Was Germantown perhaps about the nicest place in which to live in the USA in the 1930s-1950s? Well, consider, we had tree-shaded, sometimes cobble-stone streets, large stone or brick houses, some going back to colonial times, good schools, convenient rail transportation, and the spectacle of Wister Woods, one of the last remaining stands of virgin timber in the Northeast. Germantown was certainly easy to get around in or to leave for downtown Philadelphia. Shopping, a concert, a sporting event, all easily accessible by two rail commuter lines, or the 23 trolley, making connections with the Broad Street Subway at Broad and Erie. (Where the world’s longest traffic light gave you plenty of time to make the transfer.) At the corners of Wayne Avenue, Windrim and Wingohocking streets and Wayne Junction was what must have been a unique concatenation of transit lines: Wingohocking had a trackless trolley line, Wayne Ave a trolley (the first in Philadelphia to see the new “streamliners,” before Pearl Harbor, supposedly because many PTC stockholders lived on that avenue) while Wayne Junction gave access to commuter lines, and to long-distance trains all the way to New York City and the Jersey Shore; and Germantown Ave., of course, had the 23 trolley line, supposedly the world’s longest. And each of these trolleys, in addition to the motorman, had a conductor who took your fare, made change and generally kept his eye on things, undistracted by any driving duties. When was the last time you got change on a transit vehicle? And what a happy day it was in 1947, when the new “Streamliner” PCC cars with their ghostly acceleration, padded leatherette seats and art deco lines arrived on the 23 trolley line! They replaced the aged Nearsides, those growling, underpowered, barn-like, wooden-seated vehicles “run off by the mile and cut off by the yard,” that had dominated transit systems all over America. Most of America’s trolley lines were being torn up in an act of monumental ecological vandalism, but the PCCs took over what was left. Who needed a car in Germantown? And we could attend one of the best schools around, in Germantown High. (Which also had/has a most impressive school song, transcribed from a hymn: “Germantown High School, we thy children sing thee. Honor and glory … “ Far above the usual “Fight! Fight! Old Siwash!”) Does anyone remember the history teacher there of the 1950s, Mr. Henry Wagner, who inspired me to go on for my doctorate in history? Or Miss Kahler in English? It may have been just over the Germantown border, but Logan Demonstration School was something of a magnet school of the time. My parents pulled what few strings they had to get me in there. A wonderful place with kind teachers and with educators at the back of the classrooms taking notes; so the teachers had to be good. And we didn’t have to go all the way into downtown Philly to shop. We had a high-class retail center at Germantown and Chelten, served by two lines, the 23 trolley and 52 trolley. And Germantown Avenue itself was an elongated “mall” from about Logan to well above Chelten. As for even more shopping, I don’t think my own neighborhood was at all unique. At the south end of Baynton Street were two candy/light grocery stores; make a left on Shedaker, up from the “239 Café,” past Spangler’s barbershop, and you found a drug store and two grocery stores right across the street from each other. For a small charge, your purchases could be delivered to your door. All this in an area confined to just two residential blocks. Perhaps the best street in the best neighborhood in America was upper Stenton Ave. There, huge trees arched over the buff cobblestones (mindlessly asphalted over years later). Towering Victorian mansions backed onto tennis courts, then the Reading commuter line, then Wister Woods. Paradise now. Who needed suburbs? And did we ever eat and drink better than in Germantown in those days? Not just TastyKake, but Breyers lime, and tangerine sherbet long gone after Sealtest bought out Bryers and substituted their chalky “sherbet.” “Loose” ice cream, more expensive than the packaged variety but fresher, in a white open cardboard container with cellophane over the top. We had to race home on hot nights before it started to melt; no freezers then. Germantown Beverages in large GLASS bottles, five cents a bottle, two cents deposit. (I don’t remember ever seeing empty glass bottles scattered around.) Booth’s ginger ale in those large glass bottles, at 25 cents the bottle, plus five cents deposit. They never lost their fizz the way these plastic crackly bottles do today. You could buy the world’s