‘Town That Garbage Built’ for sale for $1.5M

“The Town That Garbage Built” is up for sale.

A family that has owned the Village of Reduction in Pennsylvania for nearly 70 years has decided to divest itself of the 75-acre property. The $1.5 million asking price includes farmland, 19 single-family homes and a 1914 one-room schoolhouse.

The village was once home to about 400 employees of the American Reduction Company. The company operated a plant that processed tons of garbage a day from Pittsburgh, before the city opened its own facility in 1936. Newspaper headlines at the time proclaimed it “The Town That Garbage Built,”

Current owner David Stawovy’s father bought the property in 1948 for $10,000.

His father and grandfather operated a dairy farm on an adjacent plot of land, Stawovy told the Tribune Review. When his father expressed interest in buying one of the American Reduction homes, a company official asked him “Why don’t you just buy them all?”

Stawovy said his children aren’t interested in the property and his family can’t afford to maintain it.

“I’ve done it all my life,” he told the newspaper. “I’ve got to be the mayor, the fire marshal and the dog catcher.”

About 60 people still live in the village, and most say they prefer to stay put. Police: Mom beat, choked girl over incorrect Bible verses

A woman severely beat her daughter, tried to strangle her and kicked her out of their house for incorrectly reciting Bible verses, police say.

Rhonda Kemp Shoffner’s daughter, who is under the age of 13, was forced to kneel on the bathroom floor at their Middletown home and repeat Bible verses, police told Pennlive.com. The girl told police her mother had been drunk for three days.

Shoffner, police say, asked her daughter, “What did God tell the man to do with his son?”

When the girl said she didn’t know, police say, Shoffner said, “God told the man to kill his son.”

Police say the girl told them she replied, “God said to forgive his son,” and Shoffner grabbed her by the hair and slammed her head into the bathroom wall.

They say each time the daughter made a mistake Shoffner slammed her head into the wall, about five times. They allege Shoffner told the girl to lie down because she was going to kill her and then tried to strangle her.