Jake's Burgers

The other day at the shopping center a guy handed me a flyer for a special promotion at Jake's Wayback Burgers and informed me, with supreme confidence, that their milkshakes were simply the best.
I was not about to resist a sales pitch like that. So the other night, after an afternoon of yard work, I went to Jake's with two of my favorite dinner companions, all of us first-time visitors.
Taste-Testers #1 and #2 had Jake's Cheeseburgers (two patties) and they were delicious; Taste-Tester #3, the youngest member of the party, had the chicken fingers, his usual order at restaurants, and reported they were very good.
All of us had the French fries, which were fresh, hot and the right degree of crispy.
"I'm not a big fan of fries, but these were good," said Taste-Tester #1.
And, yes, all three of us had the milkshakes, which were ice-cold and just the right consistency -- very good.
The place was bustling on a Saturday at 6 p.m., mostly with families. There are ten tables, plus counter space, and you can order your meal to go as well.
Jake's is on Route 1 east of Kennett Square, between Applebee's and the Hilton Garden Inn.
(If it were up to me, I would add that the yummy milkshakes were enhanced by the retro-style metal containers they came in, but that didn't impress jaded Taste-Tester #3: "Who cares?" he opined.)

Book 'em

Hats off to Leah Gower and her staff, who undertook the mammoth job of running the Unionville Used Book Sale. I stopped by on Saturday -- opening night has just gotten too crowded for me -- and as always had a great time browsing though the vast selection of books, everything from Rod McKuen poetry to a lab manual for dissecting rabbits, from Nancy Drew to Richard Brautigan to John Fowles. There were coffee-table books, kids' books, romances, mysteries, foreign language dictionaries, textbooks and even old VHS tapes ("What are those?" I overheard a boy asking his mom). Everything was very well organized and labeled, and there were lots of volunteers on hand, including high-school kids racking up their community service hours.

Let's be careful out there

As soon as I posted last week's item about the international e-mail scam that almost trapped my parents, I heard from two readers who had received similar fraudulent e-mails last summer. So beware if you get an e-mail purporting to be from a traveling friend who claims to have gotten mugged and begs you to wire cash to a foreign address!

Good germs

According to a European study in the latest "New England Journal of Medicine," children who live on farms have a much lower risk of developing asthma than suburban and urban dwellers because the rural children are exposed to a greater diversity of germs, helping to fortify their immune systems. The researchers collected samples of dust from houses in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, analyzed the microbes in the samples and linked the data to the incidence of asthma in each family.
The scientists stressed that it was the variety of bugs that made the difference, not the sheer number.

Dollars and rubles

The ATM screen at my bank (Wachovia, soon to be Wells Fargo) informed me the other day that it now is capable of doing business in Russian, and even showed some sample Cyrillic lettering to prove it. Who knew there was a demand for Russian-language banking services in southern Chester County?
I visited Wells Fargo's website to find out about this new service and found a really interesting little essay by historian Ileana Bonilla about the bank's links with Russia, dating back to the early 20th century. For instance:
"In 1912, Wells Fargo made sending money to Russia easier by introducing Foreign Postal Remittances. D.G. Mellor, the Foreign Traffic Manager at the time, stated that in offering this service Russians were one of the groups at whom they were aiming "the great field of [their] efforts." These remittances would be for "people who have money to send to their home villages in Europe, where there are usually no banks and where our foreign money orders, printed in English, cannot be read or understood."
Through correspondent banks, Wells Fargo would arrange for cash to be mailed directly to the recipient. The new service allowed Russians in the U.S. the convenience of sending money back home easily, knowing it would arrive right at the door of their relative or friend."

Fighting back

The Bayard Taylor Memorial Library, the Brandywine Valley Girl Scout service unit and the community group Consecha ("Harvest") are together sponsoring a showing of "Bullied," a documentary about a gay teenager who fights back against his tormenters. Dr. Loren Pearson, a psychologist with the Kennett Consolidated School District, will lead a discussion after the movie. The film is appropriate for sixth-graders and up. The movie will be shown at the library, 216 E. State St., Kennett, at 5:30 p.m. March 10. There is no admission charge, but please register with library director Donna Murray at dmurray@ccls.org or call 610-444-2702.
Loren told me that the bullying that today's kids face is not just the harassment you may remember from your school days: nowdays they have to contend with pervasive cyberbullying by e-mail, Facebook, MySpace and text messages. And, as we know from recent tragic headlines, the consequences can be deadly.

Mango

La Michoacana Homemade Ice Cream is opening for the season on Saturday, March 5! If I were a betting woman, I would wager this is the absolute best news you will read in "The Kennett Paper" this week. La Michoacana is at 321 East State Street in Kennett, and Noelia and her staff serve up delicious ice cream in traditional and exotic flavors. My favorites are coffee and mango, but I have friends who love their corn ice cream, with cinammon sprinkled on it.

