My best friend lived behind me in Goldenridge when we were both perhaps 6 or 7 years old. Jimmy’s father “Big Jim” was an electrician at Rohm and Haas, and often talked about his days growing up in North Carolina and how he as a boy spent a lot of time in the woods. There weren’t many forests around Levittown that we had access to, but as kids, the woods around Black Ditch Creek was a place where we spent a lot of time exploring, catching crayfish, and generally getting as muddy and dirty as boys can get. After hearing the stories of growing up in North Carolina, Jim and I pleaded with Big Jim to camp out over night in the woods like he used to when he was a kid. Finally on a Friday night in summer, after Big Jim got home from work, we trekked to the woods by the Black Ditch Creek. There in a clearing, the three of us camped. After much talk about the prospect for bears to be roaming in the woods, we slept – Jimmy and I both zipped all the way up in sleeping bags. We woke early when the morning was still grey and walked back to Jimmy’s house for breakfast. We remembered that little adventure of ours for a long time as we grew older.

The woods are still there. Although swaths were etched away by PECO’s expansion of the substation, the memory holds. Good night Jim.

Kevin Deeny

Originally published in the Levittown Leader.