by Mike Miller
The hallways we filtered through displayed patches where the plaster had been stripped from walls and ceilings and never replaced. Contrite, we followed David on into Mrs. DuBois’ third-grade classroom in order to witness and document another of his holy causes, because David was a consummate nudge forever hectoring the community, entreating and reprimanding the populace to its own betterment. This classroom was a shabbily disguised office with low yellow desks pushed together to form long worktables and autumn leaves cut from construction paper taped over dun-painted walls. Although there was still a discernable start-of-semester ambition clinging to it, an eagerness like fresh air mingling with the aromas of young children and duplicity. Mrs. DuBois, a thirty-something, plump African-American woman in a knee-length navy skirt and neatly-striped cotton shirt stood in front of the whiteboard, elbows out, hands clasped in front of her. But she was no star-struck provincial; she was a woman who took charge and triumphed over challenges. You could see it in her forthright gaze and firm posture.
“Who can tell me who this gentlemen is?” As if those kids hadn’t been thoroughly coached. Thirty-odd little countenances broke into immense grins, thirty-odd small hands shot into the air taking a few of those lithe young bodies partly up with them, while a few opportunists delivered skittish asides to their neighbors. David, an erstwhile teacher, stood in debonair silence beside Mrs. DuBois in his Italian suit, a caramel fabric with a golden shimmer accented by a quiet mauve silk tie and a pale pink shirt. It was his trademark now, all that sartorial splendor setting off the markedly suave demeanor, it was expected at any public appearance. But really it was the most outstanding, deliberate contrast imaginable, style befriending brutality – his darkly pitted complexion a broad, desolate moon, his features crude overall, his nose frankly bulbous, his stocky body too heavy for comfort. But his attire, his exaggerated masculine grace inevitably celebrated civilization and even beauty. He shone, he bowed his noble head and released an infinity of stars.
“Ah, I’m so pleased that you recognize me! We have aspiring politicians, then? Or merely very intelligent future citizens?” A pleased posture, that thick torso companionably forward, his deeply serious tones playing about that lovely Latin lilt. “Well, let us start. You, young gentleman! Pointing out an immediately abashed kid in the second row. “Please explain to us who it is you believe me to be.”
The boy glanced at his teacher. “City Councilman David Cevallos.”
“Ah, I see! City Councilman David Cevallos. Yes. Well, I concede that to be correct!” Then with one hand he encircled the room; I noted the oil paint clinging to his fingernails. “Well, and who are you that I have the pleasure to address here today?”
That one was unexpected and required some rapidly interchanged glances. Finally several voices explained that they were Mrs. DuBois’ class or a version thereof.
“Yes, I thank you very much for that proper introduction.” Nodding, his hand rubbing a thoughtful chin. “Well then, Mrs. DuBois’ class, can you tell me this, since you’re all so well informed! Can you tell me what precisely that means, to be a City Councilman?”
David sat himself on the edge of Mrs. DuBois’ desk, ignoring the adult chair obviously positioned for him at the front of the room, flicking an invisible piece of lint from his knee, gravely surveying the expected forest of well-prepared hands. At length he recognized an exceptionally eager girl in a middle row with sad Mediterranean eyes and a smooth olive complexion. Despite a preponderance of African-Americans the children made something of an ethnic stew, a mix of bobbing braids fastened with bright plastic barrettes, spiky-haired proto-punks, and contained or else truculent, hip Asians.
“Young lady, what is it a Councilman does?”
“Make laws!”
“Make laws. That’s almost exactly right. But let me say that I don’t think this answer is complete.” Strewing confusion over the obedient masses. “Well, let me enlighten you. Members of City Council do a thousand things, much more than merely making laws, although this is very important too.” Slowly nodding, nodding. “For example, I build buildings. I pave streets. I put out fires. In fact, I even teach school.”
Here suddenly struck by an interesting thought. “Did you know that long ago I attended this very school? As a child I sat in this very classroom.”
“Yeah! We knew that!” It would have been impossible, they would have had to have been blind and deaf not to know all about the legendary alumnus exhibited before them in the actual flesh, one of those extraordinary, rare beasts who knew other successful people and lived inside the mysterious celebrity kingdom.
“I see you do know. That’s very impressive. You are very well informed. And do you know also that Mrs. DuBois, this Mrs. DuBois standing right here today, was also my third grade teacher?”
This was met with vociferous objection.
“Oh, but I would certainly never mislead you.” Then turning courteously to the teacher still standing primly at the front of the room: “Tell us then, how long have you been teaching this class, Mrs. Dubois? Wouldn’t you say it’s been almost a century now, give or take a decade?”
“Seems like it.”
They are natural confederates, both of them the kind of people who respect social workers.
“Then with your permission let me ask you a question, if I may ask a question of the teacher. Do you think anything has genuinely changed from when you started all those years ago, what with the many changes out in the world and all the magical electronics we have today?”
