The Good Old Days

Do you know that weird sensation of connection to your roots that you often feel when you see an old family member, friend, lover, teammate, or co-worker for the first time in years, maybe even decades? Depending on the circumstances of your meet, it sometimes doesn't hit you until later. But almost always we go through that exercise in mental nostalgia which carries us back to those younger days and the experiences that we shared with this individual. The innocent memories of childhood. The fun times of high school or college. The struggles and amusement involved in our early work years. The thrills of victory and the agonies of defeat on sporting fields. The life, death, and love of family. Sometimes the person is linked to another or a group of others, and our memories will branch off towards those folks. Well these types of memories and feelings have been happening to me more and more lately thanks to the social networking website called Facebook. I have stumbled across more family members and old friends on the internet thanks to this popular behemoth than I could ever have imagined. People who I worked with years ago. Those who I hung out with on the corners of South Philly as a youth. Some who I played ball with as an adult. And being a police officer for the past 19 years there are cops, both old and new acquaintances. Lots of cops. The site allows you to mentally catch-up with these people. We share small biographies of what we've been up to, photos of our family members and friends, videos of some of our life experiences, music and other media that we enjoy, and conversations with one another and each other. These meetings of late have also driven home another point to me, that my own memories of what is classically referred to as 'the good old days' are truly long gone. For me those days would take me back to my childhood and teenage years growing up in the Two Street neighborhood of South Philly during the 1960's and particularly the 1970's. 'Two Street' is that section of 2nd Street that begins around Washington Avenue and continues south to Oregon Avenue, about a twenty block stretch, and which is bordered on the east by the homes on and around Front Street and on the west arguably by somewhere around 4th or 5th Street, depending on how far south you are. The area is a Mummers kingdom, the home to these merry men and women who star in Philly's iconic New Year's Day parade. Many of the clubs have their headquarters on 2nd Street or just off it, and you can't walk a half block without tripping over any number of residents who participate in the parade in some way. The times when I grew up there were the days of Vietnam, Woodstock, Watergate, Apollo, SNL, Nixon, Ford, Carter, drugs, disco, gasoline rationing, and the ever-looming threat of a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia that was known as 'The Cold War'. But when your age is still in the single digits, and even into your pre-teen and early teen years, most of these big stories are simply not affecting your life as you know it. Your life at those ages is filled with things like family and school, sports teams and friends, movies and music, and eventually as we emerge into puberty becomes pre-occupied with the opposite sex. In my life, family was big, and there was a simple reason for it: geography. My grandparents were all raised in South Philly, and in those days you pretty much settled and raised your families in the same neighborhood where you started. Thus my parents and their siblings, my aunts and uncles, were all raised there as well. And most of that living and raising took place in a small stretch of no more than a half mile. Within those five blocks or so lived my own little family of myself, my younger brother Mike, my mom Marie, and my dad Matthew. We lived on the tiny 2300 block of south American Street which would star decades later in a scene in the film 'Invincible' about former Philadelphia Eagle Vince Papale. Those scenes where Papale plays a rough version of schoolyard lot football? They were real. I can't tell you how many dozens if not hundreds of such football games that I participated in over the years on the school yards, playgrounds and rec centers around Two Street. From 'touch' football to 'rough touch' and even tackle football on grass or when it snowed heavily. My dad had two sisters, and my mom had one brother, and they and their families also lived in South Philly. The LoBiondo family of my Aunt Bobbie lived just two blocks away. The Piernock family of my Aunt Pat lived about five blocks away. The Gilmore family of my Uncle Ray lived a bit further away but still in South Philly. My Uncle Ray Gilmore, my mom's brother, was a DJ with the old AM radio king WIBG which was known in those days as simply 'Wibbage'. His career opportunities in radio eventually saw him become one of the first to leave the old neighborhood, first for the New York area, and then eventually on to Boston. But my mom stilled had many other family members, aunts, uncles and cousins, living all along Two Street. One of the regular joys in those days was on New Years when most of the parade groups returned to their clubhouses along Two Street and would parade down the length of the street, serenading their fans and family members. The tradition remains today as a mini version of the full-scale parade that took place along Broad Street, and has a 'Mardi Gras' feel with costumed revelers jamming the streets. In my own good old days we had two family spots along the parade route that gave us a front row seat to these festivities. My mom's Uncle Bill and Aunt Helen lived right on 3rd Street at Cantrell, where the parade came right past their front door, and my dad's sister Bobbie lived just off 3rd & Jackson (pictured). Both families always had open house parties on those days, and we got to enjoy the parade, family reunions, and good food and drink. These gatherings were like familial glue in my youth, allowing my dad's family at Jackson Street and my mom's family at Cantrell Street to be together in a fun setting year after year. My brother Mike and I would jockey back and forth between the two houses, saying the requisite hello's to our aunts and uncles and then hanging out with our cousins. This was the essence of Two Street: sitting on the front porches and stoops, hanging on the corners, family, friends, Mummers, and all of it made possible, or at least far easier, by the simple geography of proximity. In future postings I am going to talk much more about the particular people and events of my childhood and teenage years, allowing my self to revisit and you to enjoy my own memories in a regular series that I will be simply calling 'The Good Old Days'.

