This story originally appeared Thursday, Oct. 4, 2007
WEST CHESTER -- Valentine’s Day is normally a time for couples to express their affection for one another with flowers, chocolate or even just an intimate, candlelight dinner.
But for Lisa Platt of Spring City, this year’s holiday turned violent and bloody.
According to statements made during a court hearing Monday, Platt spent Valentine’s Day evening in the hospital, courtesy of her then-boyfriend, William Monroe Mathues.
Mathues had struck Platt once in the head with a snow shovel the two were fighting over outside their South Main Street home the night of Feb. 14. The two had admittedly been drinking heavily that day after a snow storm struck the region, and began arguing around 8:30 p.m. as they tried to clear the walk in front of the house.
Borough police said they found Platt in her home, bleeding from the scalp. She was taken to the hospital, where emergency room doctors closed her wound with five surgical staples.
In a hearing at which he pleaded no contest to simple assault charges, Mathues was sentenced to 235 days to 23 months in prison for the attack. The time-served plea allowed him to be paroled Monday.
Assistant District Attorney Lorraine Finnegan told Judge Howard F. Riley Jr. that Platt and Mathues have had “a long, ongoing turbulent relationship, that is now hopefully behind them.”
She said that Platt had been granted a protection from abuse order that requires Mathues to stay away from her or face jail time.
Mathues’ attorney, Robert J. Donatoni, said after the hearing that his client would be getting treatment for his drug and alcohol issues and had agreed not to have any contact with Platt, even though Spring City, where his family lives, is a close-knit community. Mathues plans to live in Royersford with his mother when he is released.
Mathues, wearing a turtleneck, striped sweater and olive khakis, said little during the brief hearing except to acknowledge that the prosecution could have proven its case against him and sought greater prison time than the seven months he has spent in jail since the incident.
He must also make restitution of about $12,500 for Platt’s medical expenses.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Party House Wanted
This story originally appeared on Tuesday, Oct. 2, 2007
WEST CHESTER — The Chester County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to take control of a former mushroom company executive’s posh Kennett home, arguing that it was used as a illicit haven for drug use in violation of state law.
Richard Basciani, a member of the Basciani Foods family, growers and sellers of fresh mushrooms in southern Chester County, pleaded guilty in November 2006 to drug possession charges stemming from a raid of his home by state police earlier that year.
Police seized a numbers of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and Oxycontin, from the home. According to authorities, Basciani kept drugs, weapons and drug paraphernalia in a safe room in the Kaolin Road house where he held drug parties for local teens.
Now, almost a year from his sentencing, prosecutors have filed paperwork to seize the 113,932-square-foot home, complete with swimming pool, as well as 3.2 acres of land it sits on and $8,011 in cash police found during the raid.
In a petition filed Sept. 21, the prosecution states the property is subject to state forfeiture law because Basciani admittedly committed drug violations there.
Between Dec. 24, 2005, and Jan. 6, 2006, Basciani used, stored and delivered controlled substances to others on many occasions that were recorded on a security video system at the residence, the petition says.
Generally speaking, any property that is used in a drug transaction — such as a car or home — can be forfeited to authorities after a person’s arrest and conviction. The county can then use the proceeds from any sale or settlement on the property during further drug investigations.
But in many cases this action comes shortly after the prosecution ends. One of Basciani’s attorneys noted the length of time it took prosecutors to seize the property.
“I was surprised that this action came at this time,” said defense attorney Robert Donatoni, who represented Basciani during a plea agreement in the case. “It’s almost a year since the case was negotiated.”
No hearing has been set in the forfeiture petition. But last month the prosecution won a temporary injunction forbidding Basciani from transferring or selling the property.
Donatoni said he had just become aware of the forfeiture action and would be meeting with Basciani’s family later in the week to determine how to proceed.
Donatoni’s co-counsel, West Chester attorney Thomas Schindler, could not be reached for comment. But earlier this summer, Schindler helped negotiate the return of some guns and Basciani’s passport, which were taken during the state police search of the home.
Judge Howard F. Riley signed an order Sept. 4 allowing Basciani to reclaim these items, but the judge left open the question of what would happen to the $8,011 and made no mention of the prosecution’s claim on the property.
The property itself would bring a tidy sum on the open market. One West Chester real estate broker estimated its value at $450,000 to $650,000.
Assistant District Attorney Norman Pine filed the forfeiture action but declined comment
on the matter.
Basciani is serving a five- to 10-year state prison sentence for his crimes. In addition to
pleading guilty on drug charges, he admitted to corrupting minors and possessing firearms without a license. During sentencing, Basciani, 51, said he had undergone drug treatment programs to get better.
The case against Basciani began when a housekeeper at his property told police he had supplied her with drugs, sometimes after they had sex. During their search, police found video recordings of drug parties attended by teens Basciani had invited.
Assistant District Attorney Lorraine M.B. Finnegan prosecuted the case and called Bascini’s sentencing a benefit to the community.
“I’m happy that the community feels it is better off without the parties and drugs he provided,” she said. “It was a party house, and I’m happy that this put an end to that.”
WEST CHESTER — The Chester County District Attorney’s Office is seeking to take control of a former mushroom company executive’s posh Kennett home, arguing that it was used as a illicit haven for drug use in violation of state law.
Richard Basciani, a member of the Basciani Foods family, growers and sellers of fresh mushrooms in southern Chester County, pleaded guilty in November 2006 to drug possession charges stemming from a raid of his home by state police earlier that year.
Police seized a numbers of drugs, including marijuana, cocaine and Oxycontin, from the home. According to authorities, Basciani kept drugs, weapons and drug paraphernalia in a safe room in the Kaolin Road house where he held drug parties for local teens.
Now, almost a year from his sentencing, prosecutors have filed paperwork to seize the 113,932-square-foot home, complete with swimming pool, as well as 3.2 acres of land it sits on and $8,011 in cash police found during the raid.
In a petition filed Sept. 21, the prosecution states the property is subject to state forfeiture law because Basciani admittedly committed drug violations there.
Between Dec. 24, 2005, and Jan. 6, 2006, Basciani used, stored and delivered controlled substances to others on many occasions that were recorded on a security video system at the residence, the petition says.
Generally speaking, any property that is used in a drug transaction — such as a car or home — can be forfeited to authorities after a person’s arrest and conviction. The county can then use the proceeds from any sale or settlement on the property during further drug investigations.
But in many cases this action comes shortly after the prosecution ends. One of Basciani’s attorneys noted the length of time it took prosecutors to seize the property.
“I was surprised that this action came at this time,” said defense attorney Robert Donatoni, who represented Basciani during a plea agreement in the case. “It’s almost a year since the case was negotiated.”
No hearing has been set in the forfeiture petition. But last month the prosecution won a temporary injunction forbidding Basciani from transferring or selling the property.
Donatoni said he had just become aware of the forfeiture action and would be meeting with Basciani’s family later in the week to determine how to proceed.
Donatoni’s co-counsel, West Chester attorney Thomas Schindler, could not be reached for comment. But earlier this summer, Schindler helped negotiate the return of some guns and Basciani’s passport, which were taken during the state police search of the home.
Judge Howard F. Riley signed an order Sept. 4 allowing Basciani to reclaim these items, but the judge left open the question of what would happen to the $8,011 and made no mention of the prosecution’s claim on the property.
The property itself would bring a tidy sum on the open market. One West Chester real estate broker estimated its value at $450,000 to $650,000.
Assistant District Attorney Norman Pine filed the forfeiture action but declined comment
on the matter.
Basciani is serving a five- to 10-year state prison sentence for his crimes. In addition to
pleading guilty on drug charges, he admitted to corrupting minors and possessing firearms without a license. During sentencing, Basciani, 51, said he had undergone drug treatment programs to get better.
The case against Basciani began when a housekeeper at his property told police he had supplied her with drugs, sometimes after they had sex. During their search, police found video recordings of drug parties attended by teens Basciani had invited.
Assistant District Attorney Lorraine M.B. Finnegan prosecuted the case and called Bascini’s sentencing a benefit to the community.
“I’m happy that the community feels it is better off without the parties and drugs he provided,” she said. “It was a party house, and I’m happy that this put an end to that.”
Holiday Displays Controversy
This story originally appeared on Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2007
WEST CHESTER -- The Chester County Commissioners are set to approve conditions under which groups can get permission to erect winter holiday displays.
The new policy, scheduled for a vote Thursday at the board’s formal session, would requite that the display conform with current First Amendment law concerning religious displays such as creches or Menorahs.
The move comes in the wake of a dispute last year after a Menorah was erected on the courthouse lawn for the first time. Its presence led a former county commissioner to argue that the commissioners had opened the door to other displays, and soon the board approved the display of a nativity scene on the lawn.
At their work session Tuesday, the commissioners made it clear that they did not want the courthouse lawn to become a central point for groups to put up displays year-round. The only times that displays would be permitted under the policy are during the winter holiday season -- roughly from the end of November to mid-January. An exception is also made for the United Way of Chester County, which has historically put up a sign indicating its fund raising activities on the lawn.
“it would be our practice to not have other displays on the courthouse lawn,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell. He suggested that it would be unseemly to have groups “start hanging stuff up all over the eaves” of the historic courthouse.
Commissioner Donald Mancini said he was in favor of an even more restrictive policy that would ban all displays from the courthouse front lawn. He noted that the building had just undergone a $2 million renovation and that there was some concern that displays would detract from the historic character of the building. But he said he would go along with the new policy allowing winter displays.
“I recognize that’s not going to be workable,” he said of the ban. “As long as things are workable, and so everyone knows what’s going on” he would support the policy’s adoption.
The proposed policy states that groups may erect winter holiday displays so long as the commissioners determine that the display “will not have the effect of causing a reasonable observer to believe that the count is endorsing religion” and “will not adversely affect the appearance of the courthouse”
It also requires that any group proposing a display mus provide proof of general liability insurance in the amount of $1 million.
Former Commissioner Colin Hanna, who last year led the charge for the presence of a creche on the courthouse lawn, said the policy appeared workable.
“It seems like a reasonable attempt to develop a policy that both honors our traditions and doesn’t cross the line into constitutional impermissible establishment of religion,” Hanna, now head of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, said Tuesday.
“The policy also leaves the final discretion in the hands of the commissioners, and I think that is appropriate,” Hanna said.
In late 2006, the commissioners were approached by former Commissioner Andy Dinniman, now a Pennsylvania state senator, with a request from the Chabad of Chester County, a Jewish organization, to allow a Menorah to be erected on the lawn, next to the traditional Christmas tree and snowman displays. The commissioners agreed to allow one to be placed here. Soon after, Hanna wrote the commissioners and demanded that they allow a creche -- a traditional Christian display.
The commissioners agreed, and soon an East Bradford woman, Helene Eissler, paid for a creche that stayed on the lawn during the Christmas season.
The Chester County Courthouse became part of the battleground over the debate on what religious symbols are permitted on a public building in 2001, when two residents objected to the presence of a plaque listing the 10 Commandments on the front of the courthouse. Both Dinniman and Hanna, commissioners at the time, supported the presence of the plaque, and a federal court eventually allowed it to remain.
The new holiday display policy requires groups wanting to erect displays to make application to the county by Nov. 15, and to pay all costs associated with constriction and maintenance of the displays. The commissioners suggested that if there are a large number of requests, not every organization would be granted approval. But they also said approval would not be made on a first-come, first-served basis.
If adopted, the full text of the policy would be posted on the county’s website, www.chesco.org.
WEST CHESTER -- The Chester County Commissioners are set to approve conditions under which groups can get permission to erect winter holiday displays.
The new policy, scheduled for a vote Thursday at the board’s formal session, would requite that the display conform with current First Amendment law concerning religious displays such as creches or Menorahs.
The move comes in the wake of a dispute last year after a Menorah was erected on the courthouse lawn for the first time. Its presence led a former county commissioner to argue that the commissioners had opened the door to other displays, and soon the board approved the display of a nativity scene on the lawn.
At their work session Tuesday, the commissioners made it clear that they did not want the courthouse lawn to become a central point for groups to put up displays year-round. The only times that displays would be permitted under the policy are during the winter holiday season -- roughly from the end of November to mid-January. An exception is also made for the United Way of Chester County, which has historically put up a sign indicating its fund raising activities on the lawn.
“it would be our practice to not have other displays on the courthouse lawn,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell. He suggested that it would be unseemly to have groups “start hanging stuff up all over the eaves” of the historic courthouse.
Commissioner Donald Mancini said he was in favor of an even more restrictive policy that would ban all displays from the courthouse front lawn. He noted that the building had just undergone a $2 million renovation and that there was some concern that displays would detract from the historic character of the building. But he said he would go along with the new policy allowing winter displays.
“I recognize that’s not going to be workable,” he said of the ban. “As long as things are workable, and so everyone knows what’s going on” he would support the policy’s adoption.
The proposed policy states that groups may erect winter holiday displays so long as the commissioners determine that the display “will not have the effect of causing a reasonable observer to believe that the count is endorsing religion” and “will not adversely affect the appearance of the courthouse”
It also requires that any group proposing a display mus provide proof of general liability insurance in the amount of $1 million.
Former Commissioner Colin Hanna, who last year led the charge for the presence of a creche on the courthouse lawn, said the policy appeared workable.
“It seems like a reasonable attempt to develop a policy that both honors our traditions and doesn’t cross the line into constitutional impermissible establishment of religion,” Hanna, now head of the Pennsylvania Pastors Network, said Tuesday.
“The policy also leaves the final discretion in the hands of the commissioners, and I think that is appropriate,” Hanna said.
In late 2006, the commissioners were approached by former Commissioner Andy Dinniman, now a Pennsylvania state senator, with a request from the Chabad of Chester County, a Jewish organization, to allow a Menorah to be erected on the lawn, next to the traditional Christmas tree and snowman displays. The commissioners agreed to allow one to be placed here. Soon after, Hanna wrote the commissioners and demanded that they allow a creche -- a traditional Christian display.
The commissioners agreed, and soon an East Bradford woman, Helene Eissler, paid for a creche that stayed on the lawn during the Christmas season.
The Chester County Courthouse became part of the battleground over the debate on what religious symbols are permitted on a public building in 2001, when two residents objected to the presence of a plaque listing the 10 Commandments on the front of the courthouse. Both Dinniman and Hanna, commissioners at the time, supported the presence of the plaque, and a federal court eventually allowed it to remain.
The new holiday display policy requires groups wanting to erect displays to make application to the county by Nov. 15, and to pay all costs associated with constriction and maintenance of the displays. The commissioners suggested that if there are a large number of requests, not every organization would be granted approval. But they also said approval would not be made on a first-come, first-served basis.
If adopted, the full text of the policy would be posted on the county’s website, www.chesco.org.
Drop Kick Baby
This story originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007
WEST CHESTER – A Honey Brook man has abandoned his quest to assert an insanity defense against charges he dropped his one month old son on the floor of his girlfriend’s house and then kicked the child in the head, instead entering a guilty plea.
Dwayne Allen “Chopper” Zeimer, 29, of Horseshoe Pike will ask Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Gavin to determine how much time he should spend in prison for the assault on his son. He entered an open plea of guilty on Wednesday to charges of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of children and terroristic threats.
The assault charge, a first-degree felony, carries with it a mandatory minimum prison term of five years because of the age of the victim. But Elizabeth Pitts, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said Thursday she would seek a “significantly” longer prison term.
In his plea, Zeimer admitted that on Feb. 20, 2006, he intentionally injured his 30-day old son during an argument with his then-girlfriend, Heidi Allison Hatton, who had told Zeimer that she intended to end their relationship.
He was arrested by state police at Embreeville, after a high speed chase through western Chester County and eastern Lancaster County, during which troopers clocked him traveling over 100 mph in a 1992 Pontiac SUV.
A year after his arrest, Zeimer gave notice to the court through his attorney, Assistant Public Defender David B. Miller, that he intended to pursue a defense of insanity at trial. Based on an interview with psychologist Elliot L. Atkins of Marlton, N.J., Miller contended that Zeimer suffered from major depression that left him psychotic, an obsessive compulsive disorder, a dissociative disorder and a dependent personality disorder.
