Philadelphia Memories

Kids Days at the Vet

2010-09-03T22:19:00.003-04:00

As the Phillies push again toward the post season, I can't help but remember the highs and lows as a Phils fan. Thankfully, the past few years have been more highs! Becoming a fan during the teams losing era, it was nice to experience 1980, and again the current run from 2007 through today.

My brother and I, along with many of our friends, spent a good deal of our youth at Philadelphia Veterans Stadium, known to most Philly sports fans as "The Vet". Some remember it more as "The Big Toilet" because of the state the City of Philadelphia left it in for a good part of it's history. But as kids, we didn't even think about the condition of the concrete octorad at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue. All we were concerned about was taking in Phillies games and having fun, both watching the games and otherwise.

Back when the stadium first opened in 1971, the cost of a general admission ticket was just $0.50. That's right, fifty cents! Cheaper than the cost of monthly phone service using MagicJack. You can't by a ticket anywhere for that low a fare anymore, so every day was Kid's Day. We would spend at least one day out of the weekend there whenever the team was in town, sometime both Saturday and Sunday if we could swing it timewise. Not that we had a full schedule as kids, but as I moved into my teen years and held two jobs on the weekend making stroboli at Pizza Shack and busing tables at The Forum caterers, I had less time for ballgames.

What was amazing was that even the Sunday giveaway day games were at that low admission price for the first few years. After a few years, they raised the general admission rate to the adult price of $2.50 for the gift days, and eventually kids had to pay that same amount every game. And that didn't last long either. After the 70s, the cost of a ticket anywhere in the Vet went higher. General admission - the famed "700 level" - was pricier than the cheap seat days that I remembered as a kid. Sneaking down into the box or reserve seats somehow left me feeling less guilty after the increase.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

... Being able to see double-headers for the price of one admission. This was the era before what is now known as Day/Night Double Headers, where games are now played first in the afternoon, and again in the evening, a separate ticket purchased for each game.

... The events that often occurred between the double headers. I remember being there when Karl Walenda, aka "The Great Walenda", walked the tightrope over The Vet. Being a dweller of the 700 level, we were there when he came down into the crowd after his walk and got to shake hands with him. Sadly, Mr. Walenda died a number of years afterward when a gust of wind took him off the wire during a stunt in Puerto Rico.

... Charlie Frank, the king of the hot dog vendors. His cries of "Doggie-ho!" were famous, so much so that he appeared in some TV commercials and the Phillies had a special day to commemorate his service. Some folks were known to try to get tickets in his section after that for a while.

... Nasty stadium food - The Vet could never be called a ballpark. Wilted hot dogs would be forgettable (sorry, Charlie) were they not so bad. The fries weren't bad, but then again, it's hard to mess up fries. The food available at The Bank - Citizen's Bank Park - is gourmet by comparison.

... The animated boards in the outfield that predated the newer screens found in today's ballparks. In 1970s technology they seemed to be spectacular. Today they would seem woefully outdated.

... Philadelphia Phil and Phyllis, the two colonial figures that stood in the outfield. Kind of a pair of mascots that served the Phillies prior to the arrival of the Phanatic, although they didn't do anything to fire up the fans or satisfy the kids - they were after all, made of fiberglass.

... The hike up the long concrete ramps when you sat in the cheap seats. It was good for a workout, but not so good if you were older or had a handicap.

Cartoons in the Afternoon (and in the Morning too!)

2010-08-12T00:46:00.004-04:00

Long ago and faraway, there was a time when kids had a vast selection of cartoons to choose from when they came home from school. When you turn on the TV today, where are the toons? With the exception of the Cartoon Network, and The Simpsons, The Family Guy, and King of the Hill (the last three seeming to be adult-oriented), there isn't much in the way of cartoons today.

Up through at least the late 70's - and probably later than that - the Philadelphia stations that fill the afternoons with their judge programs (Channel 29), and "talk" shows that should at least be on late at night (Channel 17 with their Maury and Steve Wilkos shows) once had the hours from 2:00 through 5:00 dedicated to entertaining kids. Parents knew when their kids came home from school, they were able to sit down to watch harmless programming. Add to that lineup the now-defunct WKBS, Channel 48, and they had their choice of many cartoon shows. They may not have gotten their homework done after school, but at least they weren't getting an eyeful of trash.

For the kids yet too young to go to school, there were programs in the AM too. Channel 6 - then WFIL TV - had both Sally Starr's Popeye Theater and the Happy the Clown programs. (It was alleged that Happy was a nasty fellow who would berate the kids during commercial breaks - obscenities included - then come back on the air full of smiles for the viewing audience. The source, a friend of my mother's, is pretty reliable. She said she took her kids to be part of the peanut gallery one fine day, and would never bring them back). I don't believe the other two VHF stations had kids programming, but for at least an hour, the young ones had something to watch besides Good Morning America.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

... Dr. Don Rose, the DJ from then-popular AM top-40s station WFIL, keeping kiddies occupied during commercial breaks with his cornball quips on Channel 48. Along with various cartoons, this station also broadcast the Our Gang/Little Rascals comedies of the 30s and 40s.

... Looney Toons filling a good part of the afternoon on WTAF-TV, Channel 29.

... Wee Willie Webber, the uncle-like moderator of programs on WPHL-17. Mr. Webber recently passed away, another icon of my childhood now gone.

Summer in the City - Fun Under the Fire Plug

2009-07-21T00:54:00.004-04:00

Here we are, more than halfway through July already. Summer seems to take forever to get here and it quickly goes by. If you haven't noticed, you can see that we're slowly losing sunlight at the end of the day, something that naturally happens once the solstice comes in late June.

One other thing I've noticed is that it isn't like it used to be on the streets. As I said in my ode to summer last year (see http://phillymemories.blogspot.com/2008/08/close-door-youre-letting-cold-air-out.html) back in the 60s and 70s when we were growing up, we were out from midday through as late as our parents would let us stay out. We didn't hang around the house.

Getting back to fresh stuff - you don't want me telling you about what I wrote last summer - one of the things I hardly see anymore are kids getting soaked under the fire plug. For those of you scratching your heads, that's what is called a fire hydrant. When summer came around, we could not wait to find someone who had a hydrant wrench and could open the plug for us. Once they had it opened, they'd hide it in someone's house and we'd all have some fun for an hour or so, or as long as we could before the cops would come and turn the water off. And this wasn't with a sprinkler rig attached, this was with the fire plug opened full bore! The only thing close to a sprinkler in those days was someone pressing their butt up against the opening and causing the water to fan out in every direction. The only friction we'd ever get besides the cops was a neighbor who would complain (maybe he called the police) and said that the water would flood his basement. Every kid on the block and from other blocks would be out there having fun.

Somewhere in the 80s, someone got the idea that it wasn't a good thing for kids to be doing such things. It was easy to say that it didn't matter, that we were adults and there were more important things to do than play at the fireplug. But still, a part of our heritage started to disappear. Kids were told that it created a danger for firefighters because the pressure dropped low when the hydrant was opened. Why not use one of those sprinkler caps instead? You could get them at the local firehouse and no one would have to worry ever again about low pressure or water levels in a drought year or kids getting swept under car tires by the tremendous pressure of the hydrant. Hey, we never met one kid who that happened to, but then again we would always open them on side streets like our own Chadwick Street, not on the more well-traveled streets like Shunk Street or Oregon Avenue. We did have common sense! But still, the Eighties were the beginning of the end for that summer ritual of cooling down with water that didn't pass through the meter at home and everyone enjoyed.

This summer, I think I've seek kids using the sprinkler cap on a fire plug all of one time. Not once did I see a fully opened hydrant. Granted, it hasn't been a very hot summer like most are (please explain, global warming advocates), but it's been warm enough to go out in the street and get wet. Where are the kids at? Parents, let your kids go out and have some fun! I've been thinking about posting this for a week or so, then my brother who lives in Blackwood, NJ was telling me today that he doesn't see any kids around on the street, let alone under a hydrant. I just knew I had to post this. Anyhow, he said something that makes sense. When kids of today get older, what are they going to talk about when they reminisce about their childhood? "Hey, remember summer, when we got out of school and..." And what? And waited for the back-to-school sales in August so we could buy our pencils and copy books and uniforms? Get out there and do something already! You've got approximately six weeks left before the bell rings again. Go out and find someone with a wrench and have some fun, or do what some of the kids did and one out of a pipe wrench and section of pipe. If someone asks what you think you're doing, tell them an old coot with a blog told you it would be a fun thing to do. Just hide the wrench so they don't take it away and you can turn the hydrant on again when they leave.

Remembering Harry Kalas

2009-04-13T21:37:00.003-04:00

It's never good news when an anchor breaks in to regularly-scheduled programming with a special report. A major accident, a school shooting, the death of a world leader or a legend. This afternoon, a legend passed away, and of the Phillies organization and it's fans, indeed, the entire Major League Baseball world, took a shot to the stomach that will be difficult - if impossible - to recover from.

Harry Kalas, longtime broadcaster of Phillies games, died in Washington, D.C., after being found collapsed in the broadcast booth before the start of the Washington Nationals home opener against the Phils. For me, it's impossible to write a blog about my memories growing up in Philly and not remember Harry Kalas, as my memories of him and of the Phillies go back almost as long as my lifetime itself.

The year 1971 was a banner year in Philadelphia. It was the year the Phillies moved from their North Philadelphia home of Connie Mack Stadium to their brand-new digs named Veterans Stadium, or The Vet to it's many fans and detractors. Along with their move to the new stadium came the addition of a new broadcaster to the ranks of two other legends in the field, Richie Ashburn and By Saam.

That very same year was the year that I was introduced to the game of baseball, and I've been fascinated with it ever since. Most young boys are made aware of sports by their fathers, but my Dad wasn't a sports fan. The only time he ever got near a game was when someone gave him tickets. Even then, they had to be good seats, no general admission or reserved seating. Dad's only business of going to see the Phils play was just that - business. He'd get tickets from various car dealers and sit an discuss the business of auto loans with them or kick back a few beers, forget that a game was going on before him. When The Vet added deluxe boxes, it was a boom to my brother and I. If Dad got tickets for any other seating, Mark and I would get to see a game and often, those tickets got us down to the Field Box seats along the first base line. That was okay with us, we had no business in the deluxe boxes anyhow. All the action occurred where the regular folks were, down below. So at the age of nine, Mom took us to our first Phillies game, and taught us baseball. Mom's a long-time Phillies fan, and to this day will spend an afternoon telling anyone who will listen about the 1950's Whiz Kids and her experiences at the games. Her favorite still is pitcher Robin Roberts, and it's guaranteed she'll beam a smile whenever she sees him on TV at a Phillies alumni game or some other special event.

I never got to hear Bill Campbell call a game. He was gone just before I started to understand why nine guys on a diamond smacked around a small ball with a wooden stick. I found out later that replacing him was a very unpopular move in this city that treats sports figures as idols, but that man who replaced him, Harry Kalas, didn't take long to endear himself to the fans here. His unmistakable voice and the way he called the games caught on quickly. And that's what hurts, knowing that the news we heard today will impact us forever. No more "struck him out", no more "outta here...!" No one will ever call the games like Harry, but then, that's the way it is with originals. They're sometimes imitated, but never duplicated.

What was great was that Harry called every game with enthusiasm, whether we had a winning team or not. My formative baseball years were during the era of manager Frank Lucchesi, when the home team couldn't seem to buy a win. But Harry kept the fans attention and we saw things improve during the reign of Danny Ozark. It was during his tenure that my brother and I saw the Phils clench their first-ever division title (in our lifetime), and we really started to understand the thrill of baseball. I remember Mark exclaiming, "Hey, Harry Kalas is crying!" when we took the division, not understanding until then how emotional baseball can be, for winners and losers alike. Since that game in 1975, we've shared two World Series victories with Harry and the guys in the booth, and a few attempts as well.

This afternoon, after watching the pre-game show on Comcast SportsNet dedicated to Harry, I watched the first-ever post-Kalas Phillies game. Sure there were other games in the past where he missed broadcasting, like last season when he was out for a few games recovering from eye surgery, but to know that ever game from here on in will be called without him in the booth leaves an awfully big hole that can't be filled. Just like it was eleven years ago with the death of Whitey Ashburn, the Phils lose a legend in broadcasting, and us fans mourn. It was said during the game today that many thought that Harry Kalas never recovered from the loss of Richie Ashburn. Lifelong Phillies fans still miss Whitey. But as much as we do, losing Harry Kalas seems harder still. We know we've been blessed with him calling thirty-eight years worth of games. And we grieve at the thought of him calling them nevermore.

Easter Ducks

2009-04-10T14:19:00.006-04:00

Kids have far more fun on holidays than adults do. By the time we've hit our thirties, we've exhausted all of the simple ways of having a good time and we find the burdens of life weighing down on us. Most of you will probably look back on past Christmases, Easters, and other holidays and have a number of memories that will keep you smiling for the rest of your lives.

For a few years, we really looked forward to Easter coming. And that anticipation was for one simple reason - ducks! For a few years, every Easter season, my brother's godmother would bring us a gift of a couple of small ducks for us to have as pets. The birds were past the point of being chicks and were just starting to grow. For not being able to catch a ball or play with certain pet toys, they were really fun to have, especially for kids who still had some time yet before the teen years came upon us, when our interests shifted to different things. Anyway, some kids got rabbit, but we were the only ones who had ducks, which made us unique and all the other kids around the block thought it was cool. They wanted to come by and see them and pet them, and maybe some adults had thoughts of eating them - or not - who knows?

One thing we found out with experience is that ducks get too big for pets when you have only a small concrete patch for a yard and no where to house them. As they grew, the ducks sometimes escaped from the back yard because one of us would leave the gate open and give them their freedom. Once, the lady who ran the variety store around the corner, Mrs. Lenore, came running to our house and had my mom run with her back to the store. The birds made their way down the alley, waddled a few feet down Oregon Avenue, and up the two steps into Mrs. Lenore's store. My mom calmed her down and took the two of them back home and secured them, nervously waiting for us to again leave a gate opened, or give them some other way to get away again.
(See http://phillymemories.blogspot.com/2006/03/remembering-mrs-lenores-old.html)

Because ducks get too big as pets, we never had them longer than mid-summer. As they got too large to keep around, my grandfather would make arrangements for someone to take them "to the farm". We would take my parents word that the birds were going to some nice place to pleasantly live out the rest of their lives, as it would be much better for them than risk seeing them run into traffic or have something else happen to them. What my brother and sister and I wondered secretly is whether they were going to Shady Acres (or whatever nice name you want to give the "farm"), or if they were going to end up as someone's dinner. Probably they did find a nice home, but we had a curious suspicion of things like this.

After maybe three years of having ducks at Easter, my mom asked that my brother's godmother no longer bring them. As much as we were grateful for them, she knew we were heartbroken because the ducks would be gone in just a few months, and she didn't want to see us disappointed again. And so, that ended having any kind of birds as pets. A few years later, we'd get our first dog, but until then, we'd have to enjoy the memories of these waddling birds running around and pecking us.

Close the Door, You're Letting the Cold Air Out!

2008-08-03T01:41:00.002-04:00

Summertime! Admit it. When you were a kid, you couldn't wait for it. If you were like me, you counted down the days before summer vacation, and dreaded the final days of August when our summer came to a close. Not the official summer of the calendar, but the one that left when the school doors opened again. Then it was time to face the yardstick-wielding nuns again for another nine months and wait once again, for June to roll around.

Back in the 60s and 70s, we were fortunate to have air conditioning to cool the living room, but hardly any of our parents had frigid air in their bedrooms. You could forget about the kids rooms being chilled. On the hottest of nights, my father would let us run the air downstairs to stay cool. He slept on the couch, my brother, sister, and I were relegated to the living room floor. Hey, it was carpeted and we spread our bed sheets across it to prevent rug burn. Even my mom slept on the floor. What did we expect? Dad had his chair that no one could sit in when he was home, why would we think we'd sleep on the sofa in his presence?

If the night wasn't too hot, surely Dad wasn't going to spend good money running the AC through all hours. We'd have to do with an old steel fan with openings in the guard large enough to put your hand through. Fans like that would be banned as safety hazards today. The one my brother and I had in our room was dark green, and looked like it was a relic from some military barracks.

Kids don't know how good they have it. I hardly ever hear kids say that it's too hot anymore. Maybe that's because I hardly ever see kids on the streets during the hot weather. Hey, come summer, we were all out from morning until our parents made us come in. We made the most of every minute. It was OUR summer. Even the older folks stayed out late and sat in their beach chairs and talked all night. I remember my parents used to sit with a number of the neighbors across the street and order pizza from DeFabio's (used to be at 12th & Snyder) about twice a week and just sit and talk. Man, that socialization is disappearing from South Philly. No one spends that quality time anymore, or maybe I'm missing it somewhere. If you remember your mom or dad yelling, "Close the door, you're letting the cold air out!", you know what I mean. They used to worry that the "parlor" (another word that seems to have fallen from the lexicon) would get too hot if you kept the front door open for longer than five or six seconds. Now, hey, we all have air, and no one thinks at all about it. Long live the dog days of summer!

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...your parents telling you that it used to be so safe, they could sleep on the step at night, or at least leave the door unlocked. I don't know, I think I'd rather sleep on the living room floor than on the concrete.

...when the weatherMAN used to tell you it was hot, and gave you the temperature and humidity. No "heat index", at least none that I remember. And no weatherbabes, just guys in suits who looked like you and me. Not that I've got something for guys in suits mind you (surely my wife will vouch for me), but as the characters on Saturday Night Live used to say years ago, "That's the way it was, and we liked it!" The weatherman told you about the weather, not leered at you, looking like some today who seem close to lunging into your living room.

The Old Center City Theatres - Group Participation Time!

2008-05-20T22:15:00.010-04:00

Inga Saffron's article in the Inquirer this morning about the Boyd Theater brought back some memories today. If you missed it, you can read the story at the Philly.com site. Most of us remember this place being called the Sameric, both before it became a multiplex and before it's demise. It was a grand place - still is, though without moviegoers and movies - much grander than the sterile boxes that you go to today. Now it sits vacant on Chestnut Street with many hoping that someone will purchase it and save it as is.

I wrote about the South Philly theaters back in May of 2006. That piece is archived here (see the archives list and select May 2006, Going to the Movies...). Let's move a bit farther north now. For those of you forty years of age on up, you'll most likely remember all the movie houses in Center City west of Broad Street that are long gone with the development of skyscrapers like the One and Two Liberty Place complex and others. Many of us spent a lot of time in those theaters. Like so many other things, nothing lasts forever. Now, if you want to see a flick in Center City, your choices are limited to the Ritz Theaters and the Roxy Screening Room. The only place to go for standard fare now for those in South Philly and Center City is the Riverfront on Columbus Blvd.

Doing some mental gymnastics today, I remembered around a dozen of those theaters between Broad Street and 20th, Walnut and Market Streets. And I remembered most - but not all - of their names. So, not being one to pass up on memories or having someone help me refresh those that I've forgotten, you can participate in listing the names of those movie houses. Let's see how many you can name and if y0u can tell me where they were located. No cheating! See if you can do it from freeing up what's in your gray matter. I'll be waiting for your reply. I've named ten of them, I know there were at least a couple more, and I'm wondering if there were some that I had not heard of that you may have. Make it interesting too. Tell us of something fun or interesting that you remember from when you went to the shows.

