September 24, 2010

  • Rules of rural Pennsylvania

    The rules of rural Pennsylvania are as follows:

    1. Let’s get this straight: it’s called a ‘dirt road.’ No matter how slow you drive, you’re going to get dust on your Lexus. Drive it or get out of the way.

    2. They are cattle. They’re live steaks or walking milk bottles. That’s why they smell funny to you, get over it. Don’t like it? I-80 goes east and west, I-81 goes north and south. Pick one.

    3. Pull your droopy pants up, you look like an idiot.

    4. Turn your cap right, your head isn’t crooked.

    5. So you have a $60,000 car, we’re impressed. We have $150,000 corn pickers and hay balers that are driven only 3 weeks a year.

    6. Every person in rural Pennsylvania waves (or head nods…same thing). We think of it as being friendly. Try to understand the concept.

    7. If that cell phone rings while an 8-point buck and three does are coming in, we will shoot it out of your hand. You better hope you don’t have it up to your ear at the time.

    8. Yeah, we eat scrapple, pot pie, funnel cakes, pierogies, shoo-fly pie, apple butter, chow-chow, and schnitz un knepp. Don’t like the sound of them or the names freak you out because you never saw a “Bon Appetit” article on them? Great, more for us!

    9. The ‘opener’ refers to the first day of deer season. It’s a religious holiday held on the Monday after Thanksgiving.

    10. We open doors for women. That is applied to all women, regardless of age.

    11. No, there’s no ‘vegetarian special’ on the menu. Order steak, or you can order the chef’s salad and pick off the 2 pounds of ham & turkey.

    12. When we fill out a table, there are three main dishes: meats (includes fish), vegetables, and potatoes (and bread). We use four spices: salt, pepper, hot sauce, and Heinz ketchup. Oh, yeah…we don’t care what you folks in New York call that stuff you eat. Its not real chili.

    13. You bring ‘coke’ into my house, it better be brown, wet and served over ice.

    14. You bring ‘Mary Jane’ into my house, she better be cute and know how to shoot.

    15. College and high school football are as important here as the Steelers and Eagles and a lot more fun to watch.

    16. Yeah, we have golf courses. But don’t hit the water hazards—it spooks the fish.

    17. Colleges? We have them all over. We have state universities, community colleges, and vo-techs. They come outta there with an education. They still wave at everybody when they come home for the holidays.

    18. We have a whole ton of folks who have been in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard – PA has one of the highest percentages of veterans in the entire country. So don’t mess with us. If you do, you will get whipped by the best.

    19. Turn down that blasted car stereo! That thumpity-thump-thump stuff is not music anyway. We don’t want to hear it anymore than we want to see your boxers. Refer back to # 3.

    20. Four inches isn’t a blizzard–it’s a flurry. Drive like you got some sense, and don’t take all our bread, milk, and toilet paper from the grocery stores. You’re not in Alaska. Worst case you may have to live a whole day without your croissants. The pickups with snow plows will have you out the next day.

Comments (15)

  • Haha <3 this!

    I still need to make that apple butter recipe you gave me :D

  • My pap make pierogies every year at Christmas just for me. All my friends think I’m crazy when I talk about them because most have never heard of them. I tell them its just a Polish/PA thing :) Oh and all us Steeler fans are crazy, no one understands that unless they are one! ha ha

  • I love Scrapple.  (I’m in Maryland)

    Love this!

  • Pennsylvania is beautiful and I drove on Route 6 from Scranton all the way to the road that goes through the Allegheny National Forest and then back down to I80 a few weeks ago on a Saturday.  I was taking my older boy to Carnegie Mellon which of course is in Pittsburgh, where his grandfather had grown up in a poor neighborhood called Homewood-Brushton.  I think Carnegie-Mellon University has a wonderful campus and my boy will come outta there with an education.  The older boy is the one with the high aptitude for science and math, the younger one wants to be a musician.

    We had lunch in a small town along U.S. Route 6.  It wasn’t Wellsboro or Mansfield, it was west of there, Coudersport I think.  We kept going for a while past Coudersport before we turned south again.  Yeah I like rural Pennsylvania and its pretty red barns and cornfields and dairy cattle.  There is a big waterslide park a little ways east of Pittsburgh by the way where I took my boys when they were younger.

  • you have  a recipe for apple butter, do share please?

  • Now that sounds like my kind of place to live.  Love it.

  • Never been to PA but I do live in KY and trust me, just about the same rules apply!

  • Ha ha ha, I love this! 

    Never been to Pennsylvania but the same rules apply here in Oklahoma, with the exception of the last one.  We don’t get snowstorms here – we get ICE storms that knock out pretty much everything for days, weeks if you’re one of the unlucky few.  So yeah, you better wipe the store shelves clean of TP, milk and bread because you’re not leaving your house for at least a week.  That is, if you’re smart.  If you’re like everyone else you’re out driving around the second the weatherman says ice is no longer falling from the sky.  And you’re on your way to the store to scrap together the remains of milk, TP and bread because you didn’t think you needed it and you ran out three days ago!  :D

  • ughhh scrapple… gross. I do love funnel cake though nom nom nom :)

    What part of rural PA if I may be nosy? (I have spent 95% of my life in western Berks county and I’m curious haha). 

  • @carolinavenger - North Eastern Lancaster County. Close to Lancaster and close to Reading :)

  • Between Harrisburg and Lancaster :) Good post ,Now living where I do I would say `6`they do not wave nor are friendly ,Lancaster County in my opinion is snobby .Materialistic  ,But travel  a little in any direction and boy the mood changes!I Love Living  where I do  ,Love this post !

  • Aw; heck yeah!  

  • Mmm… funnel cakes and shoe-fly cake (I prefer the cake over the pie)… and apple festivals and Dutch Days…

  • This was really fun to read. :)

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