Things We Didn't Tell Our Mothers

On every adventure there are close calls that are probably best left out of the story when you are telling Mom about it.  Here are a few.  

Spoiler alert: no muggings.  We were not mugged in Philly.  Or anywhere else. 

Yet.

Getting shot at--It was the night of July 4th, and we'd been in Philly a week.  At 2 am we were both awakened by a loud noise.  I wandered around the apartment and didn't find anything.  Next day I was pounding in loose nails on the veranda and found this:

45-caliber, copper-jacket, most frequently used in automatic weapons.  Some holiday celebrant had shot it into the air.  It came down on our deck.  I'm thinking of making it into a necklace.  Or gaging my ear with it.

Ticks--What with Lyme disease and all, the east cost is swimming with stories of ticks.  In two years I pulled two out of me, and about a half dozen out of other people.  Not counting the hundreds brushed off clothes.  No lyme disease yet;  I wouldn't mind it if it were Key Lime disease...

Cockroaches--for being in the urban center of Philly, we were remarkably pest-free.  We had a pest-control guy come every month and keep us pretty clean.  But the first month we were there, I found a fitty-cent-piece-sized cockroach on its back.  Sure it was dead, I bent over and picked it up.  It turned out not to be dead, but I didn't want to drop it and let it get away. It squirmed.

The dungeon basement--it was a 100-year-old apartment originally designed with a boiler and steam heat.  That all got replaced with gas furnaces later, but the unlit pit with the boiler in it was still in place.  This is where we did our laundry.

It is the stuff of Nightstalker plots...

Crime--not too much to report here.  Our actual corner was pretty crime-free, according to the Philly Crimespot app, but the most predictable location for fights, shootings and stabbings was about a block away in front of a bar so basic that it had no name.  It was just a bar.  With lots of drunken violence. The Philly newspaper calls it a "nuisance bar."

Yep.

Also, a couple of blocks the other way was a notorious drug alley where I saw my first daylight drug deal, just driving by.  

And to avoid standing out in the neighborhood in my white shirt and tie, I would change into "traveling clothes" whenever I would walk over to take the Ell to the train station.  I classify this as paranoia and not a true near-miss, because it wasn't really that dangerous.

This is not my actual disguise. 

As far as you know.

There were some other close calls with bedbugs, and strange people, and drunks passed out on the church steps, but as big urban centers go, Philly is all right with us. And we would gladly go back and do it all again.