Many a Philadelphia area college student spent those post-Thanksgiving/Pre-Christmas days working at one of the “Big Three” department stores in Center City: Strawbridge & Clothier, Lit Brothers, or John Wanamaker’s. Due to my mother’s influence, I thought working at Wanamaker’s was the best of all worlds. After all, who could resist the classy interior and exterior window displays, the jagged mountain range stroke of the owner’s signature on the side of the building, and the transportation proximity?
Two other striking figures claimed the store’s signature distinction: the Wanamaker eagle and the annual Christmas fountain and light show. The serene and imposing gilded bronze aviary statue was the focal point for gathering, for claiming “lost parents,” and for bon voyages until next time.
Lifting one’s eyes to the sights, sounds, and waving fountain streams of the hourly Christmas performance stopped shoppers in their tracks and delighted the minds of wide-eyed youngsters who rarely cried during those few minutes of awe. My first recollection of seeing the aqua wonder made me fearful, thinking at any moment, the fountains would fall from their upper stage perch and drown the audience below, extinguishing the prancing lights in the process.
Not every pair of eyes welcomed this holiday diversion. My first Christmas working season in the children’s department in 1972 provided a novel view of the saleswomen employed at the makeup counters. The daily music grinding of “Frosty the Snowman” did nothing for their business. No cash registers rung in harmony with “O, Christmas Tree.” Gazers leaned on their pristine cosmetic display cases; their backs turned away from the porcelain faces of Estee Lauderettes, who resorted to makeup remover to erase the handprints and elbow marks on their precious encasements of promised beauty and glamour. No allure of scented bottled blossoms could overpower the lofty sounds and scenery above the audience. It must have been the bane of their existence, their dreams of pocket money ruined by lit-up distraction. One year, I counted viewing thirty-six performances of Rudolph’s very shiny unpowdered nose glowing across the ceiling.
*****
Every college student on Wanamaker’s holiday payroll hoped to work for the main floor supervisor, Mrs. B., known for her kindness. She was a smartly dressed, middle-aged Jewish lady, brownish-black hair coiffed to perfection, with no-nonsense eyeglasses attached to a pearl chain that hung elegantly around her neck. Her high-heeled pumps that coordinated with every outfit gave her an acceptable height, appearing taller than she was. Her trim figure clicked in tandem with her stride. Mrs. B. took the time to acquaint herself with several of us. One afternoon, during the height of the Christmas rush, she announced that she would retain us for the week after Christmas. We were delighted, as it meant money for next semester’s textbooks would be less of an issue. All we needed to do was follow her instructions without variation.
When we punched in on the time clock on December 26th, Mrs. B. led us to an unfamiliar store area, one at a time. We were placed separately in obscure areas of dressing rooms and stock areas, out of the view of the “suits” who might sniff through the aisles looking for post-holiday imperfections. There were close calls, but none of us were spotted. Had we been “caught,” we would say we were Christmas shopping to maintain our ruse. During that week, Mrs. B. was ubiquitous, her eagle eyes surpassing that stony sculpture’s glance on the first floor. We functioned seamlessly as the suits paraded the aisles, praising Mrs. B. for her diligence and attention to detail. I’ll always wonder if the Wanamaker eagle suspected her and kept the secret, among all the others, under its ornate-clad feathers.
Linda M. Romanowski is a graduate of Rosemont College, in 1975 with a BA in Psychology and Elementary Education, and this past May as an MFA graduate in Creative Non-fiction. She was assistant editor of Non-fiction for Rathalla magazine, Rosemont’s literary publication. Her Italian heritage-based thesis, “Final Touchstones”, earned with distinction, is scheduled for publication by Sunbury Press within the coming months. Several of the essays from her pending book were published on City Key, Ovunque Siamo and the Mario Lanza Institute Facebook page. She recently reviewed Ellen Stone’s poetry book “What is in the Blood” for the online Philadelphia Stories 2021 Fall issue. Her poem, “Seen In Translation” was selected for inclusion in the Moonstone Arts Center Protest 2021-100 Thousand Poets for Change.
