By Candus Thomson, The Baltimore Sun
http://www.baltimoresun.com/
12:04 a.m. EST, January 14, 2011
A gigantic inflatable Steelers player guards the entrance to Crawford’s Museum, which guards the entrance to Breezewood, Pa., the midway point between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. The museum has been turned into an all-things-Steelers gift shop. (Candus Thomson, Baltimore Sun / January 11, 2011)
BEDFORD, Pa.—The Steel Curtain that hangs across this section of the Keystone State is sturdy and true. To the south and east live the flocks that take comfort in Ravens and Eagles. To the far west, color football happiness and loyalty Cleveland brown.
Despite being at about the halfway point between Baltimore and Pittsburgh, this town of 3,100 that knows a thing or two about ugly border conflicts has pledged its allegiance to the boys in black and gold.
But there is a tiny rip in the Steel Curtain, a hint at an insurrection that started with one and is growing. Few will talk about it. It's only after hours of poking and prodding, walking the streets and asking at places such as HeBrews Coffee Co. and Hoke-E-Geez indoor flea market that the truth trickles out.
There she is, at Bedford Elementary School, in shades of purple, a Ravens sticker on her desk: Lisa Gerber, second-grade teacher and Ravens season ticket holder who travels 2 ½ hours to M&T Bank Stadium "to watch the Ravens win."
"This is the roughest place to be this week," she confides, surrounded by her students. "It feels so lonely."
( Candus Thomson, Baltimore Sun / January 11, 2011 )
Of the 19 students in Lisa Gerber’s second-grade class at Bedford Elementary School, about seven have been converted by their teacher to root for the Ravens.
She envies Ravens fans in the Baltimore area who wear their purple passion on their sleeves and keeps a picture of the Bromo Tower bathed in violet light on her computer.
So one by one, she's converting her charges. Seven out of 19 so far. It hasn't been easy.
Take Kalli Taylor. When she told her grandfather that her teacher was a Ravens fan, he replied, "Is she ill?"
But Kalli has seen the purple light. Come game time, she'll be rooting for the team from Baltimore.
With apologies to Ray Lewis, Bedford County protects its house. During the playoffs, waitresses at a local steakhouse make Steelers jerseys part of their work uniform. Before games, schools have Steelers Pride days featuring plenty of team colors. Banners hang everywhere and one teacher named his dogs Bradshaw and Lambert after Hall of Famers Terry and Jack.
Some Bedford area residents say that, while they admire the Ravens' grit and blue-collar work ethic that rivals their Steelers, well, Pittsburgh got there first. The team joined the NFL in 1933 while the Ravens are relative newcomers to the scene, popping up six decades later.
"The Rooney family built the Steelers tradition. There's no reason to look elsewhere," says Everett High School football coach Tom Waltman, adding he would "go nuts," if his team ever packed up its stuff in a moving van and left for another city.
"It's where you live and what you're surrounded with," explains Tina Jesk, who keeps the shelves at the Crawford's Museum gift shop stocked with Steelers goodies, including a toaster that browns the team logo right in the bread. "From generation to generation it gets handed down and it's what you become."
So where is the line between Steelers Nation and the Ravens Roost?
Not the I-70 Pennsylvania Visitors Center just a tick over the state line, where greeter Cindy Rice playfully tells purple-clad Ravens fans asking for directions to Pittsburgh that they should, "go to the next exit, make a left, make another left and go back east to Baltimore."
Not Breezewood, that infamous bottleneck of fast-food emporiums and gas-and-go stops at the junction of I-70 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. There, Crawford's is chockablock with Steelers souvenirs, from floor to rafters. Their best sales day each year? "Ravens at Pittsburgh, when we get all the Steelers fans from Maryland and Virginia stocking up. It's crazy here," says John Crawford, great-grandson of the founder.
Not here in Bedford, where a call for Ravens fans on the Bedford County Visitor Bureau's Facebook page prompts an immediate response: "There'd better not be any Ravens fans in Bedford County. I'm just saying."
Not even, it seems, south of the Mason-Dixon line in Frederick, which boasts of two Steelers bars.
Why did Rollie Belles open a bar and grill in 1992 bearing his family name and featuring Pittsburgh games on the big TV?
"Because we're really nice people," says Belles, laughing, before admitting he's from Forty Fort, a suburb of greater Wilkes-Barre, Pa.
A Google search turns up 20 watering holes in Maryland that are labeled Steelers bars and 100 percent fewer Ravens bars in Pennsylvania.
Certainly, turf boundaries have been argued before, from the dividing line in New England between Red Sox and Yankees boosters to the imaginary line that separates fans of Ohio's Bengals and Browns.
And Bedford's loyalties have been tested before. British and French forces skirmished for superiority back when it was called Raystown. ("For Ray Lewis?" the reporter asks. "In your dreams," replies the Bedford police officer, sort of smiling). The anti-government Whiskey Rebellion of the 1790s pitted area farmers against President George Washington and federal troops bent on collecting a tax on grain.
Things are much more peaceful now—as long as you root for the home team or keep your thoughts to yourself.
But the first crack in the Steel Curtain has appeared. There is no going back. Kalli Taylor believes. Ditto classmate Noah Clark, who also roots for the Green Bay Packers and dreams of a Super Bowl matchup between his two teams.
"I tell Steelers fans, 'Wear your jerseys all week. Enjoy it. It will be the last time,'" he says, grinning and bouncing up and down. "The Ravens are going to win."
candy.thomson@baltsun.com
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