Happy National Pennsylvania Day! A celebration of the only place where breakfast can include scrapple, lunch can be a cheesesteak, dinner can be pierogies and kielbasa, and dessert somehow requires shoofly pie, whoopie pies, Tastykakes, Mallo Cups, and a Turkey Hill iced tea large enough to require its own cup holder. Pennsylvania traditions are beautifully simple. We attend county fairs for the food, fire hall dinners for the portions, church picnics for the baked goods, and family reunions to hear the same stories we have heard since 1997. We call eggs “dippy,” put fries on sandwiches and salads, wrap Lebanon bologna around cream cheese and pickles, and proudly eat chipped ham barbecue while people from other states stare at us like we invented it during a power outage.
Our people are hardworking, loyal, generous, and capable of holding a thirty-minute conversation with a complete stranger about road construction, deer, weather, or which potato chip brand is clearly superior. Pennsylvania also gave us Boscov’s, Sheetz, Rutter’s, Wawa, Weis Markets, Giant Eagle, Spencer’s, and enough regional store loyalty to turn buying gas or groceries into a personality trait. I still love the old department-store feeling of walking into Boscov’s and knowing there is probably a sale happening somewhere, even if nobody can explain exactly when it started. Then there is Hersheypark, our beloved chocolate-scented test of physical endurance, where families walk twelve miles in summer humidity, eat fries and funnel cake, ride a roller coaster, and immediately question every decision that led them there. We have Hershey chocolate, Utz, Snyder’s, Middleswarth, Martin’s, Herr’s, Yuengling, Pennsylvania Dutch cooking, Pittsburgh sandwiches, Philly pretzels, Erie sunsets, Amish markets, fall foliage, deer season, high school football, covered bridges, small-town parades, and a Dollar General appearing just when you think you have driven beyond civilization.
I joke about the potholes, orange cones, unpredictable weather, confusing highways, and the fact that every town gives directions using a building that closed twenty years ago, but Pennsylvania really is something special. It is history, tradition, family, stubborn pride, incredible food, hardworking people, and just enough chaos to keep us all humble. Happy National Pennsylvania Day to everyone who knows that living here is not always easy, but at least we are never far from a good snack, a strange town name, or someone willing to argue about the correct convenience store