From parts (1) and (2) thus far, I get the Jersey and the Living and Dying parts, the Capes May and Cod comparisons, the reflections about mortality and survival and all that, but where does Philly fit into this “nature trip,” other than being the place where you got the phone call about your cat?
The City of Brotherly Love is where this trip essentially began and ended. Commercial air travel almost always involves passing through cities large and small, with the emphasis on “passing through.” There are huge numbers of people who know nothing about a whole lot of places in this world, other than what the airport was like, which is to know nothing of consequence. This is a pity. As someone who lived in Chicago for a number of years, it makes me sad to think about everybody who’s passed through O’Hare and never been to the Art Institute and seen Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks in all its gigantic original glory, or strolled through Millennium Park and gaped at The Bean, or sampled some of the greatest ethnic cuisine available anywhere, something which might also be said about most major cities in America if not the world.
So what about Philly?
Eco travel itineraries have clear priorities and tend to skip urban experiences of any kind, with the arrival and departure city just another airport to pass through. We’d done it this way countless times until the thought occurred that we were passing up some great opportunities, at which point we began scheduling in a day or two of extra travel time to at least sample what lay beyond the airport, which is to say experience something of consequence. This could be clearly defined, like visiting the Alamo in San Antonio, or the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita, or the churches in Lisbon where one can gawk at obscene amounts of gold mined from the New World, found in the statuary and other gaudy ornamentation. Or it could amount to just walking the neighborhoods, like we did in Bozeman and Savannah and frankly every place we’ve visited, as walking – or biking, or any form of travel that does not involve the isolation of a vehicle – always turns out to be an experience of consequence.
So what about Philly?
As longtime residents of Boston who’ve also visited New York City a number of times, we lacked any experience with this other megalopolis of the Northeast, which has long seemed like a major oversight. So Philly was a must-see when it turned up as the gateway city for this New Jersey trip. We’ve a good friend who grew up there who remembers the place fondly, and it offers an interesting contrast with Boston when it comes to the early chapters of the Grand American Patriotic Story (i.e., Our National Myth). If Boston was the Cradle of Liberty and Birthplace of the Revolution, Philadelphia was all Founding Fathers and the Beginnings of American Democracy. The Continental Congress! The other Continental Congress! Independence Hall, where they signed the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence! The Liberty Bell! Philly cheesesteak!
Haven’t you grown pretty cynical about most of that at this point? Hasn’t the patriotic story grown kind of old and tired and questionable in many ways?
Sure, but the way a city utilizes its role in that myth, to inspire and educate and above all draw tourists holds a certain fascination. Spend any time in Boston and you’re soon aware of history all around you, Boston Common and the Old North Church and Bunker Hill and the Paul Revere house, not to mention all the tour guides walking around in colonial dress. Would the downtown Philly neighborhood that enveloped our hotel, with Independence Hall across the street and the Liberty Bell around the corner and Ben Franklin buried just a few blocks away, be a different experience, somehow? Ben was once one of Boston’s own, don’t forget, and he walked out (quite illegally) on his apprenticeship to his brother to escape to Philly as the place to find his fortune. Given the man’s intellect and above all his ambition, ditching the Puritan town for the Quaker town was probably a brilliant move, and subsequent history kind of proved that.
So was this some kind of patriotic pilgrimage for you? Are you kidding?
Am I not, in the end, an American who grew up fully indoctrinated in our National Myth? And as such, is finally getting to Philadelphia – The Birthplace of American Democracy – not the realization of a lifelong patriotic aspiration? What would it look and feel like, sharing it with all the other patriot pilgrims? Would it have a special vibe, one distinctively American? I should admit that being immersed in the Boston version for forty years has drained the local patriot vibe of whatever potency it might have once had, familiarity breeding contempt and all that. But so what? Besides, beantown’s part in the story was mostly about throwing off the yoke of British tyranny. The Philly piece is about grand ideas and aspirations. You can’t beat All men are created equal and the notion that we have “unalienable” (love that word!) Rights to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
All “men” ??????
