This column originally appeared on March 23, 2008
Some time ago, I voiced the opinion that the municipality known as Chadds Ford had mistakenly been incorporated into the county known as Delaware, and that a change should be contemplated in which that township would be annexed by the county of Chester and thus placed in its proper geographic and cultural setting.
Leaving Chadds Ford in Delaware County struck me as close to a sin against nature as you could get without an actual disruption of the gene pool. Chadds Ford, after all, is home to the Wyeth family, scenic creeks, rolling hillsides and picturesque stone barns. Delaware County, as far as I can tell, is home to a number of meth labs.
But I must acknowledge that there is a corollary to this campaign of mine that became clear on a recent trip to the northwestern edges of Chester County.
This is what everyone should do at some point in their lives if they live here: circumnavigate the county. It could take you several Saturdays, depending on your stamina and what time you get up on weekend mornings, but it is worth the time. A trip around the boundaries of Chester County gives you the clearest picture of not only the beauty we enjoy here, but of the multiple types of communities within our borders. If you live in West Chester or Downingtown or Kennett Square or the suburbiplex known as Lionville, and you don't travel outside of a limited distance from those town centers, you can't grasp what a complex world Chester County is.
Or realize that just as Chadds Ford has more in common with life here than it does to Delaware County, then so too does West Sadsbury or West Caln or Honey Brook look more like the rural world across the border in Lancaster County than it does the corporate centers of Malvern or the shopping centers of Paoli.
You see it from the road: The sign that advertises “Hay, Straw, Pine Shavings, One Mile.” The sight of clothes freshly washed hanging on a clothes line beside an Amish farmhouse. The sight of a barn and a silo, with a shingle telling you that brown eggs are available, turn here. A sign pointing you the way to “Hides and Supplies.” A big black angus bull standing in someone's front yard. An odd congregation of white and grey seagulls flocking around a mule-team drawn plough. Working wind mills.
Wait, did that sign say “Hides”? HIDES? What in the name of suburban sprawl do they sell there?
So if I maintain that we should get Chadds Ford, then I'd obviously have to acknowledge that Lancaster gets Honey Brook. Fair's fair, after all.
And Lancaster can have it. I don't need any part of Honey Brook at all. Except the Berry Patch Campground off Broad Street in Cambridge. That's all I need. That, and the gas station that still sells “Regular” and “Super.” That's it, and that's all. The camp, the gas station, and the “Schoolhouse Bar and Grille” on Route 10 are all I need. OK? The camp, the gas station, the bar, and the cheddar cheese curds from September Farm, South Mill Road, Est. 2002. That's it in toto. The camp, the gas station, the bar, the cheese and the place that sells “Hides and Supplies” are all I need. The camp, the gas station, the bar, the cheese, the hides, and ...
This is going to be harder than I thought.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Monday, March 17, 2008
Where Have All The Snowflakes Gone?
This column originally apeared on Sunday, March 16, 2008
It is 9 a.m. Saturday and the temperature is hovering in the low-50s. A little while ago I saw a fellow walking down South Church Street in West Chester who was not wearing a coat, just a shirt and some jeans, and he looked perfectly comfortable. When I left the apartment, my neighbor greeted me as she was arranging the flower pots on her porch with a cheery, “Happy Spring!”
I remember when it used to snow in March. Check that. I remember when it used to snow in February and March. The first winter I spent in West Chester, the skies dumped 22 inches of snow on the borough on Feb. 11. My friend Jamie and I watched the snow inch its way up the side of my Volkswagen Beetle until you could not see the door handles anymore. Then we went out and made snow angels in the drifts that had closed down the town to all but foot traffic and snowmobiles.
But those days are seemingly gone. We have not had a really good snowfall here in February or March for years.
Now, it’s about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, and the temperature is inching toward 60 degrees. The fellow whom I saw walking down South Church an hour and a half ago returned wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and a breezy smile. My neighbor was pruning the dead blossoms from her gladiolas and greeted me with a cheery, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”
I checked the records. It usually snows in March at least once, sometimes twice. Fifteen years ago, I’d lived in my apartment building for a decade when the skies dumped 10 inches of snow on the borough on March 13 and overnight into March 14. My car got stuck in the deep snow that clogged the alley behind my house, and I had to call a tow truck to pull me out.
In 2005, 5 inches of snow lay on the ground when the morning of March 1 dawned. A week later, another inch showed up. It was fun taking snapshots of the ankle-deep drifts outside my door and walking to work straight down the middle of West Market Street without a car in sight. Can we hope that any of those days come back?
I just checked the time and temperature at 2:30 p.m. Saturday here in West Chester and it’s a sunny 85 degrees. My walkabout friend just passed by wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt open at the collar, presumably to show of his tan. When I stepped outside my neighbor was mopping the sweat from her brow, cheerily singing, “We’re havin’ a heat wave, a tropical heat wave …”
What I miss about the snows of March isn’t the shoveling or the scraping or the slipping or the slush that arrives later. It’s the few hours after the snow stops falling when everything seems suspended and people get outside of their everyday skins. Strangers help push cars out from snowbanks and people stop each other on the street to marvel at what Mother Nature has wrought. There’s a sense that the rules of caution are postponed and you can go out of your way to be friendly without encouraging suspicion.
And you can make snow angels in the drifts without embarrassment.
It is 9 a.m. Saturday and the temperature is hovering in the low-50s. A little while ago I saw a fellow walking down South Church Street in West Chester who was not wearing a coat, just a shirt and some jeans, and he looked perfectly comfortable. When I left the apartment, my neighbor greeted me as she was arranging the flower pots on her porch with a cheery, “Happy Spring!”
I remember when it used to snow in March. Check that. I remember when it used to snow in February and March. The first winter I spent in West Chester, the skies dumped 22 inches of snow on the borough on Feb. 11. My friend Jamie and I watched the snow inch its way up the side of my Volkswagen Beetle until you could not see the door handles anymore. Then we went out and made snow angels in the drifts that had closed down the town to all but foot traffic and snowmobiles.
But those days are seemingly gone. We have not had a really good snowfall here in February or March for years.
Now, it’s about 10:30 a.m. on Saturday, and the temperature is inching toward 60 degrees. The fellow whom I saw walking down South Church an hour and a half ago returned wearing just a T-shirt, shorts and a breezy smile. My neighbor was pruning the dead blossoms from her gladiolas and greeted me with a cheery, “If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?”
I checked the records. It usually snows in March at least once, sometimes twice. Fifteen years ago, I’d lived in my apartment building for a decade when the skies dumped 10 inches of snow on the borough on March 13 and overnight into March 14. My car got stuck in the deep snow that clogged the alley behind my house, and I had to call a tow truck to pull me out.
In 2005, 5 inches of snow lay on the ground when the morning of March 1 dawned. A week later, another inch showed up. It was fun taking snapshots of the ankle-deep drifts outside my door and walking to work straight down the middle of West Market Street without a car in sight. Can we hope that any of those days come back?
I just checked the time and temperature at 2:30 p.m. Saturday here in West Chester and it’s a sunny 85 degrees. My walkabout friend just passed by wearing swim trunks and a Hawaiian shirt open at the collar, presumably to show of his tan. When I stepped outside my neighbor was mopping the sweat from her brow, cheerily singing, “We’re havin’ a heat wave, a tropical heat wave …”
What I miss about the snows of March isn’t the shoveling or the scraping or the slipping or the slush that arrives later. It’s the few hours after the snow stops falling when everything seems suspended and people get outside of their everyday skins. Strangers help push cars out from snowbanks and people stop each other on the street to marvel at what Mother Nature has wrought. There’s a sense that the rules of caution are postponed and you can go out of your way to be friendly without encouraging suspicion.
And you can make snow angels in the drifts without embarrassment.
Monday, March 10, 2008
A Primer For Hills and Barry
This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 9 2008
They tell me that it is going to get fairly intense over the next few weeks as Hillary and Barack descend on Pennsylvania, in general and Chester County in particular, as the make their run for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But while we may have gotten to know them fairly well over the past few months — the way she likes to wear pant suits and he likes to go without a tie; the way she likes to take credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland and he likes to take credit for blue skies and sunny days; the way she digs on KT Tunstall and he grooves to Natasha Bedingfield — they likely have been too busy to really get to know us.
So I thought I’d give them a small primer on what Chester County is all about, so they won’t make any stupid mistakes while going door to door in Malvern — like saying, “So how do you like living in Modena?”
The Revolutionary War came to Chester County in 1777, via the Battle of the Brandywine and the Paoli Massacre — and that is the last time anything revolutionary has happened here. We like to take our time about things and not get caught up in radically new or innovative procedures or principles. We are sort of the Dewey Decimal System to the rest of the world’s Google. For instance, school lunches here only recently started featuring brown mustard on hot dogs, I am given to understand. It took intervention by an ecumenical council of elders, but we finally gave in. Not so, however, for green catsup.
We have a number of local high school graduates who have actually contributed to the fine arts and culture of our great land. That’s right, we’re not just about Bam Margera and skateboarding naked into brick walls. For example, there is Matisyahu, the only (I think) Orthodox Hebrew rap artist and Henderson High alum. And Daryl Hall, rock and roll singer of “Out of Touch” (No. 33 on a list of worst songs of all time), Owen J. Roberts Class of 1965. And Douglas Brown, author of the soon-to-be-published book: “Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days” (You’ll have to read it to find out.) The pride of West Chester East.
The tourist highlights here are not just Valley Forge, the Brandywine River Museum and Longwood Gardens. Longtime residents of our county know that when people want to see what we are really about, we take our out of town guests to one place and one place only. The Herr’s Snack Co. Plant Tour. Where else can you see the actual process of turning unflavored potato chips into Buffalo Wing Kettle Chips? Or regular nachos into Green Chile Monterey Jack dippers? And all within distance of the sweetest smelling mushroom composting operations you’d ever want to turn your nose up at.
Philly has Geno’s Steaks. Pottsville has Yuengling Brewery. Pittsburgh has, well, we’re sure that the Iron City has something but we just don’t know what. West Chester has Wally’s Weiner World, the best place in the state to buy a hot sausage from a man who can stop the blades of a fan with his tongue.
There’s more, but since Hills and Barry are going to be here awhile, I’ll save the rest for later.
They tell me that it is going to get fairly intense over the next few weeks as Hillary and Barack descend on Pennsylvania, in general and Chester County in particular, as the make their run for 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
But while we may have gotten to know them fairly well over the past few months — the way she likes to wear pant suits and he likes to go without a tie; the way she likes to take credit for bringing peace to Northern Ireland and he likes to take credit for blue skies and sunny days; the way she digs on KT Tunstall and he grooves to Natasha Bedingfield — they likely have been too busy to really get to know us.
So I thought I’d give them a small primer on what Chester County is all about, so they won’t make any stupid mistakes while going door to door in Malvern — like saying, “So how do you like living in Modena?”
The Revolutionary War came to Chester County in 1777, via the Battle of the Brandywine and the Paoli Massacre — and that is the last time anything revolutionary has happened here. We like to take our time about things and not get caught up in radically new or innovative procedures or principles. We are sort of the Dewey Decimal System to the rest of the world’s Google. For instance, school lunches here only recently started featuring brown mustard on hot dogs, I am given to understand. It took intervention by an ecumenical council of elders, but we finally gave in. Not so, however, for green catsup.
We have a number of local high school graduates who have actually contributed to the fine arts and culture of our great land. That’s right, we’re not just about Bam Margera and skateboarding naked into brick walls. For example, there is Matisyahu, the only (I think) Orthodox Hebrew rap artist and Henderson High alum. And Daryl Hall, rock and roll singer of “Out of Touch” (No. 33 on a list of worst songs of all time), Owen J. Roberts Class of 1965. And Douglas Brown, author of the soon-to-be-published book: “Just Do It: How One Couple Turned Off the TV and Turned On Their Sex Lives for 101 Days” (You’ll have to read it to find out.) The pride of West Chester East.
