"R" rated fish

Cherry street seems to be the dividing line between Brackenridge and Tarentum-it end at River Road and then there is the parks.  If you keep on walking past the park, you will fall down a small mud/hill that meets  the Allegheny River.  There is also a concrete faced drain for "rain" runoff water from the streets.  The drain hole is about 4' in diameter and it goes to the river with sloping cement sides set at an angle.  Usually the water is only about 6" deep and 2' wide-unless there is a good rain, then all the street water is channeled to the drain-and they didn't make it 4' in diameter for a reason!  And that reason is for us kids to straddle the water and see how far we can walk up the drain-about 8-9 blocks was my limit.  You could hear traffic above as you passed under a manhole cover.  Yes, we had flashlights, and sometimes a kerosene or Coleman gas lantern: which was insane, because there was more than rain water, that is, of course, if no one lifted off a manhole cover and took a dump. And the stuff dumps are made off produce methane gas as a byproduct-which means a light producing a flame could have sent us into the next world, or at least through a manhole cover, if we were lucky. Scene: the funeral home.  "And just how did your boy die?  A turd got him while the jerk used fire to crawl through the sewer system.  Ka-boom!.  Which is why we yell at our kids when they do something dangerous: like use the stairs or get into a car, sit down or go to sleep:)  Anyway, the town's home's had to be connected as a relief when the sewer plant couldn't handle the load, and those turds would float between our old sneaker's as we straddled the sewer.  Told you this was going to be adult rated.  Below the Lock and dam, there were no game fish and the bottom feeders like carp and low level scavenger's-opp! I was thinking of lawyer's when I meant catfish, were so toxic from industrial waste being dumped in the water, they were poison. I don't know how the folks on "4th Avenue" ate them unless the hot grease absorbed the pollutants. There was a third kind of fish, which usually stayed on top of the water, and occasionally, we would snag one with our fishing line-which meant we had to cut it off and loose a hook, because we were not about to touch them.  We called them, "Allegheny Whitefish."  They floated out of the sewers and they were discarded, used, condoms.  When some yelled out they caught a "White Fish," no explaining was needed:  everyone of us kids new the meaning.  We just couldn't figure out how they got in a rain water sewer! Side Note:  when you got so far up in the 4' sewer pipe you could not hear if it was raining outside:  until all of a sudden you seen this wall of water come at you and and you ran like h*** to outrun it before you got washed into the river!  Did our parents know what we were doing? Of course not, just like we did not know most of the time what our kids were doing growing up.  At least they didn't live on the river and go into sewer pipes! Another, "why are we still alive?":  Bill and I were in our grandparents basement, filling a kerosene lantern, probably to go sewering, when granddad came down the steps-he probably wanted to know where the smell of gasoline was coming from-that's right, Bill filled the KEROSENE lantern with gasoline and was trying to light the wick.  He(Frana-Slovene for Frank), was not a happy camper,or use bad word's like, "gosh," darn," as not only would we blow ourselves up but probably burn down his house.  If anyone says there is no such thing as Guardian Angels, we proved time and time again that there existence is real with the stupid a** things we did as kids.  Hey! How else to learn, but to kill yourselves a few times? Next the clock radio and the $100/oz smelling "Puff," and the 1921 Silver dollar rip-off for a quart of perfume for mom when she was in the hospital after giving birth to Tim. The hospital staff probably haz-med it by pouring it in the sewer lines to kill the "Allegheny White Fish."  Some of them even had "noses," so you know they were alive at one time, before they drowned-the only fish of record to drown in water! My families always taqxidermed their record fish by mounting them on a nicely cut board, with the the stats on a gold plate under it. I should have done that to one of our record breaking catches of Allegheny White Fish!I suppose that woulde be stretching the truth somewhat......