Category: Philadelphia

The house was empty, it seemed, save for the history that so obviously still resided within its graffitied walls. Its floors were piled high with rubbish, almost as if a dumpster had been upended above them, but peculiarly the refuse had no noticeable scent. Either that or my sense of smell just wasn’t good after being in the house for more than five minutes. The stairs leading upward were rotten from the bottom up, a sure sign that no one was up there.

It was a Saturday. I was 16 or 17 — probably 17 — and it was a late spring afternoon in North Philadelphia. We were supposed to be in church, the five of us, wiling away the afternoon before the vesper service at sunset, but we were squirrely. Our parents were all otherwise occupied (having large scale conversations, sleeping in the kindergarten classroom, eating lunch, or in one of the various meetings that would crop up), and we were old enough to be on our own. So we did some exploring.

North Philadelphia was entirely run down in those days — in the early-90s — so it wasn’t hard to find some abandoned houses to explore. The hard part was making sure our nice church clothes didn’t get ruined from the experience. We would actually pick up some non-church kids along the way, gathering steam and people for a major expedition some days.

The kids from North Philly were a lot more world-weary than we were, even though we were the same age. There’s something to be said for growing up in the ghetto, with no pretense that there was something more to the world. They lived in the world of drug deals, drive-by shootings, and five families living in one row home. Continue reading “Empty”