This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 16, 2007
Here’s a little bit of historic detritus, courtesy of the Daily Local News afternoon edition, Sept. 19, 1983. Under the headline, “Festival crowd … called ‘enjoyable mob,’ appears the following paragraph:
“Organizers of the festival, which brought more than 50 restaurants to the five-block-long Gay Street Mall, were quick to proclaim the event a success. Along with unofficial estimates by the West Chester police department, the organizers set the crowd at 26,000.”
It should come as no surprise that the event in question was the fourth annual Chester County Restaurant Festival, which has morphed into the West Chester Restaurant Festival, which is set to kick off sometime around noon today on that self same Gay Street — although no one refers to Gay Street as a mall anymore, not unless they want a sour look from the Chamber of Commerce for simply bringing up the dreaded “m” word.
I bring this account to your attention because the person who wrote it seems so overtaken by the “well controlled … friendly … sunny skies … party spirit” that it’s a wonder his cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors didn’t fire him on the spot for becoming so besotted with the success-proclaiming organizers that it appears he swallowed their proverbial Kool-Aid as easily as he must have swallowed the wine they sold to benefit the Chester County Hospital.
Luckily for me, however, they didn’t, since I’m the author.
Now that I’ve turned into one of those cynical, hard-bitten, crusty old editors, I see the festival for what it truly is — a great time for people to come to the borough and get either acquainted or reacquainted with the grandeur that is West Chester, and an even better time for those of us who live here year-round to either stay inside all day or get acquainted/reacquainted with anyplace outside a five-mile radius from the center of West Chester.
It’s not that we don’t appreciate the attention the festival brings our fair borough. We know what a great place this town is, and we don’t mind showing it off every now and then. What makes us uneasy about the whole experience is that we know that the greatest meals in West Chester don’t get served at the Restaurant Festival.
No, the best meals come from a combination of dishes at a variety of venues scattered throughout the borough.
You start, obviously, with an appetizer of hummus, grilled pita and Baba ghanoush from The Mediterranian on West Gay, then dart across the street to Tony’s Meat Market and pray that Kenny has some chicken pasta left over at the end of the day. You’ve already made sure that Anthony at Penn’s Table has a quick Greek salad to go on hand so you won’t have to stop too long before picking up the seared tilapia filet from High Street Caffe on your way home. A bottle of Pinot Grigio from Stargazers that you picked up earlier from Brian and Jen at the Growers Market is already waiting for you, so you’re pretty much set, except for the dish of mint chocolate chip from West Chester Scoop for dessert.
And hopefully the only mob you have to deal with is the Corleone crew on DVD.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Monday, September 10, 2007
Before the Sun Sets
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Sept. 9, 2007
Bookmarked on my computer is a handy little Web page that shows a calendar that lists the times of sunrise and sunset, moon rise and set, and various types of twilight. I’ve been watching it regularly the past few weeks as I try to hold on to the last days of summer and prepare for the coming of autumn.
I’m not really complaining about the waning of summer; the fewer the days when the heat and humidity combine to line my brow with sweat and make time spent outside feel considerably akin to time spent behind prison bars, the better for me. But it seems that there are facets of the season that I am trying not to let go.
It’s all a little like watching the clock on a large scale, a bad habit that the unlucky of us fall into in grade school and do not relinquish even into our 30s and 40s with their workday world. From this online calendar, I can see that sunset today comes at 7:21 p.m.; Monday at 7:19 p.m., Tuesday at 7:18 p.m., and on and on until the day in late September when the sun rises at 6:52 a.m. sets at 6:51 p.m., giving us almost exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. We all know where this ends up — the day you walk out to your car at 4 p.m. and have to use a flashlight to get your key in the car door lock.
Believe me, I don’t get all misty-eyed and “Fiddler on the Roof” about this, humming “Sunrise, sunset/Sunrise, sunset/Swiftly fly the years …” in between hanging up on irritating newsroom callers. This is no existential longing to extend my youth and delay the coming of the autumn of my years.
I just like the taste of a fresh ear of corn, preferably from the farm stand along Creek Road in Cossart, Pennsbury, where clerks throw juicy peaches to the workers on the scrap metal train from Coatesville as they slowly pass by on the Conrail tracks that follow the Brandywine Creek south to Wilmington, Del.
