Falls of Schuylkill: A Neighborhood Story
![Image](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwoRgveQWWCNLEnkDfD1eJvr8ndREt3-kSsp3VdKyDNExiZCD7rMrgMQhA40Os8h-KLwDBZ7LixnLWTOXv8uJVr6j-agIeXo2CAWQs0DVaE9C4ffl4geGGTvMoIxNyplQ_F8aOhEDdxCc/s320/wooden-house-font-b-kids-b-font-toys-build-your-ideal-town-and-city-with-50.jpg)
I write fiction—there’s a reason for that. I find real life, well, boring. It was for that reason I never had an interest in journalism—reporting facts and on real life? No thanks. I’m beginning to have a change of heart though—not that I’m going to start reading nonfiction or become a newspaper reporter. No, no. Somehow last fall I got talked into joining our neighborhood community council. The experience has been...eye opening, and far from boring. First a little background on our Philadelphia neighborhood. It’s a former mill town, started, and stopped, by the river from which it takes its fantastical and picturesque name: Falls of Schuylkill. Sadly, since the late 1800s, it’s been known as East Falls. The new name is perfectly fine, I suppose but, I don’t know…it lacks the musicality, the romance of the original. Anyway, it’s a diverse neighborhood, in a city of neighborhoods, each with its own distinct personality. Here there are row houses , (which define the vernacular a