Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts
By Alyce Wilson
The best thing about having a guest visit from out of town is being a tourist where you live.
I had a friend visit from New York City. She'd wanted to see the Degas and the Dance exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, an event so popular I could only get Sunday tickets.
So Saturday we did a little exploring, stumbling across opportunities along the way. When I picked her up at the 30th Street Station, she expressed an interest in checking out an interesting neighborhood. So naturally, I thought of South Street, which is crammed with stores appealing to hippies, punks and artsy types.
One of the first things we did on South Street was eat at an Indian restaurant, Lovash, which turned out to be owned by the same people who own Shivnanda, a fine Indian cuisine restaurant on Chestnut Street where I used to love to go. Naturally, it was delicious.
We stopped in a so-called "vintage" clothing store, which primarily had items from the '70s and '80s. The prices were outrageous, so we went through the store making comments about what we saw.
She pulled out a bright yellow skirt with flowers on it. "I used to have a skirt like this," she said.
"My condolences ," I said.
I pulled out a dress with a garish pattern on it, "Pretty shower curtain!"
"It's a dress," she said.
"Ewww!" I exclaimed, dropping it. A woman nearby laughed.
We came across some orange camouflage."That was the hip thing in my school," I said. "But so were mullets."
And looking at a pair of bright, baggy silk pants: "These are soooooo M.C. Hammer," my friend said.
"Yes, but even he had the sense to get rid of them."
After we left, as we were walking down South Street, a guy handed us a leaflet for a new thrift store, Hope on 7th. Located on 7th and Bainbridge, it benefits cancer patients. We decided to check it out. It was a small thrift store, but had a good selection. I ended up getting a few shirts, including one with patterns on it just like tribal tattoos. I call it my "temporary tattoo shirt." My friend found me three wine goblets, a dollar for the set. The cashier put my purchases in a paper bag with handles, which read "Hope on 7th Street."
On a whim, we checked out an antique furniture store. As we were leaving, the owner was closing up. She saw my bag and said, "Hope on 7th Street! I love that place." She was wearing an artistic outfit: a black pants suit with fruit embroidered on it that was somehow tasteful, despite how it sounds.
We stopped in a place actually labeled as a record store, the Philadelphia Record Exchange, which we found intriguing. They sold used albums, including lots of vinyl. But I have a rule that I can't buy any more vinyl until I get a record player, so I abstained. We looked at the CDs instead.
She was looking for an obscure band and I was looking for T-Rex. Neither of us had any luck. I bought Live from 6A: Great Musical Performances from Late Night with Conan O'Brien. It was only six bucks. "You can't go wrong," I said, "unless it's mixed as badly as it is on TV."
My friend talked about getting some Moody Blues. "You can't go wrong," I said, "unless you get one of their albums from the '80s that doesn't have any songs you recognize."
She looked through the bargain bin, which was only 99 cents. "You can't go wrong," I said, "unless they're not worth 99 cents, which unfortunately, none of these are." She settled on a pricier album from a group she knew she loved.
We wandered around South Street some more, had some Blizzards in the Dairy Queen, making the mistake of using their atrocious bathrooms before leaving. This became our base level for "bad bathroom" for the remainder of the day.
Then we drifted back to Fifth and Chestnut to catch the Ghosts of Haunted Philadelphia walking tour. We were a bit early but decided to people-watch while we waited on a bench in a little park area, the same park where, during warmer weather, some of the re-enactors always gather to sing colonial ballads.
I pointed out people I guessed were going on the tour, such as a young couple. "They look expectant," I said. "And they've got brochures."
The couple was too nervous to hold hands, flipping through their brochures and scanning around, looking for the tour guide.
She was easy to spot: wearing historic dress and a long black cape, carrying a candle in a large silver holder. She took our money and divided us into two groups. We were assigned to a tour guide called Jason, also wearing period dress, who hopped up on top of the bench to greet his group. As we approached, he pointed at my bag. "Hope on 7th! I was there earlier today, dropping off a couch!"
