August 16, 1951: The Delaware Memorial Bridge Opens

August 16, 1951, 75 years ago: The Delaware Memorial Bridge opens, connecting New Castle, New Castle County, Delaware and Pennsville, Salem County, New Jersey, over the Delaware River. It is operated by the Delaware River and Bay Authority.

It is 5 miles southeast of Rodney Square in Wilmington; 34 miles southwest of Center City, Philadelphia; 50 miles north of Legislative Hall (Delaware's State Capitol building) in Dover, 118 miles southwest of Midtown Manhattan; 70 miles northwest of Atlantic City; 73 miles northeast of downtown Baltimore; 91 miles northwest of Rehoboth Beach; and 108 miles northeast of downtown Washington, D.C.

Until 1926, the year what's now known as the Ben Franklin Bridge opened between Philadelphia and Camden, there was no way to get from Delaware's largest city, Wilmington in New Castle County, to New Jersey, except by train. But if, say, you only needed to go 20 miles to Salem, New Jersey, it made no sense to make the 30-mile train trip to Philadelphia, and then another 40 miles to Salem. The aforementioned Bridge only made things a little easier.

A ferry was established as a stopgap measure. Some stopgap: After debating whether a bridge or a tunnel should be built, Congress approved construction of a bridge in 1946. It finally opened 5 years later, bannered as U.S. Route 40 (which had been using the ferry). Soon, it became the southern end of the New Jersey Turnpike. In 1956, the Delaware Turnpike opened, connecting each State's most important highway.

The opening of the Turnpikes put too many cars on the span, and a 2nd bridge was ordered. On September 12, 1968, what's now the westbound span (toward Delaware) was opened, with the original span carrying eastbound traffic (toward New Jersey). In addition to Route 40, the "Twin Span" now carried Interstate 295. Its 174-foot-high towers are arguably the most famous structures in Delaware.

Even though the Bridges were 84 miles from the house in Central Jersey where I grew up, if a trip takes me in that direction, getting over the eastbound span meant I was back in New Jersey, so it felt like I was close to home, just as it did when I would come through the Lincoln Tunnel getting back from New York, 36 miles from home.

June 29, 1956: The Interstate Highway System

June 29, 1956, 70 years ago: President Dwight D. Eisenhower signs the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, creating the Interstate Highway System.

"Ike" had wanted such a highway system for America since the Summer of 1919, when, as a 28-year-old Lieutenant Colonel, he participated in the U.S. Army's first Transcontinental Motor Convoy across the country. The convoy left the Ellipse south of the White House in Washington on July 7, and went to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. From there, it got on the Lincoln Highway, and went to San Francisco. But there were mudpatches that vehicles got stuck in, and bad bridges that the Army rebuilt. The convoy reached San Francisco on September 6 -- 61 days later. Ike thought that was unacceptable.

The Federal Highway System was begun in 1926, with proper paving. But Ike didn't think it was enough: He wanted highways without traffic lights, without having to go through big cities or small towns, rather providing access to local roads leading into them. As a General in World War II, he had seen the Germans' Autobahn system. In a book he wrote after leaving office, he said, "The old convoy had started me thinking about good, two-lane highways, but Germany had made me see the wisdom of broader ribbons across the land."

Ike got his bill, sponsored in the House of Representatives by George Fallon of Maryland, and in the Senate by Albert Gore of Tennessee, both Democrats.

Though Eisenhower is sometimes described as having advocated for the highways for the purpose of national defense, scholarship has shown that he said relatively little about national defense when actually advocating for the plan, instead emphasizing highway fatalities and the importance of transportation for the national economy. In the event of a ground invasion by a foreign power, the U.S. Army would need good highways to be able to transport troops and material across the country efficiently. Following the completion of the highways, the cross-country journey that took the convoy two months in 1919 was cut down to five days.

The numbered system followed a pattern: North-South highways would be odd-numbered, increasing the further East; while East-West highways would be even-numbered, increasing the further North. Thus, my home State of New Jersey has Interstates 76, 78, 80 and 95.

Three-digited highways have a system as well. If starting with an odd number, they are spurs to main highways: Thus, Interstate 195 extends east from I-95. If starting with an even number, they are "beltways," going around a major city. Thus, Interstate 278 forms the Belt Parkway around Brooklyn and Queens, with an extension into New Jersey; and Interstate 287 loops around New York City within New Jersey, before linking up with I-87, the New York State Thruway; and Interstate 295 loops around Trenton and Philadelphia.

The New Jersey Turnpike is bannered as I-95 from Exit 6 on north. But neither the Garden State Parkway nor the Atlantic City Expressway is part of the Interstate System.

While some older freeways were adopted into the system, most of the routes were completely new. In dense urban areas, the choice of routing destroyed many well-established neighborhoods, often intentionally as part of a program of "urban renewal." In the 20 years following the 1956 Highway Act, the construction of the freeways displaced over 1 million people. This resulted in new forms of racial segregation, as "the wrong side of the tracks" became "the wrong side of the freeway."

The Cross Bronx Expressway cut through Bronx neighborhoods, devastating the Borough. And the New Jersey Turnpike cut sections of Newark and Elizabeth off from the rest of those cities, hurting them badly. Both would become part of I-95. And I-676, the Vine Street Expressway, seriously messed with Center City Philadelphia.

Many of the Interstates paralleled older Federal highways. Examples: I-95, U.S. Route 1; I-87 in New York, U.S. Route 9; I-90 in New York and the Midwest, U.S. Route 20; I-84 in the Northeast, U.S. Route 6; I-5 in California, U.S. Route 101. The famous U.S. Route 66 was essentially replaced by I-10, I-15 and I-40 in California, I-40 from San Bernardino to Oklahoma City, I-44 from OKC to St. Louis, and I-55 from St. Louis to Chicago.

Many communities on Federal highways like Route 66 got bypassed, and suffered economically as a result, since people waited until the next big city to get off and eat and/or use the bathroom, or get a place to stay the night, instead of the next town coming up. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, although some States rebannered their sections as State Route 66. There is an Interstate 66, but it runs mainly in Washington, D.C. and its Virginia suburbs, and again from Kentucky west to Kansas.

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June 29, 1956 was a Friday. Dominican baseball All-Star Pedro Guerrero was born. And actress Marilyn Monroe married playwright Arthur Miller. Each would end up married 3 times, and divorced 3 times. 

November 30, 1951: The New Jersey Turnpike Opens

November 30, 1951, 70 years ago: The New Jersey Turnpike opens, mostly. For the moment, it runs from Exit 1 in Penns Grove, near the newly-opened Delaware Memorial Bridge, to Exit 11 in Woodbridge, an interchange with U.S. Route 1, U.S. Route 9, State Route 440, and, by 1956, the Garden State Parkway. (On that road, that interchange will be Exit 129.)

The Turnpike was extended to its full 117-mile length the next year, connecting with New York City via the Lincoln Tunnel (Exit 16) and the George Washington Bridge (Exit 18). One notable problem was the Pulaski Skyway, which has carried Routes 1 and 9 from Newark to Jersey City since 1932. If they built the Turnpike under the Skyway, there might not be enough room for trucks to fit. If they built the Turnpike over the Skyway, there would be room, but construction would take a lot more time and money. The decided to build under, and no truck has ever gotten stuck under it. Just in case, a few years ago, a big construction project was undertaken, and it lowered the roadway.

The Hackensack River span of the Pulaski Skyway

In 1956, the Newark Bay Extension opened at Exit 14, near Newark International Airport. This includes the Newark Bay Bridge, and 3 new exits in Jersey City: Exit 14A for Bayonne, Exit 14B for downtown, and Exit 14C for the Holland Tunnel into New York.

The Newark Bay Bridge

That same year, an extension was built from Exit 6 to the new Delaware River-Turnpike Toll Bridge, connecting the New Jersey Turnpike with the Pennsylvania Turnpike. It is named the Pearl Harbor Memorial Turnpike Extension. From here on north, the New Jersey Turnpike is bannered as part of Interstate 95.

In 1970, the Western Spur was opened, designed to aid travelers going around New York City to New England (taking the Tappan Zee, now Mario Cuomo, Bridge to the New England Thruway). It was also meant to access the planned Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford. The new exits were labeled 15W, 16W and 18W; while the former Exits 15, 16 and 18 were relabeled 15E, 16E and 18E. In 2005, the newest exit opened: Exit 15X, for the Secaucus Junction Rail Station.

The Turnpike has become not just a great method for getting people from one point in New Jersey to another, or from New York to points south and west (or vice versa) without having to go through Philadelphia, but it's become a cultural icon. Chuck Berry, The Mamas & the Papas, Paul Simon and Bruce Springsteen have all written songs mentioning it. And the opening montage of The Sopranos showed James Gandolfini as Tony Soprano, driving out of the Lincoln Tunnel and down the Turnpike.

Of course, for a lot of people not from New Jersey, the Turnpike is all they see of the State: Things like the Meadowlands' stadiums and swamps, the Skyway, the Airport, the big oil refinery in Linden, and vast swaths of not much south of Trenton. These people never see the nice parts of New Jersey, and never understand why it's called "The Garden State."

The Bayway Refinery

The Turnpike's exit numbers are sequential, not by milepost as the Parkway's will be. As a result, when new exits need to be built, they require letters. Between Exit 7 in Bordentown Township and Exit 8 in East Windsor is Exit 7A in Robbinsville; and between Exit 8 and Exit 9 in East Brunswick is Exit 8A in Monroe.

If the exits were by mileposts, they would be, as follows: 

* Exit 1, Penns Grove, Salem County, connecting with Interstate 295, U.S. Routes 40 and 130, New Jersey Route 49 and the Delaware Memorial Bridge: Exit 0.

* Exit 2, Woolwich, Gloucester County, U.S. Route 322 and the Commodore Barry Bridge: Exit 13.

* Exit 3, Runnemede, Camden County, N.J. Route 168 and, by extension, the Atlantic City Expressway and the Walt Whitman Bridge to Philadelphia: Exit 26. Oddly, despite the access to the Expressway, this exit, unlike Exits 7A and 11, is not labeled "Shore Points."

* Exit 4, Mount Laurel, Burlington County, N.J. Route 73 and, by extension, the Ben Franklin Bridge to Philadelphia: Exit 34.

* Exit 5, Westampton, Burlington County, County Route 541: Exit 44.

* Exit 6, Mansfield, Burlington County, Interstate 95 and, by extension, Interstate 276 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike: Exit 51.

* Exit 7, Bordentown Township (surrounding Bordentown City), Burlington County, U.S. Route 206: Exit 53.

* Exit 7A, Robbinsville, Mercer County, Interstate 195: Exit 60. This exit can be used for both the State capital of Trenton and the Six Flags Great Adventure theme park. For drivers going north on the Turnpike, this exit is labeled "Shore Points," due to the access to I-195.

* Exit 8, East Windsor, Mercer County, N.J. Routes 33 and 133: Exit 67.

* Exit 8A, Monroe, Middlesex County, N.J. Route 32 for access to U.S. Route 130 and County Route 535: Exit 74. For me, growing up in East Brunswick in the 1970s and '80s, this was the exit we used for southbound points like Philadelphia, Washington and Virginia.

* Exit 9, East Brunswick, Middlesex County, N.J. Route 18 for access to U.S. Route 1: Exit 83. This was the exit we used for North Jersey and New York City. East Brunswick's main bus terminal was here, and, from 1991 to 2020, I lived 1 mile away, for relatively easy access to The City.

* Exit 10, Edison, Middlesex County, Interstate 287 and N.J. Route 440, and, by extension, the Outerbridge Crossing into Staten Island, New York City: Exit 88.

* Exit 11, Woodbridge, Middlesex County, the Garden State Parkway, U.S. Routes 1 and 9: Exit 91. For drivers going south on the Turnpike, this exit is labeled "Shore Points," due to the Parkway access.

* Exit 12, Carteret, Middlesex County, County Route 602: Exit 96.

* Exit 13, Elizabeth, Union County, Interstate 278 and the Goethals Bridge into Staten Island: Exit 99.

* Exit 13A, Elizabeth, Union County, N.J. Route 81 and, by extension, Newark Liberty International Airport and Elizabeth Seaport: Exit 101. It also provides access to the Jersey Gardens Mall and that big IKEA store visible from the road.

* Exit 14, Newark, Essex County, Interstate 78, U.S. Routes 1, 9 and 22, with access to the Airport and the Newark Bay Extension: Exit 104.

* Exit 15E, Newark, Essex County, U.S. Routes 1 and 9, and thus the Pulaski Skyway toward Jersey City: Exit 107.

* Exit 15W, Kearny, Hudson County, Interstate 280: Exit 108. Theoretically, any of Exits 14, 15E or 15W can be used for downtown Newark and the Prudential Center arena. For Red Bull Arena, Exit 15W is the most convenient.

* Exit 15X, Secaucus, Hudson County, the Secaucus Junction Rail Station: Exit 110.

* Exit 16E, Secaucus, Hudson County, N.J. Routes 3 and 495, accessing the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan: Exit 112.

* Exit 16W, East Rutherford, Bergen County, N.J. Route 3 and the Meadowlands Sports Complex: Exit 112.

* Exit 18E and Exit 18W, Carlstadt, Bergen County, Interstates 80 and 95, U.S. Routes 1, 9 and 46: Exit 114.

November 5, 1946: Rifleman 1, Backboard 0

November 5, 1946, 75 years ago: The Boston Celtics play their 1st home game at the Boston Garden. Only 4,329 fans attend, and it's delayed for an hour, because a Celtic player damaged a wooden backboard with a dunk during warmups. A new backboard was brought in from the Boston Arena (now Matthews Arena, home court and ice of Northeastern University). The Celtics lose 57-55 to the Chicago Stags.

The Stags, and the original NBA teams of Washington, Toronto, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit and St. Louis, would quickly fail. The Celtics might have as well, had their owner, Walter Brown, not also owned the Garden, the NHL's Bruins, and the Ice Capades. He was able to keep the team going long enough to hire Red Auerbach as head coach, and the rest is history.

Oh, the player who became the 1st NBA player to break a backboard? A 6-foot-5 25-year-old Brooklynite who played at New Jersey's Seton Hall University. He went on to play 1 game for his hometown Dodgers in 1949, coming to bat once as a pinch-hitter, never playing the field for them. He then got traded to the Chicago Cubs, and played 66 games at 1st base for them in the 1951 season.

The Cubs' top farm team at the time was the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League. While playing in L.A., this athlete found off-season work as a stuntman, and, like John Wayne, moved from stunts to acting, mostly in Westerns. His name was Chuck Connors, famed for his portrayal of Lucas McCain, the lead character of The Rifleman; and as Jason McCord, the lead in Branded.

