A real mixed blessing of life in South Philly is that your neighbors know all of your business.  If you have an interesting enough life to have things to hide, this is definitely not the place for you.  Fortunately, I don’t have that interesting a life.

Case in point:  There have apparently been rumors that there was a safe hidden in our new home.  How do I know?  Because a Philly cop stopped around a couple of days ago to help me “relocate” some cars that were blocking the truck that comes to pick up the dumster.  As he was doing his thing, he looked up at me and said, “Hey, you know there’s a safe hidden in that house?” 

“Oh?” said I.  “How do you know?”

“I had to come ’round a few times and get people out of the house who had broken in to steal the safe.  I can show you where it is if you want.”

So, apparently not only did the former residents have a safe, but enough people knew about it to cause a flurry of attempted robberies a few years back.  For the record, I did find the location of said former safe and- for anyone with bright ideas- it was removed before we settled on the house