The tour took us to several spots through Old City and Society Hill, including Washington Square, which as I noted earlier, contains 9,000 unmarked graves, including American soldiers beaten and killed by the British while prisoners of war during the American Revolution; the British jailers, who were executed en masse by George Washington after America won (and buried head-down to be that much closer to hell); indigents, Native Americans and slaves; and victims of the Yellow Fever outbreak. While tour guide told us about the ghost who lurks in that park, a nearby streetlight went out.
The best spot on the tour was the Bishop White House, reputedly the most haunted house in Philadelphia. Bishop William White, beloved for his charitable work, stayed to nurse his congregation during the Yellow Fever epidemics of 1793 and 1797, which was ironically transmitted by mosquitoes breeding in a sludge-filled creek near his house.
Reportedly, his habit of cigar smoking helped save him from the epidemic, and he survived, although all his family members and household staff died of the gruesome ailment, which begins with symptoms of fever, muscle pain, shivers, loss of appetite, nausea and/or vomiting. Within 24 hours, the patient has abdominal pain and may bleed from the mouth, nose, eyes and/or stomach. Half of the patients in the "toxic phase" die within 10-14 days.
The house is supposedly so haunted that National Park Service employees do not go into it alone. One of the spirits is a kitten that mews for attention and then disappears when you try to pet it.
I told another friend about wanting to see a ghost kitten. "It would be cute," I said.
"Ghosts aren't cute," he replied.
"They are when they're kittens."
Then again, I guess he didn't grow up in a haunted house and doesn't have the same equanimity about such matters.
Other ghosts spotted at the Bishop White residence include Mrs. Boggs, an old gray-haired woman in colonial dress who is spotted in the kitchen. Once, our tour guide said, he had a sighting by an entire tour group. Unfortunately, this was from the courtyard itself, which isn't open this time of year. We had to peer at the house from the other side of a tall brick wall, too tall for a view of the kitchen.
We could, however, see the third floor rear window of the library where Bishop White died. He's been spotted in this window, looking out towards the direction of the creek, a Bible clutched to his chest. He looks very sad, and he sighs heavily and disappears. Is it possible that some sort of afterworld insight has helped him to realize how close the source lurked for the disease that devastated those he loved?
I am very excited to discover that guided tours of the Bishop White house are offered at regular intervals by the National Park Service (always in the morning). I'm going to attend one of them and take along the same camera that's had some ambiguous results in a cemetery, producing some possible spirit photos. I'll see what happens there.
(I just have to mention that right now "Dead Man Walking" by David Bowie from the Conan O'Brien album is playing, which seems so appropriate.)
Because we had been talking to the tour guide when we passed the Powell House and he'd decided to skip that stop, I asked him to tell us that story. He said there's a woman seen sometimes in the drawing room, wearing a fancy dress and stomping her foot twice before disappearing. I found this interesting, since I felt a little ookie in that room of the Powell House when I visited and asked the tour guide about whether there'd been any ghosts spotted there. She claimed there hadn't.
We finished the ghost tour in time to catch one of the Philadelphia Film Festival movies, Bug, which was showing at Ritz East, coincidentally close to where we were parked. The movie was about the intersection of fate and free will, showing the interconnections that occur in L.A. because one little boy steps on a bug.
The movie was fun and deep, and what's more, it made me think about our day, about how all of our seemingly random wanderings were somehow interwoven. With running motifs of ghosts and graves, of history and art, of "Hope on 7th Street" and people we randomly encountered time and time again throughout the day.
We were sitting in the theater, my friend and I, talking about coincidence and connections. I gestured around the room. "There a dozen people in this room we'd get along with very well just because they chose to be here this day," I said. And who knows how many of them we'll run into again, days or years from now.
The circles we run in, the subtle workings of fate.
Moral:
Some ghosts are cute, if they're kittens.
Copyright
2003 by Alyce Wilson
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