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November 5, 1605: Guy Fawkes, a Catholic fanatic, is arrested beneath the House of Lords at Britain's Parliament, for plotting to blow it up, taking with it the Protestant King James I, his wife Queen Anne, and his sons Prince Henry and Prince Charles. The idea was to place James' daughter, Princess Elizabeth, on the throne. She was just 9 years old, and would, under their order, be raised as, and be married to, a Catholic.

In hindsight, the plot was doomed to failure. The gunpowder was too damp: Lighting it would have had little effect, and aside from whoever lit it, nobody would have died.

And if it had worked? Instead of the people of England rising up in celebration, the reaction would have been like America's after Pearl Harbor and 9/11, or Britain's after the Brighton bombing of 1985 failed to kill Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher: A moment of fear, followed by righteous rage. The conspirators would not have lived to see Christmas, no matter what they did.

Although all the conspirators were caught and hanged, Fawkes is generally the only one remembered. Today, Britain chooses to "Remember, remember, the 5th of November, the gunpowder treason and plot," and it's known as Guy Fawkes Night, commemorated with fireworks and bonfires -- leading to its other name, Bonfire Night.

There are those, of course, who commemorate the plot, rather than its failure, but these are less Fawkes' fellow Catholic fanatics, and more people who don't like the government, whoever currently holds it: Fawkes is often called "the only man ever to enter Parliament with honest intentions."

The 1982 graphic novel V for Vendetta features an antihero wearing a mask designed to look like Fawkes, and his attempt to take down a tyrannical government in a dystopian future: 1997 in the book, 2038 in the film -- meaning that Norsefire took over in 2018.

The film based on it (with some considerable differences) was supposed to be released on November 5, 2005, the 400th Anniversary, but after the London bombings of July 7 of that year, it was considered to be too soon, and it was pushed back to March 17, 2006 -- St. Patrick's Day.

Except, in both book and film, "V" got one big thing very wrong: The government Fawkes was trying to bring down was actually more tolerant toward his faith than the one that came before (under Queen Elizabeth I), while the one he wanted to impose would have been a faith-based dictatorship that would have brooked no dissent -- much like the one "V" was trying to bring down. Not the only inconsistency in the character.

What does Guy Fawkes or his Night have to do with sports? Not much, I just like the story, and the story that uses it.

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November 5, 1869: The Cincinnati Red Stockings complete their 1st season as the 1st openly professional baseball team, going 65-0, and playing from coast (Boston) to coast (San Francisco), doing as much to spread the growth of the game than any other team had ever done.

Hail the Champions:

* Pitcher, Asa Brainard, from whose name we supposedly get the word "ace," a native of Albany, New York, 1841-1888.
* Center fielder and manager, Harry Wright, born in Sheffield, England, and grew up in New York, 1835-1895.
* 3rd baseman, Fred Waterman, Manhattan, 1845-1899.
* Left fielder, Andy Leonard, born in Ireland and grew up in Newark, 1846-1903
* 2nd baseman, Charlie Sweasy, Newark, 1847-1908
* Catcher, Doug Allison, Philadelphia, 1846-1916.
* Substitute, but mainly an outfielder, Dick Hurley, Honesdale, Pennsylvania, born in 1847, and history has lost track of him, the last record of him being in 1916.
* 1st baseman, Charlie Gould, the only one actually from Cincinnati, 1847-1917.
* Right fielder, Cal McVey, born in Montrose, Iowa and grew up in Indianapolis, 1849-1926,
* Shortstop, George Wright, Yonkers, brother of Harry, the last survivor, 1847-1937.

So it was a pair of Wright Brothers in southern Ohio who, essentially, invented professional baseball, just as another such air invented the airplane. Harry and George are in the Baseball Hall of Fame, 1 of only 2 pairs of brothers both in. The other is Paul and Lloyd Waner.

November 5, 1872: President Ulysses S. Grant is re-elected, defeating Horace Greeley, with 55 percent of the vote to 43, and 286 Electoral Votes to 66.

This was a weird election. The Republican Party was split over the corruption in the Grant Administration (though Grant himself has never been accused of wrongdoing). A group of "Liberal Republicans" nominated Horace Greeley, publisher of the New York Tribune, formerly one of the nation's leading voices against slavery, briefly a Congressman in 1848-49, and one of the Party's founders in 1854.

Greeley favored Western expansionism, popularizing the slogan, "Go west, young man, and grow up with the country!" But he didn't come up with the words himself: John Babson Lane Soule first used it in the Terre Haute Express in Indiana in 1851.

Greeley had long lambasted the Democratic Party as the party of slavery, but, not wanting to divide the opposition to the Republicans, the Democrats swallowed their pride, and also nominated Greeley. As a result, pretty much every attack that Greeley had hurled at the Democrats for a quarter of a century was hurled back at him, including that he supported racist policies, even the nascent Ku Klux Klan.

In addition, his wife Mary got sick, and on October 12, he effectively stopped campaigning to be by her side. She died 5 days before the election, and he won only 6 States, all formerly slaveholding States: Maryland, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri and Texas.

All this took a terrible toll on his own health, and he died at age 61 on November 29, before the Electoral Votes could be cast -- thus becoming the only person ever entitled to receive Electoral Votes for President, but unable to receive them.

Did I say the election was weird? Susan B. Anthony and Victoria Woodhull voted -- Anthony for Grant, Woodhull for herself, the 1st woman known to have gotten on any ballot as a candidate for President. Even if the million-to-one shot came in, and she won, she couldn't have served at first, anyway: She didn't reach the minimum age of 35 until September 23, 1873, over 6 months into the term.

Both were arrested on Election Day: Anthony for voting, and Woodhull for obscenity, for printing, in a magazine she and her sister Tennessee Claflin ran (the 1st women in America to do so -- and they were also the 1st women ever to run a Wall Street brokerage firm), the story of the infidelity of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, yet another former abolitionist and yet another founder of the Republican Party.

Ironically, Beecher had supported women's right to vote, but, though apparently a practitioner of free love, he denounced it in public, and denounced Woodhull in particular, from his pulpit. That's why Woodhull was charged with obscenity (the story was sexual in nature), not with libel (the story was true), and Beecher's reputation did not improve.

Woodhull was held in jail for a month, and released. She ran for President again in 1884 and 1892, with almost no notice. She moved to England with her 3rd husband, and died there in 1927, and was buried there. Beecher died in 1887. He and Greeley are both buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, along with several early baseball stars.

November 5, 1891, 130 years ago: Alfred Earle Neale is born in Parkersburg, West Virginia. An outfielder, he played 8 seasons, batting .259, and won the World Series with the 1919 Cincinnati Reds, but it is football for which "Greasy" Neale is remembered.

He played professional football before there was an NFL, including as a player-coach, for some of the teams that would go on to found the League: The Canton Bulldogs in 1917, the Dayton Triangles in 1918, and the Massillon Tigers in 1919. He coached at the University of Virginia and West Virginia University, and in 1941 was named the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, leading them to 3 straight NFL Championship Games, winning in 1948 and 1949.

He retired after a disappointing 1950 season, and never coached at any level again. He died in 1973, having lived long enough to see himself elected to the College and Pro Football Halls of Fame.

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November 5, 1900: Harvey J. Harman is born in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania. (I can find no record of what the J stands for.) He served as the head football coach at Haverford College in Pennsylvania from 1922 to 1929, Sewanee University in Tennessee in 1930, the University of Pennsylvania from 1931 to 1937, and at Rutgers from 1938 to 1941. After serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II, he returned to the Rutgers job from 1946 to 1955.

His tenure at Rutgers included the opening of Rutgers Stadium in 1938. He went 14-2-2 in 1938 and '39, and 22-5 from 1946 to 1948. He died on December 17, 1969 -- the day before I was born -- and was posthumously elected to the College Football Hall of Fame. A plaque in his memory hangs at the new Rutgers Stadium, now named High Point Solutions Stadium.

November 5, 1911, 110 years ago: Berry Nieuwenhuis is born in Boksburg, South Africa. An outside right, he played for Liverpool from 1933 to 1947, winning the Football League title in his last season. He lived until 1984.

Also on this day, Leonard Franklin Slye is born in Cincinnati. We knew him as Roy Rogers. "The King of the Cowboys" was an entertainment legend from 1933 until his death in 1998, he was my mother's childhood hero due to The Roy Rogers Show, which ran on NBC from 1951 to 1957. Aside from lending his name, and doing some commercials, he had no involvement with Roy Rogers Restaurants.

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November 5, 1921, 100 years ago: Mike Mitchell Goliat (not "Michael") is born outside Pittsburgh in Yatesboro, Pennsylvania. He only played 4 seasons in the major leagues, but 1 of them was as the starting 2nd baseman on the 1950 Philadelphia Phillies, the "Whiz Kids" who won the National League Pennant. He died in 2004.

November 5, 1931, 90 years ago: Izear Luster Turner Jr. is born in Clarksdale, Mississippi. We knew him as Ike Turner. He was introduced to abuse as a boy by a vengeful alcoholic stepfather, and, instead of rejecting this, adopted it.

He became a disc jockey in Memphis, and a bandleader. In 1951, at Sun Records in Memphis, later to be home base for Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash and other stars, he and his band, The Kings of Rhythm, recorded "Rocket 88," about an Oldsmobile car. It is often called the 1st rock and roll record.

In 1957, he met a teenager named Anna Mae Bullock, and she became his singer and girlfriend, eventually his wife. He renamed her Tina Turner, because Tina rhymed with a TV character he liked, Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. In the 1960s, The Ike & Tina Turner Revue were big among black audiences. By 1970, white audiences had accepted them as well.

But he had been terribly abusive toward Tina, and on July 1, 1976, she left him, and began a solo career. She became bigger than ever in the 1980s, and his reputation was in ruins. In 1991, they were, as a unit, elected to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Tina showed up to claim her award. Ike couldn't: He was in prison following a drug conviction. Accepting for him, and keeping it until he could be released, was a man who had produced records for them... Phil Spector, another man whose artistic genius had long excused his monstrous treatment of women.

When Tina's memoir I, Tina was turned into the 1993 film What's Love Got to Do With It, with Angela Bassett as Tina and Laurence Fishburne as Ike, any reputation Ike still had was utterly destroyed. No one wanted to think of such a horrible person as one of the founding fathers of rock and roll, or as the discoverer and guide of a legend like Tina. He published his own memoir in 1999, but his confessions only dug his hole deeper. He died in 2007, from a cocaine overdose.

November 5, 1941, 80 years ago: Arthur Ira Garfunkel is born in Forest Hills, Queens, New York. In 1954, he was cast in a 6th grade play version of Alice In Wonderland. A classmate in the play was Paul Simon. In 1957, still in high school, they recorded "Hey Schoolgirl" together, under the name Tom & Jerry, after the cartoon cat and mouse. The song was not a hit.

Both men got their college degrees, and in 1964, they recorded their 1st album under the Simon & Garfunkel name, the all-acoustic Wednesday Morning, 3 AM. It went nowhere, and they split up.

But in late 1965, someone at Columbia Records took their recording of Simon's song "The Sound of Silence," and had electric backing tracks recorded over it. It hit Number 1 at the beginning of 1966, and they got back together. Their harmonies and Simon's lyrics produced 5 fantastic albums, but they split up again after Bridge Over Troubled Water in 1970.

Paul launched a very successful solo career. Art's was less successful, but he also got good reviews for some movie roles. The have occasionally reunited since: An early episode of Saturday Night Live in 1975, The Concert In Central Park in 1981 (500,000 people came), their induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, tours in 2003 and 2009, and, most recently, a tribute to Mike Nichols in 2010.

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November 5, 1951, 70 years ago: The 1st section of the New Jersey Turnpike opens, from Exit 1 in Pennsville, Salem County, accessing the newly-opened Delaware Memorial Bridge, to Exit 5 in Westampton, Burlington County. On January 15, 1952, it will be fully open, all the way to Exit 16/18 in Secaucus, Hudson County, accessing the Lincoln Tunnel and the George Washington Bridge. This includes Exit 9 in what would become my hometown, East Brunswick, Middlesex County.

The year 1956 would see the opening of the Newark Bay Extension, including Exits 14A, 14B and 14C, and accessing the Holland Tunnel; and the Pearl Harbor Memorial Turnpike Extension, leaving at Exit 6 and connecting the main road with the Pennsylvania Turnpike.

In 1970, the Western Spur was opened, including Exits 15W, 16W and 18W, with 16W providing access to the Meadowlands Sports Complex that opened in 1976. This forced the renaming of Exits 15, 16 and 18 to 15E, 16E and 18E.

November 5, 1971, 50 years ago: The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Baltimore Bullets, 110-106 at The Forum. Gail Goodrich leads all scorers with 31 points. Jim McMillian, taking over at forward for the retired Elgin Baylor, has 22. Despite their reputations, Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain are limited to 19 and 12, respectively, although Wilt does grab 25 rebounds.

This begins a 33-game winning streak, which remains the longest in the history of major league sports in North America, and leads them to an NBA record (since broken) of 69 wins and the Championship the following May.

For perspective: The longest winning streak in Major League Baseball is 26, by the 1916 New York Giants (who nonetheless finished 4th); in the National Football League, 23 in regular season play, by the 2008 and '09 Indianapolis Colts, and 21 counting the postseason, by the 2003 and '04 New England Patriots; and in the National Hockey League, 17, by the 1993 Pittsburgh Penguins.

In the 1979-80 season, the Philadelphia Flyers had a 35-game unbeaten streak, but that included 6 ties. When Arsenal set a new record for longest unbeaten streak in English 1st division soccer in 2003 and '04, it was 49 games, but that included 13 draws. 

November 5, 1978: The newspaper strike in New York City, which began on August 10, ends. The fact that there were fewer reporters to bother them, and to complain to (although there were still TV and radio guys), is often credited as being one of the reasons the Yankees made their epic comeback and won the World Series.

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November 5, 1981, 40 years ago: Luke Hemsworth -- as far as I know, his full name -- is born in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The older brother of actors Chris and Liam Hemsworth, he plays Ashley Stubbs on Westworld.

November 5, 1987: Kevin Paul Jonas II is born in Teaneck, Bergen County, New Jersey, and grows up in nearby Wyckoff. He is the oldest of the singing Jonas Brothers.

November 5, 1988: The expansion Miami Heat make their NBA debut, at the now-demolished Miami Arena. They probably thought that picking the Los Angeles Clippers as their 1st opponent would help.

Just as their arch-rivals, the Orlando Magic, will do a year later when they choose the Nets, the Heat chose wrong: The Clips win, 111-91. Dwayne "the Pearl" Washington comes off the bench to lead the Heat with 16 points, but the Clips get 22 from Ken Norman and 21 from Reggie Williams.

Also on this day, Gino Gradkowski (no middle name) is born in Pittsburgh. A center, he was with the Baltimore Ravens when they won Super Bowl XLVII. He is now retired.

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November 5, 1994: A 45-year-old overweight minister wins the Heavyweight Championship of the World. It doesn't sound possible. It is, when it's George Foreman.

