A Different Lancaster

I drive to the Lancaster area about five times a year for many years.  I like the drive, about fifty minutes on predominantly rural roads with farms displaying dairy herds, corn fields to feed them, and tobacco to harvest and sell to support other activities.  The route takes me to Amish country east of town.  Depending on the route, often chosen by me as a path I don't remember taking before, I sometimes pass a small Pennsylvania Railroading complex with a museum and a motel cobbled from cabooses.  This time my destination was a hotel occupied by close friends visiting the area.  The GPS guided me through streets unfamiliar.  I saw a group of Hasidim with large family or campers touring a museum/farm well past the common tourist destinations.  

Lancaster seems to have several zones.  East of the city are the Amish and Mennonites with tourist attractions, ethnic places to eat, some vestiges of their unique lifestyle that people from elsewhere come to see.  Then there are places that cater to tourists, a long route of motel, chain restaurants, outlet malls, and shopping plazas with the same anchors as everyplace else.  Enter the highway, encounter some traffic, then proceed onto the city.  There really is a small city with a central area of shops and an iconic Central Market with specialty places to get lunch.  There are large employers including a renowned elite college and just past the town a branch of the state university system.  A former President's mini-estate conducts tours.  And then there is the place people live, with housing developments, medical facilities, fast food, supermarkets, and malls where people get their furniture.  That is where my friends stayed.  A suite hotel with a pool, exercise room, and breakfast area, the place where the college might house its visiting lecturers or company representatives needed to close a deal might stay.  Next door neighbors, a branch of the local medical center and a megamart.  Places to eat branches of national and regional chains.  Close enough to tourism with a car, theirs a rental. Close enough to the central city.  And close enough to the housing developments that the supermarket and retailers depend upon.

When I travel, I tend to seek out the unfamiliar.  In Lancaster that would be Amish country, maybe still the outlets, the Farmer's Market which sells more kitsch and snacks than produce, the expansive Kettle Village.  I rarely eat there, never been to Dutch Wonderland, even when I had little kids. And while I've taken a guided tour, I've not yet ridden in a buggy. Wheatland, the estate of President Buchanan is a magnificent tour that needs to be taken no more than once.  And there are the views from my windshield, Amish women harvesting the tobacco leaves, horses pulling a plow.  For me, each day trip there, really more a half-day is a little different but a little familiar.  None of it is suburban mall or supermarket.

New Places

My car has been my freedom ever since I got one to call my own, and deprivation of freedom prior to that or when unavailable to me.  Periodically my father z"l would take us someplace relatively spontaneously, the World's Fair in Flushing Meadows a few times, once the airport, occasionally to Rockaway.  But I like to get into my car and drive to different places a lot more, and mostly by myself.  Sometimes I plan, but rarely more than a week in advance if no overnight stay is required.

I needed some Me Time, shuled out, Jewed out, still inappropriately resentful of a baalebos who mistreated me in his official synagogue capacity.  Skip shabbos, visit someplace other than synagogue.  In my weekly plan, I designated this a New Place, a place I'd not been to before.

And so at midmorning, after some coffee, I asked the Waze App to direct me to the Lancaster Central Market, which I had heard about as an historical site.  Despite frequent outings to Amish Country, I'd never been there, though had been to the Central Market in York.  I had visited Franklin & Marshall College and Wheatland, both in Lancaster, but never been to the central business district.   Amish country is definitely separate from the seemingly robust mainstream economy of the town.

My GPS gave me the fastest route.  I opted instead for the one I knew well, until a turnoff of minor familiarity, then followed the directions for the final half hour through some pretty seedy parts of the town until arriving at a few blocks far more filled with people than most mid-sized towns on a Saturday morning.  Indeed, the leadership of Lancaster had made the area a gathering place, with the Central Market, open only Tues, Fri, Sat, as its centerpiece.  Parking lots all had Full designations but driving two blocks beyond, I encountered the city's parking garage.  For $2/hr I could take my time, walk around.  

