God's Country, PA

Growing Flowers. Mary Forrer Pierce, Dayton Art Institute. Wikimedia Commons.

We sat on folding chairs with my cousins and my Uncle Red’s cousins. There wasn’t much to do but eat and talk — which is, arguably, the whole point of summertime. I met a man who had traveled out that way. I don’t remember if he was a distant relative or only passing through. He had asked about my schooling and my travels, which weren’t too impressive, but they were meaningful to me.

Somehow, we got to chatting about Carlisle. It made me so happy that someone knew where it was, and I gushed about its sprawling fields and colorful prisms and the horses. I loved watching them roam in the open spaces between all the brick and white houses. Where the grass was so impossibly bright, the color of sea glass and old library lamps.

"God’s country," he said.
"God’s first love," I should have replied.

When I think, now, about Carlisle and Cumberland County, I remember the big trucks that would drive through. And the motorcycle shop, its jumbo orange-and-white sign like a spaceship off the highway. The horses, too, nuzzling and brushing their long necks up close.

Everything there was either gentle and slow or gentle and fast. Motion, renewal, and peace — peace, peace. Calm and contained like its own little perfect, turning world. The past belonged freely to the future. I could sob or scream and it was as if the whole community of dragonflies and prisms and grass would cushion my cries. Blessing me. Blessing the entire town. I wasn’t happy, really. But places — I’ve learned — can be happy for you.

And I did believe that it would become my home one day. It was impossible to know how many homes I would come to inhabit…probably twelve more since then? It’s a lot for anyone, I’d think. My moms side are Italian gypsies and seamstresses so maybe that’s inherited. We move around often and our collective posture is so-so.

*

We ate our chicken wings in silence and I looked up at the afternoon sky. My Uncle Red lived outside Pittsburgh, where healers of industry and owners of the military-pharmaceutical complex built science centers on top of meadows, rainbows, and railway steel. But outside of the city, it wasn’t anything like that.

We’d sit out on the porches when the sun was going down and stay out there all night. There was a Dairy Queen down the street, so my dad would put in an order of a dozen Dilly Bars. They were horrible for you, but there was something just right about it. Candy-coated, like round, frozen lollipops.

He said he’d been to Carlisle only for business. But he was surprised to know I’d been there, too, and nodded at how beautiful it was out that way.

Pittsburgh was different. It was not contained, it spilled. Exhaust and grey plumes into the skies. It was still beautiful, though. The people would shoot straight, every time. You can’t act fake or go around crying and crying like you’re the center of the universe. The fireflies would come out at night and, literally!, pick you up by the Dilly Bar and carry you into the ether. It was magical. We would collect our little glass jars and carry them out into the front yard, and none of the neighbors would have any problem with the fact that kids would roam from one yard to the next and the next and congregate on everyone else’s front patio.

There had been steel mills near this part of the land, in Washington County, but in recent years those factories were abandoned. You could drive all around and see the framework and torched sky like beautiful ruins of Pompeii. For centuries America was built on iron and steel. But this was the early 2000s (a little before, a little after) so you’d notice some things changing. It’s hard to explain. The buildings showed this change the most.

Over time, the men became strong and so did the beastly machines. In all the towns that have made Pennsylvania the place it is, there are signs of beastly machines. They grow from the most pure and beautiful farming fields known to man.

"God’s country," he said again.

I smiled and looked down at my phone.

"God must have given it all away."