Last Sunday and Monday I was out in Pennsylvania visiting a friend and the Hershey Spa (more on that another day), I miss Pennsylvania. I went to college out there for 4 and a half years and for years after I was visiting friends there frequently. Times change and 11 and a half years later I don't get out there too much, but this time I really felt a sense of missing it.
I was driving down a "typical" (and I use that term loosely) PA road and my heart just started to break. The road was two lanes (one in each direction) and surrounded by grass, which wasn't too green since there hasn't been much rain lately. I bet last year the grass was bright green. In some areas there was corn lining the roads. This is all very Souteastern PA to me. As I drove down this road I thought, I could live here.
I attended the Penn State Berks campus for 2 years and on two sides of the campus was corn fields. With friends living all over Southeastern PA, or "outside Philly" as they all say - I wonder how so many people can live outside Philly but live nowhere near each other, but that's another story - I drove a lot of these two lane roads lined with grass and maybe a house in the distance. Long Island is nothing like this, it has houses with little patches of grass in front and strip malls everywhere.
Two lane roads lined with grass, farms and maybe trees are primary roads, sure there are some wider roads where there is shopping and restaurants, and there are highways. But the majority of roads seem to be these 2 lane roads.
I don't find them to be as common in the Scranton area or the Pittsburg area, two other areas of PA I haven spent a good amount of time in. It's like Southeaster PA is stuck in a rural time warp inspite of the urban sprall from Philly. I miss that, you're close to Philly but it feels more countryish then suburban.
Then there are my friends who live here, the place is so great that one of my friends from high school even moved there. And as much as I love and miss my friends, times have changed since our days in college. Most of my friends are married, many have kids adn houses. While we're not as much "fun," it's nice to know when you wake up with a hangover you'll be in a bed instead of on the floor. The memories I had on my drive home on Monday were great, I had a good laugh at those times together.
I'll keep the memories to myself, it's not as funny if you weren't there. Instead, think of your own memories of the fun times, the weird times and the goofy things you did somewhere and the people you were with. In the meantime I'll keep wondering where the perfect place to live is. Maybe it's PA, or maybe it's somewhere I haven't been yet.
