PART ONE: Honest John
n the year of Our Lord, 1933,
in Philadelphia, one was used to walking at a young age, let’s say at conception.
It has always been true that Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods. Naturally, people walk through, between, around, and into and out of neighborhoods.
But, for Roman Catholics in Philadelphia, folks didn’t just walk from one geographic area to another – they walked from one parish to another.
In fact, if you were or weren’t a Catholic, the precious turf you called home, or where your place of employment happened to be, or where you used to live and grew up and went to school, or where your grandmother lived all definitively and decisively depended on the name of the Catholic church next door.
This is how you navigated Philadelphia. One didn’t need coordinates of longitude and latitude or a numbered street or a cross avenue named for some tree. You only needed the name of the parish. This is how you identified yourself.
For good or bad, this was how you were judged. This was how everyone knew your ethnic background. The parish was paramount. If not spiritually, then at least geographically.
However, if you were travelling a distance more than a few measly miles and you had some change in your pocket, you would of course take advantage of the miracle of public transportation.
Honest John Galloway tipped his conductor’s cap to the newcomer entering his trolley on Germantown Avenue and bid him welcome.
The sun was still far from making its silent, seldom appreciated, triumphant daily debut on a damp and cold December morning – Christmas Eve no less. The shops in Chestnut Hill would not be opened for hours if at all because this year Christmas fell on a Monday.
Eugene Quindlen set himself down on the hard bench seat. He was foot sore from walking all the way from Midvale Avenue in East Falls where he stopped at the church to light a candle, knowing he would probably miss Mass. At this hour he was the only fare on Galloway’s trolley.
I
REGINA | 79