A few months back, Mr. Fix-It and I took a little tour of the eastern seaboard of these great United States. It was one of those working vacation things — a couple of vacation days tacked onto each end of a work event.
I used to love working vacations when I was in sales. When the togetherness got to be a bit much, there was always a customer I needed to go check on for an hour or so. I learned that from my daddy who spent many a tail end of a family hoo-ha going to the drug store to take care of something that just had to be done before morning.
Now that I reflect on it, he went on a lot of Saturday nights when the store wasn’t open again until Monday. But he HAD to get that paper work done on Saturday night. But I digress...
Being from the west coast, Mr. Fix-It has not exercised the privilege of visiting the more history-rich areas of our beloved country. He’d been a river rafting guide in some of the magnificent national parks of the west, but he’d never been to Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello.
We immersed ourselves in Gettysburg and Antietam Battlefields, various museums, off-the-beaten path routes through picturesque towns and cities that have re-invented themselves as heritage tourism communities. En route to the conference I was attending in Buffalo, we traveled along Pennsylvania’s Susquehanna River to Lycoming County where their museum has one of the largest model train exhibits in the world.
Corning, New York, is an architectural historian’s dream city — there’s a little bit of everything there. And if you’re an art glass fan — well, you’ve hit the mother lode in Corning.
A little farther up the road, we toured Buffalo with its architectural masterpieces. The falls of the Niagara River beckoned, so we availed ourselves of the majesty of the three waterfalls that compose one of America’s most beloved representations of the sublime.
Mr. Fix-It was happy to tromp from battlefield to monument to water fall, but nothing would satisfy his wanderlust. If we didn’t see anything else, we had to go to Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania.
That spectacular Sunday afternoon in late October was made even more brilliant by the sunlight glistening on seven-foot fiberglass groundhogs strategically placed on street corners and outside of sponsoring businesses. Dressed in everything from a top hat and tails to overalls complete with tool belt, Phil’s year round counterparts are a constant reminder of Punxsutawney’s claim to fame.
Probably the greatest letdown when a movie has introduced viewers to a community is that we expect the town to be a carbon copy of the movie setting. You know: bandstand in the square, Queen Anne bed and breakfast down the street, the charm and character of the town as shown in its celluloid version.
Alas, Hollywood had taken creative license with the little town made famous by their prognosticating groundhog. The square is city block size — probably used to have an old hotel or the original courthouse long ago demolished or victim of fire. (Heavy sigh)
Phil’s habitat, Gobbler’s Knob, is actually a mile or so outside of town situated on a wooded hill. You have to follow a curvy road past several small farms before you reach Punxsutawney’s claim to fame. Gobblers Knob is quite cosmopolitan with its amphitheater, RV parking and Port-A-Potties. A few metal sculptures featuring groundhogs usher visitors along the path to the rear of the seating area replete with backless benches and cordoned seating.
Like most seasonal venues, one has to imagine how it would appear when people from all over gather every February 2nd to see a big tree-trunk dwelling critter make his prognostication as to whether winter will last another six weeks. It’s a little like visiting a summer amusement park during the off-season. It just doesn’t have the same magic without the sights and sounds of full-blown activity.
Groundhog predictions are one of those things we just take for granted. How, pray tell, did a groundhog communicate that he thought anything — much less whether we’d have winter, spring or Indian summer? Who’d he tell? What had the recipient of this information been sniffing when the groundhog shared his prediction?
Meanwhile, a bunch of folks in Punxsutawney will dress in top hats and tails on February 2nd to perpetuate the tradition of their groundhog telling them whether they’ll see the bare earth before April. It’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
Helen Person is a Winder resident and columnist for the Barrow Journal. You can reach her at helenperson@windstream.net.
