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Thursday, 01 December 2011 15:34

Written by Diana Nelson Jones

If I could count the number of hours I have spent in the hearing room at the Robin Building on Ross Street, I would probably get really depressed. I could compare it to the feeling I got when I added up all the rent I had paid in eight years to live in a townhouse in Perry South then realized I could have bought the property for less.

One pay-off is that tome of what goes on in the hearing room of the Robin Building — 200 Ross St. — is interesting. I get some neighborhood stories that way.

When the Zoning Board of Adjustment convenes, everyone who expects to testify is asked to stand, raise his right hand and answer “I do” to the following entreaty:

“Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as you shall answer to God on that last great day?”

The first time I heard that, my eyes bugged out.

I had heard the question end with “so help you God” so many times in old movies and courtroom dramas while growing up that thiswas jarring.

Great day? What, as in: “Hi honey, how was your day?” “It was great: I died.”?

Maybe it depends on what they mean by "great," maybe more along the lines of the Great Depression, Great Balls of Fire, the "great man" theory including Hitler, etc.

Every zoning hearing, when people say “I do’ and sit down, I envision a door in heaven with a sign on it that reads "lied to the zoning board in Pittsburgh."

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