Laughs and Lobotomies

In the late ’90s my father ran out of gas in Brewerytown, Philadelphia, right next to the waterfront, after dark, with a toddler and a little girl.

Brewerytown in ’97 or ’98 was a very different place.

You can tell you are in a bad part of a city when night has fallen and it is so quiet you can hear your own heartbeat.  When the engine turned over in the Blue Beetle and we were stuck that is what it sounded like.

My father’s breath caught, and the sound of the city had vanished.

He creaked the door open and got both of us out, my brother on his shoulders. 

No cell phones back then.

The first thing we passed was the building of an old brewery, sign still intact.  The car had stopped sort of in the curve of the street.  I swear I can still see that old building next to the river today as clear as I did then.

My father pointed to that building.  Explained what it was, how all along this area there were many of them, and that was how Brewerytown got its name.

We kept walking.

I, holding my father’s hand – not more than 9 or so- my brother on his shoulders.

It was a city asleep.

A city without people.

Desolate.

We got to the gas station, my father got a container full, and we made the walk back to the car.

So silent was the city that night.

My father told me not to tell my mother what happened, where we were.

But God had a plan.

And the few people we did see?

I smiled at them, and said hello.  I was a child, delighted to meet someone new, who might teach me something, or smile back, at what I had to say.

God watched the city that night.

God lives through the smiles of children and their fathers.