They gentrified the place.  People of all ages.  Complexions maybe less diverse, though not really to the exclusion of anyone.  While the market originated as a farmers market where people could gather to obtain provisions, it now functions more as a food court with stands offering all sorts of options, though seating in the market itself was rather limited.  It seemed far cleaner than the two farmer's markets near me that I frequent periodically, though those are more cheap merchandise oriented with food a secondary consideration and eating places relatively few.  

I settled on a falafel from a transplanted Middle Eastern man with a friendly smile who custom-made my sandwich.  A little mushy perhaps but tasty.  Second choice would have been an open-faced gravlax sandwich from the Scandinavian place, much less filling for about the same price as the falafel.  I took my sandwich outside, a dreary slightly chilly and misty afternoon but with a brick planter ledge to sit on.  Then walked a few blocks.  Then returned for dessert, opting for none.

Back to the car, still within the $2 parking ante.  Decided to go to a winery.  Pennsylvania allows its vineyards to set up a limited number of satellite tasting rooms but I really wanted to go to the vineyard itself, so I did.  A little farther out of the way than anticipated but took me through some pleasant agricultural and dairy operations.  The Waltz Winery has been open about twenty years.  Their tasting offered a mixture of wines from estate grapes, blends, and an apple wine.  I chose my five, sipped slowly, and enjoyed.  Chat with the hostess prior to the selections.  Considered wine glass purchase but more than I wanted to spend and I have ample winery stem and goblet glasses, enough for any reception I could ever host, milchig or fleishig.

GPS directed me home, kinda.  Rejected the Turnpike with its tolls.  Took the GPS directions, ultimately rejecting its transfer to the Lincoln Highway, in lieu of Rt 30.  I thought I would take Rt 896 all the way to my state's university, and did until I came to a cross route, one whose name I recognized in its eastern segment but have never been on its full extent.  I went there instead.  Farmland, the New Bolton Center, eventually what looked like manors of the uber rich.  Never made it through the town of West Chester as anticipated, though south of it.  Having been to football games at their state college's stadium, I recognized the road that I take to get there, proceeding on to the pike that gets me home, which it did.

Tired when I got home, though satisfied.

Different Route

Among my favorite outings has been Pennsylvania Dutch country, less than an hour away.  Lancaster, Pennsylvania also has the shopping outlets, once a much bigger lure than now, as seen by the ease of parking these past few years.  They have farmers markets, restaurants based on the pig, along with the department store chains and franchise restaurants on the main drag.  But it has always been the rural sections with buggies, kids and women coasting on bicycles that they push along with their left foot as pedals are prohibited by their sects, real farms, some grown quite large, and other out of the way places that keep me coming back as a brief escape from home.

I have two routes there, my usual path from home, Route 41 to 30, the Lincoln Highway, or Route 896 that connects the University of Delaware to the Rockvale Outlets.  Each main route has a number of places where roads less travelled can be accessed.  One takes people to Strasburg, built around the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum and steam engine ride, with most of the town having a rail theme.  One road takes people to Oxford, a larger place than I expected that seems to rise from nowhere.  Whatever cross road you take, it will eventually connect to Route 41 or 896 so getting to Lancaster is pretty much a sure thing, but just in case I can set the GPS.  So yesterday I hit Pizza/Atglen, got off Route 41 where I always wanted to but never did and stayed on Route 372, not quite following the GPS to the pizza destination.  Virtually entirely farms with perhaps and occasional small factory with a bunch of cars in the lot.  A few modern houses that could pass as suburban tract housing.  I always wondered how people in these places make a living when business are few and do not need a lot of workers, and certainly not a lot of highly paid workers, other than the utility companies, hospitals and school districts.  Amish buggies and bicycles but hardly any cars other than mine.  Not even a lot of churches.  Eventually this road found its way to 896, which I followed to the Rockvale outlets, stopped briefly at two stores, and returned in the direction of Strasburg, which advertised itself on the billboards as an historical destination.  GPS indicated a nearby winery just outside my route home, but on arrival it was defunct.  Just headed home.  Pleasant outing as it always is.

