Kidnapping McCullough

This column appeared on Sunday, Oct. 21, 2007

The law defines a criminal conspiracy as an agreement between people in which each member of the group becomes the partner of every other member of the group in deciding to carry out a criminal act.

So let’s just keep this between me and you. I think we should kidnap David McCullough.

You know, the historian-slash-Pulitizer Prize winner who authored the book “1776,” which every person in Chester County is supposed to be reading as part of the Chester County Reads program -- no matter what else they’re doing, even if they’re presently involved in open-heart surgery, on either side of the table.

If you’re not reading “1776,” then let’s just keep that between you and me, because if anyone else finds out then you are going to have to be referred to Diane Gring, public relations maven of the Chester County Library, who will personally assign someone to come to your house and read the entire book to you. And the first name on the assigned readers list is a certain Pennsylvania state senator whose last name rhymes with “dinner mint,” so I’d be extra cautious about not getting to it yourself first.

I’m in the middle of the book now and I can personally say that it among my favorite books about the year 1776. It has taught me quite a bit, including the up to now unknown fact, by me at least, that Revolutionary War soldiers were really bad dressers. It is a marvelous book, between you and me, and I highly recommend that you pick it up at your earliest convenience, and not just because of the aforementioned penalties for not doing so, either.

I think we should kidnap McCullough because I think he would fit in very well in Chester County. And between you and me, I have an inside track to get the job done.

McCullough, you see, was involved in a television documentary about the Wyeth family – you know, Andy and N.C. and the lot, and I was assigned to cover its premier in New York City. I heard him lecture briefly about the film that night, and thought he was brilliantly convincing. If he had told me that the defining moment of American history was when “Come On, Eileen” by Dexy’s Midnight Runners topped the MTV rotation in 1982, I would have repeated it as fact during my next dinner conversation.

But my “in” with McCullough comes because I spoke to him once, in 1990, on the telephone, from his home in West Tisbury, Mass., by pre-arrangement with his literary agent, about the death of Nathaniel Wyeth, the older Wyeth brother who invented the plastic soda bottle. He was kind and gracious and brilliantly convincing, and when he was done he asked me to send him a copy of his story. I did.

So I figure I’ll just saddle up to Dave when he speaks at Immaculata University on Friday and remind him that I still have some left over notes of my story if he’d like to step outside and see them. Then we’d hoodwink him and spirit him away to a quiet house along the Brandywine Creek, and he could and read and write and occasionally lecture us on the importance of classic music videos, or whatever.

Because between you and me, I think he’d do well at it.