A fire company open house with social distancing

The Po-Mar-Lin Fire Co. volunteers held an ingenious drive-through open house on the evening of Monday, Oct. 12. They set up stations around the firehouse parking lot and recorded brief explanations about their trucks and equipment so you could drive through and learn about them without getting out of your car. 

In addition to accidents, fires and other emergencies, we learned that Po-Mar-Lin is responsible for conducting large animal rescues throughout Chester County. Recent examples of animals in distress: a horse unable to extricate itself from deep mud and a cow stuck in a manure pit. And because much of the company's territory is rural, they have an all-terrain vehicle that's useful for reaching accidents and fires in remote areas. 

Also on hand at the open house were representatives from Longwood EMS (its mobile intensive care unit ambulance was on display) and the Pennsylvania State Police at the Avondale barracks.

The volunteers were friendly and knowledgeable and were clearly proud to serve as firefighters. It's clear that they put in a lot of time not only responding to emergency calls at all hours but also training and preparing behind the scenes. It was heartwarming to talk with such enthusiastic and community-minded folks.

He was a bad egg: a drive-through murder-mystery

Coping with the pandemic has brought out a lot of creativity in organizations, what business people call being "nimble."

Take the Kennett Amateur Theatrical Society (KATS), the folks who bring you the "Pantomime in the British style." Instead of the murder-mystery they usually stage each summer in downtown Kennett Square, this past Saturday they held a drive-through "social distancing" version at St. Anthony's in the Hills, a now-abandoned summer camp for kids in New Garden Township. 

We investigators were tasked with determining who had pushed Humpty Dumpty off a balcony -- a heinous (and messy) crime! We drove through "Wonderland," stopping to interview the 11 suspects along the way and attempting to discover if they had a motive and an alibi. We learned that all was not well in Wonderland: the late Mr. Dumpty, in fact, was something of a rotten egg, having cornered the market on Wonderland's vital supply of tea and tarts. 

The suspects -- the Cheshire Cat, the Queen of Hearts, the Executioner, the King of Hearts, Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, the Dame of Pikes ("I'm evil, sure, but I'm not a murderer!"), the Knave of Hearts, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare (both desperate for real tea), and Old Alice -- were all portrayed by long-time KATS regulars, and it was great fun to see them again. We were especially amused by the pugnacious brothers Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, who claimed they were "shopping for new bats" at the time of the crime. The suspects were more than happy to offer their alibis and cast suspicion on others. 

(We felt sorry for the actors, as they had to repeat their information so many times for each carload of detectives. They probably weren't doing a lot of talking the next day.)

At the end we reviewed our notes and submitted our guess for who did the murder. Dearest Partner hit the nail on the head: it was "Old Alice," who had no alibi. Who knew that such a mild-mannered woman could hold a grudge for so long! 

I had never visited St. Anthony's before and found it fascinating. Developed by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wilmington, the site is now owned by New Garden Township. While driving through we saw evidence of a former petting zoo, a miniature golf course, and lots of now-overgrown camp buildings with whimsical details and elaborate metalwork. There's a giant amphitheater with concrete tiers and staircases overlooking a small lake. The camp must have been a magical place in its heyday.