The Ghost of Broad Street

“I give the parts to my old friends who work at home. I pay them decent money. Outsourcing has changed the name of the game. There is no money in popular-priced suits. The Gap, Men’s Wearhouse, Joseph A. Bank — they utilize foreign labor. Asia, Latin America, anywhere they can. I am a dying breed.”
Rocco has spent 31 of his 69 years at this address. He has four sons. “They wear suits, they don’t make them. Two are lawyers, one’s a doctor, and one businessman. Let me tell you something about sons. If you make them independent, you won’t see them very often. If you keep them dependent, they won’t be happy. Some choices in this life, huh?”

Sadness fills the store of empty suits.

“I’ve been doing this for 58 years. I often wonder how my life would have turned out if I had gone to school after my father died. I was very young, but my older brother wanted me around, so he taught me the business. Otherwise, I would have gone to live at this school in North Philadelphia. It’s called Girard College. Ever hear of it?”

Evening services at the Abundant Life Chinese Mennonite Church at Broad and Moore have begun without me. The church is one long room decorated as plainly as the Chinese restaurant across the street. Pastor Truong Tu delivers his sermon in Chinese to eight Asian women and one African-American male; two little boys run around the room and toss thick Chinese hymnals in the direction of the Occidental stranger in the back. Eventually, the women peel off into three groups. One woman in each group starts to pray, loudly, asking for heavenly guidance and forgiveness, in Chinese, in English, in Chinglish. Ten, 15 minutes. Then it’s around the horn. Each woman in each cluster speaks fervently, personally, overlapping like a Robert Altman movie, like Mennonites at their first meetings in Philadelphia hundreds of years ago.

“Mennonite? We not Mennonite,” says Grace Dich, when prayers end. “They help us with money, so we say we Mennonite. We not Mennonite. Mennonite don’ like jewelry or modern world. We not Mennonite.”

These are, make no mistake, very conservative Christian folks. Grace’s father was a minister in the old country. Soon, they will march on Washington to rally for traditional marriages between men and women. Where are the men? Where men should be — working.

“One out of five people in world Chinese.” says Grace, the spokesperson. “We have over one billion people. We don’t stay in Chinatown no more. We move to South Philly when housing affordable. North Philadelphia too. We coming more and more.”