The tourist highlights here are not just Valley Forge, the Brandywine River Museum and Longwood Gardens. Longtime residents of our county know that when people want to see what we are really about, we take our out of town guests to one place and one place only. The Herr’s Snack Co. Plant Tour. Where else can you see the actual process of turning unflavored potato chips into Buffalo Wing Kettle Chips? Or regular nachos into Green Chile Monterey Jack dippers? And all within distance of the sweetest smelling mushroom composting operations you’d ever want to turn your nose up at.
Philly has Geno’s Steaks. Pottsville has Yuengling Brewery. Pittsburgh has, well, we’re sure that the Iron City has something but we just don’t know what. West Chester has Wally’s Weiner World, the best place in the state to buy a hot sausage from a man who can stop the blades of a fan with his tongue.
There’s more, but since Hills and Barry are going to be here awhile, I’ll save the rest for later.
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
Hey, Wait! That's My...
This story originally appeared on Wednesday, March 5, 2008
WEST CHESTER – Something looked familiar to Frank Nagy.
Specifically, the chain saw he spotted at a pawn shop in Pottstown, where he had gone after failing to find a replacement for his missing chain saw at one of the big box retailers. Specifically, the Husquavarna Model 23 chain saw with the plastic blade cover. Specifically, the same chain saw that had until a few weeks ago been sitting in the shed at the rear of his home on Ridge Road in East Coventry.
Specifically, the chain saw that his grandson, Stephen Allen Wisneski later admitted taking from the shed without telling anyone, then pawning it supposedly to buy food to feed his family.
The unlikely discovery of the chain saw eventually led to Wisneski's arrest on charges of burglary and theft and to an unusual plea bargain hearing in front of Judge William Mahon on Tuesday.
Although Wisneski acknowledged that he had taken the chain saw from his grandfather's shed to use on his own, he said he had not “stolen” it but rather “borrowed” the equipment. He said he got the chain saw mixed up with other tools that he took to he Cash Converters store in Pottstown to pawn them.
He said he had intended to tell his grandparents about the matter but had forgotten. But his grandfather had told police at the time of Wiseneski's arrest that he hadn't seen the man in years.
According to an arrest affidavit filed by East Coventry police, Nagy reported that he had gone looking for his chain saw the morning of Oct. 11 to do some work on the property. When he could not find it, he assumed he had misplaced it and went shopping for an inexpensive replacement.
After failing to find an acceptable model at the local home and hardware store, Nagy stopped by Cash Converters, which buys and re-sells used equipment. When he began looking at the equipment Cash Converters had on sale, he saw the chain saw he recognized immediately as his own there, he told police.
Nagy reported the matter to the store manager, and contacted police. When East Coventry Officer Brian Ceulers arrived to pick the chain saw up as evidence, the manager turned over the seller's information sheet, which was signed by Wisneski when he sold it on Oct. 3.
Nagy identified Wisneski as his grandson. He told police that Wisneski had later called his home and apologized for asking the saw, saying he did so to raise money to feed his kids. Nagy confirmed that Wisneski did not have permission to take the saw and that he had not spoken to him or seen him in two years.
When Ceulers contacted Wisneski, he said he was sorry for taking the saw and asked if charges could be dropped. When Wisneski said they could not, he told the officer that he was awaiting placement in a drug treatment program. He was arrested on Dec. 12.
Wisneski, 27, of Nutt Road, Phoenixville, was offered a sentence of six to 23 months in Chester County Prison in exchange for a guilty plea to charges of theft. But when he balked at admitting to actually stealing the saw, Mahon rejected the plea and sent Wisneski back to prison, where he is being held on a probation violation for a previous theft case, according to Assistant District Attorney Christin Kubacke, who was handling the plea.
Wisneski's case will now be rescheduled for trial. The saw is currently being held as evidence by police.
WEST CHESTER – Something looked familiar to Frank Nagy.
Specifically, the chain saw he spotted at a pawn shop in Pottstown, where he had gone after failing to find a replacement for his missing chain saw at one of the big box retailers. Specifically, the Husquavarna Model 23 chain saw with the plastic blade cover. Specifically, the same chain saw that had until a few weeks ago been sitting in the shed at the rear of his home on Ridge Road in East Coventry.
Specifically, the chain saw that his grandson, Stephen Allen Wisneski later admitted taking from the shed without telling anyone, then pawning it supposedly to buy food to feed his family.
The unlikely discovery of the chain saw eventually led to Wisneski's arrest on charges of burglary and theft and to an unusual plea bargain hearing in front of Judge William Mahon on Tuesday.
Although Wisneski acknowledged that he had taken the chain saw from his grandfather's shed to use on his own, he said he had not “stolen” it but rather “borrowed” the equipment. He said he got the chain saw mixed up with other tools that he took to he Cash Converters store in Pottstown to pawn them.
He said he had intended to tell his grandparents about the matter but had forgotten. But his grandfather had told police at the time of Wiseneski's arrest that he hadn't seen the man in years.
According to an arrest affidavit filed by East Coventry police, Nagy reported that he had gone looking for his chain saw the morning of Oct. 11 to do some work on the property. When he could not find it, he assumed he had misplaced it and went shopping for an inexpensive replacement.
After failing to find an acceptable model at the local home and hardware store, Nagy stopped by Cash Converters, which buys and re-sells used equipment. When he began looking at the equipment Cash Converters had on sale, he saw the chain saw he recognized immediately as his own there, he told police.
Nagy reported the matter to the store manager, and contacted police. When East Coventry Officer Brian Ceulers arrived to pick the chain saw up as evidence, the manager turned over the seller's information sheet, which was signed by Wisneski when he sold it on Oct. 3.
Nagy identified Wisneski as his grandson. He told police that Wisneski had later called his home and apologized for asking the saw, saying he did so to raise money to feed his kids. Nagy confirmed that Wisneski did not have permission to take the saw and that he had not spoken to him or seen him in two years.
When Ceulers contacted Wisneski, he said he was sorry for taking the saw and asked if charges could be dropped. When Wisneski said they could not, he told the officer that he was awaiting placement in a drug treatment program. He was arrested on Dec. 12.
Wisneski, 27, of Nutt Road, Phoenixville, was offered a sentence of six to 23 months in Chester County Prison in exchange for a guilty plea to charges of theft. But when he balked at admitting to actually stealing the saw, Mahon rejected the plea and sent Wisneski back to prison, where he is being held on a probation violation for a previous theft case, according to Assistant District Attorney Christin Kubacke, who was handling the plea.
Wisneski's case will now be rescheduled for trial. The saw is currently being held as evidence by police.
Monday, March 03, 2008
Sunrise, Sunset...
This column originally appeared on Sunday, March 2, 2008
I would say that the folks who live on Highview Road in Tredyffrin are perhaps the luckiest folks who live in Chester County. But then if I were to say that then I would also have to say that the Boy Scouts who visit Camp Horse Shoe, near Goat Hill in West Nottingham, are also perhaps the luckiest folks who live in Chester County, only in a completely different way.
You could look it up. Highview Road is the easternmost point in Chester County, sort of the Campobello Island, Maine, of our fair county. You can find it right there at 75 degrees, 21 minutes and 29.71 seconds longitude, if you care to.
Being such, it is the exact place where sunrise first touches Chester County, the place where the dawn greets us and beckons with the promise of a new day, a fresh start, and perhaps the chance that those annoying “bucket bridges” at busy intersections, with their fresh-faced college students wandering in and out of traffic begging for money to either cure cancer or fund a night of drop-dead partying, whichever comes first, will disappear from the face of the Earth once and forever.
Meanwhile, the Boy Scouts at Camp Horse Shoe find it their lucky happenstance to be the folks who see the last rays of the sun sinking below the horizon over the Octoraro Creek. Located smack dab at 76 degrees, eight minutes and 10.49 seconds longitude, the campsite is the westernmost point in the county. And a fine place to crank out the S’mores, I’m told.
If you think that everyone in Chester County gets the sunrise and sunset at the same time, you’d be wrong. I know, because I checked. Specifically with Professor Marc Gagne, head of the department of Geology and Astronomy at West Chester University and as friendly a man who teaches a course called “Remote Sensing” that you’d ever want to meet.
Professor Gagne told me that the one degree of longitude that separates Highview Road from Camp Horse Shoe would mean a difference in the sunrise and sunset times of about two minutes or so. Theoretically, he said, someone could pick up the phone at a house on Highview Road and call the camp headquarters at Horse Shoe to report that the sun had just risen, and the camp counselor would not know what in the world the person on the other end of the line was talking about because the sun was still not up down there.
Why anyone would ever want to do that escapes me, but there you are.
The business of sunrise and sunset is preoccupying my time these days, pardon the pun, because that old devil Daylight Savings Time, is creeping up on us once again. You might remember that a few years ago President Bush, acting apparently on a whim, decided to play with our clocks. He moved the start of DST up to March 9 this year, and moved the return to Eastern Standard Time to sometime in late September. Or October. I forget.
Anyway, now the sun is going to rise an hour later than normal, and set an hour later, and completely throw off whatever physiological rhythm my body has grown accustomed to over the last six months.
I’m not sure I like it, but there’s nothing I can do about it, except complain. Sort of like “bucket brigades.”
Monday, February 25, 2008
Coffee Shop Memories
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 24, 2008
Friday morning brought just enough snow to make you think there wasn’t really a need to rush to work, so you might as well stop in at Penn’s Table for some breakfast.
When I walked in from the cold it was clear I wasn’t the only one with that idea, but there was still space at the counter. I sat down a few stools away from a middle-aged man and his granddaughter, who was having the pancakes that vaguely resemble Mickey Mouse without the copyright symbol. She looked me over to make sure I wasn’t trying to swipe the syrup, and flashed me a friendly smile after I waved hello.
After a few minutes, Anthony came over to say hello to her and banter with her grandfather. Anthony and his wife Jenn own the place, have for years, and treat the people who come in on a regular basis pretty much like you would if one of your neighbors was sitting at your kitchen table, wondering if he could get extra chips and pickles with his BLT.
Anthony went about teasing the young girl, maybe 5 years old, maybe 6, about how much she’d eaten and how fast and I suddenly remembered another snowy day when I sat at a coffee shop counter and listened to the owner tease a young kid as he topped off a cup of hot chocolate with a spray of whipped cream.
The kid was me, of course, and the owner was a Greek guy named Nick, inconceivably, and the coffee shop was the one my father stopped off at to read the paper on his way to the University of Cincinnati, where he taught chemistry. On some Saturday mornings he would take my sisters and I there for a breakfast treat, and Nick and the grey-haired haired waitress who ran the counter would make us feel at home.
It is among the treasures of childhood to have an adult in a position of such high authority – owner of a coffee shop -- recognize that you are important enough to come over and gently suggest that your haircut looks a trifle silly and maybe you just ought to keep your wool cap on all day. It is even better, though, to have the waitress let you come around behind the counter and grab a new spoon since you dropped the other on the floor and have concerns about the germs.
But this column isn’t just about coffee shop owners named Anthony or Nick. It’s about the misgiving that nestles in your stomach when you see a franchise eatery open its doors down the street from the family-owned place you always go to. It’s about how those glittery national chains slowly erode the ability of the local joints to compete, and how little by little we end up all getting the same food at the same price in the same space served by people wearing the same clothes, whether we like it or not.
You might have seen some of those places open up recently in West Chester. I am not suggesting in any way that what they’re offering isn’t tasty, well presented, and sometimes more comestible than a cup of two-day-old chili at the local diner. But I think it bears noting that when Serbian crowds in Belgrade last week decided to attack the evils they associated with America, they chose a McDonalds.