Those psychological disorders would have left him incapable of appreciating the nature of his actions that night, Miller said in his notice.
Although his guilty plea has left him without of the possibility of being found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial, Zeimer can still claim his mental condition as a mitigating factor at his sentencing hearing, now scheduled for Dec. 3.
According to the description of events given by Pitts during Zeimer’s plea, Zeimer and Hatton were arguing about their relationship when Zeimer went into a bedroom where his son was sleeping and brought him back out in the kitchen. He held in by the head for several minutes before he stood up, held the baby in the air and then threw him to the floor.
He then kicked the child twice in the head before Hatton was able to throw herself on top of the baby and protect him. Zeimer also threatened to kill both the baby and Hatton during the incident.
The baby was flown to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was hospitalized for 12 days, some of the time in the intensive care unit. Pitts said the baby suffered from two broken legs, a broken arm and internal bleeding. The child is still being treated for the after affects of the injuries today, she said.
WEST CHESTER – A Honey Brook man has abandoned his quest to assert an insanity defense against charges he dropped his one month old son on the floor of his girlfriend’s house and then kicked the child in the head, instead entering a guilty plea.
Dwayne Allen “Chopper” Zeimer, 29, of Horseshoe Pike will ask Common Pleas Court Judge Thomas Gavin to determine how much time he should spend in prison for the assault on his son. He entered an open plea of guilty on Wednesday to charges of aggravated assault, endangering the welfare of children and terroristic threats.
The assault charge, a first-degree felony, carries with it a mandatory minimum prison term of five years because of the age of the victim. But Elizabeth Pitts, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case, said Thursday she would seek a “significantly” longer prison term.
In his plea, Zeimer admitted that on Feb. 20, 2006, he intentionally injured his 30-day old son during an argument with his then-girlfriend, Heidi Allison Hatton, who had told Zeimer that she intended to end their relationship.
He was arrested by state police at Embreeville, after a high speed chase through western Chester County and eastern Lancaster County, during which troopers clocked him traveling over 100 mph in a 1992 Pontiac SUV.
A year after his arrest, Zeimer gave notice to the court through his attorney, Assistant Public Defender David B. Miller, that he intended to pursue a defense of insanity at trial. Based on an interview with psychologist Elliot L. Atkins of Marlton, N.J., Miller contended that Zeimer suffered from major depression that left him psychotic, an obsessive compulsive disorder, a dissociative disorder and a dependent personality disorder.
Those psychological disorders would have left him incapable of appreciating the nature of his actions that night, Miller said in his notice.
Although his guilty plea has left him without of the possibility of being found not guilty by reason of insanity at trial, Zeimer can still claim his mental condition as a mitigating factor at his sentencing hearing, now scheduled for Dec. 3.
According to the description of events given by Pitts during Zeimer’s plea, Zeimer and Hatton were arguing about their relationship when Zeimer went into a bedroom where his son was sleeping and brought him back out in the kitchen. He held in by the head for several minutes before he stood up, held the baby in the air and then threw him to the floor.
He then kicked the child twice in the head before Hatton was able to throw herself on top of the baby and protect him. Zeimer also threatened to kill both the baby and Hatton during the incident.
The baby was flown to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, where he was hospitalized for 12 days, some of the time in the intensive care unit. Pitts said the baby suffered from two broken legs, a broken arm and internal bleeding. The child is still being treated for the after affects of the injuries today, she said.
Back to the Future
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Oct. 7, 2007
Chester County, one of William Penn’s original land subdivisions, turns 325 this year.
The Chester County Courthouse – that amalgam of buildings that occupies the center of downtown West Chester turns, by measure of its different annexes, new wings and awkward additions, 161, 115, 43, and 26 this year, give or take.
On May 12, I celebrated my 50th birthday. And on Thursday of this week, I will commemorate 25 years working for the Daily Local News.
They say that home is where the heart is, but they don’t really stamp with that idiom with an image of what that home should looks like. For my money, home stands about five stories tall, is made of part Indiana limestone, part brick and part Nova Scotia Pictou stone, and has a doorway that reads, “Justitia” above it. It’s got a clock tower on its top and a frieze on its side that features not only Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Herb Pennock but also the Marquis de Lafayette.
I started covering news as a reporter/drudge out of the courthouse in the late 1980s, and moved there on a semi-permanent basis in the 1990s.
If you want to count numbers, I composed an estimated 1,200 stories during the six years I was at the courthouse regularly, covered 15 murder trials, sat in three different press rooms, and received about 18 haircuts.
The latter may not have anything to do with the quality of the news accounts I was giving at the time in the overall scheme of things, but certainly concerned my employers at the time enough so that the publisher would make a point of coming into the newsroom expressly to comment on length of my hair when it had retreated to a space above my shirt collar.
I began falling in love with the courthouse when I began covering the courts beat – trials, pleas, filings, legal arguments, lawyerly foibles, Judge M. Joseph Melody, etc. After awhile, I learned the rabbit warren of back stairways and basement tunnels that allowed me to get places where the normal person wasn’t going, and used that knowledge to spend my time avoiding work as much as possible by gossiping with some of the most interesting people you’d ever want to meet – usually while they, too, were taking a break from their underpaid, overworked jobs.
I knew I’d found a home the first time a judge heard me yawning and said to one of the lawyers in front of him, “If you can’t keep him interested, what do you think you’re doing to me?”
I say all this because The Management at the Daily Local News has seen fit to ship me back to the courthouse, presumably to continue where I left off 11 years ago.
I know I will miss my post as news editor, as much I know as the newsroom callers who asked me to send a reporter to their daughter’s school play will miss my polite responses, but I am looking forward to the changes that I know I will find, and to seeing once again the old faces who still populate the courthouse’s hallways and courtrooms and back stairways.
I see it this way: Home may be where the heart is, but it is also where the Motion to Dismiss is filed.
Chester County, one of William Penn’s original land subdivisions, turns 325 this year.
The Chester County Courthouse – that amalgam of buildings that occupies the center of downtown West Chester turns, by measure of its different annexes, new wings and awkward additions, 161, 115, 43, and 26 this year, give or take.
On May 12, I celebrated my 50th birthday. And on Thursday of this week, I will commemorate 25 years working for the Daily Local News.
They say that home is where the heart is, but they don’t really stamp with that idiom with an image of what that home should looks like. For my money, home stands about five stories tall, is made of part Indiana limestone, part brick and part Nova Scotia Pictou stone, and has a doorway that reads, “Justitia” above it. It’s got a clock tower on its top and a frieze on its side that features not only Yankee Hall of Fame pitcher Herb Pennock but also the Marquis de Lafayette.
I started covering news as a reporter/drudge out of the courthouse in the late 1980s, and moved there on a semi-permanent basis in the 1990s.
If you want to count numbers, I composed an estimated 1,200 stories during the six years I was at the courthouse regularly, covered 15 murder trials, sat in three different press rooms, and received about 18 haircuts.
The latter may not have anything to do with the quality of the news accounts I was giving at the time in the overall scheme of things, but certainly concerned my employers at the time enough so that the publisher would make a point of coming into the newsroom expressly to comment on length of my hair when it had retreated to a space above my shirt collar.
I began falling in love with the courthouse when I began covering the courts beat – trials, pleas, filings, legal arguments, lawyerly foibles, Judge M. Joseph Melody, etc. After awhile, I learned the rabbit warren of back stairways and basement tunnels that allowed me to get places where the normal person wasn’t going, and used that knowledge to spend my time avoiding work as much as possible by gossiping with some of the most interesting people you’d ever want to meet – usually while they, too, were taking a break from their underpaid, overworked jobs.
I knew I’d found a home the first time a judge heard me yawning and said to one of the lawyers in front of him, “If you can’t keep him interested, what do you think you’re doing to me?”
I say all this because The Management at the Daily Local News has seen fit to ship me back to the courthouse, presumably to continue where I left off 11 years ago.
I know I will miss my post as news editor, as much I know as the newsroom callers who asked me to send a reporter to their daughter’s school play will miss my polite responses, but I am looking forward to the changes that I know I will find, and to seeing once again the old faces who still populate the courthouse’s hallways and courtrooms and back stairways.
I see it this way: Home may be where the heart is, but it is also where the Motion to Dismiss is filed.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
The Best Meal in West Chester
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The Other Side of Paradise
This column originally apperaed on Aug. 26, 2007
OK, class. Geography discussion time.
Get out your copy of Franklin’s “Chester & Delaware Metro Street Atlas,” and turn to map number 3182. See that little corner of Upper Uwchlan labeled Lyndell? That’s our topic for today.
The folks who decided to dam Marsh Creek and inundate the village of Milford Mills back in the early 1970s knew there would be unintended consequences to their actions, but they likely figured those would be on the order of unplanned-for growth in the population of bass fisherpeople in Chester County.
What they did not foresee was the creation of a separate colony of residents who are citizens of, but somewhat alienated from, the larger Upper Uwchlan community. Call them, as one wise man did with me in a recent conversation, “The Folks on the Other Side of the Lake.”
This is not to say that homeowners on Davenport Drive and Reeds Road and Colts Meadow Run and Fox Hollow Road live on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. In a township where the median income for a household is $96,711 and only 2 percent of residents are below the poverty line, you’d be hard- pressed to hard to find any sort of housing distinction in Upper Uwchlan that would qualify as your average shantytown.
But the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake are disadvantaged in that the rest of the township — the vibrant, functioning, car dealership-laden part of the township — is cut off from them by the 530 acres of Marsh Creek Lake. To get from Lyndell to Eagle is a nearly impossible task, requiring a switchback series of back-road turns reminiscent of the outdoor maze that Jack Nicholson got trapped in at the end of “The Shining.”
I normally don’t have sympathy for the woes of the people who populate DevelomentLand. It’s hard to break spiritual bread with people whose low point in life comes when their Blackberry loses reception in the jacuzzi.
But I do feel for the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake. They want so much to be part of the swank wine, cheese and horse dung life of Chester Springs, and yet they find themselves tied geographically to the rubble of “historic” Guthriesville.
While their neighbors in the village of Uwchland (Motto: “No, We Are Not Going To Explain The Extra ‘D.’”) are deciding whether to shop at the Lexus dealership or stick with the SUVs at CarSense, folks in Lyndell have to worry that some renegade paper mill owner might drop roofing tacks on their driveway. It has to be hard to realize that it is easier to get a burger at the McDonalds in Downingtown than it is to have dinner at the Eagle Tavern.
I believe, however, that there may be a solution to the “East of Eden” dilemma that the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake face. Passage of SB 90210, the “Chester County Open Space Creation Act of 2007 (As Amended),” would require the Army Corps of Engineers to fill in Marsh Creek Lake. When accomplished, Lyndell residents would be able to scoot over to Eagle in no time.
Plus, there’d be the natural side benefit of the drop in the bass fisherpeople population.
OK, class. Geography discussion time.
Get out your copy of Franklin’s “Chester & Delaware Metro Street Atlas,” and turn to map number 3182. See that little corner of Upper Uwchlan labeled Lyndell? That’s our topic for today.
The folks who decided to dam Marsh Creek and inundate the village of Milford Mills back in the early 1970s knew there would be unintended consequences to their actions, but they likely figured those would be on the order of unplanned-for growth in the population of bass fisherpeople in Chester County.
What they did not foresee was the creation of a separate colony of residents who are citizens of, but somewhat alienated from, the larger Upper Uwchlan community. Call them, as one wise man did with me in a recent conversation, “The Folks on the Other Side of the Lake.”
This is not to say that homeowners on Davenport Drive and Reeds Road and Colts Meadow Run and Fox Hollow Road live on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks. In a township where the median income for a household is $96,711 and only 2 percent of residents are below the poverty line, you’d be hard- pressed to hard to find any sort of housing distinction in Upper Uwchlan that would qualify as your average shantytown.
But the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake are disadvantaged in that the rest of the township — the vibrant, functioning, car dealership-laden part of the township — is cut off from them by the 530 acres of Marsh Creek Lake. To get from Lyndell to Eagle is a nearly impossible task, requiring a switchback series of back-road turns reminiscent of the outdoor maze that Jack Nicholson got trapped in at the end of “The Shining.”
I normally don’t have sympathy for the woes of the people who populate DevelomentLand. It’s hard to break spiritual bread with people whose low point in life comes when their Blackberry loses reception in the jacuzzi.
But I do feel for the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake. They want so much to be part of the swank wine, cheese and horse dung life of Chester Springs, and yet they find themselves tied geographically to the rubble of “historic” Guthriesville.
While their neighbors in the village of Uwchland (Motto: “No, We Are Not Going To Explain The Extra ‘D.’”) are deciding whether to shop at the Lexus dealership or stick with the SUVs at CarSense, folks in Lyndell have to worry that some renegade paper mill owner might drop roofing tacks on their driveway. It has to be hard to realize that it is easier to get a burger at the McDonalds in Downingtown than it is to have dinner at the Eagle Tavern.
I believe, however, that there may be a solution to the “East of Eden” dilemma that the Folks on the Other Side of the Lake face. Passage of SB 90210, the “Chester County Open Space Creation Act of 2007 (As Amended),” would require the Army Corps of Engineers to fill in Marsh Creek Lake. When accomplished, Lyndell residents would be able to scoot over to Eagle in no time.
Plus, there’d be the natural side benefit of the drop in the bass fisherpeople population.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Lazy Bones' Mea Culpa
Sorry, folks. I haven't been posting my columns in the past few weeks because I, well, uh, becaue .. I had a hangnail? Had to wash my hair? Had to defrost the refrigerator? Had to defrost my hangnail?
Face it, people. I get lazy every now and then and neglect my duties. Don't believe me? Check my kitchen sink. There's a plate at the bottom of the pile that contains scraps from a dinner I had sometime around the end of July.
Hope you have found other things to occupy your time with since I disappeared, and that you'll enjoy reading these musings.
Happy end of summer!
Face it, people. I get lazy every now and then and neglect my duties. Don't believe me? Check my kitchen sink. There's a plate at the bottom of the pile that contains scraps from a dinner I had sometime around the end of July.
Hope you have found other things to occupy your time with since I disappeared, and that you'll enjoy reading these musings.
Happy end of summer!
Chester B. DeMille
This column originally appeared on Aug. 12, 2007
Maybe you saw the news that a New Mexico production company is proposing building a multi-million dollar film and television studio in the Philadelphia area. Maybe you didn’t. But then again, maybe you saw the major motion picture “Chubb-Chubbs Save Xmas,” and maybe you didn’t. I will tell you that from what I can gather, both productions rate about one star on my grading scale — out of a possible 100.
It’s not that I don’t love the idea of saving Xmas, or the whole Mid-Winter Holiday Season Concept for those of you atheists and pagans celebrating at home. Nor do I object to the idea of locating a film and television production facility in the Philadelphia area, for that matter.
No, when I read the story, the sentence that struck me as something for the cutting room floor was this one: “Pacifica” — that’s the name of the production company from New Mexico — “is looking at sites in Bucks, Delaware and Philadelphia counties.”
“Cut!” as they used to say in those Hollywood movies about Hollywood movies.
Never mind the fact that we’re dealing here with a company named Pacifica that’s located in a state that does not currently border the Pacific Ocean, or any ocean that I’m aware of. But here they are practically slapping us folks in Chester County who are of the firm belief that our hometown would make the perfect place for a studio, slapping us like Moe would slap Curly.
The announcement comes about a month after state lawmakers approved $75 million in film tax credits for the fiscal year that started July 1. Gov. Ed Rendell said at a news conference with the film production company’s chief, who is trying to put together a $10 million incentive package to get the studio project off the ground, that the idea was a natural for the Philly area.
Rendell said the Philadelphia region should be attractive to filmmakers for its variety of shooting locations, from rural farms to the gritty neighborhoods of the inner city. “This area has unlimited capacity for different scenes,” said Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and current Eagles acolyte. “You can't get urban grime in Albuquerque.”
