NEWLIN TOWNSHIP: It takes a village to throw a party

Gail Abel of Newlin Township sent me the following thank-you note as a follow-up to the
Newlin Fire & EMS Party, a fundraiser for the Po-Mar-Lin, Modena and West Bradford fire companies that was held Sept. 13 at the Lenfest Center at the Cheslen Preserve. She and the organizers send their thanks to:
-- The local volunteer firefighters
-- Victory Brewing Company
-- Stargazer's, Galers. and Paradocx Wineries
-- Natural Lands Trust for the use of Lenfest Center
-- Megan Bittle, the emcee
-- Newlin Township
-- Raffle donors Martin May, Karen D'Alliard, Richard Chalfont, Andra Rudershausen, Loryn and Pete Schiffer of Schiffer Publishing, Bill Kelsall, Reddy Hannum and the Cheshire Hunt, Dr. and Mrs. Tim Manzone, Susan Drake of Sarah's Country Chocolates, and Lorraine's Frame Cellar in Willowdale.
"Plus Thank You to the entire Newlin Fire & EMS Support Committee and their friends who
volunteered their time and energy to help make this Party a huge success! It was a fantastic way to show our Volunteer Fire Fighters that they have our continued support!"

UTILITIES: How to annoy customers really quickly

I really should stick to my policy of not answering all "unknown" phone calls (that is, ones that don't give the caller's name).
This afternoon I got a call and out of curiosity picked it up. It was a recorded customer service survey from a Major Utility Company asking about my recent call to them. Was I satisfied with the service?
I responded yes; the rep had been helpful.
The recorded voice continued: "You answered yes. If this is correct, please say yes."
I did not answer "yes." In fact, I hung up. Were they going to ask me to confirm THAT "yes" with yet another one? This could have gone on all afternoon! And if they were going to accept the second "yes," why couldn't they just accept the first "yes" and move on? Who writes these scripts anyway?

COUNTRY LIFE: Not all manure is the same

Tilda's brother, an avid recreational bicyclist, is supremely fit and often spends entire days out on the road. His idea of a good time is when his hi-tech cycling computer crunches the numbers (heart rate, temperature, humidity, speed, etc.) and reports that his Suffering Index is at the "Epic" level.
There's one factor his computer doesn't take into account, however: horse manure. On a recent ride he took a wrong turn and ended up riding through a drenching rain on the back roads of Lancaster County, which, it seems, had recently experienced an extraordinarily heavy volume of horse-drawn carriages and wagons.
I was confused: he often bikes through Unionville and never complains about the poop on our roads. What was so different about the Lancaster County variety, I asked.
"Trust me," he said, with a you-really-don't-want-to-know air. "It's different. They must have a different diet or something."

POCOPSON: Preliminary progress report

This past Sunday we took a little detour -- not the approved one -- and explored the construction site at Route 52, Wawaset Road and Unionville-Lenape Road, where a traffic roundabout is being installed.
Frankly, it didn't look like much progress had been made, given the length of time the road has been shut down. The road surface had been removed for quite a distance, and what used to be pavement was dirt and stone. A lot of earth had been shifted around to level the area, leaving mini-Grand Canyon walls of dirt topped by utility poles. I did notice that some piping and drains had been installed.

[CAPTION: construction site of Pocopson roundabout]

[CAPTION: Route 52, looking south from Wawaset Road intersection]

I tried to get artsy and knelt down to take a photo through a metal pipe, hoping to caption it "a light at the end of the tunnel." Alas, at the end of the tunnel there was only a porta-potty.

PARKERSVILLE: New life for an old meetinghouse

Parkersville Friends Meeting House held its annual open house this past Sunday afternoon. There were representatives of three generations of Parkers, plus Elinor Thomforde, Louise Price, Mary Sproat, Karen Halstead, Dale Frens, Shirley Annand, Ellen Endslow, Director of Collections/Curator of the Chester County Historical Society, and maybe a dozen more. After an hour of silent worship we adjourned to the porch of the beautifully maintained meetinghouse, built in 1830, and enjoyed homemade chocolate-chip cookies and lemonade. We also admired the meeting's well-tended burial ground and the new National Register of Historic Places plaque.
The meeting, tucked away in a grove off Parkersville Road south of Route 926, is open for worship every Sunday at 9:30 a.m. after having been shuttered for many years. One of the senior Parkers told me he would love to see better attendance.

 

[CAPTION: Parkersville Friends Meeting House]

[CAPTION: National Register Plaque at Parkersville Meeting]

I learned that the house just across from the meetinghouse used to be the Parkerville schoolhouse. The new owners have done a splendid, and doubtless expensive, job renovating it up.

THE SEASONS: Autumn is upon us

Fall is upon us for sure after one of the most clement summers I can recall. The hummingbirds have abruptly headed south. I've harvested the pumpkins and the potatoes, and almost all the giant sunflowers have been blown over. Walnuts are starting to bang down on the roof, and I saw the first squished Osage orange fruit on the road the other day. Oddly, the gladioli are still in bloom; usually they flower at the beginning of August.
And of course school is back in session. When asked how things were going at Patton Middle School, the Young Relative produced only a monosyllabic response, but at least the monosyllable was "good." He was much more voluble about another autumnal ritual: his three Fantasy Football teams.

LONGWOOD: Final fireworks display of the summer

The final Longwood fireworks display of the summer took place on Saturday night, accompanied by the music of the Beatles. (I asked the Young Relative if he had heard of the Beatles. I received a withering look, and he asked with heavy sarcasm if I had heard of Martin Luther King. Fair enough!)
The pyrotechnics were tremendous, especially the ones that accompanied "Let It Be" and "The Long and Winding Road" (the grand finale). (In case you were wondering: yes, they played "Here Comes the Sun" and "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds.)
The red and green fireworks that lingered in the sky, slowly floating to the south, impressed even the mechanical engineer in our midst. "How do they DO that!" he marveled.
As always, we loved the loud ones and are developing our own Mach scale or Richter scale to rate the noise produced, using "car alarms triggered" and "crying babies" as the criteria.
Thanks, Longwood: You provided us with several nights of excellent entertainment this summer.