Old County, New Map

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 4, 2009

It's a new year, but it's the same old Chester County.

Call it a hangover from the hours I have spent recently arranging and then re-arranging furniture in my new apartment, or attribute my thoughts on the geographical makeup of Chester County to my lifelong appreciation of the work on Continental Drift by the German meteorologist Alfred Wegener (b.1880, d.1930, m. 1912 to Else Koppen, daughter of the "Grand Old Man of Meteorology," Wladimir Koppen), but I think it's high time we reconsidered the present layout of the 72 municipalities we have here.

The basic blueprint of Chester County was set back in 1789 when Delaware County was finally, and thankfully, excised from our borders, left to wallow in its own cheesesteak grease. The arrangement of the municipalities hasn't changed since the creation in 1921 of not only South Coatesville but also Modena — two places that frankly could be left off any road map of the county with few people the worse for wear, but there you have it. We've had 188 years of uninterrupted sameness in the county, and I say that as we near the centennial of the formation of South Coatesville and Modena in 2021 we put our collective minds together on moving things around so that they make a little more sense.

I know that some of you will ridicule me for thinking it possible to physically relocate a municipality from one place on the map to another seemingly overnight, but I would point out that there were those eminent geologists who ridiculed my hero Wegener when he first started talking about Continental Drift and the theory of Pangaea, and what did he do? He took off in a hot air balloon with his brother Kurt to win an international contest by staying aloft for 52 hours so he wouldn't have to listen to the geologists scoffing, of course. I have a distinct fear of heights so I'm not about to do that, but I can still suffer your arrow slings of outrageous derision, nonetheless.

Here are my initial suggestions for moving things around on the map. Feel free to submit your own.

Let's start with the jewel in the crown, West Chester. We're the county seat, the center of attention, the destination sensation of the Delaware Valley (as anyone who has dared to venture out toward Gay Street on Restaurant Festival Sunday is more than painfully aware) and yet we (a) have no riverfront and (2) are not the center of the county. So we obviously need to switch places with Downingtown. We get the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek, they get the Goose Creek Waste Water Treatment Plant. We get an easy drive to Wegmans, and they can have the entire campus of West Chester University, kegs included.

Next up of course is the inclusion of the township of Chadds Ford, which I have argued in this space for some months naturally deserves to be part of Chester County rather than (shudder) Delaware County. I see a perfect space for it wedged in the Tri-Township area of Pocopson, Newlin and East Marlborough. The cheese, tweed and horse dung crowd out in Unionville will of course have no cause to look down their noses at these new neighbors, as they're probably sharing recipes for coq au vin or arugula salad or whatever it is you have with wine and cheese these days. Plus, you've got the added opportunity to change the name of the fire company over there from Po-Mar-Lin to something resembling actual words.

"What do we do with Coatesville?" I hear you ask. Not a problem. I say move the Steel City lock, stock and uncertified police chief to the 19301 ZIP code, right smack between Paoli and Berwyn on the Upper Main Line. The advantages of this are that the city residents will be able to look at a functioning community and decide to stop shooting one another, and that District Attorney Joe Carroll won't have to wear a bulletproof vest while walking the dog. I had thought of scrunching Coatesville in beside the other old aging steel town, Phoenixville, but that borough seems to be making a rise from the ashes and we wouldn't want to drag it down.

And as for Oxford? I say move it back to Mountain City, Tenn., where it apparently came from in the first place.