What I learned about Williamsport

Until last weekend I had only a glancing knowledge of Williamsport.  Even though it's fairly close by, I'd only passed through it once when we went to Niagara Falls two years ago.  About all I learnd then was that it is home to the Little League Hall of Fame, and general headquarters of the of all things little league.  That's little nippers playing baseball, to the uninitiated, but it's a pretty big deal in these parts.

This time I noticed that the little leaguers were flying an enormous American flag.  I was left wondering how big the one flown at the grown-up baseball hall of fame must be if the little league merits the flag they have.

Anyway, the other two things I knew about Williamsport were that it was the scene of an attack by Native Americans of some settlers in the eighteenth century, and that not far away over the mountains begins the basin of the Ohio River, which ultimately leads to the Mississippi (though I should mention I haven't checked either of these "facts" very closely).

After our recent foray I now know two more things about the town.  First, as I wrote the other day, they know how to lay on a book sale.  And second, where to get lunch.  For after we'd rummaged around the books we retired to the Bullfrog Brewery for pretzels and sandwiches.  Mrs Walles had turkey, cheese, apple and caramelised onions while I went for simple pork loin and both were excellent.  It's one of the many good microbreweries that litter this part of the countryside, most of which have their own bar attached where you can admire all the shiny equipment in which their product is busily fermenting.

We were both amused, as we looked for a place to park the car, that most of the spaces beside the brewery are reserved for an organisation that aims to fight alcoholism.  Maybe at the end of a long day fighting alcoholism the only cure is a drink?

Anyway, I am pleased to report that Williamsport is a very tidy and pretty place.  It's a large town with solid architecture in the middle of town, where we were, but that centre is not so large that it's intimidating.  Mrs Walles tells me that there are bad parts of Williamsport, but I didn't see any of them. 

I was very happy to visit and it is nice to see the centre of a town, since you so often bypass the centre when you're travelling here, and get no real feel for the towns you are passing "through".  We're sure to be back again, whenever books or sandwiches call to us again.

The Masterpiece Mystery mystery

On Saturday Mrs Walles and I took a trip to the town Williamsport.  This would have been the weekend that her family visited and we all partook of the delights of the state fair, until the rain put a stop to that (the sun, by the way, has finally made an appearance this afternoon).  Mrs Walles found a good consolation prize in the form of a book sale organised by the friends of the library in Williamsport, which I was gratified to discover was being held in a Methodist church hall.  Having attended the annual book sale in my home town - also held in a church hall - every year like clockwork until all this going-to-America business intervened, it was pleasing to see that some things are the same the world round.

This particular sale only lasts three days and we visited on the morning of the last day so I was worried things might have been picked through.  I need not have worried, though, and between us we managed to select forty seven volumes which, thanks to the rather generous pricing scheme, we managed to get for much less than a dollar apiece.

Among other things I stocked up on British mystery novels.  I've a weakness for a good mystery and apparently so do the American library-going public as there were plenty to choose from.  But then this shouldn't have been a surprise, having watched Masterpiece Mystery on public television.  They've been playing Inspector Lewis in this slot the last few weeks.  Now, where I come from something like Inspector Lewis is the televisual equivalent of the mystery novel.  You expect exotic settings, eccentric characters, a lot of bodies and even more red herrings, and for someone other than the butler to have done it in the end.  Good stuff, and well done, but not exactly on par with the roof of the Sistine Chapel or the Mona Lisa.

But I suspect that the viewers here don't see things the same way.  Each episode comes prefixed with an introduction by the actor Alan Cumming. He's best known - to me at least - as Boris from Goldeneye, but he possesses a pleasant Scottish brogue which lends gravitas to proceedings.  Cumming treats Lewis with reverence, like a lost Shakespeare play, as he explains the set up for this week's plot.  But I don't think that's his real purpose.  Here, he seems to be saying, here is the good stuff ladies and gentlemen, and let us pause a moment, bask in its radiance, and give thanks before the tape starts rolling.

Maybe I'm wrong and it's all just a bit of window dressing.  Perhaps everyone realises it's a bit silly but they keep at it because it's what they've always done.  Alan Cumming always seems to have a slight smirk as he delivers the little sermon, so I suspect he at least thinks it's a bit over the top.  Or maybe they really have been so starved of decent telly that a decent British murder mystery is like manna from heaven.

