SATURDAY, August 12
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
We had breakfast at the hotel and then took the train and subway downtown. We had an interesting experience on the train. Shortly after we boarded the conductor came around to collect tickets. Margaret and I gave him our day passes, which he punched without comment. Some of our fellow passengers presented zone-printed passes, and others paid him a cash fare for their trip. Then he got to an obese black woman who was seated across the aisle and one seat back from us. She apparently presented some sort of a pass--but one that wasn't valid. I didn't see it, but from what I gathered, there was a sticker that told the dates it was valid that was missing. The conductor explained the problem to her and patiently explained why this was a problem--that many people will tear off the sticker, stick it on another pass, and then try to use both. The woman said and did absolutely nothing; she sat there as if she were mute. When it became clear she wouldn't pay, the conductor remarked that he should call the police--there were too many people trying to take advantage of the system. He didn't, and she did indeed ride without paying. The second we got to 30th Street Station, she bolted from the train like a cartoon character making an exit. It amazes me the nerve some people have.
Our first stop today was at the Gallery East Mall. Margaret wanted to get a pedometer, like the one I wear for our summer wellness program at school. We tried first at K-Mart (which is where I got mine), but they had none in stock. The clerk at K-Mart suggested we try Modell's, which turned out to be a sporting goods store in the basement of the mall by the food court. All they had was a rather expensive model, but after looking it over she decided to buy it.
Our first real stop this morning was at Franklin Court, the a block of rowhouses that Ben Franklin rented out to tenants in the 1700s. Franklin himself lived in a large house behind the rowhouses, which has since been torn down. They've done major archaeological work here, and one of the rowhouses is now a little museum that displays the work they found. I commented to Margaret that it would be fascinating to live in a place where the broken pottery you dig up in the back yard was historic. Our house in Mt. Pleasant was built on a former landfill, and we were forever finding broken cups and saucers in the yard. Other than thinking they were "neat" I never gave them a second thought--then again, it's not like it was Ben Franklin's stuff we were digging up. I wonder if some future resident of Mt. P. will dig up Tom Vilsack's coffee cup and think of it as a historic find.
Underneath what was once Franklin's home (filling in the hole that the archaeological excavation left) they now have what they call the Underground Museum. This is an enormous, but surprisingly empty museum that traces Franklin's life and accomplishments. Among their displays are Franklin's many inventions--including one that we saw up close and personal. It was the armonium, a very unique musical instrument. If as a child you filled glasses with water and rubbed the tops to make musical tones, you understand the principle of the armonium. Franklin placed a series of differently sized dishes on a dowel, with water running past them. The dowel was turned (traditionally by a treadle, but on the instrument we saw by electricity), and the musician rubbed their edges as they moved. A park ranger had been practicing all summer to play a bad rendition of "Yankee Doodle", but it least it gave us the idea of how the contraption worked.
Next up we headed back to the U.S. Mint. They were definitely open today; in fact there was a line over half a block line in front of the entrance. We joined it, and while we crept along we were entertained by a fife and drum corps in colonial costume across the street. It turned out they were advertising a yogurt place, of all things. Eventually we made it to the front of the line, went through a metal detector, past hallway after hallway of pointless exhibits (that were mostly designed to make you feel as if you were making progress), and into the main part of the mint.
The Philadelphia mint is the modern successor to the country's oldest mint. The current building dates to the '60s and is truly a fortress--which makes sense, given the millions of dollars in coins that are produced there daily. It's honestly not all that exciting of a place to visit. Basically it's a big factory where they do metal fabrication, in the form of money. They walk you past the various stages of the process (annealing, burnishing, stamping, etc.), but I must confess the machines for each stage look pretty much alike. The explanation is not all that good, so it's often hard to tell exactly what is going on. Many years ago I toured the Royal Canadian Mint in Winnipeg, and their tour is really quite a bit more informative than this one. It was interesting, though--even if I didn't really learn much of anything.
We walked west from the mint past the Philadelphia Police Department, which features a sappy statue of noble officers rescuing a child from danger. It's certainly heroic, but I preferred the memorials we saw in Massachusetts. Scattered on buildings all over Boston and Plymouth were bronze plaques with names, drawings, and biographies of fallen officers. Presumably each plaque was placed in that officer's own beat, which would make it more personal than this big downtown monument.
