My hopes and dreams for exciting
new Blog material were dashed like a size thirteen landing on an unsuspecting
spider. The long planned excursion to
Pennsylvania which filled me with hopes of visits to old, classic Pennsylvania
diners and a side trip to see how my favorite (Yuengling Beer) was brewed never
happened. Road repairs detoured us from
the diners I planned for, the Yuengling plant was not operating on Saturday,
the only day we could visit and the only diner visit was the Milford on 209 for an impromptu hasty pit
stop.
Did the next best thing, had a
few frosty glasses of Yuengling at a Pizza get together with a bunch of Marge’s
relatives the night before the reunion.
It seems that Marge has some influential cousins in Pottsville
who rented or used the entire pavilion and facilities of a Pottsville park. More Yuengling and a lot of tasty food
catered by the same Pizza Restaurant we were at the night before. Plenty to do, basketball, volley ball,
horseshoes, and my favorite, sitting and people watching. This was a “Shields Reunion” that hadn’t been
done for years. Our Shields contingency
looked pretty sharp with everyone wearing dark blue T-shirts emblazoned with a
picture of Marge’s deceased mom, dad and brother……very impressive.
One of the highlights
of the trip was a guided tour Marge gave us of the small town of New Philadelphia where she was born and lived some of
her younger years. I think it gave her great pleasure showing some of our kids
and grandchildren the house she was born in and the school she went to. Amazingly a 96 year old neighbor still lived
a couple of houses down and remembered most of her family.
I guess I’ll have to settle on a
few local excursions to some of Connecticut’s
classics, we do have 125 of them in our state.
