Steal This Paper!

This column originally appeared in June , 2005. It re-appeared on June 17, 2007.


Our days begin with trouble here.

By here, I mean the normally placid sidewalks of South Church Street, which of course I have already identified as the greatest street in Chester County. And by trouble, I mean the sudden presence of a wicked, hidden figure who has disrupted our peaceful lives.

Someone, you see, is stealing our newspapers.

Well, OK, not my newspaper. My newspaper sits on my desk in this office, safe as can be, guarded not only by the crack early morning staff of Jane and Sue, but also by the simple fact of supply. There are dozens of copies of today‘s daily in the building, so if you want one you don‘t really have to go to the length of appropriating one that belongs to somebody else. You probably have one sitting on your desk when you walk in anyway; why steal what you already have?

No, the purloined copies belong to my neighbors. For several days now, they emerge from their twin homes expecting to begin their day with a taste of community, nation and world goings on, only an empty delivery. Calls to circulation managers confirm that the paper was thrown; deduction proves that the papers were stolen.

We know things about the thief, and intend to find out more until apprehension is made.

• The thief is a morning person: the papers are gone before the clock strikes seven. Strange, because it is daylight at that time of morning now, so there is not even the cover of darkness to aid the crime.

• The thief has broad tastes: Not only does he/she take the Daily Local News — of which I am secretly proud — but then stops to pick up a copy of the New York Times as well. I am sure he/she dives into the Local first, getting a fix on the hometown community first, then runs off to the larger world.

• The thief may be reading this right now: Of course, it could be that he/she skips the news pages completely and goes right to the sports pages to check on the latest boy‘s lacrosse tilt, but I‘d prefer to think otherwise. If you are going to go to the trouble of stealing something, you might as well make the best use of it.

The situation has left a bad taste in our mouths. We‘ve largely avoided such problems here. I‘ve lived on the block for better than 20 years — my neighbors longer — and can‘t remember more than one break-in. I had a backpack lifted from my car once, but I admit to having left the window rolled down, more or less inviting the theft.

We don‘t have a lot of rowdiness or car-scratching or vandalism, and the trash that is left on the doorsteps tends to get disposed of rather quickly. As I said, it‘s pretty much a perfect world.

So what are we doing to stop this? Sorry, I can‘t give out that information. Rest assured, however, we are narrowing our suspects.

But just as an aside, I‘d like to offer a token of redemption to the thief: 610-430-1172. That‘s the Daily Local's circulation department‘s phone number. They‘ll be happy to help.

Don't Think Twice, It's All Right

This appeared on Sunday, June 10, 2007


I know what you‘re thinking. I hear what you‘re saying. But if you think that I‘m going to join in the chorus and sing along to the same tune, you should take a deep breath, lie down, and let the notion pass.


You say that the streets of West Chester are a bit torn up. You say that ”a bit torn up“ is just a polite way of saying that the surface of the moon provides a better ride than the streets of West Chester. You say that driving in downtown Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, is a smoother commute than trying to make it around the streets of West Chester.


You think that the fact that the ruts on our streets here in West Chester look like the canals of Venice without the water makes life here unpleasant. You think that the fact that our potholes have developed potholes is something that the borough elders should be concerned about. You think that we West Chester residents must dread making our way up West Market Street the way U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzalez dreads walking into the U.S. Senate Judicial Committee hearing room.


But all of that just proves that you don‘t know us.


We don‘t complain that the streets are a bit torn up. We don‘t complain that making a quick trip on the borough‘s blacktop is something like jumping on one of those electric ”Bucking Bronco“ rides outside the local K-Mart, with its endless back-and-forth and up-and-down rocking motion, only more expensive. We don‘t complain that, because of the roadwork detours in the borough, our path from one end of the town to the other now resembles the route taken by the mouse who gets put in a maze and has to find the block of cheese without getting an electric shock.


We don‘t complain, because we quit complaining about our streets sometime in the late years of the George H.W. Bush administration. Complaining about the street conditions in West Chester is by its own nature the very definition of pointlessness. When new neighbors who have moved here from the relatively well-maintained streets of Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, start to complain about street conditions in West Chester, we look at them and smile the sad smile of a wizened parent about to tell their child that simply asking Santa to bring you a wide-screen, flat-panel, wall-hanging HDTV with TiVo access and satellite dish hookup doesn‘t necessarily mean that it‘s going to be sitting underneath the tree on Christmas morning.


More than that, however, is that we know that at some point all this trouble is going to lead to something beautiful. We know that, like the aging starlet who has bandages wrapped all around her face from the tuck ‘n‘ lift performed at Dr. 90210‘s office, soon everything is going to look 20 years younger and a whole lot smoother.


We know this because every winter the snow piles up over our cars and the ice forms in chunks over the roads and we can‘t find a parking space without plowing through a small mountain of slush. And within the span of just a few short months, it‘s all gone and we‘re back to life as we love it.


Dodging potholes.

How Earl's Phone Changed the World

This appeared on Sunday, June 3, 2007

Roger Lerch, perhaps my favorite teacher, told us students in his Modern European History course at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, back in September 1974, that the world had changed more in the past 150 years than it had in the previous 2,000.

And at the time, he hadn‘t even ordered a sandwich at Wawa without ever having to actually speak a single, solitary word.

The memory of Mr. Lerch, and of his remark, came to me upon the visit to the Daily Local News of Molly Morrison, the president of the Natural Lands Trust and former head chef and chief bottle washer on the fifth floor of the Chester County Courthouse, the aerie of the commissioners and their staff.

I hadn‘t seen Molly in a long while, and she hadn‘t been to the Daily Local News offices in a decade or more. So with others in the room, our reunion led to a series of memories about past tribulations between the newspaper, me, Molly and, of course, Commissioner Extrordinaire Earl M. Baker, Molly‘s original patron.

The story we both remembered and liked the best was the saga of Earl‘s car phone.

The year being 1984 or so, mobile telephones were something new to the landscape. And Earl, being a man who craved communication of any kind, (He once told me the sentence he least liked reading in the newspaper was: ”Baker could not be reached for comment.“) decided he needed one. So he got the county to ante up.

For us in the press, it seemed the story of a lifetime. A phone for his car? Who did Earl think he was — the president of the United States?

So we took the ball and ran with it. Story after story, day after day. Who else in government had car phones? Who did Earl talk to on the thing? What were the Chester County taxpayers shelling out for him to jabber whilst cruising down the Schuylkill? We even got a cartoonist to draw a picture of a Princess Phone on wheels, with Earl‘s photo superimposed on the dial.

The phone itself was — so I have heard — enormous, bigger than a small dog and about as easy to manipulate.

And today? Governments hand out taxpayer-funded cell phones like politicians used to hand out lollypops. If the Daily Local News were to opine on the nonessential nature of government-paid cell phones, readers would look at us like we were publishing from the planet Neptune, not Lionville.

So I thought about how times had changed, and how technology has sped up so incredibly that something which was shockingly unnecessary 20 years ago is today considered hopelessly out of date — like Earl‘s massive car phone.

The next day, I found myself standing in line at the Wawa wanting to order a sandwich, and being completely ignored by the deli staff. I noticed a screen or two near the counter and realized that ordering now had to be done by means of a touch menu. Within a few moments I had my salami with provolone paid for and in a bag and out the door.

But I had not spoken a single, solitary word to anyone involved in the process, nor did they expect me to.

And that, Mr. Lerch, makes me yearn just a little for the days before the world changed.