Wearing the same trunks he wore 20 years minus a week earlier, when he lost the title to Muhammad Ali, Big George knocks Michael Moorer out in the 10th round at the MGM Grand Garden in Las Vegas. He thus breaks Jersey Joe Walcott's record as oldest Heavyweight Champion (38).

He doesn't hold the title for long, as organizational shenanigans beyond his control forced him to give it up. But he had made his point. Today, who remembers the guys who made George Foreman give up the title (except for Ali)? Ah, but everybody remembers George, and everybody likes George. Which was not the case the first time around: After retiring from boxing for the 1st time in 1977, he totally changed his life, and became a different and better person. His last fight was a loss to Shannon Briggs in 1997. His final record was 76-5 -- 31-3 after his comeback.

November 5, 1995: The expansion Vancouver Grizzlies make their NBA debut, at the new General Motors Place (now the Rogers Arena). They win their premiere, beating the Minnesota Timberwolves 100-98. Christian Laettner scores 26 for the T-Wolves to lead all scorers, but the Grizz get 18 off the bench from ex-Laker star and future Net head coach Byron Scott, 17 from ex-Knick Greg Anthony, and 16 from James "Blue" Edwards.

The Grizzlies never make the Playoffs in Vancouver, and they move to Memphis in 2001. The NBA has shown no indication that they will give Vancouver a 2nd team.

November 5, 2011, 10 years ago: Louisiana State, ranked Number 1, takes on Number 2 Alabama at Bryant-Denny Stadium in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Complicating things is the fact that Alabama coach Nick Saban had previously led LSU to a National Championship. It is one of several college football games that, in its leadup, had gotten billed as "The Game of the Century," and it goes to overtime, where Alabama's Cade Foster misses a field goal, while Drew Alleman makes his to give LSU a 9-6 victory.

But, in one of the several scenarios that made people hate the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) and demand a Playoff system (which we now have), 'Bama ended up Number 2 in the national rankings anyway, and got a rematch with LSU, and dominated it, 21-0, to win the National Championship. It made Saban the 1st coach ever to win National Championships at 2 different schools.

New Jersey Glossary: Volume 5, T to Z

Tacony-Palmyra Bridge: See "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

Taylor Ham: See "Pork Roll," the correct name for the stuff.

Tolja: Contraction of "I told you so."

Traffic Circle: The bane of many a New Jersey driver's existence. In Britain, they're called "roundabouts." I am not bragging, but we invented the damn things: The 1st was the Airport Circle, where U.S. Routes 30 and 130 and New Jersey Route 38 came together in Pennsauken, Camden County, in 1927.

Many of these bastards, but by no means all of them, were eliminated in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, replaced by grade-separated interchanges. The Brunswick Circle in New Brunswick, Middlesex County, was never actually a traffic circle, but since Super Bowl XLII, I like to call it Patriot Circle, because the 2 highways that form it are Routes 18 and 1.

Tramcar: See "Wildwoods, The."

Trenton: The Capital of the State of New Jersey since 1790, where it had previously been Burlington. The State House, with its familiar gold dome, opened that same year. Trenton is also the seat of Mercer County. Its name has become synonymous with political corruption.

Downtown Trenton, with the State House at left

Outside the government office area, it has grown increasingly poor, as, like Camden and Paterson, the advances of American cities since 1990 has seemed to have passed it by.

Trenton Makes, The World Takes: See "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

Trenton-Morrisville Toll Bridge: See "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

Trenton Thunder: The highest-ranking professional baseball team in New Jersey, they have played at Samuel J. Plumeri Field at Arm & Hammer Park (originally Mercer County Waterfront Park, and Plumeri was the team's 1st owner) since it opened in 1994, and in the Class AA Eastern League, 2 steps below the major leagues.

Ordinarily, I am against corporate names on sports venues. But if you're a baseball team and you gotta have one, what better than Arm (for good pitching) and Hammer (for hitting)?

They had previously played in London, Ontario. In the inaugural season of 1994, they were a farm team of the Detroit Tigers; from 1995 to 2002, of the Boston Red Sox; and since 2003, of the Yankees. They have won 12 Division titles: 1995, 1996, 1999, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019 (including the last 4 years). And they have won 4 EL Pennants: 2007, 2008, 2013 and 2019.

They are not the 1st professional baseball team to call Trenton home. The capital previously had a team known as the Senators (1936-41), the Packers (1942-44), the Spartans (1945) and the Giants (1946-50). In 1948 and 1949, they won Pennants as members of the Class B Interstate League, and a New York Giants farm team. Willie Mays played for them in 1950, but that was their last season.

It was also the last season for the original version of the Newark Bears (a former Yankee farm team), the Negro Leagues' Newark Eagles, and the Jersey City Giants (another New York Giant farm team). The growth of television killed a lot of minor league teams, and also hurt the Negro Leagues as much as the long-delayed fall of the color bar did.)

Between 1950 and 1994, the only minor-league baseball teams in New Jersey played at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City. But the 1994 season saw the establishment of the Thunder, and the New Jersey Cardinals of the Class A New York-Penn League, a St. Louis Cardinals farm team. They played at Skylands Stadium in Augusta, Sussex County, and won the Pennant that 1st season. They lasted until 2005, and were succeeded by the Sussex Skyhawks of the independent Can-Am League from 2006 to 2010, and the Sussex County Miners began play there in the independent Frontier League in 2015.

The success of the Thunder and the Cardinals led to a boom in minor-league ball in New Jersey. The 1998 season saw the beginnings of the independent Atlantic League, which had the new version of the Newark Bears, the Somerset Patriots (in Bridgewater, Somerset County), and the Atlantic City Surf.

That year also saw the Can-Am League welcome the New Jersey Jackals, on the campus of Montclair State University in Essex County (although Yogi Berra Stadium, and its accompanying museum, are on a part of the campus in Little Falls, Passaic County). And in 2001, the Atlantic League welcomed the Camden Riversharks, while the Philadelphia Phillies' team in the South Atlantic League became the Lakewood BlueClaws.

But boom turned to bust. The Sussex ballpark is already on its 3rd team. The Surf folded after the 2008 season, and their Surf Stadium now sits all but abandoned. The Bears folded after the 2013 season, the Riversharks after 2015 season. The former's Riverfront Stadium, across from Newark Broad Street Station, and the latter's Campbell's Field, under the Ben Franklin Bridge, were both demolished in 2019. Only the Thunder, the BlueClaws, the Patriots, the Miners and the Jackals remain.

Triple Bypass: See "Pork Roll."

Trump, Donald: See "Atlantic City."

Turnpike, The: The State's most important artery, its economic engine, the New Jersey Turnpike was the brainchild of Governor Alfred E. Driscoll -- as was the Garden State Parkway. The idea was to take traffic off U.S. Route 1. It worked, sort-of: Route 1 still gets a hell of a lot of traffic.

The road is usually just called "The Turnpike," but never "The Pike" as such roads in some other States are called (most notably, in Massachusetts, as "The Mass Pike"). It is operated by the New Jersey Turnpike Authority. Exits are numbered in sequence, 1 to 18. Exits 1 through 7 are in South Jersey, 7A through 12 in Central, and 13 through 18 (E and W) are in North Jersey. From Exit 8 to Exit 14, there are separate lanes for "CARS ONLY" and "CARS, TRUCKS AND BUSES."

There are 12 Rest Areas, each named for someone famous who lived nearby, including poet Walt Whitman, Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Grover Cleveland, inventor Thomas Edison, early American statesman Alexander Hamilton and football coach Vince Lombardi.

The first segment, from Exit 1 in Pennsville, Salem County, to Exit 5 in Westhampton, Burlington County, opened on November 5, 1951. It was extended to Exit 11 in Woodbridge, Middlesex County, on November 30; to Exit 15E in Newark, Essex County on December 20; and all the way up to Exit 18 in Ridgefield, Bergen County on January 15, 1952.

The Newark Bay Extension, connecting Exit 14 in Newark with the Holland Tunnel in Jersey City, Hudson County, opened on April 4, 1956. The Pearl Harbor Memorial Turnpike Extension, connecting the New Jersey and Pennsylvania Turnpikes, opened on May 25, 1956. The Western Spur, which accesses the Meadowlands Sports Complex, opened in 1970.

From 1958, the Turnpike was bannered as part of Interstate 95 from Exits 10 to 18. In 1995, I-95 was extended down to Exit 7A. In 2018, following construction in both New Jersey and Pennsylvania, I-95 as officially extended over the Pennsylvania Turnpike extension, joining the New Jersey Turnpike at Exit 6, finally providing uninterrupted service for that highway for 1,908 miles from Miami to Houlton, Maine.

Twin Span: Nickname for the Delaware Memorial Bridge, connecting New Castle, New Castle County, Delaware and Pennsville, Salem County, New Jersey. (See also "State Line.") It is operated by the Delaware River and Bay Authority, and the toll is $5.00.

Until 1926, the year what's now known as the Ben Franklin Bridge opened between Philadelphia and Camden, there was no way to get from Delaware's largest city, Wilmington in New Castle County, to New Jersey, except by train and then by the aforementioned Bridge.

A ferry was established as a stopgap measure. Some stopgap: After debating whether a bridge or a tunnel should be built, Congress approved construction of a bridge in 1946. It finally opened on August 16, 1951, bannered as U.S. Route 40 (which had been using the ferry). Soon, it became the southern end of the Turnpike, and in 1956 the Delaware Turnpike opened, connecting each State's most important highway.

The opening of the Turnpikes put too many cars on it, and a 2nd bridge was ordered. On September 12, 1968, what's now the westbound span (toward Delaware) was opened, with the original span carrying eastbound traffic (toward New Jersey). In addition to Route 40, the Twin Span now carried Interstate 295. Turnpike Exit 1. (The Parkway has an Exit 0, while the Turnpike doesn't; but the Turnpike has an Exit 1, and the Parkway doesn't.)

Two Guys: Founded by brothers Sidney and Herbert Hubschman in Harrison, Hudson County in 1946, "Two Guys From Harrison" was a discount appliance store, much like Crazy Eddie would later be, without the screaming TV pitchman.

The name was a compromise: The brothers had started by selling appliances in the RCA plant in Harrison, and a competitor said, "We can't compete with those two bastards from Harrison!" Since no newspaper would print advertising with the word "bastard" in it, the name became "Two Guys From Harrison," and it was shortened to "Two Guys" sometime between 1959 and 1967, by which point they had branched out into pretty much anything else a department store would sell.

By the 1970s, they had over 100 stores from Massachusetts to Virginia, and even in Illinois and California. The closing jingle of their commercials was, "We save money for you at Two Guys... naturally!" But they were already in trouble due to taking on a bad merger, and they went out of business in 1982.

Uhlerstown-Frenchtown Bridge: "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

University of New Jersey at Durham, The: One of the more printable nicknames for Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, due to a large number of students from the New York Tri-State Area, including New Jersey. Known for its basketball success, and for the overweening arrogance this produces in its fans.

Jim Valvano, who played basketball at Rutgers before coaching North Carolina State University to the National Championship, said Duke fans didn't bother him because, "They're all from Jersey, like me." (Not quite: He was from Seaford, Long Island, New York.)

Founded in 1838 as Trinity College, it was renamed Duke University in 1924 following an endowment by tobacco and electricity magnate James Buchanan Duke. His daughter, Doris Duke, was a noted socialite and philanthropist in Hillsborough, Somerset County.

Upper Black Eddy-Milford Bridge: "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

Valli, Frankie: Born Francesco Stephen Castelluccio on May 3, 1934 (he often fudged it to May 3, 1937 to make himself seem younger) in Newark, he struggled for years, under various names for himself and his group, until hitting it big in the Summer of 1962, as The Four Seasons, taking the name from a bowling alley in Union Township, Union County that refused to hire them 2 years earlier.

From 1962 to 1967, the hits kept coming, and, outside of Motown Records, they were the biggest vocal group in America. And they were a real band, too: Bob Gaudio on keyboards, Tommy DeVito on lead guitar, and Nick Massi on bass guitar. Nick left in 1965, and was replaced by Joe Long. On occasion, they would be listed as "Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons," with Buddy Saltzman playing drums on most of their hits and on their live appearances.

The original Four Seasons lineup. Left to right: Tommy DeVito,

Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi

By 1968, times had changed, and an attempt at matching them by recording psychedelia fell flat. By 1975, Valli and Gaudio were the only original members left, but they made a comeback, showing that disco did not have to suck. In 1978, Valli had one last big hit, singing the theme from the film Grease, a period piece musical, whose original Broadway version did not have that theme.

Gaudio was born in 1942 in The Bronx, and grew up in Bergenfield, Bergen County. DeVito was born in 1928 in Belleville, Essex County, also the hometown of the top female vocalist from New Jersey, Connie Francis (born 1938). Long was born in 1941 in Elizabeth, Union County. All of these (including Frankie and Connie) are still alive. Massi was born in 1927 in Newark, and died in 2000. Saltzman was born in 1924, in Bridgeton, Cumberland County, South Jersey, and died in 2012. (UPDATE: DeVito died in 2020.)

As Billy Joel, whose 1983 hit "Uptown Girl" was an obvious homage to the Seasons, put it, "As far as I'm concerned, the Four Seasons kick ass all over the Beach Boys. When we were kids, did we sing, 'I wish they all could be California girls?' No, we sang, 'Walk like a man!'"

Vernon Valley Great Gorge: New Jersey's only major ski resort. It opened as Great Gorge in 1965. Vernon Valley was built adjacent in 1968, and in 1971 they were merged. It was bought by the Mountain Creek Company in 1998, at the same time as the adjacent Action Park.

Occasionally, New Jerseyans, like New Yorkers, would go to the Catskills, the "mountain" range in New York State, northwest of New York City. On other occasions, New Jerseyans, like New Yorkers and Philadelphians, would go to the Poconos, the "mountain" range in northeastern Pennsylvania, west of New York and north of Philly.

We used to watch New York (or Philly) TV, and see commercials for "The Nevele" (1903-2009, the name was "eleven" spelled backwards, in Warwarsing, Ulster County, New York) and "Beautiful Mount Airy Lodge" (1941-2001, reborn in 2009 as Mount Airy Casino Resort, in Mount Pocono, Monroe County, Pennsylvania). But Vernon Valley Great Gorge was the only such place in New Jersey. (It was about as close to those resorts -- 47 miles from The Nevele and 64 miles from Mount Airy -- as it was to New York City and most of New Jersey's people.)

A 2014 New York Times article suggested that Caribbean cruises and vacations becoming cheaper killed "The Catskills" and "The Poconos" as we once knew them. Atlantic City's casino rebirth, and the aging of these resorts' clientele, may also have had something to do with it.

