Dispatches From Hellpeckersville- The Worst

Some schmo on an infotainment site named Hellpeckerville one of the worst suburbs of Philadephia in which to live. Now, he’s never been here, or to any of the other nine towns he named, four of which probably deserve to be on his list, but what the hell, buddy? What the hell is some dude from Pittsburgh (I assume this, due to his use of the word “yinz”) doing rating my town?

Population: 6,894
Crime Index: 59
Median Income: $59,340

This north Philadelphia ‘burb ranks in the bottom six in two categories: income and schools. In fact, the only category where Hellpeckersville didn’t rank in the bottom 10 in was crime.

So, at least, you’re relatively safe here. For some people, that’s the most important part.

He says our schools are not good, but on what he’s basing that, I cannot guess. People move here for the schools, we have a 96% graduation rate, they’re well equipped, have all kinds of extracurricular activities and such, so I think the only metric he used was the teacher to student ratio. Yeah, we have large-ish class sizes, guess why? People keep moving here. A lot of them move here for the schools. We have an excellent special education program, my kid is in it. Have I had to go fight with them a couple of times? Sure, but you’d have that anywhere.

The only other bad thing, the thing that makes us one of the ten worst? Income. Do we as a town not make enough, or does that mean that there’re no jobs here in town? Well, there were never that many. At the turn of the twentieth century, there were cigar factories, but they died out. This was always a bedroom community with people driving out to route 309 and or “down the pike” to work. Is a town stuffed full of factories suddenly a desirable thing? Huh. I had been led to believe that tree-lined, picturesque streets were somewhat of an American ideal, we have those out the wazoo.

Quaint, historical buildings, friendly, small-town living, five-minute drive to grocery, fast food, hardware, library, post office, nightmarish, I tell you. It’s a hellhole that nobody should want to live in, that’s why, over the years, surrounding farms have disappeared, and development after development has sprung up in their place. Many people commuting to work in the place the Pittsburgh dude named as the best to live in…lol. There’s a development going up on the site of the old high school right now. I don’t imagine it will sit empty.

The only downside to living in Hellpeckerville for me is it’s a tiny red dot in blue Montgomery county. My oldest kid is surrounded by his share of climate change denialists, and people who would rather feel their beliefs than believe any facts. My job is to supply him with the social graces to navigate the interaction with the parents of his peers, with his integrity and his friendships intact. So, all-in-all this isn’t a bad thing, that’s a life skill that should come in handy down the line.

So, dude, who uses the word “yinz,” go piss around a pretzel. Didn’t anybody ever tell you to write what you know? You’ve obviously never been to any of the towns on your list, never been to several towns that should have made that list if you knew the first thing about this area, and clearly if you’ve ever been to this part of the state, you are now suffering from some sort of amnesia. Write what you know, and you don’t know jackshit about my town.