I just like the way you feel invigorated when diving into a cool wave as it crashes over you at the beach after you’ve baked long enough in the heat of the midday sun, sitting on a chair in the sand with the proper amount of SPF 45 on your melanoma-free skin.
I just like the sunny stillness that you get in the morning on South Church Street, when the neighborhood boys come out with their mother to wait for the yellow bus that will take them off to the classroom where they will learn their history and math and English and, most importantly, their clock-watching skills.
I just like the warm evenings on the porch with the quiet conversations among neighbors or pleasant encounters with strangers, who say they are going uptown for ice cream and wonder if you’d like some and really do come back with a cup of mint chocolate chip stored in the bottom of the baby carriage.
I just like knowing that even if/when they lose today, the Phils are going to be playing tomorrow and that maybe Ryan Howard will launch one that actually leaves the entire ballyard.
Those things could all technically happen come autumn. But they just wouldn’t feel the same as they do when sunset comes after 8 p.m.
Bookmarked on my computer is a handy little Web page that shows a calendar that lists the times of sunrise and sunset, moon rise and set, and various types of twilight. I’ve been watching it regularly the past few weeks as I try to hold on to the last days of summer and prepare for the coming of autumn.
I’m not really complaining about the waning of summer; the fewer the days when the heat and humidity combine to line my brow with sweat and make time spent outside feel considerably akin to time spent behind prison bars, the better for me. But it seems that there are facets of the season that I am trying not to let go.
It’s all a little like watching the clock on a large scale, a bad habit that the unlucky of us fall into in grade school and do not relinquish even into our 30s and 40s with their workday world. From this online calendar, I can see that sunset today comes at 7:21 p.m.; Monday at 7:19 p.m., Tuesday at 7:18 p.m., and on and on until the day in late September when the sun rises at 6:52 a.m. sets at 6:51 p.m., giving us almost exactly 12 hours of light and 12 hours of darkness. We all know where this ends up — the day you walk out to your car at 4 p.m. and have to use a flashlight to get your key in the car door lock.
Believe me, I don’t get all misty-eyed and “Fiddler on the Roof” about this, humming “Sunrise, sunset/Sunrise, sunset/Swiftly fly the years …” in between hanging up on irritating newsroom callers. This is no existential longing to extend my youth and delay the coming of the autumn of my years.
I just like the taste of a fresh ear of corn, preferably from the farm stand along Creek Road in Cossart, Pennsbury, where clerks throw juicy peaches to the workers on the scrap metal train from Coatesville as they slowly pass by on the Conrail tracks that follow the Brandywine Creek south to Wilmington, Del.
I just like the way you feel invigorated when diving into a cool wave as it crashes over you at the beach after you’ve baked long enough in the heat of the midday sun, sitting on a chair in the sand with the proper amount of SPF 45 on your melanoma-free skin.
I just like the sunny stillness that you get in the morning on South Church Street, when the neighborhood boys come out with their mother to wait for the yellow bus that will take them off to the classroom where they will learn their history and math and English and, most importantly, their clock-watching skills.
I just like the warm evenings on the porch with the quiet conversations among neighbors or pleasant encounters with strangers, who say they are going uptown for ice cream and wonder if you’d like some and really do come back with a cup of mint chocolate chip stored in the bottom of the baby carriage.
I just like knowing that even if/when they lose today, the Phils are going to be playing tomorrow and that maybe Ryan Howard will launch one that actually leaves the entire ballyard.
Those things could all technically happen come autumn. But they just wouldn’t feel the same as they do when sunset comes after 8 p.m.
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
Alien Astronauts Around?
This column appeared on Sunday, Sept. 2, 2007
Saturday had an air of discovery about it, so I went looking for a little island of Chester County that plays host to a place called Point Lookout. Ultimately, however, the journey took me to Nazca Lines of Peru and taught me the meaning of the word geoglyph.
Discoveries often come during searches for something you’re not looking for. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World while looking for a route to the West Indies. Frank W. Epperson was simply being forgetful when he left that stick in some flavored water on his back porch overnight but, when it froze, he still had discovered the Popsicle. So understand that I was looking for Point Lookout when I came across the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford.
