Now and Then

I know you’ve been hearing a lot about this lately, but I’m trying to soak up and enjoy Pennsylvania as much as I can. I’m guessing this is the most amount of time I’ll be able to spend here in a very long time. Also, it’s been interesting to see what’s the same and what isn’t compared to 10 years ago when I was a permanent resident. So this entry is probably going to be incredibly boring for anyone who doesn’t have Ellsworth somewhere in their name, or who hasn’t lived in Marietta or Lancaster for 10+ years. If you don’t fall into one of those categories, I’m guessing you’ll be bored if you force yourself to read this. Or you could skim it and be slightly amused by what a country bumpkin I am.

Changed: Donegal Place. For those of you who don’t know, this is the dead end street I grew up on. A brick row of houses, surrounded by jungle-like, let your childhood imagination run wild, forest. The houses don’t look that different, it’s what’s across the street that has changed. Our old ruins and forts are actually well groomed. Brick walls aren’t covered in graffiti, there are no old tires laying around ready to give your short legs a boost up a tree, and the trails are mulched. It’s actually pretty nice. But it’s definitely different. The target audience is more like old couples that would like to go on strolls, as opposed to jungle children who would like to run wild. The Loner is even getting totally restored! I’ll take pictures.

Unchanged: The Food. Lebonon bologna, hamloaf, scrapple, shoofly pie, whoopie pie, red beat eggs, chow chow, funnel cake… They’re all still here in all their glory. Anthony’s fully embracing PA’s obsession with pretzels. So far we’ve had caramel pretzels, a sandwich with a pretzel bun, peanut butter filled chocolate covered pretzels, a pretzel dog, a pretzel the size of both of our heads put together, and now I just need to serve pretzels as an ice cream topper. Mmm.

I actually had normal scrapple for the first time ever the other day. It wasn’t anything like the deliciousness Mom makes every Christmas. I wouldn’t say it was absolutely disgusting, but I definitely wouldn’t say it was pleasant. It was the flavor of sausage but the texture of corn meal. Weird. On a sweeter note, Wilbur buds are still better than Hershey kisses.

Changed: Racial diversity. It’s about time. It’s nice to see that Marietta doesn’t seem quite as monochromatic as it used to be.

Unchanged: The weather. Still hot hazy and humid.

Changed: 441. It’s lined with townhouses, that apparently aren’t selling very quickly. There’s also a Disney world sized church that Ant calls the “Mega corn field Church.” The farmland next to Sheetz is up for sale as commercial space. :(

Unchanged: Marietta Day. I got a pair of cute, red shoes for $1. And as we were sorting through 50 cent baby clothes, we gathered four items and tried to pay two bucks. The guy smiled and said, “Eh, make it a dollar.” We told him he was a hard bargain.

There was a pretty good band playing, made up of kids maybe in their late teens. It was surprisingly folksy and simultaneously great music. We later overheard them telling friends they’d be playing at the Chameleon this weekend. Happy.

Unchanged: Mrs. Madsen…coolest high school art teacher ever. I saw her on Marietta day, she says hi to all of you Ellsworth girls out there. I don’t know if you know this, but all I had to do was mention my heritage as an Ellsworth and she exempted me from Intro to art.

Changed: No Marietta still doesn’t have it’s own grocery store, or traffic lights on its main (market) street, but it does have it’s own theatre company. It’s called the Susquehanna Stage Co., and it’s run by Jim Johnson the director of my high school musicals. It makes me happy. Also Unchanged: Nichole (one of my best friends from elementary, middle and high school), is playing in many of their productions, as she should.

Unchanged: Kindness. I strapped on Ira, and headed on a 3 mile walk with Anthony to go pick up our car from the shop. 3 miles isn’t particularly long for us, but we started getting nervous after the 1st mile when the grey skies turned black, and drizzle turned into GOLF BALL sized hail! This all happened rather quickly, so we turned around and sprinted, while dodging huge marbles from the sky. Anthony cried out “I’ve been hit,” as I continued to cover Ira’s head, and made it to the cover of Herr’s Market just as I was hit on the head. It mostly hurt my pride though. We and everyone in the market watched with awe. The ground was covered in white, and the hail falling made explosive splashes in puddles. We stalled for some time and finally picked up the offer of a persistent Samaritan who insisted on driving us to the auto shop. The storm had pretty much passed by then, but we weren’t sure if there would be another surprise attack or not. So nice. I still need to make her some brownies or something.

Changed: Park City. The Mall in Lancaster, not the city of Anthony’s origin. This caused for only slight confusion in the beginning of our relationship. Anyway, Park City looks so modern. They’ve somehow afforded a mega face lift since I’ve been there last…6 years ago? We were checking out phone deals there. Let us know if you have any suggestion on phones or phone companies you absolutely love.

