The Winter Market Cure For The Blues

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 21, 2010

There was still about two feet of snow in the front yards along West Chestnut Street in West Chester, and the temperature was in the mid-30s, but Saturday morning a group of about 50 people showed up at a parking lot bordering North Church Street and thought of spring.

More to the point, the people who arrived to partake in the West Chester Growers Market's third Winter Market came not only to cheer themselves partially out of the winter doldrums the snowstorms and cold weather have put them in, but also to stock up on items they've been missing since the last Saturday in November, when the market vendors folded their tents — literally and figuratively — at the end of the market's May to December season.

There were decent-sized lines at the Big Sky Bread Co.'s tables, and a healthy crowd checking out the new Horseradish and Cheddar spread at Lizzie's Kitchen. (Healthy in the sense that the folks were large and ruddy-faced; I'm not entirely certain what effect large servings of Horseradish and Cheddar spread would have on Chester County's recently designated "healthiest county in Pennsylvania" designation.) A more-than-smattering bunch of folks were waiting patiently to pick up their pre-orders of grass-fed beef, chicken and lamb from Lindenhof Farms, and Ellen's soap stand was drawing in customers wanting to pick up a discount on her holiday spice soaps. The older guys at Oak Shade Farm's homemade cheese stand looked like they were doing a typically brisk business.

As stated previously, there was still snow on the ground and the air was chilly, but the conversation and rhythms of the market could have taken place in July or August.

"Does that blackberry jam have seeds in it?" a woman inquired at Lizzie's Kitchen. The long lines moved slowly but surely and no one seemed out of sorts if the person two spots ahead decided they had to jump back and grab a plate of dinner rolls as well as what was already in his bag. People you had forgotten you knew bumped into you and caught up with the news, and adults remarked a lot about how much the kids had grown. If it weren't for the down jackets, hats and scarves, you'd think that Labor Day was just around the corner.

The truth be told, this was not the third Winter Market at the WCGM. The first Winter Market was scheduled for Dec. 19, but if you remember, we got a little snow that weekend, a trifling 20-plus inches, and traffic was a little slow that Saturday. But you had to figure that people were waiting to come out of their snow-imposed shells. More than one person could be heard complaining about snow-shoveling woes, and the bright sun was on everyone's lips as a way of shaking off the cold.

As for me, I had a fine time reconnecting with the various growers' stands and discovering new ones I'd overlooked in the past. I hadn't been to Jeff Porter's Chile Spot stand before, but my friend Jamie recommended it since he used to work with Jeff. An amateur chili sauce creator, Jeff was only happy to unload a tall bottle of Chipotle Finishing Sauce, which his young assistant packed up for me very nicely. Jeff in his real life is a business executive of some kind, I believe, but his chili stand is just the sort of local production that makes the growers market what it is. (I also picked up my order at Lindenhof's stand, which should last me until the next Winter Market in March. Or not, depending how many uses I can find for the lamb sausage.)

I've read a lot about the move to locally grown food products and how environmentally beneficial they are. You cut down on transportation and thus on fuel usage; you get a more diverse set of offerings and thus are exposed to better foods; you support the economy in your community instead of some multinational agri-conglomorate run by alien robots and thus keep down the possibility of outerspace domination, or whatever. I understand all those concepts, but frankly it's the sense of community that I get wandering between the stalls while I'm there that brings me back. It's nice to see folks pretty much thinking along the same lines as you do, picking up some interesting eats, and enjoying the sunshine. That's what keeps me coming back.

That and, frankly, the prospect of more Horseradish and Cheddar spread.

Push. Lift. Sling.

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 14, 2010

Push. Lift. Sling.

You have a lot of time to think when you find yourself shoveling two or more feet of snow from your 35-foot-long driveway. There isn’t much about shoveling snow that requires your concentrated attention; it is mostly a sequence of repetitive moves, the wintertime equivalent of mowing the lawn. It’s perfectly okay if you let your mind wander, because unlike using a snow blower you are not likely to face any major malfunctions if you don’t pay strict attention to the shovel. The worst that could happen is the blade falls off, and then you have a good excuse to quit. Which is nice.

Push. Lift. Sling.

So it occurred to me recently that snow inherently has a dual nature when it lands on a landscape in large proportions such as Chester County has seen in the past few days (a good 47 inches between Feb. 5 and Feb. 10, if you’re playing at home.) It can both obscure details of the landscape onto which it falls, and highlight others. The thought occurred to me as I made my way back to West Chester last Sunday along Valley Creek Road in East Bradford – a lull day in our storm cycle, as it turned out.

