Hydrant #7[last hydrant] [next hydrant]
age: around 70
Address: 4900 block of Aspen St.
Monday, 23 September
4:30 p.m.
Mrs. B. moved to 59th and Aspen in 1958, from an apartment on Brooklyn St. She came north from Fayetteville, N.C. in 1945, and has been a widow for 4 years. She shops around the corner at the Shop Rite, plus her kids bring her food a lot from Upper Darby and Winnfield, where they live. She also grows produce in her garden at Aspen Farms, where she has worked for 15 years. She doesn't have a car to get around; she walks instead, which is fine, because her doctor told her she needs to walk. Often she'll walk to 52nd and Market, shop, and walk home. She goes dowtown once a month, and sometimes goes down to Atlantic City. She doesn't like to eat at restaurants, because you never know what is in the food there. She will eat an occasional cheese steak from a restaurant though.
In addition to her children in the suburbs, Mrs. B. has one son who died, and one son who she "has lost to drugs". The son who died was stabbed to death. She says these are the things that happen when people "go down" -- when they "lead bad lives". The son who died had three children: a son who is off to University of Alabama this fall, a daughter who wants to be a nurse, and another daughter who loves to dance.
Mrs. B. belongs to a Methodist church on 54th and Catherine. She says its more moderate than Baptist -- no tamberines or wild singing or people trying to outdo each other.
Mrs. B. will only go out in a CAR at night. "There is too much going on on these streets at night," she says. There used to be drug dealers on 49th and Aspen. They were "SO bold ". But someone called the police on them and they disappeared.
She met her husband on 40th and Market -- at a club where she and some friends sometimes went. Her husband-to-be was home on leave from the NAVY. He was drunk and he told her "I wanna take you home." She told him he'd have to wait until he got sober. One night not too long later her doorbell rang -- he had found her address -- and she was "never able to get rid of him after that."
Mrs. B. worked for five years making lampshades in Frankfurt, on Adams Avenue. "Then the trouble started -- kids and husband and all." Her husband worked at 9th and Girard. He was in charge of shipping at Milton and White -- a distributor of meat, seafood and the like. He retired on his birthday -- February 18 -- in 1991. He died in 1992 of lung cancer, 17 months after he'd retired. He's buried in Geptown, PA., in a veteran's cemetery. Mrs. B. doesn't like to go there: its 100 miles each way, and going there is too hard.
Mrs. B. has diabetes. As a result, she doesn't drink. She also has a problem with her heart. She collapsed three times -- the last time in a bank. That time, she went to Jefferson, and finally found a doctor who could tell her what was wrong with her heart. He's the doctor who told her to walk. Jefferson is HER hospital now.
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