The great coat-hanger debate

“Is this for real?” Linda asks.

We’re at Uncle Bill’s on Baltimore Pike in Lansdowne (I think), gathered around the kitchen table (a picnic-table).
My mother (or aunt Betty or someone) observes that the best way to be prepared for a fire is to orientate all your coat-hangers the same way, so ya can scoop up everything in one fell swoop.
Uncle Bill strides in, fresh from building the entire Ben Franklin bridge single-handed with only a toothpick. “That’s ridiculous!” he bellows. “Do that and you’re makin’ it easy for burglars. They should be alterated one after another so the burglar can’t empty your closet in one fell swoop.”
A noisy coat-hanger debate ensued; Uncle Bill pounding the table for emphasis.
I will never forget it as long as I live.

(Not long after that was the great meeting about what to do with Aunt Mary’s kids when she got put in the insane-asylum. That was when cousin-Denny and I successfully exploded a water-balloon in the back seat of an open Buick convertible on Wycombe Ave. We were on the top floor, and the driver beat on the front-door, but was sent packing by Uncle Bill.)

“Linda” is my wife.

“Lansdowne,” Pennsylvania, a western suburb of Philadelphia.

“Orientate” because years ago I passed a dry-cleaner with a sign out front that it “alterated” clothes. I was driving transit-bus for Regional Transit Service, the transit-bus operator in Rochester, N.Y. I did that for 16&1/2 years, until my stroke October 26, 1993.

RE: “Fresh from building the entire Ben Franklin bridge single-handed with only a toothpick.......” My Uncle-Bill loudly proclaimed he was capable of such greatness. The Ben Franklin bridge is a large suspension between Philadelphia and Camden, NJ. It opened in 1926, named the “Delaware River Bridge.” It was renamed the “Ben Franklin bridge” in 1956. When built it was the largest bridge of its kind. (My Uncle Bill also claimed he was the world’s largest leprechaun: about 250 pounds.)