The photo above kind of got sprung on
me. It appeared on a Facebook friend’s page. Had not purchased the photo from
the photographer originally. Had never seen it until about three weeks ago.
My first honest reaction to it was how white
it was. That I have since lived most of the past thirty five years since
leaving Philly in or around the diverse city of New York. That because of economics that means one of
the less expensive outer boroughs other than Manhattan.
Oh I did live in Manhattan decades ago
in a studio dormitory room and shared an apartment near campus.
Manhattan in the late seventies was
still a largely American city. Now it is an International City with international
prices like Hong Kong or London.
That the mind does wander and getting
back to Philly and youth and the memory of it all, perhaps could be the subject
of a book.
The Neighborhood in which I grew up in
is no longer 99 and 44/100 percent white, ethnic western European
white. The neighborhood was predominately Irish with a smaller percentage of
Italian and Polish.
The German ethnic label thing had faded into the background with two world wars and it was not thought of as an ethnic thing even though some of the names of my classmates in retrospect
were definitely German sounding.
The school is still there as a
building. It is no longer a Catholic school but a public charter school in the now
50% black and Hispanic neighborhood as per official government stats.
The front doors in the photo were plate
glass. The present ones are steel. The
parish complex is chopped up with the school a city owned public school, the
convent with its many cell like bedrooms is a half-way house for Catholic
pregnant teens and the Church is on life support with two weekend masses and
two weekday masses being said by one priest shared with another parish about a
mile away, the Italian parish, with that priest in that rectory.
There is or was the grave of the
Monsignor who founded the parish in 1919 somewhere in the church yard next to
the closed up old rectory.
Lots of stats and not lots of feelings.
The real feelings have to do with
growing older and with word of mouth knowing that at least eight of the faces in
the photo are no longer with us on this earthy plane.
In fact, my being on Facebook had to do
with one friend seeking me out after the death of my neighbor classmate of two
doors down from where I grew up. The social network thing is the present day
family dinner or town square of virtual reality.
I never really thought much about it.
The classes were not co-ed. It was an all-boys class, separate and not equal
next to an all-girls class. The boys classes got the better qualified teaching nuns imho. Then all off to an all-boys High School, now also a
Public School charter high school.
The inner city has no appeal to the RC church. The
money is in the burbs.
And indeed in another age of segregated
by sex schools, a mighty school system was built as separate but superior to
the public school system that rejected Irish and German Catholic immigrants in
the 1840’s, riots and the determination to build that separate but superior
Catholic School System in spite of the Protestants and the Protestant Banks
having all the money.
That many a Catholic parish in inner
city America got built on pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters of immigrants
looking positively to a better life in America. That is something that carpetbagger bishops now cannot understand regarding the history of the place in which they now mismanage or "govern" by modern global Harvard / Brown / Wharton spreadsheet style management.
As I try to reconcile a lot of things,
I realize that the factories surrounding that school above are either empty,
torn down and turned into parking lots or on a small scale supporting many small
businesses in one building or gentrified into living lofts etc.
That the coded talk of my youth, with
the adults wanting to escape Philly and get over to Jersey or to Montgomery
County was code talk to fantasize a non-racial paradise outside of racially
changing, economic changing Philly in the post WWI and post WWII changing world of demographics along with rights for minorities – civil rights that extend to the future, the now, and
regarding issues like marriage equality etc.
That I catch an occasional fragmented
sentence from old friends, perhaps coded phrase of now living in Jersey or
Montgomery County of really meaning having achieved their parents dreams of family harmony in
a safe enclave place outside the origins of the family within the old city
proper.
The Europeans spent decades rebuilding
their inner cities after war and love to live, eat and entertain there.
American spared the destruction of war and with
a vastness of land into which to expand, made the loop thing of the American
civilization being turned into a grassy fortress suburbia supported by the
combustion engine etc.
Someone took the time to label the
photo with names. I remember and recognize 90% of the names and faces there.
Cannot quite still figure what happened
to a lot of the years from there to here.
.