I travel Valley Creek Road almost religiously if I find myself having to get to Downingtown with time to spare. It’s a nice, windy, wooded stretch of road that crisscrosses a pleasant little stream, hence the name, and features some architecturally pleasant homes along the way. There are also impressive geological outcroppings of some stone or schist or rock that I can tell you nothing more about than they are impressive and outcroppings. But on Sunday, they were gone.

They were covered instead from bottom to top by a true blanket of snow, the kind of layer that would look magnificently tasty on a coconut birthday cake. Instead of the normal jumble of rock that lines the western side of the road, all that could be seen was a sheer face of white. It was as thought the snow had wiped the face of the rocks clean, the way an artist will use a putty knife to flatten and smooth out a piece of the landscape.

Push. Lift. Sling.

But on Thursday I drove along South New Street in Westtown, alongside of Crebilly Farm north of Street Road. I’d come from Stetson Middle School where a friendly and talkative woman named Ellen Davis had told me about her decision to leave the home she’d slept in since 1981 to spend the night at the Red Cross emergency shelter there. (If you are wondering, two adjectives that newspaper people like in the folks we meet in the midst of our professional responsibilities are “friendly” and “talkative.” Much better than “dismissive” and “mute.”)

And I noticed that the branches of the trees that line both sides of the road were outlined in detail by the snow that clung to them, brining them into stark relief against the blue sky and asking me to open my eyes and take notice of them individually. Instead of the mass of brown and gray intertwined sticks globbed together as one, I saw instead each single fiber of the landscape – not unlike a group of colorful pick-up sticks laid out on a kitchen table, each one set against the other. The woods became transformed, branches singled out one by one.

So there you have it. Snow both obliterates and reveals, all in the same brush. Not the most profound of epiphanies, but one that I will remember for days to come as the white fades from the scene outside my car window.

Push. Lift. Sling.

Another thought that came to me whilst shoveling was the recollection from freshman sociology that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow and use them interchangeably to connote different types of frozen precipitation. Whereas I have only one extra word for snow in my vocabulary, and I cannot print it in a family newspaper.

Push. Lift. Sling.

You Don't Know Who You Know

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 7, 2010

There have been a few people that I’ve been thinking about while waiting to strap Tango, the Wonder Hound, to the dogsled and head out for provisions.

I’ve been thinking about Fred Gusz, who was recently named the “Outstanding Citizen of the Year” by the Greater West Chester Chamber of Commerce. I’ve have been acquainted with Fred Gusz for quite some years, and there are a few things that I know about him that the chamber forgot to share with its membership before they voted him in as the year’s outstanding citizen. Because, however, I find the sort of historical revisionism that is currently taken for granted in the media (See” “Edwards, John – Former Aid Sells Tell-All Book”) I am going to keep those items to myself.

Unless, of course, some publisher fronts me six figures to do a tell-all book about the outstanding West Chester citizen of the year, then I’ll just start making stuff up as quickly as I can.

Frankly, though, I could not be more pleased with giving Fred Gusz a nod or two. In all the years that I have known him, he has seemed to me to be the epitome of what you want a citizen to be. He is friendly, he is honest, and he is charming, but more than that he sees people for who they are and what they do, instead of looking at a label that someone else has pinned on them. He has friends in both political parties, and toils away with them for the greater good of the community even though he probably wouldn’t agree with them on every issue that comes down the pike.

He is the sort of person who will accompany a young reporter to a Bob Dylan concert and then get praised by the Republican former mayor of West Chester, all without changing his personality. I almost never agree with what commerce chambers do, but this time I’m signing on.

I’ve been thinking about my former colleague Jill Nawrocki, who was a staff reporter at the Daily Local News for a couple of years in the early 2000s. When she was slouching at her desk in the newsroom, she appeared mostly interested in television shows about teenagers in high school, or television shows about Olympic athletes. But you should know that Jill Nawrocki just finished two years of duty in the Peace Corps, stationed in Namibia working with young children there to make their lives fuller, better, and healthier.

Jill is of the generation that many people complain about because of their lack of commitment and sense of entitlement, and I do not know if she is the exception to the rule or an odd combination of focus and frivolity. I do know, however, that actions speak louder than words, and in Jill Nawrocki’s case those actions are very loud indeed, because Jill Nawrocki always had a rather powerful way of expressing herself.