Hey, yo, Ed! If you hadn’t looked, we got it all. You want rural, we’ve got rolling hillsides that roll into other rolling hillsides. You want grime, take a walk around Phoenixville sometime and see what ends up on the soles of your shoes. You want drama like the Western standoff in “High Noon”? Check out the battle between Borough Council in West Chester and their historic preservation comrades. You want comedy like the confused townsfolk in “Blazing Saddles”? Do the words, “Hear ye, hear ye! The Council of the City of Coatesville is now in session!” strike your funny bone?
According to the Associated Press, the Delaware Valley studio would need to grow to about 1 million square feet, comprising sound stages, production offices and other space. One million square feet is about the average size of a foyer in a Mcmansion in Upper Uwchlan. We’ve got square feet just sitting around waiting to be used — a lot of it in strip shopping centers that have nearby Quiznos, so catering wouldn’t be a problem.
And did I mention that Bam’s all set for his close-up?
Maybe you saw the news that a New Mexico production company is proposing building a multi-million dollar film and television studio in the Philadelphia area. Maybe you didn’t. But then again, maybe you saw the major motion picture “Chubb-Chubbs Save Xmas,” and maybe you didn’t. I will tell you that from what I can gather, both productions rate about one star on my grading scale — out of a possible 100.
It’s not that I don’t love the idea of saving Xmas, or the whole Mid-Winter Holiday Season Concept for those of you atheists and pagans celebrating at home. Nor do I object to the idea of locating a film and television production facility in the Philadelphia area, for that matter.
No, when I read the story, the sentence that struck me as something for the cutting room floor was this one: “Pacifica” — that’s the name of the production company from New Mexico — “is looking at sites in Bucks, Delaware and Philadelphia counties.”
“Cut!” as they used to say in those Hollywood movies about Hollywood movies.
Never mind the fact that we’re dealing here with a company named Pacifica that’s located in a state that does not currently border the Pacific Ocean, or any ocean that I’m aware of. But here they are practically slapping us folks in Chester County who are of the firm belief that our hometown would make the perfect place for a studio, slapping us like Moe would slap Curly.
The announcement comes about a month after state lawmakers approved $75 million in film tax credits for the fiscal year that started July 1. Gov. Ed Rendell said at a news conference with the film production company’s chief, who is trying to put together a $10 million incentive package to get the studio project off the ground, that the idea was a natural for the Philly area.
Rendell said the Philadelphia region should be attractive to filmmakers for its variety of shooting locations, from rural farms to the gritty neighborhoods of the inner city. “This area has unlimited capacity for different scenes,” said Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and current Eagles acolyte. “You can't get urban grime in Albuquerque.”
Hey, yo, Ed! If you hadn’t looked, we got it all. You want rural, we’ve got rolling hillsides that roll into other rolling hillsides. You want grime, take a walk around Phoenixville sometime and see what ends up on the soles of your shoes. You want drama like the Western standoff in “High Noon”? Check out the battle between Borough Council in West Chester and their historic preservation comrades. You want comedy like the confused townsfolk in “Blazing Saddles”? Do the words, “Hear ye, hear ye! The Council of the City of Coatesville is now in session!” strike your funny bone?
According to the Associated Press, the Delaware Valley studio would need to grow to about 1 million square feet, comprising sound stages, production offices and other space. One million square feet is about the average size of a foyer in a Mcmansion in Upper Uwchlan. We’ve got square feet just sitting around waiting to be used — a lot of it in strip shopping centers that have nearby Quiznos, so catering wouldn’t be a problem.
And did I mention that Bam’s all set for his close-up?
My Gift To The Midwest
This column originally appeared Aug. 5, 2007
The folks in Hawarden, Iowa, and Centerville, S.D., might think about sending me an invitation to come out their way for a quick camping trip.
Since they have little-to-virtually no precipitation at all during the month of July and are suffering a Stage Two Drought as a result, my presence there with a tent and a sleeping bag could be counted on to change things overnight, bringing cool buckets of rain to their parched landscape.
It is, after all, axiomatic: Wherever I camp, it rains.
If you think I am exaggerating, then I hasten to point to the family vacation the Rellahan family took in the summer of 1973 to Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Word had it they’d been having a dry spell that summer until my family pulled up in our 1972 Dodge Dart. It was past dark when we arrived, but I confidently pitched by canvas pop tent out in a field near the resort hotel where we would be staying.
I woke up about six hours later in both darkness and about two inches of water. The point in the field where my tent was situated was the outdoor equivalent to the bottom center of a swimming pool, with me acting as a drain plug. Things have ever been thus when I venture out into the world of outdoor recreation.
It is not simply that it rains where and when I camp. It rains when I make reservations to go camping, my actual physical presence not being needed to open up the heavens.
Don’t believe me? Ask the rangers at Bowman Lake State Park in Oxford, N.Y., who had not had appreciable rain the third weekend of August since the late 1990s. But when I paid my fee for a camp site for that weekend last week, the front started moving in almost immediately. The town got 2.73 inches of rain in one day — the day I was scheduled to arrive.
Ask my friend Julia about the weekend when we were supposed to spend a relaxing weekend in September 2005 at Worlds End State Park in central Pennsylvania and instead spent an afternoon dodging the overflowing banks of the Saucon River. They tell me that folks up in Sullivan County had never seen rain clouds so big and black and wet.
Coincidence? Is it a coincidence that sales at local beer distributors increase when West Chester University opens for its fall session? Is it a coincidence that when the phone rings at 1520 WCHE-AM that Tony Polito is on the other end? I think not.
The point hit home again last weekend when I made my way to New York for a go at camping at Bowman Lake. (Last year I saw the writing on the wall, or the storm centers on the weather radar, take your pick, and stayed home.) Thursday evening was cool and dry, Friday dawned with blue skies, the noontime crowd at Cooperstown outside the Baseball Hall of Fame was bathed in sunshine, and by 2:30 p.m. there was enough rain, hail, thunder, winds, fallen trees and lightning to make a television weather broadcaster reach for his GoreTex jacket and waterproof microphone.
Take note, thus, you residents of Hawarden, Iowa and Centerville, S.D. My services can be arranged, for a nominal fee. Just keep the umbrellas handy.
The folks in Hawarden, Iowa, and Centerville, S.D., might think about sending me an invitation to come out their way for a quick camping trip.
Since they have little-to-virtually no precipitation at all during the month of July and are suffering a Stage Two Drought as a result, my presence there with a tent and a sleeping bag could be counted on to change things overnight, bringing cool buckets of rain to their parched landscape.
It is, after all, axiomatic: Wherever I camp, it rains.
If you think I am exaggerating, then I hasten to point to the family vacation the Rellahan family took in the summer of 1973 to Old Orchard Beach, Maine. Word had it they’d been having a dry spell that summer until my family pulled up in our 1972 Dodge Dart. It was past dark when we arrived, but I confidently pitched by canvas pop tent out in a field near the resort hotel where we would be staying.
I woke up about six hours later in both darkness and about two inches of water. The point in the field where my tent was situated was the outdoor equivalent to the bottom center of a swimming pool, with me acting as a drain plug. Things have ever been thus when I venture out into the world of outdoor recreation.
It is not simply that it rains where and when I camp. It rains when I make reservations to go camping, my actual physical presence not being needed to open up the heavens.
Don’t believe me? Ask the rangers at Bowman Lake State Park in Oxford, N.Y., who had not had appreciable rain the third weekend of August since the late 1990s. But when I paid my fee for a camp site for that weekend last week, the front started moving in almost immediately. The town got 2.73 inches of rain in one day — the day I was scheduled to arrive.
Ask my friend Julia about the weekend when we were supposed to spend a relaxing weekend in September 2005 at Worlds End State Park in central Pennsylvania and instead spent an afternoon dodging the overflowing banks of the Saucon River. They tell me that folks up in Sullivan County had never seen rain clouds so big and black and wet.
Coincidence? Is it a coincidence that sales at local beer distributors increase when West Chester University opens for its fall session? Is it a coincidence that when the phone rings at 1520 WCHE-AM that Tony Polito is on the other end? I think not.
The point hit home again last weekend when I made my way to New York for a go at camping at Bowman Lake. (Last year I saw the writing on the wall, or the storm centers on the weather radar, take your pick, and stayed home.) Thursday evening was cool and dry, Friday dawned with blue skies, the noontime crowd at Cooperstown outside the Baseball Hall of Fame was bathed in sunshine, and by 2:30 p.m. there was enough rain, hail, thunder, winds, fallen trees and lightning to make a television weather broadcaster reach for his GoreTex jacket and waterproof microphone.
Take note, thus, you residents of Hawarden, Iowa and Centerville, S.D. My services can be arranged, for a nominal fee. Just keep the umbrellas handy.
What A Beach!
This column appeared on July 22, 2007
We consider this column to be, among all other things, an extension of the Daily Local News’ commitment to public service.
Over the years, we have endeavored to bring attention to various social, environmental and gastrological needs that have gone unmet in the general West Chester/Chester County area.
It is well established that we have campaigned vigorously for the addition of the township of Chadds Ford to our county’s boundaries, unchaining it from the tyrannical yoke of Delaware County; that we have urged the powers that be to open a public swimming pool within walking distance of the 300 block of South Church Street, preferably one with a diving board and a cool, shaded area for sitting; and that we have decried the absence of authentic Cincinnati chili from the menus of restaurants across the county’s landscape.
Although to date none — give or take — of those causes has received so much as a passing nod from cartographers, politicians or restaurant owners, we are proud to have raised them as issues of concern.
But now we come to an even more pressing need that has yet to be addressed by any responsible party involved in county government or business.
Folks, we need a beach.
Chester County has been around for more than 300 years (I checked), and although it has amenities such as a world-class public gardens, a historical Revolutionary War battle site and a potato chip factory tour, it does not have a large expanse of sand and shells and horseshoe crabs that sits beside a large body of water, one that features waves.
We, meaning I, recently spent several days at two beaches that find themselves attached to the Atlantic Ocean — one in Delaware, one in New Jersey — and we can say with confidence that days spent lounging on a beach with the sun overhead and a breeze at one’s back is good for the soul. Maybe bad for the skin, but good for the soul.
Why, we would even venture to suggest that the estimable former county Commissioner Colin Hanna would declare, “¡Estoy teniendo un tiempo muy, muy bueno! ¿Puedo tener otro mojito?” (Translation: “I am having a very, very good time! Can I have another mojito?”) if he were sitting on a beach in the county.
But we hear you say that Chester County does have a beach already, up at Marsh Creek State Park, right next to the snack bar. We have seen this beach. We have spent time on this beach.
We, however, do not consider it worthy of the name “beach” and would suggest that anyone who does has spent too much time in the sun.
(Besides, we have it on good terms that the lake at Marsh Creek is going to be drained soon to make way for additional open space in the county.)
We are confident that once this idea gets in the hands of the proper authorities at the Army Corps of Engineers that the day will come soon when we can all enjoy a day at the beach without having to drive to New Jersey or Delaware.
Or having to cross any large bridges on the way.
We consider this column to be, among all other things, an extension of the Daily Local News’ commitment to public service.
Over the years, we have endeavored to bring attention to various social, environmental and gastrological needs that have gone unmet in the general West Chester/Chester County area.
It is well established that we have campaigned vigorously for the addition of the township of Chadds Ford to our county’s boundaries, unchaining it from the tyrannical yoke of Delaware County; that we have urged the powers that be to open a public swimming pool within walking distance of the 300 block of South Church Street, preferably one with a diving board and a cool, shaded area for sitting; and that we have decried the absence of authentic Cincinnati chili from the menus of restaurants across the county’s landscape.
Although to date none — give or take — of those causes has received so much as a passing nod from cartographers, politicians or restaurant owners, we are proud to have raised them as issues of concern.
But now we come to an even more pressing need that has yet to be addressed by any responsible party involved in county government or business.
Folks, we need a beach.
Chester County has been around for more than 300 years (I checked), and although it has amenities such as a world-class public gardens, a historical Revolutionary War battle site and a potato chip factory tour, it does not have a large expanse of sand and shells and horseshoe crabs that sits beside a large body of water, one that features waves.
We, meaning I, recently spent several days at two beaches that find themselves attached to the Atlantic Ocean — one in Delaware, one in New Jersey — and we can say with confidence that days spent lounging on a beach with the sun overhead and a breeze at one’s back is good for the soul. Maybe bad for the skin, but good for the soul.
Why, we would even venture to suggest that the estimable former county Commissioner Colin Hanna would declare, “¡Estoy teniendo un tiempo muy, muy bueno! ¿Puedo tener otro mojito?” (Translation: “I am having a very, very good time! Can I have another mojito?”) if he were sitting on a beach in the county.
But we hear you say that Chester County does have a beach already, up at Marsh Creek State Park, right next to the snack bar. We have seen this beach. We have spent time on this beach.
We, however, do not consider it worthy of the name “beach” and would suggest that anyone who does has spent too much time in the sun.
(Besides, we have it on good terms that the lake at Marsh Creek is going to be drained soon to make way for additional open space in the county.)
We are confident that once this idea gets in the hands of the proper authorities at the Army Corps of Engineers that the day will come soon when we can all enjoy a day at the beach without having to drive to New Jersey or Delaware.
Or having to cross any large bridges on the way.
Fear Strikes
This column appperaed on July 8, 2007 (weeks befor the Minnesota tragedy)
I can cite for you at least 15 reasons why I appreciate life in Chester County, and those are the 15 covered bridges that call this place home.
But lest you think that I love them for their antiquity, their unique architecture or their rough-hewn grandeur, let me steer you off that path before you get too misty-eyed. No, I love covered bridges because when you go over them you can easily pretend you are not driving over a bridge.
I have an unreasonable fear of crossing bridges.
The people who know call this gephyrophobia, and here’s what I learned about it from the good folks at MedicineNet.com (Motto: “We Bring Doctors’ Knowledge To You”).
“Fear of crossing bridges is a relatively common phobia, although most people with it do not know they have something called ‘gephyrophobia.’ However, the derivation of the word ‘gephyrophobia’ is perfectly straightforward (if you know Greek); it is derived from the Greek words ‘gephyra’ (bridge) and ‘phobos’ (fear).”
Why thank you, MedicineNet.com, for being so helpful and so condescending, all at the same time.
If you think for a moment that knowing my fear is “a relatively common phobia” or that its name is derived from the “perfectly straightforward” Greek is going to help me the next time I’m confronted with the impending upstroke of some upcoming span, you are sorely mistaken.
Every Greek in the world, common or not, would not be able to convince me that the moment that this particular bridge would completely come apart and dissolve like steam, plunging me into the emptiness of the abyss, would be the exact moment that I am at its apex, helpless and alone.
I am going camping in Delaware this week and that means two things: One, that it will rain sometime between now and when I decamp and two, that I have been mentally preparing myself for a forced bridge crossing over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal for about three weeks. And it is not going to help.
When I drive over a bridge I keep my eyes locked on the blacktop in front of me and both hands firmly on the steering wheel. I sweat and hum a lot, too. If my eyes drift over the side and glimpse an instant of the space and water below, I am convinced that my subconscious will involuntarily jerk the car to the right over the edge and into the water below.
Here’s MedicineNet.com again. “High bridges over waterways and gorges can be especially intimidating, as can be very long or very narrow bridges.”
Yes, and bridges where traffic gets jammed and you are stuck at the top of the span and with each passing of a semi you can feel the bridge shake and roll and you think that in another five minutes the only thing to do is put the car in park, get out and crawl on your belly to the other side.
I have friends who also have this affliction and we keep it mostly to ourselves, the fear of embarrassment being almost as gripping as the gephyrophobia itself. Except when we get together and share the joy of living in a county where bridges have covers.
I can cite for you at least 15 reasons why I appreciate life in Chester County, and those are the 15 covered bridges that call this place home.
But lest you think that I love them for their antiquity, their unique architecture or their rough-hewn grandeur, let me steer you off that path before you get too misty-eyed. No, I love covered bridges because when you go over them you can easily pretend you are not driving over a bridge.
I have an unreasonable fear of crossing bridges.
The people who know call this gephyrophobia, and here’s what I learned about it from the good folks at MedicineNet.com (Motto: “We Bring Doctors’ Knowledge To You”).
