A few years ago I received a press release about a new Italian restaurant that was scheduled to open on Mt. Pleasant Avenue. I called the owner, who said he would love to have something in the paper about the opening, and he gave me a specific date for the proposed opening. I told him I’d rather wait until the restaurant was actually open since there are often delays in planned restaurant openings.

As it turned out, the restaurant was not allowed to open until two months after the planned date due to electrical and refrigeration problems. I told the owner, “This is Philadelphia. Whom you know may be more important than what you know. If you knew somebody in City Hall, maybe you could have opened sooner.”

I proceeded to give him an example of my point: In 1971, my wife and I purchased a small twin townhouse in West Mt. Airy. In 1978, we decided to have my mother-in-law move in with us. She was suffering from emphysema at the time, was tethered to an oxygen machine and could no longer navigate the steps to her second floor apartment in Langhorne.

Because our house was so small, we decided to have an addition built onto the house, a one-person, self-contained apartment, where my mother-in-law would have complete privacy and everything she would need without having to move around much. We tried to get her to stop smoking because of her lung disease, but we were unsuccessful, and she died two years later at age 59.

We had a good friend at the time, the late Jay Lamont, host of “All About Real Estate” on WPEN-AM every Sunday from 1978 to 2009. He put us in touch with an architect, who drew up plans for the mother-in-law apartment, and a general contractor from Delaware who began to build the addition. Lamont also told us we had to inform the city of our plans, whereupon the city posted a notice in front of our house. Anyone walking in front of the house and seeing the sign had the right to complain to the city.

A few weeks later, we had a hearing before the Zoning Board of Adjustment in a building across the street from City Hall. We explained our plans, and a board member asked if there was anyone in the room who objected. To our shock and amazement, two women in the back of the room, whom we had never seen before, came forward, said they lived one block from us and they objected.

Their objection, they said, was that our neighborhood was zoned single-family residential and that our plan would produce a two-family dwelling. I replied that only one person would be moving in, my mother-in-law, not anther family. One of the objectors said, “Yes, but when she dies, you could rent her apartment out to another family, and that would make it a two-family dwelling.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “It’s a tiny one-person apartment. A family could not live there, even if we wanted to rent the place out, which we don’t.”

“I guess you do not know that in some parts of Philadelphia, a family with a whole bunch of children can live in a small apartment,” an objector said. “Half a dozen children could sleep on the floor or on a couch.”

At this point, a zoning board member said the board would consider everything that had been said, and they would report back to us with their decision in one or two weeks. After about 10 more days, we received a certified letter stating that the board rejected our plans and that we could not continue with construction, which had already been mostly finished. We had already spent more on the addition than our house had cost in 1971.

When we told Jay Lamont what had happened, he said, “That does not mean it is the end. You should visit your city councilman and explain everything. This is Philadelphia. Any decision can be overturned if the right people want to get involved and change it.”

So we called the office of our then-city councilman, Al Pearlman, who just happened to be then-Mayor Frank Rizzo’s best friend. We were told to come to Pearlman’s weekly Monday night session, in which constituents could come in with problems. When we did that, there were quite a few people in Pearlman’s Roxborough office, who were called up one by one to explain why they were there. Pearlman, seated behind a big desk, reminded me of Marlon Brando in “The Godfather,” dispensing favors like lollipops.

When it was our turn, we explained our problem. “Are you registered Democratic?” He said. “Yes,” we said. “I think I can fix this,” he said. “Someone on my staff will get back to you when there is something to report.”

About 10 days later, an aide to Pearlman called us. “Al went to the right office in City Hall,” the caller said, “and got the permits that will allow you to proceed. We will give you the documentation that you will need. In about a week, a person from the Department of Licenses and Inspections will come to your house. Show him the paperwork. He will probably come in to see the apartment. Make sure there is no stove in the apartment. There can be a big empty space where a stove would be. After he leaves, you can put a stove there. If he sees a stove, he could say that is a multi-family dwelling since you have another stove in your house.”

The L&I inspector did show up and walk into the apartment, where there was an empty space for a future stove. “You’re approved,” he said. “Congratulations. You can proceed.”

The mother-in-law apartment is still here 48 years later. I now use it as an office.

I regret to say that Pearlman, who proved that it is not necessarily what you know but whom you know, was suffering from terminal lung cancer and committed suicide in June of 1984 at age 54. He had been a patient at Pennsylvania Hospital for two months when someone smuggled a .38-caliber revolver into his hospital room, and Pearlman used the gun on himself. He had just been elected to his second term in City Council.

Len Lear can be reached at lenlear@chestnuthilllocal.com.