THE PERFECT CORNER - recollections from back then

Probably, as far as intersections go, the epicenter of Philadelphia, at least from a Cheesesteak perspective, is the funky intersection of 9th Street and Passyunk Avenue in South Philly, where you can find both Geno's Stakes and Pat's King of Steaks.  

However, for me, my favorite corner was a much more interesting place.  It was on the line between Darby, PA and Philadelphia.  Both streets changed names.  Island Avenue/Island Road change to become the Cobbs Creek Parkway.  Main Street from Darby becomes Woodland Avenue in Philadelphia.  Main Street/Woodland Ave. carried the #11 Trolley from Darby to Center City (and still does).

Lets start at the Trolley station in Darby, and catch the #11.  

The cobblestones on Main Street, while tough on the ankles, would have lasted as long as cockroaches and twinkies after the world ends, were it not for the brilliant whoever who decided to remove them decades ago.

This trip is full of decisions.  Which side  do you want to sit on?  What window do you want to look out of?   If you sit on one side of the trolley, you can look at the houses and stores of Darby drift by.  If you sit on the other side, once you get to 4th Street, you get to look at the homes of Colwyn until you get to my favorite intersection.  4th Street, 3rd Street, 2nd Street, Front Street, and finally Water Street pass by on the Colwyn side.  The houses are all up on hills, above Main Street. 

On one side of Front and Main in Colwyn is 20 Main Street, where my grandparents lived for years, and where I spent much of my summers when I was young.  It was a good life - I had a group of kids on my street in Collingdale who I played with, and when my mother went to her parents, which she often did in the summer, I had another set of kids there to play with.  The kids in Collingdale were "good" compared to the kids in Colwyn.  I enjoyed both, but the Colwyn kids enjoyed exploring much more - "getting into things" as my mother would say.  Plus they always seemed to have firecrackers, and knew where to find "punks".  Real ones.  A few blocks away there were some garages, and a big wooden fence with a loose board that would let us get into a part of the train yard of Fels (more on this later).  There were four train tracks (that seemed like twelve) that passed through this forbidden spot.  Fast trains - Amtrak, as well as freight trains, I seem to recall.  Crossing the tracks really was extremely dangerous.  You couldn't dodge an express at full speed.  It probably wasn't wise to put our ears to the track to hear if a train was coming either.  We used to put pennies on the track, to let the train smoosh them to the size of silver dollars (so the lure went) but we never did find a penny after it was run over.  Of course, there was also the fear that, as lure also went, you could derail a train this way.  On the other side of the tracks was, as always, a "woods".  For some reason, every town seems to have unfinished areas that are left as woods.  This woods, which you can get to if you survive jumping the tracks, had the Cobbs Creek run through it, and a little pond I seem to recall.  If you look at a map, you'll see that you could walk in the woods and end up all the way out by I-95 at the Tinicum Wildlife Preserve!  I remember going to this woods with my Colwyn friends for the first time.  It must have been like how it felt for the founder of the Mormons when they came out of the mountains and saw the valley below, now Salt Lake City, and said, "this is the place".  When I first saw the middle of the woods, with groups of kids playing there . . . I had no idea!  A little kids Mecca - and I'm sure few of their parents had any idea where they were.  Our own little lost world.

Back onto the trolley.  After we pass Front Street and Water Street, on the Colwyn side you ride on a bridge, over the Cobbs Creek, and can see the grounds for the Fels Naptha Soap Company, also called Fells & Co.  The factory, which made Fels Naptha Soap, was built on a source of water, as factories often were, and was on the train line as well.  

It was a pretty well protected property - not the kind of place you could walk onto, unless you knew where the one loose fence board was.  Of course, I could get into the factory whenever I wanted - I would even get the grand tour and be introduced to everyone.  My father worked there.  Often he would walk to my grandparent's house for lunch, or my mother and I would take lunch there for him, or I would walk there by myself and he would take me to the Fels cafeteria for lunch.

I don't want to get too far away from the Colwyn corner of Front and Main.  As I said my grandparents lived on one corner.  On the other corner was a house on top of a much higher hill, with dozens of steps from Main Street up to the front porch.  Along The Front Street edge of the property there were several garages, built into the side of the hill, presumably built because the other houses had no garages, and these were rented out - not to anybody we knew, but the garages were always full.

"The Old Man" lived alone in this house for years, and then he died and it went up for sale.  While we never were up close to the house, lest we get caught and eaten, we did find the garages interesting, and the cars in them that never seemed to move, and didn't appear to have owners.  Each garage door had upper windows, which we could see in if we stood on our tippy toes, which we often did, so we knew.  We knew that one garage, and only one, had a door on its back wall.  It could only be one thing, it had to be a door that lead to a stairway or passageway that went up - up to the house.

