True neighborhood pride is a strange thing. Strange because you need to know your neighborhood honestly for what it is – the good, bad, and everything in between. When you truly love your neighborhood, the relationship is like any other relationship in your life. You have your ups and downs, good and bad days. The neighborhood can bring your smile, but it can just as easily break your heart.
Being a very neighborhood-minded person, I recently had the privilege to come across the writings on Fred Cimino. Fred is a lifelong Port Richmond resident who locals call “The Unofficial Historian of Port Richmond.” For years, he has been documenting the history of the neighborhood. Fred published a four-book series called, “White Marble Steps…Memories of Port Richmond.” He also published a three-volume series called “Port Richmond Before 95, the highway”. The latter series was co-authored with Joe Petaccio, Jr. The books use over 450 photographs, along with an oral history, to tell the story of the neighborhood from 1847 to 1965. Fred calls this type of history “popular history”, and these works only document popular history that can be verified by multiple sources.
Sadly, Joe passed away two years ago. According to Greg Gillespie, owner of Port Richmond Books (located at 3037 Richmond Street), Joe’s passing was a great loss to Fred. At that time they were about halfway through their fourth book in the “Before 95” series.
Fred Cimino decided to switch gears and tackle a different kind of project – fiction. Cimino’s latest work, “In These Streets: A Port Richmond Summer,” follows a sixteen year-old Freddy Simon through the neighborhood in a coming of age story set in the summer of 1959. The story is told in first person through journal entries. Freddy is instructed by his North Catholic English teacher to keep a journal over the summer.
Although there are descriptive true-to-life similarities between the Port Richmond in “In These Streets” and the real neighborhood, Fred’s novel is a complete work of fiction. The description of the docks, restaurants, and such call back to real places, but the characters and events are fictitious. This was quite a departure from the historical texts he published in the past. “First and foremost, I enjoy history,” Fred said, “But I had more fun than I’ve ever had in my life working on this novel. When writing fiction, the story and characters take you to places you don’t expect. I might start my outline heading North, but then I wind up going Northeast. Until you write a novel, you never know that experience.”
This is Fred’s first published work of fiction, and the book is loaded with those memorable characters you would sit around and reminisce about later in life at Christmas parties and family reunions. You know the kind I’m talking about, those “what ever happened to” people. Characters with names like One-Arm Abe, Shoey Malone, Slugger Foley, and Frannie Smiles haunt the pages, reminding neighborhood folks of people we all knew back in the day.
On the back cover of “Life In The Streets”, Fred Cimino declares 1959 to be “Port Richmond’s last summer of innocence.” As his main character navigates his summer through moments of love and strife, life lessons are gathered and sparks are ignited as he becomes a bit more of a man on each page.
If you ever have a conversation with Fred, you will probably hear him say the words more than once: “I Love Port Richmond!” Regarding the neighborhood, Cimino said, “Port Richmond had so much to do with my development as a person. Even with my development as a writer, there are people in this neighborhood who motivated me to write.”
“We are all made up of different parts of different people and places we’ve encountered in our lives,” Fred continued, “The people and places in Port Richmond are what influenced me.”
“In These Streets” is most definitely a work of a deeply sentimental mindset. The work exudes a sweetness and love for Port Richmond, but tragedy is laced through the details. Although we read of Freddy’s teenage romance and fast-beating heart, poverty, violence, and hostility surround the characters on the streets in this story. But what is a story without seeing your characters overcome challenges? I believe Fred shows the anxieties that come with teenage years in the city, but also shows the value of a neighborhood working together. It seems that most of the characters in the book have a hand in guiding or pushing Freddy Simon through the story. Although I did not grow up during that time, I can still remember my neighborhood being like that when I was young. You were not just raised by your parents or your school. The streets you played on, the corners where you hung out – the people and neighbors you see every day, they also play a huge part in your upbringing. This book characterizes Port Richmond in that way. There are a lot of characters, but they all seem to be part of that neighborhood system.
Greg Gillespie sees Fred just about every week at Port Richmond Books. He loves Fred’s stories, and called him “quite a character in his own rite.” Gillespie went on to say, “Fred is probably the guy to go to if you need to know anything about Port Richmond. He’s just filled with all of these stories and side stories about all of the people and characters in this neighborhood. He just has an incredible connection to this place.”
Cimino is already working on a sequel to “In These Streets.” He also plans on finishing the 4th volume of “Before 95”, so there is plenty of work in the pipeline. You can purchase “In These Streets: A Port Richmond Summer” at Port Richmond Books – 3037 Richmond Street, Philadelphia, PA 19134. There will be a book signing at the shop this coming Saturday, December 17 from Noon until 3:00 PM. The book would make an amazing Christmas gift for anyone you know who was raised in a riverward neighborhood.
