Day spent on Conshy Time

Beth Kephartis the author of 21 books, including "Love: A Philadelphia Affair"

We'd had a year of economic shifts. We were keeping things tight. Celebrating the art of the $4 meal, the significance of the handmade gift, the ingenuity that lies at the heart of an ever-crimping budget. When you have each other - and when those you love are well - the rest comes down to math. I've never been exceptionally good at math, but I am getting better.

That Saturday morning, we got in the car, drove north on the Blue Route, crossed the Matsonford Bridge, headed toward Washington Street, and parked.

Conshohocken.

How many years had we driven through this town, or stopped only for a meal or for a bag of cashews from Edwards-Freeman Nut Co.? How many times had I wondered what it would be like to walk the famous square mile, a place of conjunctions if ever there was one. Millennial apartments where factories once hummed. Easy dining on the street where General Lafayette and his 2,000 troops had hightailed. The castle-like edifices of soaring stone churches mixed up with the bric-a-brac of mid-19th-century architecture.

You can make a day of discovering a town just 18 minutes from your own. You can make a romance of it - he with his camera and me with mine. Get out, walk around, see what there is to see, zoom it in or out, courtesy of the telephoto lens.

We walked up and down the reclaimed stretch of the Schuylkill's edge. We wandered beneath the balconies of the Londonbury apartments, where bikes hung from ceiling hooks and chairs waited for warmer weather. We found our way behind the Riverwalk, where a kid sat waiting for the Conshohocken Rowing Center to open, and a child posed for his mother's photos, and a man suited up for a winter's row. We walked the slight downward slope to the river itself, where the thinnest traces of ice were melting with the winter sun and where, standing on a floating dock, you could actually feel the cool of the water.

We'd lose each other in the magnitude of it all, then find each other again. I stopped to watch the dog-park dogs, to listen to new renters, to talk to a man who has, he said, watched Conshohocken evolve over the course of 68 years. It was brown, he said. It went dark, he said. And now, he said, gesturing out toward the gleam of office buildings and the village of apartments, look at this.

Out past Washington Street, a SEPTA train pulled itself down the track. On the hill beyond, twins and rowhouses rose in waves. We headed now in that direction, climbed up to East First Avenue, then turned onto Fayette, toward the clock announcing Conshy time.

My husband with his camera and me with mine.

Despite the nip in the sunshine air, the people of Conshohocken were out. They were clustered in conversation, on their way to Tradestone Confections, stopping for pizza in the old Patriotic Order Sons of America building, where, in the windows above, Think Brownstone, the resident consultancy, floats a hopeful graphic cloud.

We watched, we walked, and then we headed back to 6 East First Ave., where I'd seen a simple sign promising a market-fresh café. We opened the door, set our cameras down, and ordered from Marcie Spampinato, who was, she told us, halfway through her first year as the café's proprietor, shake-maker, and cook. She was a lifelong Conshy resident, she said. She, too, had watched this square mile evolve. She'd seen her Conshy classmates determined to find a way to stay in the town of their childhoods and, in that determination, to help make this old town new.

Spampinato's dream - of a healthy-fare eatery - had culminated in this: chakra shakes named for their colors; parfaits built of homemade pumpkin and flaxseed granola, local maple yogurt, golden raisins, and fresh fruit; egg-white crustless quiche; harvest proteins. We chose the local deviled eggs with smashed avocado, cashews, and house-smoked salmon; the vegetable pita of roasted cauliflower, shaved brussels sprouts, and goat cheese; and the pulled cage-free barbecue chicken sandwich.

It was all (I exaggerate not) delicious.

We meandered after that - in and out, but mostly toward Spampinato's favorite spot in all of Conshy - Mary Wood Park, up on Fifth. We walked backstreets then stopped beside a gorgeous ruin - air between its beams, crumble in its eyebrow, jags in its glass. We could make it new, we said, discounting, in that instant, all math. We could make it ours.

Side by side, together, we stood, contemplating possibilities in a town just 18 minutes from our own.

Beth Kephart blogs at www.beth-kephart.blogspot.com.