In Be Home By Dinner, the protagonist, Garvey Nolan, frequents Rosario’s pizzeria in Oreland on a few different occasions. Rosario’s is the sole pizzeria in East Oreland and Oreland Pizza (recently revamped) is the sole pizzeria in West Oreland.
On a recent lunch break, I visited Rosario’s. Upon entering, the two cow bells tied to the door clanged and the guys in the back making sandwiches peered over and shouted hello. The sparse tables looked identical to the ones that I sat at during my youth, along with the stacked walls of cardboard pizza boxes, the humming beverage fridge, the counter for paying, the dusty framed photos and the TV in the back corner. I felt as if I stepped back in time, awaiting my old schoolmates to barrel through the door with their Catholic school uniforms on. Rosario’s is a no-frills experience, but you don’t need it with good food. Two plain slices and a drink for $5.00 is a great deal as well. I poured on the garlic salt like old times.
Back in the day, a woman named Erin took the orders from the counter, her hair tied back and white apron caked with sauce and dough. She had a pen over her ear and asked what we were up to, always addressing our first names and asking how our parents were doing. I don’t know where she is these days, but she taught me the power of the dedicated repeat customer — an alluring guardian that kept a watchful eye and ear on us.
I decided to put a poll on Facebook to see which Oreland pizzeria was favored the most. I then shared it to the Oreland Group and the stories that poured in were many, respecting both sides. Of 189 votes, Rosario’s won at 57%. Stop in for a slice the next time you’re cruising down Pennsylvania Avenue and feeling hungry.
In 2007, I created a stop motion animation at my house in Fishtown starring an Ewok action figure that I had since 1983, simply titled Ewok!
The video starts with the Ewok being buried in the backyard. He resurfaces, finds his way to the back door and enters the home. A couple of Jamaican toys greet him and are delighted to dance with him. But the majority of toys and household objects are trying to destroy him.
In a fight to save his renewed life, the Ewok battles a potato scrubber, an egg slicer, a swordsman, a dart board, a possessed TV and more. After drinking a bottle of Yuengling Lager, and charmed by one of the home’s human inhabitants, the Ewok continues the fight but is trapped by a large multi-legged monster covered in blue lights.
Luckily, the Ewok’s old friends (Dr. Evil from Austin Powers and President George Washington) come to the rescue. They then celebrate by lighting Snakes, a classic entry level firework, on the back patio. The Snakes char the Ewok’s face, but he survives.
Inspired by this video, 14 years later, my son Wesley made a sequel called Ewok 2. (He also made several others.) Below are both videos. Check ’em out!
Ewok
Ewok 2: By Wesley Franke
Ewok! later inspired my wife Melissa to create our wedding invitations. She had never even seen one Star Wars movie but was suddenly asking for more old action figures that were in a basement shoebox. As Wesley became a Star Wars fan, Melissa has now seen Episodes I – IX.
It’s a song my Dad sung when I was a kid as he did monotonous chores. I thought he was quoting Chevy Chase from National Lampoon’s Vacation. But, he was really singing a song from 1931 written by Harry Richman that has been covered by many. Regardless, “I Love A Parade” made for the perfect title for a Be Home By Dinner chapter set on July 4th, 1985 in Oreland, PA, during the frenzy of the parade’s start, when a stolen Hustler magazine seemed more important to protagonist, Garvey Nolan.
The Fourth of July Parade is arguably the best day in Oreland. Unlike the nearby Glenside parade, which starts at 4pm and is laden with alcohol, the Oreland parade starts at a sleepy 10am. Bystanders are more likely to hold thermoses of coffee over beer.
Although not as longstanding and lengthy as the neighboring Glenside parade, the Oreland parade is just enough to have previous and current residents meld together. Also, the route is an intimate journey that weaves through the neighborhood, opposed to just major arteries. Homeowners lucky enough to live on the parade route have a supreme destination for family and friends year after year.
It’s a given that you’ll see the helicopter from the Vietnam War and the countless line of Corvettes. Why the Corvettes (some not even classics yet)? I don’t know.
