Homewood Bound 1

Well my plans of arriving in Homewood, Pa. by 8 pm Friday was foolish. I should know myself by now. I left a bit after 4 am and arrived at my destination by 6:15 am with the help of Philip.

Who is Philip? I didn’t quite remember where Homewood was so I went to Beaver Falls. The first gas station I saw I pulled in to ask for direction. Just as I did another car was doing the same. I get out and approach this man’s car, he gets out also. He started first, what year is your van? I told him and then asked for directions. You're not from around here. Nope. And you don't have GPS. Nope. Well go down a few lights and take a left when you see… ah you're not going to find it, follow me. With that he took off and I followed. He got me right to where I should be, the fire station and what’s even better? As I pulled in a man was unlocking the door and that was my contact, Alan. Perfect-o timing. Thanks again Philip.

Saturday the book signing was slow made even slower by the hour of sleep I had. I only slept from 6:30 am till 7:30 am because the breakfast was at 8 am. I was set up in the fire station greeting people coming in for the all you can eat pancake breakfast and sausage. Hardly anyone looked interested. There were two other reasons for the sort of low turnout. The weather threatened rain all day and the main road in is down to one lane. They chose to start the road work on a Saturday. The town is upset because this is their yearly big event. But what I lacked in sales was made up by plenty of smiles, handshakes and making new friends. I especially liked teasing and talking to lil’ Rocko and his sister who are both in school. Rocko if you are out there I still think you should dress up like a pancake for Halloween.

About 3 pm it started to drizzle so I wrapped things up and took a nap. I told Karen at the display next to the Go-Go Bus to wake me if the sun comes out. She forgot, I'm glad she did. When I woke at 6:30 pm the sun was out but the whole town was rolled up. No one around. It was like aliens dissolved everyone and I was the last one alive.

I took a long drive one way but there were no towns.


So spun around and headed into Beaver falls. I drove up and down for over an hour looking for a grocery store. I was told by one person there is nothing but Save A Lot. C’mon this can’t be. So I drove around some more and another person told me, yep that’s all there is in Beaver Falls unless you drive a distance to another town and there is Giant Eagle. I was not driving any further to get food at the big bird so I wandered into a bordering town and found an old grocery store called Foodland. That’s where I shopped. Old school.

I went back to the Bus and set up camp. South Western Pa. is hilly and so is Homewood. I thought I was parked level enough but I wasn’t. Have you ever tried sleeping on a slant? All the blood rushes to one side of your body. Before dozing off I walked the town. Eerie. A silent town, an abandoned hotel with railroad tracks that had trains rumbling through constantly. I locked the doors and tried to get some good sleep. I did between the intervals of the train passing through which seemed like every 20 minutes.





I woke about 9 when I heard the festival get started. A car arrived early for the car cruise so I had to straighten the Go-Go Bus. When I opened the door I heard jangling. Hey there’s my keys. I slept with the keys in the door lock. My goodness. Someone could have driven off with the Bus with me in it. I fell back to sleep until almost 11 am.

The end of part one.