“Fear of crossing bridges is a relatively common phobia, although most people with it do not know they have something called ‘gephyrophobia.’ However, the derivation of the word ‘gephyrophobia’ is perfectly straightforward (if you know Greek); it is derived from the Greek words ‘gephyra’ (bridge) and ‘phobos’ (fear).”
Why thank you, MedicineNet.com, for being so helpful and so condescending, all at the same time.
If you think for a moment that knowing my fear is “a relatively common phobia” or that its name is derived from the “perfectly straightforward” Greek is going to help me the next time I’m confronted with the impending upstroke of some upcoming span, you are sorely mistaken.
Every Greek in the world, common or not, would not be able to convince me that the moment that this particular bridge would completely come apart and dissolve like steam, plunging me into the emptiness of the abyss, would be the exact moment that I am at its apex, helpless and alone.
I am going camping in Delaware this week and that means two things: One, that it will rain sometime between now and when I decamp and two, that I have been mentally preparing myself for a forced bridge crossing over the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal for about three weeks. And it is not going to help.
When I drive over a bridge I keep my eyes locked on the blacktop in front of me and both hands firmly on the steering wheel. I sweat and hum a lot, too. If my eyes drift over the side and glimpse an instant of the space and water below, I am convinced that my subconscious will involuntarily jerk the car to the right over the edge and into the water below.
Here’s MedicineNet.com again. “High bridges over waterways and gorges can be especially intimidating, as can be very long or very narrow bridges.”
Yes, and bridges where traffic gets jammed and you are stuck at the top of the span and with each passing of a semi you can feel the bridge shake and roll and you think that in another five minutes the only thing to do is put the car in park, get out and crawl on your belly to the other side.
I have friends who also have this affliction and we keep it mostly to ourselves, the fear of embarrassment being almost as gripping as the gephyrophobia itself. Except when we get together and share the joy of living in a county where bridges have covers.
Enjoying The Show
This column originally appeared on July 1, 2007
Take it from me: Old news stories never die. They get recycled, reprinted and rediscovered. Then they become not news, but history.
The notion occurred to me recently as I revisited two stories from my past. One you’ve heard of endlessly. The other, you haven’t, unless you were born and lived somewhere near Morganfield, Ky.
The better known of the stories is that surrounding the anniversary of the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the psychedelic album by The Beatles that may or may not be the most widely regarded rock music accomplishment in rock’s brief history.
The album came out 40 years ago this summer, and critics have been jumping all over themselves to relive the album’s meaning, its impact on the music world and its true place in rock history. I’ve been revisiting the story because it was one of the last albums I had to plead with my parents to buy me.
In 1967, Sgt. Pepper cost $4.19 cents at the Air-Waye Record store on Ludlow Avenue in Cinncinnati, Ohio, and you could have told me it cost 50,000 gold pieces at the Inn of the Seventh Happiness in Shangi-La, Himalaya and I would have had about as much chance of buying it.
Ten-year-olds in 1967 just did not have $4.19 lying around to spend on a record, even if it was the most monumental achievement in the world of rock music.
It occurred to me after reading the story of the making of Sgt. Pepper one more time that though there is little more new to be added, reading about it still makes me as happy as the day my father brought it home and I dropped our record player’s needle on the rotating vinyl and started singing along.
The other story came jumping back at me a few weeks ago after having slept undisturbed in my memory for the better part of three decades.
At the daily news meeting at the Daily Local News, at which we review the stories available for the next day, an editor began summarizing a wire story about a group of families in Kentucky who were fighting the government to get compensation for the land that had been taken away from them in the days before World War II.
The more the editor read, the more I remembered. I had covered this same story myself in 1980 as a neophyte reporter for the Sturgis, Ky., News, circulation 3,000, just down the road from Morganfield, Ky., the county seat, where the army had built a base on land taken from farmers.
The case was in legal limbo then, and still is, I gather. But it fell to me to write something about the case month after month because, well, that is what passed for news in Sturgis, Ky., population 3,000 -- and one fewer after I’d finally had it with stories about forfeited farms and packed up for Pennsylvania and, ultimately, to writing stories about Andy Dinniman.
Nostalgic nonetheless, I went through my old news clippings from Sturgis looking for whatever I had filed on the Morganfield families. I found much to revisit and rediscover, but nothing of their case. I had indeed left it all behind.
I do, however, have a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s, and I’m still enjoying the show.
Take it from me: Old news stories never die. They get recycled, reprinted and rediscovered. Then they become not news, but history.
The notion occurred to me recently as I revisited two stories from my past. One you’ve heard of endlessly. The other, you haven’t, unless you were born and lived somewhere near Morganfield, Ky.
The better known of the stories is that surrounding the anniversary of the release of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the psychedelic album by The Beatles that may or may not be the most widely regarded rock music accomplishment in rock’s brief history.
The album came out 40 years ago this summer, and critics have been jumping all over themselves to relive the album’s meaning, its impact on the music world and its true place in rock history. I’ve been revisiting the story because it was one of the last albums I had to plead with my parents to buy me.
In 1967, Sgt. Pepper cost $4.19 cents at the Air-Waye Record store on Ludlow Avenue in Cinncinnati, Ohio, and you could have told me it cost 50,000 gold pieces at the Inn of the Seventh Happiness in Shangi-La, Himalaya and I would have had about as much chance of buying it.
Ten-year-olds in 1967 just did not have $4.19 lying around to spend on a record, even if it was the most monumental achievement in the world of rock music.
It occurred to me after reading the story of the making of Sgt. Pepper one more time that though there is little more new to be added, reading about it still makes me as happy as the day my father brought it home and I dropped our record player’s needle on the rotating vinyl and started singing along.
The other story came jumping back at me a few weeks ago after having slept undisturbed in my memory for the better part of three decades.
At the daily news meeting at the Daily Local News, at which we review the stories available for the next day, an editor began summarizing a wire story about a group of families in Kentucky who were fighting the government to get compensation for the land that had been taken away from them in the days before World War II.
The more the editor read, the more I remembered. I had covered this same story myself in 1980 as a neophyte reporter for the Sturgis, Ky., News, circulation 3,000, just down the road from Morganfield, Ky., the county seat, where the army had built a base on land taken from farmers.
The case was in legal limbo then, and still is, I gather. But it fell to me to write something about the case month after month because, well, that is what passed for news in Sturgis, Ky., population 3,000 -- and one fewer after I’d finally had it with stories about forfeited farms and packed up for Pennsylvania and, ultimately, to writing stories about Andy Dinniman.
Nostalgic nonetheless, I went through my old news clippings from Sturgis looking for whatever I had filed on the Morganfield families. I found much to revisit and rediscover, but nothing of their case. I had indeed left it all behind.
I do, however, have a copy of Sgt. Pepper’s, and I’m still enjoying the show.
Feeling Free At Night
This column originally apperaed on June 24, 2007
Last night, something called the Great American Backyard Campout occurred — presumably, since the National Wildlife federation has been promoting it vigorously — in communities across the country.
The purpose of the event is to acquaint, or reacquaint, American children, with nature, by tuning off the Xbox, turning on the flashlight and dropping off to sleep outside where they can see the stars. It’s supposed to be a time when parents and kids and neighbors and communities can all converge upon one another and bond for a few hours in the presence of trees, grass and a firefly or two.
I’m not certain how this all works in the urban world of downtown Coatesville, but I’m not here to pour water on the campfire, so to speak. Hearing of the event simply made me shake my head once again at how different things have become since my childhood.
In August 1969, Danny Biehl, Bernard Frank — my two best friends since nursery school — and I did not need any national organization to tell us of the pleasures of a sleeping bag on a summer’s night.
We had been pestering our parents to let us sleep out since the summer began, and they let us do it not for any high-minded purpose, but simply because they were sick of hearing us ask.
That is the difference between then and now. About as close as we got to exploring the ways of nature was picking green tomatoes off the vines in Danny’s next door neighbor’s garden. And if our parents had suggested that the whole family would join in the night’s activities, we would have called the whole thing off immediately. Bonding with nature or our families was not the point.
The purpose behind our campout was to finally experience a world we had been waiting for all our lives — the grownup world of the night. We wanted a respite from the supervision of adults, a liberation from normal rules, and, most of all, a chance to stay up late and walk around in the dark.
We got all we had hoped for.
After seeing the lights in Dan’s house go out, we made our way off the property, flashlights in hand. This was dangerous territory, being outside on the street after the world had gone to sleep. It was as close to crime as we had ever come, and it felt great.
We prowled the neighborhood, shining our lights at unsuspecting windows. We broke off tree branches and whacked each other as if in swordfights. We jumped behind bushes at the sound of a car engine and sight of headlights, believing that any adult would have rounded us up and turned us in to whatever authorities existed that governed midnight rambling by 12-year-olds on a moment’s notice. We had fun with an exclamation point.
I am certain that the memory makes the conditions that night more idyllic than they truly were. I doubt that the night was as starry, that the moon was as full, or that the air was as warm as I think of it now.
But I am convinced that the laughs we shared were as loud, the excitement was as tangible, and the sense of freedom was real as I remember.
Last night, something called the Great American Backyard Campout occurred — presumably, since the National Wildlife federation has been promoting it vigorously — in communities across the country.
The purpose of the event is to acquaint, or reacquaint, American children, with nature, by tuning off the Xbox, turning on the flashlight and dropping off to sleep outside where they can see the stars. It’s supposed to be a time when parents and kids and neighbors and communities can all converge upon one another and bond for a few hours in the presence of trees, grass and a firefly or two.
I’m not certain how this all works in the urban world of downtown Coatesville, but I’m not here to pour water on the campfire, so to speak. Hearing of the event simply made me shake my head once again at how different things have become since my childhood.
In August 1969, Danny Biehl, Bernard Frank — my two best friends since nursery school — and I did not need any national organization to tell us of the pleasures of a sleeping bag on a summer’s night.
We had been pestering our parents to let us sleep out since the summer began, and they let us do it not for any high-minded purpose, but simply because they were sick of hearing us ask.
That is the difference between then and now. About as close as we got to exploring the ways of nature was picking green tomatoes off the vines in Danny’s next door neighbor’s garden. And if our parents had suggested that the whole family would join in the night’s activities, we would have called the whole thing off immediately. Bonding with nature or our families was not the point.
The purpose behind our campout was to finally experience a world we had been waiting for all our lives — the grownup world of the night. We wanted a respite from the supervision of adults, a liberation from normal rules, and, most of all, a chance to stay up late and walk around in the dark.
We got all we had hoped for.
After seeing the lights in Dan’s house go out, we made our way off the property, flashlights in hand. This was dangerous territory, being outside on the street after the world had gone to sleep. It was as close to crime as we had ever come, and it felt great.
We prowled the neighborhood, shining our lights at unsuspecting windows. We broke off tree branches and whacked each other as if in swordfights. We jumped behind bushes at the sound of a car engine and sight of headlights, believing that any adult would have rounded us up and turned us in to whatever authorities existed that governed midnight rambling by 12-year-olds on a moment’s notice. We had fun with an exclamation point.
I am certain that the memory makes the conditions that night more idyllic than they truly were. I doubt that the night was as starry, that the moon was as full, or that the air was as warm as I think of it now.
But I am convinced that the laughs we shared were as loud, the excitement was as tangible, and the sense of freedom was real as I remember.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Steal This Paper!
This column originally appeared in June , 2005. It re-appeared on June 17, 2007.
Our days begin with trouble here.
By here, I mean the normally placid sidewalks of South Church Street, which of course I have already identified as the greatest street in Chester County. And by trouble, I mean the sudden presence of a wicked, hidden figure who has disrupted our peaceful lives.
Someone, you see, is stealing our newspapers.
Well, OK, not my newspaper. My newspaper sits on my desk in this office, safe as can be, guarded not only by the crack early morning staff of Jane and Sue, but also by the simple fact of supply. There are dozens of copies of today‘s daily in the building, so if you want one you don‘t really have to go to the length of appropriating one that belongs to somebody else. You probably have one sitting on your desk when you walk in anyway; why steal what you already have?
No, the purloined copies belong to my neighbors. For several days now, they emerge from their twin homes expecting to begin their day with a taste of community, nation and world goings on, only an empty delivery. Calls to circulation managers confirm that the paper was thrown; deduction proves that the papers were stolen.
We know things about the thief, and intend to find out more until apprehension is made.
Our days begin with trouble here.
By here, I mean the normally placid sidewalks of South Church Street, which of course I have already identified as the greatest street in Chester County. And by trouble, I mean the sudden presence of a wicked, hidden figure who has disrupted our peaceful lives.
Someone, you see, is stealing our newspapers.
Well, OK, not my newspaper. My newspaper sits on my desk in this office, safe as can be, guarded not only by the crack early morning staff of Jane and Sue, but also by the simple fact of supply. There are dozens of copies of today‘s daily in the building, so if you want one you don‘t really have to go to the length of appropriating one that belongs to somebody else. You probably have one sitting on your desk when you walk in anyway; why steal what you already have?
No, the purloined copies belong to my neighbors. For several days now, they emerge from their twin homes expecting to begin their day with a taste of community, nation and world goings on, only an empty delivery. Calls to circulation managers confirm that the paper was thrown; deduction proves that the papers were stolen.
We know things about the thief, and intend to find out more until apprehension is made.
- The thief is a morning person: the papers are gone before the clock strikes seven. Strange, because it is daylight at that time of morning now, so there is not even the cover of darkness to aid the crime.
- The thief has broad tastes: Not only does he/she take the Daily Local News — of which I am secretly proud — but then stops to pick up a copy of the New York Times as well. I am sure he/she dives into the Local first, getting a fix on the hometown community first, then runs off to the larger world.
- The thief may be reading this right now: Of course, it could be that he/she skips the news pages completely and goes right to the sports pages to check on the latest boy‘s lacrosse tilt, but I‘d prefer to think otherwise. If you are going to go to the trouble of stealing something, you might as well make the best use of it.
The situation has left a bad taste in our mouths. We‘ve largely avoided such problems here. I‘ve lived on the block for better than 20 years — my neighbors longer — and can‘t remember more than one break-in. I had a backpack lifted from my car once, but I admit to having left the window rolled down, more or less inviting the theft.
We don‘t have a lot of rowdiness or car-scratching or vandalism, and the trash that is left on the doorsteps tends to get disposed of rather quickly. As I said, it‘s pretty much a perfect world.
So what are we doing to stop this? Sorry, I can‘t give out that information. Rest assured, however, we are narrowing our suspects.
But just as an aside, I‘d like to offer a token of redemption to the thief: 610-430-1172. That‘s the Daily Local's circulation department‘s phone number. They‘ll be happy to help.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
This appeared on Sunday, June 10, 2007
I know what you‘re thinking. I hear what you‘re saying. But if you think that I‘m going to join in the chorus and sing along to the same tune, you should take a deep breath, lie down, and let the notion pass.
You say that the streets of West Chester are a bit torn up. You say that ”a bit torn up“ is just a polite way of saying that the surface of the moon provides a better ride than the streets of West Chester. You say that driving in downtown Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, is a smoother commute than trying to make it around the streets of West Chester.
You think that the fact that the ruts on our streets here in West Chester look like the canals of Venice without the water makes life here unpleasant. You think that the fact that our potholes have developed potholes is something that the borough elders should be concerned about. You think that we West Chester residents must dread making our way up West Market Street the way U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzalez dreads walking into the U.S. Senate Judicial Committee hearing room.
But all of that just proves that you don‘t know us.
We don‘t complain that the streets are a bit torn up. We don‘t complain that making a quick trip on the borough‘s blacktop is something like jumping on one of those electric ”Bucking Bronco“ rides outside the local K-Mart, with its endless back-and-forth and up-and-down rocking motion, only more expensive. We don‘t complain that, because of the roadwork detours in the borough, our path from one end of the town to the other now resembles the route taken by the mouse who gets put in a maze and has to find the block of cheese without getting an electric shock.
