Note: we packed a lot into this day, which means it took me a long time to write and requires a bunch of pictures. Since I blogged the last day, Hurricane Sandy hit. We send our love and prayers for a quick recovery to everyone, and especially to everyone we met out there.

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Another ‘first’ for me: Since I had learned to drive in sunny Arizona, where streets are wide and make sense, I had never driven on the Schuylkill Expressway, fondly nicknamed the ‘Sure-Kill Distressway.’ (It’s true: you can look it up.)

But on Monday night, at the hotel, when I realized that my ancestral home, as it were, was only nineteen minutes away, it took everything I had not to grab Laner and run out into the pouring rain, dim light, and rush hour traffic to go see. I resisted.

Again, since my experience with the backroads of Delaware County had been limited to being carted around in the backseat of a 1967 Ford Country Squire, I had to rely on the Garmin up until the moment I got to the intersection of Sproul Road and Church Lane. And then I knew where I was, because when I was a kid I walked everywhere.

Cliché of the Week: Everything looks smaller after forty years.

Especially the backyard.

Jenny and I had remembered that backyard as being the size of a football field. And it’s not. It’s about the same size as the backyard I have now, and my backyard is considered fairly small by anyone’s standards.

What’s important about the second picture is what’s not in it.

In the foreground, there would have been a sweet gum tree that was simply towering. At its base was a wooden sandbox that Dad had built, I think, and Patrick and I played in that thing for an eternity of summer afternoons. That line of bushes along the back marks the end of the property (the playground equipment belongs to a neighbor) and used to be a deep, dense forest that had cheerful dogwood trees at the front.

Oh, and what’s not in the picture of the front yard? A maple tree used to sit in front of the first floor window on the right. In the roots of that tree Patrick and I played another eternity of summer days, at least until Mom planted a pile of pachysandra under it. The vantage point I’m standing at used to be occupied by a weeping cherry and a crabapple tree.

I’m not sure what subsequent occupants had against trees…

More from, and for, my memory:

• In the front of the house, the window on the second-floor left marks the bedroom I shared with my sisters. Mary and I had to share a double bed, and every night she would draw an imaginary line down the middle of the bed, marking a demilitarized zone the North Koreans would have respected. On stormy nights, she would point to the shadows made by the flailing cherry and crapapple branches and tell me about the giant who was thundering down Kirk Avenue and was coming to get me.
• The window on the second-floor right marks the bedroom Patrick and George shared. Patrick used to sit at his desk doing his homework and I would spin his globe and demand that he tell me the capital of Whatever. And he would patiently do it, never telling me to get lost.
• That sweet gum tree in the back produced a seed pod that looked like a medieval weapon. When Mom looked at the pictures I brought back, she said, “Oh, my first thought was to tell Patrick that the sweet gum tree was out. He hated raking those up.”

Across the street from our old house there’s a single-story house that has a gigantic rock planted on the corner of their lot. (It seemed giant to me, at least, forty years ago.) The ‘old people’ who lived in the house (I’m told they were all of fifty years old) used to call the cops on us when we’d wait for the school bus and do what kids would do when there was a gigantic rock sitting there: stand on it.

The rock is still there. I’m reasonably certain that the ‘old people’ are not.

Jenny’s old house is all of 486 feet away from our old house. And the neighborhood swimming pool is just a few feet beyond that.

I became aware that, standing on a street corner photographing houses on a cold Tuesday morning might make us look like we were casing the place, so we moved on. We saw our old church and grade school (St. Anastasia’s), and drove past the high school I would have attended had we stayed in Broomall.

We headed out to Valley Forge for a bit of history. Driving in this area is ridiculous. On the nineteen minute drive from Plymouth Meeting to Broomall we encountered SEVEN different freeways, merging and diverging and running into each other. I realize this place was laid out by people who weren’t concerned about street lights and cars, but really. You’d think in the 20th century someone would have started to care.

But at Valley Forge, time has stopped and no freeways interfere, once you’re in the park. Note: Don’t ever believe that Washington ‘suffered’ at Valley Forge. The Continental Army? This is what they slept in:

THIS is where Washington slept, for reals:

Next stop, Hershey, Pennsylvania: For years, I have talked about going back to Philly, and for years the kids planned on going to Hershey, which is about an hour and a half away. It should be noted that the other three kids didn’t seem to mind me taking a trip with Laner so much; but when they heard about the plan to see The Chocolate Capital of The World, heads popped up with the evil stinkeye. It got to the point where I had to remind everyone that the streets of the town are not, in fact, paved with chocolate. We’re all clear on this, right?

I’m not sure the amusement park was open on a Monday, but it didn’t matter, because we wanted to see Chocolate World:

Going in, we saw a basset hound named Buddy. Stop for ten minutes while Arkansas basset owner and I trade stories. I show her pictures of Elmer and Buddy smells my shoes.

We made our own chocolate bar (mine was white chocolate with raspberries and almonds) and label:

They have you bunny-suit up as if you were working in the factory, and then you tell a kiosk what kind of bar you want to make, and then you design the label. After that, you go watch the assembly line make your bar:

The candy bar didn’t turn out to be as good as I thought it would be because (I swear, I never thought I’d write these words) they dumped a whole pile of milk chocolate on it.

We saw a lovely depiction of where little Hershey’s bars come from, complete with their own repetitive, annoying theme song, reminiscent of “It’s a Small World.” Tasted chocolate, and then did some souvenir shopping, which was notable in that I had never seen a half-pound Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup before.

Made the long haul back to Broomall and scored some hoagies, which were exquisite, and huge. Shout out to Primo Hoagies, because it was amazing.

Rented Dark Shadows to watch in the hotel, watched the rest of the debate (should have watched the movie again), and tucked in, because the next morning, we were on the move.

© E. Stocking Evans 2012