Shortly after the Old Man died, the car owners must have been contacted, because one day the garages were empty and unlocked.  Within a week, they were all padlocked closed, but we took advantage as soon as we could.  My Colwyn friends and I slipped, one by one, through the barely open garage door and into the dark, clammy garage.  We stood in front of the solid wood door on the back wall, and one of us finally got up the nerve to touch the doorknob.  The door was unlocked, and up we went, up a staircase, in total darkness, almost on hands and knees, feeling the next step, then the next, not even talking, not knowing who may be in the house.  The first of us finally bumped their head on soft wood, the top of the staircase.  We sat there and listened, and hearing nothing, again tried a doorknob, and the door opened into a well-lit room on the main floor, bright sunlight shining in, no curtains or shades anywhere.  Again we listened, again, it seemed like we were actually alone.  The house was three stories high, a tall house on top of a big hill.  There was little wallpaper on the walls.  There was no furniture.  It was almost as if someone prepared the walls to wallpaper or paint a decade earlier, and never did it.  Many of the rooms had fireplaces.  It must have been an incredible house in its time.  There were two staircases that went from the first floor to the second.  Drawn on the walls, some of them, were arrows - arrows drawn in pencil.  They were hard not to follow.  They pointed up the steps to the second floor.  Some of us followed one set, some followed the second set.  Both led upstairs.  Both sets of arrows led to the same wall, in the same room, on the second floor.

Back on the first floor, on the shelf above the dining room fireplace, sat a beautiful old camera.  It must have been made of mahogany with a black bellows.  It was a large, professional camera.  Its color, against the stark off-white walls, was striking.  It was also scary.  Someone swore they heard a creak upstairs.  We realized that we had no game plan.  What if someone came up the steps from the garage?  Which way would we go?  What if we were on the third floor and the front door opened?  Would we hide?  Run?  The exploration was over.  We found a light switch that lit a series of light bulbs all the way back down the staircase to the garage, and another switch that let us turn them off at the bottom.  We slipped out one at a time, leaving space between us in case parents saw us, but no one did.  At least no one that we know of.  Urban exploration like this has always been one of the most exciting things to do, I've found.

If we continue on the trolley ride to my intersection, you now know that the Fels & Co. factory takes up one corner.  Across the street, if you had been looking out the other side of the trolley we were riding on, you'd see a falls on the Cobb's Creek, and on the corner, a little house.  

The sign indicates that it is a historical site, the Blue Bell Inn, where supposedly George Washington actually slept!  At this point, Main Street becomes Woodland Avenue, so as you go through the light, you move from Darby/Colwyn into Philadelphia. 

On the corner adjacent to the Blue Bell Inn is a little triangular "block" that I think just had a little parklet on it.  Whenever you have five square feet or more of grass, it's officially Fairmount Park in Philadelphia.  I'm not even sure if there was a bench there, but there had to be. 

There is the fourth corner, which was really an exciting place for me to go with my father on a Saturday morning.  On the corner, I forget, but I think it was a Pep Boys store.  I loved the smell of the place.  They sold car parts, bicycles, all kinds of great guy stuff.  There was a narrow alley that led to a garage behind the store, where you could get work done on your car.  Adjacent to the alley was another alley that went back to a garage behind the next store, which was a Penn-Jersey Auto Parts Store!  Pep Boys and Penn-Jersey were independent but very, very similar stores.  Being able to cruise one, then go next door and cruise the other, was great fun.  It made about as much sense as having gas stations on adjacent corners.  I mean, what kind of sense could that possibly make, right?

Behind Pep Boys and Penn-Jersey was another building, off of Island Rd., which held white collar offices and the cafeteria for Fels employees.  

Fels owners and workers ate together there.  Workers went because it was very inexpensive, and owners because it was such a good deal they couldn't pass it up either. 

There's a lot of history on this corner, although its almost all gone now.  If you're interested, read on.  If not, thanks for reading this far!  If you stay on the trolley, heading into town, you'll pass some great places that aren't around any more, like the Breyer's Ice Cream factory.  (William A. Breyer sold "a relatively new concoction called ice cream" in 1866, first from his home in Philadelphia, and later on the streets using a horse and wagon.  The company was eventually sold and for awhile owned by Kraft.  Now Breyer's is owned by Unilever, since 1993.)

Lets get back to the Blue Bell Inn in Colwyn.  There is a short video on YouTube so you'll know it actually exists. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHPcfPmoSfE
It is a "George Washington Slept Here" kind of place.  Built in 1766 by Henry Paschall, it was a stagecoach stop for coaches heading south out of Philadelphia.  It is also the site of Pennsylvania's first water-powered mill, sometimes called Printz's Mill or Old Swedes Mill, built around 1645.