As a child, my parents let me ride my Big Wheel in the parade and later my black Huffy. As you can see in the photos below, I had a standard Fourth of July striped shirt that spanned years.
Above: Careening through the bicylists in pursuit of ice cream sandwiches, Otter Pops and hot dogs.
Above: I try to look happy while staring into the sun and having my black Huffy transformed.
Above: Going the wrong way down Allison Road. This is awesome!
One of the many versions of “I Love A Parade”, by Joey Heatherton.
Before heading to work one morning, I met up with Randy Garbin of GlensideLocal.com at Elcy’s Cafe to discuss Be Home By Dinner and self publishing. This was probably the worst exhausted photo that I’ve seen of myself in a while, but what can you do when toddlers crawl in your bed at night and turn your queen bed into a slumber party?
Here’s a music video of Wes and Simone singing “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” with me on the Spire Studio. The video contains clips from the Ambler Holiday Parade, Longwood Gardens and decorating our Christmas tree. Speaking of which, we had to return our tree this year after it stopped drinking water after a couple days. We had to remove all of the ornaments and get a new one. The sellers at the North Penn VFW were cool about it and didn’t charge us for the second one.
The kiddos and I also recorded a rendition of “Jingle Bells” on the Spire Studio. This music video features some photos of many Franke Christmas pasts over the years.
We’ve been taking our kids to the Willow Grove Mall Santa since Wes was five months old. Last year, Santa had plexiglass in front of him due to COVID. It was nice to see that removed this year.
The days of playing at Challenges Arcade and buying 8-bit Nintendo and Sega Master System games at Babbages and Electronics Boutique are long gone, but the mall still has that stank of perfume mixed with Cinnabon cinnamon and buttery Auntie Anne’s pretzels. It sticks to your pores.
As Melissa and I are now married for 12 years, here’s a true story about how our honeymoon in Aruba ended.
Newlyweds in a foreign country, we had engaged in everything else that the Occidental Grand Aruba resort had to offer. We figured it was time to do up a casino, to roll the dice a bit.
We weren’t gamblers, but we were drunk after hours at the piano bar across the street, where the singer made fun of my fedora and called me Michael Jackson, and where I insisted on eating a Whopper at a neighboring Burger King to see if they tasted the same as in America.
So, my beautiful wife Melissa and I ambled into the casino, which was attached to the vast resort lobby, where a country western band was playing of all acts, and put a quarter into one of the simple slot machines.
Instant jackpot! $300 worth of coins came spitting out. I scurried off to grab a plastic cup before the coins overflowed the bin.
We cashed in and went to bed. We needed a good night’s sleep. For the next day, we were ditching the resort strips and going on an ATV tour with a group of people to see the northern rugged part of Aruba.
All of those touristy pamphlets that inundated every passageway had finally seeped into our sense of adventure. Another poolside day with piña coladas seemed boring at this point. The resort life was relaxing, but the relentless chilled out Thievery Corporation playing through the global speakers was just too perfect.
Marcos was waiting for us bright and early the next day, standing outside with his black SUV. He seemed a bit tired like us, as he opened the door so that we could sit in the back. He handed us a clipboard with release forms and we signed away as he said that it would “just be us two today”.
Aruba changes really fast once you leave the boulevards of resort strips. We were soon in a cramped suburban style neighborhood, where dirt and sand replaced the typical areas of grass. Marcos stopped at a house and we got out. He went into the garage and rolled out two ATVs and started analyzing the tires.
“Ya ever driven one of these before?” Marcos asked.
“Nope…Never have. But I see them in my neighborhood a lot,” I said.
The thought of me driving an ATV seemed unfaithful to my hatred of them. Outside my front door in Fishtown, young punks (and even guys in their 40s) would cruise around town, circling blocks, driving through stop signs, and annoying the fuck out of everybody, sometimes going the wrong way down a one-way street, sometimes on sidewalks. The louder the better it seemed. It was illegal to drive them, but cops did nothing as it was too dangerous to chase them.
