last trolley to Thurmont

Since the cat is out of the bag, I guess I owe my progeny a final post. My commitment to the blogosphere had waned with some bad experiences since the last posts, and now I have an excuse to draw a close to this adventure.

We are leaving our beloved Philadelphia. We're going to western Maryland, where there are no trolleys. I don't look forward to driving everywhere, but maybe we won't. Who knows? It will be a new adventure.

At first I thought Shmoo would be devastated. He loves Philadelphia. He really grooves on riding trains, buses, and trolleys everywhere. Even Roo has fun with it. She blows kisses to the trolleys as they lumber into view in the bowels of Thirteenth Street Station. She loves watching the trains thunder past.

But the first time I broached the question with him, without hesitation he demanded, "let's get a house in the country, out in the woods!" Well, then. Nothing to worry about there.

Me, I will miss the haul like it were a bunyon. It has compressed my spine. It has soured my opinion of humanity. It has calloused my demeanor. It has taken years off my life.

Yet my children and I have bonded and grown together in those metal boxes under the streets of Philadelphia. Countless books, made-up stories of penguin antics, observations of our fellow Philadelphians, and snacks. Someday a SEPTA employee will sweep away the last kernel of popcorn that my kids had lost down a crevice in the back seat. We're just a few mounds of flesh that these metal boxes shuttle around, unmoved by our life stories. Every passenger has a story, and every metal box has moved that story.

So here is where our story derails. I often wonder whether the trolleys dream of freeing themselves from their tracks. I imagine it would scare them. Those who have done it got into a heap of trouble. Tracks are familiar and predictable.

But I'm not at all worried. Those years on the rails have made my kids resilient. They have street smarts. And besides, our new story may not be so unfamiliar after all.

It's been quite a ride.

Shmoo-Talk Express

As my wife noted, our ride up 52nd Street revealed some of today's mood in the city. Remembering the euphoria on 52nd Street during the primaries, we decided to take the bus and check out the scene.

A little perspective... Our immediate neighborhood has some mix: roughly 65% African-American, 15% African/Caribbean immigrant, 15% Euro, and 5% Chinese. Go one block west to 52nd Street and it's almost 100% African. Go a few blocks up 52nd Street and you see Muslim bookstores and restaurants such as the "Halal Bilal Steak & Take." On our commute I see Obama posters from the Ethiopians for Obama. We stood in the poll line this morning behind representatives from the Jamaicans for Obama.

The primaries were a party scene compared to today. Our neighbors awoke with a mission this morning. Sure, there was some honking of horns and waving of banners. But they awoke early and took their places in the long lines.

On our return home this evening, the dearth of commuters struck me. Were they out voting? I expected to see mob scenes at the polling station in the A.M.E. church where we alight the trolley. With half an hour left in the election, nobody was waiting. I suspect that everyone had already completed their mission and they were on to the parties.

Shmoo voted in school. He and almost all of his classmates voted for Obama. The teachers tried to show impartiality, but admitted the trouble they had finding McCain posters. Shmoo has made a game of spotting Obama posters from the trolley window. I'm afraid that we would not please the international election monitors for the indoctrination of young minds.

When I picked him up today he confessed that he voted for Obama because Obama was the most like me. I don't recall that one written on the posters. It was a vote of confidence that made me feel like the leader of the free world. Elections? Whatever.

where do you want to go today?

Fridays are Daddy Days. Usually I have a plan because idle hands are the devil's workshop. I at least like to suggest the illusion of free will to my son by asking him what he wants to do.

This Friday's answer was "ride the orange train."

We went to the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge instead, but I wanted to share the reason for his preference. You see, at the refuge we saw a stuffed owl, and Shmoo had to share that with Mommy. In his preoperational broken-chain-of-thought way, he said, "Do you know where I saw my first owl? It was at the museum that we took the orange train to see."

That was last week. I'm way behind in posting, and there is much to write. Stay tuned, and for now let me tell you about some of the fun to be had on the orange train.

The Wagner Free Institute requires a special kind of nerd to appreciate. Within five minutes, Shmoo was crying, "Daddy, get me out of this place!" I tried their children's activity on him, but he still wanted out. The birds exhibit distracted him, but only for a moment. The porpoise jaw and whale vertebra left an impression, but that was the end. I guess the 150-year-old contorted and balding faces of stuffed badgers and cougars just weren't his cup of tea.

The highlights for me were many: a direct descendant of Peale's museum, a 19th-century lecture hall, early attempts at interpreting natural history to the public. The highlights to Shmoo were the northbound and southbound trips on the orange train. Only Roo got left in the rain. (Actually, she's turning out to be every bit the gear-head that her brother is. For all I know, she really grooved on the orange train, too!)

In the end, Shmoo managed to find something memorable about the museum. He was very excited about his first glimpse of a real (dead) owl. (And I got to see a dead Ivory-billed woodpecker!) I'm gaining confidence in our future vacation prospects: there will be something for everyone.

life, meet work

Scene: Westbound Market-Frankford Line, 8:10pm (which is late for us), fussy Roo on my back and Shmoo on Julie's lap.

"Are you a member of the Park Service?" She's half my age, in full party mode with ten loud friends.

I put on my best surly stare. On the window I can see Roo flashing indignant "WTF" looks at them.