You got a problem with that? Okay we could give Tom Jefferson and his white and mostly wealthy pals a pass for being “men of their time” or whatever, but of course that is exactly how they meant it, leaving out not just women but denying the right to vote to that part of the male population that owned no property. And of course with slaves all of this was a nonstarter, as they didn’t even qualify as human. A lot of the FF’s were slaveowners and if you didn’t know it, those from the south opposed British “tyranny” only insofar as it posed a threat to their incredibly successful business plan. You know, the one that entailed the dehumanizing and enslavement of Blacks, specifically chattel slavery, which is the cruelest kind. England did not officially end slavery until 1808, but the abolitionist cause in that country was growing throughout the 18th century, and American slaveowners correctly saw the writing on the wall. It goes further than that: some number of Founding Fathers had real doubts about whether “all men” should be part of the American democratic process at all, preferring that power be left to those of their gender, wealth, and social status. This concept has endured to this day in the form of the US Senate and Electoral College.
Aha! So this was a cynical patriotic pilgrimage, after all.
Let’s say it was kind of complicated, an enthusiastic pilgrimage if not starry-eyed. The original “democratic idea” goes back to the Greeks, which for them was unapologetically all about a small number of rich guys running the show by way of democratic decision-making, but only amongst themselves. In imagining the best political system, the ancient Greek philosopher Plato tossed out democracy altogether and suggested that the best government would be that run by a “philosopher king,” an enlightened autocrat who combined philosophical wisdom and political skill to rule for the benefit of all. Human history is mostly bereft of philosopher kings, though one could argue that in modern times Ataturk in Turkey, Mosaddegh in Iran, Lumumba in the Congo, and Allende in Chile came pretty close. The latter three were “removed” in various ways with help from the US CIA, because they were “communists” or maybe because a philosopher king is too much of a threat to the world’s status quo. The topic of philosopher king could make for a fun and sobering discussion over beer and pizza. Might a wise and benevolent autocrat be more likely to do right by a country than a government heavily influenced by the powerful and wealthy, elected by a citizenry easily swayed by prejudice and emotion? And doesn’t everybody have a favorite political leader from some time in history whom they’d favor as something close to a philosopher king? Of course this fun and sobering discussion could easily end up in a brawl, which might be avoided by expanding the concept to include philosopher queens (Catherine the Great? Hatshepsut? not Maggie Thatcher, surely) but where that might lead is anybody’s guess.
So anyway how’d it all work out for ya on yer pilgrimage?
It meant something to be in that place, amongst all those reverent pilgrims paying homage to the country’s idealistic beginnings, forget about all the flaws in the American reality that corrupted it then as now. The story lives on in all its purity, and it’s a beautiful thing. Plato, who preferred ideals to everyday reality anyway, would certainly approve. One wonders how he’d rate Abraham Lincoln as a philosopher king. The man who expressed how “government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth” was gifting us all with stirring words for the ages, ones that resoundingly capture the patriotic spirit found in downtown Philly better than any words from the Founding Fathers. So what if they were spoken in nearby Gettysburg, almost 100 years after the Declaration of Independence and the Continental Congress?
Do you think Gettysburg might’ve been a more inspiring destination?
Maybe, and it’s possible that birding in the Gettysburg area is terrific, with several nearby state parks. There wouldn’t have been any shorebird migration, however, and Gettysburg lacks a major airport, and the bottom line is our trip didn’t start there. Some other trip, perhaps. As it was, our hotel was located at the epicenter of the historic downtown. We missed the tour of Independence Hall, but figured it would probably have been too overly familiar patriotic boilerplate anyway. We did get to see the original inkwell from which the pens were dipped that signed the Declaration and the Constitution, in a room that was nearly pitch dark to add to the mystique. This sacred object inspired an unexpected reverence that was surprising, kind of like seeing the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, only different. Then there was that Liberty Bell, which had acquired its own special shrine a few years back, all the better to protect it from potential vandalism in these tumultuous times.
Which was more inspiring, the inkwell or the bell?
