Joe Biden came to Chester, and Chester came to see Uncle Joe | Maria Panaritis

He was coming, the president of the United States, right down the asphalt street that cuts between Chester City and Chester Township. So they came. And they waited.

It was cold. Gray skies dropped trickles of sleet onto this paved sliver of Delaware County just south of the airport in Philadelphia. The VIP motorcade coming through these parts any minute Tuesday afternoon was not something often seen here. Bare fingers turned frigid as people calling home a few blocks up the street in the township, or a few blocks down the street in the city, held smartphones aloft for what seemed like forever. From the corner of Ninth and Engle Streets, near an auto body shop, they hoped to see the man they had helped elect in November.

“I’m excited because President Biden is coming to a depressed town,” 66-year-old Karen Dunlap said. She’d been back to the city of her birth for a few months. Had come back north from her Teamster-driver daddy’s home state of Georgia to care for her mother until she died. The funeral now was just days away. But Dunlap would not miss coming to this corner to see the man being described warmly by others in this crowd as “Uncle Joe.”

“He thought enough of Chester to come to this town,” Dunlap said from behind a cloth mask and COVID-19 face shield, “just for him to stop here and say, ‘Chester matters, thank you for helping me get into the White House, I got your back.’”

Here, in a lower-income stratum of Philadelphia collar county Delaware County, was where the newly elected Democratic president would be making his first barnstorming stop after signing last week’s historic $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Biden and his Democratic Congress’ signature legislation seeks to realign American values by redirecting the country’s economic firepower not toward the wealthy, not toward corporations that finance stock buybacks with tax cuts, but toward people like those at Ninth and Engle. People trying to find their way in this country from the lower and middle rungs of an increasingly slippery economic ladder.

“I voted for Joe,” 36-year-old Donald Freeman said from a spot not on this corner but a few blocks away with a different sight line. Unemployed since being laid off from his sheriff’s auctions job in March 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, Freeman was outside with his son, King, 7, and fiancee, Dayshona Yates, 33. “I ain’t never seen no president down here before.”

“He’s livin’ up to his word,” Freeman said. Hopefully, that will also soon mean control enough over the COVID-19 pandemic that the economy can reopen fully. Freeman has gone long enough working just neighborhood odd jobs to make up for the one he lost. He needs a full-time gig.

“So he can get back working,” Yates, who has one full-time and three part-time jobs, added about her partner. “Help the struggling. Because it’s a struggle out here.”

At 2:40 p.m. high above the intersection came a breathtaking sight. Could it be Air Force One itself lumbering north and directly over everyone at low altitude? The jet was gliding to a landing at Philadelphia International. Heads turned skyward toward the magnificent colossus with four engines and unmistakable blue paint.

A few minutes later: “Uncle Joe better hurry up!” said a woman aiming her phone toward the Black-merchant-owned flooring business up the street in Chester Township where, behind a line of Secret Service, the president’s motorcade would be pulling up for a 3:30 visit.

“I’m right up here,” shouted another woman into a phone whose audio was set to speaker, “at Ninth and Engle! Right where the car wash at.”

Nestled inside the open hatch of an SUV and warmed by an idling engine was a mother with her four children.

Ciearra Evans said her babies knew why she had brought them here. With any luck they would see the figure who had been on their TV screen nonstop last year. Evans had kept the family glued to CNN during the presidential race.

Aasim, 7, Alani, 8, Aleem, 3, and Ameerah, 4, were smiling beneath masks, Alani said, “to see the president.”

Already, Biden has delivered to this family. Evans had to leave her job as a licensed practical nurse last year to help teach the kids. How else would they learn after their school was forced into virtual instruction?

She said forthcoming stimulus checks of $1,400 for her and for each of her children are the help that people like her were begging for all last year. The pandemic has been an ongoing financial crush to her family. Only Biden’s election, she said, made such real help possible.

“We’ve been waiting so long for this,” Evans said. “I’m just so grateful.”

Soon enough, there they were — motorcycles leading the presidential motorcade. Too far off, it turned out, to see the president clearly. But close enough for the crowd to sway enthusiastically toward a police van where they leaned on the cruiser to steady their cameras.

“We got the president of the U-ni-ted States, y’all,” said 75-year-old Martha James. “What a blessing.”

“History,” replied yet another voice in the crowd, “for the City of Chester.”