West of the police department was Philadelphia's Chinatown. This is a tiny neighborhood, probably not more than about six square blocks. Quite abruptly the people on the sidewalk change from Black to Asian, though, and the signs beckon in Asian calligraphy. We chose to have lunch in Chinatown at a place called Ho Sai Gai. This was a fascinating place, basically a diner decorated in Chinese decor. The walls were covered with a combination of beer ads and Christian motivational posters. The tables were set with silverware, and the waitress spoke English fluently. She spoke Chinese with many of the Asian guests, though, and she gave chopsticks to everyone she spoke to in Chinese.
After lunch we walked under the Chinatown gate, which stretches across 10th Street north of Reding Terminal Market. We took the subway to 15th Street and got out outside Philadelphia's City Hall. I still wanted to visit the prison we had been looking for yesterday, as well as a couple of other points of interest in its vicinity. Since neither of us wanted to go back to the horrible neighborhood we were in yesterday, I had devised another plan to get there. Philadelphia has a circulator bus designed for tourists. The purple mini-buses, called "Phlash" make a circuit of the tourist attractions in and near downtown. Our day passes wouldn't work on Phlash, but if it got us where we needed to go, that was worth paying a little extra. The problem is that the Phlash buses don't run very frequently (about every half hour), nor do they stop very often. We had a map of stops, but it was difficult to locate them on the street. There was supposed to be a stop right by the Philadelphia City Hall, for instance, but even though we circled the entire building, we never found it.
While we were at City Hall, it started raining fairly hard. We ducked inside a covered passageway for shelter, which gave us a more close-up look at city Hall than we had intended. It's an immense place, filling most of the equivalent of four square blocks. The city's two main streets (Broad and Market) intersect in a traffic circle that goes around the massive building. Topping the building is a rather nondescript statue of William Penn. Until quite recently Philadelphia ordinances required that no buildings could rise higher than the brim of Penn's hat in the statue--thereby guaranteeing that City Hall was the tallest building in town. That rule was broken about ten years ago, and now there are about three small glass skyscrapers (the sort of thing you'd see in Des Moines) in this otherwise extremely low-rise city. One thing I really didn't like about Philadelphia was that its buildings were so low. There's nothing remotely close to a skyline, and the place really doesn't feel like a "city" at all.
Just west of City Hall is a small patch of grass and concrete called John F. Kennedy Park. The travel books rave about this because it houses several of the city's most famous sculptures. Philadelphia is proud of its public sculpture--almost all of which dates to the 1970s, which has to be just about the worst era for art there ever was. One of the civic "masterpieces" is an 54-foot-high bronze clothespin. Another (which we passed frequently) looked like a combination between a flame and a pregnant woman about to give birth (I'm sure it must have symbolized something). The focal point of JFK Park is the love sculpture. Even if you haven't been to Philly, you've probably seen this. The sculpture, a 1976 tribute to the Bicentennial, spells out the word "LOVE" is giant red-painted aluminum letters. It was probably most famous as the subject of the Postal Service?s first "LOVE" stamp back in the '70s. I tried to snap a picture of the monstrosity, but I was at the end of my roll of film. I didn?t bother changing the film just for that.
The love sculpture reminds me of another strange quirk of Philadelphia. Many cities and states now have slogans that they use to draw tourists. Most of them are dumb, but Philly's definitely takes the stupidity award. The city's official marketing slogan is "Philadelphia: the place that loves you back." (That slogan, by the way, is a registered trademark, and I'm probably in big legal trouble for quoting it here.) I suppose they came up with this as an attempt to top "I love New York," but I must say I found the slogan both false and presumptuous. It presumes that you love Philadelphia to begin with--and while I didn't dislike the place, "love" would be extremely strong. It also suggests that Philadelphia is a friendly place--something again I didn't really feel. Moreover, the slogan made my mind wander into areas that were less than appropriate--making it seem as if perhaps it was all those centers of adult delight that were what was supposed to be "loving" me back.
As such slogans go, I far preferred Plymouth's. New England's first city bills itself as "America's Hometown". That's true in a couple of ways. It's our hometown in the sense that our country has its roots here--and for those of us of Anglo-Saxon descent, those roots are very personal. It?s also has a pleasant small-town feel that almost makes you forget just what a tourist trap it is.
Since we couldn't find a Phlash bus stop, we opened our umbrellas and set off walking. Running diagonally northwest from Independence Hall is a grand boulevard called Ben Franklin Parkway. As we walked along this elegant thoroughfare, it was hard to believe that those adult theaters and abandoned warehouses were just a couple of blocks south of us. Unfortunately we still couldn't find a bus stop. By the time we did, we were only about three blocks from our destination--so we just kept on walking.
