President Biden finally visited the Southern Border, the Eagles finally found NFL top playoff magic, Georgia finally steamrolled TCU to win college football’s championship and a reader chimed in about last week’s Banter.
All signs to open “ye olde miscellaneous box.”’
First a look at a trio of upcoming events worth noting:
St. Monica’s Parish, Berwyn, will close out its 125th year with a celebratory mass officiated by Archbishop Nelson Perez at 11a.m. on Sunday, January 22. A reception hosted by the church’s Women’s Society will follow.
The State of the Sixth (US Congressional District) will be held on Monday, January 23 at the Colonial Theatre, Phoenixville. The 6 p.m.-7:30 p.m. in-person gathering, will feature Representative Chrissy Houlahan in a town hall format moderated by Phoenixville Mayor Peter Urscheler. Admission, of course, is free, but reservations are suggested to her West Chester office.
The Annual Meeting of the 311-year-old historic The Baptist Church in the Great Valley will be held in person on Sunday, January 29 following the 10:30 a.m. worship service
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In the last Banter, we looked at the past year, made a few resolutions and fearless forecasts for 2023 and updated the Jerk-O-Meter.
The J-O-M prompted an email from Arbordeau (Tredyffrin Twp.) resident Gene Poppel. Paraphrasing what he wrote:
“In regard to Jerk #10, I am completely amazed at the weird advertising I see on TV! The emu ads make absolutely no sense –they don’t connect the product to the customers’ needs or wants. It took me quite a while to make\the connection with Limu, the name of the emu and the acronym for Liberty Mutual. I’m also appalled by ads that make no call to action. I think that many ads are just ego trips for marketing execs who charge millions, compared to the thousands charged by the agency where I worked (for 20 years.) Guess I’m missing something.”
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Looking back to 12 local predictions we made a decade ago, we clocked nine, missed two and scored one “iffy.” (If you are of an inquiring mind, send me an email and I’ll reply with the full accounting. Same offer for 13 forecasts in 2013.)
While thinking of 2013, we can’t help but recall an extraordinary celebration at Beaumont at Bryn Mawr.
More than 250 residents and guests attended the gala New Year’s Eve dinner there, shimmering with a spectacular ice carving of the New York City skyline with the Statue of Liberty was the centerpiece of the New York themed menu crafted by Beaumont Executive Chef John Bauer.
That menu featured truffle white bean soup with duck confit, Daikon wrapped mixed greens with a Crab Rangoon edible spoon, avocado dressing, poached lobster tail and grilled beef filet with chive, horseradish duchess potato, baby vegetables and an “all dressed up” opera torte tuxedo. The event (complete with party horns and hats, of course) also included the non-stop musical stylings of Kirk Maurer who sang and played saxophone, flute and keyboard to the delight of the joyful celebrants
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Finally, let’s go “way back” to some icons of yesteryear to close out today’s chronicle.
Like me, you’ve worn out a lot of Levi’s if you can remember washtub wringers and a neighborhood jungle of clotheslines that would make Tarzan envious. You’ve put a highway full of pedals to the metal if you put down the window of your Hudson Hornet to let a carhop place a tray with your 15-cent burger and a 5-cent Coke at the drive-in … just after you’ve filled your tank with 20-cents-a-gallon gas.
You’ve also laid a lot of rubber to the road if you recall reading queues of Burma Shave signs while tooling through the countryside, and you certainly have whiled away many hours (take a deep breath here) with your Tinkertoys, erector sets, gum-wrapper chains and packs of Topps baseball cards while playing with friends on the braided area rug while keeping an eye on the 7” TV black and white test pattern waiting for “Captain Kangaroo” to appear.
You’ve marched more than a few miles if you remember having a fluoroscope zapped of your feet at the shoe store to determine if the new Buster Brown’s or Thom Mc An’s fit properly. And, while thinking podiatric thoughts, you have spilled a lot of popcorn while stomping your feet on the movie house floor when the film broke at the Saturday morning kid show.
You’ve chilled out often if you remember placing a triangular cardboard sign in the window that you need a 50lb or 100lb block of ice to put into the family icebox, and you’ve stoked a bin of memories if you recall having a few tons of anthracite delivered by the neighborhood coal man.
You’ve snapped a lot of shutters if you remember sitting in the back of a cart harnessed to a real pony and having a traveling photographer snap your picture and you’ve licked a few sheets of 3-cent postage stamps and pasted them on requests for your Captain Midnight or The Shadow glow-in-the-dark ring you heard about while listening to your Zenith cabinet radio in the living room. What’s more, you’ve twisted a volume of radio dials if you waited on Sunday evening to hear Walter Winchell greet “Mr. and Mrs. North and South America, and all the ships at sea.”
You’ve seen a lot of calendar pages fly by while you’ve waited for the local newsstand to rack up the latest editions of your favorite Marvel and Archie comic books, and lastly, you watched a lot of turntables spin if you just couldn’t wait for the deejay to play that “last dance” 45rpm of “Good Night, Sweetheart” so you could walk home with that girl (or boy) of your dreams. Ah, yes, those were the good, old days!
Finally, nobody asked me, but if life is like a bowl of cherries, that could be the reason too many of us feel “in the pits.”
The Last Word: Good day, good luck, and good news tomorrow
Comments invited to mainllinebanter@verizon.net
