Jim the Frog remembers Jim the Man

7. MacDade Bowl

While Dad was certainly INTO sports, he never actually PLAYED them. He ran track in high school and would of course have informal games of catch and soccer with my younger sisters and I in our backyard, but when it came to the actual physical activity of sports, he chose to remain in the stands (or on the other side of the TV screen, which was often cheaper).

One sport he did play, however, was bowling. He grew up in Ridley Park, PA, which was the longtime home of a massive bowling alley (Ridley Bowl), until it was demolished to make way for a supermarket and Home Depot.

During my childhood and adolescence, every Thursday night, Dad would pick up his trusty gray bowling bag with his 16-pound navy blue ball and drive over to MacDade Bowl in Holmes, PA, just a short distance from the spot where his beloved Ridley Bowl used to stand. There, he would meet up with his teammates, “The Willows,” named after the dive bar near our house that I suppose sponsored them. I don’t think that Dad or any of his teammates ever actually set foot in the bar (named after the weeping willow trees that surround it). Like Dad, today the Willows Bar is also no longer with us. At least it didn’t become another Home Depot.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, bowling alleys had yet to transition to the neon, trendy places that a lot of them became in the 2010s hipster era. They were very much like dive bars themselves: dimly lit, full of cigarette and cigar smoke, grimy floors, and questionable male characters. Among Dad’s teammates were a local cop in our town, someone who worked for Philly’s mass transit agency SEPTA, and others. Dad would go by “Jim,” but others had nicknames like “Kess.” I never knew their real names. Dad may not have, either.

Dad always let me accompany him to the bowling alley when I was looking for something to do on a Thursday night (especially if that week’s Simpsons episode was a rerun). I would sit in the wobbly, plastic bucket seat chairs surrounding the edge of the lane and, if I got really lucky, I got to pencil in the scores of Dad and his teammates after every bowl. Yes, this was WAY before electronic scoring and animated humanoid bowling pins telling you how badly you missed. Instead, the alley had an overheard projector setup, with the scorecards plastic pieces of paper that had to be marked in pencil. Inhaling secondhand smoke, I would answer his teammates’ banal questions about school and hi-five them when they picked up a spare or got a strike. 

Once I got to high school, I followed in Dad’s footsteps and joined our school’s Saturday morning bowling league. This was pretty much the only athletic club that would have me anywhere near their field of play, and I enjoyed it for the entire 4 months that it lasted. I was no better at bowling than I was at any other sports and ultimately gave it up. 

I believe all of the surviving members of the “Willows” team came to Dad’s service, which meant a lot. Some of them had not even seen him since those long Thursday nights. Today, MacDade Bowl is no longer the dingy place it once was, but rather went the “neon hipster” route itself. But, Dad’s grandson Landon occasionally bowls at the very same bowling alley that his Pop-Pop did all those years ago, although he uses a lot of kid-friendly aides that, frankly, would have helped me a lot in high school.

6. Printz Beverage (Essington, PA)

Today is a special post to mark Super Bowl Sunday. Here in greater Philadelphia, the mood over the “Big Game” is essentially nonexistent, given that the Philadelphia Eagles were eliminated during the playoffs this season and will thus fail to capture the glory that they did in Super Bowl LIX last year, when they bested the Kansas City Chiefs for the Lombardi Trophy.

Nor will they capture the glory that they did in Super Bowl LII, when they bested the very hated New England Patriots for their first-ever Super Bowl championship.

That was the one and only time Dad got to see his beloved Eagles win the Super Bowl before he passed away in December 2023. Below, Dad poses with a mural that popped up somewhere in South Philly later that year.

The “Birds” went to the Super Bowl again in 2024, about a month after Dad’s funeral service, but, like the rest of us, they were distraught at his passing (that’s what we all like to think, anyway) and thus lost to the very same Kansas City Chiefs team that they would beat a year later.

Whether it was the Super Bowl or just a regular Eagles (or Phillies) (or Flyers) game, Dad always liked to have his beer stocked, and Printz Beverage in Essington, PA, less than a mile from our house, was one of the many places he picked up his trusty case of Coors Lite. Like every other regular there, he eventually grew to know its cashiers and owners on a first name basis and would occasionally pair his case of beer with Pennsylvania Lottery tickets. Below, he sports his #59 Seth Joyner Eagles jersey at a family function, with two longtime friends and co-workers, Mae and Harry, by his side.

And here he is, alongside me (top row with him) and his good friend Jim (bottom row) with the ultimate face of beer, George Wendt, at the Chiller Theatre convention in New Jersey.

Thankfully, Dad had a good head on his shoulders and never took drinking or living vicariously through sports to ugly extremes (which cannot be said for a lot of people in and around Philly). In the 1980s, I would even accompany him to Printz Beverage (and other stores, in case they were out) to pick up his case. I remember always being mesmerized by the store’s massive walk-in refrigerator, which was stacked floor to ceiling with every lame, watered-down American beer known to man. This was of course YEARS ahead of the hipster craft beer phase which, once it reared its head sometime in the 2010s, did absolutely nothing to sway Dad’s enjoyment of Coors Light.