We don‘t complain, because we quit complaining about our streets sometime in the late years of the George H.W. Bush administration. Complaining about the street conditions in West Chester is by its own nature the very definition of pointlessness. When new neighbors who have moved here from the relatively well-maintained streets of Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, start to complain about street conditions in West Chester, we look at them and smile the sad smile of a wizened parent about to tell their child that simply asking Santa to bring you a wide-screen, flat-panel, wall-hanging HDTV with TiVo access and satellite dish hookup doesn‘t necessarily mean that it‘s going to be sitting underneath the tree on Christmas morning.
More than that, however, is that we know that at some point all this trouble is going to lead to something beautiful. We know that, like the aging starlet who has bandages wrapped all around her face from the tuck ‘n‘ lift performed at Dr. 90210‘s office, soon everything is going to look 20 years younger and a whole lot smoother.
We know this because every winter the snow piles up over our cars and the ice forms in chunks over the roads and we can‘t find a parking space without plowing through a small mountain of slush. And within the span of just a few short months, it‘s all gone and we‘re back to life as we love it.
Dodging potholes.
I know what you‘re thinking. I hear what you‘re saying. But if you think that I‘m going to join in the chorus and sing along to the same tune, you should take a deep breath, lie down, and let the notion pass.
You say that the streets of West Chester are a bit torn up. You say that ”a bit torn up“ is just a polite way of saying that the surface of the moon provides a better ride than the streets of West Chester. You say that driving in downtown Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, is a smoother commute than trying to make it around the streets of West Chester.
You think that the fact that the ruts on our streets here in West Chester look like the canals of Venice without the water makes life here unpleasant. You think that the fact that our potholes have developed potholes is something that the borough elders should be concerned about. You think that we West Chester residents must dread making our way up West Market Street the way U.S. Attorney General Albert Gonzalez dreads walking into the U.S. Senate Judicial Committee hearing room.
But all of that just proves that you don‘t know us.
We don‘t complain that the streets are a bit torn up. We don‘t complain that making a quick trip on the borough‘s blacktop is something like jumping on one of those electric ”Bucking Bronco“ rides outside the local K-Mart, with its endless back-and-forth and up-and-down rocking motion, only more expensive. We don‘t complain that, because of the roadwork detours in the borough, our path from one end of the town to the other now resembles the route taken by the mouse who gets put in a maze and has to find the block of cheese without getting an electric shock.
We don‘t complain, because we quit complaining about our streets sometime in the late years of the George H.W. Bush administration. Complaining about the street conditions in West Chester is by its own nature the very definition of pointlessness. When new neighbors who have moved here from the relatively well-maintained streets of Qurghorteppa, Tajikistan, start to complain about street conditions in West Chester, we look at them and smile the sad smile of a wizened parent about to tell their child that simply asking Santa to bring you a wide-screen, flat-panel, wall-hanging HDTV with TiVo access and satellite dish hookup doesn‘t necessarily mean that it‘s going to be sitting underneath the tree on Christmas morning.
More than that, however, is that we know that at some point all this trouble is going to lead to something beautiful. We know that, like the aging starlet who has bandages wrapped all around her face from the tuck ‘n‘ lift performed at Dr. 90210‘s office, soon everything is going to look 20 years younger and a whole lot smoother.
We know this because every winter the snow piles up over our cars and the ice forms in chunks over the roads and we can‘t find a parking space without plowing through a small mountain of slush. And within the span of just a few short months, it‘s all gone and we‘re back to life as we love it.
Dodging potholes.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
How Earl's Phone Changed the World
This appeared on Sunday, June 3, 2007
Roger Lerch, perhaps my favorite teacher, told us students in his Modern European History course at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, back in September 1974, that the world had changed more in the past 150 years than it had in the previous 2,000.
And at the time, he hadn‘t even ordered a sandwich at Wawa without ever having to actually speak a single, solitary word.
The memory of Mr. Lerch, and of his remark, came to me upon the visit to the Daily Local News of Molly Morrison, the president of the Natural Lands Trust and former head chef and chief bottle washer on the fifth floor of the Chester County Courthouse, the aerie of the commissioners and their staff.
I hadn‘t seen Molly in a long while, and she hadn‘t been to the Daily Local News offices in a decade or more. So with others in the room, our reunion led to a series of memories about past tribulations between the newspaper, me, Molly and, of course, Commissioner Extrordinaire Earl M. Baker, Molly‘s original patron.
The story we both remembered and liked the best was the saga of Earl‘s car phone.
The year being 1984 or so, mobile telephones were something new to the landscape. And Earl, being a man who craved communication of any kind, (He once told me the sentence he least liked reading in the newspaper was: ”Baker could not be reached for comment.“) decided he needed one. So he got the county to ante up.
For us in the press, it seemed the story of a lifetime. A phone for his car? Who did Earl think he was — the president of the United States?
So we took the ball and ran with it. Story after story, day after day. Who else in government had car phones? Who did Earl talk to on the thing? What were the Chester County taxpayers shelling out for him to jabber whilst cruising down the Schuylkill? We even got a cartoonist to draw a picture of a Princess Phone on wheels, with Earl‘s photo superimposed on the dial.
The phone itself was — so I have heard — enormous, bigger than a small dog and about as easy to manipulate.
And today? Governments hand out taxpayer-funded cell phones like politicians used to hand out lollypops. If the Daily Local News were to opine on the nonessential nature of government-paid cell phones, readers would look at us like we were publishing from the planet Neptune, not Lionville.
So I thought about how times had changed, and how technology has sped up so incredibly that something which was shockingly unnecessary 20 years ago is today considered hopelessly out of date — like Earl‘s massive car phone.
The next day, I found myself standing in line at the Wawa wanting to order a sandwich, and being completely ignored by the deli staff. I noticed a screen or two near the counter and realized that ordering now had to be done by means of a touch menu. Within a few moments I had my salami with provolone paid for and in a bag and out the door.
But I had not spoken a single, solitary word to anyone involved in the process, nor did they expect me to.
And that, Mr. Lerch, makes me yearn just a little for the days before the world changed.
Roger Lerch, perhaps my favorite teacher, told us students in his Modern European History course at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, Ohio, back in September 1974, that the world had changed more in the past 150 years than it had in the previous 2,000.
And at the time, he hadn‘t even ordered a sandwich at Wawa without ever having to actually speak a single, solitary word.
The memory of Mr. Lerch, and of his remark, came to me upon the visit to the Daily Local News of Molly Morrison, the president of the Natural Lands Trust and former head chef and chief bottle washer on the fifth floor of the Chester County Courthouse, the aerie of the commissioners and their staff.
I hadn‘t seen Molly in a long while, and she hadn‘t been to the Daily Local News offices in a decade or more. So with others in the room, our reunion led to a series of memories about past tribulations between the newspaper, me, Molly and, of course, Commissioner Extrordinaire Earl M. Baker, Molly‘s original patron.
The story we both remembered and liked the best was the saga of Earl‘s car phone.
The year being 1984 or so, mobile telephones were something new to the landscape. And Earl, being a man who craved communication of any kind, (He once told me the sentence he least liked reading in the newspaper was: ”Baker could not be reached for comment.“) decided he needed one. So he got the county to ante up.
For us in the press, it seemed the story of a lifetime. A phone for his car? Who did Earl think he was — the president of the United States?
So we took the ball and ran with it. Story after story, day after day. Who else in government had car phones? Who did Earl talk to on the thing? What were the Chester County taxpayers shelling out for him to jabber whilst cruising down the Schuylkill? We even got a cartoonist to draw a picture of a Princess Phone on wheels, with Earl‘s photo superimposed on the dial.
The phone itself was — so I have heard — enormous, bigger than a small dog and about as easy to manipulate.
And today? Governments hand out taxpayer-funded cell phones like politicians used to hand out lollypops. If the Daily Local News were to opine on the nonessential nature of government-paid cell phones, readers would look at us like we were publishing from the planet Neptune, not Lionville.
So I thought about how times had changed, and how technology has sped up so incredibly that something which was shockingly unnecessary 20 years ago is today considered hopelessly out of date — like Earl‘s massive car phone.
The next day, I found myself standing in line at the Wawa wanting to order a sandwich, and being completely ignored by the deli staff. I noticed a screen or two near the counter and realized that ordering now had to be done by means of a touch menu. Within a few moments I had my salami with provolone paid for and in a bag and out the door.
But I had not spoken a single, solitary word to anyone involved in the process, nor did they expect me to.
And that, Mr. Lerch, makes me yearn just a little for the days before the world changed.
Sunday, May 27, 2007
A Way To Name That Creek!
This appeared on May 27, 2007
The plight of the Orphan Creeks of Chester County has been well documented, at least in this space. They are the creeks and streams and runs scattered throughout the county that —while making a real contribution to the community and its environment, by way of playing the role of tributary to larger creeks and streams and runs — have been left off the map, if you will, by going unnamed.
And while our local politicians have seen fit this election season to weigh in on supposedly more weighty topics such as property tax reform, liquor tax implementation and turnpike privatization, they have been strangely silent on the issue of giving names to those proud but officially ignored bodies of water.
Not one of the recently nominated candidates for county commissioner, Democrat or Republican, for instance, bothered to make even passing reference to the Orphan Creek Scandal in his or her acceptance speech. Their message, thus far, has seemed to be: "Millions, no … billions, no … umptydumptygazillions!!! for open space; not one dime for creek names."
How sad and ineffectual they all must find themselves when their children look to them for true leadership and see only abject failure.
But citizens, I am here to tell you that it is not too late, nor in any way impossible, for us to take matters into our own hands and begin to right this wrong of monumental proportions. You, me and your Aunt Sarah can all take part in naming the Orphan Creeks of Chester County. All it takes is a trip to the Web site for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names; its got a form there for just that purpose.
Water Resources Executive Director Jan Bowers, aka ”The Stream Queen of Chester County,“ assures me that although all of the large creeks and most of the medium sized ones here have names, many do not. Or if they do, they are ”local“ names, not known outside of a few villagers and people through whose backyards the creeks cut, streams flow and the runs, well, run. So it wouldn‘t be like you‘d slap a name like ”Dinniman Run“ on that trickle that runs through your West Nottingham neighborhood, only to find that it already has been named Hog Run.
There‘s a list of the names already taken, so you can check to make sure your nomination wouldn‘t trample on others' toes. Like Massacre Run or Leech Run or Dennis Run or Pigeon Creek or Trout Creek or Two Log Run or Jug Hollow. Just use your imagination.
I started this quest a few weeks ago by wondering what was the name of the stream that flows in back of the Downingtown Friends Meeting. One caller suggested that she knew it as a child as Park Run, but no such name exists on my BGN list. The caller suggested that I check with Francis Brown, the local historian and eminent Quaker, whose property through which the stream runs.
But knowing what I know of Mr. Brown, his place in the community and love for that stream, I think the better choice would be to fill out the BGN naming form in his honor.
That‘s : http://geonames.usgs.gov/bgn.html.
The plight of the Orphan Creeks of Chester County has been well documented, at least in this space. They are the creeks and streams and runs scattered throughout the county that —while making a real contribution to the community and its environment, by way of playing the role of tributary to larger creeks and streams and runs — have been left off the map, if you will, by going unnamed.
And while our local politicians have seen fit this election season to weigh in on supposedly more weighty topics such as property tax reform, liquor tax implementation and turnpike privatization, they have been strangely silent on the issue of giving names to those proud but officially ignored bodies of water.
Not one of the recently nominated candidates for county commissioner, Democrat or Republican, for instance, bothered to make even passing reference to the Orphan Creek Scandal in his or her acceptance speech. Their message, thus far, has seemed to be: "Millions, no … billions, no … umptydumptygazillions!!! for open space; not one dime for creek names."
How sad and ineffectual they all must find themselves when their children look to them for true leadership and see only abject failure.
But citizens, I am here to tell you that it is not too late, nor in any way impossible, for us to take matters into our own hands and begin to right this wrong of monumental proportions. You, me and your Aunt Sarah can all take part in naming the Orphan Creeks of Chester County. All it takes is a trip to the Web site for the U.S. Board on Geographic Names; its got a form there for just that purpose.
Water Resources Executive Director Jan Bowers, aka ”The Stream Queen of Chester County,“ assures me that although all of the large creeks and most of the medium sized ones here have names, many do not. Or if they do, they are ”local“ names, not known outside of a few villagers and people through whose backyards the creeks cut, streams flow and the runs, well, run. So it wouldn‘t be like you‘d slap a name like ”Dinniman Run“ on that trickle that runs through your West Nottingham neighborhood, only to find that it already has been named Hog Run.
There‘s a list of the names already taken, so you can check to make sure your nomination wouldn‘t trample on others' toes. Like Massacre Run or Leech Run or Dennis Run or Pigeon Creek or Trout Creek or Two Log Run or Jug Hollow. Just use your imagination.
I started this quest a few weeks ago by wondering what was the name of the stream that flows in back of the Downingtown Friends Meeting. One caller suggested that she knew it as a child as Park Run, but no such name exists on my BGN list. The caller suggested that I check with Francis Brown, the local historian and eminent Quaker, whose property through which the stream runs.
But knowing what I know of Mr. Brown, his place in the community and love for that stream, I think the better choice would be to fill out the BGN naming form in his honor.
That‘s : http://geonames.usgs.gov/bgn.html.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Coconut Soda, and Other Mysteries
This appeared on Sunday, May 20, 2007
They say the difference between young people and old folks is the level of self-awareness one gathers as one gains in years. Perhaps it is the result of making mistakes over the years, seeing others do so, or just because we‘ve lived with ourselves for so long, but as we enter the second half of our lives we come to know better what makes us who we are.
So now that I‘ve reached that stage in life when people ask me how I‘m feeling because they want to know if the arthritis has kicked in yet, I want to let you know the one truth I am most certain about concerning myself.
That is that I should never be left alone in an ethnic grocery store with a pocketful of cash, or a working credit card.
The phrase "kid in a candy store" is as picture-perfect an image for me wandering the aisles of a Latino or Asian or Indian market as you are going to get. I put things in my shopping cart I‘ve never seen before, and buy way too many things I already have at home.
Consider: On a recent morning, as an excuse for research for this column, I drove over to the Qualy (I think they mean "Quality," but I could be wrong) Food Asian Market in Frazier, just to get the sense of some of the things one might find on the shelves of such a store. Just need to jot down a few names of things, I told myself. Be in and out in five minutes. Ten tops. Fifteen at the outside.
Half an hour later, I left with a shopping bag full of frozen shrimp springs rolls, two family-size tubes of wasabe paste, three bottles of chili-sesame oil, and two packages of Korean Pan Cakes, instructions: "1. Heat in toaster or oven until they are hot. 2. Eat with any kind of dish or butter or cheese." I like that — ”Eat with any kind of dish.“ Makes dinner preparation a snap.
I realize that this proclivity for purchasing exotic items is not altogether without its benefits. I‘ve discovered a lot of very good foods just by throwing things in the basket because they look interesting — soba noodles, chorizo sausage and gyoza of every description, for starters.
But there is also a part of me that simply revels in the wonder of these markets when everything is foreign, even the advertising posters on the walls, and yet located just down the street from me. I mean, what are dried olive kernels used for anyway? I haven‘t a clue, but there they are on the shelf at Qualy, right next to something called "Dried Lillium Lancifolum Thunb."
"Thunb?"
I‘d like someone familiar with ethnic foodstuffs and cooking to accompany me on my trips, just so I can ask them what you actually do with crispy soybean sauce, or chu hou sauce, or black fungus in a can. What are these odd looking strands of fiber packaged in cellophane in the noodle section of the store? What do Coco Rico Coconut Soda and Fried Round Gluten taste like?
Thanks goodness that when I left Qualy that Purvis Indian Market was closed, or I‘d still be there, wondering why they package chick peas in lychee syrup.
They say the difference between young people and old folks is the level of self-awareness one gathers as one gains in years. Perhaps it is the result of making mistakes over the years, seeing others do so, or just because we‘ve lived with ourselves for so long, but as we enter the second half of our lives we come to know better what makes us who we are.
So now that I‘ve reached that stage in life when people ask me how I‘m feeling because they want to know if the arthritis has kicked in yet, I want to let you know the one truth I am most certain about concerning myself.
That is that I should never be left alone in an ethnic grocery store with a pocketful of cash, or a working credit card.
