Pennsylvania Vacations by Ruth Paget
When my husband Laurent joined the United States Navy, his first duty station was Norfolk, Virginia. The Navy packed our household goods and sent them off as we packed clothes and books. We strapped Florence in the back seat and set off for Virginia, the Old Dominion State, with Florence singing to pop music on the radio.
Getting to Virginia from Wisconsin required a lot of cross-country driving. Laurent and I took turns at the wheel. I drove in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Ohio while Laurent drove through Chicago, part of Ohio, and Pennsylvania. The drive into Breezewood, Pennsylvania in the dark and up and down mountains resembled a roller coaster ride.
The landscape around the freeway had begun to get mountainous east of Cleveland. The grass was so green it reminded me of Ireland. The homes in Pennsylvania have very high roofs with chimneys on either end of the roof. The homes are symmetrical and are nicely landscaped.
We woke up to fresh morning air in the mountains. We read in our hotel literature that the Gettysburg Battlefield was just sixty miles away from Breezewood.
We set out for the famous battlefield on U.S. Highway 30 for a jaunt through the mountains on a country road. The first thing we noticed were the runaway truck ramps on the downside of mountain grades. Those ramps made us very careful about the speed and control of our car. Along the way, we admired how people in Pennsylvania tended to their spring gardens with tulips and daffodils popping up everywhere. Gardening is very much an East Coast and European pastime.
When we arrived at Gettysburg, we did the auto tour. Most of the commemorative plaques that we read around the Battlefield were conciliatory towards the South, saying that the Southern soldiers were courageous. There is a huge monument with General Robert E. Lee on top of it for Virginian soldiers. In typical European fashion, Laurent knew all about the importance of Gettysburg and said it broke the morale of the South. Pickett’s Charge and Cupp’s Hill were especially important engagements.
I did not think I would see Pennsylvania again, but thirty years later, Laurent and I were driving to Philadelphia as a weekend trip from a work trip in Maryland. Our mission in Philadelphia was to buy our daughter Florence a Liberty Bell replica souvenir as a gift.
We found parking near Independence Hall. I stayed in the car to avoid possible tickets or towing. I looked around at the brick houses and thought of Laurie Halse Anderson’s book Fever 1793 about a plague in Philadelphia that year. (This is a young adult book that I read as a youth services librarian prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.) I thought about that book a lot in Germany when the whole base was dealing with how to identify the cause and cure of Ebola.
As I sat in the car, I tried to pick out the house that was best protected against plague. The one I liked had a basement opening onto the street for coal, a door which was three steps off the ground, and had a gated area for garbage that could be shoveled out or washed down depending on the season. I would also make sure to have a house with a foyer where people could exchange outside shoes for slippers to keep down tracking in germs from outside.
Laurent came back with the Liberty Bell souvenir and said we would have to go back through Delaware, so we could tour downtown.
We both yelled, “Cool!” when we saw the steps of the art museum where Oscar winner Sylvester Stallone ran as his Rocky Balboa boxer character. Laurent, the film buff, was happy.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks (Japan) and Teen in China
Click for Laurent Paget's Book
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| Ruth Paget Photo |
