hershey, pa- jul 24-jul 25
hershey, paRoute:
http://www.koa.com/where/pa/38181/
I never thought of Pennsylvania as Corn Country, but it's nothing but
cornfields eight-foot high lining the highways like fluffy pinball chutes for
the cars. It would be prettier without the utility poles -- you mentally
discount them when you're looking out the window, flying by, but if you pick up
your camera and look through the viewfinder you'll find wires and poles
crisscrossing your picture at every available angle.
Still, Pennsylvania feels like Olde-Tymey America, and not just because this
road takes you straight to Amish country. It's the existence of yet another
"Columbia" in another state (from the days before Columbus fell out with the PC
police), the Susquehanna River you cross (an obvious Indian name...a quick flash
of residual shame: didn't we take this area away from them back in the day...?),
American flags outside houses and stores and even the fruit stands, a "Just
Married! Darlene and Vern" sign in someone's front yard, and little missives on
those signs outside the general stores with the movable letters: Have you made
peace with God?
Human nature being what it is, however, you can see from the map that there's a
town called "Pleasureville" and that the train tracks actually jog off to the
right so they don't miss it. I wonder what kind of zoning they have in
Pleasureville? I imagine nothing but porn shops, liquor stores, massage parlors,
and everyone on the Kiwanis/Junior League sitting around under sunlamps wearing
bikinis and eating candy bars.
(There's also a town called "Intercourse" but we didn't go there, either.)
Pennsylvanians (or, "Pencil-heads/Pennsyl-Heads" to everyone in MY car) seem
obsessed with DUI -- there are signs everywhere warning you to watch out for
them, or to not be one yourself, because (the signs scold, knowingly), You Can't
Afford It (how do they know???? since it's probably true, I find that somewhat
creepy and unnecessarily omniscient).
We passed through the town of York, original home of the York Peppermint Pattie
(get the sensation...ahhhhh!) which is now part of the whole Hershey empire.
They have their own wiki though about their whole history, including the quality
test: if you snapped the candy and it didn't break clean across the middle, it
didn't pass inspection: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Peppermint_Patty
Miles of corn, and more corn, the occasional turquoise-painted roof, roadside
gazebos and sheds for sale, God Bless America signs, Loretta's Beauty Salon, the
230 Diner, a florist with a sign outside: "if your name is Rose, come in for
free flowers!", the Starlight Motel, and a whole strip of Flea-Market-on-Saturdays!
stores, including a huge warehouse called "Soda World" which I would have loved
to have seen the inside of. A whole WORLD of soda? (Yes, I know it just means
cases of Cokes stacked to the ceiling at rock-bottom prices, but again, I can't
help but envision a whole world where the whole point of living is soda...a
Woolworths counter with a soda jerk waiting to make you an egg creme drink and a
fountain of bubbling Sierra Mist (don't want to get those visiting kids high on
caffeine)...piles of crumpled and discarded paper cups from the free sample
table, and a special room for all the sodas they don't make any more or are hard
to find everywhere: Fresca, Faygo, Tab.)
Red SLOWDOWN signs by the Methodist church, followed quickly by the cemetery
just beyond it, in case you didn't get the point.
Flags and more flags, leading me to believe that Pennsylvania is providing more
than its fair share of servicemen and women to our armed forces. Which isn't
surprising, given the desperation apparent in the quest to make a buck -- the
military is probably a viable job option when there's nothing else but
combination insurance company/used car lots, and even a sign that said SCUBA
(...in Pennsylvania??? what are you going to go diving to look at -- the
yellowcake deposits from all the nuclear power plants???)
Passed a roadside bar called the Radio Active Bar and Grill, which I thought was
pretty funny =8^o (hair standing on end smiley)
It doesn't occur to me until we actually pass the place (and its discreet little
sign) that we're actually driving through Three-Mile Island (the wiki at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Mile_Island
in case you forget that little disaster in 1979).
The gum-snapping cutie behind the counter at the campground showed me the map of
the campground and
where to go to get to "our Giant and Taco Bell and our quick Chinese takeout" -- and
I realized she was right. Every city has a Taco Bell and quick Chinese takeout, as
if the Chamber of Commerce has to get that established before they can even apply for a charter.
Everything north is chocolate-themed all the way to Hershey (which is on Cocoa
Avenue). We passed the Cocoaplex Cinema (where I assumed that everything in the
concession stand -- including the popcorn -- would be made out of or drizzled
with chocolate). We drove up to the Hershey Grill, taking a left onto Chocolate
Avenue (off Cocoa Avenue of course), where the streetlights are shaped like
Hershey kisses. (Alas, the streets don't actually run with chocolate, and Wes
wouldn't let me get out of the truck to pop the fire hydrants to see what would
happen.) Even the stop signs have a little kiss on them (no kisses crossing?
stop kisses? I'm not sure what the message was).
