Remember the former mayor's slogan painted on the Public Works trucks? "Tom Murphy's Pittsburgh is Picking Up."

It was partly annoying because city money had been spent on what was little more than political advertising, but it was more annoying because it wasn't true.

Pittsburgh wasn't picking up. Pittsburgh was mostly lying about on the sofa, whining about its bad luck. Pittsburgh couldn't pick itself up, much less the empty snack wrappers and beer bottles at its feet.

Before that, the Masloff administration tried to motivate us with "Sophie's Choice -- A Clean City." Tasteless literary reference aside, the evidence on the sidewalks indicated that a clean city was only Mrs. Masloff's choice, not ours.

"For Pete's Sake, Keep It Clean?" Sorry, Mr. Flaherty, no can do. Cannot do because do not care.

Like a jilted spouse in mid-life meltdown, we started falling apart in the late 1970s and pretty much gave up on self-maintenance during the '80s. Picking up our trash and sweeping the sidewalks would have been just a pathetic swipe of lipstick on the post-industrial pig.

But things feel different now. We have a new lease on life -- though it's being challenged by the fiscal oversight committee.

It's not just the Steelers' Super Bowl victory, though goodness knows that was a huge boost.

It's not just the spate of attention-grabbing, award-winning buildings all over town; considered alone, those would be just so much plastic surgery on the old body politic. (Look at my new pair of skyscrapers!)

And it's not just the upcoming All Star Game. (We're going on a date! Someone asked us out!)

The change is all these things and something more: It's our attitude. Some dare call it optimism. We have lost our off-putting whiff of desperation. We now feel like we have a future worth getting cleaned up for.

Going into last fall's mayoral race, some viewed two-time Democratic also-ran Bob O'Connor as little more than the last man standing. OK, I did.

I may even have written that his vision for office was simply "The Bob stops here."

I may have been wrong. Mr. O'Connor seems to be the man for this season. Sure, he's faced no big test yet, but who wouldn't get swept up -- wait for it -- like so much litter beneath the broom of his cheerfulness?

Some have called him Mr. Optimism. I think of him as civic Prozac.

Like the mayors before him, Mr. O'Connor has his own housekeeping slogan. But you won't see it slapped on a city vehicle anytime soon -- either because he's a humble guy (relative to politics, that is) or because the city's broke.

The latter is certainly true, but the former may be also. After all, the mayor's slogan doesn't even contain his name. There may be a hidden message in that absence: It's not about Bob, it's about us.

"It's time to redd up Pittsburgh, 'cause company's coming." That's the long version of "Operation Redd Up," as cited by mayoral spokesman Dick Skrinjar. "Company's coming" refers to the Major League Baseball All-Star Game on July 11.

"The entire sports world will be focused on Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania," Mr. Skrinjar says. "We get to show the whole world how we 'redd up'."

The slogan's regional syntax resonates.

"It speaks loudly to the wonderful diversity of Pittsburgh that an Irish Catholic would use a Pennsylvania Dutch expression for a predominantly Italian city... in a phrase first uttered at the candidates' debate at the Jewish Community Center," Mr. Skrinjar notes. "The mosaic of Pittsburgh -- we nailed it right there."

For now, the slogan won't be nailed to any city trucks.

"Action speaks louder than advertising," Mr. Skrinjar says, putting a positive spin on our poverty.

"When the trucks need painted" -- note again the local colloquialism -- "if someone wants to sponsor it," that would be great, he says.

In one recent five-day week, a Public Works crew of seven or eight people working on the North Side picked up 430 tons of material, retrieved 70 tires and had five cars towed.

"Our own people are getting into the idea of redding up," Mr. Skrinjar rejoices.

I think we'd all agree that if even government employees are excited about their jobs, we have turned a significant corner.