Our Day Off

So, mom and I are here in Northumberland County, in the land of blood sucking pencils.  There are lots of interesting things here you can see without even getting out of the car.  I like sitting in the back window and meowing at all the tail-gators (they're like alligators, except they're cars).  It drives Al crazy, he's the retired police officer/realtor/cemetery keeper/fireman/FEMA guy who likes to drive the women around.  Mom and Mary haven't had to drive at all hardly.  I wish he'd let me drive, but he says cats can't reach the pedals so it's unsafe.  I say just let me steer, but he says no, I'm too dangerous.  I say of course I'm dangerous, I'm a cat.
We spent the weekend tooling around the hills, looking at stuff.  Mom and Al kept stopping and getting out and reading things.  They looked at all those hysterical markers and read every single one.  Personally, I would have taken pictures of them and read them later in the privacy of my litter box, but no, they took pictures AND read them. But we did find some really cool stuff.  There are lots of buildings including a big prison that was built in 1896 and looks like a huge fort with a dungeon.  I don't think I'd like to explore there even though it was totally cool to look at.  Probably had ghosts of cats killed by giant rats or something.  Back then cats had to work for a living.  Barbaric.
We found roads that were closed from the flooding and, of course, mom and Al had to drive up them.  Everywhere we went we came dangerously close to water.  It would be on the right side of the car, then go under the road and be on the left side of the car.  And even though they were being totally cool about it, I knew that parts of those roads had washed out during the floods.  I laid in the back window pretending to be bored but couldn't keep my tail from twitching occasionally.  When they got to a highway I thought, okay, we're safe! but no.  Mom saw a little bitty road and told Al they needed to explore it.  He turned the car around and off we went- into the wilderness.
Did you know there are bears in Pennsylvania?  Well, there are.  So we drove (with the windows open: mom loves the smell of the woods) along this dirt path off into the trees.  There were piles of rocks everywhere.  Then there were piles of stones.  Then there were piles of bricks.  Starting to sound like the three little pigs?  Well, there were also piles of asphalt and cement and wood and all kinds of stuff.  Pretty hefty beavers, I thought because all of this debris was around a big bowl of water.  Of course the humans got out of the car to get closer to the shore.  Down in the pond there were two big, yellow Caterpillar vehicles.  One of them was clearly stuck in the mud.  The other one apparently tried to get the first one out, but had also gotten stuck because although its shovel was down in the water, its tracks were dangling in the air.
They followed the road even farther into the woods and suddenly there was this small lake (or big pond) and even I have to admit it was really pretty.  I stayed in the car, of course, but mom and Al went over to the edge.  They found a dead rattlesnake there (at least they think it was a rattlesnake.  It was a skeleton with fangs).  Mom wanted me to come look, but I declined.  A family drove by on four-wheelers, pointing and laughing.  That was when I saw the squirrel with the binoculars.
The squirrel population in Pennsylvania is revolting, and by that I don't mean they're ugly.  They are getting organized.  Everywhere there are lookouts tracking human activity.  Every day we drive by the "Seminary for Suicidal Squirrels".   We have to be on the lookout for the little buggers that escape from the home and dart out in front of us.  We aren't going fast and Al always honks and slows down, but they make a concerted effort to dive under our tires.  So far we've avoided each and every one.
We went to a lot of cemeteries that day.  For some reason both mom and Al like to go see the graves of dead strangers.  There was one that we looked at that was kind of cool up on a back road.  It was fenced and had a lot of crosses.  Then right next to it, also fenced, was a Catholic cemetery.  Right next to that, and duly fenced, was a Greek Orthodox cemetery.  And across the fence from that was a Jewish cemetery.   I guess the fences were there to keep the dead from sneaking from one cemetery to another because then God would get mixed up and send the wrong people to hell.  And Jewish people don't even have hell.  There wasn't a pet cemetery there, but there is one on the road to work.  Mom and Al talked about going to see that.  If they do, I'm staying home.  Too many dog ghosts there.
While we were out and about, we stopped at a place called Turkey Hill.  It was a convenience store.  Mom had to use the facilities and when she came out she said, "You do not want to go in there!"  Apparently it was quite stinky and it was that way before she went in.  Outside Mr. Al filled the car and aired up the tires.  He's such a sweetheart.  There were a  bunch of bikers there, so of course mom struck up a conversation.  One of them asked if she knew where someplace was and she said sorry, not from around here.  The guy said that was too bad because their leader was lost and wouldn't admit it.  Mom advised him to fill up his tank and head for Route 81.  Then they could figure out where they were.  Off they roared, in the wrong direction, tattoos glittering in the autumn sun.
And it was a beautiful day.  The sun was shining, the sky was blue all over and it was just the right temperature to lay in the window and snooze.  I could watch leaves fluttering down like songbirds, all bright colors: red, purple, yellow, orange.  We were tooling around with the windows open and even though I'm not a dog, I did enjoy having a bit of a breeze blowing through my fur.
The next place we went was to see the windmills.  Now as you know, we have lots of windmills in Mouskin, but Al had never seen them up close, so we went looking.  It was very difficult as we found out that windmills don't just sit on top of the hill, they move and hide.  We saw them and drove up on the hill, then they had moved.  Then we went down another road and saw them, but when we tried to get to them, they hid again.  Finally, we found the road that led to the maintenance place for the windmills.  Al climbed a little hill.  Mom did too, but it took her twice as long and she sounded like a steam engine.  Al thought he might have to carry her out through the locked gate (oh yeah, the gate was locked and no trespassing) which he couldn't even on his best firefighting day.  But they finally made it out to the windmills.  It was so quiet (despite the bears) that they could hear the windmills creaking in the breeze.  Mom took pictures for Al of the windmills sticking out of his head.  All he needed was a beanie.

