The Village

Driving through the village that I claim as my hometown, you'd never guess that it was once big enough to need one hotel, much less two. It had at least two hotels in the past, though, as well as several churches. There were factories, and bakeries, and it was more than just a few streets and a huge number of horrible people. Most of it's gone now, since most of it burned down, but there are still traces.

One of the bakery buildings still exists over behind where the old post office was (before it burned down):



although it's not a bakery anymore. The churches are still there, and we still have a Depot Street with train tracks, even though the trains mostly go through without stopping.

Driving through, you'd probably be struck by how green and pretty everything seems to be, with the streams:







and the tourist footbridge:



(Seriously, why did they even build that? It doesn't connect anything important to anything else important, and the seating section in the middle just faces a different bridge that cars drive over:



Who is this fancy bridge even designed for?)

and the water tower:



and the horses and buggies:





and the replica Statue of Liberty:



which, other than my family and friends, is the only thing I love in Philly now that they got rid of the stretch limo up on blocks:



but never forget:

Philly is an awful place populated mostly by awful people.

You see, at the beginning of summer in 1994, I went to the village office:



to apply for a village summer rec job. I was not able to apply, though, because there wasn't an actual application. Instead, I was told that those jobs are only for people who are related to other people, even though they were municipal jobs partially funded by my parents' taxes and the taxes of all the other village residents who lived there but weren't related to the mayor or members of the town board. Home for the summer without a car, I applied for the only job in walking distance that claimed to be hiring, but it wasn't hiring because the village was practicing nepotism and discrimination, the latter of which I watched it dispense freely throughout high school.

I never spent a full summer in my village again.

I always enjoy my visits home, but I always make sure I leave again.