And I’ll have a little more whipped cream with my cocoa, Anthony. Thanks.
Friday morning brought just enough snow to make you think there wasn’t really a need to rush to work, so you might as well stop in at Penn’s Table for some breakfast.
When I walked in from the cold it was clear I wasn’t the only one with that idea, but there was still space at the counter. I sat down a few stools away from a middle-aged man and his granddaughter, who was having the pancakes that vaguely resemble Mickey Mouse without the copyright symbol. She looked me over to make sure I wasn’t trying to swipe the syrup, and flashed me a friendly smile after I waved hello.
After a few minutes, Anthony came over to say hello to her and banter with her grandfather. Anthony and his wife Jenn own the place, have for years, and treat the people who come in on a regular basis pretty much like you would if one of your neighbors was sitting at your kitchen table, wondering if he could get extra chips and pickles with his BLT.
Anthony went about teasing the young girl, maybe 5 years old, maybe 6, about how much she’d eaten and how fast and I suddenly remembered another snowy day when I sat at a coffee shop counter and listened to the owner tease a young kid as he topped off a cup of hot chocolate with a spray of whipped cream.
The kid was me, of course, and the owner was a Greek guy named Nick, inconceivably, and the coffee shop was the one my father stopped off at to read the paper on his way to the University of Cincinnati, where he taught chemistry. On some Saturday mornings he would take my sisters and I there for a breakfast treat, and Nick and the grey-haired haired waitress who ran the counter would make us feel at home.
It is among the treasures of childhood to have an adult in a position of such high authority – owner of a coffee shop -- recognize that you are important enough to come over and gently suggest that your haircut looks a trifle silly and maybe you just ought to keep your wool cap on all day. It is even better, though, to have the waitress let you come around behind the counter and grab a new spoon since you dropped the other on the floor and have concerns about the germs.
But this column isn’t just about coffee shop owners named Anthony or Nick. It’s about the misgiving that nestles in your stomach when you see a franchise eatery open its doors down the street from the family-owned place you always go to. It’s about how those glittery national chains slowly erode the ability of the local joints to compete, and how little by little we end up all getting the same food at the same price in the same space served by people wearing the same clothes, whether we like it or not.
You might have seen some of those places open up recently in West Chester. I am not suggesting in any way that what they’re offering isn’t tasty, well presented, and sometimes more comestible than a cup of two-day-old chili at the local diner. But I think it bears noting that when Serbian crowds in Belgrade last week decided to attack the evils they associated with America, they chose a McDonalds.
And I’ll have a little more whipped cream with my cocoa, Anthony. Thanks.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Goodbye, Sugar
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 17, 2008
All that was left on Friday night of the tree that towered across from my home on South Church Street in West Chester is a stump and a plastic sign with the name of the tree service that took it down and chipped most of it into oblivion. The sign flapped in the breeze, illuminated by a waxing moon and looking something like a tombstone.
That tree came down in a rush last week. Its absence leaves me profoundly ill at ease. I find my home diminished. I would like to have it back again. Do not ask me to explain myself, but in my heart I expect people to die and trees to survive.
The tree was sick. It did not look sick, it did not act sick. Its leaves were still full and lush and brilliant when they emerged last spring. But anyone who saw the hollow spaces in its thick trunk as it lay in the yard after being sawed apart would readily acknowledge that it was suffering from a disease that would ultimately have caused its collapse.
Last summer that tree shaded me from the afternoon sun as I enjoyed a glass of wine on my front stoop. Last fall that tree gave me a slide-show of color as its leaves turned from green to gold to brown. This winter the snow clung to it for an evening and outlined its branches in the shimmering blue of the night’s glow. This spring it will not be there at all.
I have photos of the tree taken from some years back. One view is upwards through its branches towards the sky, and makes me feel like standing at the feet of a giant. I once painted a watercolor of its trunk and its branches and sent that watercolor to a friend whose father had died. “Deep roots grow strong boughs,” I wrote. My friend thanked me for the card, thanked me for the sentiment. I am sure he still has it, and that it and my photographs will keep the memory of that tree alive.
I stopped by the home that the tree stood in front of Thursday night when I noticed that it had vanished. Melissa, my neighbor, told me that there was nothing to do to save it. The borough – which in West Chester is in charge of the trees that dot the sidewalks and rights of way and which give rise to its designation of “Tree City U.S.A.” – had tried to prop it up, but it was increasingly apparent that sometime in the future a strong wind would cause its limbs to crack like a weak sheet of ice and fall.
Fall on what? Perhaps only the sidewalk; perhaps only on a car’s roof. But perhaps, too, on a stroller that a pair of new parents wheeled past it on an evening stroll. The danger, Melissa – whose baby daughter came home last summer when that tree was in full bloom – and I knew, was too large to leave to chance.
Melissa and her husband Dennis are caretakers to the other tree in which I delight, the dawn redwood planted so many years ago. It still stands in the side yard of their home, where Buffalo Bill Cody stayed when he wintered his horses on the King Ranch in East Fallowfield. I would like to imagine that the tree was a sapling when Cody walked out of the house to go perform in his Wild West Show, but I honestly don’t know how old it was.
After talking with Melissa I sat outside awhile, long enough for another neighbor to walk by.
“See what’s missing?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s sad. Trees are coming down all over.”
All that was left on Friday night of the tree that towered across from my home on South Church Street in West Chester is a stump and a plastic sign with the name of the tree service that took it down and chipped most of it into oblivion. The sign flapped in the breeze, illuminated by a waxing moon and looking something like a tombstone.
That tree came down in a rush last week. Its absence leaves me profoundly ill at ease. I find my home diminished. I would like to have it back again. Do not ask me to explain myself, but in my heart I expect people to die and trees to survive.
The tree was sick. It did not look sick, it did not act sick. Its leaves were still full and lush and brilliant when they emerged last spring. But anyone who saw the hollow spaces in its thick trunk as it lay in the yard after being sawed apart would readily acknowledge that it was suffering from a disease that would ultimately have caused its collapse.
Last summer that tree shaded me from the afternoon sun as I enjoyed a glass of wine on my front stoop. Last fall that tree gave me a slide-show of color as its leaves turned from green to gold to brown. This winter the snow clung to it for an evening and outlined its branches in the shimmering blue of the night’s glow. This spring it will not be there at all.
I have photos of the tree taken from some years back. One view is upwards through its branches towards the sky, and makes me feel like standing at the feet of a giant. I once painted a watercolor of its trunk and its branches and sent that watercolor to a friend whose father had died. “Deep roots grow strong boughs,” I wrote. My friend thanked me for the card, thanked me for the sentiment. I am sure he still has it, and that it and my photographs will keep the memory of that tree alive.
I stopped by the home that the tree stood in front of Thursday night when I noticed that it had vanished. Melissa, my neighbor, told me that there was nothing to do to save it. The borough – which in West Chester is in charge of the trees that dot the sidewalks and rights of way and which give rise to its designation of “Tree City U.S.A.” – had tried to prop it up, but it was increasingly apparent that sometime in the future a strong wind would cause its limbs to crack like a weak sheet of ice and fall.
Fall on what? Perhaps only the sidewalk; perhaps only on a car’s roof. But perhaps, too, on a stroller that a pair of new parents wheeled past it on an evening stroll. The danger, Melissa – whose baby daughter came home last summer when that tree was in full bloom – and I knew, was too large to leave to chance.
Melissa and her husband Dennis are caretakers to the other tree in which I delight, the dawn redwood planted so many years ago. It still stands in the side yard of their home, where Buffalo Bill Cody stayed when he wintered his horses on the King Ranch in East Fallowfield. I would like to imagine that the tree was a sapling when Cody walked out of the house to go perform in his Wild West Show, but I honestly don’t know how old it was.
After talking with Melissa I sat outside awhile, long enough for another neighbor to walk by.
“See what’s missing?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s sad. Trees are coming down all over.”
Neither Plastic Nor Paper
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 10, 2008
When it comes to movements, social or political, I’m more of a leader than a follower.
That is why when I was in college, for example, I didn’t join in the popular “Don’t Eat Grapes” movement. (For those of you who have forgotten, or never knew, there was a time when grape pickers were trying to organize a union and the way you showed your allegiance to them was to swear off grapes. I can’t remember if the effort was successful or not.) At the time, I didn’t like eating grapes but just on principle I used to munch a few when I had a chance just to declare my non-conformity.
No, when it comes to movements, I like to create them on my own rather than fall in line with the crowd.
That’s why I formed the “Move Chadds Ford to Chester County” movement and the “Illuminate the Twin Bridges of Creek Road” movement and the “Build a Public Swimming Pool in My Neighborhood in West Chester” movement. These were movements that I could hold complete sway over with little effort, largely because the movements were made up of me and no one else.
But lately I’ve been drawn to a movement that seems to be gathering steam across not just the country, but the globe: a rejection of the plastic grocery bag.
You know, the so-called “undershirt bag” that looks like a man’s athletic t-shirt. The ubiquitous carry all shopping bag routinely dispensed in stores of all manner and stripe.
They are an environmental nuisance. Made of fossil-fuel based polymers, the bags are non-biodegradable and virtually indestructible. They remain for centuries in landfills, and clog the waterways. Ducks and fish presumably die from trying to ingest them.
Lately, local governments in New York City and San Francisco have enacted legislation to seeks t o reduce their use. In Ireland, they are taxed. In China, the world's fastest-growing economy, they are banned and shoppers are encouraged people to use cloth ones instead."This issue is not going away,”said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the solid waste program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. (He’s my presumptive choice for leader of the movement, mostly because his last name sounds so unbelievably impressive.)
I was introduced to the situation when reading pieces in The New Yorker by Ian Frazier, a wonderful writer, who discussed his growing hatred of seeing bags in trees. He even invented a device for removing them, called and patented as the “bag snagger.” He wrote: “To me, a bag in a tree is like a flag of chaos, and when I remove it I'm capturing the flag of the other side. In the end it doesn't matter how ironic or serious or even effective on a larger scale bag snagging may be. Doing it demonstrates that even in the odd little overlooked wilderness the bags inhabit, people still can use their eyes and hands and brains, and still have dominion over the chaos of bags in trees.”
Now, when I see a bag in a tree I wish them ill, and vow never to carry another one out into the wild. I have a growing collection of cloth bags from a variety of stores, and my biggest worry seems to be using one franchise’s bag in another’s check out lane.
From now on, all my eggs will go in a non-plastic basket so to speak. Ditto the grapes.
When it comes to movements, social or political, I’m more of a leader than a follower.
That is why when I was in college, for example, I didn’t join in the popular “Don’t Eat Grapes” movement. (For those of you who have forgotten, or never knew, there was a time when grape pickers were trying to organize a union and the way you showed your allegiance to them was to swear off grapes. I can’t remember if the effort was successful or not.) At the time, I didn’t like eating grapes but just on principle I used to munch a few when I had a chance just to declare my non-conformity.
No, when it comes to movements, I like to create them on my own rather than fall in line with the crowd.
That’s why I formed the “Move Chadds Ford to Chester County” movement and the “Illuminate the Twin Bridges of Creek Road” movement and the “Build a Public Swimming Pool in My Neighborhood in West Chester” movement. These were movements that I could hold complete sway over with little effort, largely because the movements were made up of me and no one else.
But lately I’ve been drawn to a movement that seems to be gathering steam across not just the country, but the globe: a rejection of the plastic grocery bag.
You know, the so-called “undershirt bag” that looks like a man’s athletic t-shirt. The ubiquitous carry all shopping bag routinely dispensed in stores of all manner and stripe.