I had some crafty plans though. Lay down a spike strip or perhaps clothesline them with, well, an actual clothesline as they drove by. That would do them in. Then there was shooting out their big targeted tires with a gun from my rooftop, but that would result in a blowout and some kid’s cranium on a windshield, and making more of a mess wasn’t the goal. Plus, I didn’t own or shoot a gun.
What was so lame about these punks and their “All Terrain Vehicles” is that they never left the asphalt roads of Fishtown. I knew the deafening roar of the engine echoing between the buildings was their goal, to frighten people and show everyone that they were tough and all that stupid masculine bullshit, but try enjoying listening to Billie Holiday in your living room with that roar constantly invading your mindset, and you’ll want to destroy them too. Any kid with a few hundred bucks could go to Pep Boys and get a Baja Motorsports 90cc ride, or work on their uncle’s hooptie and make it sound like Tyrannosaurus Rex is farting non-stop down the avenue. It’s a Fishtown plague.
And now here I was, about to hop on an ATV with Melissa clutching my waist and actually take on many terrains, as the vehicle intended. Marcos hooked us up with helmets and gave an instructional on the thumb accelerator and brakes.
Off we went! First, around town on the streets and then onto a sandy and pebbly road that slowly inclined towards Alto Vista Chapel, a tiny colorful building overlooking the north shore, where local Catholics make a pilgrimage to every Good Friday. We got off and investigated and took photos while the quiet Marcos quickly became bubbly and excited, full of information.
We then cruised down dunes and along the coast and checked out natural bridges made of rock formations, the Bushiribana Gold Mine Ruins, and a cool permanent art installation made solely of debris and trash that had washed ashore.
Marcos continually led the way, as we stayed a safe distance behind, tearing through seaside cliffs as mid-afternoon quickly approached. Without my sunglasses, I would have been blinded, as the sandy cloud of Marcos in front of me was tough enough to deal with.
After a couple hours into our tour, we were almost at the grand destination, which was the Natural Pool, a pool of seawater surrounded by rock and volcanic stone circles. It was the ultimate reward for the adventurist, as the only way to get there was via an ATV or a 4-wheel drive vehicle. We had seen the photos of it everywhere and were ready to sit in the postcard image of it.
The final stretch was of rocky terrain void of any path to follow. I kept a firm eye on Marcos up ahead, but at the same time focused on traversing the boulders and sporadic cactus. Use of the thumb accelerator became a game of exact precision as our body weight and my steering maneuvered us around the masses of tan stone.
Suddenly, I hit a stone that the tires couldn’t pass and found my body lunging forward through the air over the right side of the ATV. Melissa shrieked something to gain my attention. Control was completely lost,
I landed hard on my right side, scraping up my forearms, legs, and hip. I think I had hit my head as well, but the massive helmet saved me there. The wind was knocked out of me a bit, but the thick stench of gasoline startled my senses and I realized that the ATV was now upside down and partially on my body. I was able to slither out of it and stand up. Melissa was sitting a ways back on a boulder, holding her knee. Marcos was clambering over the rocks towards us while repeating “What happened? What did you do?”
And that’s when I started thinking…Exactly!…What the HELL am I doing? Why am I in some remote part of Aruba, far from any hospital or road, risking our lives after just getting married? Why are we now bleeding from our limbs in the scorching sun, far from our hotel? What kind of imbecile and irresponsible act is this?
One of Melissa’s knees was clearly in a lot of pain. We weren’t quite sure what the extent of our physical damage was. At first, I just wanted to turn around, but Marcos, who positioned the banged up ATV back into place, pointed out that we were quite close to the Natural Pool. I was worried that the ATV was destroyed and not able to be driven, but it was just fine.
Onward, we headed as I grew paranoid with every slight maneuver I had to make. Blood bubbled from scattered scrapes on my forearm as the bumpy ride tossed pain into my aching hip. Tiny pebbles were embedded in my skin. Immense fear grew over me as I thumbed the gear ever so slightly.
