# Travels in Philadelphia/Wildey Street

| “ | Passing by an imposing bust of Homer, which we found in front of a junk shop at 528 Noble street, the Mountaineer led me to see the old Hoboes' Union headquarters at Fifth and Buttonwood streets. The war may have given tattooing a fillip, but it seems that it has been the decline and fall of philosophic hoboism, for the vagrants' clubhouse is dusty and void, now used as some sort of a warehouse. Work or fight and high wages have done for romantic loafing. | ” |
WILDEY STREET
I set out for a stroll with the Mountaineer, who knows more about Philadelphia than any one I ever heard of. He is long and lean and has a flashing eye; his swinging easy stride betrays the blood of southern highlands. He tracks down distant streets and leafy glimpses with all the grim passion of a Kentucky scout on the trail of a lynx or some other varmint. No old house, no picturesque corner or elbow alley escapes his penetrant gaze. He has secret trails and caches scattered through the great forests of Philadelphia, known to none but himself. With such a woodsman for guide good hunting was a matter of course.
The first game we bagged was a tattooing studio at 814 Summer street. Let no one say that war means a decline of the fine arts, for to judge by the photographs in the window there are many who pine to have the Stars and Stripes, the American ​eagle and the shield of the food administration frescoed on their broad chests. Professor Al E. Walters, the craftsman, proclaims himself artistic and reliable in this form of embroidery and the sitter has "1500 up-to-date designs to choose from." The Mountaineer and I peered through the window and were interested to see the professor's array of tools laid out on his operating table.
Passing by an imposing bust of Homer, which we found in front of a junk shop at 528 Noble street, the Mountaineer led me to see the old Hoboes' Union headquarters at Fifth and Buttonwood streets. The war may have given tattooing a fillip, but it seems that it has been the decline and fall of philosophic hoboism, for the vagrants' clubhouse is dusty and void, now used as some sort of a warehouse. Work or fight and high wages have done for romantic loafing. The Mountaineer pointed out to me the kitchen in which the boes held their evening symposia over a kettle of hot stew. The house was donated through the munificence of J. Eads Howe, the famous millionaire hobo, and the Mountaineer admitted that he had spent many an entertaining evening there discussing matters of intellectual importance. "How did you get the entree to such an exclusive circle?" I asked enviously. "I was a member of the union," he said, with just the least touch of vainglory.
The Mountaineer led me north on Fourth street to where Wildey street begins its zigzag career. We ​found that the strip between Germantown avenue and Front street was buzzing with preparations for a "block party" in honor and benefit of its boys in service. All down the gay little vista flags were hanging out, Chinese lanterns had been strung on wires across the street, shop windows were crisscrossed with red, white and blue streamers and booths were going up on the pavement swathed in tricolored tissue paper. At one end of the block the curbstones had been whitewashed. We stopped to ask an elderly lady when the fun would begin.
"Tonight and tomorrow night," she said. (It was then Friday afternoon.) "Our boys are fighting for us and we want to do everything we can to help. I was at my summer residence when I heard about this party, and I came back at once. We've got to help as best we can."
The sky was clouding over and the Mountaineer and I expressed the hope that rain wouldn't spoil the festivity.
"Oh, I hope not," she said. "It doesn't seem as though the Lord would send rain when we're working for a good cause. We've hired a string band for the two nights—that's $60—and we're going to have dancing in the street. You'd better come around. It's going to be a great time."
Everybody in the street was busy with preparations for the jollification, and I was deeply touched by this little community's expression of gratitude and confidence in its boys who are fighting. That ​is the real "stuff of triumph" of which the President spoke. And one has only to pass along Wildey street to see that it is fine old native stock. It is an all-American street, of pure native breed, holding out stiffly and cleanly against the invasion of foreign population. The narrow side alleys look back into patches of vivid green; there are flower boxes and vines, and the pavements and marble steps are scrubbed as clean as water and soap will make them. A little further along we found a tavern dispensing Wildey street's favorite drink—pop and porter—and we halted to drink health to the block party.
Beyond Shackamaxon street we struck into the unique silence and quiet cleanliness of "Fishtown." The quietness of those streets of quaint little houses is remarkable: in the golden flood of a warm afternoon they lay with hardly an echo to break the stillness. The prevailing color scheme is green and red: many of the houses are neat cottages built of wood; others are the old parti-colored brick that comes down from ancient days. Almost every house has its little garden, often outlined with whitened shells. It seems like a New England fishing village in the heart of the city. An occasional huckster's wagon rumbles smoothly along the asphalt paving; an occasional tinkle of a piano in some cool, darkened parlor. That is all. I can imagine no haunt of ancient peace more drowsy with stillness and the treble chirp of birds than the tangled and overgrown ​cemetery at Thompson street and Columbia avenue, in the hush of a hot summer siesta.
There is a note of grace and comeliness in Wildey street life that one attributes to the good native stock of the inhabitants. The children are clean and rounded and goodly. The little girls have plump calves and crisp gingham dresses and blue eyes; they sit in their little gardens playing with paper dolls. Their brothers, with the mischief and errant humor that one expects of small boys, garnish walls and hoardings with whimsical legends scrawled in chalk. The old family tooth-brush that laid on the floor was one such that amused me. Another was a regrettable allegation that a (presumably absent) playmate was afflicted with "maines." The Mountaineer and I, after studying the context, came to the conclusion that the scourge hinted at was "mange!"
Most thrilling of all, Wildey street becomes more and more maritime. Over the roofs of the houses one sees the masts of ships—always a sight to make the eager heart leap up. Cramps' ship-yard is at hand, and many of the front windows display the starred service cards of the United States Shipping Board. On Richmond street, parallel to Wildey, are ship chandlers' stores, with windows full of brass pulleys and chocks and cleats, coils of rope and port and starboard lanterns. We hurried down toward the waterfront and peeped through the high board fence to see a steamer in drydock for a coat of camouflage. ​Great stripes of black and blue and white were being laid along her hull.
Penn Treaty Park, at the foot of Columbia avenue, would deserve an essay of its own. Here, under a pavilion, the Mountaineer and I sat surrounded by the intoxicating presence of water and boats, watched the police patrol launches being overhauled, watched a little schooner loading lumber (I couldn't read her name, but she came from Hampton, Va.), watched the profile of Camden shining dimly through the rain. For a very smart rainstorm had come up and we sat and felt a pang of sympathy for the good people of Wildey street, whose Chinese lanterns and tricolored tissue paper would be ruined by the wet. We watched the crew of the tug Baltic getting ready for supper and dinghies nosing the piers and bobbling with the rise and fall of the water, and we saw how the gleam of rain and mist on the roofs of Camden looked exactly like a fall of snow. Fishtown uses Penn Treaty Park as a place for lounging and smoking under the peeling sycamores and watching the panorama of the river.
P. S.: I thought a great deal about the block party on Wildey street that night and hoped that the rain would not have spoilt it. So the next morning I got off the 8:13 at Columbia avenue and walked down past that deep violin note of the Columbia avenue sawmills to see how things were going. I found the same old lady on the sidewalk, ​hopefully renewing her red, white and blue tissue, and I noticed that all the children were wearing fantastic patriotic caps made of shirred and fluted paper. "Well," I said, "how did things go?" "Oh," she replied, "the rain hurt things a bit, but tonight's going to be the big night. It's going to be a great time: you'd better come around."
The stuff of triumph!