What's the prize? There is no tangible reward, but you get to share in the memories with me. That should make it worth your while. I'll look forward to your comments.

The Neighborhood Record Stores

2008-01-04T01:33:00.000-05:00

"I see you sent my letters back, and my LP records, and they're all scratched..."
From the song "I Can't Stand Losing You" from The Police.

Hey, my first post in almost a year! Sorry, but between writer's block and feeling crappy and other responsibilities, I've been away from this page too long.

One of the things that has constantly evolved is the way we buy our music. If you're as old as I am, you remember buying 45 RPM records as a young kid and then LPs as you became a teen and got older. Hey, you may even remember the first album that you bought - for me it was Stevie Wonder's "Innervisons" album, the one with "Superstition" and "Living for the City" on it (there's a challenge for you, do you remember your first LP? - for those 35 and older, if you're younger than that and can't remember, you're beyond help) . Maybe you were one of those who bought your sounds on 8-track tapes or later on cassette. If you're under 20 years of age, all you'll probably remember are CDs and downloading. You've never had the pleasure of hearing a pop or click or the misfortune of buying and album and having to return it because of a long scratch that made the needle skip as the vinyl record turned to that same spot.

If you're one of those from the CD/download era, that means you probably have no knowledge of neighborhood record stores either. Places where the guys who sold the records knew about the music they sold. And that's what you got there - records. No movies and other stuff, just music. Today you will be hard pressed to find such a store. Now all you have are the places in the mall which have clerks who know nothing about music, big-box stores that sell everything from CDs to washing machines, or book stores that sell music (although those are probably your best bet, the people working there may know more about music than someone at Best Buys. I defy you to get a worthwhile opinion at the big-box or mall stores when asking someone which album they feel is the best of any given artist.

...AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...The local record stores here in South Philly. One actually seems to still exist. Every once in a while driving up East Passyunk Avenue, I see that the Record Bar still stands. I don't know if they're still busy or what they sell, but it looks like they've survived.

Remember Nick Petrella's on Snyder Avenue? My aunt used to tell me he was a talent scout, but I don't know if that was true. The Mario Lanza Museum was housed in the back of the store, and Mr. Petrella could often be seen sitting outside the store during the warmer months. Talent scout or no, from what I'm told he did know music.

There was another store up on Passyunk that I used to go to ever few weeks, but I can't remember the name of it to save my life. If you remember, tell me by dropping me a note in the comments to this post. I remember that's where I bought my first Bob Seger album back in 1978, "Stranger in Town" and became a long-time Seger fan.

You may remember the chains and independents that are long-gone too. Remember Platters Ltd. on Chestnut St. near 10th? There were always punk rockers sitting outside that place, maybe employees, but probably just music fans. Wall to Wall Sound and Listening Booth were to of the major chains back in the 70s, names now committed to record store history. I think even Sam Goody is now gone, at least most of their stores. Then again, they're one of the mall stores where you usually wound up paying a few bucks more for an album than at the neighborhood joints.

There was a big record store called Jerry's Records on Market St that went bust in the late 70's. I remember they had this blowout sale which was more of a teaser to get you in the door. They had a weekend where they sold albums for I think it was a buck, but when you got there it looked like they broke out the stock of albums from artists that no one heard of or wouldn't care to listen to. Shortly afterward, they were gone.

But the granddaddy of them was not a neighborhood store, but close enough to hop a bus or train to get to. Third Street Jazz & Rock stood on - you guessed it - 3rd Street just north of Market Street. You had to go to the basement if you were into rock music, and it was by no means like your mall or big box store with promotional displays and whatever. You f0und your artists records by thumbing through racks with signs written in magic marker (kids, those are what you call Sharpies today). If you wanted to know something about music, you asked and got an opinion. When I was 18, I worked loading trucks and packing cartons at the slipper factory above the old Stanley Hardware store on Market at Bank Street. Every Friday, almost without fail, my friend Professor and I would head to the bank at lunch time to cash our measly pay checks. That meant that when quitting time came, we headed right over to Third Street Jazz and bought a few albums. Imports, bootlegs, hard to find artists, they had it all.

Speaking of Professor, there's someone whose antics deserve a post here at PhillyMemories. His "Burn the Pope's Picture" or "Beat the Skunk" parties were legendary, at least for those who called in sick from work to hang out at his house for those events. I could only imagine what went through his dad's mind when the house filled with young guys and girls with their minds bent on senseless things. Stay tuned.

The Day the Music Died?

2007-02-05T01:48:00.000-05:00

Here we go, another cold February, hoping that it won't last too much longer and spring will come. Many remember February 2nd as "The Day the Music Died" because of Don McLean's hit from the 1970's titled "American Pie". On that date, Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper died in a plane crash at Clear Lake, IA, ending the promising recording careers of those artists.

Just a few days before that remembered another anniversary, where one man's death could be seen as signifying death for music locally and nationally. Ed Sciacky, long time Philly DJ, died that day after collapsing and falling in NYC. Sciacky was a pioneer in the radio industry, and we lost another local legend with his passing.

But the truth is, Philly radio started dying long before Ed Sciacky did. If you've been around long enough, you remember the days of free-form radio, where DJs could bring their own records to play on the air as long as they conformed to the station's format - or not. You could hear a track, or a whole album, of an artist you may never otherwise get a chance to listen to. Free-form FM radio opened doors for artists and listeners alike.

There's only one station locally that plays anything like this now, and that's WXPN out of the University of Pennsylvania. The death knell sounded in the early 80's when radio station WIOQ changed to Q102 and started playing the junk that you hear now. Before that, they were known as a "progressive rock" station and you could hear anyone from Bruce Springsteen to Steeleye Span, from Bob Seger to Renaissance. Now that was eclectic.

Today, just about every station programs with the information they get from focus groups, and program managers stick to a meager list of songs. Play lists are rigid, not free-form. And it doesn't matter what the format, whether classic rock, hip-hop, whatever. The worst thing that ever happened to music on the radio was that the corporate guys took hold of the stations. Forget art, forget what the people want. Money talks, and we get rubbish.

And you may remember...
...Michael Tearson's Gorilla Theater - The program started one night when Mr. Tearson locked himself in the studio at radio station WMMR and wouldn't allow anyone to come in and get him out. It was a stunt that should have gotten him fired. Maybe really a publicity stunt. Tearson is still on the radio today with Saturday Morning Sixties on WMGK.

...For Headphones Only. I believe this was also a Tearson show. All the music was heavy on stereo separation, so you got a treat when you had your phones on.

...Full albums played - A few of the local rock stations played full albums on schedule, so you could tape them rather than run out and buy them. Great for people who were either on a budget, or just cheap. I don't think that the record companies would allow it now, especially since their push a few decades ago that told us that taping was killing music.

...When local stations made the bands who they are - Many local bands thrived because of stations like WMMR and WIOQ promoted them. The Hooters, Beru Review, The Alan Mann Band, and others got noticed because local talent was more important than sticking to a play list. And places like the Khyber Pass and JC Dobbs packed out with fans wanting to hear the locals play.

King for a Moment

2007-01-28T23:13:00.001-05:00

Kids have a strange way of treating their friends. Sometimes when we were young, we didn't always make ourselves friendly, it only seemed we did. Once in a while we'd find ourselves playing tricks on friends that were good for a laugh. They guy getting tricked didn't always appreciate it though. And some had no idea at all what it was all about.

Once in a while we'd play a "game" called "King". Some poor jerk got to be the king, and he thought it was a good thing until the game was over. The object of the game was that you'd set your victim up to be the king, and he'd pick two loyal guards to defend him. The king would sit on the top step of someone's home with his guards standing on either side. Once the players were set, two other guys would approach and verbally abuse the king. Sometimes the abuse was mild, but if the guy wasn't that well liked, it could be somewhat severe. When the unsuspecting king told his guards to seize the offenders, they took off after them, but rang the doorbell while the king sat there. He had no idea that the man or lady of the house would come out screaming at him for ringing the bell.

Most kids would get the idea after just one shot. Some guys weren't that sharp. We had one kid named Johnny who hung out with us when he visited his grandparents every few months. He was always king, and he thought it was a big deal to be the royal. He wanted to be king every time we played on a given day. So any Sunday afternoon he could have seven older people screaming at him when we left him behind, not understanding that we set him up at each door step. It was funny then to hear him ask something quizzically like, "why do you chase after they guys and the old people come out and holler at me?" It's still funny, but also sad. You understand it a little better when you realize the kid grew up his whole life in the suburbs around Lansdale. No street smarts. Sometimes you wonder, would the kids from the 'burbs take a stroll through North Philly's Badlands and ask a gunman why there's not an orange plastic cap at the end of his barrel? "Hey, I wanna play too, but your gun looks too real, especially those bullets." No suburban kid without street experience should be allowed to hang out without suitable orientation to the streets.

My brother now lives in Blackwood, NJ and wonders what kids in his neighborhood do for fun when they're bored. I can't say the things we did when younger were really edifying, but they were fun for us. It would have been more fun for us to play King with Johnny if he got upset with us a few times for it. Had we known that he'd let us set him up so many times, we could have compiled a Christmas Card list for him. "Merry Christmas from the Kid Who Keeps Ringing Your Doorbell." It's enough to get someone 302'd (what the police call someone who is being committed to the psych ward).

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...A pin in your doorbell. This was a super-annoying version of "ring & run". The usual mischief was to just be a stupid kid and ring a neighbors door bell and run away. But if you wanted to really get under someone's skin and he had a bell that constantly rang when you held down the button, you could shove a long pin in the button and it would ring incessantly. But you had better had been quick. If you took too long, you'd get snagged before your feet got off the step. Not a good thing when getting caught, especially if you had an old-time dad who would whack you for disrespecting your neighbor.

...Being really nasty and doing things with a cup of urine or with a flaming bag of dog doo. There was a guy on Bancroft St. across from St. Monica's school in the 70's who would come to the door in his briefs and yell at kids for no good reason. We returned the favor on a few occassions. Once we did the fiery poop trick and lit up a bag on his door step. We hid behind the cars and waited for him to answer the door. Instead, a priest from the church came around the corner and decided to be a good citizen. We laughed so hard I'm surprised we didn't get caught.

Another time we pee'd into an old paper cup and tilted it against his door and rang. Again we hid behind the cars. When he answered, his feet got soaked and he came out in his underwear screaming. Best for him that we didn't have 7-11s in the neighborhood yet, and there were no cups as big as the Big Gulp. He would have really had been p.o'd.

A Season of Lights

2006-12-21T11:53:00.000-05:00

Here we are, just four days before Christmas 2006. This year went by quickly. The month sped by like a meteor entering earth's atmosphere. It's amazing how time goes by, especially as you get older.

One of those things that have always made the Christmas season special is the lights that illuminate the neighborhoods starting a day after Thanksgiving and going through "Little Christmas" in January. Being we have to deal with the shortest of days in December, it's great that the Christmas lights make those days a little brighter.

While the lights we have today are nice, it's my opinion that things were brighter back in the day. And more colorful. Look out your door today, what do you see? Mostly a sea of white light from small bulbs. What happened to color? It's almost as if we went from celebrating Christmas to wanting to make South Philly look more like Vegas. Especially with those homes that have the lights surrounding the entire front. It's really "production" looking and detracts from the Christmas feel.

Thankfully there still is some color around. The lights strung across our block remain in color. In our own home, we went back to multi-color lights after the long-standing white strand died a timely death. There are still many who make their decorating jobs look special. But the grand-daddy of them all around here was a man named Frank DeAntonio. It was said that Frank was one of the main decorators at the old John Wanamaker store in Center City, and his work was a testimony to that. Every year, we waited for him to put up his lights and decorations and the block really shined because of it. There were others here who tried to outdo him, but they never had the skill. I remember Mr. DeAntonio had a small n-gauge train layout in his basement window, totally crafted it himself. A nice winter snow scene with Disney characters and two sets of tracks with the trains going in opposite directions. All the kids loved it, we would go to his window often to watch.

Mr DeAntonio also had a large snowman between his bedroom windows, just like you'd see at the Christmas Light Show at what was Wanamakers and now is a Macy's store. It's arms would wave up and down in lights, a really nice piece of work. To finish the job, he used large colored bulbs for his lights, nicer than what we were used to around here. This guy knew how to decorate, and his work is missed. Frank DeAntonio passed away a number of years ago, shortly after his wife's death. He was a great guy, and always seemed to get a charge in watching the kids watch his creations. It was said that when he retired the train layout when he got older, he donated it to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. If this is so, I hope they still have it, those kids there would love it.

SOME THINGS ARE STILL NICE...
The folks on Smedley and Colorado Streets (2700) still do a fantastic job with their lighting. Do they compete? I don't know. Only about a block apart, I guess it's easy to believe that one of the blocks could do a better job than the other. Competition or not, who cares? Both do Christmas lighthing right, and it's really great for the neighborhood. I still see car and van loads of folks slowly driving around Smedley to have a look. The traffic pattern of Colorado makes it a quick trip up and out.

A Kid's Day on the Town

2006-12-08T17:26:00.001-05:00

This date, December 8th, was a day that my brother, sister, and I looked forward to for almost an entire year. No, it wasn't as important a date as say, Christmas, or your birthday. But December 8th was important for two reasons: It was a day off from school, and it was a day fully-spent in Center City (we called it going uptown) visiting the department stores and their
Christmas attractions.

The day always started with us sleeping in a little later than usual. After all, it was a day off, so you had to put it to good use and get a little more sleep. It was just a little, maybe an hour or two more, but then our feet hit the floor and we started to get ready.

We always took the route 2 bus north on 16th street into town. My mom and her friends didn't trust the subway, they thought too many bad things happened down there. So we stayed on the surface. The first stop once hitting Market Street was a short walk to John Wanamaker's to see the Christmas light show, which was a must, and still should be for families today. Afterward, we'd head up to the 9th floor to the toy department where there were two things a kid had to do: ride the monorail around the toy department, and go shopping for your parents at the Little Santa shop that the store set up for kids. The doorway into the shop was really low, giving the impression that only kids could come in, no adults allowed. We were so into it that we didn't think about how the adult cashiers and sales helpers got into the room. I think it's safe to say they weren't shrunken momentarily to allow them entrance, but we didn't care. We finished our trip to Wanamaker's with a stop for lunch in the fancy dining room they had there, at least fancier than places kids go most times of the year.

After lunch, we'd trek east on Market to Lit Brothers department store at 8th Street. This was before the pit they call The Gallery was built down the street. Lit's had an attraction called The Enchanted Village, an animated Christmas town that was enjoyed by kids and adults alike. We'd line up through the length of the store to wait to get to see it. The trip through the village took only maybe fifteen minutes, but we got to clown around with each other while waiting and the time wasn't wasted. The Enchanted Village survived until Lit's closed in 1975, and should someday rise again when the Please Touch Museum moves into the current Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park. If you haven't been there as a child, start a tradition with your family and head there every year around Christmas time. Although I haven't seen it in three decades, I believe kids will still be interested, even in the world of high tech - which the village definitely isn't. When it's back, take them and let them decide whether or not it's for them. My bet is that they'll love it.

There was a third big department store on Market St. East in those days, but to our knowledge, Gimbel's didn't have anything like the other stores did. The only thing we can remember is that on Thanksgiving Day, they were the sponsors of the parade, and Santa Claus would ascend the ladder of a Philadelphia Fire Department ladder truck and enter the window of one of the store's upper floors to usher in the Christmas season. After that, nothing. It's a shame really, because they missed out on drawing in the kids with their parents and what could have been some tradition for some families.

The common thread in all this was the big department stores. Those that survive or have started in the more recent decades fall short in a lot of ways. They're just not the same. When you look at it, the average department store has two, maybe three floors of goods for sale today. Wanamaker's had nine in Center City. Retail is a different animal than it was back in the day, and that's sad, because generations of kids and entire families will miss out on what we remember from just thirty years ago.

When We Spent Holidays Together

2006-11-21T02:21:00.000-05:00

Here we go, just a few days before Thanksgiving. We're on the heels of another holiday season. While it's great to look ahead and know that memories will be made and joy will be shared, it's almost preferable to look back instead of ahead. That may seem odd, as it's almost always better to look forward than backward. But when you get older and family and friends go away, you really do have something to be thankful for. You should be thankful for the memories of times past as well as those that are to be created in the present or future.

This Thanksgiving Day, we'll be spending the day at my sister-in-laws / brother-in-laws house, and my wife and I are always happy to spend time with them. I'm glad for it for another reason too, as my wife hasn't had the opportunity to spend too many holidays with her family. We've spent more of them with my family than with hers. I feel bad about that, because looking at it, I believe she's been denied the chance to look back when we get older on those times that could have been and probably should have been. She's never, ever complained, but a spouse deserves as much time with their family as with yours.

Why do I think about these things? Because I can sit here and think back to a time that was and remember a dinner table lined with family members who won't share those holiday dinners anymore. As I already mentioned, some have passed away. My father and my grandparents aren't around anymore to spend those holidays with. Some others won't be there because of changes in family situation where they've married and have their own to care for. And like all families, sometimes it's impossible to get everyone together because of someone who can't stand to be in the same room with another or someone said something stupid to another a decade ago and it's still remembered to this day. With many folks having the day off after Thanksgiving, maybe we should have a Forgiveness Day too, a chance for all who harbor ill feelings because of things petty or significant to come together and correct the wrongs.

What will your holidays be like this year? If you say they could be better because of something that can be corrected but hasn't, maybe this is the year to see those things resolved. If you've placed selfish things ahead of family and/or friends, put them aside temporarily. There will be other days and times for those things. Someday the folks you can make the best of things with aren't going to be there anymore. And someday, you may look back at what could have been instead of what should have been. It's always better to make the changes now while they mean something, rather than regret what you can no longer do.

HOLIDAY MEMORIES...
...My grandfather roasting nuts in an old 1920s era gas oven in the basement of their home on 17th street. No pilot light, you turned on the gas and lit it quickly or you'd get a nice "whoosh!" from the built up gas igniting.
...Conversation. Everyone stayed in the living room, dining room, or kitchen. No one ran to the sanctuary of their own room once the dinner plates were cleared, and if someone watched TV, we all did, and still talked all day.
...Everyone showing up before noon and not leaving until evening. No rushing to dinner and out the door.
...Two things were always available to drink at my grandparents: a bottle of wine for the adults and a few quarts of Frank's Ginger Ale for the kids (or adults who didn't drink much wine). We didn't guzzle the soda like kids do today. You drank it from maybe 6-ounce glasses or jelly jar glasses (remember the Flintstones glasses that Welch's sold their grape jelly in?) and made it last.
...Wresting in the living room of my grandparents house with my brother and cousin while my grandmother would yell that we were going to hurt each other. We almost never did (I remember one of us hit our heads on the marble coffee table once), but we did get to imitate our favorite wrestlers from Saturday morning TV. Never broke any furniture either.
...A full-course dinner as found in most Italian homes. Macaroni (none dare call it pasta), meatballs, sausage, and bragiole, turkey and stuffing, and then the salad (salad always came last, and always with vinegar and oil, no bottled dressing). Bread fresh from Lanci's Bakery on Jackson St. was always on the table.
...Along with the walnuts, chestnuts, and brazils, cheese from Cilione's (also on Jackson St) was on the table before and after dinner, along with bottles of Jacquin's Anisette and Blackberry Brandy. My grandmother would never let a holiday go by without stopping by the State Store to get bottles of both.
...My grandparent's neighbor Pete always knocking on holidays to say hello and to give my brother, sister, and I a quarter. As we got older, it became half dollars and we looked forward to getting those Kennedy heads, always checking to see if we got a silver one.

