Public Opinion from Chambersburg, Pennsylvania • 20

Monday FamlVUfei Tuesday HomeLeisure Wednesday Neighbor Thuredy Jobs and Careers Friday Health and Fitness Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Wednesday, May 1 2002 yvww.publlcoplnIononUne.com Assistant City Editor LIaoti Penn-Camm SG2-47C0, iHEffilJllE HISTORY mm 11 (Q10TO TTrTTT: 3 1 y. -art jijrn Ani Public Opmionmarkell DeLoatch Ed, shows off what he calls his favorite elephant, Dumbo. His broad collection of elephants began with Mister Ed finds way with his elephants By LARA BRENCKLE Staff writer ORRTANNA His name is Edwin, just like his grandfather and father before him. But to friends, neighbors and anyone curious enough to stop by his roadside oddity, he is simply Mister Ed, the guy with the elephants. lost my name a long time ago," said Ed Gotwalt owner, proprietor and curator of Mister Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Shop along Chambersburg Road in Orrtanna.

"Everyone just calls me Mister Ed." Roadside attractions like Mister Ed's are becoming fewer and farther between these days. The great American roads, such as the old Lincoln Highway, yielded their two-lane rambles to eight-lane superhighways long ago. But people keep stopping by Ed's. Some come for the bins and bins of candy. A person will find things in Mister Ed's bins that haven't been on most store shelves in 20 years Necco Skybars, chocolate babies, candy buttons, horehound candy sticks.

They're all here, and jockeying for space around the waistline. Some come for the freshly roasted peanuts 20 tons a year go out Mister Ed's door, whether bought by customers or sold at the 24 festivals he vends each year. And, of course, there are the elephants. There wouldn't be a Mister Ed's were it not for the more than 6,000 elephants that line the walls and cases of a special room in the store. There are brass elephants, cloth elephants, elephants made out of rubber or iron.

There is a huge wicker elephant that looks big enough to ride, but he'd rather you didn't thank you. Sadly, Mister Ed said, the founding of the elephant museum is not as dramatic a tale as the self-styled FT. Barnum of Orrtanna would like. He tells the oft-told tale as an old carnival barker would with punctiliousness that comes from recounting it many times but with bravado enough to make listeners feel as if they are the first to hear it. "On my wedding day 34 years ago, my sister-in-law me an elephant for good uck," he said.

"We went to Virginia for our honeymoon, Philly artifacts sitting in storage PHILADELPHIA (AP) Excavation near Independence Hall produced more than a mil-; lion artifacts of 18th-century life in the City of Brotherly leading one archaeologist to call it "the greatest urban archaeological find of our lifetime." Now, more than a year after, the dig was concluded, some archaeologists fear the trove is1 in jeopardy and that important analysis, preservation and inter-' pretative work has stopped for, lack of funding. The artifacts were pulled from1 the ground during excavation of! the under-construction National! Constitution Center, a few blocks; north of Independence HalL Thej dig was finished in January 2O01. Anthony Ranere, chairman of! Temple University's anthropolo-J gy department said he and oth-j er experts are worried the arti- facts won't be used to their full! potential. "Our fear is the Constitution! Center will say, 'Gosh, we don't have the money, and we won't support analysis of this materiaLI Then, no one will hear about it and the stuff will be buried a sec-j ond time," Ranere said. Officials at the National Con- stitution Center, the private non-J profit organization now acting as steward for the find, said they are looking for private sponsor-! ship for their long-term plan to! preserve the find and make it available to the public The task, however, is expected to be time-consuming and expensive The archaeological study has already cost $5 million.

Further' work to preserve and fully cata log the items could cost another! $3 million to $6 million, said the; center's president, Joseph Torsel-1 la "We are tremendously excited about the possibilities, but with a find this large, there are somej issues that we weren't prepared" to deal with immediately" he said! The $185 million center's first priority is to make its scheduled; opening on July 4, 2003. don't think we could justifyi taking more funds away" from! the building project, he said. Storage of the artifacts, at twdj sites in New Jersey, is also a con-j cern. One site is temporary. At permanent facility, the artifacts' are stacked five boxes high.

There is no shelving, and some boxes' have buckled under the weight I Torsella disputed that the arti-i facts are in danger, saying they! are "perfectly safe." They have been cleaned andj dried and bagged. They are in cli- mate-controlled storage," he said! The well-preserved artifacts? include bits of newspapers, Euro-J pean coins dating to 1696, kitchenj utensils, hand-blown wine bot-J ties, whale-oil lamps and perfumei bottles, sewing items, lots of shoesS some with the laces still tied and a necklace locket engraved "For Thomas Hancock Ramsey' died 1789." 3 SUP Allen r-- Cooking Wmi Know how to select prepare pork ribs Because there are different styles of pork ribs it can be a little confusing when shopping for this barbecue favorite. Traditional spare ribs are cut from the rib cage of the hog. They contain more fat than other style ribs, but the fat adds to the flavor of this cut when it is cooked. The bones are long and somewhat flat Of the three major categories, spare ribs have the smallest meat-to-bone ratio.