Lastly I have been thinking of Charles Faust, better known as Charles Victory Faust, who was born in 1880 in Kansas and died in 1915 in Washington. I don’t know anything about the first 30 years of his life, but I know that for the last three he was a member of the New York Giants baseball team, even though he was not an athlete and had no baseball skills to speak of. He was put on the squad by John McGraw, the Giants’ manager, for good luck. I had read about him in the wonderful memorial to the old days of baseball, “The Glory of Their Times,” but was always a little skeptical about his contributions to the team.

So on Saturday I pulled out the “Total Baseball” almanac and looked him up. Sure enough, he pitched two innings in two games over four seasons with the Giants, and they won the pennant every year he was there. He died in 1915, and the Giants ended up in last place.

What each of these people tell me, I guess, is that I have to be careful whom I judge, because nobody really knows anybody

Ready, Tango?

Bob's Bookstore

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 31, 2009

Bob Simoneaux was one of the reasons I love living in West Chester. He is gone now, dying at the age of 64 on Jan. 11, but it is no stretch to say that you and I have the ability – some might go as far as to say the responsibility – to insure that the contribution he made to our community lives on for years to come.

Bob was, along with his wife Kathy, the founder of the Chester County Book & Music Co. He was a native of New Orleans, La., and worked there as a police officer, but wound up in New York City at some point and found himself in the book business. He and Kathy opened their bookstore in 1982 in the Parkway Shopping Center, where I discovered it shortly after moving here and starting my career at the Daily Local News. Walking in there the first time, I knew that it was a special place and would help me adjust to my new surroundings.

Bob and Kathy were friendly people, and made you feel at home walking through the stacks and stacks of books they put on display. Because they took the trouble to know their customers by name as much as possible, the feel of their bookstore was comfortable and welcoming at a time when the trend in bookstores was to be more corporate and indifferent. They made sure that a sense of discovery hung about the place, as you could find some written work you had never heard of before; had heard of but never found; or had simply stumbled across as you made your way through the piles of novels and biographies and travel books that seemed to grow volume by volume from the carpeted floor itself like a beautiful house plant.

I loved the old place on South High Street for its intimacy, but grew to adore the new larger location Bob and Kathy opened later on Paoli Pike. They added a restaurant that served some Louisiana specialties that reminded Bob of home, and gave my friends Patrick, Greg, Marian, and Meg and I a table to sit at on weekend mornings to read the papers and gossip our time away before wading into the stacks looking for a new book to read. I do believe that Meg, who lives in Washington, D.C., would agree that a trip to see the West Chester branch of her family would not be complete without a rip to the bookstore.

I would venture to say that I have not gone more than six weeks without spending some time at the bookstore, and my shelves at home are filled with wonderful results of the money I spent there. Going to the bookstore always gave me the anticipation of bringing joy between two covers home. My friends and family have all received gifts that I found for them at Bob and Kathy’s bookstore, and I hope that their lives are better for it.

Bob was a constant presence at the bookstore, and I remember him sitting at one of the restaurant tables and drinking a cup of coffee and smoking a cigarette. He always had a dry comment to make about something of interest in the local news, and spoke kindly with Marian and I whenever we would see him. He kept tabs on what was going on behind the scenes in West Chester, and dropped tips on stories off at my table on occasion.

He and I never spoke about the weighty issues that his battle to keep the bookstore open must have presented. In an age of chain stores and Amazon, independent booksellers like the Simoneauxs are fewer and father between. They are incredibly important, however, because they do not dictate to the reader what is necessary for them to digest, no do they trade familiarity for savings. The book by the local author about his or her memories of growing up in West Chester is as available for the reader as the new bestseller; the loyal staff who populate the service desks are there to wind the customer through the shelves to find exactly what it is they are looking for, not simply what the cheapest flavor of the month is.

A few weeks ago I stopped in looking for “River of Doubt,” a tale of Teddy Roosevelt’s trip down the Amazon River in the years after he’d left the White House. I’d never known the book existed, or that the trip had occurred, until a few days before I went looking for it, but it was there waiting for me on a shelf at the bookstore as if I had always known I would want it at some point. I did not see Bob, had heard he’d been sick, and feared for the worst.

Robert Ross Simoneaux may not have lasted in life as long he should have, but we, his neighbors, have the chance to keep a bit of him alive simply by stopping by the bookstore he opened 28 years ago and buying a book. Or two.