Anyway, it's really just an amusement to me and all the more tolerable because once Alan finishes his blessing the whole show runs without ads.  Perhaps New Zealand networks should treat their shows with a bit more reverence if this is the result!

Fair's fair

The flood waters have receded, leaving devastation in their wake.  Mrs Walles and I took a little walk around town at the peak on Friday and gawped at the water rising almost to the tops of the flood banks.  If it wasn't for the banks then a sizable portion of our town would have been underwater.  Other towns along the Susquehanna River which weren't similarly protected really were underwater, including Bloomsburg, the town that traditionally hosts the state fair at the end of September.

As a result there was concern that the fair may have to be cancelled this year.  Justified concern, given that the fairgrounds were under several metres of water last week.  Although this is the third summer I've spent here I have yet to experience the fair: the last two times I've been here on a visitor's permit and it has run out before the fair starts.  It would be a shame to miss it again as it is, by all accounts, a sight to behold.  It's a bit like a giant A&P show, an extravaganza of farming, entertainment and food.  For months friends and acquaintances have been reeling off lists of stands I have to visit to partake of apple cider, apple fritters, ice cream, pizza, funnel cake, toffee apples and more (I've just realised how dominant a theme apples are in the line up - not that I'm complaining).

It is galling that now I am here for keeps I may still miss the fair thanks to the weather.  Never mind all those people whose lives have been turned upside down by historic floods or even those who rely on the fair for their livelihoods.  I might not get to try fresh apple fritters with cinnamon ice cream. That's the real tragedy here.

Fish in a dish

Today's post is only tangentially related to the Washington trip (you'll be relieved to hear if all the marble has been getting to you).
Instead it is concerned with something I had taken for granted in New Zealand but sadly cannot here - access to good fish.  Now the fish in America is very good, as long as you are in the right place.  Central Pennsylvania is not really the right place.  When I first arrived here, aware that the trip from New York takes about four hours on a good day, I realised that fish this far inland might be a bit sketchy.  And I was right, though perhaps not for the right reason.

You can get excellent fish here, you just have to know where to go.  After a few forays that ended badly (taste wise...I haven't eaten any properly bad fish here) I've come to realise that it's only worth ordering fish in restaurants if someone I trust has recommended it.  The other night Mrs Walles and I went out to a place where we had been advised the all-you-can-eat haddock and chips was good and it was excellent.  So good that I had two platefuls.  I've also had very good seafood at a Japanese hibachi place.  But then if you were looking for somewhere that was pretty much guaranteed to have fresh fish, a Japanese restaurant would surely be a good bet.

Though fish here is generally lacklustre I don't think this is because of our distance from the coast right now.  It seems more likely that in the time before fast transportation when the coast was even more remote people here just didn't have a lot of experience with cooking and eating fresh seafood.  I think you can see this in the way that a lot of restaurants serve fish - baked and smothered in cheese sauce, the kind of dish that's designed to stifle any flavour of the fish itself.  It's a conservative region and I can easily see this indifference to fish passing from one generation to the next even as access to good seafood improved.

I'm not sure if that's the explanation, but it's still a fact that it's hard to find good seafood around here, so I'm very grateful to the friend who gave us the tip the other night.  I don't have to wait until we visit a coastal area to get my seafood fix anymore (as I did in Washington).  The new place has me hook, line and sinker.

Philadelphia station

It was planes, trains and automobiles for Mrs Walles and I as we made our way to Washington D.C.  We dragged ourselves out of bed at 4:30am and as soon as it was light drove to the airport at Harrisburg, parked the car in long term parking and then took a ten minute cab ride to the train station down town.  Later we would pass the car again on the train, as the railroad runs right past the airport, within spitting distance of where we parked the car.  Ah, well, such is life.

Intercity passenger rail in the US was consolidated about 40 years ago into one government-owned corporation known as Amtrak (communism!), which runs just a few services around the country.  We're very lucky really to be able to take the train as we did - some states aren't served at all.

