Hydrant #9
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age: around 70
address: 4800 block of Aspen St.
Monday, 23 September
2:30 p.m.
Ms. A has lived on Aspen Street for 53 years. Before that she lived at 19th and Ellsworth, and before that in Stanton, Virginia. Ms. A sometimes shops at the Shop Rite around the corner, but prefers to go to the Shop Rite out on 74th and Haverford -- because they have lamb and veal, which the local store doesn't have, and because she knows the other store will give her a senior citizen discount. She buys her clothes at Franklin Mills. And she gets a lot of stuff from the Commissary on the base where her daughter and son in law live. Everything is cheaper there and there is no tax. She bought a 27" tv there as a Christmas present for her other son this year for only $340.
Ms. A says most of her friends in the neighborhood have died, so she doesn't visit people much. She does go to see one friend around the corner on 48th Street; that friend is 84. Ms. A goes to church regularly. Her church is Our Lady of Sorrow, on 48th and Wyalusing. She has been going there since 1943. It is a Catholic church. When Ms. A moved to the neighborhood, it was racially mixed: African American, Irish, Italian, some German. St. Mary's was the Italian Catholic church. St. Ignatius was the German one; now its mostly African American.
Ms. A travels a lot. She goes to see people in Boston and on Cape Cod. She goes to Atlantic City twice a month and to the Pequot reservation in Connecticut once a month. On her way back from Cape Cod a couple of weeks ago she stopped at the Pequot reservation and won $349.
Ms. A visits her daughter and son in law in Norfolk, on the base. They come up to visit her a lot too. She sometimes also visits her other son in Wakesfield, Vermont, fifteen miles from the Canadian border. He runs a printing business; he prints a lot of menus and the like for the restaurants in the area. He plays ice hockey for the Canada Royals, and he also plays polo.
Ms. A mainly gets around town on foot and in a friend's car. Her friend doesn't like for her to go shopping alone. She says she will walk anyplace. She doesn't go out at night, except once ina while to Upper Darby with her driving friend to play cards.
This summer her 18 year old grandson has been living with her -- up from Virginia. He mostly messes around on his computer and sometimes watches . He has two friends in the neighborhood, but they both work. He hangs out with them after work sometimes, but always comes in by 10:00. He is going to college in January.
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