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A tiny, nameless tributary to the Conowingo Creek got a new bridge recently.
The Center Rd. bridge dwarfs the stream, a blue squiggle on the map narrow enough to cross with one step. But the stream can turn into a raging torrent, East Drumore supervisor and roadmaster Jim Landis said last week. Even before they came back to class on Monday, many of Solanco's students had been working on their first assignments for the new school year.
Those students were given a summer reading assignment in June and they were handed the books before the previous school year ended. Lessons for the first several weeks of the new school year will be based on the books the students read over the summer. Quarryville's search for a new police chief may be over before it started.
Members of borough council have approached current chief Ken Work and asked him to stay on the job. Work, who has been chief of the borough's police department for 14 years, announced he would retire from that post at the end of the year. He has also served as the borough manager for a year and said he will continue in that position.  Larry Myers looks forward to the day he can sit along the street and watch the Solanco Fair Parade with his wife, Linda.
He'll have to wait until 2015 because Myers will be leading this year's parade as the grand marshal. "It's quite an honor," Myers said. "My first reaction was, 'Gee, isn't this usually something for older folks and then I realized I was 60 years old and it kind of fit." Myers has been involved with the fair for 29 years and serves as its resident electrician.  Quarryville Elementary School has a full-time counselor for the first time in recent history.
Mary Kent comes to Quarryville after previously working as a long-term substitute in the Boyertown School District. QE held a "Meet the Counselor" program Friday morning, August 15. With just a few days until the new school year begins, parents and students in Solanco are getting ready.
Keith Kaufman, spokesman for the school district, said that parents don't need to worry about supplies. "The district does not require parents to buy supplies. The district provides all items," said Kaufman. But both Swift and Smith middle schools sent a list of "suggested" items home with students during sixth grade orientation.  By last Friday afternoon, drivers entering Robert Fulton Highway (Rt. 222) from Swift Rd. had a better chance of avoiding an accident.
Fulton Township's crew, assisted by workers from Little Britain Township and excavator Andrew Jackson, worked throughout last week to make the intersection less dangerous. The crews used loaders, dump trucks, and a grader to remove an embankment that blocked the view of drivers trying to pull out on Rt. 222.  "Sixth grade orientation is upstairs and to the left," instructed a seventh grader at Smith Middle School last week.
Perfect instructions if you already know how to find the staircase. Sixth grade orientation was underway. Incoming sixth grader Molly Peffer said she is a little nervous about starting middle school. Her mom, Michelle, already knows the ropes. A festival planned for early next month will highlight the Scottish heritage of the Southern End and raise money to help preserve a crumbling piece of its history.
The Covenanter Scottish Festival will include Celtic music, games for kids, food, and a closing ceremony to decorate a Revolutionary War veteran's grave. Music will be performed throughout the day. What started as a sideline in 2006 has grown into a full-scale business for Fulton Township farmer Daniel Stoltzfus.
"We got married in 2004 and our landlord said he thought it might be a good sideline to grow and sell sweet corn," he said recently. The business at the corner of Goshen Mill Rd. and Lancaster Pike (Rt. 272) gradually expanded over the years, adding tomatoes, cantaloupes, and watermelons and, more recently, acquired a name - Corner Stand Produce.  For the past eleven years, Scott Weyman has been teaching history.
After working at Solanco High School for five years, he moved to Smith Middle School. Now he's changed course. Weyman will be teaching instrumental music in the district's two middle schools and beginning instrumental music at Quarryville Elementary School. The move takes his second career - teaching and playing music - and makes it full-time. The U.S. Postal Service is hiring.
The jobs are part-time, but they can lead to a permanent career, Quarryville Postmaster Patricia Wright said. The local post office is hosting a job fair to tell prospective employees how they can become substitute rural route carriers. Members of Solanco High School's 2014 marching band are playing music from their parents' era.
Many of the musicians' parents recognize the tunes in this year's program, band director Gary Doll said last week. "It's 70s jazz, stuff that a lot of their parents recognize," he said. "Most kids aren't exposed to jazz." The four arrangements in the show were composed by Chuck Mangione. They were written between 1962 and and 1978. Clocks are nothing but crude scientific instruments.
John Cooper should know. After a career that included building scientific instruments for a major Delaware corporation, he now repairs those cruder instruments, some of which are more than a century old. Cooper, who lives in Colerain Township, has been fixing clocks professionally for nearly two decades.  Founders Frank and Don Enck bought the first 26 acres of Colerain Township property 60 years ago, intending to open a summer camp for disadvantaged city kids.
The camp, Black Rock Retreat, has expanded over the past six decades and now encompasses 100 acres. Its programs have also grown, increasing from the first camp that enrolled 16 girls from Lancaster City in the summer of 1957. In 2014, more than 900 children will have attended one of the retreat's summer camps. Not all of the school district's construction projects will be finished by the time Solanco students start the school year on Monday, August 25.
But the major work will be done and the remaining projects won't interfere with the operation of the schools, said Dr. Timothy Shrom, the district's business manager. Dozens of volunteers turned out Saturday morning, August 2, to pick, clean, and freeze sweet corn for the annual Solanco Fair.
 Kids and their parents are being invited to help determine the health of a section of the Big Beaver Creek in Providence Township.
The survey, conducted in cooperation with the Pequea Watershed Association and the Lancaster County Conservation District, will count the fish and insects in a section of the stream on August 16. The results will help state and local officials determine how healthy the creek is and give a catalogue of its underwater life.  A hand-painted chest will be one of the featured items at the 2014 Gap Relief Sale. This will be the second time the chest has been a highlight of the annual sale.
The chest was made to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the sale and was sold to Elmer Mast in 1998. After Mast died, his family donated the chest to be sold again. The front of the chest is painted with a scene from the Sam Summers farm near Gap, the location of the first sale in 1948. The front also carries the dates 1948 and 1998.  The games came first. Then organizers decided to throw in a birthday party.
That's not how most parties are planned, but it is the way organizers went about setting up Middle Octorara Presbyterian Church's first community game night. They decided to host the event on August 7 and began to gather games and sports equipment. Then they realized they were holding the event on the anniversary of the congregation's founding. |
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