My Highest Level of Amusement

This weekend, or at least this shabbos, I took off.  Recreation on Saturday, mostly chores on Sunday though only the ones that evoke a measure of personal accomplishment.  The raw tally:  got my cell phone replaced and the new one accepts a charge, headed toward Lancaster at the suggestion of the Pennsylvania Wine Trail, starting with Twin Brook and ending with Kreutz Creek, which tasted mostly like medicine.  In between I had lunch in Strasburg and made the rounds at the Bird-in-Hand Farmer's Market.  Picked my son up at the Airport.  By then it was past sundown.  I tried to get a few office gifts at The Christmas Tree Shop and TJ Maxx but came home empty handed.  Concluded the day by gathering my laundry scattered around multiple rooms and transporting everything to one place so I could do the wash in its entirety on Sunday, which I ended up not doing.  For Sunday I bought and wrapped the office gifts and made some real headway with the kitchen, even washing one third of the floor and the entire Formica counter.  Seeing that the surfaces need replacement, I went to Lowe's where I looked at what it would take to cosmetically transform my kitchen.  I want to upgrade my office, so I looked at area rugs, eventually driving to Air Base Carpet Mart where I bought one.  Made progress on upcoming Torah and Haftarah readings.

How much of this is really the Highest Level of Amusement that I had intended?  I definitely like visiting wineries, rejecting out of hand the Rabbinic concept that American winemakers are idolaters who will draw me to evil other than skipping services on Saturday morning.  A number of my personal pleasures center around tasting:  coffee, microbrews, making dinner.  I've never taken great delight in eating out, though.  I do not particularly like people serving me, much preferring to take what I want from among what I am willing to eat at a buffet.  It has been ages since I've been to a good Sunday Brunch, something that I used to attend commonly when Rozzy was an infant.

I like shopping, or really looking at things more than buying things.  There is cookware that I do not need, clever implementation of ideas in the Seen in TV section, regional specialties when I travel, tchotchkes of any type from cheap pens with imprinted with names that I'd never saddle a kid with for his whole life, coffee mugs of endless design, funny greeting cards.  I do not find myself attracted to pretense.  Fifth Avenue and the like holds no allure for me at all.  I see places like that as repositories for unfortunate individuals whose self-esteem equates with what they are able to purchase that somebody else cannot.

There are few bodily pleasures that stand out.  Warm water, whether from a shower or Jacuzzi.  I like to exfoliate my forehead with facial scrub, then add a tingle from some type of atomic balm.  Irene once got me a massage certificate as part of a United Way silent auction.  Over the years, I've found myself waiting in line for mini chair massages that the Endocrine Society or similar medical organizations provide for those who attend the convention.  These are definitely relaxing at the end of a second or third day of conference.  But the real massage, which took a half hour and was of hand to skin format was not something I would seek out again.  I found it something of an invasion of my space.

My real quest best reaches fulfillment when I travel to a place I've not been before.  I love puttering around, not necessarily to the advertised attraction, but to some of the out of the way places that make the place I am visiting different from my home turf.  Museums are fine but I much prefer to drive through neighborhoods, walk on the sidewalks, maybe visit the local synagogue and chat with the people who live there.

I'm always a little uneasy getting pampered.  Because of my position people often seem more deferential to me than I think I merit, which may be part of the reason I like to escape to places where nobody knows me.  When they ask what I do professionally I tell them that I sign things.  Like many doctors, a sense of personal achievement comes mostly through what you do for yourself, for the effort that is put in starting with the every third night on call that has gone the way of the history book.  That is not to say do not delegate things but the need to pull one's weight and to reject offers of others to do what you should be doing yourself eventually becomes an ingrained part of personality.  A waitress does not have to bring me food that I can go to the buffet and get for myself..  A masseuse does not have to apply the soothing hands when my shower head has a setting that pulses hot water that I can direct where I want.  Having a waiter who spends more on his tie than I do, which is probably most waiters and for sure most medical residents, leaves me a little uneasy.

A predictable break from labor has been mandated for thousands of years.  Having somebody else convey to me a sense of self-importance that I really have not earned in the form of creature comfort or pampering is really not part of the divine directive.