One of my pet peeves involves a road that I use every day to get to and from the office.
That would be Route 352 (Middletown Road) which I traverse twice a day coming and going from Baltimore Pike at Granite Run to Route 3 (West Chester Pike) in Westtown. (Don't even get me started about the evening commute on Route 3 from Westtown to Route 202. Let's just say it's bad and getting worse every night).
For the most part, mornings are not a problem for me. That comes with working some insane hours.
But yesterday was different. As I approached La Porta restaurant in Gradyville, I noticed a bunch of flashing lights. At first I thought maybe there was an accident or a tree down. Since it's right next door to Ridley Creek State Park, dodging deer that make their way out onto the roads is something of a daily morning ritual.
That wasn't the case, this time, and I managed to squeeze by and go on my way.
I didn't think anything else about it until I got a phone call from a reader later in the day asking about it.
The scuttlebutt in the town was that perhaps shooting for the HBO series "Mare of Easttown," which stars Kate Winslet and has been shooting at various locations in the area, was in town.
I had someone put in a few calls to the folks at HBO, who would neither confirm nor deny if the series was filming
there.
The restaurant was not answering calls, and posted on their Facebook page, "we will be closed at 7:30 on Sunday and all day on
Monday for a private event. Sorry for the inconvenience."
Again I didn't think much of it - until I headed home last night.
As I made my way past the new Promenade at Granite Run, Fair Acres and Penn State Brandywine, I noticed a sea of red lights ahead of me.
Again my first thought was there must have been some kind of accident.
Wrong again.
That's when I remembered the scene from the morning drive. Yep, traffic was backed up all around the activity at La Porta. As I approached I noticed lots of those orange cones and a sign that said, "Emergency Work Ahead." Really? There were all kinds of big trucks sitting in the parking lot.
Hey, I can't complain. I could have been heading in the other direction. Traffic heading toward Granite Run was backed up forever.
Everything was clear this morning, so whatever was going on there had cleared out, just in case you're headed out that way today.
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