I could not find a picture of Mr. Bell but here is one of a downtown H and H cafeteria where he might have worked. When this photo is taken Mr. Bell would be toward the end of his employment life.
Mr. Bell
(1896-1989) who lived in Lower North Philly
“Christ emptied himself and
took the form of a slave, being born in the likeness of humanity.” (Phil 2.7)
I visited Bell at his apartment in the first years that I served at Church of
the Gesu. He was a simple, lovely man
who seemed alone without any friends or family, his wife having died. He had grown up in the Carolinas and
certainly his grandparents would have been born as slaves. He came to Philadelphia when he was a young
man and worked at one of the Horn and Hardart Automats downtown. He would take the trolley car there and still when I met him at about age ninety he missed being able to work. During each visit he would
relate short tales about his life and often used the phrase “everything is
nice.”
On a Christmas
Day, he said, in Smithfield
He threw a ball
over the roof of his uncle’s house.
The dog ran all
the way around behind that house
And brought that
ball back.
In Philadelphia he
cut apple pies
And set them in
the glass cupboards in the automat,
The faces of the
hungry seen only in pieces
Through the many
windowed wall.
“Everything is
nice,” he always said
Except that funny
pain in the back
Felt when waiting
for the car at the corner of 21st Street.
He and the pain
were precise.
He used to get up
at night and soak his feet;
His wife would
call in the dark from the bedroom.
“Bell, what are
you doin’ in the kitchen?”
She didn’t like
him soakin’ his feet.
At last he put
aside the cares of life
He heard the
mystic chant that “all is well.”
But still I hear
his dying aspirations
"Everything is nice!" for Mr. Bell