You’d think a two ton bell, with its own dedicated shrine and its curious but famous crack and more than its share of fame and notoriety (it’s on the fifty cent piece and mentioned in the Davy Crockett song, for one thing) would be the clear choice, wouldn’t you? But digging a bit deeper into the story leads to some odd and confusing complications. The original version that arrived from England in 1752 cracked upon the very first striking (the tone was evidently subpar, as well). Those wily Brits had evidently substituted tin for copper, which led to it getting melted down in pretty short order and recast in Philly. Several new bells were produced, in fact. The one put on grand display in Philadelphia developed its famous crack about a hundred years later. There were stories then about how the Americans had substituted some amount of pewter for tin, also how watchmen were evidently snipping off pieces for their own nefarious purposes. The Liberty Bell story was one about shoddy goods from the beginning, with some confusion about which bell is the original. It also turns out that a great number of bells were rung in Philadelphia upon the signing of the Declaration of Independence, so why should any one be special? Okay okay so maybe the bona fide Liberty Bell is special for its inscription: Proclaim LIBERTY Throughout all the Land, unto all the Inhabitants Thereof. Lev.XXV.VX. As it says, the quote is from Leviticus, and the context is that it’s an ancient proclamation relating to the freeing of slaves, kind of ironic given the American story at the time of the bell’s origins. Abolitionists made good use of this fact in the 19th century, but how many reverent visitors to the shrine are aware of any of this story, at all? In contrast, the inkwell story is straightforward and easy to ponder.
So is there anything more to add to this Philadelphia story?
Funny you should ask it in that way, as Philadelphia has long played a distinctive role in American culture and consciousness. This includes The Philadelphia Story, the Hollywood movie that saved the acting career of Katherine Hepburn in 1940, which also starred heavy hitters like Cary Grant and James Stewart, who won an Oscar for his performance. It really was based on Philly history, in the character of Helen Hope Montgomery Scott, the lady who married the heir to the Pennsylvania Railroad fortune and was known as “the queen of WASP oligarchy.” Old money and strict upper class hierarchies are part of the story of any large American city.
But is The Philadelphia Story really the Philadelphia story? C’mon!
Of course not. In the real beginning, Philadelphia started in a very different place, planned and financed by one man, William Penn, a Quaker from England. William was kind of a rebel in his aristocratic family, who were very unhappy with his becoming a Quaker. Following his faith, he hoped to found a utopia in the New World based on Quaker principles, starting with faith in the inherent goodness of humanity. The Quakers were radicals, rejected authority and hierarchy and have been characterized by one historian as a cross between hippies and Scientologists. Make of that what you will, but Quaker tolerance led to vast numbers of non-English immigrants flocking to Pennsylvania: Irish and Scotch, Finns and Swedes and above all many many Germans, to the point where it was the only state with a non-English majority in 1775. Over time more numbers showed up from China, Korea, Poland, and Russia, specifically Jewish people fleeing the Russian pogroms. It was also the place where abolitionist sentiment took hold early, to the point where Philadelphia was home to large numbers of freedmen and -women when this was still a rare thing elsewhere in America.
Thanks for all these tidbits of Philly’s past, but in the end did the home of Rocky, the Phillies, and the Eagles seem any different from Boston or New York? And you haven’t said a thing about the cheesesteak.
Thanks so much for yanking this narrative into the modern era. Since you brought it up, a key part of the modern Philadelphia story is how its major sports franchises have long hallowed histories of their own. The Phillies baseball team started in 1883! Eagles football fans are known for their long suffering patience and frustration through many a lousy season from their team – with the occasional exceptions, of course. Philly sports fans have long had a reputation for unruly behavior, to the point where the Eagles installed a courtroom at the old Veterans Stadium to handle the many cases of drunkenness and aggression on game days. In contrast, Rocky was the classic (some might say heavily clichéd) feel-good boxing story for the ages, and probably the only glimpse many have ever had of what today’s city looks like. Whether the film has drawn more tourists is anybody’s guess. The pictures say a lot about what we saw, but keep in mind we did not venture into the vast landscape of neighborhoods that define what cities are all about, an intricate universe of cultures and ethnicities and economic circumstances. The older a city is, the more complex the story.
So you never made it to Pat’s King of Steaks or Geno’s?