I know, the memories all seem like simple stuff, and they are. But they're my memories, those of time spent with people I loved being with and those gone that are really missed. Although they seem simple, I think I'd rather remember things like that than remembering that we spent the day around the PlayStation. And I'd rather see everyone in one room than going from house-to-house. Those times were times well spent.

Mrs. M

2006-11-02T01:21:00.002-05:00

Life leaves you with a lot of time to look back and either regret the things you did or laugh about them. Or both. A lot of what I write about happened when we were young kids through our very early teen years. So I can claim that we were young and stupid and give myself enough slack and know that there's no need to carry too much guilt about youthful indiscretions. If you grow older and do the same stupid things, shame on you. If you're a kid and do stupid things and grow out of them, you get to share a laugh with others and move on. I've moved on.

I've moved on, but you get the benefit of reading a story that should leave you laughing a bit, or maybe a lot, depending on your sense of humor. Or you'll call us all jerks and wonder how we didn't end up with a felony conviction or three. You decide.

The neighbors here on the bottom end of the block didn't have too many kids here to point a finger at when something happened. So we - my sister, brother, and myself - would usually be on the stubby end of those fingers when someone had an accusation to level. Alright, sometimes they were right, but they lacked the evidence. They were wrong too at times, but no always. One of those neighbors was an elderly lady who we'll call Mrs. M.

Mrs. M lived across the street and a few doors down, in close enough proximity to still make her a mark for our youthful mischief. I'd like to say she'd look back and laugh about it now that we're older should she still be with us, but I doubt that would be true. Some never forget. Elephants and old neighbors to name a few.

Had we realized the people could get hurt and we could get in trouble for it because of our mischief, we may not have done some of the things we did. You may say that's a load of fecal matter. You may be right. Why wonder if we'd change things, they've already happened. One of those things involved clothesline and doorknobs. You may be wondering if we had a fetish with all things lengthy, such as rope and fishing line, especially considering the post a number of months ago about Dave, who just so happened to be Mrs. M's next-door neighbor. What we did - a number of times, although not nearly as many as with the fishing line - is to take the clothes line and tie it to both of those neighbor's door knobs, with just a little bit of slack. Just enough for them to open the door almost halfway. Once the line was tied, we would pound on their doors and hide behind the cars - and laugh. What ensued was a unique version of tug-of-war in which there was no winner. And it lasted for a number of minutes, until one or both gave up. Then there was enough room for someone to cut or untie the line and the fun was over. Until the next time.

Another incident involved a ski mask, rain coat, and two older kids putting a little guy up to doing something that would get you arrested for indecent exposure today. No, I was not that little guy, nor was I either of the two who egged him on. But he'd laugh about it rather than blush if you were to mention it to him today. What that kid was put up to was that he was asked to dress in nothing but the rain coat, ski mask, socks and shoes, and knock on Mrs. M's door and flash her. Imagine if you would a maybe nine or ten year old kid flashing an eighty-year old woman. I don't think she'd ever imagine it possible had she not experienced it herself.

Anyhow, she was much sharper than anyone had expected. As soon as the flash that made neighborhood history occurred, the first thing out of her mouth was "I know that that's you, _____ ________". Of course, the name of our flasher is omitted as even under the law, youthful offenses are sealed. But there's a small handful of us here who know exactly who he is. Maybe he'll become a neighborhood legend now if enough folks read this post. The Phantom Flasher. Imagine that.

Well, you're wondering why we all did such stupid things, and the answer is the same as why you did your own stupid things. We were bored. Maybe you'll say, "We never did things like that when we were bored." I know you didn't. That's because we were much more creative than you were. Live with it. How would I feel if a kid on the block did that to me today? I don't know. Maybe be stuck between thinking him the product of parents not watching out for their kids and actually getting a huge laugh. Were our parents negligent in our rearing? Not at all. But I think if we were to tell them of some of the things we did in our youth, they too would wonder what they've raised - and then laugh!

Entepreneurs

2006-10-29T00:58:00.000-04:00

I've noted in a number of posts here in this blog the hard working men and women of South Philly who made their living doing everything from running the local candy store to collecting rags from a horse-drawn cart. All of us know folks who made their money honestly and worked their entire lives without complaint. They earned their entire living.

But on the street, there are always "entepreneurs" who strive to make a buck however they can. As you read this, you may be thinking that I'm referring to the local street pharmacists who stand on corners or make deliveries to the neighborhood junkies to keep them from going into withdraw.

I met on Oregon Avenue this week a certain salesman, trying to sell me something I got a day later for free. This guy already failed to sell me his product the minute he opened his mouth. A good salesman should know his customers. For some odd reason, this guy thinks my name is "Mazucca" and calls out to me, asking, "Hey Mazucca, you use Fusion razors? I got a load if you need them." I've had a number of guys on the street try to sell me everything from unbreakable drinking glasses (well, he said so, but wouldn't bang the mouth of the glass against his tailgate when I asked), pot, flimsy shirts, whatever. But the first ever time I found a neighborhood razor salesman.

Anyhow, the very next day, by way of the US Postal Service, what did I get in the mail? Yeah, you got it. A free Gillette Fusion razor. Pretty nice razor too, has five blades to make sure I get all the stubble. A plug for Gillette, I didn't nick myself at all when shaving with the Fusion, so you got my vote for razor of the year. That was Thursday, and on Friday, my brother too got one in the mail. Maybe all of the tri-state area males did. So where did this guy get his load of Fusions? Maybe stole a load from the local post office? Maybe they fell off the truck and landed at his feet? Who knows? But somewhere in South Philly, some knucklehead bought a Fusion or two at a deep discount, only to get one free the following day. Whatever happened to honest salesmen?

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...The guys who used to try to sell you a VCR (or computer, or TV), but wouldn't allow you to open the box. "Bad for business, selling products in open cartons" they'd tell you. If you were foolish enough to buy them, I hope you enjoyed your carton of bricks. I've heard of a few guys who paid a hundred or so for them.

My favorite was the guy who approached me while I was working in Center City in the early 90s. Said he had a camcorder to sell. I asked to see it. "Can't open the box man" he told me. Said it was an 8mm VHS camera. "Which one?" I asked, "8mm or VHS?" "Yeah", that's the one" was his answer. He had to unload them quickly, the School District needed to clear their inventory and needed the cash. I could believe they were strapped for bucks, but since when does the Board of Education need to move inventory? Naturally, he got no sale from me.

The Full Service Gas Station

2006-09-26T01:55:00.000-04:00

Alright, that debacle from last Friday with the gas lines has me remembering the old service stations as compared to the new "mini-mart" stations where you get no help. So bear with me while I continue this theme.

Again, you older guys and gals can remember the way things were done when you filled the tank. You didn't have to do a thing except drive up and then pay at the end of your transaction. The neighborhood service station was a model of customer service. Once you pulled up next to the pump, the guy holding the nozzle pumped your gas, washed your windshield, checked your oil and maybe your air pressure, and sent you on your way. He wore a uniform, gave you a smile, and kept you from having hands that smelled like 98-octane or from getting grease on the sleeves of your shirt.

Today the full-service station still exists, especially when you drive over the bridge to New Jersey. Their state government still doesn't think it's a good idea for you to have an option to save a few cents on a gallon by pumping it yourself. Then again, that full-serve really isn't. What they call full-serve is merely the attendant pumping your gas. You get none of the other services. Hey, you can't even get a free road map or free air anymore. I won't be surprised if someday they charge us for driving directions when you pull in lost on your way to your grandma's house. Maybe by then GPS systems will be less money and you'll have one, not having to rely on directions that will have you driving in circles or leave you about 35 miles from your actual destination.

And You May Remember...
...The Sinclair station at 18th & Oregon Ave. It's a Dunkin-Donuts now, but at one time, you could see your friendly Dino the Dinosaur on the sign and pumps at that station.

...There were also two Esso/Exxon stations here that disappeared long ago. One was at Broad & Oregon, a subway station now sits there for the Broad Street Line. The other was at 20th & Oregon, now a Checker's burger joint. I remember a family member left his car running across the street from that station at an ATM once. When he went back to the car, it was gone. He left it in neutral with the hand brake on, and it slipped. It was funny hearing the attendant saying, "I thought he was coming in for gas until I saw there wasn't a driver." The car hit the wall, but no real damage was done. The car was reported stolen and we searched the neighborhood for almost a half-hour before realizing it was in the station. We laughed for a few hours more.

...Promotions: You could do everything from furnish your dinner table to plan a vacation with promotions offered at gas stations in the past. They still have their offers, just not as worthwhile as they used to be. I remember Sunoco had this NFL stamp album promotion that all of us boys bugged the attendants for. Whether we were football fans or not, we got our albums and stamps, the guy who got the stamps for all players on all teams was the one who was envied by all. Keep in mind we were about nine or ten years old, so yeah it was goofy, but then again, so are young boys.

Remembering Gas Lines Old and New

2006-09-26T01:32:00.000-04:00

You readers who have been around the block a few times in life can remember the gas lines that came with the Arab Oil Embargo in the early 1970s. Thankfully I was much too young to drive at the time, so I didn't have the dubious pleasure of lining up on the designated day, depending on my license plate. But many did, much to the chagrin of drivers and our government. I can only imagine that some crazy sheik was laughing hard that he caused our folks all that grief. Someday, maybe we'll no longer have to depend on the Saudis and others to meet our energy needs and we can laugh at those jerks when they realize that they depended on us as much as we did them.

Anyhow...what reminded me of those lines of long-ago was the circus side-show that we witnessed in South Philly this past Friday when Marino's Sunoco station at 19th & Oregon Avenue made their last stand, selling regular unleaded at $1.50 per gallon as a way of telling Sun Oil Co. what they can do with their gasoline. It seems Sun has charged service stations here in South Philly too much for their product. The local owners are paying more than those upstate, yet they're a stones throw from the Passyunk Avenue refinery and transportation costs are practically nothing for them by comparison to those in NE Pennsylvania.

Anyhow...you don't want to know all the details about what gas costs and why the owners pay more. What you want to know about is the human condition, and what causes folks to do the dumb things they do. Living just off of Oregon Ave, I was able to take a 30 second stroll to the corner and watch human behavior at it's best - okay, I'm being sarcastic. What I got to see was not folks lining up because of shortages caused by governments, but instead, lining up because they wanted a good buy. But then again, staying in line for hours on end to save a few dollars isn't a good buy to me. For the sane person, time is money. For the insane, or for someone who hasn't found out what a work ethic or the value of time is, I guess time is just something to waste. For their efforts, at least they could get a burger or hot dog with their purchase. Hopefully the guy flipping the burger wasn't the same one pumping your gas.

There were some humorous moments on that day. Some of the most humorous was watching frustrated motorists griping about a condition they exposed themselves to. Even more funny was watching their faces while they listened to local residents poke fun at the nonsense and the participants, and having to sit there and take it. But the best part of it all was finding out that a few folks ran out of gas. No, that shouldn't be funny, but it is when you realize that they ran out because they intentionally got in line with just vapors in the tank, trying to save a few dollars. I watched one cop on a bike come up yelling at a motorist, asking why she was bucking the line. She had to manuever around one of those who didn't realize that "E" on the gas gage means "empty".

Thankfully it lasted no more than a half-day at worst. And thankfully, there was no natural disaster or one caused by mankind, accidentally or intentionally. Had fire department and police had to make their way to a real emergency, the gridlock caused by that mayhem could have caused a catastrophe. We survived it, the motorists survived it, Marino's sold it 's gas, and life goes on. Until the next vendor convinces the economically-challenged (those who don't realize that time is money and sitting idling burns as much as you'll save) that it's a good idea to sit in lines for a few hours to save almost nothing. If you line up, please understand the guy standing on the corner laughing has a valid reason. That reason will be found once you gaze in your mirror.

Five Years Gone: Remembering September 11, 2001

2006-09-11T01:28:00.000-04:00

This post departs from the usual memories of life here in South Philly. Five years ago today, our world changed. Some would say it changed for the worst, but if we look at what happened on that day and those that followed, we can surely see that it may have changed for the better.

You will no doubt remember where you were when you heard the news on September 11, 2006. Like a generation or so before us who remembered where they were and what they were doing when they heard the tragic news of President Kennedy being assasinated, we too remember. For me, it was a hard, rude awakening. I had slept late that morning, still recovering from cervical fusion surgery exactly one week previously. My wife Patty woke me up to tell me, saying something like "It just came on the news, a plane hit the World Trade Center." Just as I started to reply "What? That's not right, that's bad", she said "both towers" and it was immediately clear. This was an attack, not an accident. We were suddenly at war, and we remain so to this day in Afghanistan and Iraq.

There are many memories that have never left our minds of that fateful day five years ago. To this day, I can still remember how it felt weatherwise on that September Tuesday, and for some reason, it seems I remember the feel of the night air even more. The memory of the sight of hundreds or thousands of faces pasted on storefronts, utility poles and other places remains, a sad memory to the fact that each of them denotes a face and a member of someone's family who probably never came home. Being home recuperating, I remember watching Dan Rather and the others of CBS News telling us that a plane had hit the Pentagon in Washington, and then not long afterward that an unconfirmed report had come in that yet another plane had crashed in western Pennsylvania. So we wondered, how many more? How many more planes were targeting buildings, how many more American lives were in jeopardy? And I remember just shortly before the collapse of the twin towers, asking how the men of FDNY could possibly fight a fire that high up. The collapse of each tower gave the answer. There would be no need to fight the fires, and the valiant rescues and attempted rescues ended for the most part then and there.

And we remembered having hope. I still remember one firefighter being shown on the screen, walking the streets near Ground Zero, proclaiming that a number of firefighters were found alive. Sadly, it was not to be so. But we hoped and prayed.

And we saw on that day that the people of America showed their best. They gave of themselves, whether it with money from pocket change or checking accounts, or of blood from their veins. They gave food and drink to those working what seemed to be an impossible task, searching for survivors and clearing the rubble of Ground Zero. And they came from all over the country, firefighters and civilians, seeking to aid the firefighters of NYC in that daunting task. America showed her best, and that memory too remains in us all. We remember that Americans showed our enemies that they would not be defeated, that evil would not prevail.

Well, that was true for most Americans. I remember too a cab ride home from the doctors after a surgical follow-up, just a few weeks after 9/11. I was talking to the cab driver, an American about the attacks. He noted that there was a climate of fear for many of the drivers because there were some Americans who threatened any cab driver that was not "one of us". Especially nervous were the Sikh drivers, the men you see wearing turbans. No matter that they weren't Muslim, some morons considered them the enemy. Thankfully, the number of those morons was in the vast minority.

We're now five years past that day. Five years, and the grief still remains for those who lost family, friends, fellow Americans on that dreadful day. Five years, and our men and women are still serving our country, facing danger in far-away places. No matter what your politics, pray for them and support them. Most did not ask to be sent there, but went to serve out of duty for their country, for you and me.
And pray for the safety of this nation. Somewhere there are evil men seeking the destruction of this nation, their aim to destroy all that we stand for, whether it be independence, religious freedoms, or mere individuality. Pray that our Justice Department, intelligence agencies, Department of Homeland Security, are successful at revealing the threats and destroying the plots before those who aim to do those things are themselves successful. May God help these United States, that we never again experience the terror, destruction, and grief that we experienced on that day, five years ago.

GRATEFUL THANKS...
...To the firefighters and police officers who ran into two burning towers in hopes of rescuing those yet to make it to safety. Some gave their lives, some survived, bearing the memories and wounds.

...To the air traffic controllers who performed the monumental task of bringing to the ground safely thousands of flights that were airborne on that day, ensuring the safety of tens or hundreds of thousands of people, citizens of this nation and others.

...To those who volunteered to do everything from search for survivors to offering bottled water to those who did. So many gave and showed us that Americans weren't selfish people, but cared for each other.

...To the men and women of the United States Armed Forces - Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corp.

Back to School Time

2006-09-05T00:30:00.000-04:00

For many of us as kids, Labor Day would make us cringe. It was a holiday for adults, they got the long weekend and three days away from the desk or construction site or wherever they toiled. For us, it only meant one thing - back to school.

Yes, the most dreaded day on the calendar was the Wednesday after Labor Day. With that day came the start of nine months of homework, books, teachers, and all the things that an introverted, disinterested kid would hate. There were only a few bright spots during the school year, that coming when we got Christmas and Easter vacations. That's right, Christmas and Easter, not Winter Holiday or Spring Celebration or whatever the politically correct want to call them today.

To the kids heading back to school tomorrow, you have my sympathies. Especially if you have teachers who either don't care too much or those who rule with an iron hand. I know this post doesn't provide you with much of a memory or humor, but let me give you a bit of wisdom. My advice to you would be to learn as much as you can, and do your best rather than just trying to make it through. You'll come out much better in the end, finding your potential in the career market much greater than if you just seek a high school diploma and nothing more. Things worked out well for me even though I lacked a degree, I'm no longer an introvert and careerwise, I did pretty well. But why risk it? Aim high and try to enjoy the ride. And if you really hate school anyhow, hey, June will be around soon enough.

Labor Day Weekend 2006 - The Times They Are A'Changin'

2006-09-04T22:16:00.000-04:00

Labor Day weekend 2006 comes to an end, and exits with some notoriety. Three things that play on the memories of long-time South Philly residents are noted on this unofficial end of summer weekend. Two of them are goodbyes, the other remembering an ongoing annual charity...

1. THE FINAL LABOR DAY WEEKEND FOR STEEL PIER IN ATLANTIC CITY, NJ
No, it's not South Philly, and no, I've never set foot on Steel Pier although I've been to AC a number of times. But I've known and spoke with enough folks about their experiences at Steel Pier to have lived there somewhat vicariously. And our late neighbor across the alley on Bancroft Street, Alice, is said to have been one of the ladies who rode the diving horses on the pier.

I saw an article in the Inquirer this morning about the coming demise, with the pier closing in October. In that article, one of the amusement owners, Anthony Catonoso, is noted as saying:
"We're not going to be here because they don't want families in Atlantic City anymore". That's a terrible testimony for a city that relies on tourism and vacationers, even if it does play more to adults with it's casinos. This weekend alone will provide the Steel Pier with enough families for them to understand that providing attractions for the family unit still matters. But maybe the dollar matters more, and the money made selling the high-end properties and services that will replace Steel Pier will be enough to satisfy those investing in them (remember, it's a Trump venture). The families coming from other places can go elsewhere. But for those families of Atlantic City who don't have the extra money to travel, the loss of Steel Pier will leave them residents in a town without much to offer in spending a day or weekend together having some quality time. A 108-year history will become just that next month, history.

