Welcome to Pennsylvania

We crossed through Delaware into Pennsylvania. We got to our hotel late, and woke up at the crack of noon.

This morning, there were three men sitting on a bench outside my hotel. They were wearing crimson jackets with giant University of Alabama logos on the backs.

Here I was, in a remote community in the Keystone State, not far from the New York line. A rural hamlet with sprawling fields, rolling hillsides, breathtaking single-wides, and lots of Chevy Camaros on blocks in driveways.

In these parts, you do not see many Alabama Crimson Tide sympathizers. What are the odds?

I approached the men.

“Roll Tide,” I said.

“Roll Tide,” they said.

“Roll Tide,” my wife said.

“Roll Tide,” their wives said.

And then we were done.

Pennsylvania looks good today. There is a wide scope of color. Rolling golden farmland is cut with a distant winter-colored Appalachia. Old barns, grain silos, withered cornfields. To say it’s beautiful would be selling it short. This is pure Americana.

Earlier today we got stuck behind an Amish buggy on the highway. That was a treat. A young man and woman were in the carriage. She was bird-skinny. He had the hint of an Abraham-Lincoln beard. I waved. They scowled at me.

I stopped at an antique store. The place was filled with ancient rural equipment and gramophones. The old woman behind the counter was talkative.

“Cold enough fer ya?” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You don’t hafta call me ma’am.”

“Yes, I do.”

“Why?”

“Because you are a ma’am.”

She showed me antiques that dated back to the founding of Pennsylvania. Some were from her own family. Several items related to the Quaker tradition.

“My family was all Friends,” she told me.

“Good for you,” I replied. “My family can’t stand each other.”

“No,” she said with a laugh. “A ‘Friend’ it means they’re Quaker.”

I don’t know much about Quakers except that I am a big fan of their oatmeal. I asked what the Quakers were all about.

She said that she couldn’t tell me because if she described a set of formulaic beliefs, that would, by default, not be what the Quakers were about. The Quakers, she insisted, were all about three little words.

I kept waiting for the lady to call me “Grasshopper.”

So anyway, after that, my wife and I ate pierogies at a roadside restaurant. Pierogies are Polish dumplings filled with savory or sweet fillings. They are served in a puddle of butter large enough to give you atrial fibrillation.

I could eat them every day until I became the size of an Amish pole barn.

I have seldom been this far north before. In fact, until these last couple years I’d never been anywhere of note. But at this stage of life, I am staring at middle-age, it feels like I am seeing America for the first time.

I have enjoyed little pieces of this country, bit by bit. In fact, the humble American road trip has proven to be one of the greatest adventures of my existence.

I’ve seen sunrises over Texan plains. I ate etouffee in Louisiana. I saw the Washington Nationals play the Braves with the U.S. Capitol in the background.

I sang “Love Me Tender” with an Elvis impersonator in Biloxi. I bought a cowboy hat in Kansas. I camped outside Little Rock, Arkansas, and got bronchitis that lasted two months. I laid my head on Grand Canyon dirt and counted stars. I’ve shaken hands with an old Quaker woman in Pennsylvania.

Sometimes, I feel so overcome by it all that I wonder if the Quaker woman wasn’t right. I wonder if life itself doesn’t boil down to three little words. Three little words that mean the same in every dialect, region, and college football conference.

I would tell you which three words. But you don’t need me to.