Alas, a visit to the birthplace and holy shrines to the Philly cheesesteak was not to be. But our small sample of life on the streets of downtown left its mark, and offered some pleasant surprises. So many trees, such large public areas full of life! Philadelphia has a more spacious feel than claustrophobic Boston or even New York, where the skyscraper canyons and broad avenues jammed with traffic and crowded sidewalks have a confining effect. All three cities present to the eye the typical skyline phalanx of featureless and soulless steel and glass architecture, the kind that dominates urban skylines everywhere. But being old cities, the astute fan can discover many architectural treasures from the past that have been spared the wrecking ball. It helps to amble slowly, aided by one of those self-guided tours that enthusiastic local architectural societies always seem to offer. We walked into the oldest residential part of city, along 2nd and 3rd Streets, and were struck by how whole blocks of grand old residential architecture, clearly forlorn until recently, were getting brought back to life. Of course the dark side of this story is how affordable (and often charming and funky and culturally rich) neighborhoods of the world are destined by prosperity to be transformed into “luxury” places for the rich. It’s called gentrification, which we have witnessed in Boston for 40 years, and it was surprising to come upon a Philly neighborhood in transition, seemingly kind of late to the game. If you’re wondering how long this process has been going on, check out this quote:
Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.
That’s our boy Plato again, describing the Athens of 348 BC. Call it the story of humanity, with infinite variations and nuances over the past 2400 tumultuous years, and not just in the cities. Will there ever come a time of everlasting peace in this case? Is that even the right question?
So do you think you’ll ever get back to Philly? You never tried that cheesesteak, for one thing.
A much better question! The best way to begin to capture the essence of any city is to live in it for awhile, and even then, if it’s a major city, one must be resigned to knowing one will only ever comprehend some fraction of a vast and complex human universe. As a visitor, the best way is to spend time with an enthusiastic native, willing to show you what they love about their home, and we’d make efforts to return with our Boston friend who had a Philly childhood. Until we get her specific input, we know already that the place offers a lot more history than the Founding Fathers piece. Philadelphia gave us Chubby Checker and the Twist and the American Bandstand TV show, for one thing, and the singular police aerial bombing of the MOVE commune in 1985. You know, the one which killed 11 people and destroyed 61 houses in West Philadelphia, the only time in history that a US city dropped a bomb on itself. The Mayor at the time and the police department never faced any consequences, and the whole sad event was mostly forgotten until a permanent exhibit presenting the story was put on display, much to the city’s credit – in 2022. Better late than never, and clearly a must-see for any visitor to the City of Brotherly Love. Of course catching the vibe in Fishtown or Manayunk, Passyunk or Rittenhouse Square or the other 20 places on the list of “Most Interesting Philadelphia Neighborhoods” would also be worth the time and effort. And what about attending a Phillies or an Eagles game, though any chance to experience Veterans Stadium and its courtroom was lost, or rather demolished, 20 years ago. Then there’s the ritual running up the Rocky steps, or even venturing inside to see what’s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Great cities have great art, or so they say. Speaking of art, how about that LOVE sculpture?
What about that LOVE sculpture?
The story begins in Switzerland, of all places, in the summer of 1968. This writer had just spent a year at a public school there, one filled with struggle and joy and new friendships – exchange students tend to make fast friends, as that comes with the role – which resulted at the end of the year with a goingawayappreciation gift: a steel paperweight replica of Robert Indiana’s pop art masterpiece, LOVE. It was packagedin a nice wooden case, signed by all my classmates. So sweet! And I’ve hung on to it for lo these many years, as it’s not only a great keepsake but the usefulness of paperweights has been vastly underrated. Imagine the shock of coming upon the sculptural version of this very piece at a plaza we happened upon on our Philadelphia walkabout! Okay so a little research reveals there are at least 50 of these things found in cities throughout the world, but that initial thrill was real. What was also real was that the paperweight doesn’t quite get it right, as the “O” is upright instead of tilted. Is the art director at the paperweight company trying to “correct” what they see as a flaw in the original? Are they trying to avoid royalty payments? Robert Indiana, as a serious artist (is pop art truly serious? with the money involved, are you kidding?) would likely be offended, or at least disapproving. Does the art critic in you tell you that the paperweight misses the whole point of the piece? What’s love got to do with it? At any rate, the sculpture on that plaza in Philly is a great spot for a photo shoot, as the pictures show.
So what’s your final takeaway, besides the fact that you’ve little interest in trying a Philly cheesesteak?
That major cities on the whole are fascinating, intoxicating, complex and ultimately inscrutable places to visit, and that it helps to be a “city person” in the first place, by some measure. That even a single brief visit has its own thrills, and will always leave you with a strong impression of some kind. That along with everything else Philadelphia will always be the place where we got word that our cat Felice was gone, and how the vibrant energy on a city’s streets is a great reminder of how life goes on.
