A Trip To Western Pennsylvania: Trump Country
By
Leonard Zwelling
On Friday, July 26, we flew into Pittsburgh International Airport to attend the one-year birthday party of my sister’s granddaughter in Gibsonia, north of the city. It was a gala affair at the club house for the over-55 community to which my sister and her husband moved a few years ago. There was a pool that the children could use only after 4 PM (adults only before that) and extreme decorations that I doubt the birthday girl appreciated. However, the birthday girl did seem to enjoy using her fingers on her piece of cake and wearing the frosting with a grin.
If this was the one-year birthday celebration, I can’t wait until the bat mitzvah. Of course, I’ll be 88 if I’m alive. Good luck with that, Len.
The next morning, we drove to Mount Pleasant, Pennsylvania. This is a town of about 4000 people south and east of Pittsburgh near Latrobe, famous for being the home of golfer Arnold Palmer.
Mt. Pleasant is the original home of my daughter-in-law, Richard’s wife, Amanda. Richard and Amanda moved their family (my two grandsons) to Mt. Pleasant in March from Sugarland. This has been very hard on the BW who adores her grandchildren and misses them a great deal. This was an important trip for us to make as we used to see our grandchildren weekly, but obviously, no longer. We’d like not to be forgotten.
Richard and Amanda moved to a vintage 1878 house on South Church Street off the main drag of Mount Pleasant. The one synagogue that used to be active is now used by the volunteer fire department for storage. All the Jews have left. Richard may well represent the total Jewish population of Mount Pleasant.
The house has to be completely redone from the floors to the ceilings. This is Amanda’s project while she also works part-time at the library down the block.
I feel as if I have landed on another world. All the buildings are old and look rundown. There is no movie theater here beyond an old drive-in, but lots of churches each with its own cemetery.
When we took our grandchildren to dinner on Sunday evening, the first place my son sent us to closed at 4 PM. The next place was on vacation. We settled on a rib place named Gorky’s. We assumed the collection of motorcycles in front suggested decent food. We stepped into a scene from a Hollywood motorcycle gang film. The motorcyclists who had parked in front had their colors on inside. We shyly shuffled to a table in the corner and the meal was actually fine, but we were intent on creating no stir. We managed to attract little attention on the set of The Deer Hunter that was this restaurant.
We were to play golf Monday in Latrobe. It was about a 25-minute trip—again we were driving in a strange world of open fields, rolling hills, the occasional development of newer homes, corn, and cows.
This is the recurrent theme of western Pennsylvania. Churches, cemeteries, Dairy Queens, and, oh yes, Trump signs. Big ones. After all we are right around the corner from Butler where the assassination attempt took place.
Looking at the extensive renovations that need to be done on my son’s 150-year- old house, the old buildings, and smallness of everything around me makes me long for the hustle and bustle of Houston—and the restaurants, and the movie theaters, and the knowledge that in an emergency, the Texas Medical Center is close by.
I remember as a small child visiting my paternal grandparents in Zanesville, Ohio. It was just like this only that was seventy years ago. Perhaps Zanesville has also been caught in a time warp and is just as it was when I was seven. I don’t know. What I do know is that western, rural Pennsylvania is not the place to which I would choose to relocate unless I wanted to recapture an earlier and simpler time and escape 2024.
After all, isn’t that what MAGA nation wants—to return to the days of the 1950s with June Cleever in an apron and no women at work. The problem is that cannot happen. As Kamala says, “we’re not going back.”
I’m not sure why my son wants to go back to such a rural life. It is less stressful, I suspect. I’m just not sure that living here is living. Perhaps, that’s my problem. It’s not his.
