Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
started a fire that quickly grew out of control and burned down most of the neighborhood-
sixty-onehousesinall-andkilledelevenpeople,includingallthechildreninthebarricaded
home.
When they aren'tbeing incompetent, city officials like torelax with alittle corruption. Just
as I was driving into town I heard on the radio that a former city councilman had been sen
tenced to ten years in jail and his aide to eight years for attempted extortion. The judge
called it a gross breach of public trust. He should know. Across town a state review board
was calling for the dismissal of nine of the judge's colleagues for taking cash gifts from
members of the roofers' union. Two of those judges were already awaiting trial on, extor-
tioncharges.ThissortofthingisroutineinPhiladelphia.Afewmonthsearlierwhenastate
official named Bud Dwyer was similarly accused of corruption, he called a press confer-
ence, pulled out a gun and, as cameras rolled, blew his brains out. This led to an excellent
local joke. Q. What is the difference between Bud Dwyer and Bud Lite? A. Bud Lite has a
head on it.
Yet for all its incompetence and criminality, Philadelphia is a likable place. For one thing,
unlike Washington, it feels like a big city. It had skyscrapers and there was steam rising
through vents in the sidewalk and on every corner stood a stainless steel hot-dog stand,
with a chilly-looking guy in a stocking cap bobbing around behind it. I wandered over to
Independence Square-actually it's now called Independence National Historical Park-and
looked respectfully at all the historic buildings. The main building is Independence Hall,
wheretheDeclarationofIndependencewasdrawnupandtheConstitutionratified.WhenI
had first been there in 1960, there was a long line stretching out of the building. There still
was-infact,itseemednottohavemovedintwenty-sevenyears.Deepthoughmyrespectis
for both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, I was disinclined to spend
my afternoon in such a long and immobile line. I went instead to the visitors' center. Na-
tional park visitors' centers are always the same. They always have some displays in glass
cases that manage to be both boring and uninformative, a locked auditorium with a board
out front saying that the next showing of the free twelve-minute introductory film will be
at 4 P.M. (just before 4 P.M. somebody comes and changes it to 10 A.M.), some racks of
topics and brochures with titles like Pewter in History and Vegetables of Old Philadelphia,
which are too boring even to browse through, much less buy, and a drinking fountain and
rest rooms, which everyone makes use of because there's not much else to do. Every vis-
itor to every national park goes into the visitors' center, stands around kind of stupidly for
a while, then has a pee and a drink of water and wanders back outside. That is what I did
now.
