SOLTuesday: History in Philadelphia

            I just spent two days in Philadelphia with a couple of friends. We intended to visit the Philadelphia Museum of Art to see the Gee Bend’s quilt exhibit, but neglected to check whether the museum was open on Mondays until we arrived at our B&B—and it isn’t.

            But all was not lost. We had reservations for a walking tour of the Old City with a tour guide who’d been a student of one of my friends several years ago. The tour was wonderful. Tim gave lots of information that I hadn’t known, like that Betsy Ross had three husbands, and outlived them all. We walked down Elspeth’s Alley, the oldest continuously used street in the country and a National Historic Landmark District. The street was first created in 1702, and there are now 32 privately owned and lived-in houses, which were built between 1738 and 1836. Several houses still had the fire company plaques that entitled the owners to priority fire-fighting because they’d paid for that service. There were many more fascinating stops, including the very first post office next to Benjamin Franklin’s home, because Franklin was the country’s first postmaster general. It’s still a functioning post office, but also looks like a museum.

           After the tour, we stopped at Shane’s Confectionary, opened in 1863 and continuously operated since then. I bought some intriguing chocolates: chocolate with cayenne, chocolate bar with ginger, and traditional fudge with nuts and a peanut butter fudge. The store also stocks Wilbur’s Buds, which look very much like Hersey Kisses because the person who created Hersey Kisses was an apprentice to the creator of Wilbur’s Buds and went off to give the idea to another candy maker near Hersey, Pennsylvania.

            If you’re in Philly, or happen to be visiting, I strongly recommend taking the Old City Walking Tour. 

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SOLTuesday: Bookcase Finds

            No, this is not about books, although I’ve been doing a lot with my books lately.

            Recently, three shelves collapsed on one of my many bookcases—I’d had books two rows deep, and those shelves just weren’t built for that. I had to cull, and quickly, to get those books off of the floor.

            Having done that job on one bookcase, I thought I’d tackle the others before I was forced to by more collapse. But as I got started, my daughter reminded me that my husband used to stash emergency money, maybe $100, in “a book,” and since Jack’s no longer among the living, I can’t ask him which book it was. So Christie and her husband came over to help, riffling through books on four shelves of the “fiction” bookcase.

            In the process, they found, stuck behind books, a month’s worth of New York Times Book Reviews from 2005—and a brown paper bag. I know exactly what that bag is for.

            Jack used to buy a small container of yogurt at a neighborhood

deli as his movie snack, and often he didn’t get a bag to put it in. So he made a point of saving small paper bags like this one for his movie yogurt. Usually, he put the bags on a top shelf in a kitchen cabinet, but I guess this one never got there. It just ended up in the secret world “behind things,” out of sight, out of mind.

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It’s Slice of Life Tuesday over at Two Writing Teachers. Check out this encouraging and enthusiastic writing community and their slices of life every Tuesday. And add one of your own.