2. SALLY STARR'S SWAN SONG
Sally Starr, hostess of a kiddie show that many of us will remember from the 1960's, retired this weekend from her Sunday afternoon radio show at WVLT-FM (92.1). If you didn't know she was still doing something on-air, well, neither did I until I read about it recently. I guess at 83 years old, retirement isn't such a bad thing. Best wishes Sally, and I hope Mr. Senske called to say the same.

3. THE JERRY LEWIS LABOR DAY TELETHON for MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY
Jerry Lewis has been hosting the telethon since 1966, raising over a billion dollars to fight Muscular Dystrophy. He's still doing it at 80 years old, despite health issues.

I remember as a kid two things about the telethon. On our own, my brother, Chris Arizzi, and I would go door-to-door asking for contributions from neighbors. We'd get a buck here, fifty cents there, but not too many folks said no. And we turned it all in, keeping nothing for ourselves. Why did we do it? Well, we just heard that other kids did and jumped on the bandwagon.

The other memory? We'd stay up late and call into the telethon, making a few pledges in the names of folks we didn't like so much. So if you got a letter in the mail with a self-addressed stamped envelope, thanking you for your $500.00 pledge to help fight MD, please accept my apologies and laugh a little. If you sent a gift out of guilt, feel good about it and laugh even more. Your gift may help find a cure to that insidious disease.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Jerry Lewis crying at the end of the telethon. I remember sitting by the TV one year and my cousin saying something like, "Oooh, here's the best part of the telethon, he's gonna cry like a baby."

...Giving Mr. Senske a hard time about Sally Starr if you were a student in his gym class at Bishop Neumann HS. Legend has it that Mr. Senske had dated the old cowgirl and she jilted him. True or not, I don't know. But I remember a few times seeing him in the hall near the gym and hearing someone shout "Sally Starr" while hidden safely in a crowd of other students, trying to get under his skin. They often did.

...The Steel Pier Show. A locally-produced show that you could view on WPVI Channel 6 on Saturday afternoons in the summertime. Ed Hurst and some guy with the last name of Grady (Joe perhaps?) hosted the show.

Bocce At Guerin Playground

2006-08-29T14:36:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking back on pasttimes lately, and started thinking about my grandfather and how he would take my brother, sister, and I to Guerin playground every Sunday and once or twice a week during the summer months. The weekends were ours, he'd sit and watch us play or push us on the swings as high as he could. My grandfather really enjoyed taking us out, and probably had at least as much of a good time as we did.

Grandpop was very protective of us too. I remember a boy had pulled my sister's hair as she came off the sliding board one Sunday afternoon. My grandfather chased him, fired up with rage that a boy would do that to a girl, especially his granddaughter. Fortunately, the kid was naturally faster than the older man, and he made his escape. Well, those things didn't happen too often, the times there for us were typically enjoyed.

During the weekdays, Grandpop had his fun too. Not like us kids on the playground equipment. He and the older Italian men would gather at the bocce courts at Guerin and spend the better part of the day playing bocce, talking, and at times drinking wine from bottles they brought in. It was a great way for them to spend the last years of their lives after retirement, and it helped keep their community alive. I only knew the names of a couple of the men who gathered to play and talk, but the faces were very familiar. I don't think there was a man among them who was timid, all were involved in something by the courts.

As time takes it's toll, things dissapear. It saddended my grandfather as his friends started to die off. The community of the bocce courts started to dwindle in the mid-70s, and by the end of the decade, most of the men had passed away or were unable to make the walk to 16th & Wolf to play or talk, my grandfather included. By the dawn of the 80s, he was confined to the house or to the bench on the front porch, sitting and watching the world go by with faces he didn't know. Around the same time, the outdoor bocce courts disappeared from Guerin.

My grandfather died in February 1983 at the age of 90. Because of him, I had the pleasure and privilege to experience the Italian culture, if only by sitting and watching him and the other men. What may have seemed like a waste of our playtime back in our childhood is now a fond memory.

UPDATE - 9/4/2006:
It seems I've posted in haste regarding the demise of bocce at Guerin Playground. With the outdoor courts gone, I figured bocce went with it. But a number of folks noted at phillyblog.com that bocce is alive and well at Guerin, only now it's inside rather than out, and many who play in the leagues there speak Italian. I'm always glad when someone tells me I'm wrong when it comes to things like this. It's good to see the game surviving.
Brian

Go Carts, South Philly Style

2006-08-22T02:28:00.000-04:00

Kevin Karns reminded me in response to my post on bottle traps about the "go-carts" we used to build as kids. I haven't seen one in ages. Now kids either have motorized plastic vehicles, good quality bicycles, or real motor bikes. They don't have to build something themselves. Would they? I don't know, but it'd be a fun thing for them to do.

If you're in your forties or older, you probably built one or more yourself. We used to scour the trash outside of peoples homes on Wednesday, looking for material to build our go-carts and scooters. Or, we would go down the basement to see what we could find to put one together. Sometimes one guy would provide the wheels, another the 2x4s, and so on and so forth. But we all worked together and got one built, then ran it into the ground until it fell apart. The wheels were usually an old pair of our own roller skates. You remember the kind that went on top your sneakers? Yep, those types of skates. The ones you needed a skate key to tighten. We were fortunate to find bigger wheels sometimes from discarded shopping carts and such, but usually, it was the skates that got us rolling.

I did a Google search on "go carts", hoping to find some photos of the types of wrecks we built. I didn't find one I know that it wasn't a South Philly only thing, but no one gives mention to these things on the web. Pretty sad, huh?

The bodies were again sometimes found in the trash, but sometimes they were pilfered from a nearby grocery store. The bodies of our go-carts were sometimes produce crates or metal milk crates, the later good for scratching the paint on a car here or there. Much better than the produce crates that would fall apart after one or two collisions.
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Fire Alarm Call Boxes

2006-08-22T02:11:00.000-04:00

Remember the old call boxes that you found on every other corner of the larger streets to call the Fire Department back in the day? In today's high-tech world, they don't make sense. But even before the cell phone became popular they started to disappear from the streets of Philadelphia.

The call boxes made perfect sense back in the days when most homes didn't have telephones. But in the early 1980s, the Philadelphia Fire Department figured they became obsolete. And they were right, those call boxes got way more activity with false alarms than for actual working fires. Wanted to shake things up on the street a bit? All you had to do was go over to the corner, break the glass on the box face, and pull down on the handle. Firefighters would be there in just a few minutes, hoping to find a citizen to direct them to the site of the actual fire. But in the later years, the citizens beat feet and didn't stick around after pulling the box. So the PFD pulled them from the corners before the 80s could zip halfway through the decade. A bit of nostalgia, but not useful at all today.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

...that some boxes were painted black. I never could find out why. Legend was that the box was painted black when a firefighter died when responding to a fire there. But there were many boxes painted black that had no fatalities attached to them. Being they started to go black near the end of their effective lives, I would think it was done to show that they were no longer active.

... Police call boxes. I never saw an active one, but remember numerous abandoned boxes around South Philly through the end of the 70s. Useful for cops on patrol before radios became widespread. Now the average citizen can't even listen to the police on their obsolete scanners since they went digital a few years back. So a few of us have somewhat expensive paperweights with speakers and digital displays.

Mike Douglas Passes Away

2006-08-11T15:18:00.000-04:00

Most people 40 and over will remember Mike Douglas and his afternoon TV show on KYW-TV 3 back in the 70s. Mr. Douglas' show featured musical and entertainment celebrities of all types and was pretty popular at the time, before cable had widened the variety of programming and before people like Oprah and Springer ruined the format in various ways.

I read that Mike Douglas died today on his birthday at 81. Gone, but not to be forgotten. He was a staple of Philly television as much as Larry Kane was and Jim Gardner is to anchoring the news, or as Sally Starr and Gene London were to kids TV, even if we did watch him back then in blue and white pixels instead of color.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

... Mike Douglas' contemporaries of the era. Steve Allen, Merv (Ooooh!) Griffin, and Dinah Shore all had similar programs in the afternoon.

... The set of The Mike Douglas Show being maybe somewhat spartan by today's comparison. Just a few high stools, the name of the show on the wall, and a few characters with it such as an asterisk and exclamation point. Simple stuff, but the emphasis was on those on stage and not on the set or the lighting.

Bottle Traps

2006-08-08T01:34:00.000-04:00

They were almost invisible. They may have startled you a bit if you tripped one. They'd be just about impossible to make today because plastic has replaced glass in so many things. What were they? We called them "Bottle Traps".

Bottle Traps were the result of bored imagination of your average everyday kid who had a lot of nights with nothing to do but to get a laugh whenever possible. We took a length of fishing line - (you remember our last use of it from Dave and the door knocker), tied one end to a glass soda bottle, the other end to a car door handle or whatever was available, and then placed the bottle on the top step in front of someone's home. And we always did it on Oregon Avenue because we knew there would be foot traffic.

It didn't take too long to wait, even later at night. Someone would soon ramble on down the street and trip the Bottle Trap. Most would soon realize what happened and shrug it off. Some would curse and look around to see if they could see who set the trap. We always concealed ourselves and never got caught.

Every so often, someone had to dispose of the Coke or whatever soda they drank earlier that night. The suggestion would then be to urinate in the bottle before setting the trap. Not a great suggestion if you're not the one doing the urinating and/or a cap isn't available for the bottle. We didn't do it too often, but it was one of those alternatives to change things up a bit.

The other alternative was bottle size. We mostly drank 16 oz. sodas in those days. We didn't have 20 ouncers then, and we didn't have as many bloated waist lines either in the neighborhood. But sometimes we found quart bottles lying around on a corner or in an alley and used them for a bigger shatter effect. More of a startle effect too.

Someone's going to read this and say, "hey, that's the jerk (or harsher expletive) who got me way back when!" Yeah, it probably was me and some of the other guys I hung around with here around 17th & Oregon. Get over it. It was the mid-70s, we've all changed since then. If you haven't, may I give you a little advice? Get on with life already!

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

...When soda bottle labels were painted on glass bottles.

... Foam labels that replaced the painted types. They lasted until the plastic bottles came in and thin plastic labels surrounded the bottles.

... When sizes were small compared to today's soda bottles. Before the late 70s, the biggest size was the quart soda. Then came the two litre bottles and bigger, heavier kids and more kids nationwide with diabetes because of obesity. Not diabetic because of the soda, but because of the amount consumed along with super-sized meals and big bags of chips and king sized chocolate bars. We lost moderation somewhere in the last couple decades.

... Brands of soda long gone, or at least not found around here in South Philly anymore. There was Orange Crush (not the REM song), Hires Root Beer (I think made by the same guys as Crush, Ma's Root Beer and other flavors, Frank's Sodas - the local favorites (Black Cherry Wishniak anyone? It's okay, Hank's makes it now.) TAB, the nasty diet soda disappeared, but it's now back as an energy drink. I won't try it, if it tastes as nasty now as it did then, I can do without that nostalgia. And we won't forget Booth's brand of soda, made famous by Doctor Shock and his Saturday night horror films on channel 17, advertising it at commercial time with his daughter "Bubbles".

... Collecting bottle caps. The only purposes they had were for playing dead box in the street, or taking up space in a cigar box in your room. Our boredom kicked in again around age 12 and we made bottle cap rifles out of a stud, nail, and rubber band, having wars with them. That was before someone told us we'd be damaged by playing with guns of the toy variety and before manufacturers had to put orange caps on the toy guns so that the police wouldn't mistake a kid pointing a toy from a real one. Oh yeah, the bottle caps. They were solid metal with a cork or plastic liner. They were called "crown corks" by some in earlier days, probably coming from the name of the company that produced them, Crown Cork & Seal (a Philly company, now called Crown Holdings).

... When soda bottles were shipped in wooden crates, not cardboard boxes with plastic over them.

Where's Dr. Francis Davis? My TV News Gripe

2006-07-21T01:39:00.000-04:00

Who? I know you don't remember him, and it's just as well. You probably don't remember Francis Davis because the job he did back in the early 70s was the weather on Channel 6 (WFIL, before the call letter change to WPVI) News (and I believe it was before the Action News format). But the thing is, when he and the guys on channels 3 and 10 did the weather, you saw them only twice - once at the start of the program saying hello, and again when the time for the forecast came up - and that was it!

I'm weighing in my two cents today on the subject of TV weather. Much has been written about it locally such as Tom Ferrick's recent column in the Inquirer, but now I get my turn. Why you ask, is it such a big deal? Because when you turn on the noon news and the first twelve minutes are dedicated to weather and the "big" storm, you've had enough. Cut the crap, it's sad that folks are without power and that some had been injured or suffered loss. But 12 minutes out of 30 geared toward weather? Let's be real folks, you're wasting our time. You're driving folks to the web to get their news, and maybe we're better off for it.

And do we really need weatherchics like Cecily Tynan and Cathy Orr? Francis Davis gave the weather in a plain old suit, no flash at all. Alright, maybe we do need Cecily or Cathy, only because I'd rather watch them than Glenn "Hurricane" Schwartz over on NBC 10. Who names themself "Hurricane" anyhow, especially in a geographical area that doesn't see that many of those types of storm? Maybe Glenn "Thundershowers" Schwartz would fit better. Still, he's a step up. If you remember John Bolaris, he of the "Storm of the Century" forecast that wasn't, you know what I mean. Flashy John could forecast that Acme would sell out of milk and bread because of him setting the viewers in panic, but accuracy? We could expect dry days when those storms were forecast.

My challenge to the big three (NBC10, CBS3, and ABC6)...when your anchor weighs in for the start of the program, have him or her introduce the weather babe or dude, let the weather person say something as generic as "storms on the way in our five day forecast", and then get to the hard news. Let the meteorologist wait until midway, or even at the last ten minutes like Dr. Davis did to tell us that we're going to get dumped on, maybe. Hey, I have to wait for the last five minutes to find out if the Phils won or lost because your sports guy comes on before the commercial break and gets generic with me, telling me, "Phillies in New York playing the Mets tonight, will they break this latest losing streak? Stay tuned!" Yeah, keep me in suspense while I bypass and go to www.MLB.com to check the scores and standings. Oh, hey, and yeah, to noaa.gov, I can get my weather and not have you tell me three times tonight the same thing you told me at the start of the broadcast. This Internet thing is useful more than you may have thought! Come back to the airwaves, Dr. Francis Davis!

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER... ...The original Action News format with Larry Kane, Joe Pelligrino, and, oh yeah, Francis Davis. on channel 6. The late, great Jim O'Brien came along later to do the weather with more color, but at least not three times at 11.

...The authoritative voice of John Facenda on Channel 10, back when they were a CBS station. Mr. Facenda also was the voice of NFL Films and the light show at John Wanamakers in it's earlier years.

...Vince Leonard on KYW3 when they started Eyewitness News. That same program gave us the first view of talk show host Tom "fire up the colortini" Snyder, remembered for his interview on his late night talk show with Charles Manson. David Letterman later got Snyder's talk show spot.

...When news programs came on at 6 and 11 PM. No noon, no 4, 5, 5:30 shows. The older shows got right to the point, no crap like I saw tonight on 3 where they gave us a warning on how to open bubble packaging in the first ten minutes of the program. Hey, that used to be hard news time, now they use it to tell me to get my scissors out instead of using a knife to open my packages from Best Buys. Thanks, I'll consider myself well-informed now!

...When you knew the news was bad, because of what was once called a "Special Report". The newscasters would break into "regularly scheduled programming" to tell us about an assasination, plane crash, or other terrible event. Now, it's called "Breaking News", and the events are as serious as someone reporting a gas leak in their neighborhood. Break in when you hear the boom when the gas ignites, not when the neighbor smells it.

The Doctors Office Before HMOs

2006-07-16T16:07:00.000-04:00

Some things never change. Then there are those things that change so drastically you really long for the good old days. The doctors office is one of those things.

Back in the pre-HMO days, a visit to see the doctor seemed just like that, a visit. Nothing at all like today. When comparing the two eras, you notice the difference from the second you walked in the door. Before things changed, when you walked in, you did one thing, and only one thing. You waited to see the doctor with a magazine in your hand. It may have been a few minutes or a couple of hours, but that's how plain an office visit was.

I remember three doctors my mom used to take us to when we were kids: Dr. Samuel Foreman, Dr. Mario Salamone, and Dr. Peter Cocco, with Dr. Foreman being our regular family doctor. All three have departed and are no longer with us. My mom told me on numerous visits while we sat waiting, "you should have seen it here in the old days. People would be lined up outside the door to see Dr. Foreman". It seems he was a generous soul, if you couldn't afford to pay him, it was okay, he'd see you anyhow, no questions, IOUs, bills, or anything else. He was just a benevolent neighborhood doctor who cared. It wasn't possible for him to keep track of billing anyhow. As I said, when you walked in, you sat and waited. There were no receptionists, and no one to keep record of your visit. It was only after Dr. Foreman had a heart attack did his wife come to work in the office as his receptionist. You paid the doctor or receptionist ten dollars ($10.00) cash back then, no receipt, no insurance, nothing to complicate the visit. Your health mattered, the other things were handled later.

Speaking of complicating things, you didn't find pharmaceutical reps in the office in those days, only patients. I don't even know if such reps existed at that time, I never saw them. Today, they line up to see some doctors. There they sit with their big smiles, promotional materials, and dinners or vacations to offer the doctors if they'll write prescriptuions for their brand of medications for everything from hemmoroid treatments to pills that will grow new hair on your bald head. I give my neurologist credit, he seems to have no time for them. I was in his office a couple months ago when a rep came in all beaming, asking the receptionist to see the doc. The receptionist told her she had little chance, and sure enough, the Dr. sternly told the rep he was seeing patients and their care came first, he had no time for her. Finally, the patient gets first priority! That's exactly what you want to see.

And remember what I said about waiting? Part of that was because the doctor took more time to listen to you explain your problems, or maybe just your bellyaching to him. When you got in to the examination room, you had the physician's ear. No rushing because two dozen others were lined up behind you - a dozen more than should have been booked for the day. You were there because you had problems, and the doctor was the solution.

Those days are gone. Now if you don't have insurance or the - what is it, $80 or more to see your family doctor - you'll be heading to see a doctor somewhere else instead, maybe a clinic or some other low-cost facility. You won't be handing the doctor a ten for the visit, you'll be giving the receptionist $20 or more for your co-pay. And even though you'll get to see the doctor, you probably won't get to spend too much time with him or her. I don't fully fault the doctor for that. With HMOs and other insurance, you'll find many more people lining the seats in the waiting room than ever before. Ah, the good old days!

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

...Hands-on relief. Dr. Cocco used to get you on the table and align you at the beginning of each visit. You felt every joint in your upper body snap and you felt immediate relief. I haven't had a Dr. do that to me since he died in the 1980s.

...Syringe squirt guns - We used to ask Dr. Foreman and Salamone for hypodermic syringes to use to squirt each other and they'd give them to us with no question or hesitation. They'd simply remove the needle first and rinse it out. You'd not dare ask for such things today, who knows what the person had who's arm/leg/butt that needle was inserted into.