Serena Piccoli (she\her) is an Italian, speechless charlatan who writes poems and plays about contemporary social issues and takes photos of nature and graffiti writing.
Another morning. Traffic’s where I live. It moves. It stops. It stops some more. Only traffic can freeze the scenery. Only traffic can reduce the world to the bumper stickers of the car in front, the face of the driver in the rear-view mirror. Luckily, I’m going someplace I do not wish to be. This is my preferred speed. It almost doesn’t get me there.
Morning in the Alley
Sunrise seizes on those already with cheap gin on the tongue like a slow, non-violent reflex action, sets aside some shadow for the alley but shines a thimbleful of light on gray eyebrows, malted hair. The world is busy elsewhere but these men sit still for whatever the sunshine brings, everything patient about them except their thirsts. The day seeks out trembling lips. shaking lingers. a bottle passed around like gold, a few cuss words and an itching of the groin, Dawn knows where to get a drink at this time in the morning.
John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident. He was recently published in New PlainsReview, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review with work upcoming in LouisianaReview, Columbia College Literary Review, and Spoon River Poetry Review.
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Patrick Vitullo is a writer, poet, essayist, and world traveler who lives in Havertown, PA. He was awarded the 1979 John T. Fredericks Prize in Literary Criticism by the University of Notre Dame where he graduated with a B.A. in liberal arts. He also has a law degree from Villanova University and limits his law practice to representation of injured workers. Patrick has been published in The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Antigonish Review.
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Your wrecking ball smashed into my theater’s old brick walls past a surprised audience, onward through the stage’s painted canvass backdrop releasing a cast of amateurs. The Rimbaud posters in the dimly lit dressing room peeled at the edges.
Colin James has a couple of chapbooks of poetry published. Dreams Of The Really Annoying from Writing Knights Press and A Thoroughness Not Deprived of Absurdity from Piski’s Porch Press and a book of poems, Resisting Probability, from Sagging Meniscus Press.
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In Cather’s story, “Paul’s Case,”
after the coach rides, the baths,
the tortoise shell brushes, mirrors,
satin sheets, chandeliers,
plush carpets and ornate tables,
after the champagne and caviar feast,
Paul takes his baggage of flesh
draped in soft clothes
onto a final coach
into final woods, and down to the tracks,
and hurls himself into the path
of a locomotive,
choosing this form of death over poison,
pistol, or rope. It seems
he wants nothing to remain of Paul,
wants Paul himself obliterated,
wiped clean from earth’s map,
no corpse, no likeness for mourners
to view and close the lid on,
and lower into an earthen hole.
Now, a hundred years after Cather’s Paul,
a father named Paul bids his family
goodbye,
not knowing it’s his final goodbye.
A farewell in the dark: he leans
to kiss his wife’s cheek,
and then to the room of his sleeping son,
also Paul (an only child of an only child),
and leans and kisses his son’s brow
and, with light approaching from the east,
walks out his gate and leaves
his familiar street, not knowing
the finalities of these minutes
of September 2001, and to others
“on floor” when the plane crashes
through, and the sky falls
and turns into a celestial inferno.
Nothing left of September Paul
and those on his floor, nothing left
of the floor, or the shoes
he was wearing, or his teeth,
his wallet, nothing left there.
How could he have so much, one moment,
and then not even his teeth, his hair,
his family. How different his case
from that of Cather’s brooding protagonist.
Peter Mladinic’s poems have recently appeared in Neologism, the Mark, the Magnolia Review, Ariel Chart, Bluepepper, and other online journals. He lives, with six dogs, in Hobbs, New Mexico. 9/11 originally appeared in Academy of the Heart and Mind.
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The fat guy at the bus stop reminded Leonard of Tug Rooney. He didn’t especially look like Tug. The fat guy was tall and white and had the well-fed jowls and loud, bright voice of a suburban Rotarian, while Tug was short and gimpy with ashen skin and an asthmatic wheeze brought on by breathing decades of smoke. It was more in the way they both could spin into a tale, the way the audience leaned in expectantly, especially the ladies, and how each always ended with a flourish, riding a wave of laughter through the finish. Leonard had once asked Tug how he did it, how he commanded such attention.
