1182 Back Home in the Mountains!

Saturday, March 24, 2007

I'm sitting in a motel room (hotel? motel? the doors open to an interior hall, not to the parking lot, so technically I think it's a hotel) in central Pennsylvania, in the mountains, slightly northwest of State College (that's really the name of the town where Penn State is, honest).

The desk clerk/manager had bad teeth and no hair. The guest who recommended a restaurant had bad hair and no teeth. They both had nice eyes. I'm back in my mountains - my kinda people. Not pretentious and very friendly.

Pennsylvania is miles and miles of miles and miles. If you take route 80 through the state, you'd swear there's nothing here but mountains (friendly rounded walk-up-able ones), trees, and deer. I'd forgotten how nice Pa. feels. I'm starting to feel crowded in the Hudson Valley. Too many people.

It was 5.5 hours of driving, which was less than I thought it would be. When Daughter was in college, it took me 6 hours to get to State College. In the early days of Jay's illness, when Daughter needed something delivered or picked up, I would often drive to State College in the morning, and then back home in the evening. It's all highway, no towns, no villages, no turns, no nothing, and it really didn't feel so far.

I had dinner in a Dutch Pantry up the way (wow! I'm turning back into a Pennsylvanian! Pretty soon it'll be "up the ways a piece"!), and I was bouncing up and down in my seat over the menu. Creamed corn fritters! Stuffed cabbage! Wet-bottom Shoo-fly Pie! (I gotta buy a whole pie before I leave Monday. Wet-bottom. Dry-bottom is yuck. I'm a shoo-fly connoisseur.) Buncha other stuff I haven't seen on a menu in ages! I bet they'll have scrapple on the breakfast menu. I won't eat it, but it'll be nice to see it there. (Note - Firefox doesn't like scrapple either. Firefox is insisting I've misspelled "scrappers".)

My friend The Rabbi and his wife are renewing their vows tomorrow evening, followed by a 40th anniversary party, so I've got the morning and afternoon to futz around. I could call them and tell them I'm here, but then they might feel obligated to invite me over, and I'm sure they have all kinds of things to do tomorrow, so I'm not going to call. I will see him tomorrow evening for the first time in 43 years. We rediscovered each other two years ago thanks to the internet.

Daughter is feeling much better. I advised her to take it easy anyway. "Heck, fake it if you have to. It may be the only vacation you get this year."
As of July 2006, "I brake for Shoofly Pie" is the official bumper sticker of the state of Pennsylvania.
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