Walt Whitman Bridge: See "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

War of the Worlds: On October 30, 1938, on his CBS radio show Mercury Theatre of the Air, actor Orson Welles broadcast a re-imagining of War of the Worlds, the science fiction story by H.G. Wells. (No relation: Note the different spelling.)

In the original 1897 story, creatures from the planet Mars attack London, and (spoiler alert) are ultimately killed, not by any of Earth's military forces or private citizens, but by their susceptibility to our diseases. This would hold true for the 1953 film version set in Los Angeles, and the 2005 film version set in Boston.

Orson Welles' version had the creatures landing in Grover's Mill, a rural area in West Windsor, Mercer County, and advance from there toward New York, including attacking the recently-built Pulaski Skyway. The story still ends with microbes saving the day.

Throughout the broadcast -- at the beginning, at the returns from commercial breaks, and at the end -- Welles noted that this was a radio play, not real life. And it would have been very easy for someone frightened by this broadcast to turn the dial -- say, to CBS' arch-rival, NBC -- and discover no mention of the attack.

But some people were scared enough to get out their shotguns and pitchforks, or to evacuate, feeling very silly when they found out there was no threat. Welles ended up having to publicly apologize for scaring people.

Grover's Mill has embraced its unexpected fame. A monument to the broadcast is in Van Nest Park on Cranbury Road, just off Grover's Mill Pond, about a mile and a half east of New Jersey Transit's Princeton Junction station. (This is County Route 615, and should not be confused with the Cranbury Road that runs through East and South Brunswick, which is County Route 535). Turnpike Exit 8.

Washington Crossing Bridge: "Pennsylvania, Crossings Into."

Water Ice: As the website for TLC's Polish Water Ice says:

Polish Water Ice is not the same as Italian Water Ice. Polish Water Ice is a creamy soft-serve water ice treat that is 100% fat free, 100% cholesterol free, 100% dairy free and 100% delicious.

With its great taste, comes Polish Water Ice’s uniqueness. Rather than serving a stored product, Polish Water Ice is made fresh while you wait. It couldn’t be any fresher!

Other Polish Water Ice products include The Polish Freeze which is Polish Water Ice combined with custard, The Polish Chiller, The Freeze and The Ice Cap!

It seems to be considerably more popular in Philadelphia and South Jersey than it does in New York, North Jersey and Central Jersey, where Italian ice is more popular.

Wawa: A Pennsylvania-based chain of convenience stores that Central Jersey and South Jersey have come to embrace. They make sandwiches, salads, soups, chicken dishes, etc. So, if you live in Central or South Jersey, it's where you go in the middle of the night and you wake up hungry and there's nothing in the fridge, and a bag of chips from 7-Eleven just won't be enough to do the business for you.

In particular, they are known for their sandwiches. Being Pennsylvania-based, they call 'em "hoagies" instead of "submarines" or "subs." They come in 6 or 4 inches, the 4-incher known as a "Shortie."

They started out as a dairy, so you can get milk and ice cream there. And they have coffee-style drinks that are every bit as good as Dunkin Donuts (but cheaper) and Starbucks (but significantly cheaper). And their mashed potatoes are as good as those found at any diner.

They are now all over Central and South Jersey, with U.S. Route 9 having a slew of them, from Old Bridge all the way down to Cape May. They have only begun to make their presence known in North Jersey. So far, the only Wawas north of Interstate 78 are in Hackettstown in Warren County; Parsippany in Morris County; Irvington in Essex County; Kearny in Hudson County: and Garfield, Lodi and Hackensack in Bergen County. They have not yet crossed the Hudson River into New York City. The technical term for this is a "damn shame."

West Jersey: See "Pennsyltucky."

What Exit: See "Exit."

Wildwoods, The: A series of towns on the Jersey Shore, in Cape May County. From north to south, they are: North Wildwood (connected to the mainland by New Jersey Route 147), Wildwood (connected by New Jersey Route 47), Wildwood Crest, Wildwood Gables, and Diamond Beach (connected by Ocean Drive).

In 1963, Philadelphia rock and roll singer Bobby Rydell had a hit song with "Wildwood Days," showing that Wildwood was already Philly's favorite beach town, despite the fact that it's 90 miles from Center City, and the Atlantic City Expressway wasn't opened until 1964, so it wasn't an easy trek. It must have been considered worth it, though, because nobody doubted it when Bobby sang, "Every day's a holiday, and every night is Saturday night." (The song hit Number 17 nationally, and was actually a bigger hit in Australia, reaching Number 14.)

The boardwalk is full-service, and includes Morey's Piers, the biggest amusement park on the Shore, bigger than Casino Pier in Seaside Heights. Since 1949, the center lane of the boardwalk is reserved for The Sightseers Tramcar. Since 1971, it's had speakers warning boardwalkers to, "Watch the Tramcar, please." Even its website is https://watchthetramcarplease.com/tramcar/ A single ride is $3.50, while a day pass is $7.00.

"Watch the Tramcar, please."

The Wildwoods are also known for their "Doo-Wop Motels," built in the 1950s and 1960s, the early days of rock and roll, and having kept the architectural styles, colors and signage from that era, although they didn't begin to be called "Doo-Wop" until the 1990s, by which point the 1950s nostalgia wave that began in the early 1970s had faded.

Several of the motels were demolished at the turn of the 21st Century, and preservationists stepped in to save the rest, and have mostly been successful. The Wildwoods are now so known for this style that even recently-constructed buildings, such as a Wawa and an Acme supermarket, were built to look like them, earning them the nickname "Neo-Doo-Wop." Parkway Exits 4 and 6.

Woodbridge: A large Township in northeastern Middlesex County. It includes the neighborhoods of Avenel, Colonia, Port Reading, Sewaren, Iselin, Hopelawn and Keasbey. It also includes the Woodbridge Center Mall, which is often called just "Woodbridge" by people from other towns.

Woodbridge is also where the Turnpike and the Parkway intersect: Turnpike Exit 11 is Parkway Exit 129. Parkway Exit 127, in Keasbey, is a tangle of roads and ramps that includes U.S. Route 9 and New Jersey Route 440, known as Spaghetti Junction. It is easy to get lost there, and if you end up on 440 East, you could end up in Staten Island. Trust me: You don't want that. The town is also where U.S. Routes 1 and 9 come together, and form "Route 1 and 9."

The Township of Woodbridge should not be confused with the Borough of Wood-Ridge, in Bergen County.

Wooder: South Jersey talk for "water." It has nothing to do with sexual arousal.

There will be one more installment, Volume 6, detailing the crossings from New Jersey into New York City.

May 26, 1956: The Garden State Parkway Opens

May 26, 1956, 60 years ago: The Great Egg Harbor Bridge opens, over Great Egg Harbor Bay in southern New Jersey, connecting Somers Point in Atlantic County with Upper Township in Cape May County. With this opening, the Garden State Parkway is fully open.

A 2nd bridge, taking northbound traffic, was added in 1972. The original, southbound bridge was replaced in 2016; the northbound one, in 2019.

Like the New Jersey Turnpike, which opened in 1951, the Parkway was the brainchild of Alfred E. Driscoll, Governor of New Jersey from 1947 to 1954. Just as the Turnpike was designed to ease the traffic flow of U.S. Route 1 in North and Central Jersey, and U.S. Route 130 in South Jersey, the Parkway was meant to do the same thing for U.S. Route 9.

Of course, it didn't work out that way. The huge growth of New Jersey's suburbs meant that the traffic on both 1 and 9 -- which merge in Woodbridge, Middlesex County, near the interchange that is Turnpike Exit 11 and Parkway Exit 129, and then go up together to the George Washington Bridge -- filled up anyway. But it's still better to have the 2 big superhighways than not. Similarly, the Atlantic City Expressway opened in 1964, but has never really eased Shorebound traffic on U.S. Route 30.

The Parkway runs the spine of New Jersey, paralleling Route 9, at times running concurrent with 9. It starts in Lower Township, Cape May County, with an interchange labeled "Exit 0," 2 1/2 miles north of the beach in Cape May City. The exits, more or less, match the mileposts. Until 2014, Exits 9, 10 and 11 were at-grade interchanges, complete with traffic lights.

It goes from Cape May County to Atlantic County at the aforementioned Great Egg Harbor Bridge, near Exit 29. Atlantic City can be accessed via Exits 37 (U.S. Routes 40 and 322), 38 (the Atlantic City Expressway, that road's Exit 7) and 40 (U.S. Route 30).

Exits 50 and 52 are the only ones in Burlington County. In Ocean County, Exit 63 accesses New Jersey Route 72 and Long Beach Island; and Exit 82, N.J. Route 37 and Seaside Heights. In Monmouth County, Exit 100 is for N.J. Route 33 and Asbury Park; Exit 105 is for N.J. Route 36, the Monmouth Mall in Eatontown, and the Monmouth Park horse racing track in Oceanport; and Exit 116 is the only access point for the PNC Bank Arts Center (formerly the Garden State Arts Center) in Holmdel. You can't access this concert facility any way except through the Parkway.

At Exit 120, the Parkway enters Middlesex County. After Exit 125, it crosses the Raritan River. Exit 127 is an interchange with Interstate 287, U.S. Route 9, and N.J. Route 440, with ramps so tangled, it is known as "Spaghetti Junction." At Exit 129, it connects with the New Jersey Turnpike/Interstate 95 and its Exit 11. It intersects with U.S. Route 1 at Exit 130. At Exit 131 in Woodbridge, it passes under Amtrak's Northeast Corridor, formerly the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Exits 135 to 142 are in Union County, including Exit 142, an interchange with Interstate 78, which connects the Parkway with Newark Liberty International Airport. Exits 143 to 151 are in Essex County, including 145, in my parents' hometown of Newark, an interchange with Interstate 280; and 148, 149, 150 and 151 in my original hometown of Bloomfield.

Passaic County includes Exits 153, 154, 155 and 1956. Exit 153 intersects with N.J. Route 3, providing access to the Meadowlands Sports Complex. Exits 157 to 172 are in Bergen County. Exit 159 is an interchange with Interstate 80. Exit 161 provides access to the Garden State Plaza Mall in Paramus. Exit 172 is in Montvale. From here, the Parkway continues north, over the State Line, as the Garden State Parkway Connector to the New York State Thruway.

Unlike the Turnpike, which only has toll booths at the exits, the Parkway has 11 toll barriers, "nickel-and-diming" you from Cape May County to Bergen County.

*

May 26, 1956 was a Saturday. It was the off-season for the NFL, and the NBA and the NHL didn't yet extend their seasons that far. But there were Major League Baseball games played that day:

* The New York Yankees lost to the Baltimore Orioles, 9-4 at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. The O's shelled Mickey McDermott for 4 runs in the 1st inning, and Gerry Staley for 4 more in the 2nd. Bill "Moose" Skowron hit a home run, and Mickey Mantle went 1-for-3, but it was far from enough.

* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Giants, 6-0 at the Polo Grounds. Roger Craig pitched a 3-hit shutout, backed by home runs from Sandy Amoros, Randy Jackson and Carl Furillo. Jackie Robinson went 1-for-2. Willie Mays did not play.

* The Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 6-2 at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia.

* The Washington Senators beat the Boston Red Sox, 4-1 at Fenway Park in Boston. The only Red Sox run came in the 7th inning, when Ted Williams pinch-hit for pitcher Dave Sisler (son of George and brother of Dick), and singled home Don Buddin. Future manager Whitey Herzog went 2-for-4 for the Senators.

* The Detroit Tigers beat the Kansas City Athletics, 12-6 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It would be renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.)

* The Milwaukee Braves beat the Cincinnati Redlegs, 2-1 at Milwaukee County Stadium. (The Reds were named the Redlegs from 1954 to 1958. A lot of things about America's handling of the Cold War were just flat-out stupid.) Hank Aaron did not hit a home run, but he did hit a triple in the 11th inning, and scored the winning run when singled home by Frank Torre, Joe's brother.

* There was a rainout at Comiskey Park in Chicago. It was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 31. The Cleveland Indians won the opener, 3-2. The Chicago White Sox won the nightcap, 1-0. Dick Donovan and future White Sox ace Early Wynn both went all 10 innings, and Donovan won it himself with a single off Wynn that drove in Bubba Phillips.

* There was also a rainout at the original Busch Stadium in St. Louis (known from 1909 to 1952 as Sportsman's Park.) It was made up as part of a doubleheader on August 19. The St. Louis Cardinals won the 1st game, 6-0. Murry Dickson pitched a 2-hit shutout, and helped himself by going 3-for-4 with 2 RBIs. Stan Musial hit a home run. The Chicago Cubs won the 2nd game, 3-1. Overall, Musial went 3-for-9 with 2 RBIs. Ernie Banks was injured, and did not play in either game.

How to Be a Devils Fan In Philadelphia -- 2015-16 Edition

This Thursday night at 7:00, the New Jersey Devils play away to the Philadelphia Flyers.

There are a few teams that Devils fans don't like. The New York Islanders. The Boston Bruins. The Pittsburgh Penguins. The Washington Capitals. The Toronto Maple Leafs. The Ottawa Senators. The Los Angeles Kings.

But the only team, outside of the New York Rangers, a.k.a. The Scum, that we out-and-out hate is the Flyers, a.k.a. The Philth or Philthy.

This is due to factors that precede the Devils' very existence: In the 1970s, the Flyers were the Broad Street Bullies, their players taking cheap shots at their opponents, dropping the gloves to fight at the drop of a hat, and on occasion even going into the stands to fight opposing fans.

Their fans were no better, openly encouraging such behavior. All the time that the Flyers played at The Spectrum, from 1967 to 1996, they were among the nastiest creatures in the game. While things have been toned down a bit at the Wells Fargo Center, any visiting fan -- especially a Devils, Rangers, Islanders, Capitals, Bruins and above all a cross-Pennsylvania Penguins fan -- should be on his guard.

But that doesn't mean you can't go down and enjoy the experience. I have, a couple of times, and even came away with a win (once).

Before You Go. Philadelphia is just down the road, so it's in the Eastern Time Zone, and you don't have to worry about fiddling with various timepieces. And the weather will be almost identical to what you'd have on the same day in New Jersey or New York.

Still, check the combined website for the Philadelphia newspapers, the Inquirer and the Daily News, before you head out. For the moment, it looks like, for next Thursday, temperatures in Philly will be in the high 40s at night. If you wear a Devils jersey to games, that should be enough. If you don't, a light jacket should suffice, and, of course, if it gets hot inside, you can remove it: Unlike at the Spectrum, you should have enough room for it under your seat. They're also predicting a 15 percent chance of rain, so you probably won't need an umbrella, which you couldn't bring into the arena anyway.

Tickets. The Flyers averaged 19,270 fans per home game last season -- that's nearly 99 percent of official capacity. So, yes, order your tickets ahead of time.

Lower level sections, the 100 Level, run $120 to $145 between the goals, and $107 to $136 behind them. Upper level sections, the 200 Level, run $52 to $120 throughout.

