Day 12 March 15, 2008
Today before I swing by the high school track, I want to cover one block within a half mile of my house that I’ve still missed on all these trips. Highland Avenue is only one block long but is notable for the hugh cylindrical water tank visible from State Road that occupies a township high point. Its nearest neighboring house is cutely painted sunflower yellow and a mix of white and red accents. These colors brightly contrast the drab tank. The expansive sides of the tank would make a good site for a mural. Philadelphia has a world renowned mural project, which paints dozens of walls each year. Havertown to our north also boasts a big wall mural at West Chester Pike and Darby Road. Our infrastructural eyesore should at least be swabbed light blue so that it would blend in with the sky. A grove of trees painted around the perimeter would also make good camouflage. But if you are going to go to that much trouble, why not paint a a dramatic scene? I prefer naturalistic ones. There’s an artist named Wyland who paints whale murals. A whole pod of them could cavort around this tank. This one-name celebrity wants to paint 100 whale murals by 2011 and he has 95 completed. We better ask him quick. Maybe this could be his century.
After the track workout I pass through Drexel Park on Brookfield and Owen Avenue, then cross Lansdowne and zigzag on Lincoln, Congress and Clearbrook Avenues. I start thinking about street names again. Who was Owen? Why did he or she get a street named after them? I notice that on the Upper Darby side of Marshall Road the power and phone lines are strung behind the houses on Owen Avenue; on the Lansdowne side they revert to the much more common street placement. The view downhill from Garrett is distinctly grander without the poles and wires obscuring the vista. What did Owen do to deserve such special treatment? Naming a street after Lincoln requires no explanation. There must be thousands of avenues named in honor of our great president across our country. Why would anyone ever name a street after Congress though?
Clearbrook and Brookfield appear to have had their names switched at birth (or is that at paving?). A map from 1870 shows that, where Clearbrook Avenue is now, was once an estate called Brookfield belonging to David Sellers. Where Brookfield Avenue is today, on the same old map there is a stream which has since been built over by Drexel Park homes. You can probably still trace its course by mapping flooded basements during April.
Naylor’s Run meanders on the old map much more freely than it does today. Except in the municipal park north of Garrett Road it has been confined to a most unnatural culvert or buried completely on its journey to join up with Cobbs Creek. One time as a kid I caught a large diamond-backed terrapin in its waters. I'm sure that someone had released it after a trip back from the shore. Normally a gentle brook this creek, pronounced “crick” by locals, can be deceptive. Naylor’s Run has not gone gently into oblivion. Several times after heavy rainfalls it has overflowed its dungeon and deluged lower 69th Street, thereby thwarting all previous efforts to insure that it never flooded again. At such times its flow can be deadly. Fifteen years ago it swept a young neighbor to her death. I know that my boys had been similarly tempted to play in such a novel episodic torrent. They ignored their parent’s warnings as had I as a child. We’d been lucky. The pretty teenage girl was an only child, and every time afterwards that I’d see her mother, my heart would break again.
Distance: 3.90 miles Time: 36 min 50 sec Pace: 9:27 min/mile
1 comment:
Cobb's crick was one of my biggest disappointments when we moved from Connecticut to Philadelphia. It was about the only body of water that I could get to easily and it held little of the life I loved to catch. Of course, homework demands at the Prep decimated my free time anyway, making school the challenge it had never been before.
I am in Tempe, Arizona, today, being a scientist. This is one of the only conferences held in the past 30 years on 'my' topic --multi-level selection. Attendees are a mix of people from evolutionary biology, history and philosophy of science, anthropology, human ecology and political science.
I talk today--much of the audience is not conversant with the fundamental genetic ideas that my lab has worked on over the years and is still working on. Like features of the neighborhood, some ideas change little, some are painted over and become more attractive, innovations are attributed to the wrong people, and some periodically come flooding out, despite attempts to contain them.
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