 I'm assuming the Mill site is somehow related to the falls that are on the Cobbs Creek, just a few yards away.  This is not to be confused with The Blue Bell Inn in Blue Bell, PA (open since 1743).

I had mentioned the adjacent corner, a small triangular "block" that was just a "park", surely a part of Philadelphia's system of parks, Fairmount Park.  Cobbs Creek is surrounded by Cobbs Creek Park, which is a major part of the Fairmount Park system (the largest urban park in the country).  According to Wikipedia, "For many West Philadelphia and Upper Darby children, Cobbs Creek is their first introduction to wooded greenspaces and freshwater ecosystems. . . . The wildlife includes regional birds, raccoons, opossums, spotted deer, wild turkey, rabbits, and in recent history, even a mountain lion."

Across from the park triangle, in Philadelphia, is the corner where Pep Boys and Penn-Jersey coexisted for many years.  (I can still smell the inner tubes!)  According to their website, four Navy buddies, "Mannie" Rosenfeld, "Moe" Strauss, Moe Radavitz and "Jack" Jackson, all from Philadelphia, put together $800 (in 1921) to start an auto parts supply company.  The Manny, Moe and Jack characters were modeled after the founders. One of the Moes, Moe Radavitz, left after only a few years.

They started out as Pep Auto Supplies, and the story tells of a Philadelphia policeman who worked near their first store, who would often send people to go see the "boys" at Pep, so the "Pep Boys" was in common usage before they changed their name.  They chose the official name of "The Pep Boys-Manny, Moe & Jack" because Moe noticed that lots of businesses used first names, such as a local dress shop called "Minnie, Maude and Mabel's".  There are currently over 700 stores across the US (Pep Boys, not Minnie's).

One of the original Pep Boys, "Moe" Strauss, had a brother, Izzie Strauss.  He started Strauss Auto in Brooklyn, which later became Strauss Discount Auto.  In 1987, the company acquired Penn-Jersey Auto Parts.  Small world.

The Penn-Jersey Auto Stores were founded by Samuel H. Popkin.  His first store, in Easton PA in 1920 was called Sam's Tire Supply Store (according to the Philadelphia Jewish Business Archives).  

Most of these stores and factories were created by Philadelphia's Jewish community leaders.  They built much of modern Philadelphia.

On the remaining corner is the Fels Naptha Soap company factory, which I'd like to say a little more about.  Fels Naptha soap is a harsh soap known for handling heavy grease and oils.  It was Joseph Fells who developed a new soap-making process in 1895.  It started as a home remedy for contact dermatitis, such as exposure to poison ivy - "oil-transmitted skin-irritants."  It became a laundry room standard - reliable and cheap.  The product was so successful, Fels built a factory in Southwest Philadelphia, a "water-powered mill-seat on Cobbs Creek."  At it's peak in the 1930's, the factory employed more than 600 employees.  It is now essentially demolished and a gas station has been built on that corner.

One reason why Fels Naptha soap became so popular was the efforts of Anty Drudge.  According to "Adapting to Abundance: Jewish Immigrants, Mass Consumption, and the Search for American Identity." by Andrew R. Heinze (1990, Columbia University Press), Aunty Drudge advertisements were considered as Yiddish advertisements.  In many newspapers, there was often an Aunty Drudge column, in which the Aunty Drudge character gave housekeeping tips, which often discussed a problem where Fels Naptha soap was the solution.  

Heinze writes:  "The value of being up-to-date, as well as time-conscious, was reinforced by Yiddish advertisements.  Fels Naptha soap, the well-known brand of a Jewish soap manufacturer, was regularly advertised with the character of "Aunty Drudge," a matron who instructed readers in the progressive approach to cleaning.  At times, a drawing of an attractive, fashionably dressed young woman helped to convey the message that Fels Naptha would help keep a woman up-to-date."

Whenever Aunty Drudge (anti-drudge, get it?) was drawn, her dress resembled a bunch of Fels Naptha Soap wrappers sewed together.  She is sometimes referred to as Anty Drudge. 

I do have a small book, "Anty Drudge's Cookbook" (A Cook Book of Tested Recipes, Containing Many Helpful Hints for Housekeepers, Compiled by Anty Drudge, Who will gladly answer any questions or give advice about housework and cooking), from Fels Naptha, Philadelphia, 1910.  

There is a different "verse" at the top of each page. For example, "Fels Naptha soap makes clean clothes - fresh paint, spotless homes, rested women - happy families."  The recipes, sometimes for complete meals, always are inexpensive, sensitive to the needs of the woman of the house, easy to prepare, easy to clean up, etc.  Several recipes come under the "fireless cooking" category, and there is a large section on paper bag cookery, in which food, sometimes meals, are cooked inside a paper bag in the oven (and some people thought it was just a fad!).

So that's my story of my favorite corner.  Everyone should have one, don't you think?  It was pure Philly.