Green Lane

Residents of Green Lane in Primos call it "Millionaires Lane," although no one is quite sure why. They have made one thing clear to the Upper Darby Zoning Hearing Board, however: They do not want to see a new house go up on their block. Nearly a dozen residents of the street appeared before the board Thursday night to oppose the granting of variances that would clear the way for the construction of a two-story Colonial house on one of the last undeveloped plots of land on the street.

Under pressure from a Manayunk community group and City Councilman Michael Nutter, the Rendell administration last night announced steps to reduce traffic dangers on Green Lane in that neighborhood. Streets Commissioner Lawrence Moy said the city would ban trucks, except for local deliveries, from Green Lane as it runs northwest from Main Street in Manayunk. Moy also said the department would install stop signs at St. David's Street and would change parking patterns at Green Lane and Baker Street to see if that reduces the number of accidents.

Before coal was king, it was charcoal that fueled the furnaces and forges of colonial Pennsylvania's burgeoning ironmaking industry. A number of those charcoal ironworks were along the banks of the Perkiomen Creek in Montgomery County. For 140 years, from 1730 to 1870, they produced high-grade pig iron and bar iron for the local and Philadelphia markets. "The Perkiomen area had all the necessary resources needed to establish ironmaking works - iron ore and limestone deposits, water power, and abundant wood to produce charcoal," said Frank Hebblethwaite, site historian at the Hopewell Furnace Historical Site in Elverson.

In the early part of the 20th century, Ann J. Allebach became the first woman to be ordained a Mennonite minister. She brought to her calling the Mennonite tradition of education and social work, but her achievements were outside her native area. After Allebach's death, the local Mennonite community "did not quite know what to make of this woman so unlike her kind. " The files of the Mennonite Heritage Center in Harleysville report that Allebach was born in Green Lane in 1874 to Jacob and Sarah Markley Allebach.

Residents interested in the Ridge Avenue commercial corridor are invited to attend a public meeting at 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Green Lane United Methodist Church, 470 Green Lane, just off Ridge Avenue in Roxborough.

Boy Scouts at Space Camp in Green Lane, Montgomery County, watch a plane drop eggs they packaged to keep them intact as part of a NASA-designed experiment. The eggs came out OK after the 800-foot drop. The Space Camp is funded by Peco Energy Co. and administered by Pennsylvania State University.

The size of a road could be the deciding factor in a plan before officials in Charlestown Township, and neighboring residents are insisting the smaller the better. At a meeting Tuesday, the Planning Commission gave tentative approval to a plan by owners David Hitz, William Banks, Carl Lillmars and Jeremiah Madeiros for the subdivision of an 83-acre tract. The owners each plan to build one house on four of 13 proposed lots. The tract is in the northern section of the township and is bordered by Foster Road, Bodine Road and Green Lane.

The Upper Darby Zoning Hearing Board has postponed a decision on a request by a Green Lane couple who wish to build a rear addition on their house. Albert and Angela Tilli asked the zoning board Thursday if they could build a 15-by-35-foot addition at 1010 Green Lane. The couple said they needed to enlarge a bedroom and a kitchen and build a den. The couple said they were both injured in a 1984 auto accident, when a car hit them as they were crossing a street. Due to their injuries, they testified, they had difficulty climbing stairs to the second floor of their house.

Artist Ellen G. Haham (right) of New York helps Karen Turney adjust a hat at the fifth annual arts festival along Main Street between Green Lane and Shurs Lane yesterday. The warm weather brought shoppers out to the city's Manayunk section in droves and they selected from furniture, clay, paintings, glass, clothing, jewelry and more. Jazz musicians also kept the fifth annual, two-day festival lively.

Portions of Forbidden Drive and parallel paths that run under the Walnut Lane Bridge will remain closed until at least next week because concrete is falling from the span, city officials said. A recent inspection found that architectural concrete was falling from the bridge. Cars can still cross the bridge because the Streets Department did not find any immediately dangerous structural problems. City officials plan to inspect the bridge again next week to determine how long the closure will last.