We had perfectly normal non-chocolate burgers at the Hershey Grill, but they did
serve their waffle fries with "dark chocolate ketchup" -- not as disgusting as
it sounds, it is just like barbecue sauce which when you think about it, is
nothing but ketchup with more sugar in it, and a chocolate crême brulée which
was basically fried chocolate air :)
The TV is otherwise the same -- apparently we do nothing in America but shop for
cars and eat, no matter what city it is. However, it's obvious that there are
far fewer people in Pennsylvania than back home, as evidenced by the courtly
manners on the road (a whole stripe of people waiting patiently behind the timid
little old lady waiting to merge, rather than everyone jumping out and roaring
ahead of her), and by the news on TV. Pennsylvania news is able to a nudge
towards a website for jobs: http://www.pajobs.com (just the idea of a manageable
list like that in the DC area boggles the mind), a bit about a bike shop in a
town that sounded like "Ephedra" where Tour de France winner Floyd Landis had
once bought a bike, a memoriam to a Pennsylvania native who had died serving his
country in Afghanistan, and a teaser about alligators in the Susquehanna -- and
a promise to come right back to tell us all about what was going on with this
"rascally reptile." One of the newscasters was named "Ebony Heather" (a white
woman...there is a lot of whiteness in PA -- including a disturbing little
political ad about fuel research that showed flag burning and general
America-hating before it stressed how we had to develop alternative fuel (in
itself a great idea) so we wouldn't have to deal with "them" any more -- I
couldn't help but wonder what all those steadfast, heartsick folks in
Pennsylvania were thinking while seeing that on TV with their sons or daughters
fighting overseas and their hopeful flags flapping outside.
Pennsylvania weather promised that the weather the next day: Warm and Comfy
In reality, "warm and comfy" meant "hot as hell and sweaty" the next day, but we
went to the Harley-Davidson plant for a free tour: http://www.harley-davidson.com/wcm/Content/Pages/Factory_Tours/york.jsp.
I hadn't realized you had to wear closed-toe shoes, so we went up to the Dollar
General up the street to buy cheap tennis shoes and came back. They show you a
ten minute video and then you go through airport-like security (no cameras or
knives, although I think the metal detector was pretty weak...it didn't even
detect my metal buttons on my Gap shirt...lol!)
A Harley plant is probably one of the last places in America where you can
actually see some manufacturing done, and the tour took you through the whole
process in a single-file line of folks leading around the designated
yellow-lined area, be-goggled and plugged into headsets so we could hear the
tour guide describing all the processes as we passed over the deafening roar,
and letting us go up to the plastic curtains to get a better look.
Amazing and HUGE presses that turned a plain sheet of steel into a fender with
one heavy squish -- all force and no heat. There were rooms of robots going
through their jerky motions with their suction cup hands -- put steel on shape
in roughly bendy shape and SQUISH -- pick up gas tank and move to rack -- return
-- wait for the little light to proceed -- repeat. That area looked like Henry
Ford's idea of a dream PlayDoh Fun Factory. Laser rooms with pinpoint lights
cutting things into precision shapes, robots picking up groups of two foot
plates and sanding off the burrs and polishing them...zipzipzip...turn...zipzipzip.
There was a big bowl-shaped drum in the middle of the plant where they put steel
parts in to bubble around with some ceramic cones to smooth them down. The plant
was staffed by both men and women of all ages, all wearing ponytails (both
sexes), puffy tennis shoes, and tank tops (hot in there, especially where they
made the kick stands -- several passes of a glowing-red hot stick through a
series of slots that shaped it in stages).
We passed racks of parts in various stages stacked up the ceilings, until
finally getting to the finished bikes coming down the conveyor belts (the blue
tags meant they were meant for California, I think, and had different emissions
equipment on them, I think the green ones meant Great Britain or Canada (km
instead of miles on the gauges). We saw a guy start to test them out (which
looked like those motorized drums you have to drive your car onto at the vehicle
emissions stations). And the tour ended by dumping you right out at the gift
shop, which was fronted by an area with several bikes you could actually sit on
(and as the sugar-bombed children visiting proved, could jump on and leapfrog
over too).
The gift shop: the inevitable tshirt, the logo-emblazened pencils, a pad of
paper die cut in the shape of the H-D logo, a magnet for Keighley's locker at
school, and...guitar picks with the Harley logo on them. (Hey, they were only a
dollar...! what the hell?) They were clever at the end of the tour, giving each
person a postcard they could send to someone for free -- all that publicity (and
who knows if they cull all those addresses before they send the cards for you??)
-- by the end of that tour it just sounded like dang good old Yankee ingenuity
to me.
Cornfields all the way back again. Why don't the Pennsyl-heads do something with
all that *corn* ?? Isn't there some kind of pseudo-gas we're supposed to "go
yellow" with? Not to mention, with all those DUI-inclined folks out
there...there's always corn liquor....