Anyway, our train trip was in two parts, one to Philadelphia on a very sparsely populated train and then on to D.C. on a very full one.  From Harrisburg the train runs through pleasant farmland and relatively small towns (the exception being Lancaster) until it hits the outlying suburbs of Philadelphia.  Then the view deteriorates as you get closer to the inner city, but that doesn't matter so much because once you reach the station your breath is taken away.

This is Philadelphia's 30th St station.  If it looks familiar that's because it crops up on screen sometimes.  It is the station featured in the opening scenes of the film Witness where the heroine sees the murder take place.  It's also a junction for Amtrak, and according to Wikipedia the third busiest station in their system.  We had to wait a while here so we got some lunch and I looked around and took some pictures.

Opened in the thirties, it is an enormous cathedral of transportation.  The scale is hard to capture with a camera.  The pictures above are just part of the main hall of the station.  In the bottom right of the second one you can make out a tall, dark statue.  It's a memorial to railroad workers lost in combat and it looks tiny in that picture, but here's a closer view showing it towering over waiting passengers.

It's a grand piece of architecture, with a lot of neoclassical influence.  In an adjacent hall one of the walls is covered with an enormous sculpted panel entitled The Spirit of Transportation.

 

Pretty heroic stuff.  But, impressive as it was, even it paled by comparison with what I saw once we arrived in Washington.  But that's a story for another day.

Delaware Water Gap

So last weekend Mrs Walles and I went to New York (the state, not the city...well, actually we did pass through the city...it's complicated and I'll get to that another day).  Our favourite spot to stop on the way is just on the other side of the border with New Jersey, at the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, or the DWG as we usually call it.

The Delaware river is an important landmark in the northeast US. It marks the borders of several states, including the one that shares its name.  It is a very old river, pre-dating the already old geological ructions that produced the stubby mountains known as the Appalachians (I'm happy to describe them as stubby, since they are compared to, say, the Rockies or the Southern Alps, but it's all relative - they wouldn't look so stubby if I had to walk up one).

Anyway, because the river is older than the mountains it cuts through them as it pleases, its channel having carved out a place for itself as the mountains rose around it.  This creates what is called a water gap in this part of the world, which is basically a river gorge cutting through a mountain range.  It's lucky for us, too, because it provides a convenient breach in the mountains which the interstate highway takes advantage of, along with the railroad.

Apart from the convenience the DWG is spectacularly beautiful, and I highly recommend a visit.  Although the Delaware is an important river it is still relatively small at this point (and relative to other American rivers it is also small, similar in flow to the Waikato River).

At the DWG the river cuts through a ridge, called Blue Mountain on the Pennsylvania side and Kittatinny Mountain on the New Jersey side, and the walls are almost vertical, yet still heavily wooded, like the whole region.  Here's Kittatinny, seen from Turtle Beach, a little sandy spot beside the river.

The river bends to the right once it reaches Kittatinny, so that's the side of Blue Mountain to the right of the frame, with an equally spectacular vertical wall facing Kittatinny across the river.  I only managed to get a snap of the face of Blue Mountain from the road a couple of days later, on the way back towards Pennsylvania.

Incidentally, since the river forms the border, all of these photos show two states, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

My favourite of the photos we took (which required a return visit to the car to swap cameras after mine ran down - but it was worth it) is of Kittatinny framed by the lush vegetation at the side of the river.

Doesn't it make you want to go there?  It makes me want to go back.

Thunder and lightning

Sorry posts have been scarce this week, Mrs Walles and I have been away. More on that in upcoming posts.  Right now, though, I'm distracted by the dirty great thunderstorm headed my way.  It shouldn't be a surprise, thunderstorms have been forecast for our neck of the woods today just like they have most days for the last two weeks.  But it's been a lovely sunny day until now and I thought I would be able to get away with nipping out to the shops for ingredients for tomorrow's dinner.

And of course as I closed the door I heard a crack of thunder and looked up to see half the sky consumed by dark and brooding clouds.  I retreated uncertainly and now, having checked the weather, find that the storm is predicted to be severe with possible hail and gales.  So I think I'll give the shops a miss for the moment, at least until it has passed.  To be honest I'm not too worried about postponing my jaunt - it is very hot and muggy out right now.


