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'.

47

Happy Birthday to me! Well, to me and everyone else celebrating today. I share this birthday with baseball's J.D. Drew, football's Mark Gastineau and Joey Galloway, comedians Richard Dawson and Dick Smothers, musician Joe Walsh, and a trio of gorgeous actresses: Bo Derek, Sean Young and Veronica Hamel. This was also Bobby Kennedy's birthday. I woke up a little over an hour ago after a pretty good night sleeping, and my 47th birthday started out about as good as I could ever hope. My wife Debbie Veasey was already awake and nearly ready to leave for work, but before she left she greeted me with a big smile, a hug and kiss, and a sincere "Happy birthday, honey!" And she had a birthday card for me too. One of those with a real nice message and signed off with her love. It really doesn't get any better than that. Now here I sit alone at my dining room table just like many other mornings. A fresh, hot cup of Wawa coffee beside me, loaded up with their irish cream, which I understand that they are discontinuing. Wawa is one of life's pleasures, the local chain store for food, cigarettes, newspapers, and other essentials of American daily living. Here at the Veasey Ranch, we buy bags of their coffee so that we enjoy the brew not just on the run, but right here at home. The irish coffee creamer product that Wawa produces at their dairy is my personal favorite add-in. It's creamy and tasty, and along with a couple of packets of Equal, helps make the perfect pick-me-up beverage in my world. I hope the rumors turn out false about the irish cream. Don't you just hate it when some store discontinues some product that you have enjoyed for a long time? So it is with me and birthday cakes. As a boy growing up in South Philly, my local corner bakery shop was a little place called Hier's Bakery at 3rd & Wolf Streets. You could live and die right there at that intersection, which was just around the corner from our little house at 2321 S. American Street. The four corners at the intersection of south 3rd Street and Wolf Street featured Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church on the southeast, the Murphy-Ruffenach funeral home on the northeast, a doctor's office on the northwest, and Hier's on the southwest. Those institutions are still on those same corners today, though the actual doctor practice has changed, the funeral home gone through a merger, and the bakery ownership has also changed a number of times. When it was Hier's back in those 'Wonder Years' days for me of the late 1960's and early 1970's, they always featured a cake that became my birthday cake every year. The cake was layered with a chocolate layer on top of a yellow cake layer. Running between the two cakes was a delicious, thin strip of white cream. Surrounding the whole creation was the most incredible, full, sweet, dark-colored chocolate icing. And then at the top was another layer of that same white icing that ran through the middle. I would always take a slice and eat the yellow layer first, making sure that my fork took the thin vanilla icing layer with it. This was only the opening act though. Then I would move on to the upper chocolatey world. There was something about the interplay between this particular chocolate cake, chocolate edge icing, and white top icing that exploded in your mouth. I can taste it still this morning, even though I have not had a piece of that cake in about 25 years. At some point during the 1980's, whomever owned the old Hier's business sold out. I did go in a couple of times and inquired about the cake, but the new owners didn't seem to know what I was talking about. I never saw my birthday cake again. My guess is that the recipe is likely laying around somewhere, maybe in some drawer at the home of a former bakery owner. Maybe the recipe has been passed along, and the cake is being made today in some bakery out there that I have no idea even exists. It is one of those little things in life that was a regular feature of my childhood that is now gone. It is something that was here, is gone seemingly forever, and that I do miss. To find it again one day would be a miracle akin to a Christian explorer locating the Holy Grail itself. Well, okay maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but you get the idea. I hope that little slice of heaven from my childhood is not repeating itself here in my middle-aged adult life with the Wawa irish cream. But one thing that I have learned over these 47 years that I celebrate the anniversary of today is that things change. But as to those things large and small that we have come to welcome and enjoy in our lives, the little things that make life just a wee bit more enjoyable, they will stay with us forever, at least in our memories. I thank God for that childhood birthday cake. I thank God for Wawa irish cream. I thank God for the woman that I woke up to this morning. And I thank God for these past 47 years. Happy birthday to me!

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.

