John Kearns

The Logans Visit the Enchanted Village

An excerpt from the novel, Worlds

 

 

Leaving Wanamaker’s, Paul wanted to be first out the door behind his mother but somehow Kitty sneaked in front of him.  She was always ruining things.  She had a knack for messing up his plans without even knowing what they were.  

 

They were on the way to his favorite part of the Christmas visit to Center City —Lit Brothers Enchanted Colonial Village.  Paul liked the Wanamaker’s Light Show a lot.  He had seen it every year for as long as he could remember.  It was a tradition for him — and for his family — and he always looked forward to it.  But the Light Show had really become Kitty’s favorite.  She was at the age at which she could really enjoy it.  

 

Paul noticed a movie theatre across the street but it didn’t look like a nice one.  There were no movie posters that Paul could see, only blurry pictures behind glass of ladies, one with blonde hair, one with brown, one Chinese …

 

Paul’s dad bopped him on the shoulder.  

 

“This is Market Street, Paul,” he said.  “Did you know that the streets on Center City were named after trees — Chestnut, Walnut, Spruce, Pine …?” 

 

“Like a Christmas tree!” said Kitty, though Dad wasn’t talking to her.  She was always trying to butt in, ever since she first came home from the hospital, screaming like a banshee and stinking up the car with her dirty diaper. 

 

“And you know who gave them that name?”

 

“Who?”

 

“Look behind you!  And way up in the air.  See the statue way up on top?  That’s William Penn.  He named all the streets, the City of Philadelphia, and even this state — Pennsylvania.  Get it?  Penn-sylvania.”

 

“He must have liked trees.”

 

“I think he did.  He wanted a nice city for the people — with lots of grass and trees and fresh air.”

 

“What happened?” wondered Kitty.  

 

“Not everything works out the way you plan it, sweetheart,” their father chuckled.

 

A couple of different Santa Clauses rang their bells on Market Street, collecting money for the Salvation Army.  Janey pointed them out and told the kids that Santa’s helpers were in Philadelphia to collect money for the poor.  Paul imagined that the money fell into a hole at the bottom of the bucket and through a tube to underground elves ready to deliver it to people in need.  None of those Santas was the real one.  He must have been busy in the North Pole.  But he might be around — seeing you when you are sleeping, knowing when you are bad and good.  

 

A blind man passed them tapping his cane on the sidewalk.  Tap tap tap tap.  

 

Paul wondered if he would get any enjoyment from the light show.  You needed eyes for most of it.  But he might like the music.  

 

As they crossed 12th Street, his mom pointed down the block.  

 

“There’s St. John the Evangelist Church, where Daddy goes to mass sometimes.”

 

“When he can’t make it to Saint Colman’s?” Paul asked. 

 

“Exactly.”

 

Squeezed into a narrow city street, it looked different from their church.  And, there was no schoolyard.  

 

“Did you go there, too, Mommy?”

 

“Yes, I did,” she answered and she kept staring at it and staring at it.  “A long time ago.”

 

“You used to work at Daddy’s office, too — right?”  

 

“That’s right.  Mommy worked there before she got married.”  

 

“You were a secretary like those other ladies.”

 

“That’s right.”

 

“Now you take care of us.”  

 

“Yes, I got a promotion!” 

 

Janey leaned on James’s shoulder and they both smiled. 

 

At 11th Street, there was a trolley running on tracks in a cobblestoned street.  The trolley was green with a white roof and it rang a bell to let people know it was coming.  It made a strange humming noise just before it started moving.  There was a wire sticking up like Alfafa’s hair from its roof.  It was attached to another electric wire above it and gave off cool sparks! 

 

Paul thought if some kid tied his old sneakers together and threw them up on that wire, the sparks would set the sneakers on fire.  And the whole street would smell like stinky feet!  

 

Kitty kept stopping in front of the store windows to look at the lights, the little Christmas trees, the mechanical elves, and the moving Santas.  

