I took a ride back to my past yesterday.

After seeing our daughter off as she heads back to college (someone please tell me this is not her final semester; where does the time go?), my wife and I decided to go out for a ride.

Actually, she was just Jones-ing for her Dunkin Donuts fix.

I don’t think either one of us wanted to go back to an empty house and look at each other, so we decided to ride around.

I’m not sure why, but I found myself driving into my past.

A long time ago, I used to work in Coatesville. A lot of things have changed since then.

For one, the newspaper I toiled at, the Record, has something in common with another paper many of you might have read at one time, The Evening Bulletin. Neither of them is still being published.

So it was that I found myself dealing with a lot of memories as I drove over the Carlson Bridge and into what is usually referred to as the East End.

Coatesville has been in the news recently. In fact, I was stunned to tune into CNN yesterday and see “The Ville” being featured. Of course, it was not exactly being painted in a good light. The graphic on the screen screamed, “City Under Siege.”

Coatesville, a city of about 11,000 in Chester County, has been battling what can best be described as a wave of domestic terrorism.

Someone, or some group of people, has been setting fires in the city.

Since the start of the year new, there have been 13 unsolved arsons. In 2008 there were 15, including one that killed an 83-year-old woman who had survived the atrocities of Nazi concentration camps. There were three people charged in the fires. The hope was that would end the wave of terror. The hope was wrong.

Saturday night a fire being labeled as “suspicious” roared through a series of row homes in the city. Fifteen homes went up in flames. Luckily there were no serious injuries. If you can possibly refer to what is going on in the city as “lucky.”

A state of emergency now exists in Coatesville, which gives city officials new authority to battle the problem. More than 100 people jammed City Hall for a special meeting of city council.

As I drove west on Lincoln Highway into the city, I was overcome with a sense of sadness.

I took a left on Pennsylvania Avenue, then climbed the long hill that has forever been one of the marks of the city.

At the top, I took a left, and headed back out of town. What’s happening in Coatesville is unbelievably sad. People simply trying to live their lives are now cowering in their homes, unable to sleep, wondering when the next fire will break out.

I hope they find the person or persons responsible for this before anyone else is forced to huddle outside and watch much of their life go up in flames.

A life has already been lost. Damage is in the millions. People are on edge. And they’re getting angry.

They say you can’t go home again. That’s not always a bad thing.