The lookout sits on a triangular piece of land that sticks up like a pyramid along the Brandywine Creek, on the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware. The area is detached from Chester County, surrounded by Chadds Ford on two sides and Delaware on the third, but remains a part of our fair county nonetheless.
Parking my car, ducking a fence, crossing a meadow and following some railroad tracks, I came to a spot that I guessed was the Point, all the while wondering what the purpose of the lookout could have been. Early settlers scouting for marauding Lenape Indians? Colonial troops spying on the British Army? Or just wary Chester County gentry trying to catch Delaware County riff-raff sneaking into the county to open greasy pizza parlors.
I left the area without any resolution, but not really disappointed. I’d taken a quiet walk through a sunlit forest on a cool morning, and on the way back I came across a roadside vegetable stand that had great freshly picked corn and tomatoes. At home, I sat at my computer and tried to find any sign of the Point on an aerial map.
When the program loaded, however, what amazed me was not by an image of the lookout, but something nearby.
Across the Brandywine was a field of clearly visible lines cut into the ground in a strange, interconnected series of loops and circles. I stared at the image dumbfounded, struck suddenly by the memory of that 1970s sensationalist hoax “The Ancient Astronauts.” You remember: the book that sold us on the theory that structures like the pyramids of Egypt and the Andes village of Maccu Picchu were created with the help of visiting aliens?
One “proof” of this theory is the presence of the Nazca Lines, etchings carved into rock on a high South American desert plateau — figures called geoglyphs, I learned. The characters they depict can only be coherently visualized from high above, so the argument goes that their creators must have had help from a spaceship full of bored alien doodlers. But had they stopped off here to do the same thing, I asked myself. Could there be alien communities still operating in Chester County? Has Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan anything to do with this?
In the end I indeed answered the mystery of the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford, but am keeping the information largely to myself. Some discoveries are just worth savoring in private, like a nice Popsicle.
Saturday had an air of discovery about it, so I went looking for a little island of Chester County that plays host to a place called Point Lookout. Ultimately, however, the journey took me to Nazca Lines of Peru and taught me the meaning of the word geoglyph.
Discoveries often come during searches for something you’re not looking for. Christopher Columbus discovered the New World while looking for a route to the West Indies. Frank W. Epperson was simply being forgetful when he left that stick in some flavored water on his back porch overnight but, when it froze, he still had discovered the Popsicle. So understand that I was looking for Point Lookout when I came across the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford.
The lookout sits on a triangular piece of land that sticks up like a pyramid along the Brandywine Creek, on the border between Pennsylvania and Delaware. The area is detached from Chester County, surrounded by Chadds Ford on two sides and Delaware on the third, but remains a part of our fair county nonetheless.
Parking my car, ducking a fence, crossing a meadow and following some railroad tracks, I came to a spot that I guessed was the Point, all the while wondering what the purpose of the lookout could have been. Early settlers scouting for marauding Lenape Indians? Colonial troops spying on the British Army? Or just wary Chester County gentry trying to catch Delaware County riff-raff sneaking into the county to open greasy pizza parlors.
I left the area without any resolution, but not really disappointed. I’d taken a quiet walk through a sunlit forest on a cool morning, and on the way back I came across a roadside vegetable stand that had great freshly picked corn and tomatoes. At home, I sat at my computer and tried to find any sign of the Point on an aerial map.
When the program loaded, however, what amazed me was not by an image of the lookout, but something nearby.
Across the Brandywine was a field of clearly visible lines cut into the ground in a strange, interconnected series of loops and circles. I stared at the image dumbfounded, struck suddenly by the memory of that 1970s sensationalist hoax “The Ancient Astronauts.” You remember: the book that sold us on the theory that structures like the pyramids of Egypt and the Andes village of Maccu Picchu were created with the help of visiting aliens?
One “proof” of this theory is the presence of the Nazca Lines, etchings carved into rock on a high South American desert plateau — figures called geoglyphs, I learned. The characters they depict can only be coherently visualized from high above, so the argument goes that their creators must have had help from a spaceship full of bored alien doodlers. But had they stopped off here to do the same thing, I asked myself. Could there be alien communities still operating in Chester County? Has Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan anything to do with this?
In the end I indeed answered the mystery of the geoglyphs of Chadds Ford, but am keeping the information largely to myself. Some discoveries are just worth savoring in private, like a nice Popsicle.
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