Phillyboy Stories arise from flare-ups, flame-outs, boredom, or lies. From heartbreak, robbery, homicide, forgery, great success. What then?
These tell-tales thrive in hot-potato rounds, passing through The Institute, the neighborhood, the family, and Friday Nights at Casa Mosca’s. Some are better left unsaid.
We listen. We watch. We confess. We compose.
Growing up in Philadelphia rendered stories enough already.
In the time-machine of memory, everything seems true.
Part historical fiction, This Way Out, by Ron DeChristoforo, is a coming-of-age novel set in a segregated Philadelphia orphanage for all-White boys, surrounded by an all-Black neighborhood. During the tumultuous 1960s, civil rights protesters besiege the gates of the orphanage.(Based on historic events leading to the integration of Girard College.)
Some of the episodes in This Way Out:
- Papa’s dead and Mama’s gone.
- You’re never too old, or too young, to fall in love.
- Are Black and White colors?
- Swimming with the Marines.
- Professor Zalman’s crime.
- Fanny died and left Roger alone in Rome, without his thumb.
- What happens when authority is the ultimate authority?
- At least once each week, the silverback threw his own shit at the children.
- When ants and white worms live in a kid’s head, what’s next?
- Some kids can’t use a can opener, but know how guns work.
- Carson-the-Cop should have said, “No.”
- Is everything broken?
