As I sat there and contemplated on what the young man had said, about everything being possible when you are home ,
I thought about my own life when there was a time when I did not even have a home. My Father had left my Mother while I was still in the womb. When I was a child I could not tell you what he looked like or what he did for a living. I was about four years old when my Mother passed, even though I was quite young , I remember my Mother.
One particular memory I have of her, is that I am sitting on a kitchen floor playing with pots and pans, while she stood at the sink doing the dishes and singing a song. It was not till many years later that I learned that she had died. I would often see woman on the street passing by and wonder if that particular person could be her, was she coming to take me home. Many, many times in my life ,I would think of her and take comfort in her memory.
Now I have the tendency to be able to daydream and block out the rest of the world , but the lady sitting next to me was tugging on the sleeve of my coat so ferociously that I just had to turn to her and ask, I beg your pardon ? With that she offered,"Excuse me, but my husband Ralph sitting next to me, pointing to him with her thumb, thinks that he knows you, by chance do you happen to live in South Philly ?
Upon hearing her voice and the familiar accent there were no doubts that she was no stranger to that particular section of the city. I said yes, at one time I did live there, but it was in a section that was torn down when route 95 was built. Many people thanked God when that happened as it was not the best place in the world to live, I guess you could say, we were on the wrong side of the tracks.
That being said her husband spoke, he introduced himself and his wife Molly, he said that he grew up around Bella Vista and that his wife had lived on front street near the river. Ralph had gone into politics and they had moved to Washington D.C. where they were headed to now, but they still had family and friends in South Philly and always came back several times a year to visit. They had been at the airport but there was a complication with their flight so they decided to take the train back.
I was very familiar with the areas where they were from as we used to play ball at the playground on ninth street, and the foster home where I stayed was not too far from where Molly grew up.
Molly commented on how at one time Bella Vista was not the high priced neighborhood it is now but was considered a poor area with many immigrants just off the boat, many of them were shown acts of kindness by business owners like Mr Palumbo who owned a restaurant and supper club. He would offer them a place to stay and help them gain employment.
Molly started to tell me of her childhood and a Christmas that she would never forget,and of a person who left an indelible mark on her .
" I grew up on a small street , in a tiny three bedroom house that no longer exists, many years ago it was torn down. I was the youngest of six children and very prone to get into trouble, I guess my 2 older brothers and my 2 older sisters kept my parents very busy, so a lot of the things I did went unnoticed. If my mouth did not get me into trouble, my fists certainly did.you probably could not tell it now, but I was certainly not a lady then she said as she ferociously chewed her gum with her mouth wide open.
As you can imagine, our house was very cramped with the 3 brothers in one bedroom and 3 sisters in the other, the street became our playroom. We were poor, but we always had food on the table, and we always had clean clothes , though they were mended hand me downs. At Christmas I would usually receive one gift from my parents, or so I thought, wrapped in newspaper. When you are young you do not realize you are poor, you just know that sometimes you don't always get what you want.
I guess every neighborhood has their share of characters, somebody with quirks or oddities that makes them stand out, in our neighborhood there was the monkey man, he would always be pushing a shopping cart collecting cans , bottles, metal ,anything that could be sold for scrap. They called him the monkey man because he walked hunched over, his eyes always towards the ground, my father told us that he had been away at war when his young wife passed away, the only thing he had as a memento of her was a photo that was in a locket, some neighbor hood toughs had beaten him up and stole the locket, so he was always searching for it.
I never seen him talk to anybody and nobody ever talked to him,except for the neighborhood kids who would make fun of him and scream "Monkey man, Monkey man " at him. One time I got caught up in the excitement of taunting him and I was teasing him with the other kids, he turned to me and looked me in the eye, The first time that I could remember we had ever made direct eye contact, I seen his eyes swell with tears, he turned and hurried away, all the time with his eyes scanning the ground. I felt so terrible.He did one nephew who would come about once a month to check on him, that was about the only human contact I ever seen him have.
One bitterly cold Christmas morning, there was a knock on the door, my father answered and hurried out the door with a young man who it turns out to be was the monkey man's nephew. My father returned about an hour later. he said that Richard Neal, the monkey man's real name, had died in his sleep, my father said that in his hand was a locket that contained a photo of a young lady, my father then handed me a package wrapped in newspaper with my name written on it. He said, " this belongs to you "
Every Christmas I had received a gift wrapped in newspaper from the time I could remember until then, my parents never knew who it was from until that day. I still think of Mr. Neal and the kindness that he showed a child, and one day I will meet him and his wife.
