Hughesville :: Personal Narrative New York Papers

Hughesville plot growing up in Ithaca, natural York, visits to my fathers boyhood home, Hughesville, a town set in a valley among the Appalachian Mountains in northern Pennsylvania, were common. My aunt continues to live in the 1948 home her gramps build. Pleasant memories take me back to this borough of about 2000 people, 60 miles south of the New York border. Small settlements in Pennsylvania are politicallyclassified as boroughs or townships. Although a borough generally looks more urban than a township, it is ambitious for aroundone passing through and unfamiliar with an area to tell the difference.From Ithaca, this is a deuce hour drive on US 220, a two lane highway that starts at the New York border. Long after I knew the names of all the places we passed on the way, I continued to play What placement Is This? with my father. Some towns we passed were a spattering of twenty buildings, while others had two interrupt shopping districts. We passed through Milan, pronou nced Meyelin, New Albany, where signs proclaim it the Christmas Wreath bully of the World, and Dogtown, identified by Rand McNally as Tivola.Route 220 winds through high, tree greened hills. It is slip over and along the sides of these hills exposing gentle valleys with flat, cow-dotted pastures and a spectacular view of the narrow, meandering, right on Susquehanna River carving its path through the fertile farmland it floods, sometimes violently in spring. Anytime you drive through the area, vistas are a visual delight. The high, breaking wind roads can ice over in winter just insummer inspire free spirited motorcycle rides. The salutary shaded two lane roads over the hills and through the dales bring comfort from the black pavements heat rising to meet the fiery sun baking your bare arms.Before the Eisenhower Interstate System was built in the 1950s, a main travel route through the easterly part of the country was US 220. Even now you quickly and consistently find yourself behind slow-moving tractor trailers crawling steadily up and bun down these rollercoaster hills. In response to this, recently built passing laneswere forge deeper into the hillsides at the steepest climbs. Few take this route to its end in Tennessee. While most use it to make their way to the interstate connecter, four miles from Hughesville, some use it to deliver goods to the Lycoming Mall. The malls entrance is a football field away from the Interstate 80 connecter.