...Drip pills - It used to be said that Dr. Cocco would give you drip pills for just about anything whether it be a hang nail or high fever. I remember on a few visits myself he gave me a small envelope filled with a dozen or so small white pills that he called "drip pills" for whatever reason. Did they work? Who knows.

Cable TV Comes to South Philly

2006-07-06T16:59:00.000-04:00

Blogger's Note: Circumstances haven't allowed me to write as much as I'd like to lately. Physical trials - my own and those of others in my family, have taken priority. For the few who read this blog, my thanks for your patience in waiting for the articles. I'll continue to write, just not as often as I had been lately.

Young people today will never remember a time when they didn’t have a multitude of channels with nothing to watch. Bruce Springsteen sung in the early 90s about having fifty-seven channels with nothing on. Today it’s over a hundred and still it seems that there's not much to watch. Murder has become entertainment (Jon Benet Ramsey, Natalee Holloway, etc. via hour long shows from Greta Van Sustern, Rita Cosby, et al). Half-hour informercials abound for things like colon cleansing (witness the guy on CN8 bragging ab0ut his child's massive bowel movement. I've never seen such a beaming smile, dad's very proud.) So we have a multitude of channels with programs about crap or that are just crappy.

Back in the mid-70’s, the area west of Broad Street and I believe above Oregon was the test area for cable TV. No one else had it, not Southwest, Northeast, not even parts of South Philly. We were the lucky ones. Woo-hoo!

What we had back then would probably be laughed off by today’s standards. There was no TNT, USA, MTV or CNN at the time. We basically had a few New York channels (WOR channel 9 and WPIX channel 11) and a few odd things in between. There was 24 hour news, but it was just text on screen provided by Reuters. If you were one of the homes having it at the time, you’ll remember your “remote” was a box as big as a cigar box, with 15 buttons for channels and a rocker switch to go from the top tier to the bottom. Plus it had a tuning wheel to fine tune your picture. It was really primitive, but it worked for us. Telesystems was the company running the show at the time. It gave way to Greater Media, which was swallowed up later by Comcast, but I think there was another company that was somewhere between the last two. So much for the four franchises the city was supposed to have. Comcast has just about everything wrapped up.

We got cable TV installed on the same day we got a color TV back in the mid-70’s. We were always outside doing something, but not that day. We stayed inside and stayed glued to the tube. It was a big event for us, although like everything else, we got bored of it and life returned to normal shortly afterward.

Not long after we got cable, HBO became available. It was there where we first heard obscenities coming off the tube, much to my mom’s chagrin. It was a movie called Law & Disorder with Carrol O’Connor and Ernest Borgnine on a Sunday evening. Mom was livid, threatening to get rid of HBO if that was what they were going to show. Dad didn’t care much about it, so he wanted to keep it. Dad won, or so some would say. My thoughts today is that there’s not a need for profanity in movies. That’s a political argument, this is a blog about memories so we’ll not go there.

Kids, if you ever find yourself bored with TV, think of this…my earliest memories of TV was an old black & white Admiral TV with a tuning knob (a what?) – no remote controls (well my dad had one. He told us to change the channel, and we did). And we had only three channels (KYW 3; WFIL 6 – now WPVI, and public television, channel 12). Our set didn’t even get CBS 10. It wasn’t until 1969 or 1970 that we got a Sears Silvertone console set that had – wonder of wonders – UHF channels! We finally had a selection of shows that we only heard of before.

That wouldn’t cut it for folks today, but it worked for us. Ah, simpler times!

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER…
... Doctor Shock’s horror movies on Saturday nights on channel 17. Who can forget his kid, Bubbles?
... Mr. Gagliardi, the English teacher from Neumann hosting Cable Bingo.
... The Flyers channel after they won their first Stanley Cup. Neighborhood guys found you could get it free instead of paying for it by simply pressing two buttons on the remote.
... When stations signed off for the night with the national anthem.
... Test patterns that occupied the screen from signoff until around 6 AM when the channels signed on again.
... When each station had an announcer that was as well known as the anchors on their news programs. Gene Crane was on 10, Paul Norton on 6 and Gary Geers on 3.

Philomena the Hair Dresser

2006-06-16T12:25:00.000-04:00

I've not posted for a few weeks, haven't felt all that well. So let me make up for it with a second post for today for your amusement.

I've already mentioned one local hair maven who kept us amused in our youth, the Mad Barber, John Toresse. Today we move to the female side of the hair spectrum and remember one Philomena (last name unknown), a hair dresser from South Broad Street.

Growing up here in South Philly, you remember those establishments that never seemed to do any business, yet survived for years. What were those places thought to be? Uh-huh, everyone said they were "mob fronts", although we never really knew. It could have been a funeral home, steak shop, whatever, there were a number of places like that around here. Philomena's hair shop was like that, never did any business. But I don't think any of us would have hung the "mob front" moniker on her shop. Hey, it would have been good for neighborhood folklore, but the reason she never had business is because she scared it away. She was just off the wall and everyone knew it.

What would make us think that? Oh, I don't know. Maybe it was her sitting on the step of the shop or in the window, glaring at those walking by. Maybe it was her method of transporting bags of groceries from the old Penn Fruit supermarket at 20th & Oregon. That was an all-day affair. I remember she would have four bags. She would carry two of them a block down the street, then go back for the other two and walk them two blocks. She'd then go back for the bags she walked the first block and walk them another...you get the picture. Anyhow, imagine how long it would take to walk those bags the six or so blocks to her shop. If she weren't so scary, one of us would have given her a hand.

I remember my sister would call her once in a while to make an appointment. Not really, just to get her reaction to the call. She would ask just a few words, such as "I'd like to make an appointment to get my hair..." and wham, Philomena would be screeching and shouting at her in no time. So she never got her hair done there. You've gotta wonder though. Did Phil ever really style hair in her life, or did she buy someone else's shop and not know what to do with it? Who knows? But she's gone, and I've yet to find someone whose had a magic coif from that lady.

Petey Igor - Local Legend

2006-06-16T12:07:00.000-04:00

I've already mentioned a few folks from the neighborhood that most here would consider to be local legends. Today I look at another, Mr. Petey Igor. Pete was a perpetual fixture in the area, living somewhere around 15th & Shunk Streets. We would see him just about every day in the summer time.

Pete was a legend more because he overcame than anything else. He was one of those souls who had physical and mental challenges, but it didn't keep him from doing his thing. Although he couldn't speak with much more than a grunt, he got his point across. In the days of the old Veterans Stadium, we saw him one day getting a hot dog and he found he was short-changed when completing his purchase. If it was done purposefully, that person giving the change soon found out that he was not to be taken advantage of. He started jabbing at the change in his hand and then pointing up to the prices on the menu board. The bewildered cashier soon put the proper change in his hands and saw that he was sharper than some would give him credit for.

People not understanding handicaps can sometimes get a man in trouble. There was one incident where a young girl saw him come up the street behind her, and had the wits scared out of her. She ran down the block screaming. It's enough to get you put on the sexual predators list today, but no harm was done. At least not to her, whether it upset Pete or not was never determined.

We never knew what happened to Pete to cause his troubles. One legend says he was hit by a bus in his youth. There have been others who said differently. Let speculation run long enough, and eventually someone would have probably speculated that he was born near a chemical plant or that his mom gave birth while hearing of the JFK assasination and the trauma caused his problems. Whatever.

Anyhow, Pete's long gone. I haven't seen him in decades. I don't know whether he's alive or dead. But I do remember him vividly. So hats off to Petey Igor, local legend!

Toys

2006-05-31T01:39:00.000-04:00

Whatever happened to toys? All you hear about today is electronics and video games. What happened to those things that inspired imagination? Today's post isn't about anything specific to South Philly, just a memory of those things we played with. Click on the "Toys" title link above to see the video of commercials for the toys we played with in the 70s. If you're old enough, you'll remember them. Bing Bang Boing is shown. No, it wasn't some perverse sexual game. Just a thing with steel balls that you bounced on these drum-tight things. It probably kept you interested for maybe a few hours. Then you went and hung out on the street with the guys.

While today's toys seem to be video everything, having toys made of cheap plastic were fun for us. Who can forget the Rock'em, Sock'em Robots? You got to knock your opponents block off, and you could do it without getting your mom mad at you for slapping your brother around. Then again, once you played, you probably wanted to smack him around. Most of the guys I grew up with would wrestle in the living room. We never broke anything, whether it was our bones or mom's knick-knacks. Was it the Rock'em Sock'ems that inspired us, or the cartoons we watched? It doesn't matter. We had fun, and we survived it.

I remember my sister had the Hasbro Easy-Bake Oven, an electric toy oven that came with cake mixes and other fun stuff. So she got to bake a half-dozen cakes the width of a coffee can lid, and we got to eat them. What to do with that oven once the mixes are all gone? Not to worry. Your brothers will get a bunch of crayons and other nasty stuff and put it inside and turn it on. The molten mess ruined the oven, so no need to worry about going to the toy store to buy more mixes. Hey, it was made by the same folks who made the GI Joe line of dolls. Luckily for my sister, our GI Joes never made it to the inside of her oven.

And speaking of GI Joe, remember when they were big enough to keep your attention? Bigger than a Barbie doll that the girls played with. The last ones I remember seeing were smaller, much smaller, than that. Downsizing should never hit the toys you were fond of. GI Joe had so many different weapons, vehicles, and commando gear that your imagination kept going for hours and hours on end each day. If left to American boys instead of the guys in Washington, we may have won the Vietnam War with our strategy. No one asked us, so the war was a debacle and our first military loss. It's a shame, me and the boys had it all worked out. Ho Chi Minh City would still be known as Saigon today. But no, they wouldn't listen...never mind.

Remember the View-Master from GAF? Not much to hold your attention. This "educational toy" had a disk that gave you stereo views of images such as US landmarks, some of the models had sound too, so you got a few seconds of someone telling you about the Washington Monument before you pitched it off to the side in favor of the fun Christmas gifts.

I think most kids in the neighborhood had a crack at Twister. Just a vinyl mat with big colored dots and a spinner that had you twisting up like a pretzel around your friends. Maybe this is the reason for all my spinal problems today. Young kids just twisted around on that mat. Later in your teen years, you may have said, "I'd like to play Twister with her" when thinking about some girl you had the liking for. Aw heck, she wouldn't play with you and you know it. Stop dreaming boy. And even so, if she did, you both could reminisce in your adult years about the day you both screwed up your spine. Owwww!

What about Erector sets? Who erected anything with those sets? They were boring. Strips of metal you joined together to make structures of...whatever it was you made. I never had one. Good, because it would be a wasted toy under the tree. We had Lincoln Logs, and although it wasn't anything fantastic, it gave us the chance to build log homes that we could crash our SSPs into (yes, we had them, the cars you'll see in the video - we had the Demoliton Derby set and had lots of fun with it).

Later in our teen years, we took to building model cars and planes. They never saw the new year, we would always blow them up with M80s when New Year came around. They still sell those model kits today. I haven't seen someone buy one in eons, but someone still must have an interest in these things.

Then there were Soccer-Boppers. Remember them? Just two big oversized inflatable mitts that you could bop someone in the face with and not give him a bloody nose. Cool, but it seems my brother and I forgot to put on the boppers sometimes. Ah, maybe we didn't forget.

I know you had a favorite toy, one that you fondly remember. Tell me about it. Post your memory in the comments. I want to see what your favorite was.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...The big toy stores like Kiddie City or Play Town (aka Baby Town) at 23rd & Passyunk Ave. Today's mall stores like Kay-Bee aren't anything near it in size.

...HotWheels cars and their track sets. We had fun with them, but even better were slot cars, those electric powered cars that couldn't seem to stay on the tracks. We didn't care, we probably spent more time playing with them than most other toys.

... Electric Football games - Why in the world did we want those things? A bunch of plastic players on a vibrating metal field. We never could get it to work the way we thought it should. Okay, video wins out here. I think Madden Football would win the hearts of anyone over that pathetic game we had. It made it to the trash no more than a month after Christmas.

Going to the Movies: The Neighborhood Theaters

2006-05-25T15:11:00.000-04:00

"Everybody knows when you go to the show you can't take the kids along
You've gotta read the paper and know the code of GP, G and R and X
And you gotta know what the movie's about before you even go
Tex Ritter's gone and Disney's dead and the screen is filled with sex."
...From the song, "Whatever Happened to Randolph Scott" by the Statler Bros.

I don't know what happened to Randolph Scott, I never saw one of his movies. I think he was an old Western hero, the kind of movies boys piled into for a Saturday matinee back in the day - the day before I was born.

But I do know what happened to the neighborhood movie theater. Something called video - VHS - came along and killed the movie houses all around South Philly, as well as in other cities and towns. Suddently, you could rent a movie at a mom & pop store on the corner (before Blockbuster) as long as it wasn't already rented out. But before that, the movie houses ruled. It used to be a movie had it's first run in the Center City theaters, moved down here to the small houses, and then finally to the TV screen. Now, it goes from the big screen to DVD in a matter of weeks, then maybe HBO or whoever is showing them on cable or the dish.

If you're in your 40s or later, you remember the neighborhood joints. The last to go was the Colonial at 10th & Moyamensing. The owners kept it alive a lot longer than they should have. In the end, the place should have been condemned. Townhouses (ok, glorified rowhomes) stand in it's place now. The last show I saw there was Wildcats with Goldie Hawn, and I never went back again. But I had spent many weekend and summer nights there, so I have good memories, more of time with friends there than the Colonial itself.

Besides the Colonial, there were many others here in South Philly, theaters you could go to see a movie at a decent price and have a good time. I can remember the Broadway (Broad & Snyder), The Stadium (later Cinema South at Broad & Hartranft), the President at 23rd & Snyder. I remember seeing Animal House at the Stadium one Sunday afternoon. Given the type of movie it was, we call came out of there acting as juvenile as we were. Walking up Broad, I can remember Anthony C. yelling "Run!" and seeing him and a few others scramble, with three older guys in pursuit. Seems that Anthony threw something at one of our other friends and missed, and hit one of the older guys. Not knowing what was up, a few of us didn't run. The ones who did got smacked around a bit. Nothing serious, but enough to learn something.

The last flick we saw at the Broadway was Poseidon Adventure, now remade as many movies are, maybe better, maybe worse. I guess there aren't many original ideas left. If it was filmed in the 70's, it may be around again, but don't count on it being too good, or at least what you remember. Now the Broadway's gone, it went on to become a Gino's, then Roy Rogers, and now a Walgreen's drug store. Progress? I don't think so. Everything changes and we have to accept that. But still, it was nice to be able to go to a place nearby and watch a movie on a big screen.

Anyhow, you can't go to a neighborhood theater anymore. They're nowhere to be found. If you live here in South Philly, your closest option is on Columbus Blvd, and you'll pay more than you would have here in the neighborhood places. And when you add popcorn and a soda, you'll break the bank. I thought prices were high at Citizen's Bank Park when I went to a ballgame there, but the theaters seem worse. It's just not the same, watching a DVD. It's just gathering around the TV set, I don't care if you have a hi-def screen with surround sound system or whatever. Kids today won't know the good times of hanging with friends and putting down a buck to watch a movie close to home. So maybe you did have a rat run across your feet during the declining days of one of the local houses. But you still had a good time.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Drive-in theaters. There was one on 61st & Passyunk that survived through the early 80s. A concrete processing plant now sits there. I never got to go to a drive-in. One of those pleasures of life I was cheated out of.

..."no one will be seated during the last two minutes." There were a few horror movies back in the 70s or 80s that used that line to draw crowds. But if you got there in the last five minutes and saw the dramatic (or so they say) ending, you blew the movie when you stayed to watch it again.

..."Bambi vs. Godzilla". I hadn't seen that one. We got ripped at the Colonial one night (no, not drunk, but ripped off). They advertized that you could pay to watch Phantasm, and stay for the midnight flick which started with Bambi v. Godzilla. We saw Phantasm, but were ushered out the door when it ended. I don't know if there was no midnight movie, or if you had to pay a separate admission. Anyhow, someone told me the Bambi movie was just a gimmick, a shorty where Bambi is grazing in the field and Godzilla's massive foot comes down to crush him. I didn't miss so much after all.

...Being the jerk who made the wrong choice of movies. A few of us wanted to go to the show, but the choice was "Towering Inferno" at the Stadium or "Tidal Wave" at the Colonial. Someone won out and we saw the latter, a low-budget Japanese movie whose only American actor was Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame. Although I remember a wasted two hours watching a bonehead film, I can't remember who made the suggestion. So because we have short memories, whoever got us to go see that fiasco won't have the stigma of being remembered as the person who suggested it.

Batman: The Door-to-Door Huckster

2006-05-18T00:39:00.000-04:00

It seems that many here in South Philly like to relive the memories of their youth, remembering especially the characters who frequented the neighborhood around here.

My cousin and I were talking about these characters this past Monday, and he reminded me of one guy who I had just about forgotten about. That guy is Batman. No, not the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight of comic book/movie/TV fame. Nope. Our Batman was a huckster, and if he were to consider that old truck a Batmobile, he would have had to have had one vivid imagination.

I have no idea where the name came from for this guy. I don't remember anything that would really make us want to call him Batman. Yet mention the name when recalling those around here, and someone will say, "Yeah, the tomato guy!"

Most folks will remember the hucksters in the trucks with the loudspeaker who yelled out all kinds of weird stuff. I remember one of them yelling out stuff like "gowsie, and freshkie", whatever the heck that was supposed to mean. Batman was different. He didn't use a loudspeaker. He didn't need it. He'd just grab a basket off the truck and strut down the street yelling out what he was carrying for the day. "Squash!" "Peppers!" "Tomatoes!" He covered a lot of ground, and had a lot of regular customers. So many, in fact, that he would regularly run up and down the steps of the rowhomes, knowing which housewives were going to buy from him. The guys with the loudspeakers probably had to work harder, Batman had a lot of steadies.

As likeable as the guy was, he sometimes rubbed some of the ladies the wrong way. Sometimes people just don't like to hear guys yelling. It can be a minor crime with some when you have the windows open in the summertime, the soap operas on the TV, and some nut outside screaming about his romaine lettuce while you're trying to keep up with your "stories". Or when you're shouting in someone's face, they don't take too kindly to it. One of the fond stories of Batman was when he bounced up the steps to a lady's house, pounding on the door with his basket of Jersey Tomatoes. Just as the lady answered, Batman let out his customary roar of "Tomatoes!", probably loud enough and close enough to rupture her eardrum. Batman himself got an earful that day, of the lady letting him have it for yelling in her face. Well, I did say he was a likeable guy. Enough so that he kept his customers, even with all that yelling.

The day of the roaming huckster seems to be gone now. You can buy your produce on the street still, but you'll need to go down to places like 10th & Oregon or other corners where guys set up to sell. They don't hit the streets pounding the doorsteps anymore. Maybe it's because more women work today and they're not found at home as much. Maybe it's the noise statutes - I'd rather hear Batman than the crappy music we hear booming from cars of young white guy, wannabe gangsta types. Or maybe it's just that Bose's noise-cancelling technology allows the ladies to watch and listen to their "stories" and tune out the world at the same time. Who knows. Probably the only yelling from these guys we'll hear now is what we remember in our minds.

