On Elfreth's Alley, a joyful reunion

40 years on the Alley.

That, in Rob Kettell's mind, was cause for a party. A reunion.

Of course, a true reunion of the residents of Elfreth's Alley - America's oldest residential street - would require a time machine to bring back the shipwrights, dressmakers, tailors, and cobblers and their families who lived and peddled their goods along the narrow street 300 years ago.

But Kettell would do his best.

He would try to track down as many old neighbors as he could and invite them to come back - to exchange memories about life on the Alley.

Life on a street where the everyday trappings of everyday life are history. Where neighbors are bound not only by neighborly affection but also by the uniqueness of living in a sort of museum - a wedge in the ever-encroaching vies of development where the past beckons. A place weighted with their memories and the memories of lives that had come long before theirs. Where every day, tourists and schoolchildren come to walk the cobblestones, to peek in the windows, and to sometimes ask: "Do real people actually live here?"

They do, of course, and for longer than almost anyone can remember, Kettell and his wife, Sue, both 72, have been two of them.

A wonderful idea, Sue agreed, about the party.

When they arrived on the Alley in August 1975, the Kettells had $200 budgeted for rent. They had been living in Southern California, where Rob grew up. He was heading to grad school at Penn for city planning. Sue, originally from North Jersey, was looking for a teaching job. They fell in love with Number 129, built in 1797.

Like a dollhouse, Sue thought. So cozy and quaint. It had nine rooms. It was $210 a month. They would make do.

Old City was a ghost town then, warehouses mostly. But life on the Alley was tight. When the construction of I-95 loomed, Rob and Sue threatened to lie down in the road with everyone else.

For the annual springtime Fete Day celebrations, when the block fully turns the clock back to colonial times, they happily dressed in their garb and offered tours. They got used to strangers pressing their faces against their living room windows. When their landlady asked if they could come up with a down payment after 12 years of renting, they quickly scraped one together.

And never regretted it.

This little street with its rich past is where their life came together. Their girls, Wynne and Meg, rode their Big Wheels over the cobblestones and through the cartways with all the other kids. Played hide and seek in the nooks near the old communal water pump. Learned to skate at "Flagpole Park" on the corner and splashed through the spraying water each spring when the firemen came to wash down the Alley.

Rob began keeping a scrapbook for all the thank-you notes Sue received from tourists and schoolkids, some addressed to the "Nice lady in 129."

"Here we are on this historic street and have a chance to tell the story and continue history," Sue said Monday, sitting with Rob in autumn light in their living room.

And in that way, the Kettells' history became part of the street's shared history. In that way, Rob found himself spending hours in front of his computer, tracking down old neighbors so he could invite them to the reunion.

For the party this past Saturday, Sue, a retired public schoolteacher, made name tags for everyone. Ninety people showed up.

There were the Williamses from 116. The Cresses from 112. Christina Lebak, the block babysitter, who grew up in 118, the one with the cannon pole out front, showed up with her husband and her own children, feeling as if she had never left and hugging Sue all night. Arnie Wolf made it all the way from California. Murl Barker and Ron Miller, who lived in 137 for 41 years - still the block record for at least another year - sent a nice note from Seattle.

Margie McCarthy Simon, 82, who lived as a child in the house where the Kettells now live, smiled when she saw the old claw-foot tub. Stories were told about old Aunt Minnie, who for so long sold sandwiches from her cart to tourists. And of the time Kathlyn and John Egan from 112 left their front door unlocked only to come home and find strangers milling around their living room, mistakenly thinking the whole block was a museum.

So many stories of the people who've made the Alley the Alley.

"No one wanted to leave," Sue Kettell said Monday. Many promised to try to make the block's annual Deck the Alley Christmas celebration this year, she added, standing with Rob on their front step.

Then a stranger politely interrupted.

"Excuse me, do you live here?" he asked.

"Yes, we do," Ron said and happily showed the visitors around the Alley.

mnewall@phillynews.com215-854-2759@MikeNewall