They are almost always the least expensive of the group. Baby back ribs are cut from the top of the loin near the back bone. They have a good meat-to-bone ratio and the fat content is relatively low. There is a generous strip of meat between each of the short and somewhat thin bones. Baby back ribs are the most expensive of the group.

Country style ribs are cut from the front of the loin. They come off the loin in the form of a thick chop. The chop is then cut with a meat saw and opened, or butterflied. This style rib has the best meat-to-bone ratio and generally not too much fat Their price range is in the middle of the group. Avoid ribs that are labeled country style if they vary widely in size and shape.

These are off cuts from other areas of the carcass. So what rib is best? It seems there are ribs for all reasons. The traditional spare rib is great for casual affairs when the budget is a concern. The baby back rib is more upscale, more diner friendly, and has the best bite texture. A well-trimmed country style rib makes a hearty entree that eats very well when cooked in low heat for a long duration.

We currently have a depressed pork market so baby back ribs are the easy choice of this old chef. The market could, and probably will, change soon, with pork prices rising. Then I will look for well-trimmed country style ribs. Most barbecue chefs pre-cook pork ribs, then finish them on the grilL This is good technique, but do we boil or braise the ribs before their trip to the grill? 1 1 choose to braise ribs on a rack over water in a 350-degree oven. The meat is coated with the same sauce that will be used to finish them on the grill.

The pan is covered tightly with foil. Regular spare ribs and baby back ribs are cooked for an hour and a half Country style ribs braise for two hours. This technique gives the ribs the most exposure to the sauce, which carries the deBired barbecue flavor. The cooking sauce, water, and rendered fat are discarded. Fresh sauce is used to coat the ribs for a low- to medium-heat finish on the grill i Braising a day ahead or hours ahead works fine.

If your ribs are cold when they begin to grill you may want to heat them for 10 minutes before you apply the finishing sauce. This helps you avoid burning the barbecue sauce before the rib is heated through. Although I get along well with most commercial barbecue sauces, I do have a recipe that I use for special occasions, i TRADITIONAL I BARBECUE SAUCE 1 cup bottled chili sauce cup ketchup lli cup lemon juice 2 tablespoons brown sug ar 2 teaspoons Worcester shire sauce teaspoon garlic salt a few drops bottled hot sauce or more to taste I Whisk the ingredients together in a sauce pan. Stir and cook over medium heat until the sauce simmers. Simmer five minutes or more.

Yields 2 cups of sauce. Roger Tappen of Chambersburg is a cooking instructor and former chef. in his wallet Ten years passed, and the first store closed. Gotwalt, still not wanting to throw in the towel, contacted the office. The agent, it turned out, had moved to Gettysburg.

And, as luck would have it, he was still trying to sell the building. The new location opened in 1984, and has been going strong ever since. Cheryl Fickes, Fayetteville, has been behind the counter at Mister Ed's since 1977. It is the only job she has ever had. As a 21-year-old in search of employment, Fickes said she was drawn in after seeing a Mister Ed's truck drive by.

"It said The territory's most unusual general I just had to find out what that was all about," Fickes said. She came for a job interview and has been working there ever since. "It's fun," Fickes said. "He has a lot of different things on his plate. He's entertaining, and you never know what might happen next.

I don't want to do anything else when Tm done with this." Like his idol Barnum, Mister Ed is the master of self-promotion. No matter where he goes in the world, and with his peanut-vending excursions he hits cities up and down the Eastern seaboard, he hands out trinkets with the museum's name on them. He greets customers with a smile, asks them where they See ED, Page 7B 1 'ii Big friends: Ed Gotwalt, Mister a gift on his wedding day. and I bought two on the way home. Then I bought two more.

It got out of hand." Over the years, that "getting out of hand" evolved into stunts, publicity-generating events and more than one encounter with Broadway stardom. Gotwalt started his working life at Giant Foods. Slowly, he worked his way up to manager. After 17 years with the company, he left It was a manage ment training course called transac tional analysis," that sent him X. over the edge.

"They sent us to those courses to make us smarter. It was all about thinking outside the box. I took that to mean I start my own business," Gotwalt said, with a chuckle. When the first Mister Ed's opened in 1975, just down the road from the present location, it was known as Mister Ed's, The Territory's Most Unusual General Store. There was one empty wall, and on it he placed his odd assortment of personal knick-knacks the start of the elephant collection, pictures of movie stars he'd met and other odd goods.