We stopped at a museum that is unique to Philly, the Rodin Museum. If I asked my quiz bowl students where the only museum devoted to this sculptor was, my bet is that none of them would guess Philadelphia. The museum (which houses the largest collection of Rodin's work outside of France), was the gift of a millionaire who made his fortune from a chain of movie theaters. Rodin was relatively unknown at the time, but the theater-owner had a feeling his work would be important. He bought up sculpture after sculpture, and donated the whole collection to the city. Today they have a really nice museum--not too large, but big enough to show a wide selection of bronze, plaster, marble, and wax creations. The two most famous pieces, "The Thinker" and "The Gates of Hell" stand outside the main entrance, and inside there is a nice variety of Rodin's work. I picked up the children's guide to the place, and I'm glad I did. It gave a nice background on Rodin and his better known sculptures, without running things into the ground with detail.
We ended up spending more time at the Rodin Museum than we had planned. That's because the rain came harder and harder and harder as we looked around at all the sculptures. It was pouring buckets for a while, to the point where it was difficult to see in the distance. Eventually things let up just a bit, and we left the museum and headed out again.
We walked through a nicely gentrified rowhouse neighborhood (everything in Philadelphia is rowhouses) for four or five more blocks. The streets were flooded when we left the museum, but the rain let up gradually as we walked along. By the time we arrived at the Eastern State Penitentiary we could actually see small patches of blue in the sky. When we went in, however, the guides tried to talk us out of taking the prison tour. Apparently they had just experienced a major flood on the site, and they warned us we would probably get wet. Since we already were wet, we figured a little more water wouldn't hurt. By the time the tour actually started, over a dozen people had showed up to join us.
In order to tour the prison, they made us put on hard hats. This is apparently standard procedure, although they seemed more concerned than usual today. The guides were a bit worried that the flood might have caused some structural damage. They assured us that we would not go through any truly dangerous areas, though. It intrigued us that they made other people on the tour sign releases before they could go. Neither Margaret nor I signed such a document. I don't know if they just forgot or if they figured we weren't the kind to sue.
Eastern State Penitentiary is a truly fascinating place. It was originally built in 1836, and today its massive stone walls still make it look like a castle in the midst of all the rowhouses. When it was built it was the largest and most expensive building in the United States--and there's still nothing small about it. When the place began the entire prison followed an experimental plan called the Pennsylvania system. Under this plan, every prisoner served a two-year sentence in absolute solitary confinement. When they entered the prison, they were blinded under a hood and spun around so that they became disoriented, then led to the cell where they would spend every minute of the next two years of their life. The cells measured 8 feet by 12 feet. By the standards of their time, they were quite modern--complete with the first flush toilets in the city. Behind each cell was a tiny walled-in exercise yard about the same size as the cell. Other than a skylight and a window in the door to the exercise yard, there was no light. Food was delivered through a slot on the door, but there was no contact whatsoever with the guards or other inmates. The only contact with the outside year was a single letter that inmates were allowed to receive from relatives at Christmas. The prisoners were allowed no personal effects, and the only book they were allowed to read was the Bible. The whole point of this absolute isolation was to make the inmates penitent--hence the term "penitentiary" which was first used at this institution.
The other novel development at Eastern was its architectural design. This was the first prison to use the "radial" or "hub and spoke" design with a central tower and cellblocks radiating out in all directions, like an asterisk. That plan, which almost every prison in the world has since copied, allowed a minimal number of guards at the center could see what was happening in all the cellblocks.
The experiment with the Pennsylvania system was gradually determined to be unsuccessful. They had abnormally high number of suicides, and they found (in the words of our guide) that "many of our guests were returning for another stay". They also found that it would be cheaper to run a more traditional facility, because they could double up the prisoners and house twice as many in the same space. By 1900 the old system had been completely abandoned, and they were rapidly expanding the prison--filling in virtually all the empty space with new double-decker cellblocks. By the time the place closed in 1971, over 3,000 prisoners were held here at a time.
