Article about the Rascals, Rogues, and Rapscallions
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Monday, March 11, 1996
It's a guy thing:
By Mike Pelligrini
Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Seven years ago, Dan Morrison invited some friends to a restaurant to distract him from his sorrows after a woman jilted him.
Taking their cue from Morrison, the men -- no pesky women were allowed -- smoked fat cigars, sang silly songs and called themselves Rascals, Rogues and Rapscallions. Thus began The Kingdom of Rascaldom, a realm of inspired merry-making and enlightened looniness that persists to this day.
"Rascaldom is nothing less than my vision of The Kingdom of God," says Morrison, who is tall and boyish-looking at 34 and is, as might be guessed, the son of a Protestant minister.
In an age of declining church attendance, disbanding bowling leagues and depopulated social halls, Rascaldom is on the rise. Two Rascal "lairs" have been chartered in Pittsburgh and Roanoke, Va., and a third is expected to form here by the end of the year.
At quarterly meetings in a local restaurant, Morrison and his minions, in the words of Rascaldom's constitution, "Find the extraordinary in the ordinary, the heroic in the mundane, the historic in the forgotten."
To Haitian music and African drumming, they celebrate the overthrow of dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier.
Sipping wine and puffing Punch Chateau L cigars, they learn about Moses F. Gale, the inventor of a nature gas-fired cigarette lighter in 1872.
As "Far Side" cartoons flash on the wall, they explore the enduring persistence of Dante in American popular culture.
And to the strains of music written by a classically trained composer who spent most of his life in a molybdenum plant, they savor semisweet tales from Burgettstown, Washington County.
As can be seen, more than lost love was on Morrison's mind when he invited his friends to that evening of revelry long ago. Occupying just as big a place in his thoughts was the sorry state of social intercourse in the United States, especially for men.
"If you go to a pub or bar in Europe, you find men singing together," says Morrison, who teaches philosophy at Carlow College and is a writer for the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.
"Here, they are drinking beer and watching television. And I always feel the parties I go to are inchoate. I want to bring a sense of coherence and unity to them."
So, Rascal functions have a focus. Before each meeting, selected members -- academics predominate -- are asked to research a topic, person or event. "For many people, it is a revelation that the whole universe will unravel if you pull a single thread," Morrison said.
Consider what was in store for Greg Scheer, music director of Bellefield Presbyterian Church in Oakland, after he accepted the assignment of finding out all there was to know about Burgettstown.
The first people he called on were members of the Burgettstown Historical society. They spoke of the role the town played in the Whiskey Rebellion, and the bright future it would have once a sewerage system were installed.
Scheer, though, became more interested in the town's Italian coal miners. That led him to Caesar Grossi, the composer who worked in the molybdenum plant.
Scheer learned that Grossi, who had studied composition in Rome, had recently been fired as the choir director at the local Catholic church. Upon further investigation, Scheer decided Grossi had gotten a raw deal.
Meanwhile, a dispute between the owners of the town's hardware store and auto dealership began boiling over. For years, the store owner had contested the auto dealer's attempts to open a road beside his establishment. Now the auto dealer was retaliating by accusing the store owner of violating a livestock ordinance by keeping a Dr. Pepper-swilling pig on his premises.
Scheer, now joined by Morrison, began videotaping a town at war and, from 50 hours of tape, fashioned a 30-minute program that later aired on Pittsburgh's public cable TV network.
Epilogue: The auto dealer prevailed in court, and the Rascals took steps to safeguard Grossi's legacy, which encompasses everything from honky-tonk to classical to church music.
The choir at Bellefield Presbyterian recently performed one of his pieces, and Scheer is cataloging his work so it can be made available to other groups. Also, proceeds of the Recent Rascals' Ball will be used to establish the Caesar Grossi Music Archives in the Burgettstown Library.
"He had worked for the church for 50 years and had never received any recognition," says Morrison, describing Grossi's oeuvre as "good, serviceable music."
"What I love so much is that the moment he was rejected, we stepped in and elevated his life and his art."
It was, after all, the rascally thing to do.