Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, October 5, 1993 TAG: 9310050034
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Lon Wagner
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Well, you can _ you just have to be careful.
I was on U.S. 30 East, heading toward York, Pa., on the way to my parents' house in northern Lancaster County.
Traffic was creeping, as traffic tends to do when you have two big, stinking, panting Labrador retrievers drooling all over your car. At a little town called East Berlin, I saw the sign: "Speed Electrically Enforced."
"Wow," I thought, "they take speed enforcement seriously here. They pull you over, then shock the heck out of you as punishment." Special training provided by the Los Angeles Police Department.
I moved onward, at one mile an hour below the speed limit, past a hand-painted sign in a front yard: "Goats: only $40." I wondered if that was a bargain for your basic goat.
I was born in Salisbury, Md., on the Eastern Shore, but from age 6 on, Brickerville, a small town in Lancaster County has been home. It still is, because that's where my parents live.
It's funny what grabs my eye when I drive back into the Lancaster area after living in the South for five years. Some things you could just as easily see in Lancaster as you could in Western Virginia.
Take, for instance, the homeowner in York, Pa., who decided to use a rust-colored wooden fence to preach to passersby. "JOHN 3:16," "Try Jesus: Do you know him?" and "Jesus Still Loves You" were painted on the fence. And this just down the road from Paradise Elementary School.
There's probably a homeowner in Virginia using a fence for the same thing - at least there is a man who erects three crosses in just about any field he can get permission.
And take the two bearded men spitting streams of brown juice out the windows of a Chevy 1500 pickup, with big tires and raised white lettering. Wouldn't take me long to find a couple of their counterparts in the Roanoke Valley.
You Southern guys think you're tough? Back in high school, the hard-core Skoal and Copenhagen boys had to conceal the pinch between their cheek and gums - so they just didn't spit. They'd sit in class, "dipping" as they called it, and swallow the juice. Iron stomachs, I guess.
The signs at first that I am nearing my home are subtle. Instead of Advance Auto Parts, there is Pep Boys. Instead of Food Lion, there is Weis Markets.
When we first moved to Brickerville, my mom bought groceries at the Weis in nearby Lititz (pronounced Lit-its).
The Wagner family debated whether Weis was pronounced "Wice" to rhyme with "rice" or was pronounced "Wize," to rhyme with "eyes." Finally, realizing this debate prompted heated arguments among families in a three-county area, my mom started shopping at a place called "Martins," and we forgot about the whole thing.
Other Pennsylvania trademarks are less than subtle. Motorists going north cross from Maryland into Pennsylvania on Interstate 81 are greeted with a red, white and blue sign that reads "Welcome to Pennsylvania: America Starts Here."
Then your car literally drops about two inches, from wonderfully smooth Maryland blacktop to patchy, grooved, potholed cement.
Which makes me wonder if a better state-line sign wouldn't be: "Welcome to Pennsylvania: Our roads stink, but we have cheap goats."
by CNB