(I am moving to Pennsylvania sometime this year; I’ll get to that later.)
That’s how I imagined Pennsylvania: sunny, blue skies; verdant hills dotted with welcoming mine shafts; laughing children sledding down glistening mounds of coal; blackened miners tipping their hard hats to dainty, parasol-carrying women.
Lies! Forget everything your storybooks told you! Pennsylvania isn’t the utopia you and I once thought it was–it’s a little more like this:
Sardine-style buildings with a constant overcast: Pennsylvania. At least it was fun to explore and look at. Indeed, there were quite a few old, towering brick churches with marvelous stained-glass windows, but we didn’t take any pictures of those; however, we did take a handful of pictures of a convenience store (known as Convenient Food Mart–how witty!)–it wasn’t just the run-down houses downtown that interested us!And don’t forget Hazleton, PA’s famous Blue Comet Diner:
Gaze in wonder at the other-worldly blueness of the comet.
We went up there (Pennsylvania, not the diner) to get a good look at the area, as my dad is going to be taking a job there soon. The scenery is great–the mountains are beautiful and the forests are many–but so many towns seem to be in various stages of decay. And, as it turns out, piles of coal and towering smoke stacks really aren’t as beautiful as one might think. That’s all fine, though; I’ve lived all over the place, and I suppose I can adjust to the Appalachians as well. But to move to a new state only a year after moving to Delaware? WILL THE INSANITY NEVER CEASE?
For those of you who wish to see exactly where I’ve lived, click here for a Google map which illustrates my adventures.