Getting There. It's 99 miles from Times Square in Manhattan to City Hall in Center City Philadelphia, and 90 miles from the Prudential Center in downtown Newark to the Wells Fargo Center in South Philadelphia.

This is close enough that a typical Devils fan could leave his house, drive to the Prudential Center, pick up some friends, head down to the WFC, watch a game, head back, drop his friends off, and and drive home, all within 7 hours. But it's also close enough that you could spend an entire day in Philadelphia, and, hopefully, you've already done this. Having done so many times myself, I can tell you that it's well worth it.

If you are driving, you’ll need to get on the New Jersey Turnpike. If you’re not "doing the city," but just going to the game, take the Turnpike's Exit 3 to NJ Route 168, which forms part of the Black Horse Pike, to Interstate 295. (The Black Horse Pike later becomes NJ Route 42, US Route 322 and US Route 40, going into Atlantic City. Not to be confused with the White Horse Pike, US Route 30, which also terminates in A.C.)

Take I-295 to Exit 26, which will get you onto Interstate 76 and the Walt Whitman Bridge into Philly. Signs for the ballpark will soon follow, and the park is at 11th Street and Pattison Avenue (though the mailing address is "1 Citizens Bank Way").

From anywhere in New York City, allow 2½ hours for the actual drive, though from North Jersey you might need only 2, and from Central Jersey an hour and a half might suffice. But you’ll need at least another half-hour to negotiate the last mile or so, including the parking lot itself.

If you don't want to drive, there are other options, but the best one is the train. Philadelphia is too close to fly, just as flying from New York (from JFK, LaGuardia or Newark) to Boston, Baltimore and Washington, once you factor in fooling around with everything you gotta do at each airport, doesn't really save you much time compared to driving, the bus or the train.

And I strongly recommend not taking the bus. If you do, once you see Philadelphia's Greyhound terminal, at 10th & Filbert Streets in Center City, the nation's 2nd-busiest behind New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal, you'll say to yourself, "I never thought I'd say this to myself, but thank God for Port Authority!"

The Philly terminal is a disgrace. I don't know how many people are in Atlantic City on an average summer day, when both the beaches and the casinos are full (I'm guessing about half a million, or one-third the size of Philly), but it has a permanent population of 40,000 people, compared to the 1.6 million of Philadelphia, and it has a bus station of roughly equal size and far greater cleanliness than Philly’s. Besides, Greyhound service out of Newark's Penn Station is very limited, and do you really want to go out of New Jersey into Manhattan just to get across New Jersey into Philadelphia?

If you can afford Amtrak, and that will be $110 round-trip between Newark and Philly, it takes about an hour and a half to get from Penn Station in downtown Newark to the 30th Street Station at 30th & Market Streets, just across the Schuylkill River from Center City. Unlike the dull post-1963 Penn Station, this building is an Art Deco masterpiece from 1933, and is the former corporate headquarters of the Pennsylvania Railroad. (Ironically, it never had the official name "Pennsylvania Station" or "Penn Station.") You might recognize its interior from the Eddie Murphy film Trading Places. (If you can't afford Amtrak, or if you can but you’d rather save money, I’ll get to what to do in a minute.)

West front of 30th Street Station, with Center City in background

This is a 7:00 PM puck-drop, which should give you enough time to get from the sports complex back to 30th Street in time to catch the 10:28 PM Palmetto back to Metropark or Newark. If not, the last train of the night from 30th Street to Newark Penn is a Northeast Regional at 11:04 PM, and gets back at 12:10 AM.

Interior of 30th Street Station

From 30th Street Station, you can take a cab that will go down I-76, the Schuylkill Expressway, to I-95, the Delaware Expressway, to South Broad Street to the Sports Complex. I would advise against this, though: When I did this for a Yankees-Phillies Interleague game at the Vet in 1999, it was $15. It's probably $25 now.

Philadelphia and Toronto are the only 2 cities left on the North American continent, as far as I know, that still use tokens rather than farecards (or "MetroCards" as New York's MTA calls them) or tickets for their subways. One ride on a SEPTA subway train is $2.25, cheaper than New York's, but they don’t sell single tokens at booths. They come in packs of 2, 5 and 10, and these packs are damn hard to open. Two cost $3.60; five are $9.00, and a ten-pack costs $18.00. They are also available for bulk purchase.

From 30th Street, take the Market-Frankford Line to 15th Street (that's just one stop), where you’ll transfer to the Broad Street Line at City Hall Station. Being a Met fan, you’ll notice that the MFL’s standard color is blue, while the BSL’s is orange. Blue and orange. Don’t think that means they want to make Met, Knick or Islander fans feel at home, though.

From City Hall, if you're lucky, you’ll get an express train that will make just 2 stops, Walnut-Locust and AT&T (formerly "Pattison" -- yes, they sold naming rights to one of their most important subway stations). But you’ll want to save your luck for the game itself, so don't be too disappointed if you get a local, which will make 7 stops: Walnut-Locust, Lombard-South, Ellsworth-Federal, Tasker-Morris, Oregon, Snyder and AT&T. The local should take about 10 minutes, the express perhaps 7 minutes.

If you don’t want to take Amtrak, your other rail option is local. At Newark Penn, you can buy a combined New Jersey Transit/SEPTA ticket to get to Center City Philadelphia. Take NJT's Northeast Corridor Line out of Penn Station to the Trenton Transit Center. This station recently completed a renovation that has already turned it from an absolute hole (it was so bad, it made Philly’s bus station look like Grand Central) into a modern multimodal transport facility. At Trenton, transfer to the SEPTA commuter rail train that will terminate at Chestnut Hill East, and get off at Suburban Station, at 17th Street & John F. Kennedy Blvd. (which is what Filbert Street is called west of Broad Street). Getting off there, a pedestrian concourse will lead you to the City Hall station on the Broad Street Line, and then just take that to Pattison.

Because there will be a lot more stops than there are on Amtrak (especially the SEPTA part), it will take 2 hours and 10 minutes, but you’ll spend $43 round-trip, about what you'd spend on a same-day purchase on Greyhound, and less than half of what you'd be likely to spend on Amtrak. However, again, time will be an issue: The last SEPTA Trenton Line train of the night that will connect to an NJT train leaves Suburban Station at 11:57 PM (and the NJT train it will connect to won't get to Penn Station until 2:46 AM), so this might not be an option for you this time, either.

The subway’s cars are fairly recent, and don’t rattle much, although they can be unpleasant on the way back from the game, especially if it's a football game and they're rammed with about 100 Eagles fans who've spent the game sweating and boozing and are still loaded for bear for anyone from outside the Delaware Valley. It’s highly unlikely anyone will give you anything more than a little bit of verbal on the subway ride into the Sports Complex, while they might give a little more gusto to the verbal on the ride back. But despite Philly sports fans' reputation, this will not be the equivalent of the London Underground on a Saturday afternoon in the 1980s: They might tell you that your team sucks (even if your team is ahead of theirs in the standings), but that’s about the worst you’ll get.

Once In the City. Philadelphia is a Greek word meaning "brotherly love," a name given to it by its founder, William Penn, in 1683. So the city is nicknamed "The City of Brotherly Love." The actions and words of its sports fans suggest that this is ridiculous. Giants coach Bill Parcells was once caught on an NFL Films production, during a game with the Eagles at the Vet, saying to Lawrence Taylor, "You know, Lawrence, they call this 'the City of Brotherly Love,' but it's really a banana republic." And Emmitt Smith, who played for that other team Eagles fans love to hate, the Dallas Cowboys, also questioned the name: "They don't got no love for no brothers."

Center City, with the Ben Franklin Bridge in the foreground

On a map, it might look like Penn Square, surrounding City Hall, is the centerpoint, but this is just geographic, and only half-refers to addresses. Market Street is the difference between the north-south numbering on the numbered Streets. But the Delaware River is the start for the east-west streets, with Front Street taking the place of 1st Street. Broad Street, which intersects with Market at City Hall/Penn Square, takes the place of 14th Street.

In the Colonial and Revolutionary periods, Philadelphia was the largest city in America, before being overtaken by New York. As recently as 1970, it had about 2 million people. But "white flight" after the 1964 North Philadelphia riot led to the population dropping to just over 1.5 million in 2000. It has inched back upward since then. The metro area as a whole -- southeastern Pennsylvania, South Jersey and most of Delaware -- is about 7 million, making it the 6th-largest in the country, behind New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and Boston.

The sales tax is 6 percent in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (Massachusetts, Virginia and Kentucky are also "commonwealths" in their official State names), 8 percent within the City of Philadelphia.

Going In. The Philadelphia sports complex is at Broad Street and Pattison Avenue, about 3 1/2 miles south of Center City. It once included Sesquicentennial/Municipal/John F. Kennedy Stadium (1926-1992), The Spectrum (1967-2009), and Veterans Stadium (1971-2004). The arena now known as the Wells Fargo Center was built on the site of JFK Stadium. Citizens Bank Park, the new home of the Phillies, was built to the east of The Vet. And Lincoln Financial Field was built south of the new ballpark, and east of the Spectrum.

The Sports Complex, sometime between 1971 and 1992.

Top to bottom: The Vet, The Spectrum and JFK Stadium.

There is plenty of parking in the complex, including a lot on the site of  The Vet. But you'll be a lot better off if you take the subway. Not really because of the price of parking: At $16, it's one of the cheaper fares in baseball. But traffic is going to be awful. The first time I went to a sporting event in Philadelphia, it was a 4th of July celebration at the Vet, and 58,000 people showed up to see the Phils face the Houston Astros, with Nolan Ryan pitching. The game and the fireworks combined did not last as long as it took to get out of the parking lot and onto the Walt Whitman Bridge: 2 hours and 40 minutes. Trust me: Take the freakin' subway.

Coming out of the AT&T subway station, you’ll walk down Pattison Avenue, with a parking lot on the former site of Veterans Stadium to your left, and the site of the Spectrum to your right.

Further to your right is the successor to the Spectrum, the Wells Fargo Center, named for the banking and insurance company. This building is 19 years old and is now under its 5th name. The official address is 3601 S. Broad Street.

It was built on the site of John F. Kennedy Stadium, formerly Municipal Stadium, a 105,000-seat structure that hosted all kinds of events, from the Army-Navy Game to heavyweight title fights (Gene Tunney taking the title away from Jack Dempsey in 1926 and Rocky Marciano doing the same to Jersey Joe Walcott in 1952), from the occasional Eagles game that was too big for Shibe Park in the 1940s and ’50s to the U.S. half of Live Aid in 1985. And it hosted the Phils' victory celebration in 1980, with its huge capacity coming in handy. By that point, it was crumbling, and it surprised no one when it was demolished to make way for the new arena.

The new arena began as Spectrum II, then, as naming rights were sold and banks bought out other banks, it became the CoreStates Center, the First Union Center (Flyer fans liked calling it "The F.U. Center"), the Wachovia Center, and now the Wells Fargo Center. It is 1 of 10 arenas currently housing both an NBA team and an NHL team.

It was as the First Union Center that it hosted the 2000 Republican Convention, nominating George W. Bush for President; next July, presumably under the name Wells Fargo Center, it will host the 2016 Democratic Convention. (The Democrats met at Convention Hall, now Boardwalk Hall, in Atlantic City in 1964. 2301 Boardwalk at Mississippi Avenue. Atlantic City Rail Line from 30th Street Station.)

Villanova University also uses the arena for basketball games that have a ticket demand greater than their on-campus Pavilion can satisfy. And, like The Spectrum before it, it's hosted NCAA Tournament games, although it's now considered too small to host the Final Four, as The Spectrum did in 1976 and 1981 (with Indiana University winning both times).

The arena has also been home to Arena Football's Philadelphia Soul since 2004. They've been in 3 ArenaBowls, winning in 2008. The arena has not, however, hosted an ArenaBowl.

Inside the arena, concourses are wide and well-lit, a big departure from the Spectrum. Escalators are safe and nearly always work, as opposed to the Vet, which did not have escalators, only seemingly-endless ramps. Getting to your seat should be easy.

Yes, that's a lot of orange.

No, the Dutch soccer team doesn't play there.

The Flyers attack twice toward the south end of the arena.

Food. From the famed Old Original Bookbinder's (125 Walnut Street at 2nd, now closed) and Le Bec Fin (1523 Walnut at 16th) to the Reading Terminal Market (Philly's "South Street Seaport" at 51 N. 12th St at Filbert) to the South Philly cheesesteak giants Pat's, Geno's and Tony Luke’', Philly is a great food city and don't you ever forget it. The variety of food available at the Wells Fargo Center is unbelievable. Little of it is healthy (no surprise there), but all of it is good.

On the lower Main Concourse Level, the South Jersey restaurant chain P.J. Whelihan's has stands behind both goals. Tim Hortons, the Canadian doughnut chain founded by the Toronto Maple Leafs legend, has stands at all 4 corners. Chickie's & Pete's, whose main outlet is nearby at 1526 Packer Avenue (near the also-famed Celebre's Pizza), has stands on the west side and in the northeast corner, to sell their fish and their "crab fries" -- French fries with Old Bay seasoning mix, not fries with crabmeat. The northeast corner also has that wonderful junk food staple of Pennsylvania Dutch country (and the Jersey Shore), funnel cake. The legendary South Street pizzeria Lorenzo & Sons has stands on both the east and west sides. Each of these brands can also be found on the upper, Mezzanine Concourse Level.

Team History Displays. The banners honoring Flyer achievements are at the arena's north end; those for the 76ers, at the south end.

The Flyers hang banners for their 1973-74 and 1974-75 Stanley Cup wins (both banners displaying the seasons that way -- for the sub-Cup banners, I'll keep it simple); their 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1985 and 1987 Prince of Wales Conference titles; their 1997 and 2010 Eastern Conference titles; and for their regular-season Division titles of 1968, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2002, 2004 and 2011.

(You're reading that right: In both 1995 and 2000, when the Devils won the Cup, and beat the Flyers in the Conference Finals both times, the Flyers won the Atlantic Division in the regular season.)

The Flyers have 5 numbers officially retired. In 2012, they retired the Number 2 of 1982-92 defenseman Mark Howe (Gordie's son, and a Hockey Hall-of-Famer in his own right). So far, he's the only Flyer retired number honoree who was not a member of their back-to-back 1970s Cups.

The 1st Flyer player to get his number retired was 1970-74 defenseman Barry Ashbee, Number 4. The 2nd, and the 1st Flyer player to get into the Hall of Fame, was Bernie Parent, goaltender 1967-79 (missing 1971-73 in the World Hockey Association). Unfortunately, both had their careers prematurely ended by eye injuries, in Ashbee's case against the Rangers during the 1974 Playoffs. He stayed on as an assistant coach, but died of leukemia in 1977. The other 2 are Captain Bobby Clarke, center, 1969-84 and their first genuine superstar; and Bill Barber, left wing, 1972-84.

