When the Bells Stop Ringing

When the Bells Stop Ringing

Some years ago, I was a resident at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown, a small postindustrial town in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains. In a free moment, I walked an old ethnic neighborhood on the west end, known as Cambria City. At its height it must have been a hub of ethnic color, the quintessential American immigrant neighborhood, here on the edge of Pennsylvania’s vast western forests. It still maintains a Sunday stre…