This dawn's run is back to the eastern edge of the township where its border with Philadelphia is the valley cut by Cobbs Creek. I cross the trolley tracks by the site of the old synagogue at the corner of Bywood and Walnut. The township bought the tidy brick temple after its congregation moved or aged away. Attempts to turn it into a community center have been frustrated.
I run down Samson Street to the back of the Sears Auto Center. Turning left on Wiltshire, then right on Chestnut, I cross 69th Street and get back on Samson for a block before cutting over to Walnut. I'm headed for the Friends South-Western Burial Ground. This 19th Century cemetery sprouts only the modest, ankle-high grave markers favored by the Quakers. One can see clear across its expanse where only a few majestic trees guard the inhabitants. It was founded in 1860 after the Philadelphia Friends graveyards became overcrowded. In 1915 burials from Philly's oldest Friends graveyard at 4th and Arch were disinterred and reburied here. Some had been resting more than two hundred years, since William Penn had granted that land in 1701. Few people still living remember that zombies were the vanguard of the flight to suburbia.
Skirting the edge of the dead zone, I pass St. Demetrios Greek Orthodox Church. This saint was a military man, one of the earliest Christian chaplains in the Roman Army. Alas he was too ahead of his time, as the Emperor Maximian and his legions were still pagans. One man's sanctity is another's subversion and the Emperor had him tortured and speared for spreading the Word in the ranks. In this unfunny situation God got the last laugh by anointing the ground where Demetrios' blood spilled with the eternal scent of myrrh.
This Upper Darby congregation is more fondly known for a different odor. Each May they host the wonderful Upper Darby Greek Festival. The smell of souvlaki and shiskabob, mousaka and gyros wafts the surrounding streets. Traditional Greek music fills the air. Bring an empty stomach. I still remember my introduction to this Hellenistic holiday. One of my buddies from the Drexel Hill section had gone the previous year and regaled us with tales of the delicious foreign fare. As a sheltered 1960's Irish Catholic boy, used to meatloaf and fish sticks, anything beyond spaghetti was very exotic. Also in the pre-Vatican II days, I'd been taught to never step foot in any church other than a Catholic one. However by some mysterious papal dispensation Greek Orthodox were okay. They were some distant branch of the apostolic family that never learned the new modern language, Latin. Feeling guilty that I was committing heresy, I lied to my parents that we were taking the trolley to the library in the municipal building by 69th Street. With my comic book money I stuffed myself on weird wonders like grape leaves, eggplants and flaky phyllo. Baklava, of course, was my favorite. I was still licking honey from my fingers when my friend suggested the unthinkable: "You've got to check out their church." Fearing a divine thunderbolt I crept into the cool, welcoming sanctuary and was dazzled by what I saw. Nobody does religious decor more ornately. It made my home parish, St. Andrew's, look like a Quaker meeting house. It would be another decade, while traveling in Europe, before I suffered a more severe case of icon envy.
Crossing onto Marshall Road I run toward the city but turn right on Church Street just before the bridge spanning Cobbs Creek. There was once a thriving small community here centered on the mills which tapped the creek with a series of dams for power in the days before engines. The village was called Cardington. Nathan and David Gray built the first cotton mill in 1798. Nathan had served in the Revolutionary War and printed some of the young country's first currency in 1776. For the next century Cardington and Hillside Mills pumped out cotton and woolen goods. The village had its own post office as late as 1925 before it was subsumed into the growing township. On Old Marshall Road just off the floodplain there is half a block of old, stuccoed over, brick rowhomes once built for the mill workers. Between the creek and busy Marshall Road this isolated neighborhood still has a quiet, small town feeling. Cardington Fire Company occupies the Harrison Avenue edge of the long triangular block formed by Perry and Montgomery Avenues. A banner out front proclaims that the firemen "Support Our Troops" and has the uncommon, unswerving addition: "& President." At the far vertex of the triangle there is a full size, faux outhouse complete with half-moon door nestled up against the hillside retaining wall. I'm sure that there is a neighborhood controversy on whether this is crude, charming or comical. It gave me a smile.
On my way home I pass through some of the township's densest rowhome neighborhoods along Locust Street, Bradford and Margate Avenues. A hundred people live on each block here. Just where Margate terminates, between Garrett Road and the SEPTA tracks and between the auto and allergy shops, there is an urban anomaly. Emerging from under the trolley line for a fifteen foot run in the light of day flows an incongruous babbling brook. A couple of yards wide and half a foot deep it supports a lush, stream side microenvironment despite being bounded on four sides by man's lifeless constructions. An old map shows that it once sourced from springs on the hillside nearby. It quickly disappears back to its subterranean realm under the bustling street. I lean over the concrete traffic barrier to see if there are any minnows in the oasis, but I can't tarry too long. It is dangerous here. There is no sidewalk and one shouldn't peer too long into the River Styx.
Distance: 4.68 miles Time: 47min 40 sec Pace: 10:11 min/mile
2 comments:
Tim,
Just a few lines to let you know how much I've enjoyed your observations and comments on Upper Darby. I began reading as you described my part of the township running thru Cardington....I lived on Church Lane in one of the mill houses across from the park and looking up at the unknown, mysterious city of Philadelphia. I was only permitted to venture up the hill on Sunday to attend church services at St. Carthage Church. There were leftover potbellied stoves in each room of our house.....holdovers until my grandparents got a modern coal burner and, some years later, a gas heater. I remember the outhouse and the cast iron pump at the shared well in the back of the house. I played soccer and baseball (mostly soccer) in the now overgrown park and we rode horses for hours in the stables at the top of the hill on Harrison Ave. Tim, there are still archeological remains of the mills that doted Cobbs Creek. The brick floors and wall segments are still visible as are the iron pipes that emptied dye vats into the creek. Two generations of my family worked in those mills and I got a yearly guided tour of the invisible mill......Your description of each and every neighborhood is fabulous. Your writing is inspirational for those of us who know as well as for those who should....thanks for the memories!
Jim Wigo
Tim,
Just a few lines to let you know how much I've enjoyed your observations and comments on Upper Darby. I began reading as you described my part of the township running thru Cardington....I lived on Church Lane in one of the mill houses across from the park and looking up at the unknown, mysterious city of Philadelphia. I was only permitted to venture up the hill on Sunday to attend church services at St. Carthage Church. There were leftover potbellied stoves in each room of our house.....holdovers until my grandparents got a modern coal burner and, some years later, a gas heater. I remember the outhouse and the cast iron pump at the shared well in the back of the house. I played soccer and baseball (mostly soccer) in the now overgrown park and we rode horses for hours in the stables at the top of the hill on Harrison Ave. Tim, there are still archeological remains of the mills that doted Cobbs Creek. The brick floors and wall segments are still visible as are the iron pipes that emptied dye vats into the creek. Two generations of my family worked in those mills and I got a yearly guided tour of the invisible mill......Your description of each and every neighborhood is fabulous. Your writing is inspirational for those of us who know as well as for those who should....thanks for the memories!
Jim Wigo
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