Unchanged: Roots. Ant gave a great update on what this farmer’s market is like. If you haven’t been there for 10 or 15 years, it’s exactly the same. When we went to the Intercourse Amish/Mennonite Visitor’s Center, Anthony asked our Amish friend Sam, something about Roots. Sam didn’t know what we were talking about until it registered. “Oh, you mean ruts.” I apparently forgot how to really pronounce it.

Unchanged: The landmark donkey is still there. That’s right. Here in Lancaster county we don’t remember the names of roads, we instead give direction that sound something like this. “Turn left at the golf ball house, you’ll know it when you see it. Go straight for a while and then turn left at the donkey. This particular donkey (the one on Colebrook road next to the tree that swallowed the sign), has been there FOREVER! I thought he actually died because his little grazing area has been vacant for a while, but then Anthony discovered that he’s looking extremely old and hangs out in the back by his little shed. How will we give direction when he dies?

Unchanged: Lancaster 2nd Ward. There are loads of new faces, but the staples are still there: The Shaffers, Williamsons, Gubbins, Resslers, Merrises, Calverts, Herberts…and for not much longer the Pickets.

That was extremely long, but let me know if there’s something you’d like an update on that I didn’t cover. Love you!
Sharon

May Day and Marietta Day

Sharon and I have had the opportunity to go out and enjoy a few of the local traditions in the area. Our first day here we went to Maytown to celebrate "May Day". It was the 250th anniversary of the founding of the town and so I got the feeling the celebration was a little bigger than in past years. There were a several events spanning several days. Most of the excitement toke place on a stage they had set up in the town square. There was a historical walk they had set up and a few tents selling some merchandise along with food stands where I was able to have real funnel cake, a local fried dough delight. The biggest tradition was the May Pole Dance, where young women hold ribbons and dance around the pole in a way that the ribbon braids itself down the pole. It wasn't really as exciting or technical as I had originally thought, but still fun from the traditional aspect.

Funnel Cake

May Pole Dance (There is another picture posted earlier by Sharon) 

Marietta Day on the other hand was completely different. I've been trying to think of a way to explain it. For those of you who might be familiar with Swiss Days held in Midway, UT, it is kind of like that, but more informal. It's basically a huge community spring clean/yard sale/fund raiser all in one big event.

The main street of the town, Market Street, is closed to traffic and people from all over the community just set up shop on the curb. From what I could tell all you have to have is some old stuff you want to sell. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure. There were people selling off their old children’s clothes, movies, books, CD's, car parts, fishing gear, tools, dentist equipment, etc.. There were some more professional/legitimate set ups too. There were also people selling art and photography, jewelry and the like. Of course you can't have an event like this without food. There were your carnival type trailer food offerings(again with Funnel cake), to your local high school sports teams selling brownies and everything in-between. To top it all off there were a few musical groups/bands sprinkled throughout doing performances. It really was an interesting commercial experience. We weren’t in the market for much, but we found some good clothes for Ira between $0.25 and $1.00 so we were happy.

Market Street on Marietta Day (This picture is worth examining closer)

Anyway, it's been fun to take part of some local community events. They really seem to bring people together. It's also great to finally have a point of reference for when Sharon brings up her childhood memories and can understand why they are such fond memories.

The Big Apple

Sharon’s cousin, Mary, and her husband, Barney, came to DC for a little vacation  before Barney starts his MBA and Mary gives birth to their first child. I got a few days off work so we could all go and play. We headed up to Marietta, PA to pick up Gabe a friend Sharon grew up with and the rest of us got to know when we all lived in the same apartment complex in Provo.

With the gang together we drove over to New York to get as much in as we could in one day. We took the ferry over from Staten Island which allowed us to see the Statue of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. We then took the metro up to time square and got tickets to Phantom of the Opera (we tried to get into Wicked, but that didn’t happen). We had some New York pizza, went to Central Park, saw the Apple store, checked out the Trump Tower and its supper expensive ice cream shop (we passed on that for some Baskin Robins), saw ground Zero, and then headed home.

New York was a packed day so we took Thursday nice and slow in Marietta. We visited Hersey, PA (really Derry, pronounced dairy, Township) and enjoyed the magic of Hershey’s Chocolate World. We stopped by Sharon’s old work, ‘The Country Table’, to get a taste of the Pennsylvania Dutch food. It was really good. That afternoon we headed back to Washington. More pictures can be found on our DC album for the summer.

This was a really fun trip. We were with good fun people and we all got along well. It was nice to get out and just have fun. However, as great as a place as New York City is I realized that I probably wouldn’t want to live there. I do think that living close enough to make it there once or twice a year to enjoy Broadway and other attractions would be really fun.