They are an environmental nuisance. Made of fossil-fuel based polymers, the bags are non-biodegradable and virtually indestructible. They remain for centuries in landfills, and clog the waterways. Ducks and fish presumably die from trying to ingest them.
Lately, local governments in New York City and San Francisco have enacted legislation to seeks t o reduce their use. In Ireland, they are taxed. In China, the world's fastest-growing economy, they are banned and shoppers are encouraged people to use cloth ones instead."This issue is not going away,”said Allen Hershkowitz, director of the solid waste program at the Natural Resources Defense Council, an environmental group. (He’s my presumptive choice for leader of the movement, mostly because his last name sounds so unbelievably impressive.)
I was introduced to the situation when reading pieces in The New Yorker by Ian Frazier, a wonderful writer, who discussed his growing hatred of seeing bags in trees. He even invented a device for removing them, called and patented as the “bag snagger.” He wrote: “To me, a bag in a tree is like a flag of chaos, and when I remove it I'm capturing the flag of the other side. In the end it doesn't matter how ironic or serious or even effective on a larger scale bag snagging may be. Doing it demonstrates that even in the odd little overlooked wilderness the bags inhabit, people still can use their eyes and hands and brains, and still have dominion over the chaos of bags in trees.”
Now, when I see a bag in a tree I wish them ill, and vow never to carry another one out into the wild. I have a growing collection of cloth bags from a variety of stores, and my biggest worry seems to be using one franchise’s bag in another’s check out lane.
From now on, all my eggs will go in a non-plastic basket so to speak. Ditto the grapes.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Love! In The Name Of Stop (Signs)
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Feb. 3, 2008
You will please excuse us if we seem a little giddy here in West Chester. We’ve been celebrating the arrival of a new little bundle of joy that came last month, to our surprise and delight. And not just one bundle, but twins!
That’s right, folks. We have two, count ’em, two new stop signs in the borough. Right there at the corner of West Gay and North Darlington streets, right there in front of the best darn “five star restaurant” you’d ever want to chug down a beer tower in. We are so, as they say, blessed.
You know how we love our street signs here in West Chester. We are proud of them, as proud of them as any parent who has ever seen his or her son or daughter appear on “American Idol,” or “The Apprentice,” or “Cops!” or any other avenue to the world of fame and renown.
We make sure they are kept company with other signs, and even take them down now and then and clean them up a bit if they look too shopworn. When it gets too cold or icy, we have been known to bring them to our homes for an extra bit of warmth. We ask after their health on rainy days, and always remember them on national holidays.
We try not to play favorites among our signs, as any good parent would. We know that our “No Parking Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow” signs are just as important and special and unique as our “Welcome to West Chester, Not East Coatesville” signs are. (We’re not going to talk about our “Route 842” signs. We understand that they are trying to find their own “special place” in the world, but sometimes things just don’t work out. We wish them well.) But, just as any good parent would, we can’t help but feel a little bit fonder of our stop signs than the others.
Maybe it’s because they’ve been around so much longer. Can you even imagine West Chester without stop signs? We can’t. We even took a drive the other day just to spend some time with our stop signs. In a 10-minute spin around the borough, we counted no fewer than 45 stop signs. That’s 4.5 stop signs every minute, sometimes four to a corner! Did we say how blessed we are?
We have noticed that outsiders coming into the borough jump right into the spirit of things when it comes to our stop signs. Sometimes drivers with out-of-state plates will even stop at a corner where there is no stop sign. We think they may be trying to tell us something, like: “What? You guys run out of octagons?”
Our new signs have taken some getting used to, however. Manys the time we see drivers blow past them like they were not even there. We were hoping that the folks at the Borough Hall would have put up a few signs notifying people about the new stop signs, but they were apparently too busy reneging on parking garage contracts to bother.
Oh well. We suppose that like all good children our new stop signs will learn to assert themselves, stand up and be noticed. When they do, we will be here for them.
You will please excuse us if we seem a little giddy here in West Chester. We’ve been celebrating the arrival of a new little bundle of joy that came last month, to our surprise and delight. And not just one bundle, but twins!
That’s right, folks. We have two, count ’em, two new stop signs in the borough. Right there at the corner of West Gay and North Darlington streets, right there in front of the best darn “five star restaurant” you’d ever want to chug down a beer tower in. We are so, as they say, blessed.
You know how we love our street signs here in West Chester. We are proud of them, as proud of them as any parent who has ever seen his or her son or daughter appear on “American Idol,” or “The Apprentice,” or “Cops!” or any other avenue to the world of fame and renown.
We make sure they are kept company with other signs, and even take them down now and then and clean them up a bit if they look too shopworn. When it gets too cold or icy, we have been known to bring them to our homes for an extra bit of warmth. We ask after their health on rainy days, and always remember them on national holidays.
We try not to play favorites among our signs, as any good parent would. We know that our “No Parking Anytime, Anywhere, Anyhow” signs are just as important and special and unique as our “Welcome to West Chester, Not East Coatesville” signs are. (We’re not going to talk about our “Route 842” signs. We understand that they are trying to find their own “special place” in the world, but sometimes things just don’t work out. We wish them well.) But, just as any good parent would, we can’t help but feel a little bit fonder of our stop signs than the others.
Maybe it’s because they’ve been around so much longer. Can you even imagine West Chester without stop signs? We can’t. We even took a drive the other day just to spend some time with our stop signs. In a 10-minute spin around the borough, we counted no fewer than 45 stop signs. That’s 4.5 stop signs every minute, sometimes four to a corner! Did we say how blessed we are?
We have noticed that outsiders coming into the borough jump right into the spirit of things when it comes to our stop signs. Sometimes drivers with out-of-state plates will even stop at a corner where there is no stop sign. We think they may be trying to tell us something, like: “What? You guys run out of octagons?”
Our new signs have taken some getting used to, however. Manys the time we see drivers blow past them like they were not even there. We were hoping that the folks at the Borough Hall would have put up a few signs notifying people about the new stop signs, but they were apparently too busy reneging on parking garage contracts to bother.
Oh well. We suppose that like all good children our new stop signs will learn to assert themselves, stand up and be noticed. When they do, we will be here for them.
Monday, January 28, 2008
The Zen of Wa
This column initially appeared on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008.
(For those of you unfamiliar with the subject, Wawas are the Penn-Jersey-Del convenience store of choice. -MPR)
(For those of you unfamiliar with the subject, Wawas are the Penn-Jersey-Del convenience store of choice. -MPR)
If you are keeping score, add these to the things I am most certain of in life.
If I come across “High Fidelity” starring John Cusack, on television, I will watch it.
If I bet on someone to win, they will lose.
If you are walking into a Wawa behind someone, they will open the door for you.
People here in the Delaware Valley tend to be a parochial lot, concerned with a sense of the value of hometown pride. And that may be a reason why we like our Wawas so much, above and beyond any national convenience store chain and their tempting frozen sugar ice drinks. Wawa is local: there really is a village called Wawa, although I don’t remember if there is a Wawa in Wawa. Wawa is not some soulless corporation; it is regularly ranked as one of he best places to work, and when 75 managerial spots opened up in 2006 more than 1,000 people applied for the chance to work for the Wizard of Wa.
And if you have spent more than a month living here, you have an opinion about what Wawa you prefer. A friend told me that the only lunch spot he ever ventures to is the Wawa on East Gay Street in West Chester, across from Pep Boys, and that he is not alone. Ahead of him are at least 30 people waiting for their daily Shortie.
My own personal favorite was the Wawa on Old Downingtown Pike, that little spur of road that connects Strasburg Road to Route 322 on the west side of West Chester. Of course, I chose it because it was right across the street from the Daily Local News’ offices, and it provided me with food and drink at reasonable prices in the days before I started being able to afford more than $2.85 for lunch.
We all have our Wawa memories as well. At my Wawa, I once ran into a West Chester police detective who told me that yes, indeed, they had found the missing hands of a murder victim down along the Brandywine. Thank for the tip, I exclaimed! I guess I won’t be eating lunch today after all!
Tom McKee, the well-liked albeit hirsute music director of the Paul Green School of Rock in Downingtown, tells me that some of the best times of his teenage life occurred at the Township Line Road Wawa in Drexel Hill, where he would meet his friends on Friday and Saturday nights and plot aimless “secret missions” and stupid teenage pranks to keep them occupied.
Natalie Smith, our paper’s features editor, positively salivated while recalling catching sight of Frank and Mary Jelenic at the Baltimore Pike Wawa in downtown Media back in the 1980s, when the couple used to do restaurant reviews on KYW radio. She said they were pushing a tiny shopping cart ahead of them and that her immediate reaction to the moment was not, “Wow! I’m seeing real radio celebrities in person!” but rather, “Wow! Wawa has shopping carts!”
A lot of those Wawas are gone now, morphed into the new, opulent Taj MaWawas that feature gas pumps and computer touch screens. But every time I pass an old Wawa building I remember what it used to be, and try to ignore what it is today.
So come on in. I’ll hold the door for you.
Bad Luck Streak
This story originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 27, 2008.
Lawyers have at times been known to overstate or exaggerate their clients’ situations when pleading their case.
But West Chester attorney Thomas Bellwoar might not be too far off the mark when discussing Sandra Peirson, whom he has represented in various legal actions for more than five years.
“Her poor life,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s like the life of Job.”
Peirson’s tribulations began at age 12, when she was shot in the face by a BB-gun accidentally fired by an uncle, leaving her blind in her left eye. They continued 30 years later, when she sat in a Kennett Square restaurant and was struck in her right eye by a bullet fired by a drunken patron. The ricochet plunged her into total darkness, completely without sight.
Most recently, moreover, Peirson lost her oldest son in a horrific accident in southern Chester County – again involving a bar patron who was visibly intoxicated but who continued to drink. Joseph Peirson was 24 when he died and had been his mother’s primary caregiver, living with her in Kennett Square, said Bellwoar.
Now, Peirson, along with her ex-husband Joseph E. Peirson, is suing the owners of the Applebee’s restaurant in East Marlborough, claiming they improperly served alcohol the driver of the car in which her son was a passenger when he was killed. The suit contends that bartenders and servers at the restaurant continued to give drinks to the driver, Shaun Collins, after he was clearly drunk, and even went so far as to help him to his car and get him behind the wheel of his pickup truck.
The suit also contends that Applebee’s did not have trained personnel at the restaurant that night who were familiar with the standards of serving patrons alcohol.
Filed in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, the suit is tentatively scheduled to go to trial in April. The Peirson’s are asking for more than $50,000 in damages, the minimum threshold for such actions, charging negligence on behalf of Applebee’s local subsidiaries – Rose Management Services of Newtown and Delaware Valley Rose of Kennett Square.
Under what are commonly called “dram shop laws,” Pennsylvania is among those states that allow motorists, or others who have been injured, to seek monetary damages against bar owners who serve visibly intoxicated persons who later are involved in a drunk driving or other accidents.
These laws make bar owners and alcohol servers financially liable if their customers become obviously intoxicated on their premises and subsequently injure someone or cause property damage, typically by driving drunk.
Thus, if a person has several drinks at a bar and is visibly intoxicated then gets in a car and kills someone on the way home, the owner of the serving establishment can be sued for damages.
Such suits are not always successful. One question that must be answered in the cases is just how visibly drunk the patron was before leaving the bar and getting behind the wheel of a car, and whether a reasonable person would be able to determine their level of sobriety.
Jerry Marks, whose Philadelphia law firm of Marks, O’Neill, O’Brien & Courtney is representing Applebee’s in the case, declined to speak to a reporter about his client’s position in the case when contacted Friday. “It’s coming up for trial, and I just can’t comment,” he said.