More on the Ragman...

2006-05-16T01:06:00.000-04:00

My cousin Dell remembered a Rag Man, but a different one than we did growing up. He grew up in the area of the rag shop that I mentioned, living on 17th just down the street from Jackson Street where the shop was.

The guy he remembered worked right out of the shop, no horse or buggy, and no whip. He tells me that the guys in the neighborhood would collect newspapers (forerunner to today's recycling?) and the guy at the shop would pay them by the pound as they brought them in. Rags too. But the neighborhood kids must have been learning from the butchers who put their finger on the scales as they took care of your meat order. The kids would sometiimes find things in the trash like lead window sash weights and place them between the newspapers before tying up the bundles. So the guys would get a few cents extra, maybe enough to go to the movies at one of the neighborhood theatres or whatever.

The Rag Man

2006-05-08T20:44:00.000-04:00

When you think of people who do their business on wheels, you probably picture a Ford Econoline or Chevy Van, maybe a Dodge Ram pickup truck. You see them all over the streets of South Philly owned by plumbers, electricians, painters, maybe an occasional FBI surveillance team.

If you were born after the late 1960s, you probably don't remember when some guys did their business using a horse-drawn wagon or a push cart. But through at least the earliest of the 70s, they were out there, some later.

Today's post remembers the Rag Man, aka "Gitter-rags". If you grew up in the same day I did, and spent your summers in the city rather than down the shore, you remember him. Just about every week, there was a middle-aged black man who used to collect used rags and other junk from South Philadelphia residents. He'd ride up and down the blocks sitting at the front of his cart, pulled by a horse that looked to be well-cared for. You knew he was coming, as with a loud voice he would call out "Gitta-raaaaaaggggggssss" to get the attention of the housewives on the block. This was at a time when there were more stay-at-home moms and less women in the working world. And get their attention he did. Sure enough, when the Rag Man made his familiar call, some of the ladies would come out of their rowhomes, handing him things that were no longer wanted, but were probably a treasure to him. I think he may have worked part for himself, part for some shop owner. If my memory serves correctly, he would take his collection to an old garage next to the Royal Villa Cafe at 17th & Jackson Street and unload there. Why would anyone collect rags you wonder? Rags can be recycled, just like many other things. They even can be used in the manufacture of paper. The dollar bill in your wallet is mostly rag content, although I don't think that in this case it came from the Rag Man's collection.

The Rag Man was not to be messed with. Riding a horse-drawn cart, what tool of the trade did he employ besides a strong back and legs? Yeah, you guessed it, a whip. Common sense says you don't give a guy with a whip a hard time. Yet kids don't have too much common sense, they haven't lived enough to accumulate it. Knuckleheads that we were growing up, we would often parrot the same "Gitter-raaaaaagggggsssss" refrain that he did. He never said a word to us when we did. But one day, either the Rag Man couldn't take it anymore, or someone said something stupid to him. He bolted off the cart and came after us with the whip. The Mad Barber may not have been to quick running after us with the razor, but the Rag Man at least caught one of us. He cornered his prey at the front step across from our home and stood over him. And what did he do? He scared the human waste #2 out of us, but besides admonishing the foolish words that were spoken, he walked away. Not a hair harmed, and not a word spoken in foolishness ever again to that guy.

I'm trying to remember who it was that was cornered, I remember the Rag Man and the event better than I do who said what. Almost certainly, it was me, my brother, and Chris A that were there that day. Maybe some of the others we hung with from the neighborhood, but I remember the three of us. Who knows, maybe it was me that was cornered, one of those repressed memory things. I dunno. No matter, we learned a valuable lesson, don't mess with adults, especially those bearing whips.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

...That you didn't get away with anything as a kid when it came to being disrespectful an older person. Either that person dealt with you, or your dad did. The wise decision was left to the father. I remember my dad said to a person who said he would "kick our a--" if we messed with him again..."That's my son. He does you wrong, you bring him to me, and I'll kick his a--. You don't touch him, but I promise you, I will. If you do touch him, I'll kick your a-- and his." Point noted, for that man and us. Maybe more dads need to line up their boot bottoms with their sons' bottoms today, or at least apply the paddle or belt (my dad's favorite). Not in an abusing way, but a correcting one. Some dads need to understand the difference. The more you see the disrespect of kids towards adults today, you wonder if their dads are administering any discipline to those punks.

My dad may have looked like a too light to fight, too thin to win office worker, but he wouldn't take any grief from anyone.

...Finding a hand bell in your basement window if you lived on Chadwick St., 2600 block. Another of our vendors who propelled his cart with flesh & bone - his own - got angry with a guy we sometimes hung around with, Tommy B over the quality of his pretzels. That pretzel man realized that hand bells made good missiles. What he didn't figure into it was the guidance system - him! He missed. Tommy ran away laughing, and a neighbor would return home from work finding his window smashed, bell on the basement floor. I wonder how he got people to come out to buy from him after that. Maybe he should have taken lessons on how to call the neighbors out from the Rag Man.

Bob Burns: He Was Here, There, and Everywhere

2006-05-06T16:57:00.001-04:00

Mr. Bob Burns was one of the more visible characters here in South Philly, and he was everywhere. No, not at one time, but he got around. Bob was a local fixture who was a homeless man. He had a penchant for quart bottles of beer before 40s became the size of choice for those who may find beer to be the sole reason to exist in life. You could find Bob and his quart sitting in the doorway of just about any business around, whether it be on Oregon Ave, Shunk St., West Passyunk Ave., Broad Street, Snyder Ave., wherever. His constant travelling companion was a guy we called Drunken Joe who lived on the 2600 block of Bancroft before his passing. Bob and Joe would just sit for hours drinking their beer and discussing the critical issues of the day. Well, the issues were were critical to them anyhow. Who knows, they may have actually discussed world hunger or how to bring an end to the Vietnam War. Or maybe which beer was better, Bud or Miller.

When I started this blog, I had mentioned to my cousin that I was writing about the characters we knew and loved from our youth. The first name out of his mouth was Bob Burns, and he told me a hilarious story I had not heard before.

It turns out there was one local West Passyunk Avenue auto parts merchant who liked to "help" Bob whenever possible. That "help" meant Bob was always going to be on the wrong end of a practical joke. One night, the business owner offered Mr. Burns the use of his store to get a good, safe, night's sleep and get cleaned up. When he returned in the morning, the businessman gave Bob a shave to tidy him up. Much to Bob's dismay, he dropped the razor (yes, purposefully) down the heating duct halfway through the shave. Of course, he didn't have a replacement. So Bob walked around South Philly for a few days with one side of his face having thicker stubble than the other, one side totally smooth for a day or so. Sadly, no photo is known to exist of Bob after that semi-shave. This wasn't the first or last joke played at Bob's expense, but whether because he was desperate or because he lacked common sense, he kept coming back, for a while anyhow. During one of Bob's sleep-overs, he decided to defecate in the store, rather than use the toilet. Some may say that he ruined a good thing, losing shelter. I'd say he got his revenge. I wouldn't want to be working the counter that day, or be the lowly employee who had to clean up the mess.

Bob Burns and Drunken Joe are long gone. They both exited somewhere mid-way through the 70s. The most reasonable facsimile in recent years here was a guy who would panhandle cars at Broad & Wolf while they waited for the light, asking for money to buy a hot dog. If he bought dogs with what he took in, his cholesterol level would probably be alarming. His nourishment usually came in the form of that gold liquid found in 40s. I saw that guy in the Philadelphia Daily News, they caught him on film scouraging beer from half-empty bottles in the old Veterans Stadium parking lot after an Eagles game.

Camoflage Man

2006-05-06T02:36:00.000-04:00

That's what some of the guys called him because of what he wore. Actually, it was a set of green work clothes, same shirt and pants every day. Well, same type. If it really was the same exact threads, it was good that we stayed away from him.

This guy was like 40s lady in that he too was often seen on the move down Oregon Avenue. But where she walked down the street gracefully, "Camoflage Man" walked more with the strut of a person looking to do someone harm. Mean look on his face, eyes somewhat staring, but not bulging out of the sockets, arms tense like they were going to connect with someone's face if he didn't keep walking. Quite a character, although one you probably didn't want to get up close and personal with.

I remember the only time I ever saw him doing something more than walking. I was behind him in line at the old Shop & Bag supermarket at 20th & Oregon. This is the place that's now a CVS, and was a Penn Fruit market before Shop & Bag. I think Camoflage Man almost made the cashier jump out of her skin. He had maybe six boxes of cereal in his shopping cart, and when he got up to the fron of the line, pulled each box out of the cart and slammed each on the belt. He didn't say a word, just slammed them down hard, enough to really smash them. The cashier sheepishly asked for the amount of his purchase. Camoflage Man paid, got his change, and walked away with his cereal. Not one word. I didn't look on the floor to see if the cashier left a wet spot, but I'd almost bet she did.

Why was this guy so angry that he would slam things down and not say anything? Maybe it was his diet. If I ate cereal and nothing but all day, I'd be a grumpy guy too. Perhaps it was because he lacked a variety of clothing. Wearing green work clothes day in and out may leave a man feeling blue. In his case, more red with rage. Hey, maybe it would have been cool to have his phone number, adding him to the legion of folks called in the early morning hours to a less than happy greeting. I suppose he would have had to say something to vent at the crank calls, slamming cereal boxes into the receiver doesn't translate well during a phone call. If he did that, he probably wouldn't have had us bother him on many nights. It just wouldn't have entertained us. Hey, I don't even know if this guy lived in an inhabitable place, let alone having a phone.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

John Gacy, Wayne Williams, Ted Bundy, etc. - Serial killers from the 70s. What do they have to do with this post? Probably nothing more than the fact that Camoflage Man seemed to be the kind of guy who you'd expect to someday find on the front page of the Philadelphia Inquirer - above the fold - with the blazing headline of Serial Killer Captured, Terrorized City. Or would he have been a Cereal Killer? Snap, Crackle, and Pop can come out of hiding, he hasn't been seen for a couple of decades.

Shorty - Ol' Shorty was a homeless guy who lived in the abandoned Evening Bulletin newspaper stand outside the old "Miller Bar" at 15th & Oregon Avenue (where Mio Sogno now sits). It was only called "Miller Bar" because we didn't know it's real name. It had a Miller Beer sign above the street, so the name stuck. I really don't remember seeing anyone go in there to drink. (Hey, idea for another post - places where nothing seems to happen - Ricci Funeral Home, Frank's Cabana Steaks, Philomena's Hair Salon, etc).

Shorty had a big scruffy beard and walked up and down the streets, talking with no one but himself. Not someone who drew a lot of interest, but a neighborhood fixture who I remembered. Sorry Shorty, you get only a short mention here.

40s Lady

2006-05-01T22:17:00.000-04:00

Alright, it's not the most entertaining or provacative moniker you could give a person. But she sure was interesting enough to grab our attention. Who was that lady anyhow?

Back during our youth, there was a lady who we would see weekly walking down Oregon Avenue, dressed up like a 1940's socialite or movie star. Every Saturday without fail, she'd stroll down the street in her fur stole, hat, rhinestone sunglasses, stockings with the seam down the back, and period dress. Not the same dress every week mind you, but definitely they all fell within the 40s era. And her hairstyle matched. I remember we used to say "hairdo" then, but now that word seems to have fallen out of favor.

People who get a post here in this blog get it for a reason. That reason being that they were interesting folks. Not your everyday neighborhood types, but those who captured your interest. This lady was one of them. I have to wonder, being we saw her only on Saturday, did she only come this way once a week? Maybe she took the subway to Oregon station and walked down from there. Or maybe she was actually among us every day, yet dressed in current styles for the other six days. Who knows? She was interesting that lady, but not to the point of where she'd get some catcalls or where someone would mock her. We just watched her walk by and took notice. I wonder what some of the kids would say if they saw her dress that way today in 2006? I think she'd get more than a notice. I think she'd dress that way once and not again once she heard the kids give her a hard time. Just my opinion. Some would say that South Street is the place to go today if you want to be different. I say let people be people.

Kids, take notice to what's going on around you. Maybe someday you too will remember and write about the unusual neighbors and strangers you've encountered. Or maybe not. Time will tell.

The Mad Barber

2006-04-28T12:51:00.000-04:00

OK, I'm on a roll, with my first post below about drug stores in over a week. I've felt good enough today to write, so my memory is springing into action.

Most of those I hung with around here remember the "Mad Barber", Mr. John Torresse at Bancroft & Oregon. No, he didn't give himself that name, we did. The Mad Barber was not a tolerant man. He did not like anyone hanging on his corner, even if you were perhaps a monk in a saffron robe sitting there silently meditating. If you did hang there, you were an open target. It was said he was a race car driver back in Italy. He had a pair of Alfa Romeos that he drove, at one time he had a third car, all were the same model. Whether he actually did race or not we'll probably never know, I think that the photos on his wall of racers and cars gave that impression.

I think every one of us had at one time or another been chased or felt his wrath in some way. I remember waiting for someone on his corner - actually not even in front of his shop - and he chased me up Bancroft Street with a straight razor. Fortunately my youth made me faster than he was, i may have avoided being sliced and diced that day.

Another time, my friend Kenny (aka "The Professor") walked into class while we attended Bishop Neumann and told me he was going to kill that man. He said it out of anger and the Mad Barber wasn't in any danger, but Kenny was upset. The Mad Barber had seen him standing on the corner with another person and tossed an M80 out the door at them, leaving them unharmed but with ears that rang for a few days from the explosion. I think I would want a piece of someone who did that to me, so I fully understand The Professor's anger.

What was strange is that normally, you do stupid things as kids and then make peace growing older. With us, it was in reverse. The Mad Barber had a water ice stand that he operated in the garage at the rear of the barber shop during the summer. We got to be friendly with him because of that. But as we got older, it seems we were perceived as the enemy, and open targets for him. Well, we all lived through it, none of us were ever truly physically harmed.

And yes, like many of the old characters mentioned in this blog, he's no longer with us.
I remember he moved into a local nursing home some years ago and sold the property. Flocco's Painting is now located there. I heard a few years ago that he had passed away. The memories are still there though, part of growing up in South Philly.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Vito's Barber Shop on Broad near Porter Streets. Vito's was the first place my dad ever took me for a haircut. He shut the place down sometime in the late 1960s.
...Bob's Barber Shop at Bancroft & Shunk. Bob Golden was the shop owner where Johnny of Johnny's Place got his start. Bob had a glass eye. I remember John telling me that he liked to play a joke with some customers where he would hang over the chair from the rear and drop his eye into their laps. That had to spook some guys. I remember him in my youth, Bob was a nice guy.
...Johnny's Place still stands and he's my barber. I remember in my early teens, I was getting the kid's rate because John didn't know my age and I didn't know at what age he charged adult rates. One of the neighborhood guys, Enzo, blew that for me. I was in the chair shortly after my birthday. Enzo was there and said, "Hey, thirteen years old now huh?" John took notice and said, "ah, I thought you were younger than that. No kids price for you anymore." I could have had some pocket money saving the difference if he didn't know, but honesty rules and I'm still paying the adult rate today.

The Old Time Neighborhood Drug Stores

2006-04-28T12:04:00.000-04:00

The term "Drug Store" has just about faded from the American lexicon, at least when it comes to South Philly. Today most people will mention CVS, Rite Aid, or Walgreens to name a few chains when asked where they get their prescriptions filled. But those places aren't the "Drug Stores" we remember growing up pre-1980s. Nope, those stores were neighborhood corner operations run by people who had a stake in the neighborhood.

If you remember the old time drug stores before the explosion of prescription medications that can do everything from keeping your legs from shaking to putting a thin rug of hair on your head, you'll know that the druggist had a small arsenal of medications on his shelf behind the counter. He didn't operate in a world where the medications your doctor prescribes may be dictated more by the incentives offered by the drug company reps than your true needs. You were the person who mattered most.

There were a ton of drug stores in the neighborhood until the late 80s, and the advent of the chains were the signal for their demise. If you lived here in the 17th & Oregon vicinity, you remember Gallegher's at 17th & Shunk, Overbeck's at Broad & Shunk, Max's at 16th & Oregon (where City Pizza now sits), Packer Park Pharmacy, Nichols at Broad & Jackson, and a few others. All of them are gone, but older folks will remember them all. It was always known that Nichols had the best prices on prescriptions, those being the days before you had drug coverage as part of your benefits, most folks paid cash.

And what could you find in those stores? They were pretty much bare-boned compared to the super-stores of the chains. You'd find mainly healthcare needs, along with a few candies, magazines, and a small list of sundry items. Now, you can get a full array of Easter or Halloween candy at the same time you buy your toothpaste, or all your Christmas stocking stuffer needs while you pick up something to help you over the hangover of the pre-holiday party at the office. Almost all of the old stores had the old scales where you could weigh yourself for a nickle. And in many cases the pharmacist knew your name.

A few stores that kept the old model of drug store do exist still. Broad St Apothecary in the 2400 block of South Broad is one of them. The store that used to be Vitale's at 10th & Oregon is another. I know there are a few more, but they're mostly gone, the small-time guy brought down by the big chains.

Well, the old stores may be gone, but there are still good things found in the big stores today. With all the meds I take, there's bound to be some issues about getting them or questions about how to take them. I go to the Rite Aid at 15th & Moyamensing, the ladies and gents there are always helpful, even to an extreme. An experience last week proved this, where one outstanding lady helped me find a prescription that I needed immediately at another store. I spent a full afternoon tracking it down with no success, but she got me what I needed with a quick phone call, and said she'd make sure it was in stock for future months. Big points were scored with me that day.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Overbeck's Drug Store at Broad & Porter. Yes, they filled prescriptions, but I think I remember this store more for the gaggle of old men who sat around the counter talking all day.

...Nichols at Broad & Jackson. There's a Rita's Water Ice there now. But Nichols always had what you needed when bringing in your prescription, and had good prices too.

...Max's at 16th & Oregon. Max was a big guy, and very friendly. He lived in the back of the shop, and was always ready to fill your prescription. These were the days before you needed to jump through hoops to get painkillers. I remember my mom had me go there a few times to get Paragoric, which is a morphine or opiate-based drug when she had stomach problems. Max would ask if she had a script, and when she didn't, he'd still fill it and ask that she get one from the doctor to account for it. You can't do that today. Max died in the mid-70s of a heart attack, a sad loss for the neighborhood.

...Packer Park Pharmacy. This store was a bit far from home to get prescriptions filled. Most of those I hung with only knew this store because they had magazines that you couldn't find anywhere else in the neighborhood, along with a variety store at 16th & Pollock (which was simply known as the Magazine Store). And some of those characters had sticky fingers when it came to getting a copy of Rock Scene or Hit Parader magazine. No one ever got caught, and hopefully those who did those youthful indiscretions had regretted them.

The Philadelphia Naval Hospital

2006-04-20T12:40:00.000-04:00

Photos © 2001 by Brian Bennett. All rights reserved, use without permission and credit is prohibited. Permission is granted to those using photos in personal blogs where no financial gain is made from sale or use of these photos.