When we finally reached the Natural Pool area, we were greeted with a makeshift parking area and a series of stone steps to descend down. This wasn’t in the postcard! Marcos waited at the top as Melissa and I inched our way down the steps void of any bannister. This motion was especially difficult for Melissa and her damaged knee.
The color of the serene water in the Natural Pool was turquoise, surrounded by spiny rocks that you had to hop on to get to the water. Closer to the pool, the rocks were slippery with black crabs of all sizes wandering on them. Melissa and I looked at each other with disorientation and moved our bodies into the water, wondering if any bones on our bodies were broken.
An excited family was in the pool speaking Dutch, splashing about with their blond hair. I saw that they had taken a 4Ă—4 Jeep here. Well, that was smart, I thought.
Melissa and I treaded water, wondering how deep it went, and let the salt water clean our wounds with a slight sting. The massive waves crashed onto the rocks and poured into the Natural Pool. As the waves retreated back to the ocean, anything in its grasp could easily be sucked out to sea. We were told that these waves were so bad the previous day that the Natural Pool was closed.
On the long drive back to Marcos’s ATV garage, we ran into a clashing rally on the streets for one of the Aruban political parties. The general election was coming up in September. Yellow and green flags mixed with angry chants through megaphones made for an awkward getaway, as we had to drive on sidewalks that could barely fit the width of the ATV. The crowds were thick with the Papiamento language of the Caribbean, and here we were, a couple of tourists just dying to get back to our all-you-can-drink pool bar.
Finally at the hotel, and stripped of our clothes, we saw how bruised and battered we were…and could barely move without pain. We had one day left at the resort. So, we headed poolside and sat in the lounge chairs.
A girl came over next to me, positioned herself on a lounge chair, and started reading a book. I couldn’t help noticing her right leg was gnarled up with fresh wounds. I caught her eye and said, “ATV accident?”
“No…Jet skiing…” she said. “Just flew into some rocks. Had to get adventurous!”
At night, Melissa and I got drunk and went to one of the attached resort clubs where they were having a massive karaoke session, equipped with wireless microphones and a big stage.
One of the waitresses saw my arm and asked, “ATV accident?”
“Yep…Had to get adventurous.”
“Ahh, yeah, those things are more dangerous than they look.”
I eventually sang “Proud Mary” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, grinning through the pain, as our honeymoon came to an end. The season of the buzzing Fishtown ATVs was at its peak and awaiting my return back on Memphis Street.
From 1997 through 2004, I played keyboards (and often sang) in several original bands that lasted anywhere from 3 weeks to 13 months. These bands were a mix of pop / rock efforts. I loathed and loved them equally at times. The ultimate goal was always to get gigs — anywhere and anytime. 10pm Tuesday at the Khyber Pass or Pontiac Grill, sure thing. Even if three people showed up and were only there for whiskey night caps, we would do whatever it took. A backyard BBQ in 95 degree July heat? Yep, we took that spot to play for the birds and squirrels while everyone nibbled on food in the central air inside.
Here’s a sample of the sounds from Pagoda, one of the longer running bands:
Some lyrics:
The prophet is drawing near. Can’t you feel the portals blooming in the air? All of the scriptures that have ever been written are slowly bleeding into one. And he’s rubbed elbows with the New Jersey Devil. And he’s driven with Christ and floored the pedal. He knows exactly when the shit is going down.
A neighborhood Fishtown friend ran a kitten rescue out of her home. She had a litter of orange and white cats.
We adopted a male, one that was animated and looked at us often.
At home where we lived in sin, Melissa named him Santucci in about 30 seconds, named after our favorite pizzeria.
“We can call him Tooch.”
Hanging out with Tooch at our Fishtown house on NYE 2007. Tooch had been living with us for just a few days.
I proposed to Melissa days later at the Moshulu on NYE. She said yes.
Tooch’s middle name was Rambo.
He was a true house cat and never tried to sneak out. We put him on a leash in our little yard, just so show him the outside world, but he was more annoyed than anything.
