Memoirist Tom McAllister Comes Home

Roxborough native Tom McAllister will do a reading and sign copies of his memoir, Bury Me in My Jersey: A Memoir of My Father, Football, and Philly, Saturday at 2 p.m. at in Manayunk.

"It’s always exciting to find out about the talents of our local authors, and we are happy to promote their work through special events at our bookstore," said Spiral Bookcase owner Ann Tetreault.

"[And] the memoir is a great read. Eagles fans will appreciate Tom's anecdotes about being a die-hard fan, and all readers will appreciate his honest portrayal of dealing, and not dealing, with the loss of his father."

McAllister (profiled in January), a graduate of the University of Iowa Writers Workshop and English lecturer at Temple who grew up on the 300 block of Hermitage Street, wrote the book as a homage to his late-father. Joe McAllister passed away from complications of cancer in 2003, but not before passing on to his son an abiding, and sometimes problematically intense, passion for the Philadelphia Eagles.

Case in point (from an excerpt of "Bury Me" reprinted in the Philadelphia Inquirer):

I once told a friend, while drinking, that although I didn’t cry when my dad died, I would cry if the Eagles won the Super Bowl. This was partly a lie: Of course I cried when my dad died. But it’s also partly true: Not only would I cry if the Eagles won the Super Bowl, but I’m pretty sure I would cry more about the win than I did about the death.

His father introduced in him a passion not only for football, but for the written word. He was his first, and most valued, reader.

"[When I was a kid] I would write these really bad short stories and show them to my Dad," McAllister told Patch in January. And Joe McAllister, a discerning reader who had "books all over the house" always read them.

"One of the first things I thought of [when the book got published] is, before anyone else thought I was gonna write a book, he and my mom thought I was gonna write a book."

While "the book" has sold reasonably well, McAllister concedes it will probably never be a best-seller. For him though, that's not really the point.

"I get at least an email a week from someone who has read the book, usually an Eagles fan, telling me they really enjoyed it. And that's really gratifying," he said.

So, he expects, will be the experience of doing a reading in the town where so much of it was born. Though most of his family has since left Manayunk, the area is rich with personal history.

"The Spiral Bookcase is on the same street where my mom grew up, and where her mom lived until she died, and so the fun part about coming home is that no matter where you go or what you're doing, you're just surrounded by memories; every building tells a story, and you're a part of it."