She smiled politely and ignored the inquiry, knowing full well he was merely transitioning into his patented motivational harangue. Earnestly gazing out from his perch on the desk, cupping his meaty hands against his sizable pouch. That’s how you always picture David: looking down at someone with paternal affection and that gravity lurking just underneath, like exhaustion. “I can tell you what has never changed, not in all that time, not with all our modern electronics, which is that every single one of you has been given a precious gift: the opportunity to choose your own future. This is incredible! In all of history you are among the few children fortunate enough to be able to choose what your life will be.”
“God chooses,” said an affronted little voice from the middle of the room.
“God too. You and God together, that goes without saying. I apologize if I did not make myself clear.” And he let the protective blank silence, the cautious waiting continue while he carefully examined his own palms, readying himself to sow wisdom in this hostile ground, even knowing.
“Inside your own head you can dream wonderful secret fantasies but unless you obtain an education you will not achieve those things no matter what they are, no matter if those dreams are of computers and outer space or sports or music. But you see it’s a kind of a test. Are you smart enough to want to be smart?”
However much they truly understood of this effort at indoctrination, an unmistakable fog of resentment was drifting up from those tiny desks now, a thick security blanket of rebellious disinterest. Their impossibly small backs were still, their posture resigned, their faces uniformly expressing a boredom nearly surpassing human endurance. No doubt twenty years from now they’ll value his message, having forgotten how it was literally impossible to stop the inchoate hurt for an whole endless day without recourse to the usual methods of distraction or oblivion, to instantly acquire sufficient souls. How their particular deficiencies were as much beyond their control as cancer and equally tragic but unfortunately outside the current fashion in victims. Because if they could, then they were already somebody else, receiving another congratulatory pat on the back. But yes, eventually they’ll blame themselves. That morning they simply glared back at the mockery of this enemy come to further diminish their fragile self-respect, promising rewards to the lucky, using the truth against them.
David stood then, gazing benevolently down at them. Not saying to them: “Love wisdom for its own sake. Read for joy. Learning is the greatest adventure imagin
able. It will make you value humanity.” Instead he said, “Let me repeat this so that you always remember: your time in school is where you decide your entire life.”
Speaking with such urgency while the children mostly ignored this tedious demand to become a more convenient problem, amenable to current solutions. And all this ridiculous effort because David truly hoped, even expected mere words to shift their precarious lives that critical bit towards alignment with his truth, so that finally they would be able to hear him. It was a matter of wearing them down, accomplishing a few precious millimeters of progress with each repetition.
“I want you to watch carefully. Is everyone watching? Well then, here is what the world owes you.” And he turned over both empty palms. “And this is what you can have.” And he expanded both arms to embrace the universe. “And this is how you can win in this world.” And he reached out and embraced the classroom, pointing to the posters and bookshelf and computer in turn, pointing finally at Mrs. DuBois who smiled back at him. And then he was waving in farewell and cleanly finding his way out.
In the Hispanic neighborhood stretching up North 5th Street into Olney, up among the flashy boutiques and cheap furniture stores and bodegas with hand-painted signboards and tiny taquerias and religious stores with resin crucifixes in the windows, that area climbing north towards the Asian gangs further up and the Russian mobs north of them, this gospel of education was generally considered fine so far as it went. But listen, I have no true knowledge of this community, all those pragmatic believers patiently climbing up the continent, but from what I could gather David was everyone’s strict but important uncle who kept getting re-elected for all the profound reasons that manifest politically. His continued re-election seemed to me inevitable even though David was getting older and a little out of touch, an aging Latin king.
In his student days he learned easily, and he veritably worshipped knowledge, any knowledge, even though he had no idea what to do with it except swallow it whole like a communion wafer. It was a gift, all for free, and accepting it put him at the top of his class at Central High with a Mayor’s Scholarship straight through Penn. From there he developed his social and organizational skills with additional degrees until he became an administrator in this very same disintegrating school system. Look at him now, fighting to make them see.
After the morning’s heartless classroom diatribe we headed down to the Landing. It was a gray sort of day with a few scattered breakthroughs of bright sunlight reflecting off the water like brilliant afterthoughts. And it was chilly. I think a lot about weather because I generally don’t like it. I don’t like the cold or people who can’t seem to feel it. Waiting there that day, the wind hit us unimpeded. I sighed and lifted my eyes to the blue arch of the Ben Franklin Bridge, its nearby material presence at once impressively concrete and utterly ethereal.
We formed a watchful semicircle facing away from the water, our backs to the vague squalor of Camden with that noticeable white dome of the aquarium in its midst and the impressive ghost-gray battleship New Jersey lingering at the shore. Here on the Pennsylvania side, below the Seaport Museum, there’s another retired battleship: Commodore Dewey’s former command the USS Olympia. Her final official act was to convey the body of the Unknown Soldier to Arlington; now she sits as a reminder of a former ethos, her hull painted a sickly pink at the water line, then white, and then a horrible tan above, so that she resembles a gigantic serving of Neapolitan ice cream dished up, for some reason, next to an urban pleasure marina with piers marked out with little translucent pinwheels. You viewed her in disbelief because she evaded the expected categories, until eventually you noticed the submarine lurking in her shadow. The Becuna’s a Vietnam vet so black and low she virtually disappears within her own dark aura. Both vessels float stationary at this uncertain destination, still reeking of death and blood and fear, two uncomfortable veterans refusing to amalgamate into this half-hearted recreational venue.
