“That was Jack the Ripper.”
“It was also the Frankford Slasher.”
“Still think you’re making it up.”
I pushed myself up by pressing my palms on the warm brownstone.
“I’d better finish packing. A couple of teenagers could be plotting my death as we speak, and I don’t want to disappoint them.”
“Or the Frankford Slasher.”
“Fortunately, I’m not a prostitute.”
“Not yet.”
“Nice.”
There was an awkward moment of silence. Then Meghan looked at me.
“Call your mom, Mickey. Tell her I’m driving you.”
Frankford wasn’t always a bad neighborhood. A couple hundred years ago it was a nice quiet village where the framers of the Constitution would spend their summers to escape the stifling heat of the city. I could show you the place—Womrath Park—where Thomas Jefferson allegedly kicked back and read the Declaration of Independence for the first time in public.
But take Thomas Jefferson to Womrath Park now. Introduce him to the new owners of the park—the hard young men selling little white chunks of smokeable snuff. Walk him into the triple-X theater across the street, where he’d be treated to projected images of people engaged in a very different sort of congress.
You could almost imagine him marching back down to Independence Hall and saying: Look, fellas, I think we oughta think this whole “freedom” thing through a bit more.
A century after Jefferson, Frankford the Quiet Country Village morphed into Frankford the Bustling Industrial Neighborhood. It was a popular way station on the road (King’s Highway) from Philadelphia to New York City. The streets were crowded with factories and mills, along with modest-but-sturdy rowhomes for the workers who labored in them. There were cotton mills, bleacheries, wool mills, iron works and calico print works. There was a bustling arsenal and gunpowder mill. The industry thrived for a while, then sputtered, then died. Just like it did in the rest of the country.
But they say the neighborhood was truly doomed in 1922, the year the city ran an elevated train down its main artery—Frankford Avenue—shrouding the shops below in darkness and pigeon crap. White flight to the suburbs began in the 1950s. Then, in the 1960s, drugs found Frankford, and invited all of its friends to stay.
And I’d told Meghan the truth: a serial killer really did prowl the dark avenue under the El, late at night, looking for drunks and prostitutes in the 1980s around dive bars like Brady’s at Bridge and Pratt. The Slasher was never caught.
A Philly band called American Dream had a minor pop hit back in the early 1970s called “Frankford El.” The chorus explained that you can’t get to Heaven on the Frankford El. Why?
Because the Frankford El goes straight to…Frankford.
Grandpop’s block looked like a junkie’s smile. Starting from the extreme left, you had the dirty concrete steps leading up to the Margaret Street station of the El. Right next door, an abandoned building. Then, a weeded lot. A three-story building. Weeded lot. Grandpop’s building, the ground floor occupied by one of those beer/rolling paper/pork rind bodegas that upset City Council so much. Weeded lot. Weeded lot.
Out of an original eight buildings on this strip of Frankford Avenue, only three remained.
My new place was up on the third floor, where it appeared I’d have an excellent view of the El tracks.
Meghan gazed up at the dirty underbelly of the El through her windshield. Pigeons nested around up there, covering every possible square inch with their chunky white shit.
“It’s not so bad.”
“You’re right. If you squint, it’s eerily reminiscent of Rittenhouse Square.”
“This is probably the next great undiscovered neighborhood. Look what they did to Fishtown and Northern Liberties.”
“Yeah. They could level the area with a bunker buster and start all over.”
She scanned the block. Across the street was a rusty metal kiosk that, if I remember correctly, used to be a newsstand. Now it appeared to be a community urinal.
“Think it’s okay to park here?”
Meghan was born and raised on Philadelphia’s so-called Main Line. You remember the movie—Cary Grant, Katharine Hepburn, all that? That’s the Main Line. I remembered watching the movie on TV as a kid and wondering why they called it The Philadelphia Story, because they certainly couldn’t have filmed it in Philadelphia.
The Philly I knew was Rocky, Twelve Monkeys. Hardcore gritty tales set in unforgiving concrete canyons. Meghan claimed to love the rough-and-tumble Philadelphia from Rocky and Twelve Monkeys. I had to gently remind her that the latter was a postapocalyptic film.
Still, I couldn’t blame her.
She didn’t grow up here.
When I left Frankford after college I swore I’d never return. You get punched in the face often enough, chased down the block and through your own front door often enough…well, it kind of puts you off a neighborhood.
As a kid, I mostly stayed in my back bedroom and read whatever I could get my hands on. And later, I wrote stories. Looking back on it now, it seems I was plotting my escape all along, because it was a writing career that got me out of Frankford.
And now, the lack of a writing career was bringing me back.
My mom had come up with the idea of me crashing here until I found another job. It wasn’t like Grandpop Henry would know the difference. The downstairs bodega owner had found him a few hours after he’d suffered some kind of seizure and fell into a coma—the same day I lost my job at the City Press, in fact. Not exactly a banner day for the family.
My mom told me that Grandpop Henry could breathe on his own. But now he was like a TV without cable: the power was on, only he couldn’t receive any programming.
“You should still visit him. He can still hear you.”
“Okay.”
“He’ll only be a few blocks away.”
“Okay.”
“You’re going to visit him, right?”
“Okay.”
My mother delighted in telling me what to do, and I found a not too small measure of satisfaction doing the exact opposite.
She also told me that Grandpop’s apartment was fully furnished, so I wouldn’t have to worry about pots, pans or utensils. Not that I owned much of that stuff. My worldly possessions included a crate of old LPs from the 1960s and 70s; a box of Hunter S. Thompson and Charles Bukowski paperbacks—standard issue for journalists; another box of vintage paperback mysteries; a six-year-old Mac laptop; a three-year-old cell phone that didn’t close right; and finally, two trash bags full of clothes and other assorted junk I’ve been dragging around for fifteen years, from Philly to New York City and back.
It’s sad when your worldly possessions fit into a 2009 Toyota Prius.
On the upside, we finished unloading in less than thirty minutes, even though it was three flights up to Apartment 3-A. I drove Meghan’s Prius to the Frankford Hospital garage a few blocks away, where I assumed it would be reasonably safe. After all, doctors parked there, right?
Meghan gave me a playful punch in the arm.
“So, what now?”
“Well, I was about to have my boy Tino mix me a gin gimlet before retiring to the terrace to watch the sunset.”
“Send Tino home for the night. Let’s get drunk on beer.”
“Excellent suggestion. But I’ll have to go get your car again.”
“What, and drive back wasted? Let’s go downstairs and buy a few sixes.”