It’s our second day in Pennsylvania at Martha Yanavitch’s house, so we took the opportunity to go around and see my old haunts. I wanted Matt to get a gander at where I hung out when I was a nubile chick with the world at my feet and not the shell you see before you now. First, we stopped at the Wyalusing Valley Junior-Senior High School in Wyalusing, a set of buildings I have not set foot in since June of 1979, when I graduated. Lucky for us the school was open for registration so we were able to wander around. I showed him where I entered the building every day from the school bus, my home ec room, my locker, and other sites of significance to myself only. Honestly, it was weird. How could all those years have passed? What happened?
Home ec classroom at Wyalusing Valley High School in PA
We hooked onto Route 6 and headed to Tunkhannock, a town larger yet and a place I was taken on dates and where we shopped occasionally. The shopping strip with the Murphy’s Mart that we used to frequent was so different I would not have recognized it had it not been for Pompei’s, a pizza and sub place that figured large in my life as a 17-year old. We decided to eat there and had some kick-ass Buffalo wings and Italian and fish subs in the same orange and white Formica surroundings that ensconced me in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.
The Italian sub was wonderful, having plenty of the usual cold cuts like ham and salami, along with provolone, shredded lettuce, sliced tomato and sub dressing, an essential ingredient. If that sub dressing — which is like vinaigrette with plenty of oregano — is “off,” the sub will not work. This worked. Maim me if you like, but you cannot find this kind of sub in the Bay Area.
On the way back, we stopped at my friend Lori’s old house in Stevensville. Although it looked well past condemned today, I spent many a late evening on her porch listening to Dolly Parton’s “Heartbreaker” while taking in the fragrant air and dreaming about Ralph, the boy up the road – whom I was mad about, in the mid 1970’s.
I also snapped a photo of Matthew at “fish rocks,” the local swimming hole on the Wyalusing Creek that runs through Stevensville. The last place we went was my old house. We knocked on the door and were invited to check out the inside, which I have not seen since the closing of the sale of the property in 1982. This was the hardest memory to confront since it represents a number of broken dreams and fruitless hopes, made all the worse by my father’s condition. When he lived here he was young, robust and unstoppable. We all were.
live and they’re not really hard – not really. When I was a child, the Sunday tradition in my family was to get the papers, hard rolls and butter by about 9:00 a.m. Buttered rolls were then eaten with pots and pots of percolated Eight O’clock coffee. We’d all sprawl out in the living room among the papers and hang out for hours, sometimes calling out interesting things we came across. I would start perusing the news to see who had been killed or maimed in the preceding 24 hours. Even then I was a macabre little shit. I read a number of detective magazines starting at about age 11. Ever read those? My parents did not censor anything, to their credit. Incidentally, my father now resides in what was once known as an “efficiency building,” which means more or less compact units for one or two working people. I would guess the building was put up around 1930, the latest. The interior is completely archaic and incredibly well-preserved. Check out the mail slot at each apartment. Later that evening Matt wanted to try Ponderosa, a reasonably-priced family steak house chain, which turned out to be not so good. I used to frequent a Ponderosa in Wilkes-Barre when I lived there in the early 1980’s, and it was not bad, so it was on that basis that I agreed to visit the Front Street location in Binghamton. Now, either my tastes have improved 
or the quality of the food went down. The salad bar that was standard back in 1980 morphed into what can only be compared to a very low-end Vegas buffet. There were several kinds of chicken, mashers, gravy, mac and cheese and the like along with the greenery, but I can’t say that the quantity now beats out the quality back in the day. That said, the quantity starts to make sense when you see how small the steaks are. I suppose loading patrons down with heavy, inexpensive starches is one way to take their minds off the steak, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to fool Matthew. While both our steaks were adequate tasting — what one can expect from a USDA Select grade of sirloin, which is what most budget steakhouses serve — he was fuming about the size. He kept spearing it with his fork and holding it up for my inspection at various angles to make his point.