The One Who Died From 289

Charlie Knox was a Police Academy classmate of mine from recruit class #289 in the Philadelphia Police Academy back in 1990. Entering the Academy and joining the Philadelphia Police Department was a huge step for me, both personally and professionally. It led directly to many big changes in my life, and signalled a complete change of direction for me and my family, both in the short and long terms. But the changes that I would go through as a result of joining the PPD were nothing compared to those of Charlie Knox. You see, he was the one who died on-duty from our class. The experience of a recruit officer at the Academy is not an easy one in any way, but it is an incredible experience, and it was seriously fun at some points. I have often described it as sort of being back in high school, but being paid for it. Only this time you have classes that include how to fire a gun, drive a car under emergency conditions, and hand-to-hand combat, among others. Still, the instruction takes place in classrooms and on the grounds of a campus environment, and it very much has a high school feel to it for those of any age. Our class #289 started at the Academy on April 23rd, 1990, and was made up of about 100 recruits divided into two 'platoons' identified as 289-A and 289-B. The division came alphabetically, and Charlie fell in with the 'A' platoon while I was assigned to 'B' platoon. Since most of your day-to-day experiences came within your own platoon, we didn't see a lot of the 'B' folks except in passing. But Charlie and I had become friendly in passing over that spring and summer. We were the same age, were both married, and both had young kids. His son was 7-years old, and my two daughters were 10 and 8 years. And he had that same kind of mischievous, smart-alick, attitude and sense of humor that I had, and we always said 'hi' to one another and asked how we were doing with the Academy process. When we got our assignments upon graduation, neither of us got a bad one: I was assigned to the downtown 6th district, Charlie to South Philly's 1st district. Having lived in the 1st for much of my teenage years, I knew it well, and knew that he would likely enjoy himself there. It also was close to home for him, as he lived just across the bridge in Southwest Philly. Our graduation was in mid-September of 1990, and we all congratulated one another and wished one another well. As we shook hands that day out at the old Convention Center in University City, I didn't realize that it would be the last time that I would ever see Charlie Knox alive. Everyone who came out of class #289 worked our first full year on the streets in 1991. As we moved through 1992, my first marriage had come to an end, and I actually met my future (and current) wife early that summer. So on Sunday, August 30th, 1992 with less than two years on the street, my own life was going through a number of big changes, but nothing compared to what Charlie was about to go through. That evening, Charlie and his partner, Tony Howard, were working a patrol wagon. Tony had less than 6 months on the streets, so it was a couple of relatively inexperienced, but aggressive, cops who responded to a call that came from police radio of a robbery in progress at the Roy Rogers restaurant at Broad & Snyder. Having responded to these kinds of calls hundreds of times, I can tell you that they flipped on their overhead dome lights, kicked the wagon into high gear, and headed towards that major South Philly intersection. Charlie was paying attention to traffic, and driving in that controlled emergency responder manner that we were taught at the Academy, while Tony was likely operating the siren when needed. The two also were mentally playing out in their minds what would happen when they got there, how they would handle whatever situation awaited them. They might even have talked out some flexible game plan. There was probably even the thought crossing their minds that all this could be for nothing, as so many calls like this end up being either 'unfounded' completely, or some other type of situation than a robbery, such as a minor argument or disturbance. They arrived at the restaurant just after 8:30pm, just moments after receiving the call, and walked in on a violent robbery in progress situation. Charlie confronted a male in the manager's office who was holding a gun to that manager's head. Charlie ordered the man to drop the gun, and then became engaged in a physical struggle with the robber. Unseen by Charlie, a second gunman suddenly stepped from behind a doorway, shoved a gun into Charlie's side under his vest, and fired. When Charlie fell, the gunman fired another shot into his head. Howard had entered through a separate entrance, and the gunman fired at him as well, striking him in the shoulder. Tony Howard was rushed to Thomas Jefferson hospital and survived the shooting. Charlie Knox wasn't so fortunate. He died from his gunshot wounds as the two robbers, who turned out to be brothers Tucker & Alan Ginn, fled the scene. They would not be arrested for another five months, after an incredible investigation and an intensive manhunt, and they were found guilty, now both serving life sentences in prison. This afternoon, myself and other classmates of Charlie's from Academy class #289, now having served 18 years with the police department, gathered along with his family, local dignitaries, and hundreds of fellow officers as a memorial plaque was laid outside the Walgreen's pharmacy which has now replaced the Roy Rogers restaurant at Broad & Snyder. The plaque is part of a memorial program instituted a few years back to honor all of Philadelphia's fallen heroic police officers and firefighters like Charlie Knox at or near the place where they made their ultimate sacrifice for our community. Charlie's son, Charlie Jr, was not there today. He was tragically killed in a car crash at the age of 16, six years after his father's murder. Charlie's widow, Arlene, has since remarried and has two young children with her 2nd husband. She was there, front and center, to honor her former husband and her hero. Anyone who knew Charlie Knox will never forget his famous, flashing smile, and that twinkle in his eye. When we were in the Academy, at one point an instructor invited everyone in the class to take a look around at one another, because he said that the odds were that at least one of us was going to be killed on duty over the course of our careers. It turned out that we didn't have long to wait. It was less than two years before Charlie Knox became the one that died in the line-of-duty from class #289.