Our Lady of Mount Carmel

I was born and raised in the Two Street section of South Philadelphia, and during the late 1960's and into the mid-1970's my parents sent my brother and I to school at Our Lady of Mount Carmel, a Catholic elementary school. The school provided me with a tremendous education, and my experiences there were some of the most memorable and valuable of my life. I'll get to some of them in a future post. But one thing that I can say for sure is that never during the entire eight years that I spent at what was known to us simply as 'Mount Carmel' do I recall being told just who or what was our namesake. So it's well past time to take a little trip to the web libraries and find out just what and whom the namesake of my original and still thriving parish is all about. Per Wikipedia, Mount Carmel is a coastal mountain range in northern Israel and the West Bank, stretching from the Mediterranean Sea towards the southeast. It is characterized by a 'richly fertile hillside', thus its name which means 'plantation of high quality trees' and its tradition of being known as 'the vineyards of God.' Israel's 3rd largest city of Haifa is located in its northern slopes. What is regarded as 'one of the most important human fossils every found' was located in one of Mount Carmel's caves during excavations there in the early part of the 20th century, in the form of the skeleton of a female neanderthal now named Tabun I. These excavations were able to trace human developments passage from hunter-gatherer groups to more complex agrigultural societies over what has been estimated as a span of roughly one million years of human evolution. In a key battle of World War I, General Allenby led the British in the Battle of Megiddo, which took place at the head of a pass through the Carmel Ridge, and which led ultimately to victory over the Ottoman Empire. The mountains have long been considerd sacred, with the great prophet Elijah being most associated there, and with a legendary altar to God having been built there as well. The Carmelites were a Catholic religious order founded on Mount Carmel in the 12th century at the site of what was believed to have been Elijah's own cave. A community of Jewish hermits was said to have lived at the site of the cave continuously since the time of Elijah, and the cave was situated at the highest natural point of the entire mountain range (pictured above.) The Carmelites founded a monastery there, and dedicated it to the Virgin Mary in her 'Star of the Sea' (Stella Maris, another South Philly parish) aspect, which was an ancient manifestation of Mary as a guide and protector to those who work and travel on the seas. The monastery changed hands many times during the Crusades, even spending time as a Muslim mosque, and Napolean even turned it into a hospital in 1799. The original monastery was destroyed in 1821 by the Ottomans, but a new one was later built by the Carmelites on the same site. The scapular, a religious artifact or collar consisting of a length of cloth having two pieces of material at either end, often with religious images, is the object most associated with the Carmelites and their relationship with Our Lady. It is said that the Blessed Virgin appeared to Saint Simon Stock, an English Carmelite, in Cambridge, England in July of 1251 and conferred the first scapular on him asking him to take "this scapular of thy order as a badge of my confraternity and for thee and all Carmelites a special sign of grace; whoever dies in this garment, will not suffer everlasting fire. It is the sign of salvation, a safeguard in dangers, a pledge of peace and of the covenant." It is said that if one faithfully wears the scapular constantly until death, they will receive eternal salvation, assuming that you receive penance for grievous sins committed. So the Virgin Mary in her manifestation to Simon Stock, and thus specially related to the Carmelite order, is the answer to the question 'who', and the scapular is the answer to the question 'what', in regards to the background of the namesake for my childhood parish. Founded in 1896, the church and school for Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish are still alive and well at 3rd & Wolf Streets in South Philadelphia. I was raised and lived most of my life until a little over a decade ago, over three decades in total, on American Street, a small street that looked out over the church, and I heard its comforting bells chime every Sunday morning. My maternal grandfather, Ray Gilmore, was active with the church for a long time, and my own mother, Marie Veasey, was a regular worshiper through her adult life battling illness. Thanks both to these direct examples and my schooling there, I will forever carry wonderful memories of a Catholic education and community. An education that gave me the foundational skills to be able today to create, write, and maintain this blog, and to research the very origins of the parish namesake, Our Lady of Mount Carmel.