best cheesecake or sticky buns (I am not exaggerating) at Bitner’s Bakery, Germantown and Wister. Then there was Young’s Ice Cream parlor at Germantown and Penn St., with its marble-top tables and ice cream made on the premises that day; I have never tasted anything better, even at a dairy; and that Reading line took you directly to the culinary delights waiting at Reading Terminal Market, where you could drink your buttermilk and eat your shad roe in season while the trains rumbled overhead. If memory serves, my only (temporarily) unrequited food yearnings was during World War II, when bananas and bubble-gum were not just rationed, but unobtainable. An always-locked warehouse on Shedaker was rumored to contain vast stocks of bubble gum, not to be released until after the war. The bananas reappeared some months after V-J Day. As for bubble-gum, I was too young to remember the pre-war stuff, and before post-war stocks began to appear in the candy stores, my mother and I had left Germantown to be with my father, who was on occupation duty in Austria. There, no PX carried the stuff. Not until 1948, when we returned to Germantown, was I able to stuff my face with one whole pack of the gigantic Bazooka Bubble Gum ($.05 cents a pack). At the end of the day, my jaw felt as if it would drop off, and I haven’t touched bubble gum since. OK, the tap water of Germantown/Philadelphia was not so good. In fact it was awful, and Philadelphia was noted for its “chlorine cocktails.” The building of a new reservoir at Queen Lane was, understandably, one of the first priorities of the reform Clark administration when it came into office in 1951. Many Germantowners remember long lines at the Belfield Ave spring on the edge of Wister Woods. But did they line up because of the good spring water or the bad city water? It seemed to me odd that Philly, between two good-size rivers, couldn’t manage to pump out better tap water. Germantown wasn’t all cobblestone streets, trolley cars and good eating and drinking. People worked there too, in factories, such as Wakefield Winding on Wister Street. South Stenton had a row of plants anchored at the north end by Leeds and Northrup. Right across the street row houses nestled. Workers could simply cross the street to go to work. How many Americans can do that today? Now urban planners and sociologists tell us that we need “mixed zoning,” that is residential areas should be nearby business and light industry, as well as have access to public transportation. It’s an ideal almost never achieved, but Germantown had that from the get-go. For entertainment, we could go to at least three movie theatres close by. The first-run “Colonial,” the little “Band Box,” sometimes showing un-Hollywood movies; and the cut-rate “Lyric” with its 8 cents Saturday “Kiddie Matinee.” None of them had any parking; it was assumed that you took the trolley or walked to see such fare as “Key Largo,” “Three Coins in the Fountain” or “Johnny Belinda.” Personally, I wasn’t always so fortunate; working as an usher at the Band Box, 1954-55, I must have seen “Demetrius and the Gladiators” 20 times –arghhh! Still, each film feature (and sometimes it was a double feature) was preceded by several cartoons and a “short,” as well as the misnamed “trailers.” Unlike most monochromatic suburbs, Germantown was a nearly intimate juxtaposition of social and economic groupings. “My” street, Baynton, was lower middle-class, but halfway down stood Clapier Court, a low-rent line of row houses that had one step separating the front door from the sidewalk. A quarter-mile away was Ashmead, an Afro-American enclave, also of tightly packed rows. Unplanned, unforced “diversity.” Then there were the hucksters bringing in fresh fruit and vegetables picked that morning from fields now smothered by suburban sprawl, and the anonymous “dandelion men,” plucking those weeds from public places and putting them in large cotton bags they carried over their backs for some unknown purpose. And walking down a street as a child on an evening, without fear of anything worse than getting lost. Did we appreciate our Germantown of those years? I doubt it. Certainly most of us wasted little time in moving out to the suburbs in the ‘50s and ‘60s and raised our kids there. We drove every where, over streets that are eerily empty of people now and compare that to the neighborhood streets of Germantown of an evening in the 1940s, swarming with kids somehow having fun without I-Pods, Little League, ballet or karate lessons. History is not always a tale of progress, and, looking at Germantown over the years, I believe that we have lost a lot.