He watched Netflix DVDs with us, sitting on our laps or like a gargoyle on the sofa’s edge.
He played with a turquoise sequin belt and a fluorescent pink scratch pad.
We gave him a bath once and it was the angriest he’d ever been. I swore he’d claw me to pieces.
Tooch didn’t really like the freedom of the great outdoors. We left the door open accidentally for hours and he never ran out.
He wore a collar for a few days, but almost strangled himself trying to get it off.
I was trying to record percussion instruments and he kept jumping up near the microphone. I decided to record his purring and meowing and made “Happy Tooch“.
He had a lot of nicknames: Tooch MaLooch, Tooch Master General, TuLaRooch.
He knocked down a wine bottle one night and bloodied his nose a bit.
His tail was rather long.
He always hid from my parents. I think he was scared of my Dad’s laugh.
He was a scaredy cat of sorts. If you farted, he’d run out of the room, sometimes so fast that his claws couldn’t gain traction.
He slept along our legs in bed and sometimes nibbled on our toes.
He liked to be petted, but not on the stomach. Under his chin was his favorite.
His hunting instincts made him a moth’s worse nightmare. He thrust his body to attack shadows.
He was the homestead captain of the house, always there, ready to lay on laps.
He lost a lot of whiskers once, getting them singed by a candle.
His white hair stuck to my navy pea coat from just walking by him.
Melissa took amazing photos of him jumping in the air and made a t-shirt for me out of an image.
We didn’t know his exact birthday, so we chose Halloween as it was around that time.
I sense he liked holidays and festive wrappings to play with. Santa gave him stocking stuffers and he was included in Melissa’s holiday postcards.
When we moved to Glenside, he stayed in our office for weeks before slowly making his way through the much bigger house.
He scratched up the brown leather sofa pretty bad on one side, but was rather good to our stuff.
He knew what was going on in the basement.
He jumped through swaying plexiglass entry doors.
He only ate hard dry food. He never ate moist food. We gave him grilled branzino from Zahav once and he wouldn’t touch it. Cheese, milk, nothing.
He didn’t like to leave the house. When dropping him off at family or friends for vacation, he usually hid behind major appliances.
He hated going to the vet. If you touched his travel bag, he’d hide in a section that we couldn’t reach in the basement. We had to get him in a room first.
He liked to stick his paws under the bathroom door while you were sitting on the toilet.
If his food bowl was missing just enough to show the bottom, he’d meow until we filled it. We called this the “bald spot”.
He started having issues with going to the bathroom and wasn’t using the box anymore.
He made puddles on our wood burning stove hearth.
He strained and wailed when going. Sometimes he was fine.
Vets recommended Miralax, herbal treatments, organic moist food from Whole Foods, but nothing helped.
It was disgusting but we grew used to it, for almost two years.
He frothed at the mouth and howled one day, clearly in immense pain.
Melissa took him to the vet, just a 5 minute drive away. He didn’t fight it.
He was analyzed and treated for about 6 hours.
Surgery was an option, but not a guaranteed outcome.
We decided that it was best to end the pain and say goodbye.
We sat in a room with him for 20 minutes and talked to him, petted him, while he sat on an ottoman. He was sedated but knew who we were.
He wanted to sit on Melissa’s lap, so she let him.
We told stories of him and teared up.
He was soon put to sleep.
We drove home and put him in his favorite blue chair. It was upright and had a soft velvet feel.
We then all went out to the nearest Santucci’s restaurant for dinner, a surreal day.
The next day, we buried him in the backyard in an area that we planned to have a flower garden.
He brought tremendous joy for over 12 years to our family.
He was the 3rd member, always there to connect eyes and help me relax, always there to jump on my lap and stop be from being frantic, so that I could stay put and watch the birds out the window.
Thanks to everyone that came out to Bettie Jack Gallery on October 4th! It was great talking about the book to new and old faces, especially those that live in Oreland and were name dropping old faces from the 80s. It’s amazing how many families raised in Oreland stay in Oreland, or at least moved nearby (like I did).
