Here is a nice map of New Castle County from 1881 that might be helpful to researchers. 

Dad and Prices Run Pool

Last night my friend Raymond Harrington and I were sitting at the mostly empty bar at the Hunter’s Den in Marshallton. A couple of women were sitting across the bar, to our right was a man and his daughter, and another man was to our left. The various conversations were simply a murmur of background noise when I heard Tommy Gears drift over from the other side of the room. I looked at Raymond and he obviously heard it too. Then I heard it again with Prices Run pool, I jumped off my barstool and went over to the other side of the bar and showed the woman my driver’s license and said “I’m Thomas Gears!” Then the man at the bar with his daughter said “I used to lifeguard at Prices Run with your father in the 1950s.”

W. Thomas Gears at Prices Run Pool

The woman introduced herself as Eleanor McNutt. She joked that my father was so handsome that when he was a lifeguard at Prices Run she thought about drowning her younger brother to get dad to come over to them. The man, Marty Apostolico, told me he remembered my father as an excellent swimmer and diver. Apostolico was a retired teacher and well-known high school football coach who lead Dickenson through its glory years as a football giant. McNutt is retired from the Dupont company also remembered my dad from his days working security at the Chestnut Run site.

The man on our left was wearing a Wilmington PD tee shirt. I turned to him and said “I guess you know my dad as well” and he shook his head yes and agreed. So goes life in Delaware, our little piece of the world where everybody knows everybody.

The both McNutt and Apostolico shared fond memories of Prices Run pool. Dad is 80 and still lives in the city on 9^th street near St. Anthony’s. Here he is talking about Prices Run Pool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaDEvd4jSBk

Canby Park and Walking the Tracks

One of the things parents always tell their children is stay off the train tracks and to never go into abandoned buildings. One of the things growing up in Canby Park was the train tracks went right through the woods and they were just a natural corridor. You could walk the train tracks and get yourself right into the city. I know I mentioned walking train tracks in other posts but this time I'm just going to talk about walking down to the riverfront. The tracks it went through Canby Park we're called the Market Street branch of the B&O Railroad. The Market Street branch connected the big railroad yard by the General Motors Factory to Wilmington and the businesses in the city. Those tracks are still there but there and used once in awhile to transfer cars from one railroad to another but there are no longer any businesses in the city that get rail service.

We would walk down the street into Canby Park woods and then down to the tracks, once on the tracks we head down toward the city. Next we would cross Maryland Avenue, then walked behind Alban Park and around Robinson's Bend and you would be at a place called West Yard. At West yard you'd have to be careful because that's where the tracks connected with Amtrak. Those trains went faster and they were patrolled by the police.

Once we got to West yard there was a lot of things we could get into. There was a place that had been a scale house for weighing rail cars. The scale house was gone but the scale mechanism was still in the ground and there was a manhole hatch that opened allowing access to climb down

underground and around inside the scale mechanism. It was dark, smelly, dirty, and greasy but it was a neat place to crawl around when you were a kid. We could go under the Amtrak elevated railroad and in the other side between Amtrak and the Christian and River there was an industrial park that used to be the old Dravo Shipyard. One part of the shipyard was used by a company called Trans Car Services that repaired tank cars, mostly for the Dupont company. I remember in the summer after 8th grade I had to go to summer school and there was a girl that rode the bus with my named Judy Dombrowski, her dad worked there. Sometime 2000 Raymond and I were walking around in the closed down facility and I picked up a piece of paperwork that was blowing around in the breeze and her dad’s name was one it. It's amazing that the name has stuck with me but sometimes we just remember peculiar things.

The switcher from Trans Car Services is now
on display at the Delaware Children's Museum. 