The phrase "kid in a candy store" is as picture-perfect an image for me wandering the aisles of a Latino or Asian or Indian market as you are going to get. I put things in my shopping cart I‘ve never seen before, and buy way too many things I already have at home.
Consider: On a recent morning, as an excuse for research for this column, I drove over to the Qualy (I think they mean "Quality," but I could be wrong) Food Asian Market in Frazier, just to get the sense of some of the things one might find on the shelves of such a store. Just need to jot down a few names of things, I told myself. Be in and out in five minutes. Ten tops. Fifteen at the outside.
Half an hour later, I left with a shopping bag full of frozen shrimp springs rolls, two family-size tubes of wasabe paste, three bottles of chili-sesame oil, and two packages of Korean Pan Cakes, instructions: "1. Heat in toaster or oven until they are hot. 2. Eat with any kind of dish or butter or cheese." I like that — ”Eat with any kind of dish.“ Makes dinner preparation a snap.
I realize that this proclivity for purchasing exotic items is not altogether without its benefits. I‘ve discovered a lot of very good foods just by throwing things in the basket because they look interesting — soba noodles, chorizo sausage and gyoza of every description, for starters.
But there is also a part of me that simply revels in the wonder of these markets when everything is foreign, even the advertising posters on the walls, and yet located just down the street from me. I mean, what are dried olive kernels used for anyway? I haven‘t a clue, but there they are on the shelf at Qualy, right next to something called "Dried Lillium Lancifolum Thunb."
"Thunb?"
I‘d like someone familiar with ethnic foodstuffs and cooking to accompany me on my trips, just so I can ask them what you actually do with crispy soybean sauce, or chu hou sauce, or black fungus in a can. What are these odd looking strands of fiber packaged in cellophane in the noodle section of the store? What do Coco Rico Coconut Soda and Fried Round Gluten taste like?
Thanks goodness that when I left Qualy that Purvis Indian Market was closed, or I‘d still be there, wondering why they package chick peas in lychee syrup.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Message For Readers
Some people may want to go to the www.dailylocal.com Website and look for my blog posts there. Good luck!
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
The Creeks With No Name
This appeared on Sunday, May 6, 2007
If you call up Google maps on the Internet and type in Downingtown, Pa., with a little trial and error you can see a satellite image of the creek that runs behind the Downingtown Friends Meetinghouse.
Not to be a wiseacre about it, but it‘s a friendly creek — big enough not to be a mere drainage ditch but small enough for children to splash around in on a hot summer day while their parents do whatever it is adults do after Quaker meeting is over, without them getting in deep trouble. Or hot water, if you will.
But here‘s the rub. So far as I can tell, it does not have a name. It is a tributary of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek, so it has a purpose in life. It makes a contribution to the greater good, to the larger whole, and yet it is left nameless — at least on printed maps.
And it is not alone. Looking at the latest edition of Franklin Maps‘ atlas for Chester and Delaware counties, I found countless examples of identifiable bodies of water that have no identity ascribed to them. (Well, countless only in the respect that I really didn‘t feel like counting them.) There they are, drawn onto the map like small blue veins stringing along the countryside of West Whiteland or East Nantmeal or whichever Coventry you care to examine, and they are as nameless as Clint Eastwood‘s character in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly."
They are the Orphan Creeks of Chester County.
Now, I am certain that everyone reading this has their own favorite creek in Chester County, although I‘m going to bet that a good 65 percent immediately go with the Brandywine, east or west branch, as their personal favorite. Fine. If you want to go with the obvious choice — if you want to root for the Yankees or the Cowboys or one of the easy winners — I‘m not going to denegrate you. What some people lack in creative selectivity I‘m sure they make up for in other ways, like an acute passion for dusting or dishwashing.
Me, I go Valley Creek. Not the Valley Creek in Valley Forge, mind you, but the East Bradford-West Whiteland Valley Creek. If the Brandywine Creek is the Pennsylvania Turnpike of Chester County creeks — flat, straight, wide, well-trafficked, boring — then Valley Creek is San Francisco‘s Lombard Street.
It curves and weaves and twists its way through the woods, emerging here and disappearing there, only to turn up crossing your path just a few yards up the road when you least expect it. It‘s clean and swift and bubbly and full of trout, enviable characteristics for any creek.
And it‘s is a lucky creek, too, because it has a name. Just like the Big Elk or the Octoraro or the Red Clay or the White Clay or the Crum or the Ridley or the Radley French Pickering Bucktoe or Marsh, you can talk about it like it‘s a person in the room.
The Orphan Creeks don‘t have that same luck, and I say it‘s time to correct that. I say the next time one of the candidates for county commissioner knocks on your door, you bring up the Orphan Creeks to them.
See what they say.
If you call up Google maps on the Internet and type in Downingtown, Pa., with a little trial and error you can see a satellite image of the creek that runs behind the Downingtown Friends Meetinghouse.
Not to be a wiseacre about it, but it‘s a friendly creek — big enough not to be a mere drainage ditch but small enough for children to splash around in on a hot summer day while their parents do whatever it is adults do after Quaker meeting is over, without them getting in deep trouble. Or hot water, if you will.
But here‘s the rub. So far as I can tell, it does not have a name. It is a tributary of the East Branch of the Brandywine Creek, so it has a purpose in life. It makes a contribution to the greater good, to the larger whole, and yet it is left nameless — at least on printed maps.
And it is not alone. Looking at the latest edition of Franklin Maps‘ atlas for Chester and Delaware counties, I found countless examples of identifiable bodies of water that have no identity ascribed to them. (Well, countless only in the respect that I really didn‘t feel like counting them.) There they are, drawn onto the map like small blue veins stringing along the countryside of West Whiteland or East Nantmeal or whichever Coventry you care to examine, and they are as nameless as Clint Eastwood‘s character in "The Good, The Bad and The Ugly."
They are the Orphan Creeks of Chester County.
Now, I am certain that everyone reading this has their own favorite creek in Chester County, although I‘m going to bet that a good 65 percent immediately go with the Brandywine, east or west branch, as their personal favorite. Fine. If you want to go with the obvious choice — if you want to root for the Yankees or the Cowboys or one of the easy winners — I‘m not going to denegrate you. What some people lack in creative selectivity I‘m sure they make up for in other ways, like an acute passion for dusting or dishwashing.
Me, I go Valley Creek. Not the Valley Creek in Valley Forge, mind you, but the East Bradford-West Whiteland Valley Creek. If the Brandywine Creek is the Pennsylvania Turnpike of Chester County creeks — flat, straight, wide, well-trafficked, boring — then Valley Creek is San Francisco‘s Lombard Street.
It curves and weaves and twists its way through the woods, emerging here and disappearing there, only to turn up crossing your path just a few yards up the road when you least expect it. It‘s clean and swift and bubbly and full of trout, enviable characteristics for any creek.
And it‘s is a lucky creek, too, because it has a name. Just like the Big Elk or the Octoraro or the Red Clay or the White Clay or the Crum or the Ridley or the Radley French Pickering Bucktoe or Marsh, you can talk about it like it‘s a person in the room.
The Orphan Creeks don‘t have that same luck, and I say it‘s time to correct that. I say the next time one of the candidates for county commissioner knocks on your door, you bring up the Orphan Creeks to them.
See what they say.
Monday, April 30, 2007
The Twin Churches of Chester Springs
This appeared on Sunday, April 29, 2007
When I was 10 or 11, my father, a chemistry professor, brought home a vial of mercury for me to play with. I found it fascinating. When I poured some of it out and tried to put my finger on it, it squirted away. You could not pin it down.
Sort of like Chester Springs, in northern Chester County.
I find that Chester Springs — that tweed, cheese and horse-dung community referred to as ”one of the most affluent and desirable locations in Southeast Pennsylvania‘“ — keeps moving, stretching its limits like mercury on a glass table. Supposed to contain only parts Upper Uwchlan, West Pikeland, East Nantmeal and West Vincent, I find that people who live in East Pikeland or Uwchlan or Charlestown are creepingly beginning to answer ”Chester Springs“ when someone asks where they live. Soon it will extend to the outskirts of Exton.
It‘s the Postal Desirability Factor at work. You can‘t blame people who would rather have the distinction of having a Chester Springs address than one from say, Phoenixville or Royersford.
Finding the limits of Chester Springs may be difficult, but for me the heart of the place is right where Conestoga Road meets Fellowship Road. It‘s there that years ago I stumbled across a trio of spiritual symbols of Chester Springs.
Two still stand, the third is no more.
The first two I like to call the Twin Churches of Chester Springs, although they do not resemble one another, not in any physical sense, but rather by the saint from whom they took their names — St. Matthew. On one side of the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s United Church of Christ, a comfortable looking, homey sort of a building that just exudes a sense of history.
A few hundred yards up the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s Evangelical Lutheran Church, a stately building that would not look out of place among the grand churches of Old City, Philadelphia.
You‘d think that there might be a copycat name-calling game going on between the two congregations, but those I spoke with assure me that‘s not the case. The two churches sprung, you see, from the same source, back when congregations shared buildings for convenience sake.
The Lutheran and Reformed churches went their separate ways in 1879, when the Lutherans decided to build their own house of worship.
The split was supposed to be amicable, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, seeing as the Reformed folks threw in $1,000, a wood stove and half the books in the church library to seal the deal. But I do note that the Reformers took their sweet time granting the dissolution — putting it off once owing to the weather being ”very rainy“ and again because, according to a church history, ”the matter escaped notice.“
Diane Myer, the church secretary at St. Matthew‘s United, told me that the two congregations get together sometimes for joint outdoor services, and I‘m sure the Lutherans do like to come down for the chicken barbeque dinners the Uniteds sell in the summer. There‘s some ambiguity, though, about who is who, and Myers told me that travelers confuse one church for the other ”all the time.“
Oh, and the third part of my Chester Springs triumvirate? That would be the Fellowship Road barn that used to hold a private squash court. Playing squash inside a barn is the height of the tweed, cheese and horse-dung life, it seems to me.
When I was 10 or 11, my father, a chemistry professor, brought home a vial of mercury for me to play with. I found it fascinating. When I poured some of it out and tried to put my finger on it, it squirted away. You could not pin it down.
Sort of like Chester Springs, in northern Chester County.
I find that Chester Springs — that tweed, cheese and horse-dung community referred to as ”one of the most affluent and desirable locations in Southeast Pennsylvania‘“ — keeps moving, stretching its limits like mercury on a glass table. Supposed to contain only parts Upper Uwchlan, West Pikeland, East Nantmeal and West Vincent, I find that people who live in East Pikeland or Uwchlan or Charlestown are creepingly beginning to answer ”Chester Springs“ when someone asks where they live. Soon it will extend to the outskirts of Exton.
It‘s the Postal Desirability Factor at work. You can‘t blame people who would rather have the distinction of having a Chester Springs address than one from say, Phoenixville or Royersford.
Finding the limits of Chester Springs may be difficult, but for me the heart of the place is right where Conestoga Road meets Fellowship Road. It‘s there that years ago I stumbled across a trio of spiritual symbols of Chester Springs.
Two still stand, the third is no more.
The first two I like to call the Twin Churches of Chester Springs, although they do not resemble one another, not in any physical sense, but rather by the saint from whom they took their names — St. Matthew. On one side of the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s United Church of Christ, a comfortable looking, homey sort of a building that just exudes a sense of history.
A few hundred yards up the road you‘ve got St. Matthew‘s Evangelical Lutheran Church, a stately building that would not look out of place among the grand churches of Old City, Philadelphia.
You‘d think that there might be a copycat name-calling game going on between the two congregations, but those I spoke with assure me that‘s not the case. The two churches sprung, you see, from the same source, back when congregations shared buildings for convenience sake.
The Lutheran and Reformed churches went their separate ways in 1879, when the Lutherans decided to build their own house of worship.
The split was supposed to be amicable, and I see no reason to believe otherwise, seeing as the Reformed folks threw in $1,000, a wood stove and half the books in the church library to seal the deal. But I do note that the Reformers took their sweet time granting the dissolution — putting it off once owing to the weather being ”very rainy“ and again because, according to a church history, ”the matter escaped notice.“
Diane Myer, the church secretary at St. Matthew‘s United, told me that the two congregations get together sometimes for joint outdoor services, and I‘m sure the Lutherans do like to come down for the chicken barbeque dinners the Uniteds sell in the summer. There‘s some ambiguity, though, about who is who, and Myers told me that travelers confuse one church for the other ”all the time.“
Oh, and the third part of my Chester Springs triumvirate? That would be the Fellowship Road barn that used to hold a private squash court. Playing squash inside a barn is the height of the tweed, cheese and horse-dung life, it seems to me.
Monday, April 23, 2007
Boro' to 'Bucks: Drop Dead
This appeared on Sunday, April 22, 2007
Remember when you were a freshman in college and there was this person, this beautiful blond, who you really wanted to meet? Maybe get to know them, maybe start a relationship, maybe propose, maybe settle down, maybe raise a family and buy a mortgage and send the kids to college and celebrate each other‘s 50th birthday and retire to the South of France with? Remember that?
But they weren‘t having any of you. They were just way too cool for you, and they had other friends to be with and places to go and Spring Break vacations to take, and you, well, you just weren‘t up to their speed. Remember that?
Then you made a splash in the college newspaper because you had been cast in whatever MTV reality show was debuting that September (or whatever the 1960s equivalent of the MTV reality shows were), and all of a sudden your dream person started showing up at your dorm room around 7:30 a.m. wanting to know if you could accompany them to the cafeteria for breakfast and maybe have a ”study break“ later and then send the kids to college and retire to the South of France with. Remember that?
Then you will know how we felt when we heard the news that Starbucks is planning to open a café in West Chester.
After all this time, the Starbucks folks have decided that we here in West Chester are classy enough to be part of their ultra-hip, ubiquitous coffee culture. Not only will Starbucks come to town, but they‘ll be plopping down right smack dab in the middle of the borough, at the corner of High and Gay, where nobody can miss them, not even a West Chester University student walking home at 2:30 a.m. from a ”study break“ at Rex‘s Bar.
We are not amused.
Remember, this is the coffee company that decided it was better to open cafes in Paoli, Chester Springs, Kennett Square, Exton and Downingtown before coming to our fair borough. Remember, this is the coffee company that opened four, count ‘em, four outlets in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, before it opened one in downtown West Chester.
You think we‘re happy? You think we are going to start counting down the days until we can order up a grande of Ethiopean Yergachefee and crank up the Norah Jones on our iPods at the ‘Bucks? You couldn‘t be farther from the truth if you were Albert Gonzalez trying to explain the attorney general firings.
Read our lips, Starbucks folks: We don‘t want you anymore. We are not going to fall for your newly discovered attraction for our brick sidewalks, our historical county courthouse, our brightly painted street signs, our newly elected Democratic state legislators, and just roll over and order whatever size Breakfast Blend you tell us to, like we fell for that beautiful blond back in college.
You had your chance. We asked, nearly begged, for you to come here years ago and you ignored us. Coffee love has a small window of opportunity, and for you we have slammed it shut.
Now The Gap, on the other hand ...
Remember when you were a freshman in college and there was this person, this beautiful blond, who you really wanted to meet? Maybe get to know them, maybe start a relationship, maybe propose, maybe settle down, maybe raise a family and buy a mortgage and send the kids to college and celebrate each other‘s 50th birthday and retire to the South of France with? Remember that?
But they weren‘t having any of you. They were just way too cool for you, and they had other friends to be with and places to go and Spring Break vacations to take, and you, well, you just weren‘t up to their speed. Remember that?
Then you made a splash in the college newspaper because you had been cast in whatever MTV reality show was debuting that September (or whatever the 1960s equivalent of the MTV reality shows were), and all of a sudden your dream person started showing up at your dorm room around 7:30 a.m. wanting to know if you could accompany them to the cafeteria for breakfast and maybe have a ”study break“ later and then send the kids to college and retire to the South of France with. Remember that?
Then you will know how we felt when we heard the news that Starbucks is planning to open a café in West Chester.