Howe's 2 had yet to be retired when this photo was taken.

Two others should be mentioned. Pelle Lindbergh, goaltending hero of the 1985 Playoffs, was killed early the next season when he drove drunk coming home from a party in South Jersey and crashed into a school. His Number 31 has not been retired, but neither has it been given out since.

And Eric Lindros, controversially stripped of the Captaincy by then-GM Clarke and then had his Flyer career ended by Scott Stevens' shoulder in Game 7 of the 2000 Conference Finals, wore Number 88, and no Flyer has since. Since he represented the Flyers, not his next team the Rangers, in the Winter Classic Alumni Game at Citizens Bank Park on New Year's Eve 2011, before the Flyers-Rangers game the next day, it can be presumed that he and the Flyers have buried the hatchet.

It should be noted that Clarke is usually called "Bobby" when you refer to him as a player, and "Bob" when you refer to him as a coach and executive. Flyer fans still adore Bobby Clarke, but they didn't much like Bob Clarke, seeing him no longer as their guy, but as a stooge for ownership.

Alongside the 5 retired number banners in the rafters, the Flyers have 3 banners honoring 23 figures from team history in the Flyers Hall of Fame: Ed Snider, the only owner the team has ever had in its 48 years of existence; Cup-winning head coach Fred Shero and GM Keith Allen; longtime broadcaster Gene Hart; 1974 and '75 Cup-winning players Clarke, Parent, Barber, Ashbee, Rick MacLeish, Gary Dornhoefer, Reggie Leach, Joe Scott, Ed Van Impe, Joe Watson, Dave Poulin and Dave "the Hammer" Schultz; 1980s players Howe, Tim Kerr, Brian Propp and Ron Hextall; and 1990s players Lindros, John LeClair and Eric Desjardins.

Lindbergh has not yet been inducted, probably because they would have to explain to kids and victims of drunk driving why a drunk driver is in there. Which is probably also, along with his fraud conviction and imprisonment, why the Phillies haven't elected Lenny Dykstra -- who included Devils legend Ken Daneyko among those he defrauded -- to the Philadelphia Baseball Wall of Fame.

Clarke, Parent and Lindros were named to The Hockey News' 100 Greatest Players in 1998.

There are also banners honoring music legends Bruce Springsteen and Billy Joel. Each has their number of sellout concerts in the city on his banner (all venues combined): Bruce, 53; Billy, 48. Although Bruce has a higher total, Billy holds the sellout record at the WFC: 18. (The Grateful Dead had the most sellouts at the Spectrum, but there is nothing reflecting this at the WFC.)

On the lower concourse, the Flyers also have displays honoring the history of the team, including a tribute to the 1974 and 1975 Cup winners. I have never been to a 76ers game there, so I don't know if they have a similar display when they play, but if they do, it wasn't shown during my Devils-Flyers visits.

There were 4 statues outside The Spectrum. One was of Sylvester Stallone in character as Rocky Balboa. That one has been moved, appropriately enough, to the Philadelphia Museum of Art, not far from the steps he ran up in every movie. One was for Julius "Dr. J" Erving of the 76ers. The other 2 were for the Flyers. One was titled "Score!" depicting Gary Dornhoefer's overtime goal against the Minnesota North Stars in the 1973 Playoffs. It bears a striking resemblance to Bobby Orr's "Flying Goal" that wont the 1970 Stanley Cup for the Boston Bruins.

"Score!" This was taken outside The Spectrum.

Another was for Kate Smith, whose recording of "God Bless America," played in place of "The Star-Spangled Banner," was a good luck charm for the Flyers, to the point where she was invited to sing it live before Game 6 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals, which they won for their 1st title.

The Dr. J, Score! and Kate Smith statues have been moved to Xfinity Live! on the site of The Spectrum. A statue of Fred Shero has since been added. Outside the Wells Fargo Center, a statue has been added for Wilt Chamberlain, who played for the Warriors and the 76ers.

Clarke played on the Team Canada that beat the Soviet Union in the 1972 "Summit Series." But no member of the Gold Medal-winning 1980 U.S. Olympic team ever played for the Flyers.

Stuff. The Flyers have a team store, run by Forty Seven Brand ('47), in the northwest corner of the lower concourse, which is also open on non-game days.

You might expect to see DVDs in the store, including NHL History of the Philadelphia Flyers, taking the team from its 1967 beginning to its 40th Anniversary in 2007; and the Philadelphia Flyers 10 Greatest Games set. Based on a fans' vote, they are shown from 10th through 1st.

I'll list them chronologically: Clarke's overtime winner taking Game 2 of the 1974 Stanley Cup Finals, The Cup clinchers of 1974 and 1975, the 1976 win over the Soviet Red Army, the 1979 win in Boston that gave them an NHL record of 29 straight games unbeaten (they extended it to 35), Kerr scoring 4 goals in 1 period against the Rangers at the Garden in the 1985 Playoffs, J.J. Daigneault winning Game 6 of the 1987 Finals in overtime against the Edmonton Oilers, Keith Primeau scoring to win the 5-overtime epic with Pittsburgh in the 2000 Playoffs, Jeremy Roenick scoring in overtime to win a 2004 Playoff series against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and Game 6 of that year's Conference Finals against the Tampa Bay Lightning (though the Bolts won Game 7).

What you might not expect to find in a Flyers team store is books. I'm not suggesting that Flyer fans are illiterate...

In 2000, Philly-based sportswriter Jay Greenberg published Full Spectrum: The Complete History of the Philadelphia Flyers Hockey Club. But if you really want to get a feel for Philly sports, get these 3, all co-written by WIP host Glen Macnow with one of his colleagues: The Great Philadelphia Fan Book with Anthony Gargano, The Great Philadelphia Sports Debate with Angelo Cataldi (who is Philly's answer to Mike & the Mad Dog, all in one guy), and The Great Book of Philadelphia Sports Lists, with Ed Gudonis, a.k.a. Big Daddy Graham, also a Philly and Jersey Shore-based standup comic and a great guy who writes a regular column for Philadelphia magazine.

During the Game. A November 19, 2014 article on The Hockey News' website ranked the NHL teams' fan bases, and listed the Flyers' fans 6th, 2nd among U.S.-based teams behind Chicago: "Attendance holds steady even when Flyers have the odd down season."

Unlike most venues in North American sports, a Flyers home game -- and an Eagles home game, but not so much the Phillies and 76ers -- carries with it the specter of fan violence. For the most part, Flyer fans might give you some verbal abuse, but very few with take to the level of violence, even when drunk.

Besides, in spite of 1995 and 2000,

they hate the Penguins more than the Devils.

The best thing to keep in mind if you're a visiting fan, especially if you're wearing team gear, is to not instigate anything. And definitely don't chant, "Rangers suck! Flyers swallow!"

The Flyers have a choice of pregame patriotic songs: Either they'll go with Kate Smith's recording of "God Bless America," or the National Anthem will be sung by Lauren Hart, recording artist and daughter of the late Hall of Fame broadcaster Gene Hart. Their goal song is "Booyah" by Showtek, replacing "My Songs Know What You Did In the Dark" by Fall Out Boy, which was not popular among Flyer fans.

The Flyers do not have a mascot. They briefly had a creature named Slapshot in 1976, but the fans did not take to it, and he was withdrawn before the next season began.

The "Let's go" chant is different from those used by all 3 New York Tri-State Area teams: Instead of hitting the 1st and 3rd syllables, as in, "LET'S go, DEV-ils!" they hit the1st and 4th: "LET'S go, Fly-ERS!" It's a little weird the first time you hear it. It's also a little weird every time you hear it thereafter.

This game will be a Dollar Dog Night, sponsored by the Flyers' hot dog maker, Dietz & Watson.

After the Game. Philadelphia is a big city, with all the difficulties of big cities as well as many of the perks of them. Especially at night, the risk of Flyer fans getting rough increases, as they’ve had time to drink, but not by much. Again, don't antagonize them, especially if the Devils win, and you'll probably be okay.

What you should do at the end of the game depends on what time it is and how you got there. If you took the train(s) down, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting back onto the subway, and to Suburban Station, in time to catch the 10:45 PM SEPTA train back to Trenton, which will allow you to get the 12:10 AM NJ Transit train back to New York, arriving at Penn Station at 1:35 AM. If, for whatever reason (extra innings, you stopped somewhere along the way, something else), you end up missing this train, there will be another an hour later, but the NJT train it connects to at Trenton at will be the last train of the night.

If you drove down, and you want to stop off for a late dinner and/or drinks (except, of course, for the designated driver), the nearby Holiday Inn at 9th Street & Packer Avenue has a bar that is co-owned by former Eagles quarterback, now ESPN pundit, Ron Jaworski. As I mentioned earlier, the original outlet of Chickie’s & Pete’s is at 15th & Packer. Right next to it is a celebrated joint, named, appropriately enough, Celebre Pizzeria.

(The legend is true: Richie Ashburn and his broadcast partners, Harry Kalas, Chris Wheeler and Andy Musser mentioned their great-tasting pizzas on the air so often that, since Phils broadcasts were then sponsored by a pizzeria chain, they couldn't mention Celebre’s anymore. So, just as Ashburn's New York counterpart, Phil Rizzuto, liked to mention birthdays and food, especially Italian food, on the air, "Whitey" rattled off a few birthday wishes, and said, "And I'd like to wish a Happy Birthday to the Celebre's twins, Plain and Pepperoni! Say, Wheels, how old are Plain and Pepperoni?" And Wheeler said, "Oh, about 20 minutes, I hope!" Sure enough, 20 minutes later, the delivery of the 2 pizzas was made. And nobody fired Richie Ashburn -- although he died from a diabetes-induced heart attack in 1997, and his eyesight was already getting bad enough that he was getting pressured to retire, and was considering it. He died at the Grand Hyatt adjacent to Grand Central, during a Phils roadtrip to play the Mets -- and he wasn't alone as initially reported: He had his mistress with him.)

The legendary Pat's and Geno's Steaks, arch-rivals as intense as any local sports opponents, are across 9th Street from each other at Passyunk Avenue in the Italian Market area. My preference is Pat's, but Geno's is also very good. Be advised, though, that the lines at both are of Shake Shack length, because people know they're that good. Also, Pat's was "the original Soup Nazi": You have to have your cash ready, and you have to quickly order your topping, your style of cheese, and either "wit" or "widdout" -- with or without onions. I haven't been there in a while, but I've been there often enough that I have a "usual": "Mushroom, whiz, wit." Both Pat's and Geno's are open 24 hours, but, because of the length of the line, unless you drove down to the game, I would recommend not going there after the game, only before (if you can make time for it). Broad Street Line to Ellsworth-Federal, then 5 blocks east on Federal, and 1 block south on 9th.

There is one place I know of in Philadelphia that caters to New York fans: The Tavern on Broad, at 200 S. Broad Street at Walnut, seems to be the headquarters of the local Giants fan club. The Fox & Hound, at 1501 Spruce Street in Center City, is also said to be accommodating to Giants fans. Jet fans are said to be welcome at Revolution House, at 200 Market Stret in Old City.

A particular favorite restaurant of mine is the New Deck Tavern, at 3408 Sansom Street in University City, on the Penn campus. You can also pick up a sandwich, a snack or a drink at any of several Wawa stores in and around the city. If you came in via Suburban Station, there's one at 1707 Arch, a 5-minute walk away; if the game lasts 3 hours or less, you have a shot at getting in, getting your order, getting out, and getting back to the station in time to catch your train.

If your visit to Philly is during the European soccer season (which is in progress), you can probably watch your favorite club at Fadó Irish Pub, at 1500 Locust Street in Center City. Be advised that this is home to supporters' groups for Manchester United, Liverpool, Tottenham Hotspur and Celtic FC; so if you're not particularly fond of any of those teams, you might want to stay away.

Sidelights. The Philadelphia sports complex once included 3 buildings that have all been replaced and demolished: From north to south, the Vet, the Spectrum and JFK Stadium. The arena now known as the Wells Fargo Center was built on the site of JFK Stadium. Citizens Bank Park, the new home of the Phillies, was built to the east of The Vet. And Lincoln Financial Field was built south of the new ballpark, and east of the Spectrum.

* Sesquicentennial/Municipal/JFK Stadium. Built in 1926 for a 150th Anniversary (Sesquicentennial of American independence) world's fair in Philadelphia, this 105,000-seat horseshoe (open at the north end) was designed for football, but one of its earliest events was a fight for the Heavyweight Championship of the World. For the 1st time, that title changed hands on a decision, rather than on a knockout. But Gene Tunney so decisively outfought champion Jack Dempsey that no one disputed it. (When they had their rematch a year later, at Soldier Field in Chicago, that was another story.)

The stadium was renamed Municipal Stadium in 1931 (sometimes it was called simply Philadelphia Stadium), and, due to being (roughly) halfway between the service academies, became the site of the Army-Navy Game from 1936 to 1941, and again from 1945 to 1979, before it was moved to The Vet.

The Eagles played home games there from 1936 to 1939, and select games thereafter, including the 1950 season opener that was, as soccer fans would call it, a "Charity Shield" game: The 2-time defending NFL Champion Eagles vs. the Cleveland Browns, 4-time titlists in the All-America Football Conference. The Browns were 47-4-3 over the AAFC's 4-season history; the Eagles, 22-3-1 over the last 2 years, thanks to a 5-2 alignment that was the 1st defensive unit to have a memorable nickname: Before San Diego and Los Angeles had a Fearsome Foursome, Philly had a Suicide Seven.

Some people then called it "The Game of the Century," and some now think of as an unofficial "first Super Bowl" -- ironic, since neither team has won an NFL Championship in the Super Bowl era, and the Browns haven't even been to a Super Bowl yet. Playing on a Saturday night -- making it, sort of, not just "the 1st Super Bowl" but "the 1st Monday Night Football game" -- in front of 71,237 fans, still the largest crowd ever to watch a football game in Philadelphia (and nearly double the capacity of Shibe Park, which really limited the Eagles' attendance), the Browns beat the Eagles 35-10, stunning football fans all over the nation. The Eagles never recovered, while the Browns won the NFL title that year, and appeared in 7 title games in 8 years, winning 3.

In 1964, Municipal Stadium was renamed John F. Kennedy Stadium. On August 16, 1966, the Beatles played there. On July 13, 1985, it hosted the American end of Live Aid. But that show exposed to the world that it already falling apart. The Rolling Stones, who had packed the place on their 1981 Tattoo You tour, chose the considerably smaller Vet for Steel Wheels in 1989. It was demolished in 1992, and the new arena opened on the site in 1996.