The accident which claimed Joseph Peirson’s life occurred on Oct. 15, 2005. According to the lawsuit and police reports, Collins, a friend of Joseph Peirson’s, was driving north on Route 41 in Londonderry about 3 a.m., when he lost control of the 2001 Chevrolet Silverado.
In his suit, Bellwoar says that Collins, who had a blood alcohol level of .125 when he was tested after the crash, was arguing with other people in the car, taking his eyes off the road, when he lost control.
Driving at speeds estimated later by police to be close to 100 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, the truck drove onto the northbound shoulder of Route 41, struck a mailbox, and then crossed over into the southbound lanes and struck a guardrail. The truck traveled about 50 feet along the rail, and then became airbourne.
The truck went 82 feet in the air before it hit the ground, rolled over and collided with a house at 2200 Gap-Newport Pike.
Of the four people in the vehicle, two were thrown from the cab – Joseph Peirson and Tashia A. Gambill, 21, of Cochranville, Collin’s girlfriend. Both were killed instantly, Gambill being thrown completely over the roof of the house into which the truck crashed.
A fourth person, Nichole Stahis of Kennett Square, was severely injured.
Gambill’s family, as well as Stahis, is also suing Applebee’s for its alleged negligence in serving Collins.
Collins was charged with homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, involuntary manslaughter and related charges. He pleaded no contest to two counts of homicide and one of aggravated assaulted while DUI, and as sentenced by Judge William H. Mahon in February 2007 to nine and a half to 18 years in prison. He is currently housed at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.
“It’s a DUI case that should be shown and taught to kids everywhere,” said Assistant District Attorney Carlos Barraza, who prosecuted Collins. “It was, for me, the worst accident scene I have ever seen.”
The case resonated with Mahon as well, but for a different reason. It was Mahon who in January 2003 sentenced Cesar Arreola-Solis to 11 ½ to 23 months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service for the shooting that left Sandra Peirson blind.
Barraza said that Mahon remembered the case and Sandra Peirson.
Sandra Peirson, then 43, was at the Birch Inn in Kennett Square the night of Nov. 11, 2001, sitting at a table enjoying a drink with the bar manager when Solis, who was drunk and who had brought a loaded handgun into the bar undetected, began waving the gun around. At some point, he accidentally fired the weapon, hitting himself in the hand, his brother, sitting next to him, in the ear and Peirson in the eye "due to an unforeseeable ricochet," according to records.
Left blind, Sandra Peirson could not work any longer and moved in with her mother. She sued the bar owners and settled the case out of court in 2003, a settlement that Bellwoar said allowed her to buy a home in Oxford, where she and her son Joseph lived until late summer 2005, when she sold the house and the pair moved back to an apartment in Kennett Square.
A month after moving, Joseph Peirson went out to Applebee’s with Collins, his friend, and the two women. He never came home. Sandra Peirson moved away from Pennsylvania, and now lives in Virginia, where she is cared for by a friend, Bellwoar said.
Lawyers have at times been known to overstate or exaggerate their clients’ situations when pleading their case.
But West Chester attorney Thomas Bellwoar might not be too far off the mark when discussing Sandra Peirson, whom he has represented in various legal actions for more than five years.
“Her poor life,” he said in a recent interview. “It’s like the life of Job.”
Peirson’s tribulations began at age 12, when she was shot in the face by a BB-gun accidentally fired by an uncle, leaving her blind in her left eye. They continued 30 years later, when she sat in a Kennett Square restaurant and was struck in her right eye by a bullet fired by a drunken patron. The ricochet plunged her into total darkness, completely without sight.
Most recently, moreover, Peirson lost her oldest son in a horrific accident in southern Chester County – again involving a bar patron who was visibly intoxicated but who continued to drink. Joseph Peirson was 24 when he died and had been his mother’s primary caregiver, living with her in Kennett Square, said Bellwoar.
Now, Peirson, along with her ex-husband Joseph E. Peirson, is suing the owners of the Applebee’s restaurant in East Marlborough, claiming they improperly served alcohol the driver of the car in which her son was a passenger when he was killed. The suit contends that bartenders and servers at the restaurant continued to give drinks to the driver, Shaun Collins, after he was clearly drunk, and even went so far as to help him to his car and get him behind the wheel of his pickup truck.
The suit also contends that Applebee’s did not have trained personnel at the restaurant that night who were familiar with the standards of serving patrons alcohol.
Filed in Common Pleas Court in Philadelphia, the suit is tentatively scheduled to go to trial in April. The Peirson’s are asking for more than $50,000 in damages, the minimum threshold for such actions, charging negligence on behalf of Applebee’s local subsidiaries – Rose Management Services of Newtown and Delaware Valley Rose of Kennett Square.
Under what are commonly called “dram shop laws,” Pennsylvania is among those states that allow motorists, or others who have been injured, to seek monetary damages against bar owners who serve visibly intoxicated persons who later are involved in a drunk driving or other accidents.
These laws make bar owners and alcohol servers financially liable if their customers become obviously intoxicated on their premises and subsequently injure someone or cause property damage, typically by driving drunk.
Thus, if a person has several drinks at a bar and is visibly intoxicated then gets in a car and kills someone on the way home, the owner of the serving establishment can be sued for damages.
Such suits are not always successful. One question that must be answered in the cases is just how visibly drunk the patron was before leaving the bar and getting behind the wheel of a car, and whether a reasonable person would be able to determine their level of sobriety.
Jerry Marks, whose Philadelphia law firm of Marks, O’Neill, O’Brien & Courtney is representing Applebee’s in the case, declined to speak to a reporter about his client’s position in the case when contacted Friday. “It’s coming up for trial, and I just can’t comment,” he said.
The accident which claimed Joseph Peirson’s life occurred on Oct. 15, 2005. According to the lawsuit and police reports, Collins, a friend of Joseph Peirson’s, was driving north on Route 41 in Londonderry about 3 a.m., when he lost control of the 2001 Chevrolet Silverado.
In his suit, Bellwoar says that Collins, who had a blood alcohol level of .125 when he was tested after the crash, was arguing with other people in the car, taking his eyes off the road, when he lost control.
Driving at speeds estimated later by police to be close to 100 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone, the truck drove onto the northbound shoulder of Route 41, struck a mailbox, and then crossed over into the southbound lanes and struck a guardrail. The truck traveled about 50 feet along the rail, and then became airbourne.
The truck went 82 feet in the air before it hit the ground, rolled over and collided with a house at 2200 Gap-Newport Pike.
Of the four people in the vehicle, two were thrown from the cab – Joseph Peirson and Tashia A. Gambill, 21, of Cochranville, Collin’s girlfriend. Both were killed instantly, Gambill being thrown completely over the roof of the house into which the truck crashed.
A fourth person, Nichole Stahis of Kennett Square, was severely injured.
Gambill’s family, as well as Stahis, is also suing Applebee’s for its alleged negligence in serving Collins.
Collins was charged with homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, involuntary manslaughter and related charges. He pleaded no contest to two counts of homicide and one of aggravated assaulted while DUI, and as sentenced by Judge William H. Mahon in February 2007 to nine and a half to 18 years in prison. He is currently housed at the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon.
“It’s a DUI case that should be shown and taught to kids everywhere,” said Assistant District Attorney Carlos Barraza, who prosecuted Collins. “It was, for me, the worst accident scene I have ever seen.”
The case resonated with Mahon as well, but for a different reason. It was Mahon who in January 2003 sentenced Cesar Arreola-Solis to 11 ½ to 23 months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service for the shooting that left Sandra Peirson blind.
Barraza said that Mahon remembered the case and Sandra Peirson.
Sandra Peirson, then 43, was at the Birch Inn in Kennett Square the night of Nov. 11, 2001, sitting at a table enjoying a drink with the bar manager when Solis, who was drunk and who had brought a loaded handgun into the bar undetected, began waving the gun around. At some point, he accidentally fired the weapon, hitting himself in the hand, his brother, sitting next to him, in the ear and Peirson in the eye "due to an unforeseeable ricochet," according to records.
Left blind, Sandra Peirson could not work any longer and moved in with her mother. She sued the bar owners and settled the case out of court in 2003, a settlement that Bellwoar said allowed her to buy a home in Oxford, where she and her son Joseph lived until late summer 2005, when she sold the house and the pair moved back to an apartment in Kennett Square.
A month after moving, Joseph Peirson went out to Applebee’s with Collins, his friend, and the two women. He never came home. Sandra Peirson moved away from Pennsylvania, and now lives in Virginia, where she is cared for by a friend, Bellwoar said.
Monday, January 21, 2008
A Table, Some Chairs, a Bitter Memory
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2008
There are no rules to the way we react to trauma. Some people become obsessed by their misfortune and it grips them whole. Some shake the evil off their coats like a drenched dog drying himself.
Years spent sitting in court rooms has shown me that the victims of crime approach their lives differently after the harm that befell them was inflicted. There are no longer any walks after dark. Strangers are greeted with distrust. Children become more clinging, or less approachable. A proud stride is reduced to a painful shuffle. But until last week, I never thought of that trauma having an impact on a room, and a piece of furniture.
Two years ago, a Honey Brook man argued with his girlfriend about the course of their relationship. During the fight, he took their 30-day-old son and held him up, dropped him to the floor and kicked him twice, in the head.
The assault took place in the kitchen of the woman’s home on Horseshoe Pike as the family ate dinner. In a letter she wrote to the judge who was set to sentence her former boyfriend for the assault, the woman remembered that location particularly.
Here is what she wrote:
“He did all of this in the kitchen where my children and I used to share so many laughs, sit down as a family for dinner and have family game night. Now we are unable to sit around the table; it’s become a useless piece of furniture. The chairs are now in the children’s room, where they sit to eat their dinner, while the table grows cobwebs.
“It’s too painful to enter the kitchen where the assault took place. Even after I tried to re-arrange it to make it less painful, we can still see the image of (her ex) holding (her child) in the air by the back of his pajamas, then being thrown to the floor.”
Her description struck me as profound, and poetic. The trauma suffered that night had an impact not only on the physical and mental well being of those involved, but on their relationship to their own environment. And the picture is immediately recognizable: what family doesn’t use the kitchen table, or counter, or island, as a place to gather and laugh and talk and play and perhaps shout a bit. It is the central place for where the business of being a family gets conducted.
And what more poison could there be than to bring violence into that space, and how could you not feel a chill every time you went back to that place?
The idea of the table itself being shunned, being cast aside, growing dust and cobwebs, drew me in. Inanimate objects do have lives, I thought. We give cars names and they grow personalities. We find a rock in the cool shade and it becomes a friend. Violence enters our homes and the furniture itself become witnesses and victims.
At the end of her letter, the women pleaded for a sentence that would bring her family justice. Here’s how she put it.
“Please let us get that phone call, knowing maybe we’ll go to sleep tonight and actually wake up tomorrow and be able to live again, start on the process of moving the chairs back into the kitchen, sitting around the dinner table as a family … and just finally get back some happiness.”
There are no rules to the way we react to trauma. Some people become obsessed by their misfortune and it grips them whole. Some shake the evil off their coats like a drenched dog drying himself.
Years spent sitting in court rooms has shown me that the victims of crime approach their lives differently after the harm that befell them was inflicted. There are no longer any walks after dark. Strangers are greeted with distrust. Children become more clinging, or less approachable. A proud stride is reduced to a painful shuffle. But until last week, I never thought of that trauma having an impact on a room, and a piece of furniture.
Two years ago, a Honey Brook man argued with his girlfriend about the course of their relationship. During the fight, he took their 30-day-old son and held him up, dropped him to the floor and kicked him twice, in the head.
The assault took place in the kitchen of the woman’s home on Horseshoe Pike as the family ate dinner. In a letter she wrote to the judge who was set to sentence her former boyfriend for the assault, the woman remembered that location particularly.