Shamokin

Mom and I are in Shamokin, a little coal town nestled deep in the hills of Central Pennsylvania.  At one time this was a booming place, bustling with coal miners, bankers, wealthy investors and other workers.  You can tell that by the presence of majestic old buildings with fine masonry and carved stone decorations, beautifully detailed Victorian homes and artfully wrought metals and statuary.  This town is a dream for anyone interested in architectural details and variety of structures.

But the sad part is that these buildings are empty, or crumbling, or being sub-divided.  The native rock here has been used for centuries to make sturdy, long-lasting homes.  Amish farms are built of these materials, by hand with tools wielded without the aid of electricity.  This is Shamokin, a shadow if it’s former glory.
The people here are tired, I think.  Tired of being broke.  One by one the businesses pull out.  More and more people are out of work, needing help.  Things are a little dingy: the houses, the streets, the signs, as if coal dust had settled over everything and colored the mood of the place.

But these are good people.  They work hard, they tend to one another.  They’re proud, too, don’t want to take help, even when they need it.  One of the things that’s hardest for mom is to convince folks that it’s ok to get help from the government.  It seems that their pride is all they have left sometimes, after all the flooding, and they don’t want to give that up.  Mom and the guys do their best to convince them that they paid their taxes and these taxes are coming back to them to help when they need it most.  And that works mostly because it’s true.  They deserve help and they need it.

Looking around it seems even the sky is tired.  Gray skies raining on gray-green hills.  The water is still running high and it too, is gray.  It takes just a little storm to restart the flooding.  Folks have been cleaning and fixing, then cleaning and fixing again.   It’s wearing on everyone and it shows.

Help is here for the flooding, from the government and the voluntary agencies.  But the help is not enough to fix the real problems.  The town is ghostly.  People seem haunted as they pass.  Younger people have left this town, and the older ones will stay here until they die.  There are no jobs here to speak of: every big business that built this town has moved on.  There are few farms because the land is so steep and great piles of coal and slag mar the hillsides.  The town, and in fact the entire area, has been used up and left for dead.

But these people aren’t dead.  They are pulling themselves up, one by one; out of the the flooded mire, cleaning up, fixing up and living.  And when the sun shines here again, they will turn their faces to the sun.
Is there a future for these people?  They deserve one, a future with jobs and children and good health.  The people of Shamokin are nothing if not resilient.  And once they shake off the water, they’ll be ok.