Day 17 Plodding Onward

Day 16 April 9, 2008

 

     This morning I'm not going to cover much new ground.  I'm headed to the track again to prove empirically that I'm getting older and slower.  I haven't been there in over a week.  The workouts are daunting and my self-imposed schedule calls for me to up the effort each month.  So I've had track block, as well as a little runner's block after a bit of illness.  A close reader will notice that my entries are almost never done on the same day as the run is completed.  This is my writer's block, or should I now call it blogger's block?

 

    The track goes as I feared.  Only my first lap is fast.  Then time, length and gravity, all the fundamental physical values in the universe, start working against me.  I can't turn back the clock, lengthen my stride or lighten my step.  I do what I can: plod onward.

 

     The early morning streets, which had been bare on my arrival, are now teeming with high school students doing their plodding to homeroom.  They look less refreshed than weary me.  How can you be young and strong and not smile every morning?  They'll learn that lesson too late.  I pass through packs of them all around the busy State and Lansdowne intersection.  I go left on State then take the first left onto Highland.  This is a three block neighborhood tucked into this corner of the huge tract containing Arlington Cemetery.  A phalanx of high evergreens at the corner of the cul-de-sac shrouds the graveyard from my view.  Lower down all along the boundary between the living and the dead forsythia are having their golden yellow Mardi Gras.  The brick rowhome blocks are neatly maintained.  Several homeowners walking their dogs greet me genially.  I'm used to initiating contact while running.  They contrast the sullen students streaming by a block away.  When I leave the neighborhood, the student rush has passed.  Only a few stragglers make up the cohort's long tail.  Just as they passed through this neighborhood every morning, so will they pass through life.  My cohort passed this way years ago, oblivious to the wealth we held on our bones.  I'd like to run after them and shake them awake.  But I'm old and slow, and I never listened when I was their age. 

 

Distance:   2.87 miles Time:   27 min 59 sec   Pace:   9:44 min/mile

Weblink:  http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1775018

Day 16 Sellers Hall

Day 16     April 2, 2008

     Today's route is rather simple: transverse the long blocks south of Walnut Street between Shirley and 69th Street, just north of Marshall Road.  Running from my house the first curiosity I see is a small, wedge shaped park formed by Sanford and Springton Roads.  It is an island of trees nestled among row homes.  There isn't a speck of trash.  Some good soul has recently picked the place clean.  The canopy is thick, but the grove is stark except for a couple of odd, long slatted wood pieces of outdoor furniture.  They are a little high and wide for benches, but a little short and narrow for tables.  I recall a scene from a horror movie about human sacrifice and hurry on without investigating further.  There is another wedge shaped block formed by Wingate and Springton with no park, only a barren grassy lot at its peak. 

     I run a half mile along Shirley before I start my switchbacks: Shirley, Long, Ashby, Copley, up one block and down the next, rowhomes and twins.  

 

     Running north on Glendale Road, I come out at Walnut across the street from Sellers Hall.  Built in 1684 this was the home of the township's first registered resident, Samuel Sellers.  He first lived in a cave nearby, but its location has been lost so this house got the Historical Society marker.  Dozens of Swedes had already been living out by Darby Creek for fifty years, but they apparently didn't know enough to apply for residency.  

 

     The Sellers were a prominent local family for four generations.  Sam's son, John, who was born in the house, founded the American Philosophical Society in 1743 along with Benjamin Franklin and some other early American eggheads.  This was America's first think tank and started our proud talking heads legacy.   After arguing amongst themselves for a few decades and convinced that they were the new land's best and brightest minds,  they got the country involved in a couple of international wars.

 

     The structure is now part of the St. Alice block of buildings.  The old stuccoed stone house has become a bit rundown and is now shuttered.  Like all the old Quaker houses in the county, it is claimed to have been part of the Underground Railroad helping escaped slaves fleeing northward.  Of course, like all buildings that see enough history, it is now haunted. 

