I used to
have a photo(s) of ourselves, family, in fuzzy unfocused "Baby
Brownie" Black and White, of ourselves on Memorial Day or the 4th of July
picnics at Wissinoming Park in Philly of over fifty years ago. (Wissinoming -
Lenni-Lenape word of "duck creek").
The photos
might still exist but are in the hands of my gay brother in Phoenix who refuses
to share them with me. Still victimizing his younger sibling after all these
years and him pushing 70 - whatever. No love lost there.
Wissinoming
Park is a nice little plain stretch of ground with big trees and a dried out
impression or small creek bed that runs through the property, all that is left
of some 19th century Philly robber baron's country estate. The mansion in the
middle of the property is long gone.
The
significance of this park was that my father and his childhood family also
picnicked there as a child, his childhood home nearby and now under I-95 across
from the old Frankford Arsenal.
In a small
corner of this very tranquil piece of real estate was a tiny crowded cemetery,
a Jewish cemetery with grave stones carved in English but mostly Hebrew. I say
crowded because the whole scene is also surrounded by Cedar Hill Cemetery, the
major secular cemetery that dominates the landscape north of the old town of
Frankford. Some of my great-grandparents buried in there I was told by my wasp
grandmother. I have yet to look up that Scots/Welsh branch of my family tree.
The town
dates back to the Swedes before the Dutch and the English and the cemeteries
were built post Civil War out in the farmland and countryside of Philadelphia
County before all this was absorbed into a dense urban center full of factories
and now a decaying hulk of a place. But the cemeteries escaped the fate of a
lot of once country and then urban cemeteries that were condemned, disemboweled, and moved on mass in boxed
bones to other resting places further out into the outer suburban counties of
Philly.
The
condemned cemeteries usually ended up as things desperately needed in the urban
sprawl as playgrounds or supermarkets or supermarket with parking with other
small stores, laundromats in what even in an urban setting is the traditional
American Strip Mall.
But
surprising there is a hill or higher land setting above the old town of Frankford
which now ends as a terminus of the Frankford to downtown to Upper Darby
elevated train. The old Frankford Road splits into a fork in the road at the
entrance to Cedar Hill Cemetery into Bustleton Pike to the left and on the
right old Bristol Pike now Frankford Avenue. - (The road to Bristol Pa. and
Trenton N.J. beyond - and the oldest road - originally an Indian footpath in
the state.)
Long intro
to the Hebrew Cemetery. and the recent tragic event in the news. I say this
because between the decay of the old Frankford town and the fancy row houses
that went up from the 20s to the 50s of post WWII Mayfair on farmland beyond is
this brief land of cemeteries and a park that gives a welcome and calming shade
of trees and green to the urban setting.
Surprising
to hear of the vandalism of the Mount Carmel Jewish Cemetery. There always
through the years were acts of terrorism vandalism - some spray paint or the
turning over of a gravestone or two in Cedar Hill or Mt. Carmel representing
IMO more as act of teenage angst on a Saturday night with a couple of buds from
the neighborhood sharing a six pack.
While there
were pockets of anti-Semitism in Philly, it was nothing what I see on TV or
read about in Irish Catholic places like South Boston where the sub-culture
there is no doubt back bay Brahmin in direct conflict with working class Irish
American and somehow the Jews in between.
I have tried
in the past few days to talk to some ppl on Twitter who use the desecration of
the Mt. Carmel cemetery as part of some great political plot under the current
Russian Junta running the White House.
I am in the
middle working with memories of older than forty years from Philly, is the
memory that the Quaker subculture was always unique in that tolerance was
preached if not always practiced in Philly town square, i.e. the Know Nothing
Riots of the 1840s that inspired the RC archdiocese to build a separate and in
many ways superior school system for children of that particular belief system.
But alas that RCAD only has a few token minority catering high schools left in
the inner city to supplement its premiere in the suburb rich white Catholic
education business.
I should say
that Mr. Carmel was built on a tiny lot, photo below and a text of sort in
comment of the current political situation - daily ten minute 1984-style Fake
Hates out of the Trump Whore White House. The tiny plot seemed overcrowded in
the number of stones per square inch and always seemed to me to comply with the
European concept of "ghetto".
I grew up
near one of these forgotten and condemned Jewish Cemeteries in Harrowgate,
Harrowgate and or the German Cemetery and or Jewish Cemetery on old urban maps.
I grew up not even knowing that it was and or once was there. I in a way am a
very minor contributor to not letting forgotten Philly and or Harrowgate
history slip away into the nothingness of dumbed-down American nothing
recognition of the past. Those who do not know of or understand the past are
condemned to relive the worst parts of that past etc.
My sometimes
hobby is making up a Find a Grave entry for forgotten Philadelphians. I ran
into the fact of the old Harrowgate Jewish Cemetery and resurrected the memory
of a rabbi once buried there before being moved elsewhere. At the time I did
not know that the Cemetery did not still exist. The spot on the map in a Google
satellite image is still green etc. I am not perfect but it bothers me that
some ppl in Philly died after their children or never married and people who
made major contributions to the history of the area are forgotten to the
present. So below one of my grave
entries and that in some cases get adopted and managed by others more
enthusiastic than moi on the person and or subject matter. Doing my part as
part-time amateur historian.
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