"After a few days, people were whispering There's Mister Ed, there's Mister They'd ask me to have my picture taken with their wife or kids. It got so that I started handing out 8-by-10 glossies. I signed pictures all weekend," he said. People made it an entity. We started saying "Mister Ed The Daily grind tute.

"If you work in an office, you should assume you are being monitored." Don't expect to find help from the courts in these matters. The case law is overwhelmingly on the side of the employer," says Deborah Pierce, a privacy attorney. Businesses have legitimate reasons for screening online activity like investigating sexual harassment, protecting themselves against lawsuits, safeguarding their intellectual property and making sure they dont lose productivity to Internet addictions. "You shouldn't assume that your employer is an electronic voyeur and wants to know about your personal life," Flynn says. 1 'f jr from creeping in to Gotwalt's wacky kingdom In 1983, he had to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The store, with its leaking roof and thrice-dry well, was just too much to keep on top of. But the universe still had a purpose for the eccentric man in the mountain. A year after Mister Ed bought the first store, a real estate agent from Baltimore asked him if he wanted to buy a building up the road. Gotwalt declined at the time, but kept the agents card Keep it clean. When companies conduct keyword searches in e-mail monitoring, "explicit sexual or scatological" language is the most common things they look for, according to an AMA study conducted with the ePolicy Institute.

Any salacious content in your e-mail could trigger an investigation. Visiting an inappropriate Web site may cause your employer to pay more attention to how you use office equipment If you receive an e-mail that violates company policy, don't reply or forward it advises Flynn. Even writing back to reprimand the sender can loop you into an investigation. 4 Don't bad mouth. Ranting about your boss or co-worker over e-mail can get you fired and, in some cases, even land you in court with defamation charges.

If you must vent do it in person, preferably off company property. One-on-one conversations leave no trace. You cannot prevent your recip- 8ee WATCHING, Page 7B should do this, Mister Ed should do that'. It was like he was a separate person." Mister Ed played Santa at his store. One year, he tried to drop in by hot air balloon.

The balloon crashed into a tree in Michaux State Forest, leaving Gotwalt dangling in his Santa suit An Associated Press photographer took a picture and it went into newspapers throughout the world. However, even the scores of good-luck elephants couldn 1 1 Public Opiniofi MarMI DeLoatch Welcoming sight This elephant stands outside Mister Ed's Elephant Museum and Candy Shop on U.S. 30, Orrtanna. Ifs hard to imagine a company that would dedicate resources to prying into employees' personal lives. Still, there may be individuals in your company who can access everything you say and do in e-mail and online.

Here's what you can do to protect your privacy. Perform a background check, Ask human resources whether your company has an official policy for e-mail and Internet use. If so, request a copy and read it Larger companies are more likely to keep tabs on employees. Businesses in the financial services sector (banks, insurance, real estate, etc) do the most intensive monitoring. If you can't get an official answer, try to get the inside scoop from friends in IT They may be able to offer details that aren't explicit in the company's written statement Talk to your boss about his or her expectations.

Most managers understand a certain amount of personal correspondence is necessary during working hours. uuuiuu i a nixie un oi sorrow Feel like someone's watching? You're probably right fHAT MUST-SEE TV See the bunny: If you haven't caught Fox's hysterical new show, Greg the Bunny, its time to hop on by. The puppets-meet-people sitcom is the surprise hit of the spring season. In this episode, titled PkJdleron the Roof, Warren gets mad and defaces Alison's (Sarah Silverman) car. Airs tonight at 9:30 p.m.

on Fox. 'HOLLYWOOD ENDING' Ever wonder if your boss knows you've been reading job postings, or if there's an IT worker who read that mushy e-mail you sent to your latest love interest? Such seeming paranoia may not be unrealistic. "You are being watched at work whether you know it or not" says Lewis Maltby, president of the National Workrights Institute. Sixty-three percent cflarge and mid-sized companies monitor Internet use and 46.5 store and review e-mails, according to the American Management Association (AMA). Writing e-mails and roaming the Web feels private.

Many workers would rather research a health issue online than call a doctor, or will flirt with a co-worker via e-mail but not in front of the boss. This perceived anonymity is an illusion. "You need to work on the assumption that your employer is reading over your electronic shoulder," says Nancy Flynn, executive director of ePoicy Insti- Starts Friday: Woody Allen stars as Val Waxman, a once-famous director who has hit the skids. When he starts on the comeback trail, he has a bout with hysterical blindness. Though there is no physical problem, he cant see a darned thing.

Which, of course, for a film director is a very bad thing. Also stars Tea Leoni, Debra Messing, Scott Wolf and Treat Williams. Rated PG-13. FACULTY SPOTLIGHT CVSM recital: 7 p.m. tonight, Cumberland Valley School of Music student recital, featuring students and a faculty spotlight on soprano Paula Hepfer, free, Thomson Chapel, Wilson College, 1015 Philadelphia information,.