Saints in the city

We lived in an area of South Philadelphia that was considered the Jewish section, but there were also pockets of Irish Catholics and, just a block or two away, there were blacks too.

You could have called it the melting pot of America in the 1950s, but if you looked closer the melting was only at the fringes. Each group kept to itself. Each had its own turf. The Irish and blacks had carved out their territory up the tiny side streets while the Jews lived on the main street.

Except for us — we lived on the main street with the Jews. We were the only Italians for blocks around.

If it were true, as my parents said, that some irate Jewish neighbors had tried to keep us from moving into the little rowhouse on Fifth Street, the animosity never surfaced during the 25 years I lived there. We melted right in.

Next door to us lived Cuban-born Jews who had come to Philadelphia to turn their hard work into a bright future for their family. One of my parents’ proudest moments was the neighbors’ boy Sidney joined one of our town’s biggest law firms.

The Golds and the Cardellas got along famously. The Golds spoke English with a Cuban lilt, spiced with a Yiddish dialect. Mom brought them dishes of her lasagna and Hilda reciprocated with whatever Cuban Jews were cooking back then. (It might explain my taste today for mojitos with a knish.)

I became a traveler between two cultures. You talk about the best of both worlds: When you’re eating smoked fish and Jewish rye with corned beef and green tomatoes right out of the barrel one day and enjoying lasagna and calamari the next, you’re living large. And large I became.

Mom and Dad were the most charitable people I have ever known. Every time a family member either got down on his luck or the man of the house got drafted into World War II, they moved in with us.

I can’t pretend to have liked it as a kid. Secretly I think my dad wasn’t too keen on it either, being a very private man who would run up the stairs if the doorbell rang and he was in his T-shirt. But Mom opened her heart and our house to everyone.

When I was around 12, I broke her heart because I refused to share my bed with my cousin Joey. No matter how Mom pleaded that cousin Marie had some problems and needed a place for her son to sleep, I was adamant. Cousin Joey is long gone, but I still feel a little guilty about it.

Mom’s sense of charity did not extend only to her family. Through the years she "adopted" every needy family in the area, especially the kids. As the neighborhood got poorer, Mom’s generosity grew larger.

Both Mom and Dad had a soft spot for the neighborhood kids. I found that a little strange about Dad because he wasn’t the kind who enjoyed a lot of leisure time with his own kids. Maybe he was just fulfilling the male role of the 1950s whose responsibility ended with earning the wage. It was Mom who signed our report cards and went to parent-teacher conferences and the like. Mom even acted as the disciplinarian.

Dad got upset with me only twice in my life — once when I came in five minutes after the newly installed 10 o’clock weeknight curfew (wild kid that I was, I had been playing basketball at Bok gym and had stopped to take a shower before I came home).

The other time was when I was a college freshman and went to a barbecue at a friend’s home with a bunch of classmates and got home around 2 in the morning. Dad was certain that I had been wenching and drinking and lost track of the time. The sad truth was that the closest I had come to contact with a female was our touch football game, in which one of the girls participated and got a black eye for her efforts. I was late only because I didn’t (and still don’t) drive and was waiting for a ride home.

Dad’s sense of charity was more of the organized formal kind than Mom’s. While she was busy adopting every needy person in the neighborhood, Dad was sending part of his meager wages earned as a city cop to charities like the Indian Missions and Father Flanagan’s Boys Town. Dad had seen Spencer Tracy play the part of Father Flanagan in the movie of the same name and had become convinced that he and Tracy were keeping kids out of reform school.

Dad always had a soft spot for any charity that helped the Indians. He felt personally responsible for their betrayal and saw something noble in them long before the political left wing adopted them as a cause celebre.

I like to think if Dad were alive today, he’d probably only gamble in the casinos owned by American Indians. It’s the least a guilty white man can do.