Below, you can peek inside Printz Beverage, where, coincidentally, a case of Coors Light sits on the bottom left.

I did not inherit my dad’s love of beer (he tried; he gave me sips but, to me, all beer tastes the same) or even sports (which are also all the same to me), but my younger sister Kris did. To this very day, she will have a Coors Light in his memory whenever we go out to his favorite places. She also gets her own beer from this very store herself these days.

5. Mores Lake Park sledding hill (Prospect Park, PA)

A snowstorm by the name of Fern hit the northeastern U.S. over the weekend of January 17-18 of this year. Below-freezing temperatures kept the snow around for the entire following week, making what wasn’t plowed away icy and slick.

In other words, sledding conditions at Mores Lake Park were ideal.

It isn’t the Alps or Aspen, but tiny park in Prospect Park, Pennsylvania, on the border of Ridley Township, has a rather steep hill that leads right into Stony Creek, which flows through the park. As my dad spent his formative years growing up in a nearby house on Lindsay Street, I imagine that he, his brothers, and sister all enjoyed their own childhoods sledding down the hill at this park.

When my own sisters and I were younger, Mom and Dad both ensured that we had the same experience.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, my younger sisters and I LOVED the snow. It meant time off from school and enjoying unique outdoor activities like sledding and building snowmen that the “nice weather” during the rest of the year just couldn’t provide. To add further fuel to the fire that was my youthful naivete, I actually thought that my parents ENJOYED going out after--or even during--a heavy snowfall to shovel the driveway and sidewalk into a huge mound of snow for us, as my sisters and I would slide down the hill and make snowballs from it. It never occurred to us that Mom and Dad HAD to shovel all of that snow out of the way so they could access their car and the sidewalk to do grown-up things like buy groceries and get the paper. 

Of course, my one sister and I now know that snow is not something to be gleefully welcomed, despite the social media points that photos of it are worth, but rather dreaded. Shoveling. Slipping and falling. Running out of room to put it as more comes down. And so on. My other younger sister had the foresight to move to Florida and send us poolside pictures every time it snowed up here.

Anyhow, Mom and Dad knew that the snow still held magic for us kids and, once they dug their car out, would drive us over to Mores Lake Park so we could take advantage of its very steep hill. We had a bright orange plastic sled that could easily fit all three of us kids, plus Dad. Mom, always the worrisome one, would stand at the top of the hill, yelling for us to be careful and not to end up in the frozen creek. On more than one occasion, however, Dad would coax her into a ride down the hill. Dad may have been an adult, but he knew to also have fun, even if it meant risking his back that he had just risked to shovel mound after mound of snow out of our driveway.

I took these pictures very early on a Sunday morning. I was the only one on the hill. Broken pieces of plastic littering the top of the hill made me ASSUME that sledding was still a pastime for kids in the area. 

I could not find any pictures of us enjoying the snow, but I did find one of Dad’s X posts (yes, he had an account) from a 2018 snowstorm that occurred on the first day of spring. In it, you can certainly witness his love of the weather AND the local TV news talking heads that sensationalize it.

4. Tinicum Township Fire Company (Essington, PA)

Dad was a "life member" of the Tinicum Township Fire Company, even though the only fires he had ever personally put out involved birthday candles (and he even needed assistance with those toward the end). However, he still volunteered his financial skills to the township's fire company for years and years. His involvement made him even more of an upstanding, well-known and well-respected member of the Tinicum community.

As part of the fire company, he got to enjoy perks such as marching (or riding) with them in the township's annual memorial Day parade. The below picture of him in one of the fire company's trucks is from Memorial Day 2023, which would turn out to be his last one with us.

Below, Dad stands in full uniform (center) at the fire company's annual veterans' wreath dedication. Standing in front of him is his brother-in-law, my mom's brother and my Uncle Bek. He enjoyed stints as President of the fire company (and personally fought fires).

One memorable moment that occurred at the firehouse was, in the lead-up to the 2008 Presidential election, none other than Bill Clinton visited to stump for Hillary Clinton's candidacy before she ultimately lost to Barack Obama for the nomination.

While the township has forever been--and will likely forever be--strongly Republican like most suburbs, Clinton was welcomed warmly and with quite the crowd.

Once he got word that Clinton would be appearing, Dad and I hurried down to the firehouse and joined the crowd to hear Clinton speak, even though no one in the crowd had any intention of voting for Hillary. Hell, I was likely the only one there who planned to vote for Obama.

Nevertheless, it isn't every day that the average Tinicum resident gets to be THIS close to an actual U.S. President. And we both managed to shake his hand.

After Dad passed away in December 2023, I was happy and proud to see that the fire company lowered its flag to half-staff in mourning.

3. Phở Philly (Essington, PA)

Dad was a Baby Boomer. I am a Millennial. Despite this, *I* was the one who traveled to Vietnam.