That slick site you now see west of Broad Street on Pattison Avenue wasn't always a practice facility for the Philadelphia Eagles. What's now known as the "Novacare Complex" (corporations get to buy their way into naming just about everything sports related these days) was once the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. Younger folks will remember it as an old building that seemed to stand vacant, gathering cobwebs and dust. But for us who have a few years behind us, we know that it was a premier facility for treating troops of every military service during the Vietnam War. This hospital had one of the top programs for prosthetic limbs nationwide, and some of the top surgeons in that field. Today, it's just a memory. Which brings us to this post.

I remember back during it's heyday my uncle Pat was a patient at the Naval Hospital. He suffered from advanced lung cancer, succumbing to it in the late 1960s. Uncle Pat was a master sergeant in the US Air Force stationed in Dover, DE at the base there. Out of tragedies come good things, and the one good thing that came out of his illness was that we got to meet my aunt Ruby and my cousins. My brother, sister, and I had not yet met them until his illness brought him go Philly.

Being able to get on the grounds of the hospital as a kid with their family, you could see it was a big, busy place. And while it was a place where people went because of suffering wounds and illnesses, you could see it was a grand art-deco structure. Buildings like that just aren't made today. At best you get faux art-deco with a lot of glass and steel, but not the real McCoy.

I went to watch the end of the Philadelphia Naval Hospital, to witness the implosion that would bring it down. I've always seen implosions on TV, but this one was in walking distance from my home, so I just had to go and photograph it. Well, the best laid plans of mice and men sometimes go awry. For me, it happened at the hands of an ignorant, misinformed Philadelphia Police officer. That woman made my set plans go awry.

I had it all scoped out. I had checked out vantage points earlier in the week, finding a great spot at 16th & Packer Avenue. There you could see straight down to the hospital with an unobstructed view, dead-on. Firing quickly, I could have captured the fall of that building and had a great sequence of shots. As I set up my tripod and started mounting the camera, Officer Know-It-All came up to me and told me I had to move. As she told it, the area I chose was the viewing area for former hospital employees and neighbors. Yet there were no viewing stands, no police lines, no nothing to indicate it was an official area of any type. An older man came to join me and wanted to witness the implosion from that site too. Again, our erstwhile officer tells us we'd have to go, repeating that only neighbors and former employees could stand there. "Plus", she said, "someone standing here could be hurt". Whether she was talking about from flying debris, the concussion of the blast, or her own foolishness remained to be seen. Just as I was about to protest, the older gentleman said, "What about you? Are you going to stand here and risk getting hurt?" She wasn't pleased. I set her over the top when I asked her why neighbors and ex-employees would be put in harms way. "If you don't get out of here right now, I'm waving that (police) wagon over and you're both going to the police station!" she yelled. What to do? If we stay, we're going into the wagon, and we miss the implosion. Best just to move on down the road.

I made my way over to Broad & Geary, finding a spot to watch, but not a great one. It would have to do, as we were only a few minutes away from zero hour. I didn't even have time for the tripod, I would have to shoot hand-held and risk movement, or else lose the shot. And so, we watched the fall of a great institution on that early spring Saturday morning, June 9, 2001. The few memories I have of that place are etched in my mind, and the few photos of the implosion are found here.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...

...The Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in it's heyday. The yard still stands, although not as a military facility. As time marches on, more businesses are occupying the Naval Business Center and the Kavaerner shipyard (or whoever runs it now) continues to slowly crank out ships. Thousands of men and women worked there during WWII building and maintaining warships. Now the only naval ships are those mothballed waiting to become razor blades or whatever else they'll someday use the scrap for.

...The Defense Support & Supply Center - aka "The Quartermaster" complex. Another once-extremely busy military facility. You could stand on the corner of 20th & Oregon and watch bus after bus full of employees empty out and huge masses of bodies stream towards the gates on any given morning. There they made and distributed things like uniforms, medical supplies, and battlefield rations for our troops. The center made it to the presidential list of facilities for base excellence, as it was recognized for it's efficiency and quality. Recognition sometimes means nothing. A year after Bill Clinton recognized it, the government announced it would close, and since has. Now the center has become a retail shopping center at 23rd St. and a light industrial/manufacturing area. Some of the base still remains vacant to this day.

The Phone Before Cellular

2006-04-18T01:13:00.000-04:00

What device as we knew it was more simple than the telephone? We remember a time when you picked up the phone, dialed seven digits, and connected with the person you called at the other end.

It was a time before you had to dial the area code to call a local number.

A time where you may found yourself joining in on someone else's conversation because of a "party line". Today a party line is a 976 number that kids call to meet new friends and talk about whatever kids talk about today. Interesting thing about the new party lines. They seem to be marketed to kids although they're supposed to be for adults only, and the only adults who seem to join in are those who haven't realized they're no longer kids anymore. This can include adults in their 40s or 50s with MySpace.com accounts, and if you live here in South Philly, you know your share of these folks.

A time when it was a big thing for a kid to get an extension phone in his or her room. No, you didn't get your own number, let alone a cell phone to glue to your ear while walking down the street or standing on the corner. Suddenly we know more than we want to know about a person's life because they're not smart enough to be discreet and talk in private. Where they were once your neighbor's darkest secrets, now you only have to be within earshot to know that they've cheated on their taxes or spouses, that they have some sort of sexually transmitted disease, or that their kid is the biggest screwup in the neighborhood and they feel so hopeless about it. Thanks, but if I want to hear your conversations, I'll buy a police scanner and listen in to your cordless or cell phone calls so I can hear both sides. Hearing only your end will bore me. (Note: I'm being sarcastic, it's illegal to listen to someone's conversation through electronic means. So I guess I do have to be satisfied to listen to your one side.)

It was a time when you could make crank calls and no one knew who the heck was on the other end. Especially annoying for someone was when we were on summer vacation and friends stayed over. We'd stay up til 3 or 4 in the morning and someone had their night ruined. Those who yelled the most were those who got repeat calls and no sleep. There was no such thing as caller ID then, and although the person you called said they'd "have this call traced and have your a@@ thrown in jail", you knew it wasn't going to happen. So did they for that matter, which meant that it was even greater mental torture for them. Yep, caller ID ruined it for a new generation of American kids. Now if they're up until 4 AM, it's because they're checking out some "hottie" on the aformentioned MySpace.com whose profile says she's 19 years old, 104 lbs. and 5'-7" with long blonde hair, yet you just know she's a few years older, many pounds heavier, and she hasn't washed her hair in maybe two weeks. The photo in her profile? She found it online.

If we grew up in the cell phone era, my dad would have probably told us to get lost should we have asked for one. I don't even know if he had a phone growing up in the meager home they did in Tampa, FL, ten kids being raised during the depression of parents of modest means. Our generation didn't know those hardships so parents are more free to give their kids what they want. A cell phone? Dad would have probably slapped us in the ear rather than letting us spend half our waking hours with one welded to our ear.

And who can forget growing up in a home where there you had two or more siblings contending for the phone? Your sister's latest boyfriend's on the phone with her talking to her about nothing and you want her off. Why? Because your friends are going to call and talk about nothing. Your mom wondered why she hasn't heard from her best friend in months, and it was because we spent too much time on the line. That person got a busy signal when she called, no such thing as Call Waiting then.

Let's not forget how business was done with the phone company. Today you mail in, phone in, or electronically pay your phone bill. Mom used to have us take a walk with her once a month to Broad & Passyunk to pay the bill at the Bell Telephone Company office. Verizon still owns the property, but I believe it's only for their internal use. Back in the day, you could see all the different phone styles for RENT, no one owned their own phone until the feds broke up AT&T and the "Baby Bells". I'm told there are still a few older folks paying rent on phones that they could have owned 1200 times by now. And what were your rental options? Perhaps a Princess Phone or slimline model? Nothing too fancy, and as the characters who used to reminisce on Saturday Night Live used to say, "...and we liked it!". Today we use the phone lines to do everything from surfing the net to faxing to it's traditional use, talking. Alexander Graham Bell would have his mind boggled if he could only see what his invention wrought.

It's after 1 AM as I finish writing this, and I can only think of those poor souls that I mentioned earlier Those crank calls were another thing Mr. Bell couldn't have anticipated. Or could he have? Maybe, just maybe, one of his reasons for his inventions was to give millions of unstable citizens a way to have fun when the nights were long and... Then again, probably not.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
..."At the tone, the Bell Telephone Company brings you the correct time." - You can still call TIME-123 and get the time, I checked tonight. But only a geek would really do it today. I remember reading an article of a mistress who entered her the home of the man who jilted her and dialed the number for time in a foreign country. He was an airline pilot, so he'd be away for a while. His bill was astronomical. Fortunately for him, they let him off the hook.
...When extensions were letters instead of numbers - HOward5-xxxx, DEwey4-xxxx, FUlton9-xxxx, MUnicipal6-xxxx. Since the 1980s we've been using all numbers, but older adults still give their number in the old way.
...When 411 was the information number, and you didn't have to dial the 555-1212 number.
...The days before 911 was used to dial the police. Their number here was 231-3131, and you'd better dial the Operator to get the fire department. Their number was so obscure your house would be gutted before you got the call through.
...The neighbor on Bancroft St. who would call the police regularly and then swear it wasn't her when they arrived. One night after they arrived twice, she said "Next the fire deparment will be coming." Someone heard her say it and surely they did. Of course no one believed her when she said it wasn't her. And no, it was NOT me who called the fire dept. Even I am smart enough not to do that.
...When phones had dials instead of push buttons.
...The previousely mentioned party lines. Those already in conversation would get irritated that you picked up and interrupted, and you'd get angry that you couldn't make a call. Back then, the phone books all mentioned that it was a crime to tell the other parties you had an emergency in hopes of getting them to give up the line. I don't know if anyone ever did this, but you could clear the line quickly.

A Lack of Individuality

2006-04-09T00:28:00.000-04:00

I don't know whether it's amusing or disturbing - or both - but it seems lately that young people today, especially the guys, lack individuality. Put 100 young men under 30 in a room together and chances are that 90+% of them are going to look exactly the same.

I'll narrow my thoughts here to the South Philly - South Jersey area. I'm not ready to say the rest of the nation has gone that way. Lately it's become like some sort of B movie, maybe we'll call it, "Attack of the HipHop Clones". But maybe we should just call it "The Uniform". You know what I'm talking about. The weather's going to get warmer. Check out the guys hanging on your local street corner on a warm spring evening. What do they look like? They're probably in "The Uniform". Long white t-shirt down to their knees, baggy pants, black baseball cap turned backward or sideways. And all have the same hair style and facial hair. They go to the barber and get their scalped shorn down to as close a crop as you can, and trim the musctache and beard to the same narrow lines as the next guy. I recently had to get a family member to the ER at Methodist Hospital and literally saw no less than 8 guys in less than a few hours all looking the same. Whether it was the security guard, guys waiting for treatment, or some other guy. At least the security guard didn't have the t-shirt and baggy pants, and he did keep his cap with the bill facing forward, but the hair style was the same. It's ridiculous.

What ever happened to being yourself and dressing yourself? Growing up and heading into our early adult years, most kept to the styles of the day. At least something was different that made the guys stand out at that time. Today if a guy hooks up with a young woman, she'd better keep him isolated and away from the corner.Otherwise, she'll have the needle-in-a-haystack dillema trying to find him in the crowd.

I don't know what bothers me more though, the styles or the language. Communications skills are at an all-time low. While we've always butchered the English language here in South Philadelphia, at least we formed sentences. The "Hey, whattsup man?" of yesteryear had de-evolved into simply "Sup?" or "Yo", with voices of some of the young dudes sounding more like hip-hop wannabees than that of a person who has been getting an education. It's just pathetic sometimes what you see and hear.

Sorry about the rant in an otherwise nostalgic and/or humorous blog. I couldn't help myself. Maybe some young guy out there is going to read this and step up to the mirror and realize what he's seeing is the same thing he saw earlier in the afternoon when he looked across the lunch table in school at his classmates. If it causes him to toss that tent of a t-shirt and six sizes too big pants in the trash and go out and buy some duds that look like they didn't come out of some strange cartoon, then I've made an impact on society. And if it carries on to where more guys do it, young ladies may find that I've given them some hope. They'll find more guys out there who look like individuals than a regiment of men who have adopted "The Uniform" and have a very limited language. And maybe there's a Nobel Prize or something else to give me notoriety for what will be this post's great impact on American culture. As I pause to think about it, probably not. So what. If I see just one young guy dress in your everyday t-shirt or button-down shirt and a pair of Dockers or boot-cut jeans, and chuck the ball cap, it's reward enough for me.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER -
Other styles from the past that were different, but at least still more individual than "The Uniform"...

...Bell Bottom pants - Especially the louder ones. I had a pair in my pre-teen years with vertical blue and yellow stripes. I wouldn't be caught dead wearing them to a snake fight these days.
...Terry cloth shirts - We were wearing our bath towels with collars and short sleeves during the Disco Era.
...Gold chains - Wait a minute, forget that. The guys wearing "The Uniform" are wearing them too. Gold chains on guys almost always give a stereotypical image.
...Leisure suits (see photo above) - I had two during my freshman year in high school. I think there's one photo that survives of me wearing one of them, a baby blue polyester number. Don't ask, there's no way that picture will ever see the light of day. What was humorous is that at Neumann, a lot of guys' parents bought them for them during the summer before school started, and the leadership decided that leisure suits were unacceptable dress. A firestorm ensued with those said parents furious that those dubious pieces of 70s fashion were to sit in the closet, never to be worn to school, or anywhere else for that matter. But the parents were able to get a meeting with the school bigs, and sure enough, the guys got to wear their leisure suits.

Right now, there's some classmate somewhere rummaging through shoe boxes and photo albums, looking for any pics of him wearing that pink or peach colored polyester wonder. Hopefully his wife or girlfriend will look over his shoulder and catch a glimpse of him before the photo makes it to the shredder or burns in a trash can. I'd love to be a fly on the wall when she cries out, "What the heck is that thing? You look like a dork wearing that" and grabs the picture and shows it to her girlfriend. Guys, if this is you, some advice...it's better to say nothing than to say "My mom bought it for me." Why make an embarrassing situation even worse?

Manny Hoffmann’s Close Encounter of the Unusual Kind

2006-04-05T16:11:00.000-04:00

Growing up on Chadwick Street, we had two grocery stores up the block at the corner of Shunk St. One of them was Jim Campbell’s on the SW corner, the other Manny’s on the NW corner. Manny operated the store for decades with his wife Sylvia before finally retiring. Toni’s Market now stands at that site, she and husband John are good grocers in the old-time sense of the word.

Just about all of the local groceries employ young guys to do things such as stock shelves, make deliveries, and help clean up at the end of the day. Manny did that too, and had Kevin’s nephew David working there for some time. You may remember David from the episode with Guy Sommobeech and the electrified fence debacle. In retrospect, maybe he was the kind of guy you just best left alone.

A few of us can remember a time when he got upset with Manny and wanted to work out his frustration on the grocer. Manny had this large fiberglass awning that wrapped around the perimeter of the storefront, held up by metal braces ever few feet. David had this plan to crash the awning down on Manny as he opened the store at the beginning of the morning. He wanted to loosen the bolts holding the braces in place, tie a rope to the awning, hide, and pull it all down when Mr. Hoffman entered the store.

Maybe it’s good that he was often a man with intention but without a plan. Some of us asked him, “How are you going to pull that off?” Looking at the structure, there was no way to get up to the braces short of renting out a high-reach truck with a bucket or growing wings. David gave it some thought, and it just wasn’t going to work. No way would he get to those braces. Manny would survive to retirement age, and David would move on to points unknown,

There’s a difference between thinking of doing something and actually doing it. Today, kids act too quickly. Arguments are often settled with a gun rather than meeting on a street corner after school or razzing your soon-to-be former boss. Kids need to stop and think today. Is it worth that person’s life (or yours when they send you up to Curran Fromhold or Graterford with a life sentence?). Young folks are dying today over simple, stupid things. Unfortunately, more knuckleheads will soon learn that they have the rest of their lives to think about how stupid it was to pull a trigger because they were bumped into, insulted, or wore the wrong colors.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Jim Campbell's Market. Jim gave away a pint bottle of Manashevitz to his customers every Christmas. Our parents may not have realized, as most years the bottles never made it home.

...A time when the state didn't need to enforce tobacco laws. If you weren't old enough, you didn't get the cigarettes. No one had to tell the grocers to check cards.

...Tom's Butcher Shop at Smedley & Oregon - Back in the day when a butcher could survive simply by selling meat and nothing but meat.

...Tony's at 17th & Oregon - Tony operated the market for decades with his wife Jill until she passed away and he retired soon afterward. Their nephew James was a constant fixture there, sharing the operation of the store. Last word was that another nail salon would open there, but that seems to have fallen through. Yeah, just what we need in South Philly, another nail salon.
I remember a kid in there once who kept asking for "enema cakes", leaving Tony a bit bewildered. It turns out the kid didn't know how to say "Entenmann's" and Tony couldn't figure it out. I'm not sure what irritated Tony more, the kid asking for that, or my snickering at the kid's request.

The Duck Lady

2006-04-03T22:27:00.000-04:00

There may be a million and one ways to mingle with people and not feel lonely in life. Everything from churches for Christian folk to clubs for the hedonistic and bingo for older folks who need something to do. And now in the electronic age, even online chat rooms of every kind.

There was an elderly lady in the neighbohood who would use the funeral homes along south Broad Street either to socialize, just have something to do, or both. We called her Duck Lady. All you had to do is hear her speak once and you understood why. She had a voice like Donald Duck in the old Disney cartoons, and she spoke loudly so you heard her at the other end of the block. You knew when the Duck Lady was around.

We would see her many times a week, yet there were only two memories I have of her. One is that she would often pull a shopping cart down the street on the way to the store. She would also visit the funeral homes each night to pay respects to each person. From Stolfo, to Monte, to Grasso, to Gangemi, to Leonetti, she had them all covered. If Carto was there at the time, she would have been visiting there too.

I could see if there was food or drink served, there would be something to draw her to those funeral homes. Or if she was a very sociable lady and had lots of friends passing away. But the Duck Lady would simply walk in, stay a few moments after "paying respects", and off she'd go to the next one. I don't believe she attended the morning viewings just before departing for the cemetaries, only the evening viewings. Still, there are wakes every night but I think on Saturday at those places, so she always had somewhere to go.

The Duck Lady is long gone. I think she disappeared sometime in the early 1980s, most likely going the same route we all do in life. One has to wonder if her own viewing was well-attended. With all the wakes she walked into, had she gotten to know the families, it would have been standing room only at her own viewing. I'd believe that she would have had only maybe a few family members or neighbors though. With her being such a figure on Broad Street, one of the funeral directors should have held her funeral at little or no cost. Well, that may be a stretch being funerals are so expensive. Okay, they could have at least laid a plaque in the concrete sort of like they did around Broad & Spruce to honor Philly-area recording artists. There they have the names in stars embedded into the sidewalk. What could they use for this lady to remember her? A bronze plaque shaped like a tombstone or a coffin?

Where have all the characters gone? Walk down South Broad today and you'll see the same old faces over and over, but they're characters aren't as defined as those we knew in our youth. We need more Duck Ladies to keep things interesting.