Tugs had put one hand on the back of Leonard’s neck and drew the younger man closer so he could smell the stale beer and cigar smoke that seeped from his pores. He pointed at Leonard, the ever-present stub of cigar wedged between his fingers and said in his broken, sibilant croak, “Lips, you believe in what you say, people will follow, understand?”
Leonard, not quite a whisker past twenty at the time, didn’t, but he nodded all the same. That was just how he was with Tug, when he asked, you nodded. He had that way of making you agree.
The Rotarian at the bus stop finished his story and the ladies around him cackled laughter. A bus growled up to the stop, belching diesel, and he strode away. The ladies watched him leave with bird-like avidity, their eyes bright and admiring.
“He’s so nice,” one of them whispered. The others nodded approvingly.
More buses came to the stop. Brakes bellowed mournful whale song. One by one, the ladies folded behind hissing pneumatic doors to be carried away to kitchens and dinner tables in Cherry Hill and Collingswood and Washington Township. To husbands and children and houses that would soon grow dark and quiet as the winters night settled slowly around them and their day came to an end.
Leonard pulled his coat tighter and shivered. It wasn’t as cold as it should be, not for January, but it was cold enough. He should head to the shelter. They would put him up for the night, make sure he had something warm, but the bench held him fast. The traffic along Broad Street thinned. He watched long shadows stretch from the giant paintbrush, a silly and gaudy thing that sat next to the Fine Arts Academy and thought of Tug, and the club, and how he used to make that trumpet say things he never could in his own voice.
“Lips, you wouldn’t say shit even if you had a mouthful,” Tug would holler from his seat by the bar. And Leonard would nod, and then Buster would start plinking that piano, and Milo tap on that snare, and Leonard would raise that trumpet to his mouth and he would disappear, and Lips Boudreaux would fill his spot. Only then would he speak, the wailing notes letting everyone at The Trap know about pain and loss and redemption.
“Don’t listen to him, hon,” Billie had said. “That old fool been talking shit so long, he don’t know how to shut up.” They had been naked when she said that, wrapped together under dingy sheets in his apartment above the club. The flickering neon sign cast them into discordant reds and washed out white. Tug owned the sign, the club, the apartment Leonard rented. Hell, he owned Leonard himself, courtesy of the contract Leonard signed the day he arrived in Philly, a battered, all-but-empty valise in his left hand, his trumpet case clutched in his right. Tug had heard him play, had taken him out to buy a steak, and a new suit, even a woman; and then he had laid the crispy, white contract before him and urged him to sign.
Leonard had read it, or tried to. The words swam before him, blurred by liquor and obscured by the promise of $50 per week, a king’s ransom back in Holmes County. “What does ‘perpetuity’ mean?” he had asked. Tug fixed him with rheumy grin, clapped him on the back, and said, “It means until you don’t want to play no more, son.” Leonard had nodded and signed. He had his doubts, his mother didn’t raise a fool, but to not sign meant getting back on that train to Mississippi and he couldn’t do that. He had failed in New Orleans, he damn well wasn’t going to fail up here.
Bright light pulled him from the past. A police car pulled to the curb, its searchlight speared the darkness and pinned Leonard to the bench. He stiffened, and remembered a time when this might lead to billy clubs and beatings, even in the so-called enlightened north. He never got caught up in that, and when the earnest young men would appear at the club and urge him to lend his voice to a cause, he simply demurred. People were people, and nothing he said could change that. Milo went to the rallies, sometimes came back with blackened eyes he wore as a badge of honor. “What’s right is right, Lips. And this ain’t right.” But Leonard would just shrug, and play on. He supposed the abuse still happened today, at least that what the papers left on his bench said. The light flicked off and a voice called from the darkness
“You’re not planning on sleeping here?”