* The Spectrum. This modern (for its time) arena opened in 1967, and 2 teams at the opposite ends of the competitive, uh, spectrum moved in: The 76ers, the NBA's defending Champions; and the Flyers, an NHL expansion team. Although the Flyers won inspirational (and confrontational) Stanley Cups in 1974 and '75, they also lost in the Finals in 1976, '80, '85 and '87. And while the Sixers won the 1983 NBA title in a dominating season-long performance, they also lost in the Finals in 1977, '80 and '82, and were lost after a couple of puzzling Draft Day trades in 1986.

The Spectrum hosted the NCAA Final Four in 1976 and 1981, both times won by Bobby Knight's Indiana. Since 1976 was the Bicentennial year, it also hosted the NBA and NHL All-Star Games. The Vet also hosted baseball's All-Star Game that year. And the Spectrum was the site of both fights between Philly native Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed, the former in the first Rocky, on New Year's Day 1976, and the latter in Rocky II, on Thanksgiving of that year. (All the movies' fights were actually filmed at the Los Angeles Sports Arena, due to its proximity to Hollywood.)

The Spectrum was also a big arena for college basketball: Villanova used it for home games that were too big for its on-campus Pavilion, the Atlantic 10 Conference used it for its tournament, and it hosted NCAA Tournament games at the sub-Final Four level, including the 1992 thriller that put Duke into the Final Four at Kentucky's expense, thanks to the last-second shot of Christian Laettner. The first rock concert there was by Cream, on their 1968 farewell tour. The last, and the last public event there, was by Pearl Jam in 2009.

Elvis Presley sang at The Spectrum on November 8, 1971; June 23, 1974 (2 shows), June 28, 1976; and May 28 1977.

The Spectrum became, in the words of its promoters, "America's Showplace" and the most-used sports arena in the world. This was a blessing and a curse: They could make a lot of money off of it, but it was limited. So Spectacor, the company that owned the Spectrum and the Sixers, built Spectrum II -- which, in a series of naming-rights changes due to bigger banks swallowing old ones, became the CoreStates Center, the First Union Center (Flyer fans loved calling it "the F.U. Center"), the Wachovia Center and now the Wells Fargo Center.

From 1996 to 2009, the arenas stood side-by-side. The main Spectrum tenants said goodbye as follows: The Flyers with an exhibition game on September 27, 2008, with all their former Captains on hand, as the Fly Guys beat the Carolina Hurricanes 4-2; Villanova with the building's last college basketball game on January 28, 2009, a win over the University of Pittsburgh; and on March 13, 2009, the Sixers beat the Chicago Bulls 104-101 in a special regular-season game.

The Spectrum was demolished the next year, and replaced in part with a live concert venue called "Xfinity Live!" (Yes, the exclamation point is included in the official name.) This structure now hosts the statues that were outside the Spectrum. A hotel is planned for the rest of the Spectrum site.

* Veterans Stadium. When it opened on April 10, 1971, it was considered state of the art and wonderful. And, as the Phillies had a great team from 1976 to 1983, reaching 6 postseasons in 8 years, winning 2 Pennants and the 1980 World Series, it became beloved by Phils fans. The Eagles, too, had a resurgence in the late 1970s, and hosted and won the 1980 NFC Championship Game. The Vet was seen as everything that Connie Mack Stadium was not: New instead of old, in good shape instead of falling apart, in a safe place instead of a ghetto (unless you were a New York Giants or Dallas Cowboys fan), and representative of victory instead of defeat.

The Eagles had a down period in the mid-1980s, but rebounded toward the end of the decade. But the Phils had collapsed, and the Vet's faults began to be seen: It was ugly, the sight lines were bad for baseball, and the turf was bad for everything, from eyes to knees. By the time the Phils won the Pennant in 1993, Camden Yards had opened just down the road in Baltimore, and suddenly everyone wanted a "retro park," and no one wanted a "cookie-cutter stadium."

It took a few more years, and a lot of complaints from opposing NFL players that the stadium was deteriorating and the turf was dangerous, for a new stadium to be approved. The Eagles closed the Vet out with a shocking and devastating loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the 2002 NFC Championship Game, and the Phils did so with a loss to the Atlanta Braves on September 28, 2003. The Eagles had already moved into their new stadium by that point, and the Phils moved into theirs the next April, a few days after the Vet's demolition. The baseball and football sculptures that were outside have been placed on Pattison Avenue, in front of the parking lot where the Vet once stood.

The Vet hosted the Army-Navy Game every year from 1980 to 2001, except for 1983, 1989, 1993, 1997 and 2000. (The 1983 game was played at the Rose Bowl, the 2000 game at the new Ravens' stadium in Baltimore, and the rest, as well as the 2002 game, at the Meadowlands.) Various pro soccer teams, including the North American Soccer League's Philadelphia Atoms, also played there.

* Citizens Bank Park. It opened in 2004, and the Phils were in the Playoff race until September that year. In 2005 and '06, they were in it until the last weekend. In 2007, they won the Division. In 2008, they won the World Series. In 2009, they won another Pennant. In 2010 and '11, they won the Division -- 5 straight Playoff berths, and 8 seasons in the ballpark with all good-to-great seasons. Only in 2012, when injuries flurried in and the team suddenly seemed to get old all at once, did the bad times return.

Baker Bowl was a dump. Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium was already neglected due to Mack's strapped finances by the time the Phils arrived, and by the time they left the neighborhood was a ghastly ghetto. The Vet was a football stadium. CBP is a ballpark, and a great one. (Okay, on January 2, 2012, it was a hockey rink. To make matters worse, the Flyers lost to the one team I would want them to beat, the Rangers.)

"The Bank" has statues of Phils greats like Richie Ashburn and Mike Schmidt, great food like Greg Luzinski's Bull's Barbecue, and lots and lots of souvenirs, some of which don't involve the Phillie Phanatic. And, with the Phils now being terrible, tickets are easier to get.

* Lincoln Financial Field. The new home of the Eagles has seen them make the Playoffs more often than not, and reach the Super Bowl in the 2004 season. And fan behavior, while still rowdy, is not as criminal as it was at The Vet: No more municipal court under the stands is necessary.

"The Linc" has hosted the Army-Navy Game every year since it opened, except for 2007 and 2011. It will also not host it this year or in 2016, as Baltimore will on those occasions. It's hosted 3 games of the U.S. National Soccer Team, games of the 2003 Women's World Cup, an MLS All-Star Game, and several games by touring European teams such as Manchester United, Glasgow Celtic and A.C. Milan.

If you drove down, or you came by train early on Saturday and have the whole day to yourself before a 7:05 gametime, in addition to the other stadiums and arenas at the Sports Complex, there are lots of interesting locations for you to check out. Remember that, although the city's centerpoint is technically Broad & Market Streets, where City Hall is, the numbering of north-south streets starts at the Delaware River, so that Broad takes the place of 14th Street.

* Deliverance Evangelistic Church. This was the site of Shibe Park, renamed Connie Mack Stadium in 1952. This is where the A's played from 1909 to 1954, the Phils from 1938 to 1970, and the Eagles in 1940, and from 1942 to 1957. The A's played World Series there in 1910, '11, '12, '13, '14, '29, '30 and '31, and the Phils (against the Yanks) in '50.

The Eagles played and won the 1948 NFL Championship Game there, beating the Chicago Cardinals 7-0 in a snowstorm, and also won the NFL title in '49 (though the title game was played in Los Angeles against the Rams). The Frankford Yellow Jackets sometimes used it in the 1920s, winning the 1926 NFL Championship. On October 14, 1948, shortly after Israel declared its independence, its national soccer team faced the U.S. at Shibe Park, shortly after doing so at Yankee Stadium. These were Israel's 1st 2 matches, and the U.S. won them both.

Be advised, though, that this is North Philly, and the church is easily the nicest building for several blocks around. Across the street is Dobbins Tech, a high school known for its great basketball program. (Remember the story of Hank Gathers and Bo Kimble? They went to Dobbins. So did Dawn Staley.) 21st Street & Lehigh Avenue. By subway, use the North Philadelphia station on the Broad Street Line, and walk 7 blocks west on Lehigh.

* Site of Baker Bowl. This was where the Phils played from 1887 to 1938, and the Eagles from 1933 to 1943 (though sometimes moving to Municipal Stadium, the one renamed for JFK). The Phils won one Pennant there, in 1915. It was also the Eagles' 1st home, in the 1933, '34 and '35 seasons.

Southwest corner of Broad Street and Lehigh Avenue, 8 blocks east of the Connie Mack Stadium site. Same subway stop as Shibe/Connie Mack. The A's original home, Columbia Park, is at 29th Street & Columbia Avenue, but I wouldn't recommend going there. If you're going to any of these, do it in daylight.

* The Palestra. Built in 1927, this is the arena aptly nicknamed the Cathedral of Basketball. It even has stained-glass windows. (I swear, I am not making that up.) The home gymnasium of the University of Pennsylvania (or just "Penn"), it also hosts some games of Philly's informal "Big 5" basketball programs when they play each other: Penn, Temple, La Salle, St. Joseph's and Villanova.

Penn, a member of the Ivy League, has one of the nicest college campuses anywhere, but do not be fooled by its Ivyness: In Philadelphia, even the Ivy Leaguers are tough. 235 South 33rd Street. Take the "Subway-Surface Line" trolley, either the Number 11, 13, 34 or 36, to the 33rd Street stop.

As I said, Philadelphia has hosted 2 NCAA Final Fours, both at the Spectrum. 'Nova has made it 4 times: 1939, 1971, 1985 and 2009. La Salle made it in back-to-back years, 1954 and 1955. Temple made it in 1956 and 1958, although never under legendary coach John Chaney. St. Joe's made it in 1961, and just missed in 2004. Penn made it in 1979, under future Detroit Pistons coach Chuck Daly. Temple won the NIT in 1938, but the only Philly-based National Champions under the NCAA banner (which began in 1939) are La Salle in 1954 and 'Nova in 1985.

* Franklin Field, right next to the Palestra. The oldest continuously-used college football site, the Penn Quakers have played here since 1895 (which is also when the Penn Relay Carnival, the nation's premier track-and-field event, began), and in the current stadium since 1922. That year, it supposedly hosted the first football game ever broadcast on radio (a claim the University of Pittsburgh disputes), and in 1939 it supposedly hosted the first football game ever televised (a claim New York’s Columbia University disputes). The amazing building in the west end zone is the University administration building.

The original Franklin Field was the 1st midpoint/neutral site game for Army vs. Navy: 1899 to 1904, 1906 to 1912, and 1914. The current structure hosted it in 1922, and 1932 to 1935, before it was moved to Municipal/JFK Stadium.

The Eagles played here from 1958 to 1970, including their last NFL Championship, December 26, 1960, beating the Green Bay Packers in a thriller, 17-13. Half a century. Penn’s football team has been considerably more successful, having won 14 Ivy League titles since the league was formally founded in 1955.

Like the Palestra, the stadium at Franklin Field is in surprisingly good shape (must be all those Penn/Wharton Business School grads donating for its upkeep), although the playing field has been artificial turf since 1969. Same trolley stop as the Palestra.

* Site of the Philadelphia Civic Center. This complex included the Convention Hall, where Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for President by the Democrats in 1936, Wendell Willkie by the Republicans in 1940 and both Harry Truman and Thomas E. Dewey were nominated in 1948 – that year’s Republican Convention being the first televised convention. It was built on the site of the Exposition Auditorium, where the Republicans renominated William McKinley in 1900.

(The Democrats met in Atlantic City at the Convention Hall, now named Boardwalk Hall, in 1964, nominating Lyndon Johnson. 2301 Boardwalk at Mississippi Avenue. New Jersey Transit Atlantic City Line from 30th Street Station. The Beatles played there a few days before.)

The Beatles played here on September 2, 1964. Pope John Paul II said Mass here. The Philadelphia Warriors played here from 1952 to 1962, when they moved to San Francisco (and now the "Golden State Warriors" play in Oakland), and the 76ers from 1963 until the Spectrum opened in 1967. Titles were won here by the 1956 Warriors and the 1967 76ers. The Philadelphia Blazers played the 1st World Hockey Association season here, 1972-73, but were terrible, and with the Flyers on the way up, nobody wanted to see the WHA team. They moved to Vancouver the next season.

So many Philly area greats played here, in high school, college and the pros, but you need know one name -- pardon the pun -- above all others: Wilt Chamberlain. I saw a concert here in 1989, and the acoustics were phenomenal, with a horseshoe of seats and a stage at one end, much like Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City and the building once known as the Baltimore Civic Center.

Built in 1931, it was demolished in 2005 to make way for the Perelman Center for Advanced Medicine. an addition to the University of Pennsylvania Hospital. 34th Street & Civic Center Boulevard. Same stop as the Palestra and Franklin Field, which are a block away.

* Site of Philadelphia Arena. Built in 1920, this was the first home of the NBA's Warriors from 1946 to 1952, and site of some 76ers home games as well. It seated only 6,500 at its peak, so the Civic Center and later the Spectrum were preferable.

The Arena made its name hosting college hockey: Penn playing there was understandable, but, at the time, Princeton and even faraway Yale did not have their own rinks, and used the Arena as home ice.

The worst team in NHL history played there: The 1930-31 Philadelphia Quakers. After 5 seasons as the Pittsburgh Pirates, they clowned their way to a record of 4 wins, 40 losses and 4 ties, making them about as bad as the worst team in NBA history, the 1972-73 76ers (9-73). They were strapped during this 2nd indoor sports season of the Great Depression, and went out of business thereafter. Although several minor-league teams would play at the Arena -- the Arrows, the Comets, the Ramblers, the Falcons and the Rockets -- it would not be until 1967, with the opening of the Spectrum and the beginning of the Flyers, that Philly would have another NHL team.

Baseball pitcher-turned-evangelist Billy Sunday delivered sermons there in the 1920s,, and Charles Lindbergh used it for an America First speech in 1940. Early in his career, Elvis sang at the Arena on back-to-back days, doing 2 shows each on April 5 and 6, 1957.

Philly's ABC affiliate, Channel 6, formerly WFIL and now WPVI, built its studio next-door. It still stands. The Arena does not: It caught fire on August 24, 1983, and had to be demolished. A housing project is on the site today. 4530 Market Street. Market Street Line to 46th Street.

* Talen Energy Stadium. Built in 2010 for the expansion Philadelphia Union of Major League Soccer, and named PPL Park until last year when PPL was bought by Talen Energy, it seats 18,500 people, on the bank of the Delaware River in Chester, under the Commodore Barry Bridge (U.S. Route 222), linking it with Gloucester County, New Jersey.

The main supporters' section is called the River End, and is home to The Sons of Ben. The group named themselves after Benjamin Franklin, and they created an alternate logo for the team, showing a skull, with a Liberty Bell-style crack in it, wearing Franklin's hairstyle and bifocals, on a kite-shaped background. Of course, fans of the rival New York Red Bulls and D.C. United tend to call them The Daughters of Betsy -- after Ross. The U.S. national team played Colombia there on October 12, 2010, but lost.

