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The year was approximately 1976. As a child, my grandfather in Hatboro, PA watched my sister and I during the day while my mom worked as a single parent. He was a retiree of the Reading Railroad who retired early due to loss of vision late in life from untreated glaucoma and diabetes. My sister and I have a fond memory of him having the impulsive idea one day of taking the grandchildren (myself, 4, and my sister, 5) to the city on the train for an ultimate destination of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. This was rather cost effective as he had a lifetime retiree benefit of unlimited train trips on the Reading and my sister and I traveled free or at reduced cost because of our age. He successfully did this trip one day, as a blind man, using my 5-year old sister as his set of "eyes" to read signage coupled with his experience in growing up in Philadelphia and knowing the public transportation system. We successfully took this trip, leaving in the morning after my mom dropped us off at his house for the day, and returning before my mom picked us up after work. We arrived via the viaduct to the Reading Terminal (which was not the picture of cleanliness and wholesomeness for suburban children in the mid-1970s), navigated Philadelphia public transit, and even had some time for a stop at Bassets in the Terminal Market for Ice Cream before returning to Hatboro without any major issues. Nobody would have ever learned of this escapade until my sister and I innocently told our grandmother and mother later that evening that we got to see the "house with the hole in the floor for a bathroom" (Shofuso Japanese House in Fairmount Park). Although quite a serious "transgression" of my grandfather at the time (there were several), we can both look back today fondly on the experience. To this day, if my sister and I find ourselves in Philadelphia, we cannot escape the city without a visit to Bassets to reflect back on our "secret trip" to the city on the train long ago!
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