 

“C’mon, Kitty,” Paul heard his mother saying again and again.  “Stay with us.”

 

But Paul never looked back.  

 

“Did you ever ride the trolley, Dad?”

 

“Yeah, I used to.  There aren’t as many as there used to be.  Everything’s gettin’ modern these days.  Y’know, sometimes my friends and I used to jump on the back of a trolley and get a free ride.”

 

“James!” his mother exclaimed.  “Don’t teach him that!”

 

“It was a long time ago.  It was a different world.  When people used to leave their doors unlocked.  Besides, it was a long way to get to Shibe Park to see the Phillies.”

 

They saw some horses and buggies clopping down the streets, the heavier, faster cars acting like bullies trying to get around them. 

 

Kitty held her nose.  

 

“Ohh!  Smelly!” 

 

Paul thought it was cool to think about going back to the days of riding horses, and fighting with swords.  

 

They had to stop at a red light to let cars go by.  

 

“There’s Lit’s!” his mom exclaimed, pointing to a large Victorian structure that stretched its columns and archways the length of a whole city block.  “Not much farther!”

 

“Where the Enchanted Village is!” cried Paul. 

 

“That’s right,” said James.  “Up on the second floor.”

 

“Did Lit’s used to be a castle?” Paul asked.

 

“No, it’s always been a department store,” his dad said.  “Lit’s is made up of 33 buildings.”

 

 “All put together into one store?!” 

 

“How did they do it?”

 

“I don’t know.  It was done a long time ago by some very smart men.” 

 

“The people back then were smart — weren’t they?”

 

“Yes, they were, Paul.  Yes, they were.”

 

“Like your granddad — and his dad,” added Mom.

 

Paul looked around, counting parts that could have been different buildings.  

 

“C’mon, hon’,” Janey said.  “It’s time to go in.”

 

They took the escalator up to the Enchanted Colonial Village.  The lines of dressy parents and children serpentined through white fences — stopping in front of the displays of near-life-sized mannequins with motors inside them.  The mannequins repeated the same movements over and over.  That was so everyone would see the same thing no matter when they came.  And there were so many things to see.  It was like a whole town full of people and their jobs, but from a long time ago.  Mechanical mannequins fixed watches, sewed pants, carved meat, sold pets, made glass by blowing through a tube, and ate a Christmas dinner at a long, crowded table while women and girls prepared more food in the kitchen.  The Logan family saw a cobbler making shoes and Kitty jumped up and down at the sight of the Wig Maker’s Shop.  The little school room had a gentle-looking teacher with bifocals on her nose and old desks and ink wells.  It was so different from Saint Colman’s!  But, still school.  

 

It was funny to watch the mannequins.  It was like someone had put a spell on them to be stuck forever in one place, performing one task.  Kitty giggled at her father’s imitation of the motions of the candlemaker and the blank expression on his tilted face.  

 

Paul imagined the blacksmith putting down his hammer, lifting his feet up from where they were fastened to the floor, and walking past the open-mouthed families into the shopping areas of Lit Brothers’ Department Store.  How shocked he would be to see all the modern gadgets for sale: electric razors, curling irons, heated plastic hair curlers for the ladies, little clocks people can wear on their wrists, and toys that could zoom or walk on their own!  He would hear the announcements over the loudspeaker and not know where the voice was coming from.  A staircase moving by itself?  Magic!

 

“Lordy!” he might say, like Tom Sawyer.  

 

But they might not have said that in colonial days.  

 

And then if he went out into the street he wouldn’t believe how much has changed.  He’d be scared by all the cars on Market Street.  Cars?!  What are cars?  He wouldn’t even know what to call them.  To him they would be dangerous creatures with bright eyes and round black feet. 