Leonard jumped. The voice that called out from the cruiser was Milo’s. He’d know it anywhere. Then he remembered that Milo was in Jersey, buried next to his wife. He tried to peer through the open window of the vehicle and a face swam out of the void. Not Milo at all, just a young cop making the rounds.
“Sir, you can’t sleep here. Snow’s coming.”
Indeed, flakes had already begun to fall, coating the bench in a thin layer of cotton.
“Yes, sir,” Leonard called. His voice cracked in the frozen air. He pointed towards city hall and the shadowed bus that lumbered around the corner. ‘I’m just waiting on the 400.”
The cop shrugged. The car pulled away. Tug, dead these passed forty years, stood beneath the giant paintbrush across the street, nearly obscured by the falling snow. Leonard shook his head, rubbed his eyes and Tug disappeared, replaced by the plastic dollop of paint that completed the sculpture. Oldenburg’s Paint Torch they called it. Milo would have called it a giant pile of Day-Glo dogshit, and laughed that crazy laugh.
Milo had been the one to introduce him to Billie. She was his wife’s cousin. He brought her in to watch them play, and when their regular singer that summer – some college girl who had run off to get married and left them hanging like forgotten laundry – Billie had stepped in. She stopped the world that night, her voice a huge and living thing that filled every corner and made people forget their drinks, their conversations, to turn their head and just listen.
Tug had been there with the contract before she even finished that first set, that same rheumy grin he laid on Leonard four years earlier. Billie had taken one look, and laughed that smoky laugh that singed every nerve ending in Leonard’s body.
“Take that thing away, Mr. Rooney. You want me to sing for you, I’ll sing, but I ain’t signing my name to nothing that don’t involve records.”
The contract disappeared, never mentioned again. And Billie King became their regular singer. For seven years she belted out the favorites. For seven years she brought people in, from Philly, of course, but also from Jersey, and New York, and Baltimore. Leonard didn’t remember exactly when they became lovers. They got along immediately, fell into each other’s cadences and rhythms. He instinctively knew when to let the horn fade, to let her voice carry the song, and knew when it was time to step forward and let the horn do the talking. And then one day they shared a bed. That simple. No pronouncements of love or devotion, they just slid into place, like they belonged.
“You know the best thing about you, hon?” She often said, while his head lay on her breast and her fingers traced fiery trails through his scalp. “You know when to step back and let a girl shine.”
That was of course before the big fight. Before the record man came with his promises and lured her away to California.
“Come with me,” she urged. “You can play horn out there, too.”
He had gone to Tugs. Told him he didn’t want to play for him anymore and was heading to California. Tugs pulled open the drawer of the decrepit filing cabinet crouched in the corner of the office behind the bar. Metal scraped against metal in a discordant screech and Leonard winced. Tug retrieved the contract, slapped it on the desk, and stabbed one stubby finger into the center.
“See this word, ‘perpetuity’, it means ‘till I don’t want you here no more.”
By then Leonard had known what it meant. Until then, he’d had no reason to care.
“You can’t stop me from leaving, Tug.”
Tug had grinned, and Leonard knew in that moment he’d lost.
“Sure I can’t stop you, but I can sue you. No one likes a contract breaker, Lips.” Tug had paused, clouded eyes fixed to Leonard’s face. He shook his head.
“Ah, hell, Lips. I don’t care about the goddamn contract.” Tug sat back in the chair. The springs squealed. He blew smoke towards the ceiling.
“Billie’s going to be big. Too big for you. She’ll leave you in a year, and then what will you do?” He turned back toward Leonard, pointed towards him with the cigar. “And if she don’t, you’ll hold her back. You gottta see that, right?”
Leonard had nodded. Of course Tug was right. Billie King didn’t need a second rate trumpet player to back her up, not when she could have a Kenny Dorham or a Chet Baker, or even a Miles Davis. Leonard was small time. He had failed in New Orleans, and had no guarantees he’d do anything good in California. Philly was where he belonged, and in Philly he had to stay.
