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TOUR GUIDE: JUDY
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When I called Judy Becker at 8 a.m., she said she wasn't feeling well, but she'd take me around Philly for a little while anyway. She asked me what I wanted to do.
"I'm up for anything," I blurted out even though my brain thought otherwise.
C'mon, I thought. This woman is 69 years old. She's even sick today. How strenuous can this be?
I met Judy at the Rocky statue at 9:30 a.m. I finally left her at 8:30 that night. I was with this woman for 11 hours, and if I had to guess, I'd say she talked for 10 ½.
It's not like this should have been a surprise. Judy has to be one of the most traveled women on Earth and a couch surfer before the craze even existed. She's been around the world three times since 1962, stopping off at 112 different countries. She's been a few feet from John F. Kennedy and met Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya. She helped stage a sit-in in Maryland, saw the Vietnam War (not on TV, in real life), and stayed at a hippie house in Australia ("That was interesting," she said) She's been stoned off of a single joint for three days in Afghanistan, jumped out of the window of a truck after having a machete pulled on her in Columbia, and been propositioned more times than a ten-dollar hooker. In Japan, she was known as "The Girl Who is Hitch-hiking Around the World," and in Africa, she was "The Doll Lady."
What's more, Judy knew as much about Philadelphia as any tour guide in the city. For exactly zero dollars Judy took me to Quaker meeting houses, Christ Church, Elfreth's Alley, Betsy Ross's house, the frame of Ben Franklin's house, Franklin's Printing Press, Independence Hall, the Liberty Bell and nearly every other historical site in downtown Philly.
In each place, it seemed Judy knew just as much as the guide who was talking to us. So I had to ask her if she gets bored with the tours.
"No, I don't get bored," she said, laughing. "For one thing, I forget a lot. So sometimes I learn again and again."
By dusk, we had made our way to her house in a suburb of Philadelphia, near the Germantown neighborhood. After she showed me an entire room devoted to artifacts from around the globe, I sat down on her couch for a second and announced I was exhausted. Judy just looked at me.
"I thought this morning you said you were up for anything?"
Night 2
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