"I mean, do you work with the parks?"

Begrudging, "yes." And what's it to you? (I realized she had noticed the arrowhead on my attache.)

Turn the clock back twenty minutes...

We had just left the park. I don't normally hang out there after hours, but it's Fringe Fest and there was a performance on Dock Creek. We sigh every year and dream about all the performances we would enjoy if we had no kids.

This one I couldn't miss, and it was family-friendly. I had worked with the actor, Brett Keyser, on an interpretive program this year (I can take credit for spotting the hawk in the video). I learned an immense amount from him. Tonight he created a performance about a park resource that I feel strongly about and one that I think gets neglected. Shmoo went to bed muttering the sequel to Brett's drama of Eliza falling into the creek.

I try hard not to let work get in the way of my good times. Rangers can never really go on vacation. Two weeks ago, when we went camping at Ricketts Glen, I thought I had gotten away. Some New Yorker picked me out of all the bathers on the lake to ask how he could catch a cab and whether his car would be towed. We're at 2500 feet in the Pocono Mountains! There are no taxis! And I'm not in uniform, so go away!

Tonight was a great outing. For a little while, with the aid of the performance art, I could construct a psychological barrier that let me cleave to my family and cleave from work.

Then on the walk to the subway, A__ from the visitor center called me over. I was delighted to see him and to introduce him to my family. But A__ is high strung. His banter instantly took me back to the high-strung fitful building one park service official had called "a prison day room."

Then I recognized a visitor I had met from Holland. She had complained earlier that Dutch was not among the thirteen translations of our park materials. Now she was looking for a salad stand. I smiled and told her about Fringe Fest.

I couldn't go back to Fringe Fest, though. I was back on my commute with a kid on my back. Work was nipping at my heels. Then this punk.

"Yeah, my friend works at a park in California. I went backpacking there and it was great! Do you like backpacking and all that?"

"No." Do you mean carrying a kid on my back on the subway?

I should mention here that one of the few things I have a chip on my shoulder about is all the happy-go-lucky people who think it's funny to say, "I bet you thought you'd get a job out in some mountain in California!" Readers of this blog know that I am passionate about urban life. I believe that, like the root of the word itself, the root of civilization is in the city. I also love God's creation so much that I believe we should leave it alone and live in cities. I work in an urban park to preserve our civilization in the most literal sense.

Then again, she was just a groupie. How can I discourage somebody's enthusiasm for this agency? We need all the friends we can get.

"But I do like camping. I'm glad you had a good time out in those California parks."

"Yeah, it was great. So do you like live out real far away and drive really far to work every day?"

"Nope. I live in West Philly and I take the subway. With the kids on my back!"

Steamtown

On Sunday, I finally became a hero to my son. I know he loves and admires me, but he's such a Mama's boy and rarely confesses to any affection toward me. But when he saw the arrowhead and the park rangers at Steamtown NHS, I saw the face of Moses looking upon the burning bush. "Daddy, you work here!"

It was the only rail-head site in the 120-mile radius that we had not yet visited. I'm glad we saved it for last, because all else pales in comparison. Sure, it's easy to impress a child, and I became a child again clambering around the old coaches and engines. I'm not just writing from my bias toward the NPS. It really is that good.

There were all the usual attractions, but in greater number, size, and accessibility. Who among us can say that we've opened the steam valve on a Big Boy?

Who among us has sat among the ghosts of New York tycoons in a 1940s luxury coach?

Who among us has planned a whole transit system with blocks?



To think that my father's father and grandfather mined the surrounding hills to provide fuel for those trains. (The risks to life and limb are evident at the bottom of this photo!)

And then to take the helm of the very same trolley that my mother's father and grandfather rode across Philadelphia on their daily commutes.

Today I marked thirty-four years of age. We celebrated with yet another ride on the #34 trolley and a #34 shirt. Somehow, I feel older than that.

k

The pedestrian portions of our regular route include many attractions. The best one, the library, is open late on Mondays and Wednesdays. It affords us an imaginative distraction to an otherwise mechanical routine. Who among us does not harbor fond childhood memories of exploring the universe on the stacks?

Now feel my pride as my daughter has shown greater passion for books than for the very breast that nourishes her. Her first word, "k," applies to the two things in life that make her squeal and flap: Cats and booKs.

I like to think I played a part in that, but it's more likely she inherited the biblio-nematoda gene from her mother. But in her first week of life, I was there with the book.

She was trapped in the NICU, surrounded by fluorescent lights, monitor wires, and mechanical beeps. I desperately wanted her to know that she was born into an organic world of love and beauty. On every visit, I held her on my lap while I read from a volume of Shel Silverstein. Of course she couldn't understand a word, but she could hear the natural rhythm of my voice. She could hear my inflection and cadence speak hope, fear, laughter, wonder, love. She heard the pages turn.

Shmoo and I have shared a famous tradition of reading books to let our minds escape the subterranean metal box's electrical lumbering. When we entered the library last week, Roo couldn't contain herself. Squirming, kicking, flapping on my back, she exclaimed, "k! k!"

Like a kid in a candy store? No, just a kid who sees the beauty of human life.

cannot...resist...sleep

Museums, kids, crowded trolley, then...


Day off with Dad. Just try to keep up.