A bus stopped. The woman sitting next to him, a shapeless shadow bundled against the cold, hurried towards the open door. She paused and looked back, and in the warm inviting light spilling from the bus he saw Billie’s cocoa skin and aquiline nose. Soft trumpet emanated from within the bus, a little Stella by Starlight. She smiled, stepped onto the bus and disappeared behind the polarized glass.
“I should have gone with you, Billie,” he murmured. The snow fell harder and he pulled his jacket tighter. Miles’ trumpet continued from somewhere in the darkness, echoing off silent buildings. Stella had always been their favorite.
He had brought her few small bags to the car the record company sent. They looked lost in the cavernous trunk of the new Eldorado. She had waited for him by the back door, silent, eyes damp, beseeching. She touched his face. “It’s not too late.”
He put his head down. “I can’t leave. This is where I belong.”
Billie sobbed softly and slid into the back seat of the Cadillac. The car pulled away and he watched until it disappeared down Broad Street.
Her first record came out a year later. Then a second and a third. He had bought them all, filled the apartment with her voice. Some nights he pulled out his horn and played along. She never got to play with Miles, but the trumpets that accompanied her were accomplished enough. He saw her once, briefly, on the television, her hair done up in a style she’d never worn back here, some outlandish fur draped around her shoulders. She had been sitting with a man he did not recognize and they both laughed uproariously as the camera caught them. That laughter never touched her eyes though. In that brief moment, it seemed to Leonard that something essential was missing.
And then she was gone. Stolen by a demon that lived in a needle. Ruined by men that drained every last drop of spirit from her and cast her empty shell aside. That night at the club he launched into the solo they had worked into Stella by Starlight and kept going, his horn shouting over that year’s singer. She muttered “Lips, Christ” but he continued. One by one they stopped playing around him. Buster’s piano tinkled to a stop, Milo gave one last hissing tap on a cymbal. Silence fell over the club and he felt the weight of four dozen eyes fall upon him. He kept blowing, pouring everything into the horn, lamenting promises broken, wailing into an indifferent world for everything lost and forgotten. And when he was finally spent, when the last note faded into the smoke-tinged darkness he had stood, panting on the stage, and thought that one is for you, Billie. Always for you.
“You played beautifully that night,” Billie said from beside him. Leonard started, snow sliding from his shoulders.
“Best I ever did,” he answered to the empty bench beside him.
Tug died the following spring, the cancer that had sprung from his throat spread through his body like the kudzu back in Holmes County. Leonard sat by his hospital bed and watched captor and friend disappear beneath a confusing array of tubes and wires. Milo came by several times and together they talked about twenty years of shouts from the corner of the bar, of singers come and gone (After Billie, Juanita had been their agreed upon favorite), of the places the music had taken them. Tug’s sons, sober young men without a note in their soul stopped by, checked in, and left, often without saying a word to the two old musicians sitting bedside. Leonard often wondered if they even saw him.
The boys sold the building and The Trap joined the parade of jazz clubs that disappeared from Broad Street – Zanzibars, Checkies, Suede – all buried under concrete and glass monstrosities that urged people to buy, buy, buy. Drugstore chains and clothing stores piping ersatz music that spoke to no one, and concert halls that no one could afford.
He sometimes stopped on the corner, using his trumpet to tempt loose change into the old case, until someone – a manager or a cop – told him to leave. He found jobs, especially in the nineties when the Jazz scene began to make a comeback and the clubs sprung up in the North East, but work was sparse now. No one really wanted a tired, old horn player.
A flourish of trumpet and light flared from the empty convention center behind him. He turned, amazed at the crowd of people, sitting in twos and threes around tiny tables that had sprung out of nothing.
“I hope you ain’t sitting here feeling sorry for yourself, sugar,” Billie said. She grabbed his hand and placed it against her warm cheek. “You’ve had a lot of good, too.”
“That’s right, Billie,” he whispered. “And you was the best part of it.”
“Hey now,” Milo laughed from beside him. “You and me had some times together too.”
