Those of us who have worked

for newspapers for a few years may never get used to the fact that today's

cyber communication lets people read our words in places we've never heard

of and for reasons we've never dreamed of.

Used to be we could visualize

the paper being read by our neighbors, or by new folks moving into Fayette

County, or at most, by Aunt Martha in Albuquerque whose niece in Fayetteville

mailed her a copy.

When I visited Glenn Brewer

recently to admire the model train layout he's built in his garden, he

commented that The Citizen's circulation was larger than he had appreciated.

He'd had phone calls from hobbyists from all over, he said, responding

to an article Dave Hamrick wrote which concluded with an open invitation

to Glenn's house.

"Glenn," I said

gently, "we're on the Web. People could read about your trains anywhere

­ in St. Petersburg, Fla. or St. Petersburg, Russia. Don't be real

surprised if buses with California license plates pull into your driveway

Sunday."

Glenn paled visibly. "Oh,

gosh. ," he said.

Our daughter sent Dave a brushed

stainless steel "egg clack" for Christmas, and I wrote about

it. The clack is a cone attached to a nine-inch shaft, with a heavy steel

ball that moves freely on the shaft, a smaller ball forming a grip at

the top. You place the cone snugly over a soft-boiled egg and allow the

ball to drop onto it from the top of the shaft.

The result: The egg is neatly

decapitated.

Several months after writing

about this spiffy product (in German called a eierschalensollbruchstellenverursacher ),

I received an e-mail asking if I knew where one could be purchased. The

writer had bought one for a friend, but now could not find another for

himself. He asked me please to respond even if I couldn't help him, because

he wanted to share with me a recipe "which was served in a wonderful

French restaurant outside Paris which is real desirable for egg lovers."

Hmmm. This could be interesting.

I wrote back that I didn't know where a clack could be found in this country,

that mine had come from a shop in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. I asked him

where he lived.

He replied curtly: "I

am rushing out to preview my son's movie 'My Louisiana Sky' which will

preview on Mother's Day. ... My friend asked me to help him find this

egg gadget and I was successful in locating it in a kitchen store in San

Francisco but have lost the name. ... I will write more tomorrow. I am

in Santa Barbara, Calif. I found you by going to Google and typing 'Clack

Egg.' You were the only site which came up."

(His son was the executive

producer of the film based on a popular children's book, Silvio replied

to my question later; his partner in the production company was actor

Anthony Edwards.)

Somewhere in our correspondence,

my new friend seemed to get the idea that I wanted to purchase a clack,

and described its operation to me in great detail. He also shared the

recipe that he and his friend developed to replicate the Parisian dish.

It consisted of "an egg

opened by an egg clacker with the liquid white removed and a little maple

syrup and chives added before the yolk was heated to just below the point

where it will set up. [My friend] fell in love with the dish and wanted

to replicate it but couldn't find the instrument to open the egg. ..."

To make a long story short,

Silvio persisted and, within a few days, wrote that he had found the clack

at the San Francisco Museum of Fine Art store. It's even on their Web

site, HtmlResAnchor www.SFMOMA.com , under Design Objects.

I thanked him, musing that

the world had shrunk a bit more when a man in the Philippines asks a friend

in California to find something that a woman near Atlanta happens to have

written about and which her daughter purchased in Germany.

Human nature being what it

is, I was not surprised to receive the following, and was gratified that

Silvio provided an ending to the story:

"My clack egg opener arrived

yesterday and after playing with it for about an hour I put it away. It

is like those toys where anticipation is greater than reality. My curiosity

was soon fulfilled and it probably will go into a drawer. I will use it

seldom and only when I am trying to show off the extent of my gadget collection.

"Warmest regards, Silvio"

A woman with an e-mail address

reflecting her position with Dupont wrote to ask me about our boat, a

Nimble Nomad. She said she's coordinator of a Web site for Nimble owners

and found one of my columns when she entered "Nimble Nomad"

in a search engine.

When I told her that what she

saw was but one of more than a dozen columns I'd written about the boat,

she asked if she could use them on the Web page she's designing. She and

her husband are relatively new Nomad owners on the Chesapeake Bay and,

like many enthusiasts, are eager for information about customizing their

boat, finding good cruising waters, getting the best performance from

their engine.

The columns are posted, with

credit to The Citizen, at HtmlResAnchor https://forums.delphi.com/Nimble_nomad/start/

and have already drawn nice comments from readers all over the country.

Like I said, "Hmmm."

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