Family visits typically focus around the food element. Visiting Mom at her retirement community in West Chester, PA for a few days was no exception. As a result of one of her “ladies-who-lunch” groups, I had heard about Arianna’s Café and got to try it for myself this time. Normally, I would not even look twice at a restaurant in a bland strip mall, but this place was fantastic. Once inside, it felt very homey.
Mom is doing durn well at 94!
I didn’t photograph my lunch (which was fantastic!) but I DID take a picture of the dessert, which was a slice of homemade Peaches & Cream pie. This place is definitely on my “return” list next time I’m in the area.
Since shipping for
Leopold’s Ice Cream is cheaper from Savannah to Philly, I had a large supply sent to Mom’s in time for her birthday AND my visit! Pumpkin Spice was one of the DELICIOUS seasonal flavors:
We also tried the Ice Cream Cookie sandwiches. Wow… both the cookie AND the ice cream were off the charts.
Friday night is Bingo night at Mom’s community; I came close a number of times but as the saying goes…no cigar!
My visit also happened to coincide with the memorial service for former Philadelphia Phillies owner Bill Giles.
His wife Nancy was a high school and college friend of my Mom’s, and they both ended up in the Philadelphia area. We saw them on a regular basis for dinners, holidays, and Phillies games (with just about the best seats in the house). Nancy passed away six years ago. The last time I saw both of them was on a visit for my stepfather’s 80th birthday back in 2009. Below are Nancy, my stepfather, Bill, and Mom:
Nancy graciously invited the family to attend a Phillies game the next day at Citizens Bank Park stadium, which had opened five years earlier to replace historic Veterans Stadium.
The Party Suite was named after Giles. As his son admitted at the service, he was not exactly the poster boy for healthy living, and yet he lived to 92!
Inside the suite:
When my Mom remarried in 1977, it was a small wedding at the house with Bill and Nancy, my Aunt and Uncle, and my stepfather’s mother. Bill got a kick out of me playing the Wedding March on the piano that afternoon and never failed to bring it up whenever I’d see him. His autobiography,
Pouring Six Beers at a Time is the riveting story of his life in baseball and how he engineered some of the most zany stunts to help fill the seats at Veterans Stadium.
From my treasured autographed copy:
Giles was the mastermind behind the still beloved Phillie Phanatic:
To me, his strength was being able to talk to people from all walks of life with his kind nature and ability to put people at ease. There were no airs or artifice about him. The service was held at the Episcopal Academy in Newtown Square; it was packed.
The service was filled with beautiful (and funny) testaments of Bill, with one of the highlights coming from Phillies legendary third baseman, Mike Schmidt. All three sons spoke of their dad, with eldest son Mike detailing the annual spring training trips by car to Florida that the two shared. I was hoping to get a chance to talk to Giles’ youngest son, Chris, who was close to my age. I probably hadn’t seen him in over forty years, but as kids, we would often play together when our moms would visit. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to connect afterwards.
Mom and I had lunch at LaScala’s Fire afterwards. I’ll just leave it at that…
On the way home, I spotted the new-to-me Newtown Square Railroad Museum. I had to pull over for this one! It was closed, but I still milled around and got a few photos.
What a cool little gem! Edited from
their website:
The Newtown Square Freight station was constructed in 1895, shortly after the Pennsylvania Railroad branch line was built. It was located on the west side of Newtown Street Road (Rt. 252) and what is now Winding Way This was also the site of the lumber and coal yard, plus a feed and grain store. A corral was located in back of the freight station to hold livestock for shipments to and from the farms in the area. Farmers would bring their horses to E.W. Powell, the veterinarian, and after being tended by him they would be shipped out by stock car. A passenger station was next to the freight station. It housed the post office and telegraph station for many years. The freight station was the end of the branch line, the last stop from Philadelphia.
Between 1895 and 1908, as many as thirteen trains a day pulled in and out of the Newtown Square station: the milk train, the mail train, and various freight and passenger trains. The railroad ran its passenger service from 1895 to 1908, but its freight service operated into 1963 - in the later years servicing mostly the lumberyard. There were ten stops on the line - eight of them were “flag stops”, along with the Llanerch and Newtown Square stations.
The freight station is the last vestige of the Newtown Square branch of the P.R.R. freight and passenger line that once rumbled 9.2 miles between Newtown Township and Philadelphia.
Several years ago, when the Winding Way bypass was to be built, the abandoned freight station was saved from destruction by the Newtown Square Historical Society, who raised money to have it disassembled and relocated to Newtown Township’s Drexel Lodge Park, where it was restored and the Newtown Square Railroad Museum built up around it – which now includes a 1902 passenger car, 1907 box car, 1950 caboose and small steam engine.
Next stop: Independence Hall!
See more Philadelphia photos at my
main website.
