On These Old Streets

Ceridwen & I decided to pedal around a few West Philadelphia neighborhoods and happened by the intersection of 40th Street, Lancaster Avenue, and Haverford Avenue, which I'm very familiar with. Last year, however, these new commemorative installations were created and were as new to me as they were to her. That whole section (called Belmont, about a mile North of my place) is rich in history, but I'm not so well informed of it.

Haverford and Lancaster Avenues are early, angled thoroughfares (connecting the city to those two towns), and the street grid went across them around 1890, making a very confusing tangle of streets. A good buddy of mine lives on Lancaster between 39th Street and 39th Street. I'll save it for a future blip, but that same friend is shoving off to Antarctica, no less, next week for a five-month stint as a painter & carpenter. I'm green with envy!

This was a beautiful day for riding bikes blipping, and remembering Martin Luther King as well. It's very strange to think of it now, but I grew up in a totally White suburban town on Long Island, and i never knew even one African-American till after I moved to Philadelphia, when I was nearly thirty years old. The first time I remember hearing of Dr. King was on the day of his murder, when the kid next door (we were eleven) asked me, "Did you hear they shot Martin Luther Coon?" I'm back in touch with that same friend now, and when i told him that, he didn't remember it, but he said, "I believe it happened but in those days, it could just as easily been you saying it to me." He was right. I sometimes tell that story now as a way to explain either to younger people or to Black folks that people of my generation have had to unlearn things like this. It's pretty weird to think about it now, as I've said. Younger people don't quite understand what segregation was like, and how different things are now that so much has changed.

Take a look at my blip for yesterday while you're at it, as it was late in arriving.