Leonard whirled. Milo leaned casually on a column, cigarette tucked beneath his lip, a spare drumstick wedged behind his ear. Tug stood next to him, a trumpet case in his hand. The convention center doors stood open. A quartet stage set up and waited for the music to start. Buster already sat at the piano. Milo flicked his cigarette and sauntered inside, his long hands beating a rhythm against his narrow chest. Billie gave him a lingering kiss and slid away.
“Don’t keep me waiting, Sugar.”
Tug remained outside, his head cocked, cigar clenched in the corner of his mouth. He raised the trumpet case towards him.
“What do you say, Lips. You gonna honor that contract?”
“That was never a fair contract, Tug. You know that.”
Tug grinned and shrugged. Leonard took the trumpet. The old club owner waddled away in an acrid cloud of cigar smoke. Leonard unclasped the case and found his old horn, the good one with the pearl-inlaid buttons that Billie had bought him before she left. He had sold it for rent money.
Inside the convention center, Buster plinked on the keyboard. Milo beat a light staccato on the snare. Billie scatted some scales, something she loved to tease the crowd with before each set. The audience murmured its approval, and Leonard felt sudden warmth blaze in his chest. His heart pounded, his lungs filled with air and he felt it, the music, coursing through him, waiting for release. He placed the trumpet to his lips, let the horn wail, his fingers jumping nimbly through notes, making them dance like fireflies in the Mississippi twilight. Billie gave a primal shout and opened her arms and Lips Boudreaux strode up to the stage. It was time for him to do some talking, and he had a lot to say. The snow fell and grew into a shroud, covering Leonard in white that would remain undisturbed until morning. Somewhere from the darkness, a horn wailed, and for a moment the few remaining souls who wandered Broad Street stopped and marveled as the note spoke to them of love and hope and the knowledge that all things lost will someday be found again.
James Knipp is a graduate of Rutgers College with a BA in English. He is the creator of the humor blog KnippKnopp and a frequent contributor to the pop culture site Biff Bam Pop He has had work published in Crypt-Gnats, Philly Flash Inferno and the anthologies Long Tales and Short Stories from South Jersey and In a Flash. Jim’s first book, Everything you Need to Know About Being a Grandfather (Quirk Books) was published in 2019.
I lose the insomnia contest.
Someone stays awake the longest
who looks like but is not yours
truly. In a drawing contest I draw despair
as walls of black windows, hollow space.
Crossing the street I step up my pace
in the contest to see who leaves wins.
I stay on the street abandoned,
not wondering where did they go,
only mesmerized by the dark hollows
that were windows people looked out.
The next contest, to see who’s proud.
Yet I’m fixated on the empty street,
abandoned tenements, summer heat.
Peter Mladinic’s poems have recently appeared in Neologism, the Mark, the Magnolia Review, Ariel Chart, Bluepepper, and other online journals. He lives, with six dogs, in Hobbs, New Mexico.
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I like the old city. It fills me full of ghost. How the horses still clop on the cobblestone. A clipper ship floats in the harbor as if it has cross and bones when the only lantern seems to be the moon as steps draw nearer, between the the shadows and the Spanish moss.
The City at Christmas (Greenville, SC)
These buildings are a little smaller the sidewalks no longer run nor the lights so many and magical but I know they are there somewhere in the moonlight’s little coat.
Danny P. Barbare resides in the upstate of the Carolinas. His poems have recently appeared in Blue Unicorn and Ethel. And his poetry has been nominated for Best of Net by Assisi Online Journal. He has been published locally, nationally, and abroad.
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In 1952, ten men assembled in a modest two-story building, in the Spring Garden Section of Philadelphia at Ridge and Callowhill Streets. They worked as technicians for Remington Rand Inc., founded by University of Pennsylvania graduates, J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly. One of these technicians was my father.
That night, the group set out to do what had never been done before – with six Univac computers spread out on their test floor, they’d predict the results of the 1952 Presidential election. It worked out according to plan – they determined early on that evening that Eisenhower would win the election.
THE CITY KEY 