Here is what she wrote:
“He did all of this in the kitchen where my children and I used to share so many laughs, sit down as a family for dinner and have family game night. Now we are unable to sit around the table; it’s become a useless piece of furniture. The chairs are now in the children’s room, where they sit to eat their dinner, while the table grows cobwebs.
“It’s too painful to enter the kitchen where the assault took place. Even after I tried to re-arrange it to make it less painful, we can still see the image of (her ex) holding (her child) in the air by the back of his pajamas, then being thrown to the floor.”
Her description struck me as profound, and poetic. The trauma suffered that night had an impact not only on the physical and mental well being of those involved, but on their relationship to their own environment. And the picture is immediately recognizable: what family doesn’t use the kitchen table, or counter, or island, as a place to gather and laugh and talk and play and perhaps shout a bit. It is the central place for where the business of being a family gets conducted.
And what more poison could there be than to bring violence into that space, and how could you not feel a chill every time you went back to that place?
The idea of the table itself being shunned, being cast aside, growing dust and cobwebs, drew me in. Inanimate objects do have lives, I thought. We give cars names and they grow personalities. We find a rock in the cool shade and it becomes a friend. Violence enters our homes and the furniture itself become witnesses and victims.
At the end of her letter, the women pleaded for a sentence that would bring her family justice. Here’s how she put it.
“Please let us get that phone call, knowing maybe we’ll go to sleep tonight and actually wake up tomorrow and be able to live again, start on the process of moving the chairs back into the kitchen, sitting around the dinner table as a family … and just finally get back some happiness.”
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Enveloped By The Modern World
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 13, 2008
It remains for me a striking image: Five Old Order Amish men sitting in a sterile, modern, community hearing room inside West Chester Borough Hall, listening to a family describe how one of their number’s perceived racism had damaged them.
Here were people — who, because of their religious faith and practice, work in varying degrees to separate themselves from the outside “English” world — being brought kicking and shouting, figuratively, into that sad feature of the modern world — the racial dispute.
To recap, a black family from Valley had been looking for a new home to rent that would take them out of the urban setting where they lived. Responding to an advertisement, the wife went to look at a home for rent in Little Britain, just across the Lancaster County line from Oxford. She fell in love with the picturesque, rural property and eagerly told the landlord, an Amish carpenter, that her family would like to rent it.
But later that night, the landlord called and left a phone message that another tenant had complained about her race and had threatened to leave the property if they moved in. “I’m sorry,” the Amish man told her. Shocked and angry that the color of their skin would be reason for rejection, the family filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
Attempts at reconciliation with the parties failed, leading to Thursday’s hearing.
The black family was accompanied by a lawyer from Philadelphia; the Amish landlord was accompanied by four men from his church district and a non-Amish fellow who drove them from their homes 35 miles away.
The rejected family spoke eloquently about the pain, humiliation and anger they endured because of the denial. With his head bowed, his traditional black brimmed hat laid on a chair next to him, the landlord sat silently alone at the defense table that had been set up for him.
Factually, the case against the man seemed strong. His voice could be heard on a tape saying how his other tenants didn’t want a “colored” family living next door. His argument that the lease application started by the wife hadn’t been fully completed and was thus still not formally “rejected” seemed forced. But there was no hateful monster sitting there to despise, just a man seemingly caught up by something he had not anticipated.
I am not one who looks at the Amish through the misty-eyed romanticism of “Witness,” or the Lancaster County Tourist Bureau, viewing them as plain, uncorrupted folk who just want to be left alone to live their simple life. The Amish have bad apples and good ones, just like any community, and can be just as wrong in their decisions as you or I.
But as used to seeing the courtroom dynamics of practiced attorneys and judges and litigants as I am, I will long remember the response of the landlord when asked by the commission’s hearing examiner if he had any more evidence to provide.
Sitting quietly for as long as 20 seconds, scratching his beard and fiddling with his hands, the man finally spoke.
“I can’t understand what any of this is about,” he said.
It remains for me a striking image: Five Old Order Amish men sitting in a sterile, modern, community hearing room inside West Chester Borough Hall, listening to a family describe how one of their number’s perceived racism had damaged them.
Here were people — who, because of their religious faith and practice, work in varying degrees to separate themselves from the outside “English” world — being brought kicking and shouting, figuratively, into that sad feature of the modern world — the racial dispute.
To recap, a black family from Valley had been looking for a new home to rent that would take them out of the urban setting where they lived. Responding to an advertisement, the wife went to look at a home for rent in Little Britain, just across the Lancaster County line from Oxford. She fell in love with the picturesque, rural property and eagerly told the landlord, an Amish carpenter, that her family would like to rent it.
But later that night, the landlord called and left a phone message that another tenant had complained about her race and had threatened to leave the property if they moved in. “I’m sorry,” the Amish man told her. Shocked and angry that the color of their skin would be reason for rejection, the family filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission.
Attempts at reconciliation with the parties failed, leading to Thursday’s hearing.
The black family was accompanied by a lawyer from Philadelphia; the Amish landlord was accompanied by four men from his church district and a non-Amish fellow who drove them from their homes 35 miles away.
The rejected family spoke eloquently about the pain, humiliation and anger they endured because of the denial. With his head bowed, his traditional black brimmed hat laid on a chair next to him, the landlord sat silently alone at the defense table that had been set up for him.
Factually, the case against the man seemed strong. His voice could be heard on a tape saying how his other tenants didn’t want a “colored” family living next door. His argument that the lease application started by the wife hadn’t been fully completed and was thus still not formally “rejected” seemed forced. But there was no hateful monster sitting there to despise, just a man seemingly caught up by something he had not anticipated.
I am not one who looks at the Amish through the misty-eyed romanticism of “Witness,” or the Lancaster County Tourist Bureau, viewing them as plain, uncorrupted folk who just want to be left alone to live their simple life. The Amish have bad apples and good ones, just like any community, and can be just as wrong in their decisions as you or I.
But as used to seeing the courtroom dynamics of practiced attorneys and judges and litigants as I am, I will long remember the response of the landlord when asked by the commission’s hearing examiner if he had any more evidence to provide.
Sitting quietly for as long as 20 seconds, scratching his beard and fiddling with his hands, the man finally spoke.
“I can’t understand what any of this is about,” he said.
Sunday, January 06, 2008
My Next Job
This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 6, 2008
The matter of my retirement occurred to me the other day when I sat looking at the line up of Chester County Common Pleas Court judges during a swearing in ceremony in stately Courtroom One at the courthouse for their newest member, David Bortner.
One of these days, I say to myself, I am going to be forced to give up this newspaper dodge I’ve been engaged in since the late days of the Carter Administration and find something useful to do. One of these days either Chelsea Clinton or Jenna Bush is going to be President of the United States, and the sublime will have sunk to the ridiculous so far so that reporting the news won’t be half as stimulating as just making it up, and I’m going to have to find another way to occupy my time and/or mental capabilities.
What better job, I thought, than Court Tipstaff.
All those folks sitting in Courtroom One wearing their black robes would be hard pressed to admit it, since they’re constantly having people stand up for them when they do nothing more than enter a room, but in general I’d say the Court Tipstaff is the central figure in any courtroom in Chester County. They may not look like it sometimes, but the power and influence they hold is incalculable.
Take a for instance.
I’m sitting in Courtroom Seven a few days ago waiting for something to happen. That’s what we do at the courthouse, mostly: wait. There’s me, a court clerk, a court stenographer, a deputy sheriff or two, and Al the Tipstaff. Otherwise, it’s an empty courtroom.
So who walks out from his chambers but Judge Anthony Sarcione, who by my estimation is the only currently sitting jurist in Chester County who has ever ridden a surfboard, unless there’s a side to Judge Robert Shenkin that I haven’t been exposed to. Anyway, Judge Sarcione walks out of his chambers, strides purposefully to his bench, and looks out on the courtroom to see…
“What? No attorneys?” he says, disappointedly, to no one in particular.
Now, a judge on a bench without any attorneys in the room is a lost cause. It’s a boat without a sail, a gun without bullets, a pitcher without a batter. There’s no one to squint at in confusion, there’s no one to argue with in derision, there’s no one to overrule, for heavens sake. So there stood Judge Sarcione, ready to hang ten on the Big Kahuna Wave of res judica, so to speak, and the only one looking back at him from the audience is me. And I’m nowhere near qualified for him to hold in contempt, at least in a legal way.
Al the Tipstaff to the rescue.
Minutes later, there are not one but two attorneys in the courtroom, just aching to tell Judge Sarcione about this or that aspect of their case, meet with him at sidebar, call him “Your Honor,” use words like “colloquy” without chuckling, and ask to be excused when they leave the courtroom. All was right, God was in his Heaven, and we owe it all to Al the Tipstaff.
That’s what I want, real power. And the chance to say, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” in public.
The matter of my retirement occurred to me the other day when I sat looking at the line up of Chester County Common Pleas Court judges during a swearing in ceremony in stately Courtroom One at the courthouse for their newest member, David Bortner.
One of these days, I say to myself, I am going to be forced to give up this newspaper dodge I’ve been engaged in since the late days of the Carter Administration and find something useful to do. One of these days either Chelsea Clinton or Jenna Bush is going to be President of the United States, and the sublime will have sunk to the ridiculous so far so that reporting the news won’t be half as stimulating as just making it up, and I’m going to have to find another way to occupy my time and/or mental capabilities.
What better job, I thought, than Court Tipstaff.
All those folks sitting in Courtroom One wearing their black robes would be hard pressed to admit it, since they’re constantly having people stand up for them when they do nothing more than enter a room, but in general I’d say the Court Tipstaff is the central figure in any courtroom in Chester County. They may not look like it sometimes, but the power and influence they hold is incalculable.
Take a for instance.
I’m sitting in Courtroom Seven a few days ago waiting for something to happen. That’s what we do at the courthouse, mostly: wait. There’s me, a court clerk, a court stenographer, a deputy sheriff or two, and Al the Tipstaff. Otherwise, it’s an empty courtroom.
So who walks out from his chambers but Judge Anthony Sarcione, who by my estimation is the only currently sitting jurist in Chester County who has ever ridden a surfboard, unless there’s a side to Judge Robert Shenkin that I haven’t been exposed to. Anyway, Judge Sarcione walks out of his chambers, strides purposefully to his bench, and looks out on the courtroom to see…
“What? No attorneys?” he says, disappointedly, to no one in particular.
Now, a judge on a bench without any attorneys in the room is a lost cause. It’s a boat without a sail, a gun without bullets, a pitcher without a batter. There’s no one to squint at in confusion, there’s no one to argue with in derision, there’s no one to overrule, for heavens sake. So there stood Judge Sarcione, ready to hang ten on the Big Kahuna Wave of res judica, so to speak, and the only one looking back at him from the audience is me. And I’m nowhere near qualified for him to hold in contempt, at least in a legal way.
Al the Tipstaff to the rescue.
Minutes later, there are not one but two attorneys in the courtroom, just aching to tell Judge Sarcione about this or that aspect of their case, meet with him at sidebar, call him “Your Honor,” use words like “colloquy” without chuckling, and ask to be excused when they leave the courtroom. All was right, God was in his Heaven, and we owe it all to Al the Tipstaff.
That’s what I want, real power. And the chance to say, “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” in public.
Monday, December 31, 2007
The Skyline's Limited
This column originaly appeared on Sunday, Dec. 30, 2007
There is no easy way to put this.
If there was an easy way to put this, you can be certain that I would take it. We in the news businesses – with the possible exception of Dan Rather, Jim Lehrer and some of the folks who work at E! Entertainment’s crack Britney Spears Division -- are very comfortable, shall we say, with taking the easy way when it comes to life.
