Nobody refers to the Internet as the World Wide Web anymore, despite that ubiquitous www prefix that leads us to a universe of online adventures.
I do, but not for the reason you might think.
What I am discovering is that the World Wide Web is making for an increasingly small, small world.
I was reminded of that fact by a couple of things that happened to me this morning.
The first was a voicemail from a reader who wanted to alert me to an obituary that was going to appear in Wednesday's Daily Times. My heart sank, not necessarily out of grief - at least the mourning kind - but rather by the fact that when you're the editor of a community newspaper and you get a call about an obit, you know it's usually about a complaint. I can assure you there is nothing I can do in this job to tick off loyal readers than to make a mistake in a loved one's obit. As I have stated many times, it is the most important information we publish, day in and day out.
But this call was not made to lodge a complaint. Instead it was to jolt my memory. The woman wanted to let me know that Tom Russell had died.
The name seemed vaguely familiar, but I couldn't quite place it.
Tom Russell was an attorney in Media, a man who took great pride in his work - and his grandchildren.
I still wasn't making the connection, then the woman said the magic words. "You once wrote about him," she said. "You used to swim in the pool at his house when you were a kid."
Bingo.
I in fact devoted an entire print column to Tom Russell. That's because print - in the form of the newspaper - was something Tom Russell took pretty seriously. He was calling to complain that our new, earlier deadlines were preventing us from always getting the latest Phillies stories and baseball boxscores into the paper.
We had a great conversation. As I usually do, I chatted with him amiably, asking him where he lived and where he got the newspaper. He said he was a longtime Delco resident, but that he had moved his wife and kids out to Chester County. Of course, my ears immediately perked up.
I told him of my own Chester County roots and asked where he was living now? It turns out he had bought a house just outside the small town where I grew up. And that's not all. This house had a pool with a tall sliding board. The very same pool and sliding board that I had spent some of my summer youths whiling away the hours. It turns out Tom Russell had bought the house of a childhood friend.
As I said, it's a small world.
Since I can't seem to find a link to that old column, I'll include the text to that old column at the end of this post.
Rest well, Tom.
I've been spending a lot of time thinking about that little old town where I grew up. As was once said about Oxford, Pa.: Live there for awhile and you get to know the place pretty well.
A Facebook page has popped up about the town, and I've been having a blast thinking about that tiny town and all the time I conspired to get out of it, only four decades later to find myself pining for a return to that simple life.
I'm amazed every day at the people I've been able to reconnect with, some of whom I have not seen or talked to since we walked off that stage at Oxford High.
One of the people I met on the site is Tom Newnam. We have something in common, Tom's a writer. He's a few years older than I am, but it turns out he was best friends with some of my cousins.
Tom has written a memoir about life, really about the lessons learned growing up in a small town. A town like Oxford, Pa. If you ever spent any time in a little town, or maybe you'd like to experience it, I highly recommend Tom's book. 'Memo From Your Soul' is sitting on top of my nightstand right now. I can't wait to dig into it, and revisit a place that I remember well. You can find out more about it here.
It turns out little towns aren't just dots on the map. They are indelibly seared into your brain and heart as well.
Here's that old column on Tom Russell:
Caller sparks summertime memories
By Phil Heron
It's the kind of phone call I hate to get. And one I have been fielding all too often recently. My guess is Tom Russell is pretty representative of your basic Daily Times reader.
He's a little older than I am, old enough to inform me, as so many readers have over the years, that "I have been reading your newspaper since it was the Chester Times."
Of course, "newspaper" is the key word in that sentence.
Tom Russell likes the quaint idea of ink on paper. He revels in the way the newspaper feels when he holds it in his hand. I know how he feels.
But that's not the way our conversation started, and I picked up the phone to return his phone call with some trepidation.
Tom Russell is an attorney. Here's a hint, barristers. Never leave a voice mail for a newspaper editor with your business number. Unless, of course, you have a legal issue with the newspaper. I get plenty of those.
So I was a little anxious when I dialed Russell's number. It turns out he was not representing someone who had a beef with the newspaper.
Which, I quickly learned, is not the same thing as not having an issue with the paper.
Russell was not a happy reader. He told me of his great love for the print edition of the newspaper, in particular the sports section and our daily coverage of the Phillies.
I kind of expected what was coming next.
Russell had noticed, as have many readers, that with our new, early deadlines, we were not always getting the Phillies game story into the print edition the next day.
And, of course, the same goes for his beloved box scores.
Unless you're a real fan, you have no idea how important those pages we refer to as sports agate are. Tom Russell does. He exults in going over every day's statistics, checking out the batting average following how many players got into the game, who pinch hit for whom, how many pitchers were used, and how long they lasted.
I explained to Tom the vagaries of newspapering, and the enemy of every newspaperman – deadlines. Ours have recently been bumped up. He's noticed the difference, and he's not alone.
Now sometimes the first edition of the paper does not have the night game in it. Those papers are supposed to be delivered to our outlying areas. So I asked him if this was a paper that was delivered to his home or bought in a store.
And while I expected much of what we talked about, I did not expect this. Our conversation was about to take, for me, a delightful twist.
He told me that while he still practiced here in Delaware County, he had moved his family out to southern Chester County some time ago, but he still bought the paper most days at a store near his home. It was how he started his day.
I smiled for a lot of reasons. It is exactly how I would start my day if I did not get in here at an ungodly hour. But I was intrigued by his reference to Chester County, so I asked him where he lived.
Oh, you probably wouldn't know it, he responded, it's out in Lower Oxford.
My smile got a little wider. I then informed him he was talking to a native of Oxford, Pa. And so I decided to push my luck and ask him where his house was.
When he told me, I started drifting, as I often do, to summers gone by, as a kid in Oxford.
What happened next even I didn't expect. As he described where his house was, on a county road leading out of town, my mind started to wander. Then I started to ask him questions.
Finally, when he mentioned a mushroom house, I couldn't resist.
"This place didn't by any chance have a pool, did it?" I inquired. There was silence on the other end of the phone. "Is the sliding board still there?" I asked.
I could almost hear him smiling.
It turns out Tom Russell had bought the house that belonged to a family that lived down the street from us in town.
Their dad had a mushroom house outside town. Eventually, he built a house out there. And a pool. I spent several summers riding my bike out there every day and whiling away the summer going down that big sliding board.
It turns out Russell had three daughters, and it sounds like they loved that pool every bit as much as me and some of my friends did as kids.
It was another time, when things seemed simpler. When a parent thought nothing of seeing their child pedal away from the house, knowing they were headed out of town, and confident they would return safely at night.
A time when newspaper editors no doubt were not consumed by the Internet, when holding a print edition of the newspaper was supreme, and when deadlines were manageable.
For just a second there, I was a kid again.
I'd give anything to go down that slide again. Or to have later deadlines.
Thanks for the memories, Tom.
Philip E. Heron is editor of the Daily Times. Call him at (610) 622-8818. E-mail him at editor@delcotimes.com. Make sure you check out his blog, The Heron's Nest, every day at www.delcotimes.com.
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