Philadelphia Freedom

I had never left the South. Until Philadelphia. It was a bit of a culture shock, to say the least.

I sub-leased space at 15th and Spruce in the summer between the two years I attended graduate school at William & Mary. It was a tiny apartment above McGlenchy’s, termed one of the best dive bars of them all. I hardly slept the entire summer due to the sounds that surrounded me. Turns out there’s not much air conditioning in Philly, so I had to leave the windows open. And there, in a city that apparently never slept either, I listened to all the nighttime noise while I sweated profusely. Car horns. Sirens. The bar crowd spilling out at 2 a.m. In Williamsburg, the loudest thing at night had been crickets.

It was such a big city! I walked to work through downtown streets each day alongside hundreds of others I didn’t know, like a scene out of a movie. The SmithKline office on Walnut Street was a tall building, 49 stories in fact. I felt like the small-town girl had arrived!

I remember getting lost when I was supposed to attend a focus group the first week I was there. Someone had told me to take the scu-cull (or so I thought they said) to get there. This was well before GPS and I had no idea what a scu-cull was. In fact, I had to pull over at a gas station and ask someone, who laughed at me hysterically. In a pure Philly accent — Yankee-speak I could hardly decipher — the man at the store told me “it’s the highway that runs along the Skukill River.” How was I supposed to know that? Furthermore, why did people buy pretzels covered in car exhaust at stop lights?

After I got my bearings, I jogged along the meditative Skukill River on some days. Others, I ran up the 72 stone stairs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, raising my hands in the air like a dork (after I was sure no one was noticing). You only live once, right?

I worked with the most amazing people. We hung out during the day and worked hard, then went out in the evening together. Travelled to the shore together. Played softball together. Tom, another summer intern, was my super smart, very handsome cube mate. Not a bad deal, even if we never dated. We often compared notes on Excel tutorials (the early days of Microsoft Office) and our latest social escapades.

Eric and Carel were full-time employees who shared a cube on the other side of the wall. Eric was beloved by everyone — warm, entertaining, the kind of person who made a room better just by being in it. He was also a Morehead Scholar (yeah, like the smartest people at the whole school). He could dance like nobody’s business, which is exactly why he never understood why I couldn’t match his rhythm.

Tom would join in too, though he had no more rhythm than I did.

Carel, a Stanford grad, was a puzzle in the best of ways: his parents were mixed, and while his twin brother looked unmistakably Black, Carel himself read as white. He liked to call himself “a brother” anyway — a line that made us all laugh, especially with Eric standing right there to call him on it. Instead, Eric had nicknamed Carel “Skirt” — not because he acted like a girl, but because, somehow, he didn’t, and the name stuck precisely because Carel didn’t like it.

Carel and I played tennis at Penn a lot over the course of three months. I’d been told it was a rough part of the city and to watch my back. Every time we drove over, I felt it — this was nothing like Chapel Hill or Williamsburg, and I was genuinely scared. (The area has been cleaned up a bit since the early 90s.)

Carel and I remained friends for many years, and we even bet one another over the outcome of the 2015 Super Bowl. Seahawks versus Pats. Yep, that one. I lost and had to wear this abominable shirt (a child’s small that I borrowed).

Some days, we’d skip out to eat lunch at the Reading Terminal Market. It was so incredibly cool, with a wide array of food vendors and merchants. I had never seen anything like it.

One day, the whole crew went to hear Bill Clinton and Al Gore speak at the Liberty Bell Center. The crowd buzzed with excitement over this unknown from Arkansas who was running for president. I remember being so proud that I could vote — and how far I’d come since (Tennessee) Girls State in high school.

I hosted a party one night when friends from grad school visited — including Cam, my friend from Charlotte and partner in crime since long before that summer. I’m not sure how we arranged a gathering that large in space so tiny, but we found a way.

It was that kind of summer — the kind where you feel invincible, like nothing could touch you. Which maybe explains what happened next.

One day, when I was out jogging alone along the Skukill, a car full of men parked in a lot called me over to their car. I thought they were lost and needed directions. What was I thinking? Thankfully, I ran away quickly, and there was no harm done.

Just before the summer ended, Carel invited me and Eric up to his family’s place on the Cape to run a 10K. I’ll never forget running on the cobblestone streets along the ocean. It was so beautiful and his family was terrific.

After the race, I drank a few beers then drove back to Philadelphia alone (one of the many stupid things I did back in the day). I was tired and didn’t get back to my apartment till almost 3 a.m. Parking downtown in Philly late at night was not exactly the pinnacle of safety. I decided to park in the lot across from my apartment building and prayed I wouldn’t get towed before I moved it a few hours later.

When I pulled into the empty lot, I saw someone running over to me. I took a deep breath, parked my car, and prayed. I literally thought to myself: This is the end of my life. But at least I had a good one. I made a deliberate decision to get out — what good would it have done to lock doors and stay in the car? I was also exhausted and had to be at work in a few hours (if I lived, that is). I’d always had a feeling that nothing bad would happen to me. I still do, if I’m honest.

So I unlocked my car doors, jumped out, grabbed my bag, and held my keys like a weapon, since they were the only thing I owned that resembled one. Who was I kidding? And why hadn’t I bought pepper spray by this point in the summer? Naive, maybe. Crazy, probably. But the man ran right by me. I let out a huge sigh of relief.

Did I mention that I went out every single night that summer? I’m really not kidding. A few nights, I was simply too tired to do it. I’d relax in my tiny apartment, and then, my door would buzz. (This was before cell phones.)

“ML, come join us at McGlenchy’s for a drink.” Eric and Carel. Downstairs in the neighborhood bar drinking 99 cent shots. How could I turn them down?

That bar shut down last year. But the memory of that summer lives on — as does one of my favorite childhood songs.