I tell this story on the day Peter Boyle, who died Tuesday at age 71, will be buried in New York. Everbody loved Peter Boyle, the devout Catholic schoolboy from St. Francis DeSales parish in West Philadelphia, who grew up to shun life as a monk in order to become Young Frankinstein's monster plus an assortment of thugs, psychos, racists, gangsters and curmudgeons in an acting career that made him the most famous Peter Boyle in the world outside of Philadelphia.

In his hometown, however, he would remain the second most famous Peter Boyle, behind his father "Uncle Pete" or "Chuckwagon Pete" Boyle, the Channel 10 kiddie show host who introduced a generation of Baby Boomers to Spanky, Alfalfa and the rest of Our Gang. And second-most-famous status was just fine with Uncle's Pete's son who portrayed the irascible father on Everybody's Loves Raymond. "I was in an airport somewhere when Daryl Hall of the band Hall and Oates came up to me and told me how much he enjoyed watching my dad's show when he was a kid," Peter Boyle told me as I drove him around the old neighborhood one March afternoon in 1993.

At the time Peter Boyle was in town shooting a pilot for a dramatic series about Philadelphia fire fighters to be called Philly Heat. The series never got picked up despite an A-list of talent, including Boyle, co-stars Julianne Margolies and Mary Mara (ER), Ving Rhames (Pulp Fiction) and producer-writer Tom Fontana (St. Elsewhere, Homicide. Oz).

I had met Boyle a couple of nights earlier at Dirty Frank's bar in Center City where he was visiting his former roommate, Jay McConnell, in their old college watering hole, which McConnell now owns. I offered to take Boyle on a tour of West Philly, to show him what had changed. And what hadn't. I picked him up at the Philly Heat set, the former Philadelphia Fire Department Engine Co. 65 at 54th and Haverford Ave., just around the corner from where "Uncle Pete" Boyle grew up. As we drove to take a look at the brick twin at 51st and Hazel St. where the younger Boyle grew up, I asked him what it was like being back home. He answered slowly, almost philosophically. "It's been very emotional, very enlightening, and I don't feel sad," he said.

Then I took him to my house. I wanted him to see what a West Philly home looked like in 1993 (and if truth be told, I wanted to take a picture of him standing in front of our house). I don't know why I thought he'd be interested, but I did. And he was. I showed him family photos and paintings by local artists that meant a lot to me, and in the middle of my tour of the downstairs, he stopped, looked around and smiled. "This is nice," Peter Boyle said. "You've got a life."

There was one more thing I wanted to show him just down the street from where we live, the sledding hill in Clark Park where any kid who grew up in West Philadelphia spent snowy winter days and nights. As we stood there Peter Boyle was dressed in character, wearing a faded blue Philadelphia Fire Department windbreaker when three pre-teen boys came walking up 45th Street bouncing a basketball. "Who do you like tonight?" Peter Boyle shouted to the boys. "Michigan!" answered the one bouncing the ball. "Awwww. . .!" said Boyle, pretending to disagree. Then the same kid said, "Hey, you're that guy from TV."

At that time and that place, never in a million years would I have made this bald middle-aged man as being a movie star. Peter Boyle just smiled. And the kids smiled back. They'd met the real deal homeboy and they knew it.