After all this time, the Starbucks folks have decided that we here in West Chester are classy enough to be part of their ultra-hip, ubiquitous coffee culture. Not only will Starbucks come to town, but they‘ll be plopping down right smack dab in the middle of the borough, at the corner of High and Gay, where nobody can miss them, not even a West Chester University student walking home at 2:30 a.m. from a ”study break“ at Rex‘s Bar.
We are not amused.
Remember, this is the coffee company that decided it was better to open cafes in Paoli, Chester Springs, Kennett Square, Exton and Downingtown before coming to our fair borough. Remember, this is the coffee company that opened four, count ‘em, four outlets in Johore Bahru, Malaysia, before it opened one in downtown West Chester.
You think we‘re happy? You think we are going to start counting down the days until we can order up a grande of Ethiopean Yergachefee and crank up the Norah Jones on our iPods at the ‘Bucks? You couldn‘t be farther from the truth if you were Albert Gonzalez trying to explain the attorney general firings.
Read our lips, Starbucks folks: We don‘t want you anymore. We are not going to fall for your newly discovered attraction for our brick sidewalks, our historical county courthouse, our brightly painted street signs, our newly elected Democratic state legislators, and just roll over and order whatever size Breakfast Blend you tell us to, like we fell for that beautiful blond back in college.
You had your chance. We asked, nearly begged, for you to come here years ago and you ignored us. Coffee love has a small window of opportunity, and for you we have slammed it shut.
Now The Gap, on the other hand ...
Monday, April 09, 2007
Recalling Bitter/Better Days
This appeared on Sunday, April 8, 2007
It was one of the oddest stories I have ever covered.
In August 1988, my editor dispatched me to Valley Forge National Park, where the Ku Klux Klan was holding a hate rally.
I remember being miserable, and not simply because I would have to spend several hours covering what essentially was a non-event. It was a typical summer afternoon in northeast Chester County — hot and muggy, or what we journalists like to refer to as ”sun drenched“ — the type of afternoon I‘d rather spend sitting in an air conditioned theater watching the latest Scorsese.
I say non-event because there really was no news taking place that afternoon, in the sense that no one was being elected, no flooding had occurred, no politicians were being indicted. The news had already passed, after the Klan announced that they were going to rally at the park and the Park Service let them.
What remained was a bunch of slightly overweight white men dressed in the strange garb of the Klan, standing on an amphitheater that bore a vague resemblance to Stonehenge (prompting more than one droll aside from reporters about the intelligence of those participating in the rally), and saying not really much of anything.
If I dug out the story I wrote that day I could find a quote or two to share with you — something dealing with superiority or separation or subjugation or some such. But what struck me at the time was the lack of interest the Klan folks who spoke seemed to have for what they themselves were saying. They didn‘t put much passion into their declarations, and they drifted from one subject to another haphazardly.
Their main interest came from getting a reaction from the few people who gathered to protest their appearance. The crowd, such as it was, was separated from the Klansmen by a storm fence the park people had erected to keep the sides apart. The fence was 50 or more feet from the stage, I recall, so you had two groups yelling at one another from a block away. Not much excitement there.
The whole situation quickly became ridiculous, and I stayed only as long as I needed to, filling up about less than half my notebook before flipping it shut.
The scene came back to me last week after I took an afternoon drive to Valley Forge, hoping to see the park‘s flowering trees in full blossom. They weren‘t, so instead my mind wandered back to other days spent there.
I remember touring the historical aspects of the park with my mother, who never met a vacation that didn‘t involve some educational opportunity. I also remember a summer picnic with a young woman I was enamored with at the time, and who I thought would be impressed with my ability to wrap cold chicken in Saran Wrap and open a bottle of white wine with a corkscrew. (She wasn‘t.) I remember also seeing the flowering trees on Gulph Road Hill tinted with snow after a freak storm one late April morning.
And I felt better letting those memories overtake all that hate I had seen, that one hot summer day in August 1988.
It was one of the oddest stories I have ever covered.
In August 1988, my editor dispatched me to Valley Forge National Park, where the Ku Klux Klan was holding a hate rally.
I remember being miserable, and not simply because I would have to spend several hours covering what essentially was a non-event. It was a typical summer afternoon in northeast Chester County — hot and muggy, or what we journalists like to refer to as ”sun drenched“ — the type of afternoon I‘d rather spend sitting in an air conditioned theater watching the latest Scorsese.
I say non-event because there really was no news taking place that afternoon, in the sense that no one was being elected, no flooding had occurred, no politicians were being indicted. The news had already passed, after the Klan announced that they were going to rally at the park and the Park Service let them.
What remained was a bunch of slightly overweight white men dressed in the strange garb of the Klan, standing on an amphitheater that bore a vague resemblance to Stonehenge (prompting more than one droll aside from reporters about the intelligence of those participating in the rally), and saying not really much of anything.
If I dug out the story I wrote that day I could find a quote or two to share with you — something dealing with superiority or separation or subjugation or some such. But what struck me at the time was the lack of interest the Klan folks who spoke seemed to have for what they themselves were saying. They didn‘t put much passion into their declarations, and they drifted from one subject to another haphazardly.
Their main interest came from getting a reaction from the few people who gathered to protest their appearance. The crowd, such as it was, was separated from the Klansmen by a storm fence the park people had erected to keep the sides apart. The fence was 50 or more feet from the stage, I recall, so you had two groups yelling at one another from a block away. Not much excitement there.
The whole situation quickly became ridiculous, and I stayed only as long as I needed to, filling up about less than half my notebook before flipping it shut.
The scene came back to me last week after I took an afternoon drive to Valley Forge, hoping to see the park‘s flowering trees in full blossom. They weren‘t, so instead my mind wandered back to other days spent there.
I remember touring the historical aspects of the park with my mother, who never met a vacation that didn‘t involve some educational opportunity. I also remember a summer picnic with a young woman I was enamored with at the time, and who I thought would be impressed with my ability to wrap cold chicken in Saran Wrap and open a bottle of white wine with a corkscrew. (She wasn‘t.) I remember also seeing the flowering trees on Gulph Road Hill tinted with snow after a freak storm one late April morning.
And I felt better letting those memories overtake all that hate I had seen, that one hot summer day in August 1988.
Monday, April 02, 2007
A Modest Proposal
This appeared on Sunday, April 1, 2007
Although I am certain he means well, the new legislation that state Sen. Andy Dinniman, D-19th, of West Whiteland, introduced at a sparsely attended session of the Legislature last week seems to me to be, well, shall we say, a trifle odd.
His legislation, SB 90210, is termed the ”Chester County Open Space Creation Act of 2007.“ When you get past most of the legislative gobbledygook that these documents always include (”Whereas …“ ”Be it therefore resolved …“ ”The General Assembly of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania hereby enacts ...“ ”The term ’Dinniman‘ shall refer to the all-knowing, all-seeing, all-powerful Legislator from Exton …“) what it comes down to is that Sen. Andy is tired of seeing open space in Chester County simply preserved; he now wants to actually make more of it.
Which I admit is a pretty nifty idea on its face. But somehow draining Marsh Creek State Park Lake and filling it in with prime topsoil from Carbon County appears to pose some engineering obstacles that might prove nettlesome, to say the least.
To his credit, Dinniman is optimistic about his plan.
"What a worthy goal this extensively researched legislation aspires to," the county‘s lone Democratic senator said in prepared comments. "For far too long, the waters of Marsh Creek Lake have taken up too much room, when that acreage could instead be a fertile plain among the landscape of Uwchlan Township, giving homeowners a place to walk their dogs, provided they are leashed.
"We all know that we can‘t just sit idly by while developers rape and pillage our hills and valleys and meadows and compost farms," Dinniman continued. "We‘ve got to be pro-active about this. What better way to start creating new open space than by also creating a massive civil service project that would bring new jobs to the underemployed in northern Chester County. Like, those so-called ’soccer‘ moms I see sipping Starbucks at Exton Square in the middle of the day. Don‘t they have a game to go to?"
Regarding the environmental impact of draining a 535-acre lake, Dinniman stated: "Impact, schmimpact. We‘ll grow grass there, and in my book green is good. Except for that moldy stuff that forms on my dog‘s teeth when we don‘t give him the right snacks."
At this point, it appears the biggest fallout over Dinniman‘s bill has been the introduction by state Rep. Carole Rubley of another piece of legislation, seemingly put together to keep her potential rival from getting the lead in the fast-developing Open Space Race.
Rubley, R-157th, of Tredyffrin, said her bill, HB 4-01-2007, the ”Even Better Chester County Open Space Creation Act“ would tackle two problems at once — making more open space and reducing rush-hour traffic.
"I know it would be expensive to tear down the entire Great Valley Corporate Center and return it to the farmland it once was," Rubley said. "But come on! How many cars would that take off 202 at the worst time of day, and how many more ears of corn could it put in the stalls at the West Chester Growers‘ Market? You do the math."
Me, I‘m reserving judgment on the entire thing.
P.S. Check the date on this posting.
Monday, March 26, 2007
All Things Elk
This appeared Sunday, March 25, 2007.
Elk Township has 10.4 square miles of land within its borders.
Elk Township has, as of the national census taken in 2000, 1,485 people living there.
Elk Township, located along the Mason-Dixon line in southern Chester County, east of East Nottingham, from which it was carved in 1857, and west of Franklin, has 27¼ miles of paved roads. The local government has claim to about 15½ miles of those roads, and the state owns the rest. It is a place you have to want to go to get there. You are not going to stumble upon Elk Township. You are not going to find yourself suddenly in Elk Township, all the while thinking you were driving to Wegman‘s, or the Herr’s Snack Co. for the factory tour. You have to get off the main road, and several smaller roads after that, to get to Elk Township.
Elk Township has, on my count, five villages: Elk Mills, Mount Rocky , Hickory Hill, Lewisville and Peacedale. I am going to live in Peacedale someday, even if it’s the last thing I do, because I can think of no better return address on my letters than "Peacedale PA." There is a house in Peacedale with a sign at the front of its driveway that reads: "Hope Hill."
Elk Township has real property assessed at $94,574,830, as of the last countywide reassessment. It has houses that were more than likely built sometime after Elk Township was carved out of the eastern portion of East Nottingham, and which when you drive by them remind you this was originally a county of farms and farmers, not developments and developers. It has ranch houses that you would not be surprised to see dotted along the suburban landscape of the 1960s, and at least one log cabin with an enormous American flag in the front yard. It also has some homes whose owners would likely be described as leading "secluded" lives, and some that would be completely at ease resting on the inside pages of Architectural Digest.
Elk Township has three covered bridges — the Glen Hope Bridge, the Rudolph and Arthur, and the Linton Stevens Bridge. The Glen Hope crosses the Little Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 10‘6“. The Rudolph and Arthur crosses the Big Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 9'0". It also has a house sitting next to it with a "No Trespassing" sign on a tree and a wooden mailbox that looks like a covered bridge. Both of these bridges do not allow bicycles to cross them, although I do not believe that rule to be strictly enforced. Once you cross the Linton Stevens Bridge you have to turn your car around immediately and go back unless you have a permit to drive on the road ahead. The Big Elk Creek is deeper and wider than the Little Elk Creek.
What Elk Township does not have is any number of large, wild, antlered, hooved members of the red deer family, known scientifically as Cervus canadensis and by Native Americans as wapiti, or "white rump."
That is to say, there are no elk in Elk.
Elk Township has 10.4 square miles of land within its borders.
Elk Township has, as of the national census taken in 2000, 1,485 people living there.
Elk Township, located along the Mason-Dixon line in southern Chester County, east of East Nottingham, from which it was carved in 1857, and west of Franklin, has 27¼ miles of paved roads. The local government has claim to about 15½ miles of those roads, and the state owns the rest. It is a place you have to want to go to get there. You are not going to stumble upon Elk Township. You are not going to find yourself suddenly in Elk Township, all the while thinking you were driving to Wegman‘s, or the Herr’s Snack Co. for the factory tour. You have to get off the main road, and several smaller roads after that, to get to Elk Township.
Elk Township has, on my count, five villages: Elk Mills, Mount Rocky , Hickory Hill, Lewisville and Peacedale. I am going to live in Peacedale someday, even if it’s the last thing I do, because I can think of no better return address on my letters than "Peacedale PA." There is a house in Peacedale with a sign at the front of its driveway that reads: "Hope Hill."
Elk Township has real property assessed at $94,574,830, as of the last countywide reassessment. It has houses that were more than likely built sometime after Elk Township was carved out of the eastern portion of East Nottingham, and which when you drive by them remind you this was originally a county of farms and farmers, not developments and developers. It has ranch houses that you would not be surprised to see dotted along the suburban landscape of the 1960s, and at least one log cabin with an enormous American flag in the front yard. It also has some homes whose owners would likely be described as leading "secluded" lives, and some that would be completely at ease resting on the inside pages of Architectural Digest.
Elk Township has three covered bridges — the Glen Hope Bridge, the Rudolph and Arthur, and the Linton Stevens Bridge. The Glen Hope crosses the Little Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 10‘6“. The Rudolph and Arthur crosses the Big Elk Creek and has a sign at the top of its crown that reads: HT 9'0". It also has a house sitting next to it with a "No Trespassing" sign on a tree and a wooden mailbox that looks like a covered bridge. Both of these bridges do not allow bicycles to cross them, although I do not believe that rule to be strictly enforced. Once you cross the Linton Stevens Bridge you have to turn your car around immediately and go back unless you have a permit to drive on the road ahead. The Big Elk Creek is deeper and wider than the Little Elk Creek.
What Elk Township does not have is any number of large, wild, antlered, hooved members of the red deer family, known scientifically as Cervus canadensis and by Native Americans as wapiti, or "white rump."
That is to say, there are no elk in Elk.
Monday, March 19, 2007
A Diner Sort of Guy
This appeared on Sunday, March 18, 2007
Had lunch the other day at Hooters.
(Pause.)
Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.
My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.
Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.
My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.
He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.
Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.
I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.
"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."
But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.
I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.
Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.
I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.
Had lunch the other day at Hooters.
(Pause.)
Now that I‘ve got your attention, I want to elaborate.
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for what I was doing eating a meal at perhaps the world‘s cheesiest male-oriented restaurant chain, and by cheese I‘m not referring to the Swiss or the Camembert.
My friend had suggested that we get together on Thursday to catch some of the opening round of the NCAA Men‘s Basketball Tournament, but because our normal noontime meeting spot doesn‘t have wall-to-wall television sets we‘d need to pick a different venue.
Hooters, apparently, does have wall-to-wall television sets, sets which are permanently tuned to whatever sporting event is happening at that particular time, anywhere in the world.
My friend knows this because he‘s been there before, primarily, it seems, to watch the opening round of the aforementioned basketball tournament. There may also be some association in his mind between semi-naked men trying desperately to score and the whole Hooters concept, but never mind.
He‘s been to Hooters before, as I said, and he allowed when we got there that if Hooters had been extant while he was in his 20s, his life today would have been demonstrably different than it is, most likely for the worse. I imagine he meant that instead of being happily married with four delightful children, a good job, a house on a hill and a voter registration card with the word ”Democrat“ displayed prominently on it, he would probably be living in a rented room, jobless and near destitution, with only a Hooters' Girls calendar on the wall to keep him company.
Most likely he‘d also have voted for Bush. All four times.
I hadn‘t been to Hooters before, and he could see the discomfort with the whole situation in my face when we got a cheery ”Hi there, guys!“ from our waitress. He‘s pretty much used to my various states of discomfort, but this time he wasn‘t having any of it.
"You‘d be honest with yourself if you just acknowledged the fact that you really enjoy having food and drink served to you by a perky blonde/brunette/redhead in a tank top and nylon orange shorts," he told me. "Just look inside yourself," he said, "and respond to your inner … something or other. Let go and admit that the whole thing is fun."
But I don‘t see myself as a Hooters sort of guy.
I‘m more of a diner sort, and have been ever since my father sat me down at the counter at the Toddle House on Clifton Avenue in Cincinnati when I was 8 and ordered me a cheeseburger and a cup of hot chocolate, while he flirted with the 65-year-old waitress, who was probably named Irene.
