So, I’ll throw this question open to the class: is it pronounces Wilkes-Barry, or Wilkes-Bear? Ask anyone within a 75-mile radius of the place, and you get a 50-50 split. I was told by a girl I went to high school with, who was from the city in question, that it was Wilkes-Barry. But I’ve […]
Read MoreOur friends Denise and Lynn have been trying to get us to Wilkes-Barre for at least a year to see the Sterling Hotel, an abandoned building on the Susquehanna that was one of the more opulent places of its day. We got a chance to visit at the beginning of June, and out we went […]
Read MoreSigns and buildings are always a casualty of urban renewal, and whereas some need/have to go for safety concerns or plain darn ugliness, there’s always one or two gems that caught in the friendly fire. Allentown has been preparing for a brand new hockey stadium downtown which hopes to bring some revitalization to the downtown […]
Read MoreLast Friday I went to my regularly-scheduled part-time job, video editing the television broadcast for a local church, and discovered as I walked in the door that this was not going to be an ordinary day. Funeral services were going to be held in the main sanctuary, and for somebody well-known, I was told. It […]
Read MoreLast year, in my never-ending quest to find new ways of getting to the same old places, I happened through Jonestown, Pennsylvania on PA 72. I saw something interesting out of the corner of my eye on the side of the building and so I pulled over and investigated. When I did, I got some […]
Read MoreDriving along the Southern Tier. I still had the bad taste of Bath in my mouth, and as we passed Corning and Elmira I didn’t want to even think of stopping to go through and do some sign-spotting. Instead, as we skimmed along the Pennsylvania border, the sign-spotting came to us. Somehow, I had completely […]
Read MoreOur trip through the north end of the Finger Lakes had been glorious, as it almost always is. The lakes themselves are, of course, spectacular, but even the spaces in between are bucolic, full of meadows and farms and wide-open spaces. The normal routine for us has been to go to Geneva and cut south […]
Read MoreIn the last post, I stated without reservation that Skaneateles, New York, for my money, is the best small town in the United States, and even taunted Lititz, Pennsylvania in the process. In fact, I even had to tone down my taunting in the final draft of that post. As for the positive aspects of […]
Read MoreNot the most original title, huh? But this is the song I would play every time I came home from college: I had the exact moment timed on my audio cassette version of Billy Joel’s Greatest Hits so “New York State of Mind” would play as soon as I crossed the border. That kind of […]
Read MoreOne of the most interesting aspects of what I do here is the reactions I get. I’ll be covering this in greater detail in some future posts, but I just wanted to say how happy I was to receive word from the owner of one local business who appreciated a contribution I made to Instagram. […]
Read MoreAdamstown, PA is known as the Antique Capital of Pennsylvania, boasting such massive outlets as Shupp’s Grove, Renninger’s, Green Dragon, The Mad Hatter, and a number of others to warm the heart of any seeker of vintage stuff out there. It had been a while since I had been down there, and my memory was […]
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