with great relief—for the Army inn1954.nThe spindly sycamore tree that mynfather had planted in front of thenhouse and kept erect with an elaboratencircular fence, rubber stays, and guynwires was now somewhat misshapennbecause of lopsided pruning. But it hadngrown very large and stretched over tonthe other side of the street where itnjoined the top of another tree, formingna green archway over the blacktop.nOur house was part of a row, joined onnboth sides with others mirroring it. Fornsome reason, people called them bungalows,nalthough they bear scant resemblancento the India-inspired designngoing by that name in the Midwest.nThe paint could have used somentouching up, but the steps and associatednbrickwork against which we usednto play stoopball looked as if they hadnbeen renewed. The house had thensame novel improvement as most ofnthe others on the block: a metal awningnover the front porch, high over thensteep driveway and the undergroundngarage. Home on leave from the 82ndnAirborne Division, I used to show offnby jumping from the brick wall off thenside of the porch and climaxing the 12orn15-foot fall with a paratrooper’s rollnon the patch of grass between ournproperty and the house next door.nThese house fronts now sported annumber of air conditioners, not commonnat all 30 years earlier.nNext door to our old house, andnsharing a wall as well as a tiny lawnnwith it, was Alvin Toffler’s, now similarlynawninged. I remember him innwarm weather sitting in the backyardnreading, very tall and very thin. He wasna college student — Columbia, as Inrecall — and I was some five or sixnyears behind him. There was that stabnof awe and envy of an awkward kid, asnI looked at the suave Ivy League type,nwith his books and his pipe and hisnblond girl friend. I wonder if henthought his life was as idyllic as Inimagined it, and what he now thinks ofnthose days.nI stayed out there a long time,nwalking back and forth, wondering if Inwould be challenged by a nervousnhouseholder, or perhaps by a policeman.nFinally, I continued on, to thenend of the block. The corner grocerynwas still there, but Harry and Bess —nthe childless couple who ran it when Inwas growing up—would be about 100nyears old by now. Around the cornernon Clarendon Road, the dry cleaner bynthe old grocery was gone, and nextndoor to it, in place of the candynstore — read soda fountain, you outlandersnfrom the other side of thenHudson — was an Eglise Evangile.nHow could it be French? I wondered.nMaybe some Haitians had moved intonthe neighborhood. Continuing acrossnClarendon Road I studied the housesnof friends from the old days, thennwalked around the block and headednback on East 53rd Street in the directionnfrom which I had come. About anblock from the old candy store, I heardnsome French wafting faintly toward menfrom a group of men playing cards in andriveway, and when I saw the eglisenagain it seemed to fit better. I tried tonsee my old backyard, with its two applentrees, from a side alley which used tonbe accessible to the public but now wasnblocked off, and also from alongside ofna house on 53 rd Street that was behindnit, but it was hopeless. To my surprise,nthe numbers of East 53 rd didn’t matchnthe numbers on East 54th, and I wasnunable to tell where my house wasnfrom the next street.nAfter one more turn around thenblock, and one last look at the street onnwhich I had lived from the age of twonuntil I left for good at 19, I walked anblock to the grandly named King’snHighway to catch a cab to La GuardianAirport. It was a main thoroughfarenthen, but not so impressive now thatnthe cities are full of freeways. It took anhalf hour for a taxi to come by, andnthen it was an ordinary black sedannwith an almost invisible emblem onnthe side. I wondered if this was annattempt to get around the licensingnlaws that make it impossible for honestnimmigrants to start a business while atnthe same time making it hard fornpeople to get transportation.nOne reflection remains. When JackienRobinson moved to our neighborhoodnupon joining the Dodgers, hisnwas the only black family there. Walkingnhome from P.S. 232,1 used to seenhis children playing in front of theirnhouse, and it always seemed odd — anviolation of the de facto segregationnthat characterized so many New Yorknneighborhoods. With all the changesnwrought by the years, the segregationnremains. Since I had first entered thensubway to catch the Utica Avenue busnuntil I entered the taxi on King’snHighway, only three faces of the manynhundreds I had seen were white — twonbehind the counter at the Creek restaurantnand one old woman maunderingnalone on Church Avenue. Somenday I would like to see an analysis ofnthis phenomenon, marred neither bynideology nor guilt.nHerbert Schlossberg writes from Minneapolis,nMN.nLetter From SouthnPhiladelphianby J. Michael BolinskinThe Wheel of FortunennnOn the morning after Election Day,nthe front-page headline of the PhiladelphianDaily News said it all, not justnabout the events of the day, but aboutnthe possible future of Philadelphia:nGoode Squeaks InnRizzo Won’t QuitnIncumbent Mayor W. WilsonnGoode won, by unofficial count, bynabout 14,000 votes (2 percent of thentotal) in a bitterly divided city. Therenwas a palpable belief among many ofnthe 318,500 people who voted fornRizzo that fraud may have accountednfor many more than 14,000 votes. Twondays after the election, a radio talkshownhost was promising to checknwhether the owner of a residentialnproperty — even an abandoned one —nmay give permission to anyone to usenhis property as a voting address. Andnon election night Rizzo himself madena vague reference to reports of votersnarriving at polls on buses.nThese kinds of reports are nothingnnew in Philadelphia, where dead peoplenhave been known to vote in largennumbers and even be elected to ofEce.nBut whether or not Rizzo keeps hisnpromise to finally retire from thenscene, the resentment over Goode’snvictory — justified or not — may remainnfor a long time to come.n* * >(;nOn the Wednesday before ElectionnDay, Kate and I decided to take thennight off at the Pen & Pencil Club, thenoldest journalists’ drinking club in thenMAY 19881 43n