A storm passed over us on Monday accompanied by something I had never heard before, a constant loud and low rumble.  At first I took it to be thunder and but it was so unfamiliar that I actually began to wonder if it really was thunder, or if it was some weather phenomenon hitherto unknown to me.  In a moment of panic it occurred to me that a tornado might make a sound like that (we aren't at much risk of tornadoes here - but it can happen).  Fortunately I was mistaken: it was rolling thunder after all, and a few minutes later the torrents of rain and wind arrived.  It wasn't a twister but it was dramatic all the same.

And now that I've finished this I'll stick my head out the door and see if it's all clear.  Well, I'll look out the window first - otherwise, if I'm not careful, I'll end up with a spiky hairdo and a shocked expression.

An old-fashioned deck-raising

Mrs Walles and I noticed the other day that something structurally unsound is going on with our back deck, so we emailed our landlord.  We heard back that she is arranging to have it rectified (possibly replaced) by some Amish, which is very exciting. Only in Pennsylvania.

I hope that there will be fiddles and lemonade and Harrison Ford skulking in the background...though I suspect it will be actually be some Amish men Just Getting The Job Done.  And they probably wouldn't appreciate it if we charged tourists money to stand in our yard and watch them work.

I've seen Amish working before, actually, roofing a house down the road.  They don't have to pay tax, and they have an outstanding reputation, so naturally the non-Amish contractors hate them because they undercut them and take all their work.

But that's nothing to do with me, I'm just wide-eyed outsider, who thinks it's neat to be connected in any way with these interesting people.  Let's face it, I'm not likely to have much contact with them otherwise.  They probably view a person like me (a computer programmer and technology writer) as some kind of antichrist.  I don't think they go in for popish rituals like exorcism, but I'd rather not find out the hard way.

Lincoln people together

There wasn't a heck of a lot to see from the hotel room we stayed in in York last week, as you can see.

We weren't in the thick of it.  The most interesting thing about that picture, as far as I can tell, is the road running through the centre of it.  That's US Route 30.  If you turned left on it and drove and drove you'd eventually end up in Atlantic City, New Jersey on the Atlantic coast.  If you turned right you'd eventually find yourself in Astoria, Oregon on the Pacific Coast.  It's a road that runs across America.

There are several of these, a notable one being Interstate 80 which also runs through Pennsylvania on its way from New York to San Francisco.  But even though it has been superseded, Route 30 is interesting because it was made up largely from large parts of the Lincoln Highway, the first highway to cross the country.  Many stretches of Route 30 still follow the Lincoln Highway, though the bit in the picture above is not one of them, but rather one of the many bypasses that evade town centres that the original highway passed right through.  On the whole, though, Pennsylvania is a good state in which to follow the historic route.  It's a nice drive and some stretches (such as west of Lancaster) give a real taste of what highway travel must have been like in the US during the first half of the twentieth century.


It's said that the Lincoln Highway inspired the vast Interstate Highway System which eventually put it and its friends in the shade, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower, then in the army, travelled along it in 1919.  It may not be as famous as Route 66, but it has outlasted it (lasting almost a hundred years is itself an impressive feat here) and gathered a lot of history along the way.  I think Route 30 deserves to be remembered, even if it is by a foreigner who doesn't drive.

Watch out

Mrs Walles and I had to go to York earlier this week so that the government could "capture my biometrics".  It's less violating than it sounds, they just wanted my fingerprints, photo and signature.  We didn't get to see much of York itself, our business being on the outskirts, but from what I can tell, the New York is a little more exciting.

On the way back we took one of the state roads (routes, as they call them here, all with numbers, all of which everyone except me seems to be able to remember).  At a few points along the way we passed signs like this one.

That's fair enough.  There are plenty of deer here, even around towns.  We had one browse through our back yard last summer and that was just the one we saw.  They aren't that worried by people, or roads, so they are a real hazard.  More than once I've seen a carcass lying on the side of the road.  But wild deer aren't that weird to us Kiwis.  The next one isn't something you won't see back in New Zealand, though.

