Michael Mayer - Time Trippers The Nights of the Round Table

We walked around the massive, tall city hall with the statue of William Penn surveying his city of brotherly love. It looked dirtier but otherwise the same impressive building I remembered.

What I was really looking forward to was around the corner. We turned the corner on that quiet morning and stood facing the incredibly ornate, ugly, grimy, crazy, tall Gothic 19th century stone pile that was, I mean is, Broad Street Station. It looked for all the world like a cathedral, with its two mismatched towers. Torn down as an ‘eyesore’ in the 1950’s, in the frantic efforts to modernize cities, it was like a dream to see it here, untouched.

“Is that a church?” Jonathan asked.

“It’s a church!” Lauren said.

“Nope, it LOOKS like a cathedral, doesn’t it? No, just a train station. We’re going to New York City on the Pennsylvania Railroad, just like in Monopoly, remember? Come on – we can get breakfast and wash up inside.”

We walked up the ornate central stairs, the marble steps worn down from so many feet over the years and found the washrooms. We washed up and brushed our teeth. I shaved with my orange plastic Bic shaver, getting a puzzled look from another man scraping his lathered face with a big straight razor.

The only modern things I brought were my indispensable plastic disposable razor, my credit cards (for our return) and my plastic eyeglasses. I didn’t have time to lay in a pair of big old round black plastic frames more in keeping with the times.

We passed by the newsstand and the newspaper’s date said that it was Saturday, September 24, 1927. Not bad, I thought to myself. We missed the target date by only a few days. Could it be that the farther back you go traveling in time, the less accurate it gets? Still, a staggering achievement!

Tired and hungry, we went into the classic Union News restaurant. We sat at the marble and brass lunch counter. The kids were still sleepy, not really grasping where they were. I ordered pancakes with lots of bacon and chocolate milk for the kids.

“I’m hungry!” Lauren said a little cranky.

The rather pretty waitress with fashionable bobbed hair, headband, lace cap and black dress with white apron smiled and said what cute kids I had. She looked at Lauren. “Are you a princess or something?”

“No,” Lauren said, smiling shyly. Jonathan flashed his big wide grin at the waitress. She pinched his dimpled cheek. “He’s gonna be a real Sheik when he grows up,” she said.

“What’s a Sheik, Lito?”

“I’ll explain later, just slang for a cool guy,” I told him.

He nodded. “Cool!”

“Want any scrapple with your eggs, sir?” the waitress asked. Knowing what it was, I still passed on that traditional Pennsylvania ‘Dutch’ spicy sausage dish. Two steaming platters of hot pancakes and crisp bacon were placed in front of us and a pot of wonderful coffee for me as well as two eggs, sunny side up.

For once the kids tucked in hungrily, splitting a plate of pancakes, munching the bacon. Real maple syrup and very creamy butter melted on the thick, rich pancakes, which were delicious. They loved the very creamy milk and thick cocoa. I smiled, knowing that the milk would be extra tasty because they hadn’t heard of homogenization, so the milk would have all its cream.

Soon more people began entering the restaurant dressed for work, men in elegant suits, all wearing hats, mostly the big fedoras, some in derbies, some in straw ‘skimmers’ like Harold Lloyd. There were quite a few women as well, in stylish tweed skirts and jackets, the cute, helmet-like ‘cloche’ hats framing pretty faces, almost covering the eyes and short hair, and very shiny, mostly white, silk stockings and high heels clopping along the tiled floor. I was a bit puzzled - it being early Saturday, hardly 7 o’clock. I had forgotten that most people worked a half day on Saturdays, so this would be like a weekday morning.

With breakfast done, the kid’s plates mostly clean and having drunk ALL their milk for once, I got the check. Less than a dollar! For the first time I took out the big, folding dollar bills. Jonathan looked at the oversized money.

“Lito, is that REAL money?”

“You bet it is. See the bills with the orange ink? You can exchange that at a bank and get real gold for it,” I said with a smile as I peeled off two dollars and gave them to the waitress, asking if she could give me change for a dollar. She plunked down the change in the real silver quarters and nickels. I left fifty cents to the waitress. She flashed me a smile worthy of the movies and scooped up the money.

“Real gold, like Harry Potter’s bank?” Lauren chimed in.

“Yeah, something like that.”

We took our suitcases, went downstairs again to the ticket windows and found the Pullman window.

“What have you got for parlor seats to New York?” I asked. The agent, brisk, said he could get three seats on the 9:00 am ‘Clocker.’

“No room on the 8 o’clock. - Penn Station?” he asked.

“Yep!”

“That’ll be $5.50, one adult and two half-fares for the kiddies – Track 15.”

“What does Clocker mean, Lito?” Jonathan asked.

“It’s the nickname for the Pennsylvania’s hourly service between Philadelphia and New York, every hour on the hour so you don’t have to check schedules. Easy to remember and gives them a competitive edge with their archrival the Reading, just around the corner.”

We wandered back upstairs to the black iron gates, crowds of commuters swarming out of the gates on the left which the owl-eyed electric commuter trains used, announcers trying to make themselves heard with big megaphones. I caught one announcement “…..last call 8:15 Paoli Local for Overbrook, Merion, Narbeth, Wynnwood, Ardmore, Haverford, Bryn Mawr…..” the storied Paoli Local serving the wealthy, very old money ‘Main Line’ communities.

“Old Maids never wed and have babies…” I said to myself.

“What Lito?!” Lauren said.

“Oh, sorry, that’s the way Philadelphians remember the stops on the Paoli Local – the first letter stands for each station…Old Maids equals Overbrook, Merion…get it?”

Lauren looked at me puzzled.

“It’s a local thing.”

A big steam engine was breathing and snorting like a dragon facing the station at Track 12, Lauren pointing and grinning.

“Yes,” I said, “big, isn’t she?”

“Like a dragon!” Lauren said.

After some time, we lined up at Track 15’s gate, the few stops listed on the board. Soon the gateman opened the gate and we walked up the brick platform to the front of the dark red train where the First Class ‘Parlor’ Car would be.

“Right behind the ‘Smoker or Club Car,” I told them.

“Smoker?” Lauren asked.

“It’s a car where people can relax, smoke, play cards, and is usually right behind the engine.”

“This train’s kinda dirty.” Jonathan said as we walked along the dusty, heavy steel cars.

“Well, these are pretty hard-working coaches, and most of the engines are steam and they burn coal, so it gets dirty,” I told him, knowing the Pennsylvania was not noted for its cleanliness.

To my relief, the Parlor Car was clean and we mounted the steps as the proud Afro-American Pullman Porter helped us up the steps and took our suitcases. He glanced at our tickets and wished us a good morning.