There is no such place as Havertown

A comment on a recent story sparked one my favorite idiosyncrasies about Delco.

A woman took to Twitter to correct some of our reporting on the recent shooting that took place in Haverford Township.

"Isn't this in Havertown, not Haverford?" she posted.

Uh, I hate to break this to you, but there is no such place as Havertown.

Other than in the eyes of the United State Postal Service.

Havertown is a post office, a neighborhood. It is part of Haverford Township.

There is no Havertown Township. No Havertown Board of Supervisors. It is not a municipality.

Which gives it something in common with lots of other places in Delaware County.

Places like Broomall, Secane, Holmes, Woodlyn, Folsom, Linwood, Boothwyn and Glen Mills. None of them exist either. There are at least three of four different post offices in Ridley Township.

Believe me, I know.

I went to work every day in a place called Primos, which also does not exist. It's part of Upper Darby Township.

Then we moved to a new office in Swarthmore. Which would be nice except for one thing. The office is not actually in Swarthmore. It's in about a one-block island down here on Chester Road that is part of Springfield, even though it is not physically connected to any other part of Springfield Township.

Take two steps in one direction and you are in Ridley. A quick jog the other way, and you're in Nether Providence. Swarthmore is just up Route 320 about a stone's throw, but we get our mail from the Swarthmore Post Office, thus our address.

My favorite - and a phone call I've received any number of times - is from agitated readers who want to inform that we've made a mistake in identifying them.

"I don't live in Upper Darby, I live in Drexel Hill," they sniff.

Our policy is, whenever possible, to identify people by geography. That's why we referenced that shooting the other night as Haverford.

It's not as easy as it seems. Do you have any idea how many municipalities get their mail delivered by the Media Post Office? When they knocked down the Granite Run Mall and started building that Promenade thing, they didn't move it. That's not Media. It's Middletown. Same for the Media Barracks of the state police. That's also in Middletown.

This becomes a problem when people get arrested. We usually list them by the information we get from police. They inevitably base that on a person's mailing address. Which works except for one thing. That may or may not actually be where they lived.

The people in one part of Aston are always telling me they get the blame for people with an Aston post office address who don't actually live in the township.

Outside agitators?

Only in Delco.