MY HOMETOWN--

In the photo above please permit me to introduce Main St., Altoona, PA. Yup, if you mail something to 123 Main St., Altoona, PA it will arrive somewhere on this tiny street.

By some quirk in the original plot process, what has grown up to be downtown Altoona is now known totally by numbered streets and avenues.

Main Street is out here in the suburbs, where, as you can plainly see, they already have rolled up the sidewalks for the night.

Here’s another quirk. Hollidaysburg is a small suburb generally south of Altoona which is a modern city of some 50,000 souls about the size of Mansfield and long known as the home of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Yet today, Hollidaysburg is the county seat. Hmmm.

The new truck did an admirable job today. Six easy hours and 261 miles later we arrived in my hometown. The only time I got close to 65 mph was coming down Cresson Mountain into Altoona. And, while I was crossing the summit of about 2,400 feet, the temperature had fallen from 80ish to 63 degrees and we were driving carefully--in the clouds.

My cousin Bob Wolf whom I will be visiting for these four days promptly treated me to a supper of Texas Hot Dogs. He always gushes how much better they are than the Main St., Coneys in Mansfield.

I usually humor him; you see he belongs to the political party that appropriately favors donkeys as their symbol.

In the event he is still speaking to me after he reads this this morning, our itinerary calls for a visit to Penn’s Cave up near State College—yup, that one, known to Buckeyes as the home of the Nittany Kittens.

Maybe I better quit before this becomes a really short visit.