 

     Only a block away at the corner of Hampden and Locust I run past a small church that contrasts sharply with the large, stone St. Alice Parish complex beckoning from its hilltop.  What looks like a small, brick country chapel is tucked away under some old trees.  The only way it can compete is by the length of its name: Prayer Chapel Church of Christ in God.  I head for home pondering the difference in ecclesiastical styles and what it means to the congregants, to God and to us who only pass by.

Distance:   4.35 miles Time:   39 min 55 sec   Pace:   9:10 min/mile

Weblink:  http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1752718

Day 15 Terminal Square, Mews, Sycamores

Day 15  April 1, 2008

     This morning's run takes me past the Upper Darby Post Office to the lumpy triangle shaped, block formed by Fairfield Avenue, Terminal Square Boulevard and the last block of Garrett Road.  This is our township's ethnic business garden of delights.  In this one block there are a Korean Realtor, a Korean computer store and a new huge Korean supermarket called H-Mart.  Also there are an Asian boutique,  an Asian DVD store and an Asian gift store.  When it comes to a good meal, one can choose among a Vietnamese restaurant named Little Saigon, a  luncheonette called Sol Del Peru, or two Mexican restaurants: La Marqueza and Sabor Latino.  

   

     In past decades I can remember a host of businesses that failed on this block including:  a dance hall, a gym, a model car racing center and a self defense studio.  For years a shoe repair and typewriter repair store stood guard on the block unflinchingly.  I remember getting my school shoes resoled at the former at the end of every summer.  These days people throw away worn shoes.  The tops don't last like they did when they were made in Boston or Hanover.  Typewriters too have gone the way of the dodo.  Slowly the two repair stores gathered dust in their front windows and aches in the joints of their craftsmen.  Their skills outlasted their trades.  Only the Pipe Store still smolders.

  

     There was a convenience store here that met a more abrupt end though.  On the south side of the block when I was a kid there was a store with a soda fountain style counter.  It was the first "restaurant" that I went to without my parents.  A hamburger, fries and a drink cost $1.25.  I first learned to tip here, rounding out my meal to $1.50.  My buddies and I would go to the library in the municipal building then there for lunch on Saturday.  We loved the burgers.  They were big and greasy, and tasted better than those at home.  We were stepping out!  One weekend the place was shut.  There was a notice from the Health Department on the door.  They never reopened.  We were heart broken, and hungry.  About a week later the rumor spread that they were closed for serving uninspected meat...from Australia...from kangaroos.  To this day I am still looking forward to a trip Down Under...for the hot, jumping food.

       

     I criss and cross the blocks just south of the 69th Street Terminal.  On Richfield Road between Chestnut and Samson is one of the township's few examples of courtyard houses called mews.  This term has a royal heritage.  It came from a French word, muer, for the moulting of falcons.   The English king kept his hunting birds at the stables at Charing Cross, which became known as the King's Mews.  These buildings were clustered around a courtyard and, when they were converted to living quarters, the name stayed with the building style. I'm sure that this architectural terminology was started by a quick thinking Elizabethan realtor.

  

     Further south on Richfield I run into a draft of colder air emanating from the Sears parking garage.  This three story structure is half buried in the hillside and is so big that it acts like a cavern.  Hampden, Glendale, Copley, Ashby Roads, I run back and forth, up and down.  These blocks are most distinguished by those with sycamores and those without.  These peeling bark trees look diseased at first glance, but it is just their healthy growing trunks needing to exfoliate their outgrown bark, like garter snakes shedding their skin.  They also grow curiously in another way.  Rather than heaving the sidewalk upward, their trunks grow out over the sidewalk like the exploding tops of baking muffins.  The blocks with sycamores, even without their foliage, seem close and comfortable; those without, elemental and exposed. 

 

Distance:   5.15 miles Time:   49 min 9 sec   Pace:   9:33 min/mile

Weblink:  http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1748610