That's a horse and buggy, specifically the kind that the Amish like to use.  They have to use the road just like everyone else, and you'll see them out in their buggies or riding bicycles in their uncomfortable-looking, old-fashioned garb, even in the ludicrous heat and humidity that the summers bring here.  On this trip I saw an Amish man ploughing a field with a team of horses and an Amish couple tending their garden.

The generally acknowledged Amish centre in Pennsylvania is Lancaster County, around the town of Lancaster (surprise, surprise) which isn't far from where we were in York.  Unfortunately the Amish and their way of life have become such a tourist attraction that many of them have left for distant parts of the US to start a new life away from the glare of publicity.  There are still plenty there, though, and the tourists flock in their thousands to tiny places like Intercourse and Blue Ball (I know, I know) where specially built attractions cater to their every need.  It's pretty much like Rotorua or Queenstown, but in a corn field.  And, though it can feel a little exploitative and artificial, it's really great fun.  More on that another time, perhaps.

For all their differences, which are many, I do feel an affinity to the Amish in one tiny way.  Like most New Zealanders, and unlike most Americans, they dry their washing outside on a line.  That's probably where the similarities end, though.  I doubt I'll be joining them in their spiritual endeavour any time soon - I don't think I could handle the beard for a start.

Garden decor

Last time I left off with a teaser about what people put in their gardens instead of plants, and now I'm feeling a bit sheepish because I'm short of photos to illustrate just what I mean.  Possibly this is because I'm too busy taking it all in when I come across a good specimen to snap a picture, and possibly because when I see something I want to document I'm worried that the owner might view my photographic interest with displeasure, and express that displeasure through the medium of bad language or firearms.

Anyway, whatever the reason I don't have a lot to show, but needless to say that googling for "yard decoration" will turn up plenty of examples.  You've got your gnomes and other statuary, of course, your fake flowers, your wind chimes, your little windmills and so on, which are familiar from New Zealand.  There is a lot of seasonal decoration too (inside and out).  Imagine the kind of thing that people around the world do for Christmas and multiply it by all the varied public holidays.  At the moment Easter is the theme, before that it was St Patrick's day.  First shamrocks, now bunnies.

I've got no problem with this on the whole, it's not unfamiliar even if quite a few people take it over the top.  But there are some elements which aren't so familiar.  Like the flags.

I don't mean Old Glory, though I do have plenty of examples of the stars and stripes flying outside homes. Here.

And here.

And here.  Handy if you forget which country you're in.

No, I'm talking about garden flags.  Mrs Walles and I have one, everyone does.  Some people have more than one.  They're little flags that hang down from a metal frame you stick in the ground (the middle US flag up there is really an overgrown garden flag, to give you the idea).  You can get them in all kinds of patterns, typically they are seasonal, so as you can imagine bunnies and chicks are common at the moment.  I think they're rather sweet, and I didn't suspect their existence before I came here.

Of course some people kill two birds with one stone, and fly a stars and stripes garden flag, especially around the patriotic holidays.  Now if only they made them with the design of the New Zealand flag, I'd be able to ruffle a few feathers around here...

A disclaimer

In writing this blog I'm bound to attribute a lot of things to Americans that don't really apply to all Americans - indeed I've probably done it already.  I don't mean stereotypes, which I hope to avoid, but the danger of generalising from the people I have encountered to those I haven't.  Because they aren't all the same.  Far from it.

Take, for example, the classic stereotype that American service is excellent, but insincere.  I believe there are places - though I haven't personally visited them - like Los Angeles and Southern California generally that this is true. Visitors to those places have the stereotype reinforced each time they go.

I can personally attest, though, that neither part of the stereotype applies in heartland Pennsylvania.  Here the service can be good or bad, but either way it is generally very sincere.  They're good, salt of the earth types, and I just don't think they have any time for putting on a show.  Even in New York City, where service generally depends on how much you're willing to fork over, I have many times experienced spontaneous and sincere offers of help - the hotel doorman who hails you a cab, or the theatre usher who offers to take your photo.

The point is that attitudes vary widely in the US and it is a point I didn't really appreciate before I came here.  Of course I didn't think Americans were all cookie cutter duplicates.  But I didn't appreciate that their differences from one another might outweigh their similarities.  I'm still not sure exactly how diverse they are, but it is a lot more than I expected.