Believe me, I don’t like the hard way. I avoid the hard way like the folks at the E! Entertainment's crack Britney Spears Division avoid discussions on Salman Rushdie’s latest novel. If the hard way was walking down the street and I spotted it coming in the opposite direction, I would cross over and pretend to do some window shopping at Fairman’s Skate Shop.
So believe me when I say it is not easy to admit that the skyline that greets me when I return to Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from traveling out west makes me want to yawn.
There, I said it. The sight of Chester County’s border along about mile marker 300 is boring with a capital “Is that it?” It’s unidentifiable. It’s non-descript. It’s a vacuum in the skyline sense. My sister once drove to Chester County from her home in Cincinnati and didn’t even know she had passed the so-called “most beautiful place on earth” until she hit the New Jersey Turnpike.
You cross into Chester County on the Pennsylvania Turnpike from Berks County and you might as well be left in a time/space warp in which you continually return to the same Berks County landscape that you just left, only with fewer animal food processing plants.
Travelers the world over get awe-striking views of the cities they enter that stick with them for years. New York City’s skyline upon boating in on the Staten Island Ferry is one. Driving around the bend in the Schuylkill Expressway near the Philadelphia Zoo when that city’s Boathouse Row comes into view at night is another. Even coming into my hometown of Cincinnati from the south, where the skyline emerges above the stately Ohio River, always left me with a bit of a tickle on the back of my neck.
Coming into Chester County from the west on the Pennsylvania Turnpike leaves me thinking, “What should I cook for dinner?”
This calls for action. This calls for change.
We need to create some better skyline, some identifiable landscape, that will stand up and be noticed. We need to create a skyline that speaks to the Chester County-ness out there, something that will leave travelers passing by open-mouthed and drooling and leave residents coming home from the west with a warm feeling in their souls like they just rescued the neighbor’s puppy.
What that scene should be is not up to me. No, I’ve fulfilled my role in this situation. I’ve identified the problem, and now I’m leaving it up to others to deliver the solution. It could be politicians, it could be business leaders, it could be -- dare we say -- Lani Frank. I don’t care. As I said before, I’m about the easy way.
And when they come up with a new skyline for the entrance way to Chester County from the west, I’ll be here, waiting.
As for the eastern skyline, we’ve got the Gateway Shopping Center and that’ll do.
Monday, December 24, 2007
Will The Real Chester County Stand Up?
This column originally appeared on Dec. 23, 2007
Have you ever closed the refrigerator door and wondered whether the light inside has actually gone off, or is rather still burning, illuminating all the leftover meatloaf and pasta with pesto and rapidly deteriorating lettuce that is taking up space in there?
Ever shut the front door behind you on the way to work and imagined your kids had stopped running around like 5-year-olds and had sat down calmly on the sofa to discuss options for reducing the family household’s carbon footprint, rather than tracking actual carbon footprints from the Webber grill detritus through the living room?
Then you can understand the way I feel at this time of year, when I leave Chester County behind and travel to my original hometown.
I have spent the past 25 years as a resident and registered voter in Chester County, and have stayed relatively put during that quarter century. I don't move much. Suffice to say, the state constables know where to find me if -- or more accurately, when -- my parking ticket warrants reach maturity.
But I have never spent a single Christmas Day in Chester County. Each year I make the sojourn back over the Alleghenies and across the Monongahila and the Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my family. I may stay only a day or two, sometimes as long as a week, but I have never failed to return there for Dec. 25.
And that has me thinking, as you do when you shut that refrigerator door, what in the world goes on in Chester County when I’m gone? What if it’s nothing like I'm used to? What if everything changes? Could it be that for the few days I’m absent from the Brandywine Valley, the lay of the land reverts to some other reality that only exists just after the Winter Solstice?
Could it be that all of those quaint Revolutionary War stone farmhouses that dot East Bradford are replaced by cheesy Yeadon-style rowhomes? That the breathtaking beauty of Route 162 through Unionville transmorphs into a streetscape comparable with the Golden Outlet Mile outside Lancaster?
Could it be that for a few days the Democrats start running the county courthouse, and that they vote to replace the Ten Commandments plaque with a framed copy of “It Takes a Village?” That Bill Scott and Andy Dinniman have a quick holiday luncheon at Rex’s Bar and not a word passes between them besides, “How ‘bout that Bam?”
Could it be that former Commissioner Colin Hanna whips up a batch of tacos and margaritas and invites his favorite atheist, Margaret Downey, over to the family manse to join him in a few verses of “Feliz Navidad?”
Could it be that while I’m sitting down to a plate of Skyline Chili (onions, no cheese, and two Coneys on the side, please), noted defense counsel John Duffy is standing up in a courtroom somewhere and saying, “Now that I think about it, You Honor, my worthy adversary on the prosecution just might have a point there?”
I don’t know if any of these things actually happens, but if they do and you know about it, keep it to yourself, please. I’ve got one reality and I’d like to stick to it.
Have you ever closed the refrigerator door and wondered whether the light inside has actually gone off, or is rather still burning, illuminating all the leftover meatloaf and pasta with pesto and rapidly deteriorating lettuce that is taking up space in there?
Ever shut the front door behind you on the way to work and imagined your kids had stopped running around like 5-year-olds and had sat down calmly on the sofa to discuss options for reducing the family household’s carbon footprint, rather than tracking actual carbon footprints from the Webber grill detritus through the living room?
Then you can understand the way I feel at this time of year, when I leave Chester County behind and travel to my original hometown.
I have spent the past 25 years as a resident and registered voter in Chester County, and have stayed relatively put during that quarter century. I don't move much. Suffice to say, the state constables know where to find me if -- or more accurately, when -- my parking ticket warrants reach maturity.
But I have never spent a single Christmas Day in Chester County. Each year I make the sojourn back over the Alleghenies and across the Monongahila and the Ohio to Cincinnati, Ohio, to visit my family. I may stay only a day or two, sometimes as long as a week, but I have never failed to return there for Dec. 25.
And that has me thinking, as you do when you shut that refrigerator door, what in the world goes on in Chester County when I’m gone? What if it’s nothing like I'm used to? What if everything changes? Could it be that for the few days I’m absent from the Brandywine Valley, the lay of the land reverts to some other reality that only exists just after the Winter Solstice?
Could it be that all of those quaint Revolutionary War stone farmhouses that dot East Bradford are replaced by cheesy Yeadon-style rowhomes? That the breathtaking beauty of Route 162 through Unionville transmorphs into a streetscape comparable with the Golden Outlet Mile outside Lancaster?
Could it be that for a few days the Democrats start running the county courthouse, and that they vote to replace the Ten Commandments plaque with a framed copy of “It Takes a Village?” That Bill Scott and Andy Dinniman have a quick holiday luncheon at Rex’s Bar and not a word passes between them besides, “How ‘bout that Bam?”
Could it be that former Commissioner Colin Hanna whips up a batch of tacos and margaritas and invites his favorite atheist, Margaret Downey, over to the family manse to join him in a few verses of “Feliz Navidad?”
Could it be that while I’m sitting down to a plate of Skyline Chili (onions, no cheese, and two Coneys on the side, please), noted defense counsel John Duffy is standing up in a courtroom somewhere and saying, “Now that I think about it, You Honor, my worthy adversary on the prosecution just might have a point there?”
I don’t know if any of these things actually happens, but if they do and you know about it, keep it to yourself, please. I’ve got one reality and I’d like to stick to it.
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
Trump Trumped
This column originally apered on Sunday, Dec. 9, 2007
Did you see the news item the other day about the Scottish landowner who is standing up to billionaire egomaniac Donald Trump and his plans to build a $2 billion golf course and condo development project on the Aberdeen Coast?
Did you hear how Michael Forbes, a multi-tasking fisherman and farmer, has refused to sell his 23 acres of “wind-scoured coastline” even though Atlantic City’s favorite comb-over casino mogul had offered him more than three-quarters of a million dollars for it?
Did you tell the story around the dinner table of how the local Scottish business community was up in arms about Forbes refusal to sell, seeing the golf complex as a boon to the local economy?
Did it remind you of anything?
No, I am not referring to that paltry little dust-up in Coatesville over the Iron Eagle Golf Course and one man’s refusal to give up his family farm so that duffers would have a place to shoot a round within spitting distance of a beleaguered steel mill.
I’m talking about the epic confrontation involving Knox Oil and Gas Inc., the residents of Ferness, Scotland and crusty old beachcomber Ben Knox, who owned the beach at Ferness and refused to sell out so that Felix Happer could build a multi-million dollar oil refinery there.
If you didn’t read about that situation in the papers or see it on CNN, don’t feel loop challenged. The confrontation took place only in the sublimely comic imagination of Scottish writer and director Bill Forsyth.
In 1983, Forsyth released the film, “Local Hero,” a story about a Texas oil company executive named “Mac” McIntyre who gets orders to travel to Scotland to wrap up the Ferness land purchase for the oil refinery, an assignment that fell to him largely because of his Scottish heritage. Except that Mac is the descendant of Hungarians and really doesn’t like to travel (“I’m more of a Telex man,” he says.)
The film has everything you’d want in a comedy, if by everything you mean an injured rabbit with two names; a small town populace looking to make a killing and pick up a few Maseratis on the way; a mysterious and beautiful marine researcher who may or may not be a mermaid; a Russian fishing boat captain with a serious investment portfolio; a crazed motorcyclist; the aurora borealis; and a red telephone booth.
The film does in fact have a character that refuses to sell his beach property because he loves living there. Old Ben Knox turns down Mac’s offer to buy him a beach anywhere else in the world, and tricks the exec when he offers to set a price equal to the amount of sand he holds in his hand. It’s wonderful to hear the dialogue between characters as they discuss the modern world versus the traditional world, as in the exchange where Mac wonders how one negotiates business deals with a man who has no door and is told: “The ethics are the same.”
I don’t think The Donald is going to end up with a plan like oil company owner Felix Happer (deliciously played by Burt Lancaster), who eventually decides to scrap the refinery plan and build an institute dedicated to the sea and the sky at Ferness.
But it is wonderful to see life imitating art in some small way, and to know that there are people off the movie screen who regard a stretch of beach as being worth something more than money.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
Some Words to the Wise (And O'Rourke, Too!)
These posts go out to my Google Groups list, and show up in (at least) my e-mail without any paragraphing, just one big blog blob. (Say that five times fast!)
If you want to see how the columns/stories look with paragraphing, go to www.michaelpcolumns.blogspot.com.
Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
If you want to see how the columns/stories look with paragraphing, go to www.michaelpcolumns.blogspot.com.
Good night, and have a pleasant tomorrow.
Ode to a Road
This column first appeared on Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007.
While taking in the sights and sounds of Old Fashioned Christmas in West Chester Friday evening, it occurred to me that although there have been literally dozens of Christmas carols written for our listening enjoyment, there are exactly no poems available to those of us who want to sing the praises of state Route 926.
Forgive me, but that’s the way my mind works. You do not even want to know what occurred to me after taking in the sights and sounds of the Phoenixville’s Blogfest.
In order to correct that situation, I hearby submit the following, “Ode to a Road.”
926! 926! 926!
Your lanes cross open fields.
And the homes that dot betwixt
All bear security shields.
We adore your wooden barns
And landfills named SECCRA.
And across from Landhope Farms
A chiropractic Mecca.
Oh, your ponds must have toads
And your pastures fine horses,
And round about Lamborton Road
There’s room for golf courses.
Springdel and Chatam and 841
Post a speed limit 45.
But squinting at morning’s new sun
On you at 30 we drive.
Your balm of Friends Meeting,
London Grove, is like talcum,
Owning much to the greeting
First Day School, “All Welcome.”