My dad’s enrollment in college in the early 1970s spared him from being drafted into the Vietnam War. By the time of my first trip there in 2015 to visit a girlfriend of mine who had accepted a teaching position in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon), the war had been over for quite some time (fortunately for me) (and, let’s face it, for America). I visited her again for 2 months in early 2016 to really get assimilated with the country’s unique culture, which naturally included its food. The signature dish in the country is phở, a beef noodle soup in a broth that has just the slightest hint of ginger to set it apart from other Asian noodle dishes like ramen.

Phở Philly opened in my hometown in early 2022, much to the surprise of everyone in the township. I was amazed there was enough demand for a pho restaurant in the area, considering most of the people who live there have historically referred to anyone of Asian descent as “Chinese,” regardless of what nationality they actually were. You can only imagine how COVID went there, ugh.

I had sung the praises of phở ever since returning from Vietnam (which, yes, I do describe as “when I was in ‘Nam”) and, when an actual restaurant serving the stuff opened (which, let’s face it, was NOT going to ever appear on the menu at any of the township's pizza places, nor its Dennys), Dad agreed to check it out. My girlfriend and I accompanied him.

Dad, who had been responsible for my introduction to Asian-based foods in general years ago during my childhood, of course liked the dish. I did as well; it was pretty close to what I had sampled when I was in ‘Nam myself (sorry). 

Also, it had really interesting pipes sticking out of its men’s room urinal.

That was Dad’s first and last time in Phở Philly. I myself have not set foot in the place since our maiden excursion. 

Prior to Phở Philly, the building had been home to locally-owned diners: Mel’s Diner and, prior to that, the more locally renowned Preston Diner. The Phở Philly space indeed retained a lot of the diner’s characteristics; it seriously does look like a small phở shop inside an old diner space.

During the Preston Diner days, my diner-loving dad had of course been a very frequent visitor. Its 24-hour schedule also meant that my friends and I would go there in our teens and twenties, especially when Dennys was too crowded. Dad even kept a framed photograph of Preston Diner, as it appeared in either the 1970s or 1980s, as part of his “man cave” wall decoration at home. I truly do feel that my own sense of nostalgia and making sure it is properly honored came right from Dad.

2. CVS Pharmacy (Ridley Park, PA)

The branch of the nationwide pharmacy chain located on Chester Pike in Ridley Township, PA was not only Dad’s longtime pharmacy, but it was also the first CVS I ever remember EXISTING. That is saying something for a kid who grew up in the suburbs, where, by the turn of the 21st century, there seemed to be a CVS on every BLOCK (which was a common complaint of my insufferable 19-year-old self). In 2019, just before COVID hit, the tiny CVS underwent a major renovation, which included additional space, more parking, and, best of all, a public restroom. They kept it open during this renovation, as seen below with the exposed ceiling.

My entire family had prescriptions--some of them tasty, like whatever cough syrup they had in the late 1980s--filled here for decades. Once my dad suffered his first heart attack in 2001, he became a permanent regular at this store, having to go on the first of his many lifelong heart medications. As he hit the remainder of his 50s, 60s, and early 70s, his health required more and more trips to CVS and more and more medications dispensed from behind its pharmacy counter. Despite being the least tech-savvy person in our family, my dad nevertheless set up alerts on his flip-phone style cell phone (to his dying day, he refused to get a smartphone) to let him know when his latest pickup order was ready.

Below is a video of him meeting Barney Miller star Hal Linden at the Chiller Theatre convention in Parsippanny, NJ in October 2019. If you listen closely, at the very beginning of the clip, Dad’s phone alerted him to his latest prescription that needed picked up. And, of course, Dad decided to share this fact with Hal Linden, someone who, up until that exact moment, he had met zero times before.

1. Phily Diner (Runnemede, NJ)

Located on the busy Black Horse Pike in Runnemede, New Jersey, this diner…whose name is intentionally spelled (misspelled?) “Phily” instead of “Philly”...doubles as a sports bar at night.

In June of 2017, Mom and Dad stayed overnight in nearby Deptford, NJ to attend the wedding of my brother-in-law’s brother (got that?). The morning after the wedding, my girlfriend and I met them for a tasty breakfast in the rather crowded diner. On our way out, Dad posed for a picture with the retro 1955 Ford Coupe that sits outside of the restaurant.

Dad loved eating casual meals at diners. Fancy, upscale places just weren’t his style. He also loved classic cars, something that I failed to inherit from him. He was the type of guy who could identify and admire any kind of car--its make, model, year, possibly even gas mileage--just by looking at it (or at a picture of it). Meanwhile, I describe cars as “a red one.” A car has to be something clearly unique--like the fact it is instead a garbage truck--for me to take even an educated guess at identifying it. This never stopped me from snapping pictures of what I perceived to be “classic” cars and texting them to my dad, which he would usually reply to with what kind of vehicle it was.