85 Shots and 'One Less Nigga With a Gun'

A year ago at this time, in July 2007, Steven 'Butter' Miller (left) was shot at 85 times by Philadelphia police officers. I have sources that say it was actually 81 times. In any event, about two dozen of those shots found their mark, and Miller was dead. In it's July 24th-31st, 2008 issues the extremely liberal 'Citypaper' here in Philadelphia, one of those free tabloid style publications distributed throughout the downtown area by placement in stores, business lobbies, and curbside boxes, published a cover story titled '85 Shots' about the incident. As could be expected if you understand the source, the Citypaper writers, Doron Taussig and Tom Nammako, told the story in a way that was, in both tone and tenor, completely sympathetic with the alleged victim and extremely critical of the Philadelphia police officers involved in the shooting, as well as their hierarchy in its response. That's a shame, because the real problem right here in Philadelphia and in many big American cities today is not unwarranted shootings by rogue groups of police officers. Actually, one of the biggest problems facing American big cities today is men just like Steven Miller. Fact is that Miller exited his house that night as a stark-raving mad lunatic waving a gun around in the air, alternately pointing it at officers as well as towards neighbors homes as he waved it. The officers gave him plenty of warnings to drop the weapon, perhaps even more than they actually needed to give. At a certain point, one officer felt that the circumstances had gotten too dangerous and felt that he needed to discharge his weapon in order to save his own life, the life of a fellow officer, or that of a community member. It was a hot summer night in South Philly, so it was dark, and when this officers' shots rang out other officers who had also responded did not know from where these shots were coming. They fired at the man who they saw waving around the gun, Miller, just as they were trained, and they took him down. One of Miller's best friends, Daniel Williams, was quoted as saying "...they probably look at it like, that's one less nigga with a gun." Your words, Mr. Williams, but the idea behind them is not so far off from the truth. What this city needs, in fact, is thousands of fewer young men waving around guns, and every one that is stopped from doing so is one less that will harm the rest of us. The article goes on to actually print the names of seven officers involved that night before discussing how neighbors see these officers now and say, in the words of one Tyree Bullock: "Here go this motherf*cker". How about the mother-bleepers living around you every day, Mr. Bullock? The ones doing the shooting, drug-dealing, pimping, impregnating, and glamorizing it all in their booming and blaring rap music? The article also goes on to talk about another of the people in Miller's life, one Anthony Lawrence, who relates that in the past twenty years he has personally seen 34 deaths in his neighborhood, implying those were violent deaths. I have lived 46 years and was born and raised in South Philly, and I don't think that I have known more than a couple people, if that many, who have been killed by violence. Why have you seen so many, Mr. Lawrence? Why so many, Citypaper? Rogue cops shoot them all down? Not hardly. The fact of the matter is that most of them were killed by men just like Steven Miller. But before he met his demise, he helped perpetuate even more of the problems in the urban world. He had fathered seven children, none of whom he financially supported, by three different women, none of whom he had ever married. He had been arrested at least once in his life, for drugs of course, and had also been shot once on a playground basketball court. He had wasted away his twenties in a life of drugs and violence and 'laying back'. Oh, and in trying to become a rap star, of course, all the while perpetuating the exact lifestyle of huge numbers of young men in his demographic community across the nation. Irresponsibility, criminality, violence, addiction, all frequently glorified by the rap community in one of the most heinous examples of all-time of a community announcing and advertising for its own demise. Miller's rap group was named DLK (Down Low Killaz). Nice. And typical. The article states that Miller was 'suited up' (carrying a gun) on the day that he died because he 'had gotten on bad terms with a dangerous young bull', meaning that some young thug was looking to gun down Miller for some reason. The only 'bull' that matters in this story is perpetuated by this article, that somehow men like Steven Miller deserve our sympathies. The folks who really deserve our sympathy are the seven whose lives he created, but who didn't elicit enough love and respect from him that he would go out and get a real job or two to support. What makes men like Miller and many others in his violent neighborhood around Tasker & Taney Streets decide to turn to drugs and violence, both in the reality of their lifestyle and the glamorization of that same culture, rather than turning it around, staying in school, taking responsibility, and bettering their community. What makes one man from South Philly into a Steven Miller and another man from West Philly into a Will Smith? The answer quite simply is personal choices. Steven Miller chose illegitimate fatherhood. Steven Miller chose to get involved with drugs and violence. Steven Miller chose to walk out of a house waving a gun at neighbors and police officers. Steven Miller left those officers with no choice but to fire 85 shots, however many it took, and leave the city with 'one less nigga with a gun.' His choice, and it is people like the authors of this Citypaper article and the editors who chose to run the story with the slant that they did, who make further choices that keep all of us less safe each and every day in the city of Philadelphia.

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.