We think as New Bolton nears
“With joy must come woe.”
And then we raise up our beers,
And toast Barbaro.
It’s the watershed of Red Clay
That get’s us to thinkin’
Where will come the day
You’ll be a highway like Lincoln?
For although your number
Is more than 30 times as sweet
We can’t help but wonder
Why this road’s name is “Street.”
While taking in the sights and sounds of Old Fashioned Christmas in West Chester Friday evening, it occurred to me that although there have been literally dozens of Christmas carols written for our listening enjoyment, there are exactly no poems available to those of us who want to sing the praises of state Route 926.
Forgive me, but that’s the way my mind works. You do not even want to know what occurred to me after taking in the sights and sounds of the Phoenixville’s Blogfest.
In order to correct that situation, I hearby submit the following, “Ode to a Road.”
926! 926! 926!
Your lanes cross open fields.
And the homes that dot betwixt
All bear security shields.
We adore your wooden barns
And landfills named SECCRA.
And across from Landhope Farms
A chiropractic Mecca.
Oh, your ponds must have toads
And your pastures fine horses,
And round about Lamborton Road
There’s room for golf courses.
Springdel and Chatam and 841
Post a speed limit 45.
But squinting at morning’s new sun
On you at 30 we drive.
Your balm of Friends Meeting,
London Grove, is like talcum,
Owning much to the greeting
First Day School, “All Welcome.”
We think as New Bolton nears
“With joy must come woe.”
And then we raise up our beers,
And toast Barbaro.
It’s the watershed of Red Clay
That get’s us to thinkin’
Where will come the day
You’ll be a highway like Lincoln?
For although your number
Is more than 30 times as sweet
We can’t help but wonder
Why this road’s name is “Street.”
New Justice Center Emphasizes Security
This article first appeared on Monday, Nov. 26, 2007.
WEST CHESTER – Chester County’s new Justice Center on West Market Street has one district court, seven floors, more than a dozen cells – group and individual size -- for prisoners, enough space for 18 courtrooms, and a stairwell with 152 steps.
But most tellingly, it also has 172 individual panic buttons to bring courthouse security personnel on the run.
That final figure is the result of changes in design for the 422,000 square foot, $100 million building brought about by a bloody attack in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta two years ago.
In March 2005, a man on trial for rape overpowered a court deputy, took her gun and killed three people – the judge overseeing his case, a court reporter and another deputy who confronted him as he fled the courthouse. He later pistol-whipped another man whose car he stole and shot and killed a federal marshal unconnected to his trial.
The courthouse killings in Atlanta came just two weeks after a federal judge’s mother and husband were found murdered in their home, and set off a flurry of concerns about the safety of judges, prosecutors and others who work in courthouses across the country.
What had thus been planned as a somewhat standard-issue building housing the county’s Common Pleas courts and court-related offices underwent a metamorphosis into a high-tech structure whose complexity rivals hat of a hospital and whose security suggests something close to a modern maximum security prison.
“This is in no way a run-of-the-mill building,” explained Don Thompson, the county “owner’s representative” who is overseeing the work on the Justice Center, as he did for the Chester County Prison expansion in Pocopson and the county’s Juvenile Detention Center in West Bradford.
“This is a big building. A really, really big building. It is a special place that requires service you can’t ever imagine would be done at another facility,” Thompson said during a recent tour of the building. “The normal frame of reference of an office building that you and I would work in just doesn’t apply.”
Among the security measures that are incorporated in the Justice Center include a basement sheriff’s lock-up that is state of the art in its safety measures to keep prisoners from escaping; judges chambers that are accessible only by security card or electronic entrance; separate elevators for the public, judges and prisoners; and courtroom corridors that are inaccessible to the public and are used only by sheriff deputies and their charges.
It is a far cry from the current courthouse facility, where shackled prisoners walk down hallways in plain view of the public, and can be brought into the courtroom only one at a time. No longer will someone riding one of the courthouse’s four elevators be ordered off so that the deputies can transport a defendant to the courtroom of his or her destination.
“I think the county is going to get a good building,” said Thompson. “Perfect, no. What they paid for? Yes.”
The decision to build a new court facility was years in he making. As long as a decade ago the county’s judges began urging the commissioners to expand the court facility to make room for the new judges the county gained because of its striking increase in population, and all the component personnel – extra prosecutors and public defenders and courts clerks, for example.
The decision was first made to expand on the footprint of the current courthouse, located in the center of West Chester bordered by High, Church, Gay and Market streets. But a dispute between the county and the borough over the density of the planned construction and the proposed demolition of historic properties led to the ultimate decision to relocate the court facilities to the 200 block of West Market Street, across from the site of the county’s new parking garage.
In some ways, the delay itself became a favorable circumstance; because construction did not begin until after 2004, the county was able to incorporate the security changes brought about by the Atlanta courthouse shooting into its design while the building was still being built, instead of after it was completed.
Thompson said that when he came aboard the project, the design by architects Bernardon Haber Halloway of Kennett Square were already on the books. It became his task, he said, to go to all of the county’s court-related department heads, show them the design and ask them what changes they needed.
Which leads Thompson, a friendly man who needs only a small invitation to talk about the project in his hands, to tell the story of the district attorney’s restroom.
In the original design, the DAs office had no interior restroom facilities. In his conversations with District Attorney Joseph Carroll, however, Thompson discovered what a mistake that had been; if left unchanged, it would have put criminal witnesses and victims in the uncomfortable, if not unsafe, position of having to share the facilities with someone connected with their case – perhaps even the defendant.
The DAs office now has its own washroom, Thompson said.
The original design also showed judges having to share courtrooms; now, each judge on the bench currently will have their own courtroom – although they may have to trade off during criminal sessions. Not all courtrooms have been given the necessary individual prisoner lockups, so a judge who hears mostly civil cases would have to move to another courtroom temporarily if he or she is hearing a criminal matter.
When the Justice center opens in late spring or early summer, it will have 15 completed courtrooms, one for each of the county’s judges. There are three additional courtrooms that will remain unfinished until more jurists are added.
Thompson says that special touches in the building – terrazzo floors and milled cherry wood paneling, for example – make it somewhat elegant. Those touches also prove less costly to maintain, however, so that the county will end up spending less money in the long run. He refers to the center as a “50-year building,” ready to stand up for the long haul.
The commissioners, who every month or so are faced with the decision to approve construction change orders that add to the cost of the building, have expressed faith in Thompson’s proposed changes.
“I’ve got lots of confidence in Don,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell, who owes that nevertheless he has ridden Thompson hard on some of his requests.
“I think there were design flaws in (the center) that hadn’t been thought out clearly,” he said. “But Don does not come in with changes lightly.”
Thompson predicted that the final cost of the building will be within three percent of the original budget.
“I’m very proud of that,” he said.
WEST CHESTER – Chester County’s new Justice Center on West Market Street has one district court, seven floors, more than a dozen cells – group and individual size -- for prisoners, enough space for 18 courtrooms, and a stairwell with 152 steps.
But most tellingly, it also has 172 individual panic buttons to bring courthouse security personnel on the run.
That final figure is the result of changes in design for the 422,000 square foot, $100 million building brought about by a bloody attack in the Fulton County Courthouse in Atlanta two years ago.
In March 2005, a man on trial for rape overpowered a court deputy, took her gun and killed three people – the judge overseeing his case, a court reporter and another deputy who confronted him as he fled the courthouse. He later pistol-whipped another man whose car he stole and shot and killed a federal marshal unconnected to his trial.
The courthouse killings in Atlanta came just two weeks after a federal judge’s mother and husband were found murdered in their home, and set off a flurry of concerns about the safety of judges, prosecutors and others who work in courthouses across the country.
What had thus been planned as a somewhat standard-issue building housing the county’s Common Pleas courts and court-related offices underwent a metamorphosis into a high-tech structure whose complexity rivals hat of a hospital and whose security suggests something close to a modern maximum security prison.
“This is in no way a run-of-the-mill building,” explained Don Thompson, the county “owner’s representative” who is overseeing the work on the Justice Center, as he did for the Chester County Prison expansion in Pocopson and the county’s Juvenile Detention Center in West Bradford.
“This is a big building. A really, really big building. It is a special place that requires service you can’t ever imagine would be done at another facility,” Thompson said during a recent tour of the building. “The normal frame of reference of an office building that you and I would work in just doesn’t apply.”
Among the security measures that are incorporated in the Justice Center include a basement sheriff’s lock-up that is state of the art in its safety measures to keep prisoners from escaping; judges chambers that are accessible only by security card or electronic entrance; separate elevators for the public, judges and prisoners; and courtroom corridors that are inaccessible to the public and are used only by sheriff deputies and their charges.
It is a far cry from the current courthouse facility, where shackled prisoners walk down hallways in plain view of the public, and can be brought into the courtroom only one at a time. No longer will someone riding one of the courthouse’s four elevators be ordered off so that the deputies can transport a defendant to the courtroom of his or her destination.
“I think the county is going to get a good building,” said Thompson. “Perfect, no. What they paid for? Yes.”
The decision to build a new court facility was years in he making. As long as a decade ago the county’s judges began urging the commissioners to expand the court facility to make room for the new judges the county gained because of its striking increase in population, and all the component personnel – extra prosecutors and public defenders and courts clerks, for example.
The decision was first made to expand on the footprint of the current courthouse, located in the center of West Chester bordered by High, Church, Gay and Market streets. But a dispute between the county and the borough over the density of the planned construction and the proposed demolition of historic properties led to the ultimate decision to relocate the court facilities to the 200 block of West Market Street, across from the site of the county’s new parking garage.
In some ways, the delay itself became a favorable circumstance; because construction did not begin until after 2004, the county was able to incorporate the security changes brought about by the Atlanta courthouse shooting into its design while the building was still being built, instead of after it was completed.
Thompson said that when he came aboard the project, the design by architects Bernardon Haber Halloway of Kennett Square were already on the books. It became his task, he said, to go to all of the county’s court-related department heads, show them the design and ask them what changes they needed.
Which leads Thompson, a friendly man who needs only a small invitation to talk about the project in his hands, to tell the story of the district attorney’s restroom.
In the original design, the DAs office had no interior restroom facilities. In his conversations with District Attorney Joseph Carroll, however, Thompson discovered what a mistake that had been; if left unchanged, it would have put criminal witnesses and victims in the uncomfortable, if not unsafe, position of having to share the facilities with someone connected with their case – perhaps even the defendant.
The DAs office now has its own washroom, Thompson said.
The original design also showed judges having to share courtrooms; now, each judge on the bench currently will have their own courtroom – although they may have to trade off during criminal sessions. Not all courtrooms have been given the necessary individual prisoner lockups, so a judge who hears mostly civil cases would have to move to another courtroom temporarily if he or she is hearing a criminal matter.
When the Justice center opens in late spring or early summer, it will have 15 completed courtrooms, one for each of the county’s judges. There are three additional courtrooms that will remain unfinished until more jurists are added.
Thompson says that special touches in the building – terrazzo floors and milled cherry wood paneling, for example – make it somewhat elegant. Those touches also prove less costly to maintain, however, so that the county will end up spending less money in the long run. He refers to the center as a “50-year building,” ready to stand up for the long haul.
The commissioners, who every month or so are faced with the decision to approve construction change orders that add to the cost of the building, have expressed faith in Thompson’s proposed changes.
“I’ve got lots of confidence in Don,” said Commissioner Patrick O’Donnell, who owes that nevertheless he has ridden Thompson hard on some of his requests.
“I think there were design flaws in (the center) that hadn’t been thought out clearly,” he said. “But Don does not come in with changes lightly.”
Thompson predicted that the final cost of the building will be within three percent of the original budget.
“I’m very proud of that,” he said.
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