A Job Well Done

I am sure the Unionville Community Fair has been ably covered elsewhere in these pages, so I will say only this: Thank you to everyone involved in this wonderful event. It must be a giant undertaking to organize such a multifacted, weather-dependent weekend, and everything was done just beautifully. Three hearty moos!

A Hard Rain

Congratulations to the folks who run Newlin Township for setting up an e-mail system designed to alert local residents (even non-Newlinites like me) to any problems. When a flood warning was issued before our recent heavy rain, I received an e-mail from the township secretary/treasurer, Gail H. Abel, complete with an advisory letter from the county government and a bunch of National Weather Service maps. Thank you!

Off-road

The "singing bridge" over Doe Run on Route 82 in West Marlborough was shut down for half a day so the metal plate could be fixed, and PennDOT detoured traffic onto Wilson Road, Ryan Road, Hicks Road and Thouron Road. Parts of these roads are gravel, and they're one-and-a-half lanes wide at best. We locals are used to this, but the delayed Route 82 drivers I spoke to most certainly were not.
I saw six cars coming down unpaved Ryan Road, kicking up a cloud of dust, and I pulled over at a stop sign to let them by. This kind of traffic is unheard of, except when the foxhunters come by and there are lots of car followers. I rolled down the window and asked what was going on.
"What a mess!" declared one woman, who then eyed my low-to-the-ground sports car and frankly doubted whether it would be able to manage the detour.
"You're gonna have fun," warned another driver, darkly.
I felt sorry for them. But if they want some real fun, they should try driving on Hicks Road when it's icy and rutted in the winter.

Holy hoops

If you don't know the layout of the Y, there's an elevated indoor track that encircles the gym, so while running laps you can watch kids playing basketball or row after row of energetic men and women sweating through a kick boxing or "Body Pump" class.
The other day at lunchtime, while I was slogging through the 16 laps that make up a mile, a group of middle-aged guys were shooting baskets. Once enough to make up two teams had arrived, they gathered together near the free-throw line. They bowed their heads, and a few slung their arms over each others' shoulders. The leader said a short prayer, asking God to keep them safe and thanking Him for their health and fellowship.
Well, this posed an ethical problem: Should I stop running for the duration of the prayer, acknowledging that the Sacred was being summoned into our midst -- or should I ignore them?
Why tempt fate? I stopped and bowed my head. No matter what you believe (or don't), it's never a bad thing to count your blessings.

Omnivore

My sister visited from the Midwest this summer and was amazed at the variety of great restaurants around here, contrasting them to the slim pickings in her town. And she is absolutely right: in the past few weeks I've eaten at the Half-Moon, the Four Dogs, the Stottsville Inn and the Whip, and had wonderful meals at each of them. Naturally, I e-mailed her links to the menus and gave full descriptions of the wild boar and mushroom chili, the mussel bisque, the raw Wellfleet oysters, the artisanal gin, and so forth. Whatever it takes to lure her back!

Venture capitalist alert

One recent early evening my friend Jenny and I were chatting outside a local coffee shop that's in a fairly busy little strip shopping center. In the space of maybe an hour, three people driving the wrong way nearly collided with cars coming around the corner from the coffee shop's drive-through window. We just looked at each other in amazement; how could they have overlooked the huge white arrows on the pavement? How clueless can you get?
Jenny had a great idea. Instead of just arrows, she suggested, why don't they install motion-triggered warning holograms that pop up as you near the blind corner?
I guess that would be the 21st-century equivalent of those spikes in the ground that would puncture your tires if you exited a parking lot without paying.

Out of the Blue

Mike Edwards, a cellist with the 1970s British pop group Electric Light Orchestra, was killed instantly when a 1,300-pound bale of hay crushed the van he was driving in Devon, England, on Sept. 3. The bale apparently fell from a piece of farm equipment and rolled onto the highway. From this description and the weight, I'm guessing it was one of those big round ones that we see every day in pastures around here. Police are calling it a freak farm accident.
ELO was immensely popular during my college days with songs like "Strange Magic," "Evil Woman," "Fire on High," "Turn to Stone," "Last Train to London" and "Can't Get It Out of My Head."