The lines obscured my view of the Ukrainian Social Club, directly across the street from my house, where inebriated older gentlemen on a cheap whiskey buzz would exit to their beat-up cars in a gravel parking lot. On the other side of that parking lot was a popular bar that occasionally would bring in "Go-Go" girls on Friday nights.
For me, Penn State was just . . . well . . . sanitized.
The streets of State College are pristine, and the air there feels as if it has gone through some kind of natural filter. On a clear day you can see forever - they had to have written that song about Penn State. On a clear day, a sun-splashed day, with the Nittany Mountains on the horizon, the place seems as if it's been touched by the hand of God.
Penn State is an addictive comfort, with its venerable buildings and tall oaks and ivy walls, and where its students deliver a daily cultlike mantra of "We are . . . Penn State!"
To the outside world, that chant is a little weird, but Penn Staters never take the time to even consider the strangeness, because they are so caught up in the spirit of a setting that is so idyllic. When students get their degrees at Penn State, when their time has finally run out there, many of them try to invent ways to stay - grad school, a job at the university, slinging hot dogs at a storefront eatery. Anything to remain in utopia.
When I was at Penn State, I remember pondering what it must be like to grow up in the Rockwellian existence of State College, Pa. Raised in State College, you might not ever gain any kind of appreciation for the real world. We are surrounded in life by war, famine, pestilence, terrorism, global warming, and crime. Open your window in State College, you hear only the sweet sounds - sparrow tweets and cricket chirps.
Where in the world is all this other stuff going on?
Which brings me to Tim Curley.
