Impresssions of Wayne, then and now

Once upon a time, when Radnor Middle School was a fortress of bruised brick and I was "new" - an eighth-grade introvert who was fleetingly (and fittingly) cast as the ousted Baroness in that year's production of The Sound of Music - I survived by way of fantasy.

I set my thoughts adrift over the kingdom of Wayne, with its mansard roofs and dormer secrets, its irrevocable stone and creaking porch swings, its trellised brambles, its rising hills and silver streams. Oh, those yellow bells of daffodils in the ribbony yards. Oh, the tolling of the church songs. Oh, the cool shadows beyond the low hedges. Oh, the perpetual rain in private fountains. Oh, the rumble along Lancaster Avenue and the tooting of the trains. As my classmates pandered in age-appropriate schemes, I found ample cause to walk those streets, and to imagine my way into a place of deep belonging.

Years later, happily married, I had myself a fling with George W. Childs (1829-94), the Philadelphia Public Ledger man known for his generosity toward newsboys, his friendships with the presidential and philosophical, his engagement with the Centennial Exposition, and his long-lasting philanthropic measures. I loved him for all these things, but perhaps I loved him best for having joined his dear friend Anthony Drexel in the circa-1880 purchase of a certain swath of bucolic acreage along the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks.

There had been cornfields and a reservoir before the arrival of Childs and Drexel. There had been the elaborate Louella House, a milk stop, a pumping station, a tidy turf engineered by a doting father. But Childs and Drexel had in mind something much more grand for this quiet hamlet, a community, as their advertisements promised, of "the best homes that can be built." These homes, with their "Carved Oak Staircases" and "tasteful effects in stained-glass rundells," had "every city convenience." "Pure water," the brochures promised, was everywhere, and malaria was "unknown." The roads were "spacious and substantial." There were "two newspapers, seven daily mails, a town hall for entertainments, a casino for recreation."

There were hotel rooms.

There was steam heat.

There was "health and comfort."

There was electric power.

Who would not fall for a man such as this salubrious George W. Childs - a man who saw the future and named it Wayne after the local-born Gen. Anthony Wayne, who made a name for himself not only in the American Revolution but later, during the settlement of far-flung territories.

Today, I may not belong to Wayne, but Wayne in part belongs to me. In its Radnor Memorial Library I begin the writing of most books - and the celebration of them. In its corner salon they tame my hair. At the Tredici Italian Market I buy the frozen shells or the cool turkey meat loaf that will be piping hot by dinner. At Elegance Cafe I make as though the Frisbee-size cookies are calorie-free. As the salsa sifts through the speakers at Xilantro, I say hello and they say, "The usual with the mild sauce?" At Teresa's Next Door, they bring me cheese and a glass of Malbec. At Anthropologie, I entertain illusions of youth. At Vecchia, the classy Neapolitan pizza parlor up on North Wayne Avenue, I open the door, my husband nearby, and Frank Nattle and his pizza-spinning crew look up and nod. They serve the crust light as steam and the cheese puffing sweet. Mushrooms or anchovies? That is the only question.

And when rumor has it that Bruce Springsteen has booked a room beyond the yellow awning at the Wayne Hotel, I walk up and down Lancaster Avenue - past storefronts touting cosmetics, toys, tennis shoes, bread, hoodies, west again toward the deco-esque Anthony Wayne Theater and then back east - hoping for the off chance of a glimpse.

Speak to me, Bruce. Sing to me.

Walking the gridded streets north of the train tracks, I remember the friend (for, in time, I had friends) who lived in the cranberry-colored house up on the slight hill, also the friend who lived in the stony twin. Walking the twist in the hills that lie below Lancaster Avenue, south, I wonder who occupies those royally complicated manses now, and how many pairs of feet have tromped up the Carved Oak and slid into the private corners, and what color I would paint the turrets or the shiny porch boards if such a decision were ever mine to make.

A few years back, the old fortress that was Radnor Middle School was replaced by more welcoming finery. Sometimes, I see the students hurrying in from the bus or hurrying out from a class. In them, I see a trace of me - the girl who learned the art of drift and who still chases fantasies.