Appparently this isn't a local phenomenon. I saw a rerun lately of an old Good Times show on TV Land. It was the episode where James Evans passed away. Near the end of the program, I can't remember if it were the preacher or funeral director, but someone had said good bye to an older woman and said they'd see her tomorrow - at yet another funeral. She was a regular just like Duck Lady? Could it be the writer of that episode spent some time on Broad Street?

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
Going to confession at St. Monica's on a Saturday afternoon and raising the priest's ire. Rather than the usual standard "Bless me father for I have sinned, it's been 1,472 days since my last confession...", many of us who hung together took a shot at approaching and saying "Bless me father for I have sinned, I peeled a potato and ate the skin" and then ran out of the confessional. Some of the priests ran out after us, some never did, I guess they just sat there and shook their heads. What does this have to do with Duck Lady or funerals? Absolutely nothing. It's too short for it's own article and I wanted to post it before I forgot about it.

Hey, It's RJ!

2006-04-01T02:39:00.000-05:00

Dick Clark's American Bandstand is probably the "gold standard" for all TV dance shows. It started here in Philly back in 1957 and stayed here until 1964 when Dick moved the show to Los Angeles until it's demise in the 1980s. If it were true that he sold his soul to the devil, he got a bum deal. Dick Clark's show didn't last forever, he had his health problems of late, and the restaurant in King of Prussia where I and some of my co-workers sometimes did lunch is no more.

Since then, there have always been dance shows on the tube. Most of them were laughable in my humble opinion, whether national or local. Remember Denny Terrio's Dance Fever? Perhaps you do, but probably not because it's one you've grown nostalgic over. Another show for the TV junk heap.

OK, does anyone remember RJ's Hollywood? RJ (real or alleged real name Ron Joseph) was a local host back in the 1970s. There were a number of kids from the neighborhood who would dance on the show on Channel 29 (WTAF then, now WTXF), my sister included. Whether she'll want to admit it or not, I don't know. Sometimes we'd rather forget our past. Then again, it's just my opinion. I never liked that dance type music. Back in my teens, I had strange friendships that somehow worked. One of my best friends would indulge in smoking pot often while we hung out, I never touched it. Other friends who I hung with regularly were disco fans, with their designer jeans, gold chains, and velour shirts. I listened to rock, wore Lee's and Wrangler's, and non-descript T-shirts. They said disco would rule and rock would die. Of course, history proved them wrong. They missed RJ's show by a few years. Would they have danced on that program if it had still existed during their time? I don't know. Would they have admitted if they did? I doubt it, I know I wouldn't have. Every so often someone brings back bad memories with the question "Do you remember when you..." This would be one of those times. Back in that era, there were no VCRs. Maybe that's a good thing, saving a generation of kids from blackmail tapes as they ramble through their adult lives and careers.

Photo borrowed from the Broadcast Pioneers of Philadelphia website at
http://www.angelfire.com/tv2/broadcastpioneers/rj.html

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
There was another show that came on in the mid to late 70's on Channel 6 in the late afternoon, in the spot now occupied by Oprah and her annoying gabfest. They were big on playing KC and the Sunshine Band and Wild Cherry's greatest hit (Play That Funky Music, White Boy). Can you remember the name? I can't, so no, this isn't a trivia question, I'm just grasping for an answer.

Remembering Uncle Virgie's and Other Old Neighborhood Luncheonettes

2006-03-30T00:33:00.000-05:00

One of the staples of local South Philadelphia culture is the neighborhood luncheonettes. Those places as we know them are mostly gone, but some still survive. My wife has worked for 20-plus years now at Nick's T&N Luncheonette on Moyamensing Avenue, and it's a place like Cheers on TV where "everybody knows your name". Nick and the gang make great steaks and other sandwiches, and although I may seem biased because of my wife, I suggest you pay them a visit. You'll like the food and the people.

Back in the 60's and 70's though, a different type of luncheonette ruled the land. All of them had the metal signs above their storefronts from either Coca-Cola or Pepsi (the only one I know of surviving with this type of front is Carmen's at 11th & Wharton). They all had at least three booths to compliment the stools at the counter, and all of them had jukeboxes with the latest in rock music, with lots of kids or young adults hanging around.

Uncle Vergie's at 17th & Oregon was one of those luncheonettes. For the entire decade or so that I remember them being there, Uncle Vergie and Aunt Millie ran the shop from opening to closing time. Both were great people who didn't mind kids making noise or hanging around longer than it took to eat their fries and have a Coke. This is the place where many of us had our first cheese steak or our first burger. We didn't know McDonald's or Burger King back then, and this was even before Geno's (20th & Moyamensing, long gone) became popular here and then faded away. My brother, sister, and I along with a few friends were the younger of the grade school kids hanging around there, most of the others were in their late high school years or older.

Maybe Uncle Vergie was a little too tolerant, this was back in the 60's when drugs were becoming a recreational thing and the older guys were experimenting. Still, he didn't make a fuss and toss them even though it was general knowledge that there were many there who were high. It was never an issue until one night near the end of his career. After closing, the older guys would hang out on the corner, or in the apartment upstairs. And then one of them ran afoul with a local gang, marring the peaceful atmosphere that we knew. Arrests were made, some were injured, and it wasn't the same place anymore.

Maybe we didn't do a whole heck of a lot there other than eat junk food and listen to music such as Steppenwolf, The Guess Who, the Stones, and other now-classic rock bands played on 45 rpm records in the old jukebox (kids, ask your parents to explain how music was played with a needle). But it was our place to go. The place and the people either had characters or were characters. It wasn't the mass produced plastic interiors of today's fast food joints, it was homey. You don't find that too often anymore. Still, if you want a feel for it, go sit at the counter at T&N and strike up a conversation with Nick or the others. You won't find the booths or the jukebox and the soda makers have long since stopped cladding such shops in their logos. But it's close enough.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...Ralph & Josie's - Bancroft & Shunk Streets
...Frank & Tessie's - 18th & Shunk Streets. Tessie wore a house dress and was alleged to have placed more than a few hoagie rolls under her arm pit while cooking up a steak, sending the customers elsewhere.
...Millie's - Still going after all these years at 15th & Shunk
...Does anyone remember the name of the luncheonette at 16th & Oregon where Spectrum Realty now sits?

Remembering Neighborhood Characters - Guy Sommobeech

2006-03-26T23:20:00.000-05:00

In the movie "The Boys in Company C", there was a character named Alvin Foster who was writing a journal about his Marine Corps experience while in Vietnam. Narrating the movie, Foster's character says something to the tune of "...but who would believe it" when pondering the content of that diary.

And so it is in South Philly. There are so many characters doing so many odd things, it makes you wonder "who would believe it" should you tell someone about it. Yet everything I write here is true. Maybe a few fuzzy details, but all true.

One of those unusual characters we grew up experiencing was a person who came to be known as "Guy Sommobeech". Guy was an elderly man, maybe late 70s or early 80s when I first saw him on the street. He was always dressed in a long black rain coat, whether you saw him on a December winter's day or a warm day in June. You probably wouldn't even thought twice about him if you saw him on the street. Just an old guy who walked his dog every night down the same few blocks. I didn't think twice until...

My first encounter with Guy was while we were hanging on the corner at 17th & Oregon, back when Uncle Virgie had retired and the abandoned luncheonette still stood. One evening, sitting there with my brother, sister, a friend Kevin, and maybe a few others, Kevin says, "Hey, here comes Guy Sommobeech". Now anyone with common sense just knows that this isn't a man's real name, so I had to ask why they called him that. As Guy and his aging mutt approached, Kevin tells me to reach out and pet the dog and I'd see why. Alright, that seemed harmless enough. So sure enough, I reached for the dog.

"Sommobeech! Sommobeech!" yelled ol' Guy. You would have thought someone had attempted to reach out and steal his life savings from the man. With rage in his eyes, he screamed those immortal words, swinging at me in a swaying motion, twisting his upper body from left to right and back again in comic fashion. Probably the only person in danger of getting hurt that night was Guy himself. He would have probably bruised his own ribs or did something else to himself. I've never seen a man swing in that way at another before or since them.

If someone did that today, he'd get a different title, something other than "Guy Sommobeech". Serial killer comes to mind, and you'd start wondering where the bodies were hidden. For a few years afterward, Guy would continue to walk the dog, same routine every day in the same black rain coat. And then as all aging folks do, he disappeared, no longer to be seen.

I was never compelled to bother with him again. After all, who wants to be responsible for an elderly man hurting himself because you tried to pet his pooch? I didn't feel the need to mess with him, but then there was Kevin's nephew David.

Apparently, Guy also did the same thing to David, swinging at him and screaming at him. Me? I see an old man who's at the least upset and at the most disturbed. David I guess saw a man who had payback coming to him. One evening, he approached my brother and I with an extenion cord in his hand, with the head cut of of it. Just a plug at one end, and two bare wires at the other. David asks, "You guys want to come with me? I'm gonna electrify a fence and have Guy Sommobeech chase me into it. I'll duck, he's gonna get jolted."

If I didn't believe it would fail, I would have steered clear of this mayhem. David insisted it would work. Amused and curious, we had to see what he had in mind. So we took a walk to 18th & Oregon where the pipe company had a chain link fence on the Oregon Ave side before that land gave way first to the Telesystems Cable TV building, and now the medical offices. David took the cord, twisted the wires to the fence, and then ran the cord to the outdoor outlet at the William Penn gas station on the corner. He figured Guy would be coming by soon, so now was the time to plug it in and get ready. We watched, David got ready, to do...nothing. Having both positive and negative wires on the chain link, all he did was cause a short-circuit, and the lights in the gas station went out. Guy Sommobeech would live to see another day.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
...The Sinclair gas station with it's green and white Dino the Dinosaur logo at 18th & Oregon (later BP, later William Penn, now a Dunkiin Donuts).
...Various characters from the streets of South Philly including:
Duck Lady, Camoflage Man, 40's Woman, Foschi, and a whole host of others.
We'll look at some of those other characters in future posts, so stay tuned.

Remembering Neighbors - Dave W and the Fishing Line

2006-03-25T00:52:00.000-05:00

Roll of 15 pound test fishing line - $4.00
Chrome-plated door knocker - $12.00
Interacting with crazed neighbors - PRICELESS
So would read the narrator of a certain credit card commercial should they do an ad based on this story...

Part of growing up in South Philly was having a penchant for mischief. It was a good way to pass the time, and fun - well, maybe for some of us, but definitely not for some of the neighbors.

Back when we grew up in the 70's, we used a certain creative flair to kill boredom that's not found with kids today. Today, everything's electronic this or mechanical that. With us, give us something as simple as fishing line and we were happy campers.

Tonight we remember a neighbor named Dave W. who was a good guy, but he had a major problem. That problem was that he lived almost directly across the street from our house - a home with two young, bored boys. Oh, and he had one of those heavy metal door knockers that made a loud bang when you knocked at the door. Logistics being what they were, it made him the perfect victim.

One evening, my brother and his friend Louie had told me they had this plan to have some fun with Dave. The plan was to take a roll of fishing line, tie it to his door knocker, run it behind the parked cars and knock on his door. So with a certain stealth, my brother and I hid behind the car while Louie ran up to the top of the step, tied the line to the door knocker, and ran to join us. "Knock, knock, knock", and in a few seconds, Dave was out the door looking for the phantom that he heard, but couldn't see. Shrugged, shoulders, door closed, oh well, no one's there. A few seconds later, "knock, knock, knock". Dave springs out the door, again, no one there. I can describe the situation on and on, but you get the picture. After a few times, Dave didn't go back to the sofa. He waited at the door, you could see the top of his head, eyes peering at the top of the door out the small glass window blocks. "Knock, knock, knock"...this time he's gotta have us. Dave springs like a tiger onto the top step, and no one's there.

This may be a somewhat boring story if it ended there. Since we were kids with nothing better to do, this went on for over 20-some evenings. Sometimes I participated, sometimes my brother and Louie had their own fun. Sometimes we hid behind the cars, other times we ran the line across the street and into the basement window. One can only imagine that Dave's sanity suffered tremendously. Alas, all good things must come to an end. And so after more than three weeks, another of our neighbors came walking down the street at the same time Dave came springing out the door after another round of knocking. She caught her neck in the fishing line, and caught Mark and Louie. I wasn't around that night. You could say that I caught a lucky break and didn't get grounded along with my brother. Then again, you could say I missed out. I didn't get to see Dave's reaction when he came storming across Chadwick street and screaming about his sanity.

When I got home that evening from whereever I was, my mom by then furious, said, "You'll never guess what your brother and that other no good did." I could have said, "I bet they took a roll of fishing line..." but I'm not that dumb. She went on to tell me the story, not amused at my laughter.

Dave's long gone, passing away in the early 1980s. Hopefully he forgave us that mental torture, but I know he couldn't have forgotten it. Hey, I didn't, and we're two decades removed from it. Kids today don't do these things. Parents, if your kids read this and do it, don't be too angry with them. Or with me for that matter, I'm only telling a true story. They're responsible for their actions. But if they do it and don't get shot by neighbors who are more likely to be armed with large-caliber weaponry (get the HINT kids?) , be glad they did something besides sit at the computer all day or play with their new Play Station XBox whatever electronic time waster. They interacted with a buddy and learned how to have fun. The folks from Hall Mercer Medical Center will be there shortly to help your neighbor with the admissions process.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
Byberry State Hospital - The state run home for those who had psychological problems. The courts said that they couldn't keep the patients, and they're now on the streets of Center City. Or for those who have more well-rounded lives, you get to come home after your weeks visit to Hall Mercer.

Remembering Mrs. Lenore's - Old Neighborhood Candy Stores

2006-03-24T01:48:00.000-05:00

I think everyone who's been around for a while remembers the old candy stores or variety stores we used to have here, and there were many. Before the days of 7-11s hitting South Philly, there were numerous little stores that sold candy, ice cream, cigarettes, newspapers, and a few other items. Not a tremendous selection, but good enough for the proprietors to make a living and to keep us satisfied.

The one I remember most is the store owned by Mrs. Lenore on Oregon Avenue, between Chadwick and Bancroft Streets. Doughterty Financial and Insurance now sits where her
store and Martin Real Estate used to be. Mrs. Lenore was a nice old lady. She ran the store Monday through Saturday until she got too old to do it anymore. She always smiled, and was always nice to her customers. One of the memories I have of her is when our ducks got loose from our yard (a gift from my brother's godmother at Easter) and made it to her store. She ran out hysterically, heading for our house because she knew they were ours. Fortunately, she and the ducks survived. Although she retired in the early 70's, I still remember her. Nothing lasts forever. I remember she bowed out in the early part of that decade, and Ed Kane, our neighbor up the street bought her out. He never got the respect that Mrs. L got from everyone, and most of the kids harrassed him.

Thinking back to her store, this was back when you got a choice of maybe eight flavors of Dolly Madison ice cream, no Baskin Robbins job where you got a selection of 48 flavors you'll probably never want. Eight was enough, and we were happy. The Evening Bulletin was still published, and was probably still a nickel at that time. You could still get candy for a penny each - remember "Grade A's", strips of candy buttons, and loose shoe-string licorice? Soda was sold in glass bottles with painted-on labels (10 oz, 16 oz, and quarts - no 2 liter bottles then). I still remember the red Coca-Cola cooler chest she had too with the built-in bottle opener. Back in the day when there was style and character, before the days of the True refrigerator cases where the logo of the soda manufaturer appears over the doors and a label on the glass said that only their products could be displayed in that case. Back before Mello Yellow, energy drinks, Cherry Coke, or Vanilla Coke. Tab was the main diet soda of the day, and it tasted like...well, it was nasty. Frank's was the local favorite for Cream, Black Cherry Wishniak, etc. Coke and 7-Up (remember their slogan "You like it, it likes you!"?) were the biggest sellers. There were no Altoids then, you'd most likely grab a pack of Sen-Sen if you had smoker's breath.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
If you're from this neighborhood, you'll remember other stores that were similar, but not quite the same as Mrs. Lenore's....

...Rudy's - Bancroft & Shunk Streets (until late 70's)
...Richie's Variety - 16th & Oregon Ave. (Mid to late 70's)
...Harry's - (16th & Shunk Sts.) What did he sell anyhow?
...Fay's - (until late 70's, later Angel's) - Mole & Shunk Streets. In
contention with Richie's as maybe the most complete variety store around at the time.
...Ray's - aka "Elephant Joe's" - Bouvier & Wolf Sts. (until early 80's). Bare-bones, actually made Mrs. Lenore's look like a super store.
...Mike's - (until mid 70's) - 17th & Wolf Streets.
...The "monkey" store (until early 70's) - 16th & Wolf Sts. The owner actually had a pet monkey that would jump on your shoulders while you were in the store.

And that's by no means a complete list. These stores were all over the place, and all of them thrived. For you neighborhood folks, you'll probably remember others as you review.

If you'll notice, all the stores carried the owner's first name (except Mrs. Lenore's, I don't know if we ever knew her first name). And when you went in, Rudy would be Rudy, not some guy who bought the name Rudy, came from outside the neighborhood, and knew no one.

South Philly merchants have changed. The old ways are gone, but the memories remain.

Photo from http://www.oldtimecandy.com/candy-buttons.htm

Coming soon: Luncheonettes, Drug Stores, and much more.

Strawbridges - Another Landmark Department Store Gone

2006-03-23T02:28:00.000-05:00

We made a trip to the Strawbridges in the Deptford Mall this past weekend to take advantage of the huge savings they're advertizing. What you'd save on is anyone's guess. The first floor was just about empty except for some Oriental rugs, and what was to be had on the second floor wasn't great selection-wise.

Deptford Mall? "That isn't Philly" you may be saying. True. Like many here, I go across the river because you don't have to pay to park at the mall, and it's nicer than at the Gallery in Center City. But looking through the carcass that has become the Deptford store, I remembered the various department stores that once made Philly a great place go shop. Gimbels, John Wanamaker, Strawridge & Clothier and Lit Brothers were the ones I remember, and quite vividly. Each year on December 8, my mom would bring us to the CC stores as a pre-Christmas event. We'd see the light show at Wanamakers and ride the monorail in the toy department. Then we'd have lunch in the restaurant in the store. Afterward, we'd march down Market Street to Lit's to tour the Enchanted Village. Where has it all gone?

Walking down Chestnut Street yesterday, I walked into Lord and Taylor (formerly Wanamaker's) just to get a look at what it had become. I saw the eagle was still in the Grand Court, and that a quote from John Wanamaker was still etched into one of the columns. Hopefully when Macy's takes over, they'll stay. A lot has been lost with the closing of those stores that I've mentioned. Chains take over, stores are closed or renamed, and much of what we remember from the younger years is gone. I have fine memories of those places. I'm sure many Philadelphians over 40 still do.

AND YOU MAY REMEMBER...
"Walk right in, feel at home, Gimbels is the place to shop" - TV commercial jingle for Gimbles, circa late 1970s.
"Hats trimmed free" - Sign on the facade of the Lit Bros. building at 9th & Market. It's still found there, along with the original store name.
"Third floor, furniture!" - A time when each elevator in each store had someone taking you up or down, calling each floor and the type of merchandise found on it.