A Primer For Hills and Barry

This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 9 2008

They tell me that it is going to get fairly intense over the next few weeks as Hillary and Barack descend on Pennsylvania, in general and Chester County in particular, as the make their run for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

But while we may have gotten to know them fairly well over the past few months — the way she likes to wear pant suits and he likes to go without a tie; the way she likes to take credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland and he likes to take credit for blue skies and sunny days; the way she digs on KT Tunstall and he grooves to Natasha Bedingfield — they likely have been too busy to really get to know us.

So I thought I’d give them a small primer on what Chester County is all about, so they won’t make any stupid mistakes while going door to door in Malvern — like saying, “So how do you like living in Modena?”

The Revolutionary War came to Chester County in 1777, via the Battle of the Brandywine and the Paoli Massacre — and that is the last time anything revolutionary has happened here. We like to take our time about things and not get caught up in radically new or innovative procedures or principles. We are sort of the Dewey Decimal System to the rest of the world’s Google. For instance, school lunches here only recently started featuring brown mustard on hot dogs, I am given to understand. It took intervention by an ecumenical council of elders, but we finally gave in. Not so, however, for green catsup.

We have a number of local high school graduates who have actually contributed to the fine arts and culture of our great land. That’s right, we’re not just about Bam Margera and skateboarding naked into brick walls. For example, there is Matisyahu, the only (I think) Orthodox Hebrew rap artist and Henderson High alum. And Daryl Hall, rock and roll singer of “Out of Touch” (No. 33 on a list of worst songs of all time), Owen J. Roberts Class of 1965. And Douglas Brown, author of the soon-to-be-published book: “Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days” (You’ll have to read it to find out.) The pride of West Chester East.

The tourist highlights here are not just Valley Forge, the Brandywine River Museum and Longwood Gardens. Longtime residents of our county know that when people want to see what we are really about, we take our out of town guests to one place and one place only. The Herr’s Snack Co. Plant Tour. Where else can you see the actual process of turning unflavored potato chips into Buffalo Wing Kettle Chips? Or regular nachos into Green Chile Monterey Jack dippers? And all within distance of the sweetest smelling mushroom composting operations you’d ever want to turn your nose up at.

Philly has Geno’s Steaks. Pottsville has Yuengling Brewery. Pittsburgh has, well, we’re sure that the Iron City has something but we just don’t know what. West Chester has Wally’s Weiner World, the best place in the state to buy a hot sausage from a man who can stop the blades of a fan with his tongue.

There’s more, but since Hills and Barry are going to be here awhile, I’ll save the rest for later.