Friday afternoon is never a good time to drive Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway. Fact is, there's hardly ever a good time to enter that sometime parking lot, sometime race track that winds its way along the river after which it is named.
But there we were a week and a day before Christmas Eve, in a snow storm. We were headed down (literally) toward the heart of the city, and so was everyone else in the world. Snow was blowing across the roadway and sticking to it. Traffic was moving…perhaps ten miles per hour. Drivers were being uncharacteristically cautious. We would get to the Airbnb in West Philly that we’d booked, but when?
Not being very familiar with the area we were listening carefully to Ms. GPS’s calm voice. About an hour into our slow descent, she advised that we’d save seven minutes by taking the next exit and cutting through neighborhoods to our destination. That sounded very good to us, not only because of the shorter time, but also because (and even more urgently) I had to find a bathroom quick. Surely there’d be a convenient gas station near the exit.
Not to be. We exited, and pushed slowly up a hill in a thick stream of cars moving by fits and starts, nothing but city parkland all around us. We finally came to an intersection, turned left, crept our way through fairly down-and-out neighborhoods, and turned this way and that on a route that seemed intentionally circuitous. Not a gas station in sight. I grew desperate. I told Maxine I had to stop. She suggested a bar that we were approaching. I didn’t have to go that bad.
Finally, around some corner under some commuter rail tracks we saw a CVS Drugstore. A drug store, where health is dispensed, surely would meet my need. I turned into the snowy parking lot, frantically found a place to park, and abandoned my wife in the car as I ran in to seek a bathroom. It was then I realized I was outside my comfort zone in more than one way. I was in a strange, inner city, and yes, largely black, community. Would THIS drug store respond to my need?
Of course it did. Unlike our local suburban CVS, it did not openly offer restroom facilities to the public. You had to ask to be let into a locked area to get to them. I will never know whether they let me in because they let in everyone who asks, or because I looked as if I posed no danger of doing something in them other than what they were intended for.
Much relieved, I said thank you to every employee I saw on the way out of the store, and returned to Maxine in the car. At least I could relax as we finished our tortuous trip to a residence we’d never before seen.
As usual in Philadelphia, there were few places to park within sight of our place, but we did find one. I squeezed into it, then walked to the sign to see what kind of restrictions the city placed on parking in my spot. It was something like two-hour parking during weekday day-time hours until 10:00 pm. It was 4:00 pm Friday. The snow was still falling; traffic everywhere was a mess. Surely every traffic cop (including every meter maid, or whoever checks the meters) had more important things to do than give parking tickets to hapless out-of-town visitors, who might be in town to spend money, as visitors do. I decided to risk it: make it to 10:00 pm and we’d be in free for the weekend.
Of course we didn’t make it. Later that evening I found an envelope stuck under a wiper blade. The law had noted our parked Prius just after 5 pm and issued a ticket two hours and one minute later. That will be $26, you who apparently cannot read. No warning, no welcome to Philadelphia, please note the parking restrictions on this street.
I am sure residents of that street truly need and want the powers-that-be to enforce the laws so they can park there, but there is more than one way to tell otherwise benign persons that they’ve made a mistake. And it’s not a big deal for me, that parking ticket. Actually, $26 does seem too small even to cover the cost of issuing the citation.
But the message from the CVS staff and the message from the city authorities are quite different, and made me think about the journey of the holy family to the stable. Ordinary folk offered them welcome and helped them address their urgent need. The Roman Empire collected what they owed, not caring a bit about them as persons until they realized that they represented a threat to its oppressive law and order. Things operate just about the same way 2,000+ years later.
What if we learned to do more than say Merry Christmas?
The rest of the weekend was wonderful, and included two fine concerts of seasonal music, quality time with our daughter and friend, and a reunion with two long-time friends we had not seen for years. Philadelphia is a great city for us to visit, from its music scene to just the right CVS when you need it.
Let’s do more Merry Christmas-ing, friends. It’s needed now, perhaps more than ever.
