Philadelphia: Part I
For want of anything interesting about my life to relay to you today, I thought I'd tell you just a bit about Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, as promised two posts ago.
If you've been paying attention to the news these last two weeks, you might have heard something about a Ku Klux Klan member standing trial for crimes committed forty years ago in Mississippi. The backwater waste of life in question, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted today of having organized the disturbing crimes which were subsequently portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning.
However, he was only convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter, from what I presume was a very sympathetic jury. It's unthinkable that, in this day and age in the United States, a jury of this man's peers could rescue him from a well-deserved murder conviction, thereby robbing the victims' families of a full victory. Or is it? Not in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
So, please don't confuse that last bastion of Antebellum America and antediluvian ideologies with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my beloved home town.
Philadelphia, or Philly, has about five million residents, which is about half that of New York City. It is situated on the western banks of the useful (that's all, just useful) Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. British readers might remember it as the axis of agitation within those damned rogue colonies.
The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia and adopted in 1776, and the Constitution of the United States followed shortly thereafter in 1789. Thus, it is "the Birthplace of America."
In the 19th century, Philadelphia was the glad recipient of wave upon wave of European immigration, most notably from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. South Philadelphia was historically Italian, and is still very much so today. Or, at least, in the collective imagination of it's residents: forgeddabadit. Southwest Philadelphia was where all the Irish went, and were usually engaged in fisticuffs with their jaunty neighbors to the east. Germans, being very German, founded Germantown: fabelhaft! Interesting that if you had asked any one of these groups of people to describe any of the others, they would have most likely accused them of laziness, alcoholism, or spousal abuse.
This is why my grandparents had to elope: She was from Italy, he was from old Irish stock, and both were shunned by the elders of their families for falling in love. It turned out that the Irish were indeed lazy, alcoholic wife-beaters after all, but at the time the suspicion was mostly unfounded. Just kidding, Grandpop.
Philadelphians have the German immigrants to thank for the ubiquitous breakfast treat scrapple which, as suggested by the name, is made of the scraps leftover after everything actually edible has been carved off a pig. It comes in bricks, and is served sliced and fried. It's worth a try if you're in the area but, for the love of god, consider what it's made of and don't do it twice.
Have a cheesesteak instead. Philly is also known as "the Birthplace of Cheesesteaks," and is honestly the only place in the country where one can have a good one. Many other restaurants in many other cities purport to have perfected them as well, but it's all lies and distortions, I assure you. A cheesesteak is made of thinly sliced beef, cooked fresh on a hot griddle, and shredded in the process by a grizzled, spatula-wielding man. It's served on a long, soft roll and topped with cheese and fried onions. They were "invented" at Pat's Steaks in South Philadelphia in the 1930's but, soon after, the ingenious Gino hung his shingle across the street, claiming his were better than Pat's. A messy war has raged since. I prefer Jim's Steaks, though, on South Street in Center City. Jim really refined and perfected the process, bless him.
So, we've gotten the really important facts out of the way. I'll write more about Philly on another occasion. Please, try not to die of anticipatory stress in the meantime.
If you've been paying attention to the news these last two weeks, you might have heard something about a Ku Klux Klan member standing trial for crimes committed forty years ago in Mississippi. The backwater waste of life in question, Edgar Ray Killen, was convicted today of having organized the disturbing crimes which were subsequently portrayed in the movie Mississippi Burning.
However, he was only convicted on the lesser charge of manslaughter, from what I presume was a very sympathetic jury. It's unthinkable that, in this day and age in the United States, a jury of this man's peers could rescue him from a well-deserved murder conviction, thereby robbing the victims' families of a full victory. Or is it? Not in Philadelphia, Mississippi.
So, please don't confuse that last bastion of Antebellum America and antediluvian ideologies with Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, my beloved home town.
Philadelphia, or Philly, has about five million residents, which is about half that of New York City. It is situated on the western banks of the useful (that's all, just useful) Delaware River, which separates Pennsylvania from New Jersey. British readers might remember it as the axis of agitation within those damned rogue colonies.
The Declaration of Independence was written in Philadelphia and adopted in 1776, and the Constitution of the United States followed shortly thereafter in 1789. Thus, it is "the Birthplace of America."
In the 19th century, Philadelphia was the glad recipient of wave upon wave of European immigration, most notably from Ireland, Germany, and Italy. South Philadelphia was historically Italian, and is still very much so today. Or, at least, in the collective imagination of it's residents: forgeddabadit. Southwest Philadelphia was where all the Irish went, and were usually engaged in fisticuffs with their jaunty neighbors to the east. Germans, being very German, founded Germantown: fabelhaft! Interesting that if you had asked any one of these groups of people to describe any of the others, they would have most likely accused them of laziness, alcoholism, or spousal abuse.
This is why my grandparents had to elope: She was from Italy, he was from old Irish stock, and both were shunned by the elders of their families for falling in love. It turned out that the Irish were indeed lazy, alcoholic wife-beaters after all, but at the time the suspicion was mostly unfounded. Just kidding, Grandpop.
Philadelphians have the German immigrants to thank for the ubiquitous breakfast treat scrapple which, as suggested by the name, is made of the scraps leftover after everything actually edible has been carved off a pig. It comes in bricks, and is served sliced and fried. It's worth a try if you're in the area but, for the love of god, consider what it's made of and don't do it twice.
Have a cheesesteak instead. Philly is also known as "the Birthplace of Cheesesteaks," and is honestly the only place in the country where one can have a good one. Many other restaurants in many other cities purport to have perfected them as well, but it's all lies and distortions, I assure you. A cheesesteak is made of thinly sliced beef, cooked fresh on a hot griddle, and shredded in the process by a grizzled, spatula-wielding man. It's served on a long, soft roll and topped with cheese and fried onions. They were "invented" at Pat's Steaks in South Philadelphia in the 1930's but, soon after, the ingenious Gino hung his shingle across the street, claiming his were better than Pat's. A messy war has raged since. I prefer Jim's Steaks, though, on South Street in Center City. Jim really refined and perfected the process, bless him.
So, we've gotten the really important facts out of the way. I'll write more about Philly on another occasion. Please, try not to die of anticipatory stress in the meantime.
posted by SD at 2:51 AM
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