All Things Elk

This appeared Sunday, March 25, 2007.

Elk Township has 10.4 square miles of land within its borders.

Elk Township has, as of the national census taken in 2000, 1,485 people living there.

Elk Township, located along the Mason-Dixon line in southern Chester County, east of East Nottingham, from which it was carved in 1857, and west of Franklin, has 27¼ miles of paved roads. The local government has claim to about 15½ miles of those roads, and the state owns the rest. It is a place you have to want to go to get there. You are not going to stumble upon Elk Township. You are not going to find yourself suddenly in Elk Township, all the while thinking you were driving to Wegman‘s, or the Herr’s Snack Co. for the factory tour. You have to get off the main road, and several smaller roads after that, to get to Elk Township.

Elk Township has, on my count, five villages: Elk Mills, Mount Rocky , Hickory Hill, Lewisville and Peacedale. I am going to live in Peacedale someday, even if it’s the last thing I do, because I can think of no better return address on my letters than "Peacedale PA." There is a house in Peacedale with a sign at the front of its driveway that reads: "Hope Hill."

Elk Township has real property assessed at $94,574,830, as of the last countywide reassessment. It has houses that were more than likely built sometime after Elk Township was carved out of the eastern portion of East Nottingham, and which when you drive by them remind you this was originally a county of farms and farmers, not developments and developers. It has ranch houses that you would not be surprised to see dotted along the suburban landscape of the 1960s, and at least one log cabin with an enormous American flag in the front yard. It also has some homes whose owners would likely be described as leading "secluded" lives, and some that would be completely at ease resting on the inside pages of Architectural Digest.

Elk Township has three covered bridges — the Glen Hope Bridge, the Rudolph and Arthur, and the Linton Stevens Bridge. The Glen Hope crosses the Little Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 10‘6“. The Rudolph and Arthur crosses the Big Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 9'0". It also has a house sitting next to it with a "No Trespassing" sign on a tree and a wooden mailbox that looks like a covered bridge. Both of these bridges do not allow bicycles to cross them, although I do not believe that rule to be strictly enforced. Once you cross the Linton Stevens Bridge you have to turn your car around immediately and go back unless you have a permit to drive on the road ahead. The Big Elk Creek is deeper and wider than the Little Elk Creek.

What Elk Township does not have is any number of large, wild, antlered, hooved members of the red deer family, known scientifically as Cervus canadensis and by Native Americans as wapiti, or "white rump."

That is to say, there are no elk in Elk.

A Diner Sort of Guy

This appeared on Sunday, March 18, 2007

Had lunch the other day at Hooters.

(Pause.)

Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.

There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.

My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.

Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.

My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.

He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.

Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.

I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.

"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."

But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.

I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.

Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.

I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.

The Case of the Brick Windows

This appeared on Sunday, March 4, 2007

Everyone loves a good mystery, even more when the mystery involves something in your own backyard.

You know, like whatever happened to the 12 missing votes from the 156th Legislative District (ballots, you may remember, it has yet to be disproven had my name on them)?

Or exactly when did Andy Dinniman‘s Groucho mustache disappear? And where did it go?

Better yet, how did William H. Lamb, former law-and-order district attorney of Chester County, turn into the Slots King of Fishtown?

But sometimes there are mysteries right under our noses that we don‘t notice until someone points them out.

Like The Case of the Brick Windows, suggested to us by Constant Reader Bob B.

Mr. B, a keen observer of goings-on in West Chester and its accompanying environs, noticed that there was something off-kilter about the new Justice Center (Code Name: We-Don‘t-Know-What-To-Call-It-Yet) going up on West Market Street. To wit: there are five bricked-in windows on the front façade of the building, right there near the corner of North Darlington Street.

The bricked windows go from the ground floor up. At a glance, they remind you of that scene in ”The Matrix“ when Mouse tries to escape from the on-rushing Agent Smith SWAT Team after coming back from Neo‘s visit with The Oracle, and draws aside a window curtain in Morpheus‘ apartment building, only to find that the window has been replaced by a brick wall and that he has nowhere to go and he‘s going to get shot up to smithereens when the SWAT storm troopers break down the door and, thus, become the first of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar to perish.

Or it doesn‘t. Whatever.

Mr. B. was puzzled by the brick windows because they are not depicted on the original architectural drawings of the project. (Trust me: he checked.)

So he left it up to me to solve the puzzle and get back to him. ”If anyone can get to the bottom of the story, er, actually five stories, top to bottom, it‘s you,“ he fawned, leaving me slightly faint. So, with the help of Chester County Public Information Officer Extrordinaire Evelyn Walker, I did.

Here‘s the skinny, as delivered by the county‘s architect through Ms. W:

"It became necessary to locate a telecommunications and electrical room in the southeast corner of the building in order to properly serve the large floor plates. The architects desired to maintain the character and rhythm of the fenestration along Market Street; therefore, the cast stone surrounds and brick infill were proposed to satisfy the aesthetic goal. Sincerely, Paul Andrew Sgroi, AIA."

Frankly, I‘d have just said: "Oops!"

Mr. B. accepted the explanation with some rancor, and not just because of the technocratese that the answer came in. He declared that the brick windows were an eyesore that the citizens of Chester County would be stuck with when coming to West Chester to file their election recount petitions, or whatever else they‘ll do at the Justice Center, "rhythm of fenestration aesthetics" notwithstanding.

He suggested that the county get a huge refund from the people to blame for the snafu. I can‘t disagree.

Because, as Bill Lamb might say: ”Cha-ching!“