver for the game, is planning to look me up and that he had better not find my "ass."

He apparently took umbrage that I had called his place a "hole," which anyone should know is a term of endearment.

Chris Dawso e-mailed again Friday, promising to buy me a beer, if I would show up at Jack's again. All would be forgiven, he said.

Even bad publicity, Chris Dawso apparently had come to understand, was better than none at all. I couldn't buy a beer in Jack's on Friday.

Pittsburgh, aesthetically, is still not my cup of tea. If you like buildings smoked-stained by long decades of steel mills, this is the place for you.

But, let me just add this: If you want to meet some of the nicest people who trod the planet, Pittsburgh also is the place for you.

"You know, you are butt-ugly," a man downtown said to me, completely out of the blue. I froze. And then, he slapped my back and shook my hand.

I am really starting to love Pittsburgh. It is a shame it will be in such misery come Monday.

Ah, but Pittsburgh in the final days leading up to Sunday's game at Invesco Field at Mile High, is truly a sight to behold.

Everyone here is festooned in black and gold. Businessmen wear Steelers jerseys over their suits. Old men walk about in Mean Joe Green jerseys.

At noon Friday a pep rally kicks off at the City and County Building. I estimate that at least 300 people, all dressed in black and gold, turn out.

If I never again hear "Here we go Steelers, here we go!", it will be much too soon.

A large pine tree stood in the middle of the expansive courtyard of the City and County Building. It once was a Christmas tree. Long before the Indianapolis game they had taken off the holiday lights and garland and turned it into the Steelers Tree.

It now stands outfitted mostly with Terrible Towels, cardboard yellow school buses - all bearing Jerome Bettis' No. 36 - black-and-gold ribbons and balloons, flags, helmets and black-and-yellow lights.

On a laurel tree just to the right of the Steelers tree, a papier-mâché likeness of Broncos quarterback Jake Plummer hangs in effigy. The bottoms of his shoes read "Help" and "Me."

Midway through the pep rally, a grown man hands the children in attendance a black-and-gold baseball bat and instructs them to bash the effigy as hard as they can.

Three children and multiple piñata swings later, Jake's head is gone.

"We live for this," Donald Nemchick, 55, a retired federal worker, tells me, as we watch people dance to the Steelers fight song.

"We are all wearing the black and gold because it is clear contempt not to wear it. We sing the fight song because we actually believe it will go with the team when it goes to Denver. And we want to fire each other up."

Folks are hanging out third-story windows, waving Terrible Towels and other Steelers paraphernalia. Former Steelers great Franco Harris grabs the microphone, and people are awestruck all over again.

I have no idea if such madness is occurring in Denver, but I trust that it is.

"Ask her about them," Dave Ackerman, 35, and born and raised in Pittsburgh, taunts me. "Ask her what I bought her that is so lucky."

His fiancée, Didi, blushes. "Steelers panties. I wear them every game day. They work!"

"You don't know anything about Pittsburgh," Dave Ackerman says. "I had a job offer in Charlotte, paying me a hell of a lot more than I am making right now, and I turned it down because I couldn't leave the Steelers.

"I will never leave this place and only because of the Steelers. Cut me open, I will bleed black and gold. And, yes, I am as stupid as stupid can be."

This is largely why I am glad I am leaving when I am. Radio and television here are broadcasting, virtually to the exclusion of every other bit of news (except to report on the guy who called their town butt-ugly), Pittsburgh Steelers updates. Hines Ward burps, it leads the newscast.

Denver, in the 10 years I have known it now, has boasted of itself to be a football town. But I don't believe it as rabid as this: Elderly people in wheelchairs wearing Steelers jerseys on a Friday afternoon.

The saddest thing is, come Monday, they will be taking down the Steelers tree at the City and County Building, and the sidewalk gear stands will lose all their customers and disappear. Real news will return.

And way too many nice people I have met during the past four days will be knocked for a loop. I expect they'll wail like toddlers. Fortunately, they'll have their Terrible Towels to dab at their tears.

Bill Johnson's column appears Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Call him at 303-892-2763 or e-mail him at johnsonw@RockyMountainNews.com.

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