The differences cut across each other.  There are geographical differences, ethnic and racial differences, language differences, religious differences, educational differences and who knows what other kinds of social differences.  There are individual idiosyncrasies, too, but if you look carefully you can identify characteristics that are common among, say, New Yorkers, or rural Pennsylvanians or urban Jews.  Take the whole nation, though, and it is a lot harder to pin down those commonalities.

I'm not sure why this is.  Individualism is a virtue here, but is that a cause or an effect?  It is a documented fact that before independence the thirteen colonies that made up the fledgling United States (pop quiz, can you name them?) had more to do with the mother country than with each other, so even in the beginning this country was diverse.  More recent immigration from far-flung parts of the world was no doubt another contributor.  And when the land itself varies so much, from snow-capped mountains to vast plains to deserts to forests to swamps, you would expect the people to vary to match.  Enough of my half-baked theories, though.

The upshot of all this is that it is hard to generalise from the Americans I meet to Americans in general, and I ask you, gentle reader, to keep that in mind.  When you see me boldly state that Americans do this or think that, always attach a footnote in your head reading "at least the Americans I have encountered".  And if, by chance, you happen to be one of those Americans I haven't encountered, feel free to correct me where I stray from the truth.

Don't save the sceptical treatment just for me, though.  Do it whenever you hear a weary traveller report on their experiences.  I remember in New Zealand often listening on the radio to talking heads just returned from LA or, rarely, New York or further afield, reporting on the attitudes or behaviour of the American people.  Now I know just how suspect those reports were.

Mind you, that hasn't stopped me from doing pretty much the same thing in this blog.  Just consider yourself warned.

Penn's Woods

Before I left New Zealand my impending departure would often become a talking point, even with people I had only slight contact with.  Reactions were mixed.  Many people weren't sure where Pennsylvania was, and said as much; far more amusing - or perhaps worrying - were the people (more than one) who were excited that I was going where the vampires come from.

I assume (unless there's something they haven't told me here...maybe that's the reason we keep so much garlic in the house) that they were getting confused with Transylvania, the region of Romania where Bram Stoker set Dracula.  I laughed to myself but the joke was eventually on me because when I finally got here the extent of my own ignorance became clear.

It wasn't only ignorance.  There were plenty of things that I didn't know about the US and life here (there still are, and they pop up every so often to confound me), but there were also things that in a way I did know but nevertheless didn't expect.

Take that confusion between Pennsylvania and Transylvania, for instance.  They both end in -sylvania, Latin for "woods".  Transylvania is "on the other side of the woods" and Pennsylvania is the name Charles II gave to the vast region of woods that he granted to William Penn - "Penn's woods".  That should have tipped me off that there would be some trees here.  I'd also read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, recording his hiking of the Appalachian Trail through several eastern states, including Pennsylvania.  Again, just the title should have been a sufficient hint.

And yet it came as a great surprise to find that vast tracts of Pennsylvania are covered in trees instead of, oh I don't know, rolling hills or something.  Maybe this comes partly from growing up in Central Otago, where forests are something you visit in the car.  New Zealand, too, was once largely covered in trees until farmers turned up.  Here, though, even after the farmers took their share the trees are everywhere.  There is a stand of them in the back yard and visible beyond the next row of houses are woods which stretch on and on out of sight.

These aren't evergreen forests as you find in New Zealand, either, but largely full of deciduous maples, oaks, hickories and dozens of others. I'm used to these trees as interesting ornamental plantings in parks and gardens, and I think that the very idea of millions of them growing in the wild didn't quite register before I came here.

It's not just Pennsylvania, by the way, but most of the eastern part of the US that's this way.  Outside the towns the trees generally rule unless beaten back by humans.

That's one of the reasons I'm writing this blog - to draw attention to the unexpected things about America.  Some are like the woods: the evidence was all there but I never joined the dots.  Mostly, though, it's things that Americans only rarely refer to in books, movies and TV, presumably because they are considered too mundane to mention. They can't be blamed for that: when you're so close to the action it's easy not to see the wood for the trees.