The big attraction was walking around the shipyard, going through the abandoned buildings, and climbing up into the cranes. The abandoned buildings are all mostly knocked down now and the few that remain from the shipyard days have been repurposed. Inside some of the warehouses there were large overhead cranes, you could climb up the ladder and get up in the control box of the crane and pretend you were driving the crane. I clearly remember all that smelling like pigeon poop. It was a heck of a lot of fun for a little kid. Some of the big free-standing cranes are still standing in the shipyard shops area. I've been inside every one of those. I also remember going into the boiler room and climbing up on the boilers and walking around on the catwalks inside the boiler room. One of the things I remember about those old buildings were there were still World War 2 era posters hanging up, you know the type that warned “loose lips sink ships.”

The former Wilson Line steamer State of Pennsylvania

Another attraction was sunk in the mud in the Christiana River, a steamship from the old Wilson Line. I'm not old enough to ever remember the Wilson line but I remember people always talking about it. The ship was called the State of Pennsylvania and it got stuck in the mud when it was on its way to either be stored or scrapped at the old shipyard. In the 1970s there were cables attached to shore that went out to the ship and us kids always talked about crawling out on the cables and getting out to the ship but we were never brave enough to do it. Probably a good thing because by then the ship was probably so rotted if we walked around we would have fallen through the floor and gotten ourselves into a world of trouble.

If mom only knew the places we used to go. The view was great! 

So when I became apparent that when my own kids were old enough to wander I had to keep in mind these things I had done. I went on the train tracks and I went in abandoned buildings. In fact if there was a train ran rumbling down the tracks going to Wilmington we would wait for the locomotive to get around the curve so they would not see us and then we'd hop on the freight cars and ride down into the city and also we'd ride back if we could catch one going the other way. If my parents only knew all the places we went and things we did when we would be off wandering for the afternoon.

Things Dad would Say

In the present the world has changed to one of short and fast sensory input. The president communicates with tweets, people can have entire conversations in emojis, and internet acronyms such as LOL and OMG are commonplace not only digitally but in speech. In the past people used expressions which used words and some were actually full blown sentences.

One of the things I'll always remember from my childhood are the things that my dad always used to say. No, they weren't dirty, not really, and they weren't full of cuss words, they were just fun and memorable.

My nickname was Tom-O, not Tom or Tommy. I always liked Tom-O the best, but ended up being Tommy for most of my life. If you want to make me smile call me Tom-O.

When my bedroom was messy, my dad would say “this place looks like Hogan's Goat.”

When I wanted something, my dad would answer “people in Hell want ice water.”

When I asked my dad where we're going he'd say “crazy want to go.”

Me with my dad about 1969.

When I asked my dad if we were going to do something he would say “might as well we can't dance.”

When I asked about what's for dinner, dad would say “bread and pull it.”


When I asked about where babies came from he'd say "an eagle shit on a rock and the sun hatched you."


Sometimes when we'd see a pretty girl dad would say “hey Tom-O there's a sexy broad.”

Also, like for maybe of us in the area, the creek was always the crick and the crick had wooder, not water.

Once in a while he would say: "Tommy you ain't no good, gonna chop you up for firewood, put you in the pot when it's hot, put you in the bowl when you cold."

Now, for the last one I can remember for the moment, when I would ask where is mom, he would reply, “she went to take a shit and the hogs ate her.” When I was little I heard it so fast I thought he was talking about a place called a hogzater, I thought it was a special place where mom’s went to poop. Once I got a little older I figured out what he was saying.

If you have a memory of some long-forgotten expression please share it in the comments.

Coach Larry Monaghan

My time as a student at Delcastle was such a important time in my life. Looking back throughout my life I note how many of the teachers there helped me learn not only the curriculum but how to live, how to be a good person, and how to treat others. One of the ones who helped me learn a lot was Larry Monaghan, who was principal for part of my teaching career, but was the girls basketball coach when I was a student there.

I became involved in girls basketball by following my buddy Joey Adorno's lead. I quickly realized it was fun to watch, the girls were nice, and I liked girls. I've always been attracted to girls sports. So I never thought I would actually learn anything by watching girls basketball, but it happened. After going to a number of games and getting to know all of the girls I soon found myself with a clipboard keeping stats for the team and even riding the bus to some of the games. Joey and I with all of those girls. It was a good gig!

