Get ready for an onslaught of Rocky allusions, mangled quotations of Jim Carville's "Alabama" remark about the state's rural center, brisk treatises on "cheesesteak with" (and the political perils of botching your order at Pat's), parallel scholarship on the Primanti's sandwich in Pittsburgh, evocations of the Centralia mine fires, and elegiac tone poems about the husks of steel mills looming in the morning mist over the Monongahela.
But don't curse the cliché; light a candle. In that spirit, I offer this Parachutist's Guide to Actual Fun Facts About the Real Pennsylvania, with a helpful gloss on how each fact will come into play on April 22.
The national soda/pop line runs through Pennsylvania, a bit west of Wellsboro. East of the line, the stuff that comes in a Coke or Sprite can is called soda. To the west, it is called pop. Which is to say: Western Pennsylvania is, in outlook and folkways, part of the Midwest. Eastern Pennsylvania is culturally part of the East Coast megalopolis. A candidate ignores this point to his peril. Speaking of stuff near Wellsboro . . .
We have our own Grand Canyon. It's also known as Pine Creek Gorge, and it's in the middle of a sylvan nowhere. Which is to say: Pennsylvania isn't just rusting smokestacks and rowhouse 'hoods. It has a lot of green spaces and cornfields. It has the third-largest rural population in America, and ranks 19th in agricultural production. To win our hearts, urban policy is important, but candidates better know what's on the minds of dairy and fruit farmers, too.
