The View From Scranton

From There to Here

More digression.

So we were off, away from Chester and all the ugly it represented. Driving on some of Philadelphia's filthiest thruways. It was rush hour, but it seemed the rush hadn't caught on yet. Leaving ugly through more ugly. The roads were beaten and poor, the traffic foul and unpleasant, and the drivers looked mean and miserable in their dime-a-dozen sedans. I didn't care. The misery-soaked 'burbs of America's seventh city meant nothing to me. I was sprung.

So we drove. And we drove. And we drove. The a/c on full; the windows on wide open; the smokes hooked to a chain. I wanted to stop on the side of the road and pick a flower, feed a duck, roll down the embankment. Do a somersault. It'd had been so long since I'd been allowed to do what I wanted to do, I wanted to do anything.

We hit a Dunkin' Donuts. Four years of Coolatta ads and I was gonna have one. Seemed the whole damn world had the same idea. 13, 14, 15 fatso's in line for what they obviously didn't need. For some dumb reason they were all in shorts and very bright shirts. Had something happened to the world while I was away? Yeah, it got fat.

I had a five dollar bill in my hand. Just the feel of currency made me giddy. The last cash I saw was in the fist of a prison kitchen blue shirt (supervisor) who was trying to impress the convict help; the last cash I touched was what brought me jail. This was neither stolen nor someone else's; this was mine.

So I ordered. And it took a minute. Then it took a minute more. And I started to get impatient. These are my minutes now, baby, don't you dare waste one of 'em. When the cool, coagulated concoction came though it was as refreshing as I'd wished. One problem: it was served in plastic, and I had been forced to use nothing but throughout my exile.

We next hit a kinda suit warehouse I'd seen advertised on Philly TV. Amazing. Within mere minutes I had picked out a deliciously suitable black suit, a scrumptious white shirt, a Hood's eye power tie, and Hollywood-perfect shades. Killer. What struck me most was that I still knew what I wanted without looking.

That struck would be stricken anew when we hit the chain-store CVS. The array! I had not faced so many choices in forever. Six kinds of Mach 3's; nine styles of combs; fifteen baking powder toothpaste selections alone. Now I was dumbstruck. In the joint you have one, possibly two choices on the commissary list, and cons spend hours upon hours deciding on them. Here I'd made a trip to bountiful and couldn't decide on a toothbrush. Fortunately they had Clubman after shave; now that I'd never have to think thrice about. I figure it took me forty minutes to buy forty dollars' worth of toiletries and still I wasn't done.

Before my brother came undone though, I settled. Then I stewed some more when the cashier crawled through the transaction. Do these people not train? Or are they taught to keep a customer waiting in the hopes they'll buy more? Whatever the reason, there's no reason for it.

Now we hit Scranton. At first glance it's kinda like a trailerpark without wheels, set a little bucolicly perhaps, but set on blocks. It was that immobile. And immobilizing. Everything's stripped and ramshackle, and the people seem worse. Thankfully the first impression was wrong. Once you get into town the shackle gives way to an almost immaculately preserved collection of buildings all built by King Coal. In other words, aged. Like a big brick and mortar Mayberry done by Dickens, or Our Town with a past. I tell ya, it was a tremendous surprise. Snide and snotty me thought the only preservation was done in the big cities; now I know better.

Sweet.

posted by John Hood. @ 8:31 PM