City of Brotherly Love

A trip to the Jersey shore gave impetus to the last blog. The approach of my natal anniversary kindled this musing on the city of my birth, Philadelphia.

"I was thrust unto this stage of fools" in Philadelphia on Thursday, June 17, 1954. About four months after my birth, my family moved across the Delaware to Haddonfield NJ, another colonial-Quaker settlement. This could explain my love of oatmeal and affinity for Barbara Bush who resembles that guy on the Quaker Oats' box.

As a kid, Philly was like Oz to me. We'd drive across the Ben Franklin Bridge to visit relatives and/or friends. As we approached the crest of the bridge, the skyline produced awe and excitement.

Several of my father's medical school alumni moved to South Jersey at the same time. The families grew up doing things together. Several came from South Philly. We'd go to block parties on holidays in their old neighborhoods. The sights, sounds and smells of these Italian urban communities seemed alien, yet wonderful.

Until the early 70s, we would celebrate Thanksgiving at my great-aunt and uncle's in southwest Philly. The best part would be the ride home when Dad would drive us past boat house row adorned with lights and then through Center City with all the stores festooned in holiday finery.


Closer to Christmas, all the cousins and their Moms would meet in Center City on a Saturday afternoon. We'd start with lunch at the Horn & Hardart's automat, walk through Lit's Brothers and Strawbridge & Clothier looking at the decorations and Christmas villages. The afternoon would finish off at the Wanamaker's light show accompanied by the world's largest playable pipe organ.

These memories swirl happily through my mind tinted with the  rose-colored glasses of remembrance. The curmudgeon in me refuses to allow nostalgia to lull me into the belief that those were simpler, better times.

In the first eight years of my life, Eisenhower used the CIA to overthrow the legally elected governments in Guatemala and Iran, Francis Gary Powers' spy plane crashed in the USSR showing the world America was spying on them, the Cuban missile crisis had us on the brink of nuclear war and civil rights' abuses on black Americans was at its zenith. By the time I was 10, we began sending troops to Vietnam to support a government which forbade elections and came to power in a bloody coup.

No wonder despite my fond memories I have an ever-present feeling of impending doom - as ever - BB

"The past always looks better than it was. It's only pleasant because it isn't here." - Finley Peter Dunne