Alleyways and Stone House Lane

Early on this splendid day, after my gym workout and walk around Martin's Lake, I drove down to the Delaware River through Gloucester City. On the way, I decided to drive around the Mill Blocks, oldest buildings in G.C. built in 1845 to house the workers from the two large brick mills that once stood just to the North of them, just before what was once the New York Ship Yard. Suddenly I realized the alleyways and remembered the ones we had between the rows of brick workers houses where I grew up in South Philadelphia, down below Oregon Avenue.

I hadn't given much thought to alleyways over the years, and how they disappeared in residential housing developmentw, although they were once a staple of village life both here and in England. The alleyways separated the the back yards of houses and made a track way for back yard entrances, probably very useful for cottage gardening and back door deliveries.

I remember the hucksters coming through my Grandmother Lyons' back alley in Spring and summer until autumn, delivering ice for the ice boxes we had in my earliest childhood before refrigerators were common, and selling produce. The hucksters had wooden wagons drawn by horses and as a small child in the city, I was amazed and entranced by the horses. Also, I have such a crystal clear picture of the tin weighing bucket and the gauge and how the black needle moved when the produce went into the bucket to be weighed and priced. I can also remember the large tongs the ice man used to haul out the big block of ice and bring it in our kitchen on Warnock Street for our ice box. My Grandmother's Alley was much better than ours. So many people where we lived on Warnock Street had cemented their back yards and had wrought iron fences, but Grandmom's back yards were all lants and flowers and trees and wooden fences. Also, the homemakers would gather around the alleyways to meet at the huckster for their produce and it was a chance to socialize.

My Grandmother in Ocean City, New Jersey had an alleyway behind her house at 623 Asbury Avenue too, also green with plants in the sandy yards and wooden fences. I never saw a huckster there, though, and perhaps the day of the huckster had already ended.

Our hucksters in South Philadelphia came up from Stone HOUse Lane, and ancient village reclaimed from the Delaware River estuary swamplands by enterprising early Dutch and German Settlers who dug canals and used the fertie soil to rais up agricultural beds where they grew the vegetables and the things they needed to feed the hogs and horses they kept there. Later the City took the land and the shipyard is there now, and the airport and industrial usage and Stone House Lane is almost lost to memory.

Although there were no interesting hucksters in my Gradmother Wright's backyard alleyways, I so well remember her meeting with her neighbor Mrs. Garwood, to chat over the fence.

Some things promote socializing and the alleyways certainly did that, so do gardents. I used to meet my neighbor, Mrs King, a German war bride, who kept a vegetable garden on her side of our fence in the backyard and when she was tending her garden and my small daughter was playing in her playhouse we would chat over the fence.

I hope you get out and enjoy this gorgeous, even exhilerating weather while it lasts. Go for a walk and maybe ghrow in a drive and visit someplace and find some wonders! Happy Trails - Jo Ann wrightj45@yahoo.com

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Stonehouse Lane, Philadelphia, Pa from whyy.org

Sep 2, 2016