This is Paoli

No, I’m not Ed Murrow. God knows, we could use him at this point. But I spent so much time reading about Murrow and his boys in Europe that I sort of wish I could go back and get my cred validated. I also remember him as a little kid on CBS, although, as you may know, that did not end well. Funny that. In case you labor under any illusions about CBS having any backbone, well, they had Murrow, which was as close as it got. He had backbone. I don’t know, maybe Fred Friendly. The suits, forget. They worried about offending the little people who bought the crap that the advertisers paid good money for to keep subversives like Murrow on the air. And business, even then, was business. So don’t kid yourself. Between Joe Carthy and Roy Cohn and Donald Trump and (fill in the sleazeball here), I’m not sure there’s much difference. Oh yeah. McCarthy hated Commies and Trump appears to work for them. Sorry.

But the Paoli stuff does represent something different. I’m home, sort of, for the first time since 1981. Well, I didn’t live in Paoli, but I did live in Wayne from 1978-1981, down the road a piece. And well before that, I’m your basic Philly kid with the usual infusion of suburban finishing school (Penn Wynne) and education (Devon Prep, Villanova). Yeah, tnhat ultimately put me on a different path, but I never dreamed I’d end up living here after, what, 8 years in California and 35 in Texas, not to mention nearly two in Mexico. So I’m extra imperium Hispalensem for the first time in a while, effectively. And it feels weird.

Boy, does it feel weird. I wake up in the morning and it’s 30 degrees. I know that this is gonna last more than two days. My Representative in Congress isn’t some lunatic member of the Freedom Caucus (Chip Roy), but Chrissy Houlahan who graduated from Stanford, MIT and the USAF. The Chipster never served, his obnoxious faux patriotism notwithstanding. I believe you would call him a chicken hawk, but he’s no longer my problem, thank God. Texas is no longer my problem, basically, and thank God. Thank God period. We survived.

What’s weird is that I did go to high school out around here, so am basically familiar with the area. Or with the area as it was from 1965-1969. As you can imagine, it is rather different. The area was much closer to rural then, and it seemed far removed from the Philly neighborhoods in which I grew up. That was the idea, basically. To get the kid out of the city before he could turn into some kind of hoodlum. No danger, really, but my Mom worried and my Mom’s worries had away of becoming mine. So off I went to Devon and the Main Line, which wasn’t Shipley or Baldwin then, although today at 28K (I think) a year, I’m not so sure. That’s not really my concern either, since I’m basically out of touch with the school, although not the Piarist Order who ran the place. They are different things, believe me. One I still find admirable, the other less so. That’s another story, and eventually, I’ll get to it. Lots of changes in the world since 1969, many of which I don’t much like.

For one thing, my family, my immediate family, is basically gone. I miss them. A few days ago I found myself thinking I hadn’t spoken to my Dad in a few days. Yeah. I’ll say. Like 20 years’ worth. It was strange how much my subconscious was prompting me to find out how he was doing, a kind of psychological muscle memory that says he’s here even if he’s not. That really sucks. And it’s happened with a few other people too, including my maternal grandparents–whom I adored–and a favorite uncle, Stan the Man. They were good people, and the approach of the Christmas holiday reminds me of the rounds we would make back then. Boy, what a blast. My Grandmother cooked for thousands every week and Christmas was one long party season with a lot of old-fashioned Italian cookies that I can’t even begin to think of making. Forget the protein or the gravy. Yeah, I’m playing to stereotype, but I don’t care. There are a lot of ghosts here, I won’t kid you. How I make my peace with them is gonna be an interesting process.

To give you just one example, I’m itching to go to Mass at St Donato’s church in West Philly again, which is in the throes of a Mother Cabrini revival. Seriously. I havent seen the film, but Hell, the entire place is a second class relic (I think: I have to ask Jim Maule, my guru on Catholic sacramentals). But one small thing. My neighborhood and school are no longer Italian-American. Now, as half-Sicilian, I was never surprised to find the most intriguing hints of mixed ancestry in the Salvucci DNA. I sort of think I come by my affinity for bop and swing honestly, through some mysterious, osmotic process. But I a m a realist. You don’t just walks around my old Haddington neighborhood saying–hey, bro , I get it. It doesn’t work that way, whatever some of my idiot liberal (mostly WASP) friends think. I am now an outsider in a Black neighborhood, and that’s just a fact. So, like, no, I don’t walk up to 6613 Haverford and say, hey, bro, I was here before you were. Right. Maybe I would be joyfully received, but, somehow, I doubt it. And I don’t blame the folks around there. White folks are an acquired taste in some places, and I’m not stupid enough to ignore that. So how I’m gonna go over to St Donato’s and say, “I’m back” without doing some Archie Bunker meets George Jefferson routine is a good question. You think I’m a racist? I can tell you didn’t grow up in a city, and a lot of my friends didn’t. They think (academics, mostly) that I am some kind of quasi-bigot. Know what? I don’t care, but I’ m no fool either. This is juist an artefact of my life between various worlds, and reentering one of them has its challenges.

You don’t care? Fine. I’ll live. Sooner or later , you find out who your real friends are. And guess what, religion, color, nationality–all that Trumper shit–doesn’t cut it. It’s a tough time to try to go home again.

But I’m gonna try. And you’ll be the first to hear.