Since then, I‘ve always tried my best to establish a friendly working relationship with all of the waitresses that have served me on a regular basis over the years, and have succeeded more times than not in developing a server-servee friendship not based on too much artifice. Also, without orange shorts on either side of the counter.
I‘d like to keep it that way. Besides, the local Hooters is in Concordville, and I don‘t do Delaware County very well.
Monday, March 05, 2007
The Case of the Brick Windows
This appeared on Sunday, March 4, 2007
Everyone loves a good mystery, even more when the mystery involves something in your own backyard.
You know, like whatever happened to the 12 missing votes from the 156th Legislative District (ballots, you may remember, it has yet to be disproven had my name on them)?
Or exactly when did Andy Dinniman‘s Groucho mustache disappear? And where did it go?
Better yet, how did William H. Lamb, former law-and-order district attorney of Chester County, turn into the Slots King of Fishtown?
But sometimes there are mysteries right under our noses that we don‘t notice until someone points them out.
Like The Case of the Brick Windows, suggested to us by Constant Reader Bob B.
Mr. B, a keen observer of goings-on in West Chester and its accompanying environs, noticed that there was something off-kilter about the new Justice Center (Code Name: We-Don‘t-Know-What-To-Call-It-Yet) going up on West Market Street. To wit: there are five bricked-in windows on the front façade of the building, right there near the corner of North Darlington Street.
The bricked windows go from the ground floor up. At a glance, they remind you of that scene in ”The Matrix“ when Mouse tries to escape from the on-rushing Agent Smith SWAT Team after coming back from Neo‘s visit with The Oracle, and draws aside a window curtain in Morpheus‘ apartment building, only to find that the window has been replaced by a brick wall and that he has nowhere to go and he‘s going to get shot up to smithereens when the SWAT storm troopers break down the door and, thus, become the first of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar to perish.
Or it doesn‘t. Whatever.
Mr. B. was puzzled by the brick windows because they are not depicted on the original architectural drawings of the project. (Trust me: he checked.)
So he left it up to me to solve the puzzle and get back to him. ”If anyone can get to the bottom of the story, er, actually five stories, top to bottom, it‘s you,“ he fawned, leaving me slightly faint. So, with the help of Chester County Public Information Officer Extrordinaire Evelyn Walker, I did.
Here‘s the skinny, as delivered by the county‘s architect through Ms. W:
"It became necessary to locate a telecommunications and electrical room in the southeast corner of the building in order to properly serve the large floor plates. The architects desired to maintain the character and rhythm of the fenestration along Market Street; therefore, the cast stone surrounds and brick infill were proposed to satisfy the aesthetic goal. Sincerely, Paul Andrew Sgroi, AIA."
Frankly, I‘d have just said: "Oops!"
Mr. B. accepted the explanation with some rancor, and not just because of the technocratese that the answer came in. He declared that the brick windows were an eyesore that the citizens of Chester County would be stuck with when coming to West Chester to file their election recount petitions, or whatever else they‘ll do at the Justice Center, "rhythm of fenestration aesthetics" notwithstanding.
He suggested that the county get a huge refund from the people to blame for the snafu. I can‘t disagree.
Because, as Bill Lamb might say: ”Cha-ching!“
Everyone loves a good mystery, even more when the mystery involves something in your own backyard.
You know, like whatever happened to the 12 missing votes from the 156th Legislative District (ballots, you may remember, it has yet to be disproven had my name on them)?
Or exactly when did Andy Dinniman‘s Groucho mustache disappear? And where did it go?
Better yet, how did William H. Lamb, former law-and-order district attorney of Chester County, turn into the Slots King of Fishtown?
But sometimes there are mysteries right under our noses that we don‘t notice until someone points them out.
Like The Case of the Brick Windows, suggested to us by Constant Reader Bob B.
Mr. B, a keen observer of goings-on in West Chester and its accompanying environs, noticed that there was something off-kilter about the new Justice Center (Code Name: We-Don‘t-Know-What-To-Call-It-Yet) going up on West Market Street. To wit: there are five bricked-in windows on the front façade of the building, right there near the corner of North Darlington Street.
The bricked windows go from the ground floor up. At a glance, they remind you of that scene in ”The Matrix“ when Mouse tries to escape from the on-rushing Agent Smith SWAT Team after coming back from Neo‘s visit with The Oracle, and draws aside a window curtain in Morpheus‘ apartment building, only to find that the window has been replaced by a brick wall and that he has nowhere to go and he‘s going to get shot up to smithereens when the SWAT storm troopers break down the door and, thus, become the first of the crew of the Nebuchadnezzar to perish.
Or it doesn‘t. Whatever.
Mr. B. was puzzled by the brick windows because they are not depicted on the original architectural drawings of the project. (Trust me: he checked.)
So he left it up to me to solve the puzzle and get back to him. ”If anyone can get to the bottom of the story, er, actually five stories, top to bottom, it‘s you,“ he fawned, leaving me slightly faint. So, with the help of Chester County Public Information Officer Extrordinaire Evelyn Walker, I did.
Here‘s the skinny, as delivered by the county‘s architect through Ms. W:
"It became necessary to locate a telecommunications and electrical room in the southeast corner of the building in order to properly serve the large floor plates. The architects desired to maintain the character and rhythm of the fenestration along Market Street; therefore, the cast stone surrounds and brick infill were proposed to satisfy the aesthetic goal. Sincerely, Paul Andrew Sgroi, AIA."
Frankly, I‘d have just said: "Oops!"
Mr. B. accepted the explanation with some rancor, and not just because of the technocratese that the answer came in. He declared that the brick windows were an eyesore that the citizens of Chester County would be stuck with when coming to West Chester to file their election recount petitions, or whatever else they‘ll do at the Justice Center, "rhythm of fenestration aesthetics" notwithstanding.
He suggested that the county get a huge refund from the people to blame for the snafu. I can‘t disagree.
Because, as Bill Lamb might say: ”Cha-ching!“
Monday, February 26, 2007
Paying a Debt to Pippin
This appeared on Sunday, Feb. 25, 2007
I cannot remember how cold it was, or if there was snow on the ground.
But I do remember the intense scene of a group of men and women standing in a half circle around a gravestone at the Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery.
The date was Feb. 22, 1988 – 19 years ago last Thursday – and the occasion was a remembrance ceremony for Horace Pippin, the respected and acclaimed artist who was born in West Chester 100 years ago to that date, and who made his home here after the seeing the end of World War I, returning back to the nation that enslaved his grandparents and treated those of his race with distain.
I was not attending as participant in the ceremony, anymore than I would have for any event that I covered for the Daily Local News in my quarter century here. I was there as an observer, with pen and reporter’s notebook in hand. But the moment has stayed with me for all this time.
The event had been organized by the Chester County Historical Society and some of Pippin’s peers as a way to atone for the neglect that had been shown him during this life, and at the time of his death from a heart attack in 1946. A man named John Halstead, president of the historical society at the time, noted how a contemporary of Pippin’s had noticed the lack of representation by the West Chester community at his funeral. Halstead spoke of a redressing of that grievance.
Here’s part of what I wrote:
“To the Rev. Earl D. Trent Jr. of West Chester, the event served as “a tax, a debt of respect and honor to Horace Pippin.
“ ‘The fact that it came on the centennial of his birth is merely coincidence,’ said Trent, pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, where Pippin worshipped and taught choir. ‘The age does not matter. It is due him.’ ”
Pippin was a self-taught artist whose work showed the lives of black men and women in their daily lives in the flat, linear style that became known as primitive. He also painted scenes from the Bible and American history that cast a forceful light on the racial injustice that his country allowed at the time. His paintings toured the country as part of a Museum of Modern Art traveling show. He sold dozens of paintings to collectors and museums across the country.
And he was a good man, working within the black community of West Chester to better young lives.
But the larger community in his home town apparently did not pay him the respect he earned elsewhere. Two days after he died at his home on West Gay Street, the Daily Local News seemed more interested in noting that Charles Lukens Huston, “Steel Pioneer,” had his 90th birthday.
I went looking for his gravesite on Thursday but the frozen snow kept me from finding it, even though in my mind’s eye I could see it clearly. And I remembered, too, what one of Pippin’s contemporaries, Warren H. Burton, told me.
“In his quiet and gentle manner, he was an integral part of this community,” concluded Burton.
Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery is just north of West Chester on Route 100. Maybe when the snow clears, we might stop by and put down another payment on our debt to him.
I cannot remember how cold it was, or if there was snow on the ground.
But I do remember the intense scene of a group of men and women standing in a half circle around a gravestone at the Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery.
The date was Feb. 22, 1988 – 19 years ago last Thursday – and the occasion was a remembrance ceremony for Horace Pippin, the respected and acclaimed artist who was born in West Chester 100 years ago to that date, and who made his home here after the seeing the end of World War I, returning back to the nation that enslaved his grandparents and treated those of his race with distain.
I was not attending as participant in the ceremony, anymore than I would have for any event that I covered for the Daily Local News in my quarter century here. I was there as an observer, with pen and reporter’s notebook in hand. But the moment has stayed with me for all this time.
The event had been organized by the Chester County Historical Society and some of Pippin’s peers as a way to atone for the neglect that had been shown him during this life, and at the time of his death from a heart attack in 1946. A man named John Halstead, president of the historical society at the time, noted how a contemporary of Pippin’s had noticed the lack of representation by the West Chester community at his funeral. Halstead spoke of a redressing of that grievance.
Here’s part of what I wrote:
“To the Rev. Earl D. Trent Jr. of West Chester, the event served as “a tax, a debt of respect and honor to Horace Pippin.
“ ‘The fact that it came on the centennial of his birth is merely coincidence,’ said Trent, pastor of St. Paul’s Baptist Church, where Pippin worshipped and taught choir. ‘The age does not matter. It is due him.’ ”
Pippin was a self-taught artist whose work showed the lives of black men and women in their daily lives in the flat, linear style that became known as primitive. He also painted scenes from the Bible and American history that cast a forceful light on the racial injustice that his country allowed at the time. His paintings toured the country as part of a Museum of Modern Art traveling show. He sold dozens of paintings to collectors and museums across the country.
And he was a good man, working within the black community of West Chester to better young lives.
But the larger community in his home town apparently did not pay him the respect he earned elsewhere. Two days after he died at his home on West Gay Street, the Daily Local News seemed more interested in noting that Charles Lukens Huston, “Steel Pioneer,” had his 90th birthday.
I went looking for his gravesite on Thursday but the frozen snow kept me from finding it, even though in my mind’s eye I could see it clearly. And I remembered, too, what one of Pippin’s contemporaries, Warren H. Burton, told me.
“In his quiet and gentle manner, he was an integral part of this community,” concluded Burton.
Chestnut Grove Annex Cemetery is just north of West Chester on Route 100. Maybe when the snow clears, we might stop by and put down another payment on our debt to him.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
A Valentine to West Chester
This appeared Sunday, Feb. 18, 2006
Whatever else its benefits are, the new parking garage in the 200 block of West Market Street has provided a remarkable scenic overlook of downtown West Chester.
Standing on the site of the late, great Short Line Bus Co. terminal, the garage spirals up five levels or so, putting the climber several dozen feet above the rooftops.
If you look east up Market Street, you can see the clock tower of the Chester County Courthouse, the west facade of the elegant Farmers & Mechanics Building, the top of the Green Tree Apartments, and the awning of the former Mr. Sandwich Building at the corner of North Church Street — currently occupied by a certain state senator Andy D. who has a penchant for, well, let‘s just say the spoken word.
From this vantage point, you can‘t see the way the town has changed over the years, and you can imagine it as it was in the early 1900s —quiet and beautiful.
And if you look hard enough, you can see the people that make the borough as colorful and vibrant as a Dennis Haggerty watercolor. In fact, you can even see Haggerty himself, chugging his little red truck (”Honk if you are Elvis“ bumper sticker included) up Hannum Avenue.
Look north and there‘s Mickey Cugino handing out Pennsylvania Lottery tickets for the financial dreamers who stop in his smoke shop all day. Across the street you‘ll spot Amy Beaver, making sure the Deadheads along Gay Street have a place to hook up with a supply of sandlewood.
Pulling into the back of her sports pub is Ruth Gallagher, of the Delaware County Gallaghers, making sure the place is ready for business when Skip and Carlos wander in towards the late afternoon.
You might catch a glimpse of Dawson R. ”Rich“ Muth skipping down the steps of his law office and heading out for lunch, or to check to see whether there‘ve been anymore shenanigans outside Sheriff Bunny‘s office.
Lunch is what‘s being served right now at Tony‘s Market, run by Kenny, and if you hurry downstairs after your panoramic tour you might be able to get the last roast pork sandwich. But if you miss out, you‘ll just have to take out your sorrows by buying the new Lucinda Williams CD at The Mad Platter, where John and Debbie probably have it on hold for you anyway.
Look very hard, squinting into the sun, and you might be able to catch Police Chief Scott Bohn teaching the family dog a new trick — staying awake during Borough Council meetings. Or turn your sights west and watch as Fred Gusz attempts to ride his $400,000 bicycle down Wayne Avenue on his way over to Ray Ott‘s for a spin Down The Shore. Or maybe he‘s just on his way over to Blue Rock Road for breakfast with his grandson Graham.
Gaze a little longer and you‘ll no doubt see one of a hundred or more people that you know and who, if they disappeared from the streetscape of West Chester would still be there in the mists of history, forever leaving the borough vibrant and colorful.
And yet not one of those wonderful people saw fit to send me a Valentine‘s Day card this year.
Like Andy, I‘m just sayin.‘
Whatever else its benefits are, the new parking garage in the 200 block of West Market Street has provided a remarkable scenic overlook of downtown West Chester.
Standing on the site of the late, great Short Line Bus Co. terminal, the garage spirals up five levels or so, putting the climber several dozen feet above the rooftops.
If you look east up Market Street, you can see the clock tower of the Chester County Courthouse, the west facade of the elegant Farmers & Mechanics Building, the top of the Green Tree Apartments, and the awning of the former Mr. Sandwich Building at the corner of North Church Street — currently occupied by a certain state senator Andy D. who has a penchant for, well, let‘s just say the spoken word.
From this vantage point, you can‘t see the way the town has changed over the years, and you can imagine it as it was in the early 1900s —quiet and beautiful.
And if you look hard enough, you can see the people that make the borough as colorful and vibrant as a Dennis Haggerty watercolor. In fact, you can even see Haggerty himself, chugging his little red truck (”Honk if you are Elvis“ bumper sticker included) up Hannum Avenue.
Look north and there‘s Mickey Cugino handing out Pennsylvania Lottery tickets for the financial dreamers who stop in his smoke shop all day. Across the street you‘ll spot Amy Beaver, making sure the Deadheads along Gay Street have a place to hook up with a supply of sandlewood.
Pulling into the back of her sports pub is Ruth Gallagher, of the Delaware County Gallaghers, making sure the place is ready for business when Skip and Carlos wander in towards the late afternoon.
You might catch a glimpse of Dawson R. ”Rich“ Muth skipping down the steps of his law office and heading out for lunch, or to check to see whether there‘ve been anymore shenanigans outside Sheriff Bunny‘s office.
Lunch is what‘s being served right now at Tony‘s Market, run by Kenny, and if you hurry downstairs after your panoramic tour you might be able to get the last roast pork sandwich. But if you miss out, you‘ll just have to take out your sorrows by buying the new Lucinda Williams CD at The Mad Platter, where John and Debbie probably have it on hold for you anyway.
Look very hard, squinting into the sun, and you might be able to catch Police Chief Scott Bohn teaching the family dog a new trick — staying awake during Borough Council meetings. Or turn your sights west and watch as Fred Gusz attempts to ride his $400,000 bicycle down Wayne Avenue on his way over to Ray Ott‘s for a spin Down The Shore. Or maybe he‘s just on his way over to Blue Rock Road for breakfast with his grandson Graham.
Gaze a little longer and you‘ll no doubt see one of a hundred or more people that you know and who, if they disappeared from the streetscape of West Chester would still be there in the mists of history, forever leaving the borough vibrant and colorful.
And yet not one of those wonderful people saw fit to send me a Valentine‘s Day card this year.
Like Andy, I‘m just sayin.‘
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