I had to agree with Molly, there were an awful lot of good people in South Philly, I was fortunate to have met several as I was growing up, who had treated me with extreme kindness and generosity , these were people that I grew to love and respect. As is the case when old acquaintances meet again, stories and memories are exchanged , and by a serendipitous exchange , Ralph and I discovered we had friends in common.

Ralph was quite a character and he had dozens of stories to tell but one that I particularly liked began in this way,..

"There are two things you need to know about South Philly,like I have to tell you, first, It seems like everyone in South Philly has a "nick name", sometimes people will pick up a nick name as a child and carry it with them their entire life, take for instance Joey "bag of donuts" Da Nato, from an early age Joey had a serious love affair with pastry, he also happened to live in an apartment above the neighborhood bakery, from the age of eight years to eighty years old,Joey will always be Joey "bag of donuts".

Another curious thing about South Philly is, everybody hangs on a corner, from the very young to the very old, there are people that have hung on the same corner for over 60 years. After establishing those two truths, Ralph continued on.

Everybody in the neighborhood knew Stevie "Steaks" Kerchefsky , he was the coolest guy in South Philly, maybe even all of Philadelphia, "Steaks", as we affectionately called him was a mixture of James Dean, Bobby Darren, Fabian and Rocky rolled into one , he was the "Fonzie" before there was the Fonz.Steaks got his nickname because his corner faced two legendary South Philly landmarks, Geno's steaks and Pat's steaks. Ralph then said, "If you can believe this, in our Nation's Capitol there are people who don't even know what a Cheese Steak is!!!? They think they can buy this frozen concoction and throw it on a hamburger bun, fuhgeddaboudit!, they ain't even close."

Ralph continued, "Wells anyways. "Steaks" had a 57 Chevy which he would wash and wax every Friday afternoon and race on Delaware ave every Friday night, he was a legend on Delaware ave , he never lost, people would come from all over the area to challenge him and to watch him race.The last time "Steaks" raced was the December night of my brother Tony's bachelor party, we had gone out celebrating that night, and when we had gotten back to the corner we were all feeling pretty "good". It was about 3 am when these guys from south west Philly pull up in a thunder-bird and challenge "Steaks", maybe we should have stopped him , but that is all hind sight now , I will always remember that night, "Steaks" won his last race but lost his life when his brakes failed and he hit a tractor trailer.

It's peculiar to South Philly, guys never leave their corner, we are all old men now , but my friends still hang there at 9Th and Passyunk and so does "Steaks", when we are about a block away, within sight of our corner, "Steaks" let's us see him, he looks just as he did back in 61, with his hair in a James Dean pompadour and a black leather jacket, as soon as we get closer than a half block he disappears.

It seems everybody hangs on a corner in South Philly,even the ghosts!

Over the loud speaker it was announced that trains on platform A were boarding for Washington D.C. and points south. Molly and Ralph both gave me a warm goodbye and wished me a very Happy Christmas, they said that one day ,we will all meet again. As they were walking away, Molly hit Ralph with her pocketbook and asked Ralph, if he had played the numbers at the newsstand , I heard Ralph say that he played their flight number, 517. I had to laugh, it is a long standing South Philly tradition to play the numbers, that just shows, you can take the boy out of South Philly but you can't take South Philly out of the boy.