A Special Visit to Philadelphia

We didn’t mean to go to Philadelphia. Sometimes, though, between the vagaries of the weather and the ever-strengthening decline of our air transportation system, one can find themselves in the middle of a hot and humid city with nothing to do but walk and look and learn. Philly is a melting pot, full of the colors and smells and stories of a nation, and on the day we were there it was truly melting. HOT! For a boy who just that day had left the pacific northwest, dressed in jeans, it was doubly so.

We got on our connection (to Detroit)in Philadelphia at 8 am in the morning, sat on the tarmac for three hours, and then returned to our gate to learn that our flight was being cancelled due to some mysterious servere weather somewhere between Philly and D-town. Calls to the Loewe posse indicated no signs of weather, but none the less, no plane was going our way until the evening.

Christine cornered two nice ladies in the terminal hallway and learned how to catch the train into downtown Philly, and off we went. It was almost convenient – I had been trying to figure out a way to visit this city on our short jaunt east. We did just that, reaching downtown at mid-day with two or three hours to look around.

Philadelphia’s history, and its role in U.S. history is truly pivotal and, I think, a bit underplayed. We made our way to the historic district to marvel at buildings older than any recorded history in the Pacific Northwest and ended up at Independence Hall to tour the rooms where the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence AND the Constitution were signed. Pretty heavy stuff. Our friendly Ranger Bob even pointed us in the direction of a stair case railing, original to the building, that lead up to the office inhabitated by Ben Franklin when he was, I believe, Supreme President of the Pensylvania governing council in the late 1780’s. Since old Ben was stricken with gout at that point in his life it is almost a sure bet that he used that railing to great effect to haul his debilitated-but-genius ass up to his office every working day. I practically licked that railing…the very same one.

On the way back to the train station, about two blocks from Independence Hall we passed the Graaf House. In 1776 this house sat on the edge of town and was used by Tom Jefferson as a retreat, far from the oppressive heat and bustle of the city, to write the debating draft of the declaration. Now the building sits puny-looking in the midst of a great mass of sweltering concrete and asphalt stretching as far as the eye can see in either direction. It illustrated, in stark relief, just how far we’ve come as a nation in 200+ years…for better and for worse J