Also there’s the Moshulu, a different matter entirely, a huge black-and-white sailing ship now converted into a decent restaurant, eminently suitable for professional or special occasions. From her decks and dining rooms you sense that she likes it here, you feel her wood expand happily while she rocks at her ease.
There’s not much else: the ferry station, sometimes a motorboat or two on the water, on rare occasions a cruise ship. Few people as well; unless there’s some concert or ethnic festival on it’s mostly joggers or random tourists trying to read the ruptured historic markers lining the pier. Otherwise the emptiness is noticeable; even the seagulls don’t much congregate here, there’s no point. And except for our summer festivals and those few major holidays where there are fireworks over the bridge the greater public either ignores this site or holds it in abeyance.
But I need to be clear for the benefit of anyone not from around here: Penn’s Landing isn’t a complete wasteland, it’s just an underutilized venue, obviously shabby and crumbling around the amphitheatre. A lot of people like it well enough the way it is, the Great Plaza and the lights on the bridge, a tall ship or battleship to tour and another one to have dinner on, even the casual lack of coherence, the human perspective reflected in that friendly hodgepodge. And I don’t want to disparage those summer concerts and movies, or even the lackluster festival weekends let alone Freedom Week with its proud celebrations. Also there’s the newer Festival Pier a little north, but I don’t count that although maybe I should. The River Rink is fine too, especially at Christmas. But as a general rule it’s only shuttered concession booths, and it takes you much too long to walk the nothingness from the ferry landing to the stage. There’s just not enough there to overcome the inconvenience.
Look west at Philadelphia and there are the newer hotels and the clean white spire of old Independence Hall, then further up there’s Billy Penn and further west of him our sparse handful of actual skyscrapers glaring from the constant haze, irradiated by an invisible sun. Then really look, examine it carefully and without preconceptions, and you start to notice the dilapidation, the collapsed infrastructure of our obsolete factory town, the brick walls bearing painted traces of ancient painted advertisements. Remnants of that former vital mercantile city are plentiful here along this river, that old living Philadelphia that was once so vigorous and callous and dangerous.
But David was looking away from the city confusion and gesturing instead at the narrow property isolated between the river and I-95. “I want you to imagine what we can create here. I want you to dare to envision something created with the people of Philadelphia in mind.” Staring south towards a few skeletal cranes and one slowly approaching freighter. The confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill was somewhere way down there, past the old Navy Yard to where the great Delaware Bay opened out into the Atlantic. Moving ponderously as usual, David turned north to face the looming blue span of the bridge pulling the gray sheen of the river around with him, wrapping himself in the idea of it. “We have been blessed with incredible potential here.”
Unfortunately all that potential is exactly what’s killing the Landing. It’s a history so elaborately improbable, so magnificently preposterous you start to wonder if there really is some species of curse at work. How else explain the supernatural antipathy to success, the almost mystical ability to forestall progress; it’s a force so elegantly malicious eventually you find yourself secretly rooting for that evil imp no doubt hiding under the pier.
It starts with the initial, determinative clearing of the riverside slums, the fill brought in to build the Landing, the Society Hill renaissance and the reclamation of the lower city. All that was well before my arrival in Philadelphia, of course, and a potent enough victory for any comparative metropolis, except thus far and no farther because then everything starts to fall apart. Certainly by the time of the Bicentennial, when there was extensive restoration around the historic district and they put in all this miserable pink brick composite that immediately started to decompose. When everyone started seeing th
e value and trying too hard. There was NewMarket, that strange, vaguely nautical mall with wooden stairs to higher levels of struggling or failed shops and restaurants, its superfluous banner left hanging over the river for approximately forever.
There followed numerous developers armed with familiar hype: it made for a hilarious sequence of newspaper extracts (even funnier read in reverse chronology), a dependable succession of confidence and catastrophe. The excerpts below offer a typical recounting of one typical attempt, and if you think I’m exaggerating look it up yourself:
May 1997 - Largest developer in nation – entertainment complex with 11-screen movie - mayor acknowledges mayors have been making similar promises of development at site for decades
August 1998 - 17 movie screens - progress being made - demolish existing Great Plaza - two ice rinks - still hostage to rent and construction costs
October 1998 - Step forward with lease agreement – developer not legally committed until board of directors votes and construction commitment given - start locking in leases
January 1999 - Board okays deal
April 1999 – Children’s Museum to occupy part of complex – the mayor pledges five million in city funds
September 1999 - Art Commission approves location for Children’s Museum
October 1999 - construction delayed - opening spring 2002 - state approval needed to remove ramps connecting Columbus Boulevard to Market and Chestnut Sts. - current RiverRink stays put for now
October 1999 – many retailers sign on - project skewing upscale
February 2000 - developer seeks additional public aid money from Port Authority for enhancements - delays taking legal control of site
March 2000 - new worries over Riverfront complex as start of construction is put off again
May 2000 - done deal - construction to start in August