Grays Ferry

True story. I'm in this bar in Grays Ferry ten years ago when the phone rings. It's Stinky. He had recognized my car parked outside. He wants to know what I'm doing in the neighborhood. Mostly he wants to know why I'm in this bar at 28th and Reed Sts. asking questions about the neighborhood instead of a bar at 29th and Tasker where he, Stinky Markey, could answer them. What I didn't know then was the language of the neighborhood. In Grays Ferry 28th and Reed meant people who had hung out at the playground on 26th Street whereas 29th and Tasker meant the playground at 30th Street. Both 26th Streeters and 30th Streeters made fun of the people from Wharton Street, the playground at Hollywood and Wharton. In the pecking order of playgrounds, 30th Streeters considered themselves royalty and one of their nobles was a man named Stinky.

It was a tense time in Grays Ferry. Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan announced he was going to lead a march of Black Muslims through the streets in protest of an incident where a black woman had been disrespected by group of white men. It was a complicated tale, filled with compelling back stories and I was trying to figure it all out. I had known Stinky -- Joseph Cyril Markey III -- for almost 20 years. I knew him well enough to ask him how he got his nickname. When Joe was a baby his uncle caught a whiff of his diapers and said, "C'mere Stinky." The name stuck. But I didn't realize how well it had stuck until I got off the house phone and the owner of the bar asked me who had called. "Joe Markey," I answered. The bar owner looked confused for a second and said, "Stinky Markey?" I nodded. And he said, "I didn't know his nickname was Joe."

That was one of the funniest unintentionally funny comments I ever heard. I wondered if I'd ever hear anything like it again. Not long ago I was in a store in the mega strip mall on Delaware Avenue in South Philadelphia when I heard a man call to a child wandering down the aisle, "C'mere Stinky." I looked over expecting to see a little boy in dirty diapers. Instead there was the most beautiful little girl I had ever seen. She had shining red hair, porcelain skin and the bluest blue eyes -- she looked like a postcard from Ireland -- and on her face was a look of absolute adoration directed toward the man who had just called her Stinky. For some reason I thought of her walking down another aisle 20-some years from now and a priest saying, "Do you take this man. . ."and someone in the church turning in surprise to the person next to him, saying, "I didn't know her nickname was Maureen."