Detour

I keep forgetting that Old Kennett Road is closed between the two branches of Snuff Mill Road, just into New Castle County, so a new cement culvert for the creek can be installed. The short detour (heading south) takes you on Snuff Mill, then Center Mill and Ashland Clinton School Road, and back to Old Kennett Road.
Old Kennett Road is supposed to reopen this April after the $990,496.03 project is completed, but when I was there on Saturday morning a pelleton of bicyclists seemed to be greatly enjoying the much-reduced traffic.
Speaking of roads in Delaware, southbound Route 7 really took a hit this winter: it seems to be mostly potholes as you're heading toward Pike Creek.
Perhaps you've noticed, not for the first time, that I'm a little on the obsessive side when it comes to directional references. That comes from being a reporter for a lot of years, having to describe on which corner a development was going to be built, or which direction each car in a crash was heading.
You can also blame William A. Nolen, M.D. As a teenager I read "A Surgeon's World," his terrific autobiography about life in Litchfield, Minnesota, and was determined to be more exact about directions after reading the following:
"The flatness leads to one characteristic of the Midwest that constantly confused me when I first moved here. It still does...Everyone gives directions in terms of the compass, because the roads, unlike the twisting roads of New England, run in straight lines."

Whip hearing #3

The West Marlborough Zoning Hearing Board threw out a major chunk of the Springdell residents' case against the Whip at a hearing on Monday, Feb. 21. (The residents are claiming that the operations of the popular bar and restaurant have had an increasingly negative impact on their quality of life in terms of noise, parking, lighting and so forth.) The zoning board ruled that according to the Pennsylvania Municipalities Code, the residents should have filed their complaint within 30 days after the permits were first issued to the Whip by the township zoning officer. (The residents' attorney previously argued that because the approvals process was flawed, the 30-day rule shouldn't even apply.)


The only remaining argument is whether the Whip is allowed to use the adjoining house just west of the restaurant as part of its business. The residents contend that it used to be a rental house and, because the Whip now uses it for storage, the owners should have applied to the township for permission for a change in use.

However, on Monday a woman who used to manage the Country Deli, which preceded The Whip, testified that for years she used the back of the house as an office for the deli and for storage, which means it is not a new use. She also testified that even the Country Deli used to have parking problems at the site.

Despite the fact that a snowstorm was predicted, the third hearing, which lasted 2 hours, drew a larger-than-usual audience, including the Springdell residents and their attorney, Kristin Camp; K.C. Kulp of the Whip and his attorney, Neil Land; the township's attorney, Dwight Yoder; township supervisor Hugh Lofting; Bernie Langer, who lives in Springdell but is not one of the plaintiffs; Al Giannantonio and Russell Yerkes, of Yerkes Associates, the township engineers; and a "Philadelphia Inquirer" reporter.

Members of the Zoning Board who attended were Elizabeth "Baz" Powell, Charlie Brosius, chairman Clayton Bright and solicitor Craig Kalemjian.

The next hearing is set for Wednesday, March 16, at 7 p.m.

Drugstores everywhere

A Walgreens drugstore is being built on Route 41, just west of the old Pyle's hardware store. But there's already a Walgreens store just 2 miles away, on the other side of Avondale, at Route 41 and Penn Green Road. I suppose pharmacy chains do a thorough market research study before embarking on a construction project for yet another store, but sometimes it makes you wonder.

"The Happening"

If it weren't for the howling wind outside on Saturday evening, you might well have heard our shouts of glee coming from a Powell Road farmhouse.
Two friends and I were watching "The Happening," the M. Night Shyamalan movie that was filmed, in part, literally just down the street from their home in the summer of 2007.
"That's the back of our property!" cried Susan.
"I have that exact same map book!" I yelled, startling the Corgi who had been snoozing on my belly. I made the host stop the DVD, and I jumped up from the sofa and pointed to exactly where I live. There were the words "West Marlborough" on the map, right there on the screen!
It was so much fun to recognize the Unionville countryside, which of course looked beautiful, even though the wind blowing through the trees and tall grass was meant to be ominous. Susan pointed out the road that was built just for the movie, so that folks fleeing the mysterious neurotoxin could arrive from four directions at "the triangle" formed by Powell and Scott Roads. (In real life the road ends abruptly on the top of a hill, just as it leaves camera range.) We see several corpses sprawled on what is clearly Scott Road.

 

Apparently working on location in Unionville didn't suit the actors, though. In the "Making of" feature, they were complaining about having to run through fields day after day and fending off large grasshoppers.