 

The street names would be familiar — Market, Chestnut, Walnut and the ones with numbers 15th, 16th, 17th.  But everything else would be so different — the tall buildings and the street lights and the traffic lights.  The El roaring under the sidewalk?  He might think it’s a monster and then duck into the doorway of a store with TVs in the window.  People inside a box moving and talking, all in black and white?  Even black-and-white furniture and black-and-white houses?  What is this witchcraft?  The horses and buggies would be familiar to him and might calm him down.  Phew!  At least, he could have some work he knew how to do — making horseshoes! 

 

The whole display was supposed to be like the Olde City of Philadelphia.  Paul’s dad said that it was like history come to life — the streets and shops and people all back to life the way they were in olden times.  

 

Like Frosty?  Like the nutcracker?  What if you could really make the past come back to life, instead of just pretending?  

 

A group of chubby, rosy-cheeked men in the Village Tavern held metal mugs and pantomimed singing a song.  Paul’s father pretended to toast with them.  

 

“Hey, cheers!  God rest ye, merry gentleman!” Dad cried to the mannequins.  

 

“Hey, Dad, are these robots?”  Paul asked. 

 

“I guess you might call them that, Paul.  They can move around like people.  But, they can’t go get your dinner for you like on The Jetsons.  It’s amazing what they can do nowadays, though — huh?”  

 

“Yeah, it’s so cool.  I wonder when people will be able to make real robots.”  

 

“Who knows?  You never know what they will come out with next.” 

 

Janey asked the kids what they thought.  Would they like to eat that bread?  Skate on that pond?  Watch the doggies box and wrestle in the pet shop?  Paul nodded his head but was too full of his own imaginings to have much to say.  Kitty said “no” to most of the things, though she might eat some cake if the bakery made it.

 

Paul looked up from his reverie to see his mother bent down and murmuring something about “Santa” and “a lot of trouble” to Kitty who stared straight ahead at the butcher shop and pouted.  The expression on her face was so different from what it had been during the light show, when the Sugar Plum Fairies were dancing and Rudolph’s red nose was going blink blink blink … or when she called the escalator handrails fat snakes on their way up eight flights to the Wanamaker’s toy department … or when she pointed down at the dolls, the Barbies, and the games through the metal-mesh window in the dented grey monorail depending from the ceiling …  that it made him feel sad.  

 

Kitty was his sister.  And she was not having fun.  He liked the other Kitty better, the Kitty with the happy face who Mom and Dad asked Paul to take care of on the monorail, the joyful Kitty, who had been so excited to look down from the ROCKET EXPRESS car at the sprawling electric-train layout and find Mom and Dad shopping.  

 

Kitty was small.  She liked to wear mittens.  And sometimes she got leaves and twigs stuck in her wavy hair or on the back of her coat.  She was so little.  And she was his sister.  He remembered her all the way back to when she was a baby and she used to cry when she was supposed to be sleeping.  She was Kitty.  She was his little sister.  And she was cute.  And … and he … If anyone ever did anything to harm a hair on her head, he’d be held for murder.  

 

The Logans stopped in front of some murals of real Philadelphia landmarks. 

 

“That building is called Christ Church,” Paul’s dad said.  

 

Pointing to a second one, he asked, “Do you know what that building is called?”

 

Paul knew the answer but he said nothing to his father.  Instead, he stuck his nose into Kitty’s hair and whispered.   

 

“Independence Hall!”  she exclaimed.  

 

“Very good, Kitty!” his dad said, looking at both of his children.  “That’s very good.”

 

 

 

John Kearns is the author of the short-story collection, Dreams and Dull Realities and the novel, The World and playwright of dramas including Sons of Molly Maguire and In the Wilderness.  His novel-in-progress, Worlds, was a finalist in the 2018 William Faulkner – William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition and the 2002 New Century Writers’ Awards.  John’s fiction has appeared in The Medulla Review and Danse Macabre.  His poems have appeared in such journals as the North American Review, the Grey Sparrow Journal, and The Razor’s Wine.  John is the Treasurer and Salon Producer for Irish American Writers and Artists.  He has Master’s Degree in Irish Literature from the Catholic University of America.