I didn't have any classes with Coach Monaghan and he never really tried to teach me anything. What happened was purely organic. I started to realize his style was to run plays, the girls were trained and drilled in various plays. The would run to certain spots and pass the ball here and there and someone would get open and boom, they'd get a basket. He also really pushed the basics; the bounce pass, the pick, the hop stop layup, and other fundamentals. He was a coaches' coach in the respect. Whenever a game would get out of hand he would call a timeout and get the girls calmed down and instruct them on getting back to the basics. They would settle down and run the plays while sticking to the basics. They really played as a team, it was amazing.

So my big takeaway was that I always need to know the basics. Sometimes when things get a little out of control, take a time out, and focus on the basics. Follow the plans, run the plays, and good things will happen. There have been a number of times when I felt things were getting out of control in my life and I followed Coach Monaghan's plan with good results.

I learned so much without ever taking a class. I had so many good teachers at Delcastle. I just want to be as good as Mr. Kuska, Mrs. C., or Mr. Monaghan.

Goldie's Deli on Union Street

One of the places I will always remember going as a kid was Goldie's Deli at 906 Union Street. It was owned by Anthony and Joseph Briscoe who were friends of my dad. As far as I can tell the Briscoe Brothers purchased the deli from Samuel Goldstein or his heirs, hence the name Goldie's. Goldstein was a Wilmington businessman who also owned Goldstein's Liquor store on 8th and Monroe Streets and a taproom at 807 Shipley Street. 

Goldie's was located directly across the street from Huber's Bakery where a great uncle on my mom's side of the family worked. I think it was uncle Ed. When you walked into Goldie's the first thing you noticed with the amazing smell of the fresh deli meats. People like Wawa and Subway these days, but you haven't lived until you walked into an old-time city deli and smelled that amazing deli smell. Wawa might be the place where people go nowadays but they will never compare to a neighborhood deli like Goldie's. The counter was on the right and the wall on the left had various racks for items found in a neighborhood store such as loaves of bread, chips, pretzels, and the coveted Tastykakes. The next thing thing you really noticed were the trophy mounts of all of the game that the Briscoe Brothers hunted over the years. There were also mounted fish and plenty of photos of the brothers on various hunting trips. They went on trips to faraway places like Maine, Idaho, and Montana. I don't remember exactly but I remember looking at the photos and knowing that those places did not look like Delaware. I've always suffered from wanderlust and seeing these photos made me want to see these places. In the back there was a room with tables and a television where you could sit and eat.

My dad would take us there and we'd get hoagies and eat in the back. Dad would talk with the guys there for what seemed like forever. Sometimes the back room would get smokey and uncomfortable but that was part of life back then. I can't imagine being in a public place filled with smoke these days. There was always a TV going and we could watch wrestling with Captain Lou Albano, roller derby with Judy Arnold, or Howard Cosell commentating on ABC's Wide World of Sports. The adults would talk and talk and my brother Chris and I would hang out watching TV and every so often pester dad for some Tastykakes. My favorites were, and still are, the Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes. In my opinion the flagship of the Tastykake product line, I know a lot of people might say otherwise. Pestering dad normally worked, it bought him more time to chat and got my brother and I our coveted Tastykakes.

Dad and his friends would be talking about hunting, fishing, or the latest things happening in Wilmington. Eventually we'd hit the road and if we were lucky dad would stop and get us Italian Water Ice. A hoagie from Goldie's, Tastykakes, and Italian Water Ice... the trifecta for a kid on a Saturday in Wilmington in the 1970s.

Today you can still get a good sandwich at 906 Union Street at the Kozy Korner Restaurant. It is a great place to get a little neighborhood flavor in Wilmington's Little Italy. The hunting photos and mounted deer trophies are long gone, the air is smoke-free, but you can still meet up with a friend and have a sandwich. 