1 Stadium Drive, in Chester. SEPTA Wilmington/Newark Line train to the Chester Transportation Center, then shuttle buses leaving every 20 minutes will take you to the stadium. If you're only going for a visit, not a game when there would be plenty of police protection, do not visit at night: Chester can be a dangerous city.

* Site of Frankford Stadium. Philadelphia's 1st pro football team was the Frankford Yellow Jackets, who played at Frankford Stadium in Northeast Philly from 1924 to 1930, winning the 1926 NFL Championship, before a fire on the eve of the 1931 season forced them into Baker Bowl and then into folding.

The stadium was on a plot bounded by Frankford Avenue, Devereaux Avenue, Hawthorne Street and Benner Street. An AutoZone (at 6137 Frankford) and rowhouses are on the site now. Market-Frankford Line to Frankford Transportation Center, then transfer to SEPTA Bus 66 Frankford & Harbison Avenues.

In addition to the Yellow Jackets, another ill-fated team played in Eastern Pennsylvania in the NFL's early days. The Pottsville Maroons played at the 5,000-seat Minersville Park, at the intersection of Sunbury Road and Prison Road, 106 miles northwest of Philly, from 1920 to 1928. They claimed the 1925 NFL Championship, but may have been "robbed" of the title.

* Site of Broadwood Hotel. From 1924 to 1991, this hotel stood at the intersection of Broad and Wood Streets, just north of Center City. From 1924 to 1946, its ballroom was the home of the Philadelphia SPHAs -- a basketball team run by the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, even though it wasn't in South Philly. This team would evolve into the Warriors. A parking deck for Hahnemann University Hospital is on the site now. Broad Street Line to Race-Vine.

* Site of Cherry Hill Arena. Before the Devils, the 1st hockey team with major league pretensions to call New Jersey home was actually in South Jersey. In the 1973-74 World Hockey Association season, the former New York Raiders set up shop at the Cherry Hill Arena in Bergen County, and renamed themselves the Jersey Knights.

The building went up in 1959 as the Ice House, and was later renamed the Delaware Valley Gardens before assuming its most familiar name, but no one was confusing it with Madison Square Garden (old or new), the Boston Garden or Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. Sports Illustrated called it "perhaps the worst facility" used by any WHA team, noting that it lacked showers in the dressing room for visiting teams, who had to dress at a Holiday Inn 2 miles away, and that the ice surface was not even level, giving the home team a distinct advantage, as, 2 periods out of every 3, the visitors would have to skate uphill to the opponent's goal.

The Eastern Hockey League placed 2 teams there: The Jersey Larks in 1960-61, and the Jersey Devils (the 1st pro hockey team with the name) from 1964 until 1973, when the arrival of the Knights forced their move. The Philadelphia Warriors played an occasional "home game" there.

The Knights left for San Diego after the 1973-74 season. In 1978, the Arena was renamed The Centrum, and the Northeastern Hockey League placed the Jersey Aces there, but they only lasted a few games. The Arena was demolished in 1981. 

The site is now a parking lot for a shopping center that includes a Burger King and a Retro Fitness. 1447 Brace Road, at Haddonfield-Berlin Road. Not easy to reach by public transit: PATCO train to Haddonfield, then almost a half-hour walk.

* Temple University. Straddling the border between Center City and the mostly-black North Philadelphia ghetto, Temple has given thousands of poor urban kids a chance to make something of themselves, including comedian Bill Cosby, who ran track for the school, including in the Penn Relays at Franklin Field.

Temple now plays basketball at the Liacouras Center, at 1776 N. Broad Street, across from its former arena, McGonigle Hall, at 1800. Broad Street Line to Cecil B. Moore station.

The Owls have played football at the South Philly complex since 1978, first at The Vet and now at the Linc. From 1928 to 1977, they played at Temple Stadium, a 20,000-seat facility on the city's northern edge. On September 25, 1968, the U.S. soccer team played Israel to a draw there. It was demolished in 1996, and, like Shibe Park/Connie Mack Stadium, the site is now home to a church. 2800 Pickering Avenue at Vernon Road. Broad Street Line to Olney Transportation Center, then transfer to the Number 18 bus toward Cedarbook Mall.

* LaSalle University. All of Philly's Big 5 basketball universities are private; unlike Penn and Temple, La Salle, St. Joe's and 'Nova are Catholic. LaSalle is in the northernmost reaches of the city, its bookstore at 1900 W. Olney Avenue, and the Explorers' new Tom Gola Arena, named for their late 1950s superstar and 1960s coach, and 2100 W. Olney. Broad Street Line to Olney Transportation Center.

* St. Joseph's University. St. Joe's straddles the western edge of the city, on a hill bisected by City Line Avenue. They are known for their Hawk mascot flapping his wings throughout the game, never stopping, thus leading to the chant, "The Hawk will never die!" This, of course, leads their Big 5 opponents to chant, "The Hawk must die!" and, if victorious, "The Hawk is dead!"

Their fieldhouse, now named the Michael J. Hagan Arena, is at 2450 N. 54th Street, and features a plaque commemorating a 1967 speech delivered there by Martin Luther King. Number 44 bus from Center City.

* Villanova University. The Wildcats just won their 2nd National Championship, defeating North Carolina in a thriller in Houston, 31 years after their even more amazing upset of Georgetown in Lexington, Kentucky.

Famously (well, famous within the Philadelphia area, anyway), they played a Big 5 game against St. Joe's at the Palestra a few years back, having beaten each of the other Big 5 schools, and, pulling away, their fans chanted, "We own Philly!" The St. Joe's fans, no fools, reminded them of their location, in the town of Villanova, 18 miles northwest of Center City: "You ain't Philly!"

Jake Nevin Field House, their home at the time of their 1985 National Championship, and The Pavilion, which that success allowed them to build, are next to each other, along with their bookstore, at 800 E. Lancaster Avenue. They also have a 12,500-seat stadium for their Division I-AA football team. SEPTA Lansdale/Doylestown Line to Villanova Station.

Of the Big 5, only Temple plays Division I-A football: Temple, 'Nova and LaSalle play I-AA, and while St. Joseph's Prep has one of the better programs in Philly-area high school football, their collegiate namesake doesn't play football at all.

* Spike's Trophies. When the Philadelphia Athletics Historical Society closed its facility in the northern suburb of Hatboro, they moved their operations, and the plaques honoring A's greats that used to be on the concourse wall at the Vet, to this store near Northeast Philadelphia Airport. 2701 Grant Avenue at Ashton Road. Market-Frankford Line to Frankford Transportation Center, then transfer to Number 50 Bus.

* Laurel Hill Cemetery. This is the final resting place of former Phillies manager Harry Wright, who founded the 1st professional team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, in 1869; and of longtime broadcaster Harry Kalas. 215 Belmont Avenue in Bala Cynwyd, not far from the St. Joe's campus. Use the Number 44 bus to get to both.

* Gladwyne Methodist Church. Kalas' longtime broadcast partner, the Hall of Fame center fielder Richie "Whitey" Ashburn, is laid to rest here. 316 Righters Mill Road in Gladwyne. The Number 44 bus can also be used for this.

* Holy Sepulchre Cemetery. This is the final resting place of Connie Mack. 3301 W. Cheltenham Avenue. Broad Street Line to Olney Transportation Center, then Number 22 bus.

Philadelphia is home to Independence National Historic Park, including Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell. The Visitor's Center is at 6th & Market Streets: At this complex, there will be people there to advise you on what to do. 5th Street on the Market Street Line.

The President's House -- that's as formal a name as it had -- was where George Washington (1790-97) and John Adams (1797-1800) lived while Philadelphia was the national capital before Washington, D.C.. It was demolished in 1832. When digging to build the new Liberty Bell Center, the house's foundation was found, and somebody must've asked, "Why didn't anybody think of this before?" So, an exhibit has been set up, at 530 Market Street at 6th. The new Liberty Bell Center is between it and Independence Hall (Chestnut Street between 5th and 6th). Be advised that since 9/11 -- and since the movie National Treasure -- they're understandably a bit finicky about security there.

The oldest surviving Presidential residence (chosen specifically for the President, not counting homes like Mount Vernon or Monticello) is the Germantown White House, which still stands at 5442 Germantown Avenue. George Washington and John Adams used it to escape the heat and, more importantly, the yellow fever epidemics of what's now Center City Philadelphia, making it less "the first Summer White House" and more "the first Camp David." SEPTA Chestnut Hill West Line to Germantown, then 3 blocks down Armat Street and a left on Germantown Avenue. Definitely not safe at night.

Speaking of George Washington, Valley Forge National Historical Park is just an hour's bus ride from Suburban Station. On JFK Blvd. at 17th Street, board the SEPTA 125 bus. Valley Forge Casino Resort and the King of Prussia Mall are a short drive (or a moderate walk) away. The fare is $4.75 each way ($9.50 total).

Only one President has ever come from Pennsylvania, and he might be the worst one of all: James Buchanan, whose Administration began with the Panic of 1857 and ended with the secession of several Southern States. (Whether Buchanan was gay has been debated since even before he became President, but the evidence is flimsy.) His home, Wheatland, still stands at 1120 Marietta Avenue in Lancaster, and he's buried about a mile away in Greenwood Cemetery. But Lancaster, the heart of "Pennsylvania Dutch Country," is 80 miles west of Philly. It's a cheap trip by Amtrak standards, but unless you've always wanted to visit the area, or you're a big history buff, I'd suggest forgetting about it if you're pressed for time.

The Musical Fund Hall hosted the 1st Republican National Convention in 1856, nominating John C. Fremont for President. (He lost to Buchanan.) It was one of many historical meetings at this building, which has stood since 1824. 808 Locust Street, Center City. The Academy of Music hosted their 1872 Convention, renominating President Ulysses S. Grant. It opened in 1857, and hosted the Philadelphia Orchestra from 1900 to 2001, when the Kimmel Center opened across Locust Street. 240 S. Broad Street, Center City.

And the Walnut Street Theatre, which opened in 1809 and is the oldest continuously operating theater in America, hosted the 1st Presidential Debate of the 1976 campaign, between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. 825 Walnut Street, Center City.

Philadelphia's answer to the Museum of Natural History is the University of Pennsylvania Museum, at 33rd & South Streets, across from Franklin Field. (Same trolley stop.) Their answer to the Hayden Planetarium -- and a better one -- is the Franklin Institute, which is also the national memorial to Big Ben, the man who, more than any man made any city in the Western Hemisphere, made Philadelphia. 20th Street & Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Number 76 bus. 76, get it? The bus is nicknamed "The Ben FrankLine."

At the other end of the Parkway, at 25th and Spring Garden Streets, is Philly's answer to the Metropolitan, the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The Rocky Balboa statue is here, and it doesn't cost anything except sweat to run up the steps.

The chocolate city of Hershey, Pennsylvania is 95 miles west of Center City, and only 15 miles east of the State Capitol in Harrisburg. The smell of chocolate wafts over the city, and is the source of the nickname "The Sweetest Place On Earth." Amtrak goes from 30th Street station to Harrisburg and nearby Middletown (the home of the infamous Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, which is still in operation and hasn't had an incident since the one in 1979), but if you want to go to any prominent place in Hersey, you'll have to rely on local bus service.

There are 4 prominent places in Hershey. There's the Hershey's chocolate factory. There's Hersheypark amusement park. There's Hersheypark Stadium is a 15,641-seat high school football stadium, opened in 1939. On May 9, 1990, the U.S. soccer team beat Poland there. Most notably, Hersheypark Arena, formerly Hershey Sports Arena, which now seats 7,286 people. The Warriors and 76ers played a few home games here, including the March 2, 1962 contest between the Warriors and the Knicks, when Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points.

The minor-league Hershey Bears used it from its opening in 1936 until 2002, when the 10,500-seat Giant Center opened next-door. It still hosts college hockey and concerts. Appropriately, the address of the Arena is 100 W. Hershey Park Drive.

No college football rivalry has been played more than Lafayette College and Lehigh University, separated by 17 miles of U.S. Route 22 in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Lafayette is in Easton, 69 miles north of Center City; Lehigh is in Bethlehem, 56 miles north. On occasion, they've played each other twice and, during World War II, even 3 times a season. Now, they limit themselves to 1. In 2014, on the occasion of their 150th meeting, they played each other at the new Yankee Stadium, with Lafayette winning. Lehigh won last year, but Lafayette leads the series, 78-68-5.

Lehigh's Goodman Stadium hosted a U.S. soccer game on October 23, 1993, a draw vs. Ukraine -- although I doubt too many people in the Delaware Valley were paying attention, as that was the day of Game 6 of the World Series, which the Phillies lost to the Toronto Blue Jays on the Joe Carter home run.

Believe it or not, it's easier to reach both Easton and Bethlehem without a car from New York than it is from Philadelphia: Transbridge Lines runs buses from Port Authority into the Lehigh Valley, and Susquehanna Trailways runs them from Philly's Greyhound Terminal at 1001 N. Filbert Street, across from the Market East Station.

Not surprisingly for a city of its size, Philadelphia has had a few TV shows set there, but not many actually filmed there. Boy Meets World was filmed entirely at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. (Its sequel series, Girl Meets World, featuring Cory & Topanga Matthews and their kids, is set in New York.) Neither does It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia film in Philly -- and it is not always sunny there. Nor did Thirtysomething film there. Nor did Body of Proof. And, being a cartoon, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids didn't have to "film" anywhere.

The 1960s flashback series American Dreams did some filming under the Market Street Elevated Line, but most of it was filmed in L.A. The films Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Story and The Philadelphia Experiment had a few Philly locations put in, but all filming was done in Southern California. For chronological reasons, the film version of the musical 1776 couldn't be filmed on the streets of Philadelphia, or even inside Independence Hall -- although National Treasure used the Hall, and the Franklin Institute, and the Reading Terminal Market.

Probably the best-known film set in the city is Trading Places -- except a lot of it was filmed in and around New York! The New York Chamber of Commerce Building (65 Liberty Street) and the Seventh Regiment Armory (643 Park Avenue) stood in for the Heritage Club. Mill Neck Manor for the Deaf on Long Island stood in for the Duke Brothers' estate. And, of course, the climactic scene was set at the New York Mercantile Exchange, at 4 World Trade Center, which was at destroyed in the 9/11 attacks. Locations in the film that were absolutely in Philly were: 30th Street Station; Duke & Duke, at Fidelity Bank at 135 S. Broad Street, 2 blocks south of City Hall; and Lewis Winthorpe's residence, with exterior shots at 2014 Delancey Place at 20th Street, near Rittenhouse Square, which is where Eddie Murphy pretended to be a blind, legless Vietnam veteran. (This is a private residence: Walk down there if you like, but leave the residents alone.)

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So, to sum up, I would definitely recommend to any Devils fan to follow their team to nearby Philadelphia. But be warned: These are Flyer fans. Stay safe, and good luck. (To the team, too.)