Good thing the game wasn't as much of an uphill battle as the journey. For Roman Catholic High's football players, getting thrown for one loop a day is more than enough. Coach Joe McCourt had one of those uh-oh feelings when the driver of the Cahillites' team bus told him beforehand that something was wrong with the vehicle and that 30 mph would be the top achievable speed from downtown to Chestnut Hill Academy. Red signs with big, white letters mean stop. Sometimes, so do inferior buses.

Antiques/Art/Crafts 10th Anniversary Glass Now Auction Cocktail reception, five-course dinner & live auction. Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, 1201 Market St.; 215-925-2800. www.libertymuseum.org . $200. 10/3. 5 pm. 18th Annual Bucket Auction Fund-raiser Hosted by the Animal Welfare Association. Washington Township High School, Hurffville-Cross Keys Rd., Sewell. www.awabucketauction.org . $10 includes 25 initial bidding tickets. 10/3. 6 pm. Cape May Designer Show House Tours of this newly remodeled historic home.

James M. McHugh, 74, a Philadelphia police officer so at ease with the people he protected in the Third District that he was welcome to make his own cheesesteaks at Pat's, died of Alzheimer's disease Sunday at home in Roxborough. Mr. McHugh grew up in Swampoodle, where he played football, basketball, baseball, and golf. He left Northeast High School before graduation to apprentice with an auto mechanic. He was drafted by the Army in 1956 and married Annamarie Smith the next year before shipping out to Karlsruhe, West Germany, where he made camouflage smoke with the 51st Chemical Company.

Ahman Fralin was 18, two months from his diploma at Harry S Truman High School in Bristol Township, and headed to college on a full scholarship. "The sky was the limit," said David Zellis, Bucks County's first assistant district attorney. Kendell Cottrell, 22, is a drug-dealing, police-assaulting, state-incarcerated father of six, a man so depraved, authorities say, that he fired into a car full of high school students because another driver accidentally tapped the bumper of the car he was in. "The contrast is stunning," Zellis said.

It couldn't have been a coincidence, author and spiritualist Stephen Redding says. At various times run over by a tractor, frozen in a blizzard, swarmed by bees, and thrown through a windshield in a car crash that killed his brother, Redding said, he survived. Each time he was in danger, unseen forces protected him, Redding believes. His mother, the late Virginia Bly Redding, a holistic healer, warned that someday he would speak about his "edge experiences" in public. Now he has. Redding, 61, published the slim book, Something More, in 2005, giving his take on the supernatural.

The concept cars, the hybrids, the Hummers, the ultra-luxury vehicles, the ubiquitous SUVs and minivans all got their due. But the car that seemed to truly capture the imagination yesterday at the Philadelphia International Auto Show was the itty-bitty Smart Fortwo, which has been available in the United States for less than a month. "Is this the line to sit in it?" asked Robin Emrick of Bensalem. There was no line, just a steady throng of people three deep milling around the two-seater, photographing it, marveling at it, lifting its hatchback, and sitting in it, in some cases, rather snugly.

A 57-year-old Roxborough woman was hit by a city sanitation truck and fatally injured as she attempted to cross the street at Ridge Avenue and Green Lane early yesterday afternoon, police said. The woman, identified as Marie Gross of the 300 block of Gates Street, was crossing the intersection near her home when she was hit. Her hands were reportedly loaded with packages when she began to cross, west to east, near a bus stop and a bank. The truck, southbound on Ridge Avenue, hit and knocked her over its front wheels, severing one leg and almost cutting off the other.

DURING THE summer of 1980, right after my freshman year of college, I worked as a counselor at Green Lane, an overnight camp in suburban Philadelphia. A week before it opened, Green Lane hosted a football camp associated with Ron Jaworski, the Eagles quarterback. Counselors were given an option of working at the football camp to perform odd jobs, like selling candy at the canteen. Since I was a fanatic Eagles fan with time to kill, I agreed. The week was a sports fantasy come true.

Blue skies, world-ranked athletes and 350,000 fans are expected to be on hand this weekend for the Commerce Bank Philadelphia International Championship bicycle race, a challenge of men, women and machines now in its 23d year. About 300 racers will compete tomorrow on a course that runs from the Benjamin Franklin Parkway through Fairmount Park to Roxborough, up the Manayunk "wall" and back again for 10 laps (men) and four laps (women). The women's course is 56.7 miles; the men's, 156. Top-finishing men share $59,000 in prize money; top women share $26,000.