A Third Story on American Street?

I grew up in a traditional, small South Philly rowhouse in the 2300 block of south American Street. Our block was one of the few in our working-class rowhouse neighborhood that had houses on only one side of the street. Our houses were situated on the east side of the block, between Wolf & Ritner Streets. On the west side was Our Lady of Mount Carmel church and school (pictured here from the Wolf Street entrance.) The neighborhood eventually became known to some as 'Whitman' and it led into the next neighborhood north known as 'Pennsport', but nobody from down there used those names. To us, and to those in the other South Philly neighborhoods, we were 'Two Streeters', the name owing to 2nd Street which ran through the neighborhood and was home to many of the Mummer's Parade clubs who maintained their headquarters facilities along the street. For those neanderthals not familiar, the Mummers are the thousands who parade each year on New Year's Day through the streets of Philadelphia in what is a cultural phenomenon of our town. But that topic for another day. Down on Two Street, we were mostly white of Irish ancestry, with some Germans and Polish mixed in as well. South Philly is largely known for it's Italian community, but they were further west from us. There weren't too many Italians down on Two Street. So back to the topic of this blog post: A third story on American Street. Our block was, and still is for the most part, a long block of two-story homes with peaked roofs in front. It is a kind of signature to the block and a couple of others around that area. But some one has committed a travesty, and they have done it right in my old house! They put a 3rd story on American Street, and man does it look out of place. Now those houses are small, so I absolutely understand the idea of wanting more space. Growing up in that house, we had a first floor living room of moderate size that led into a smallish kitchen, big enough to keep a kitchen table for the family to eat around, some cabinets, and your appliances, sink, etc. A door in the back of the kitchen led directly out into a small concrete yard. Upstairs on the 2nd floor, there were three smallish bedrooms. The main bedroom was in the front of the house, looking out on American Street, and that was, of course, the parents room. It was my parents bedroom for years, and it became my own room during my first marriage. There was a small middle bedroom without windows, but with a skylight, and then a small back bedroom that on our block looked out over the rear schoolyard of the public Sharswood School. In between these was a smallish bathroom. Enough space for a tub, toilet, sink, and a small closet. If you haven't caught on to the key word here to describe the house, it is 'small'. But it was just the right size for a young family starting out, which is what it was meant to be in the first place. My parents bought the house in 1960, and the house remained in our hands for the better part of the next four decades. It stayed in our hands through divorce, illness, child-rearing, and death. My dad started to fix it up back in the early 70's, and was doing a pretty good job, when my mom's illness and their ultimate divorce put a halt to that effort. The next real effort at fixing it up came after my mom's death in 1998, when my brother did some work there to prepare it for sale. We used to order pizza on many a Friday night when we still lived there as a family back in the late 60's and early 70's from a place called Celebre's (still serving South Philly to this day), and my dad, brother and I all did it one more time for old time's sake before the place finally sold around 2000 or 2001. My understanding is that this is the 2nd owner since we sold it, and as far as I am concerned they may have gained more space, but they have taken a huge bite out of the character of American Street. With one little 3rd story addition, they have shown me that truly you often can't go home again even if you wanted to. Our block of American Street was used for filming scenes of the movie Invincible, the Mark Wahlberg underdog story of Philadelphia Eagles receiver Vince Papale. In the film, Papale's father's home is just two doors from my boyhood one, and you can see our old porch and the look down-the-block that I grew up viewing on an everyday basis. It's nice to have that preserved in a major motion picture. If you ever decide to stop down to Two Street, and ride over to the Our Lady of Mount Carmel at 3rd & Wolf Streets, you will find American Street just to the east of the church. A tiny street that is tough to turn down and drive on if you're not used to it, you won't be able to miss the monstrosity of which I speak, the now 3-story home in the middle of the block. What was my childhood home, and the childhood home to my kids, is gone, and so is the character of my little, lovely block. It now just lives on forever in my memories.