The experience of the chewing the rag in the back room of a neighborhood deli is one that is fading. Devices and social media have taken the place of conversation while people use touch screens or smartphone apps to order hoagies and rush in and out without ever taking to anyone. Sometimes we think things improve but maybe they actually have not.

Adventures in Africa Part I

In 2009 Don Richard and I went to Africa in search of riding some of the last steam locomotives in regular railroad service in the world. For a guy who loves trains this was really big. Think about seeing the last dinosaurs on the planet. We took a really long flight from JFK to Johannesburg and then changed planes for a short flight to Victoria Falls. The first flight was 16 hours and the second was maybe an hour and a half. At Victoria Falls we went straight to the falls. They were spectacular! One of the wonders of the world. We spent the afternoon walking the paths around the falls, then crossed the spectacular bridge next to the falls into Zambia. What an experience! We were tired because we did this straight through from the US without a night in a hotel. We then scored a ride in the cab of a steam locomotive pulling a dinner train. It was a special sort of locomotive called a Garratt that was mostly used in Africa and never really caught on anywhere else. For part of the ride we sat on the roof. At one point I spotted an elephant dashing into the brush. What an amazing time.

We weren't done yet. After all of that we bought train tickets to ride to the town of Hwange which is the site of a large national park and also a coal mine that still used steam locomotives. We Really didn't know much about what was going on there and were getting tired. Now were read a lot of information about traveling in Zimbabwe and there were a lot of advisories like if you ride the train lock yourself in the compartment and don't open the door for anyone without a badge. We also read not to go out at night, not to be alone at night, and be warned that there were a lot of petty crimes. So at the train station we decided we wanted to get some pizza and beer. Don wandered off on his own to find pizza and I started asking about where to buy beer. Some kid hear me talk about beer and ran up offering to help me. I gave him $5 and he took off running. I thought I'll never see my $5 or my beer, I was also waiting for a guy who told me he would sell me a Zimbabwe license plate so I hung out. A few minutes late the buy arrives with 6 beers! For $5! I took the beer and gave him another $5 and thanked him. He was a happy kid. My guy arrived with the license plate, which is a great souvenir because they are durable, flat, and light. Don arrived with the pizza and we boarded the train.

We got underway and the conductor came along and checked out ticket. He came back a minute later and said if we had any left over pizza he would like a piece.  We said to have one and offered him a beer. He turned it down saying he had diabetes, left with the pie of pizza only to return a minute later saying he would take us up on the beer. We finished the pizza and beer and soon were really tired. It was about a 4-5 hour train ride to Hwange and we closed our door and tried to sleep but it was bloody hot. We ended up opening the door and the cross breeze made it comfortable and soon we were both asleep, just like we were warned not to do. Nothing bad happened and soon we were in Hwange.

Now keep in mind that we had been two days traveling and had not been in a hotel room. We soon found out that the train actually didn't stop at Hwange but rather at Thompson Junction, a few miles outside of town. We got off and found the station was very basic, it has one light bulb and no taxis. We were miles from town, didn't know anything about the hotel situation, and had no reservations. The few people who got off were dispersing quickly. We went to a guy with a pickup truck and said we needed to go to a hotel, there was only one as it turns out. We hopped into the back of his pickup and off we rode into the African night. The starry sky was amazing, second only to the one we say a few years prior in Inner Mongolia, China. The Baobab Hotel sat on top of Baobab hill and overlooked the town of Hwange. Our driver took us straight to the hotel and wow, had a spectacular view. We gave him a few buck and he went on his way. How lucky we were that the guy was honest. Between Don and I we probably had more cash than he had seen in a lifetime. We were in luck because the hotel had space for us. Finally, we got to sleep in something that was not moving.

In one single event we traveled from Wilmington to Hwange, Zimbabwe over two days with only sleeping on the plane and train. We saw Victoria Falls, named in honor of Queen Victoria at the height of British colonialism. Rode on the roof of a steam locomotive and took a train to a town we didn't know, got in the back of a pickup, and somehow safely ended up in a decent hotel without a reservation.