Summerfest | Scene Through the Lens

It’s easy for me to remember my first day at The Inquirer. After celebrating Independence Day with inlaws in the Lehigh Valley, my wife and I drove home Sunday afternoon, down East River Drive (now Kelly) to our new apartment in Brewerytown.

There were so many cookout grills fired up along the Schuylkill that it looked like a scene out of my fifth grade world geography textbook - Tierra del Fuego - Land of Fire, on the southern tip of South America supposedly named by Magellan when he saw all the campfires burning.

The next morning, Monday, July 5, 1983, I parked in a visitor’s space in the back of the Inquirer & Daily News building, but walked all the way around to the front door and started my career at the newspaper by walking under the blue glass globe in the lobby, before taking the elevator to the fifth floor newsroom.

If you missed it last week - because of your own Fourth of July celebrations - here’s the link to my column looking back over forty years.

» READ MORE: Marking Inquirer Staff Photographer Tom Gralish’s 40 years at The Inquirer

Since 1998, a black-and-white photo has appeared every Monday in staff photographer Tom Gralish’s “Scene Through the Lens” photo column in The Inquirer’s local news section. Here are the most recent, in color:

» SEE MORE: Archived columns and Twenty years of a photo column