Teacakes

I drive around town for a living, serving legal papers. Not quite as welcomed as the Fed-Ex guy but, hey, somebody has to do it.  

Very often, in the afternoon, on my way home, I find myself driving right past a place I had been to earlier that day. It’s not that I’m really bad at planning my route and I keep doubling back over myself, it’s just I don’t always get all my stuff at the same time. Most days my boss calls me into town, sends me out, calls me back, sends me out … and like that. Ours is a very spontaneous business.

 I read somewhere that if you take a person and drop him or her in the middle of say … the desert or the forest and tell him or her to walk in a straight line you will discover that he or she, after a while, will have actually walked in a big circle. Some say that this is because we all favor one side of our body, or have one leg that’s longer than the other, thus our stride is uneven and over the long haul those fractions of inches add up.  But I don’t think that’s it.

Today, I went into town, from my home in Abington, picked up three things to serve at three different places in the city and headed out to my destinations. One was the S.P.C.A. on Erie Avenue, near Whittaker. One was a real estate office on Frankford Avenue, around the Church Street stop of the El. And one was some big company on the Boulevard, way up by Nabisco.

I decided to hit the S.P.C.A. first. There’s no real direct way to get from Broad and Chestnut to Erie and Whittaker. The nice lady on my GPS told me to drive all the way up Broad Street to Erie and take Erie all the way across town. I usually listen to her but the thought of driving up Broad Street for 30 or 40 blocks – all those lights? And the herds of people clogging the works at Temple, University, and then again at Temple Hospital. I decided to head to I-95. It might be longer but it would definitely be faster. If that makes any sense.

My plan was to get off at Bridge Street, take that up to Torresdale, hang a left and follow that to Erie. I probably should have listened to the GPS lady but somehow this felt right.

I got off 95 at Bridge and there it was: the Eiffel Tower! That’s the logo for the infamous Chateau Caterers and Restaurant at Bridge and Aramingo, the flagship of our old neighborhood. Forty years ago my wife and I moved into our first house on Brill Street in Bridesburg. We lived there for over 20 years.

Our first neighbors were the old Polish and Ukrainian friends of my wife’s grandmother. It was her house – was. She had died shortly before we were married and … well, save the circumstances, it all kind of worked out pretty well for us. They were all very sweet and kind and protective of their good friend’s granddaughter and her new, slightly suspect, husband.

One by one, Time escorted them all to a new neighborhood, and one by one, new neighbors took their places, young couples, just like us: married with children. We all looked after each other and each other’s kids. It was a nice place to live and for our children to grow up in. But no matter how pleasant your little niche of the city, the song of the sirens of the suburbs cannot be ignored. We were one of the last families to flee but, in the end we, too, fled.

Back then I thought we moved because the neighborhood was going to seed but as I drove down Torresdale Avenue on my way to Erie I was surprised at how little the place had actually changed. The curse of the upwardly mobile set is their curse on the perfectly good station they think they must somehow rise above – wait a minute. The Frankford Avenue service was only a few blocks away from here. Coincidence? Or did the zip code on the slip: 19124 trigger the GPS in my brain?

With one out of the way I once again headed towards Erie Avenue but for some reason, a block before Erie, I turned up Luzerne and found myself smack in the middle of Juniata, the neighborhood where I grew up. I was tracing my walk home from North Catholic High, up Luzerne, crossing Castor Avenue, and then all the letter streets: O, M, L – my old house on K! I took a short detour down Claridge Street to see my old friend Herbie Brown’s house, and Bill Gatti’s across the street. This was where I was a boy, with all my boyhood pals, where we played stickball and basketball and mostly hung out on the corner and smoked and cursed and bragged. This was where my family lived before we succumbed to the sirens’ song of the suburbs. That’s where Dan’s was, before they built the 7-Eleven right in front of his cozy little candy store. I remember those pink flamingoes in old lady Lorden’s front yard. Is she still …?

I turned down G Street to Erie and from there it was only few blocks to the S.P.C.A. I noticed the place had two entrances: one to the main building where I assumed the office and people who were going to sign for my papers would be found, and the other which led directly to the pets up for adoption. I was tempted but fought it. I could almost see my old dog Melvin, rest his soul, resting his big hairy head on my feet as we both watched Jeopardy, and smell his fur when I grabbed his snout and rubbed my face between his crocked ears. This was turning into the kind of day where … if I had walked through that place there was no way in hell I wasn’t leaving with some big, sad eyed, slobbering mutt.

The S.P.C.A. is only a stone’s throw from Whittaker, which is where the old Lighthouse Field used to be. Every summer the Clyde Beatty and Cole Brothers Circus would come to town and pound their tent stakes into the baseball fields there. But is wasn’t the circus so much as its offbeat, prurient traveling companion, the George S. Straights Shows that got us kids all worked up. The Straights Shows were a cross between a carnival and a freak show, one of the last true freak shows in the country I think, when gawking at Billy Burkes, the man with three eyes and two noses or Sweet Marie, the world’s fattest lady or the giant hippo that sweated blood was just plain, good ol’ American fun. Oh! The political correctness of it all!

George’s shows were anything but straight – on the up and up. The rides were slapped together with duct tape and a prayer. The games of “chance” were anything but. The freaks were exploited and sad and stared back at the curious voyeurs with blank, pathetic, non judgmental eyes. It was both fun and scary, a little on the shady side, but we wouldn’t have had it any other way. I never had more than a dollar in my pocket to spend whenever I went there but that got me a ride on the Scrambler or Salt and Pepper Shaker – the Wild Mouse – and maybe some cotton candy or a soft pretzel and a Coke.

I took Whittaker all the way up to the Boulevard. From there it’s a straight run all the way up to my last stop. Before I knew it I was stopped at the very same red light I was stopped at over 44 years ago: My first traffic ticket in my first car – ’57 Chevy Two-Ten – the “Silver Streak,” we called it. And only a week after I had gotten my license. I was sixteen years old and working at Burger Chef at C and The Boulevard.

“Hey! Mr. Big Shot Drivers’ License! Drive down to R and W and pick me up a hot pastrami on rye!” Emil, the manager, never ate the house food. On my way back I guess I made an illegal u-turn or … I never figured out what I did wrong. I was too overwhelmed. I was a kid. I remember the guys all having a good laugh when I showed them my summons and Emil’s cold sandwich.

And as I sat there waiting for the light to change I thought about those guys and all the fun we had flippin’ burgers and spittin’ in the secret sauce and chasing girls and wondered if they were stopped at a traffic light somewhere thinking about French fries and milk shakes and the smell of hamburger on their fingers, a smell that simply could not be vanquished no matter how much you washed, scrubbed or even Cloroxed.

No. It’s not because we all favor one side or have one leg longer that the other that we wind up traveling in circles our whole life. The shortest distance between two points may be a straight line but our lives aren’t straight lines. Our lives don’t really begin or end. My buddy Horace said, “Seize the day! And grant tomorrow no credit.” But with respect to the old boy, I don’t agree. No one lives just in the present. No one can get through a single day without thinking about the past, something he or she did or said or saw or smelled – it’s amazing what the aroma of a simple teacake cake can conjure up in the mind. Ask Marcel Proust. And certainly no one with children can get through a single day without wondering about the future.

I mean, even squirrels bury nuts.

I got back in my car and headed home on the delicate, olfactory waves of Nabisco ‘Nilla Wafers wafting through the air.

Fist bump, Marcel!