Over the years they've had some famous residents. Supposedly they've restored Al Capone's cell, for instance. We didn't see it (probably due to the flooding), but we did see death row, a number of other cellblocks, the prison industry area, and their on-site baseball field yards. The whole place is in dreadful repair. When it closed, the state completely abandoned the property. The gentrified rowhouses we had seen were then part of a very rough neighborhood, and apparently the place was severely vandalized. (Most of the windows were still broken out today.) The city bought the ground, with plans to raze the building and use the land for a shopping center. Preservation activists fought to preserve it, though, and now the place is a National Historic Landmark. Current plans are to stabilize the structure--to keep it from falling down--but there are no plans to restore it. Given the vastness of the facility, it would be virtually impossible to restore, even if they could find the money to do it.
It was sunny when we left the prison. We walked back south to the Rodin Museum, where we finally caught the Phlash bus. We headed west for a while, past the Philadelphia Museum of Art whose famous steps were featured in the original Rocky movie, and then turned back down Ben Franklin Parkway toward downtown Philly.
We had an interesting ride back downtown. In their literature, they make it clear that Phlash is not a tour bus. It's public transportation; not a guided tour of the city. Our ride was a bit more than that, though. Most of the other riders in our minibus were black tourists who were visiting the city. The driver, who was also black, seemed to be trying to impress them--and especially one woman, with whom he was basically flirting. We heard about every landmark, every building, and every park. For $2, we couldn't have asked for a more thorough tour.
For dinner tonight we went back to the Gallery East mall. We went into McDonalds, which was probably a mistake. Only rarely have I seen food service lines that moved as slowly as this one did. Slow service seems to be a serious problem at McD's, since they introduced their "made to order" system a few months back. This place was definitely worse than most, though. We waited for nearly half an hour before we finally made it to the front of the line. The clerk for our line, who we later found out had been on duty since breakfast, seemed to do everything in slow motion. She also did only one thing at a time. First she would get the sandwich (for which there was the "made to order" wait), then she got the fries, and finally she got the drink.
We finally started to feel like we were making progress when the only people in front of us were a young Asian couple. All they ordered was a happy meal. That again was filled in slow motion, with the clerk getting each the hamburger, fries, and toy one at a time from separate places around the restaurant--literally plodding as she made her way from one place to another. The girl (who was probably 20--a bit too old for happy meals, if you ask me) opened her box and took out the "Hello Kitty" toy inside. She then complained to the clerk that she already had that toy and wanted another. The clerk got a second stuffed cat, but the Asian woman had that one too. Finally the girl pointed to the one she wanted, the clerk brought it to her, and it was finally our turn to order. If my mother hadn't trained me well to be polite, I would have gotten downright irate. Even if the woman is a collector, happy meal prizes should be like baseball cards--pot luck, and tough luck if you get a repeat. Oh well--eventually our barbecue cheeseburgers were really quite good.
We made our way through the mall to the Market East commuter train station, the modern underground remnant of what used to be Reading Terminal. We bought our tickets from a machine and then went down to the platform to wait for a train. An Asian girl on the platform first asked me if this was the right platform for the airport. She was obviously not reassured when I told her it was, and she proceeded to have a long conversation with Margaret. The girl spoke very little English, but she and Margaret managed to communicate fairly well. The girl was from Korea and was in Philadelphia (working, I assume) for the summer. She planned to fly to San Francisco to visit a friend or relative. Something had come up, and the person she was visiting told her to postpone the trip a couple of days. Now the girl had to go to the airport to change her tickets. Margaret has far more experience in communicating with non-English speaking people than I do, and the girl was obviously delighted that Margaret was understanding her. Margaret assured her that the train would take her to the airport and also that since the girl did not already have a ticket, she could buy one from "the man on the train". That particular phrase seemed to cause some difficulty in communication, because the girl clarified that the man would be in the train, rather than on it. I have no idea what the equivalent Korean prepositions are, but I suppose that instead of a conductor, the girl must have been picturing someone sitting on top of the rail car. The girl also had a question about which terminal her airline (one I had never heard of) was in. Again, Margaret suggested that the conductor could help her.
The train soon came, and the girl managed to get a ticket without incident. The conductor also had trouble understanding the name of the airline the girl wanted, but once he understood it, he was able to look up the correct terminal on a list he had. We got off at Eastwick, and the girl continued south to the airport. I certainly hope everything worked out okay for her.
On the news tonight we found that the rain we had seen this afternoon was nothing compared to what other places in the area had experienced. The city had gotten around two inches of rain. There was flooding in the eastern suburbs, and north of here in New Jersey they got over 14 inches! I'm sure glad we weren't trying to slosh through that.
CONTINUED IN PART 7
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