I had spent the previous night in Scranton. Although it was almost 2 hours from my final destination in the hinterlands of Northeastern PA, it was the closest truckstop. I awoke early and headed out into the beautifully hazy morning mountains. The Poconos are technically not mountains but rather a deeply eroded plateau geologically not part of the Appalachian mountain chain. They are related to the adjacent Catskills, essentially two names for the same geological feature. Regardless of the nomenclature the back roads are hilly as hell.
After turning off US-6 the road narrowed, lifted and plummeted, careening through bucolic valleys and to the edges of glacial lakes. The last turn was onto a wide dirt road. Branches brushed the tops of the cab and then a sign “Camp Nesher →” I turned in tightly revving the engine up a steep narrow dirt road thinking of the sleeping campers and this undoubtedly unusual morning. Another driver was there already we had both arrived before the construction crew. The camp looked classic summer camp run down buildings and a lake with all sorts of brightly colored things floating in it.
The crew soon arrived and quickly unloaded him and then me and informed us there was a way to get out by continuing strait which was a relief since turning around would require some doing. Once I was unloaded I headed out the track rounding a corner and heading down a hill where I saw a bus stuck on the curve from the road into the drive. The driver motioned frantically at me to stop as if I were a freight train. I was still a good 100 yards off and moving at 10 miles an hour.
From the road the lane took a turn up hill (the hill I was headed down) and the tow hooks on the rear of the bus had snagged on the asphalt of the road. She was fully blocking the southbound lane but traffic could squeeze by in the other lane. I tried to do what I could to help her but she was already on the phone to her company explaining the situation. “There goes my safety bonus” she grumbled as she sat on hold.
I realized there was nothing I could do and decided I needed to back back up the driveway and turn around in the construction site. This was tricky but not impossible and as I beeped into the site the crew looked at me. I explained that there was a bus stuck in the drive and they immediately jumped into the forklift and a pickup.
“You got the chains?”
“Let’s go!”
And they were off like that. I turned around to head back to Scranton. About half way there I got a message to head up to Oswego and pick up some coils to take to Winston-Salem. Déjà vu all over again.
I turned north onto more hilly Pennsylvania mountain roads headed toward I-81. Winding out of town a long line of cars snaked slowly up a ridge. I couldn’t see the head of the line but I figured it was a slow moving truck. At the ridge crest the cars turned into a cemetery. Men in military dress stood at attention. The cars crawled to top of the hill under a grey Pennsylvania sky to put another dead boy in the ground.
I made it to Oswego to find a long line in the driveway of the Aluminum mill. Who knew what the back up was but it took forever to load the same load it had taken me less than an hour to load the previous week. Again to Syracuse where I biked to the mall to try and find some 220 film for the medium format camera my sister had lent me. No dice, they barely had any 35mm film, how quickly things change.
The next day a long one down I-81 which must have a higher percentage of hills than any other interstate. South through the river valleys of central New York then crawling diagonally over the successive crests of Pennsylvania’s comb like Appalachian ridges. Flat for a while from Harrisburg to Winchester as the mountains retreat to the west. They return and you climb up and into the Great Valley of Virginia, snug for a while with the Blue Ridge (an outlying eastern ridge) to your left and the Valley and Ridge (the main body of the Appalachians) to your right. Around Roanoke you head up into the mountains proper and things are really hilly. Leaving I-81 and heading south on I-77 toward Mt. Airy, NC presents a fantastic vista of the Piedmont (literally “foot hills” as you tumble out of the mountains and realize just how high up you were. Now I’m here in Winston Salem, sweating and waiting again.
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