We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride
Way back when, somebody was writing about how you get to Penn State. Might have been Bill Conlin. Probably was Bill Conlin. Long before he became known for some truly unspeakable allegations, he was merely a quirky Phillies beat guy for the Philadelphia Daily News who wrote long-winded ledes that included references to Thermopylae and the like. Then he became a columnist, where he would on occasion compose pieces that began, “When I’m King of the World …”
He was no less bizarre in person. I recall him sitting in the Lincoln Financial Field pressbox for an Eagles game one winter’s day, wearing a hat worthy of an Eskimo – and remember, this was indoors, where it was nice and toasty. And as he pecked away on his laptop he would just randomly yell out weather updates, to no one in particular. None of his colleagues seemed to find that the least bit odd: Ah, that’s just Bill.
But anyway, Penn State. Pretty sure Conlin, who died in 2014, was the one who wrote that to get there, you take a left at Harrisburg and swing through the trees.
Which isn’t far off, of course.
I was reminded of this recently when I made that drive for the first time in a few years. As it was for a PSU men’s basketball game and not a football game, it was not as difficult as it usually is. But boy, it’s still long.
My best guess is that I’ve made the drive about 200 times over the years, give or take. That’s a lotta tree-swinging. A lotta scratchy radio, before Sirius/XM came along. A lotta time spent sitting in traffic behind RVs whose horn only plays the damn fight song.
I mean, think about it – that’s 200 five-hour round trips, if you’re lucky. A thousand hours, or over 41 days.
Goodness. Shoulda put those six weeks in escrow or something.
I’m feelin’ okay this mornin’
And you know
We’re on a road to paradise
Here we go, here we go
The journey really begins on Route 322. That’s when you know you’re really doing this, man. There’s no turning back. And before too long you come upon Dauphin Boro. There’s a Hardee’s there, which before the roads were reconfigured was something of an oasis in the night on the return trip, as it was the first easily accessible restaurant in miles.
But the real oddity sits upon an old, broken-down railroad piling in the middle of the Susquehanna River – a mini-Statue of Liberty. It was first put there by a man named Gene Stilp in 1986, in honor of the centennial of the real Statue of Liberty. According to this piece, he built it out of fiberglass and Venetian blinds.
Mother Nature eventually got the better of Lady Liberty, so the Dauphin Town Council built a permanent replacement in 1997, and it still stands today.
Up the road a little further you cross a bridge and pass through the outskirts of Duncannon. There’s a convenience store, and, uh, a gentleman’s club, which from the outside looks like a fine establishment. Also the Red Rabbit, a snack bar that has been there for years but is now dwarfed by vast Sheetz and Rutter’s convenience complexes.
Ah, progress.
And after that, there are miles of nothingness, a fact driven home on the return trip, when you pass a place called Watts.
“No Services,” it says on the exit sign.
Damn, Watts, why you wanna do us like that?
Maybe you wonder where you are
I don’t care
Here is where time is on our side
Take you there, take you there
Your eyes glaze over. Your mind wanders. You question some of your life choices. You wonder about the occupants of the Buick in front of you, with the “409” bumper sticker affixed to their back bumper. A pickup blows past you, and you catch a few bars of “Free Bird” as it does.
And still the trip continues.
At Mifflintown, there is a McDonald’s and another Sheetz, one that has something of a Star Wars-bar vibe late on a Saturday night, should you choose to stop there at that hour. Lotsa locals, eyeballing whichever rube chooses to go in and use the facilities. (You can’t help but think of a certain Bob Seger song at times like that.)
Just beyond that lies Lewistown, which might be the most promising milepost of all, as it lies just 30 miles south of State College. And it is here that you pass the Electric Avenue exit, which immediately compels those of a certain age to belt out a line from a 1982 song by Eddy Grant that begins, “We’re gonna rock down to …”
Apparently the street gets its name from the electric railway that began operating in that area in the 19th Century. Which is nice to know, but by this point in the trip, you have only one thing in mind – getting out of your car.
So you power on. Almost there now.
There’s a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
It’s alright, baby, it’s alright
You climb the steep grade adjacent to the Laurel Creek Dam, which conjures up a sad memory. In 1988, Scott Erney, a Pennsylvania kid (Mechanicsburg), quarterbacked Rutgers to an upset of Penn State, but afterward lost his grandfather in an accident near here.
And it is a treacherous spot, particularly when heading south, down the mountain. So you proceed slowly upward, then level off.
It is possible to avoid much of this, though the alternative – Route 15 North to Route 115 West – adds time to an already endless trip. I’ve gone that way a bunch of times, too. And that conjures up a far more pleasant memory – this one of a friend named Bill Fisher, who for years served as sports editor of the Sunday News.
I went that way one time with Bill for a night game, and he suggested breaking up the return trip by staying at a hotel in Shamokin Dam. Fine. Good idea. And what I remember most is that when I stumbled into the coffee shop the next morning, Bill was sitting in a booth, scribbling notes on napkins and placemats and just about every other available piece of paper in the place. He had a story idea, dammit, and he wasn’t gonna depend on his memory (much less his laptop) to recall what he wanted to say or who he needed to call.
I don’t remember what piece came of that, nor is that particularly important. What is important is that that is my enduring memory of Bill, who died in 2021 at age 93. How he was all in on his idea. How the story was the thing.
We’re on a ride to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride
Finally Beaver Stadium looms before you. Your parking space beckons, but there are a few obstacles still to navigate. The foot traffic. The guy in front of you who seems bent on conferring with every attendant, as he has a special parking problem.
But you inch along, past the Ag Arena. That calls to mind a story I was once told by a friend who worked at the York Daily Record. He was, shall we say, a guy who liked to embellish tales, so I can’t swear to the veracity of what I was told. But I certainly want it to be true.
He had a co-worker riding along with him, a guy who had an urban background. And he took one look at the area near the Ag Arena and exclaimed, “Holy shit – there’s cows right next to the bleepin’ stadium!”
And here I am reminded not only of what Conlin might or might not have written, but something cuddly ol’ Bob Knight said 30-some years ago, when Penn State was entering the Big Ten. PSU, he said, is “a camping trip.”
Quite so. By the time you get there, you might know where you’re goin’, but you don’t know where you’ve been. And you know what you’re knowin’, but you can’t say what you’ve seen.
With apologies to David Byrne and Co.