Forest Hills, a borough located Pittsburgh’s city limits, was largely middle class and all white when I grew up there. My neighbors worked a range of jobs, from the steel mills in nearby Braddock to the engineering labs of Westinghouse, and the kids went to all-white public schools or the local Catholic school. More often than not these kids went to college.

The yards of Forest Hills varied in layout and maintenance, in parallel with the varied conditions of the houses and neighborhoods. They were often bathed in the overcast light that was common to the Pittsburgh area. Later, after some education in art history, I might euphemistically think of this haziness as atmospheric perspective … kind of like a Northern European landscape painting.