Happy Valley Detour

There's a signpost up ahead: Next Stop - Happy Valley! No, this isn't about an episode of The Twilight Zone. The following tale has nothing to do with the boundless imagination of television writer Rod Serling. This is a sad-but-true (and somewhat disturbing) story of a regular guy from the real world who once found himself in the upside-down and inside-out world of Happy Valley, PA. And who lived to tell about it.

Back when I blindly believed in the goodness of people and the sanctity of old age, I used to volunteer my time at various senior citizen events. I fetched and carried like a "gopher", moved furniture, set tables, helped people to and from places, pulled out chairs and pushed them in again, and generally served and respected my elders the way I'd been taught as a boy. And I did this because I liked older people and old folks, felt at home around them, and always believed that none of them was getting a fair deal out of life anymore. I still believe that, although I'm a little more cautious nowadays about practicing that belief.

Anyway, several years ago I volunteered to hand out bingo prizes at a big senior citizen event "just a stone's throw" from Penn State University. Lots and lots of senior citizen women and even a few senior men attended this blowout and it was held in Happy Valley, PA. Where else? That's State College, Pennsylvania, USA, for those of you who, naturally, have no clue. Happy Valley is a "Marginal People's Paradise" that's presided over by Big-Sister, Penn State.

I found a folding chair behind an unused podium and sat down with my little Mini-Igloo cooler, containing a few snacks and some bottled water. I'd already prepaid for the big, sit-down lunch with the others but I had this little life raft with me, just in case. I happily waited in this spot, out of the way, until I was needed by the bingo caller. The room was soon filled to the brim with people well past their prime, guys and gals who'd finally had to turn in their lease on life for canes and walkers and electric scooters and restricted activity. My heart went out to them as it always did. Senior citizenship on planet Earth was no way to treat a lady, or a gentleman, but it was the best this backward world had to offer them at the present time.

No one in the room smiled or waved or nodded at me. What they did was stare. They stared and stared. And it wasn't because I was a lot younger than they were. I was in my early 50s and would be one of them before any of us knew it. Besides, there were plenty of volunteers and workers at this shindig who were my age or younger. Anyway, they continued to stare at me until I wanted to rush to a mirror to see if I had a smudge on my face or something objectionable peeking out of my nose. But I knew instinctively what it was, why they were staring at me like I was "a little green man from mars" or something worse. It was worse. It was my clothing.

My cargo shorts didn't say "Dockers" on them anywhere. My sneakers were not Nike or Adidas or Reebok. The crown of my ball cap was way too high by collegiate standards and it didn't sport a cool Nike logo or the name of a U.S. Virgin Island on it. My shirt wasn't an expensive golf shirt with a tiny Izod Lacoste alligator on the left chest. It was a teal-colored T-shirt that said "Penn's Cave" on it and that made it all too common in Centre County, Pennsylvania, Land of Penn State and Penn's Cave. That was it, then. That had to be it. An alien, redneck hick from The Mountaintop (that's anywhere in the Snow Shoe, Clarence, Moshannon or Pine Glen area of Centre County for those who, naturally, don't know) had entered their shallow world of superficial things and symbols and meanings, and they didn't like it one darn bit.

Then, before I could even hand out my first bingo prize, a short-haired female head appeared over the podium from the front. I craned my neck to engage her eyes with mine. She was somewhere in her late forties or early fifties, I imagined, maybe older, and I waited for her to speak. Maybe she was about to welcome me aboard or she wanted to introduce herself or thank me for my volunteerism. I waited patiently and quietly for what she had to say. Then she spoke. Her voice was chilling and clipped and her words were unforgettable.

"Don't mess us up," said the talking head. "Don't mess us up," she repeated, her carefully-controlled hostility making her point very clear to me. "Because, if you mess us up, I'll kill you." Her penetrating stare assured me that this was no joke, no prank. She was serious. And then she turned on her heels like a Gestapo Agent and disappeared into the mostly older female crowd. I was even more speechless than before. I wanted to open the little Igloo cooler and crack the seal on the first bottle of water in the worst way. But assuaging my sudden bout of "cottonmouth" might have been some act of "messing up", I wasn't sure. I wanted to consult someone, somewhere, about what I'd just been told but that might have also been some way of "messing up". So, until someone finally hollered bingo, all I did was just sit, sit, sit, sit. And I did not like it. Not one little bit.

I apparently "didn't mess up" and successfully verified each bingo winner's winning numbers and eventually handed out the last of the bingo prizes. But I was a little taken aback by the fact that no one spoke to me as I did this. No one said "Thank you." No one smiled or nodded his or her head. They just kept staring and staring at me as if staring at me would somehow make me go away and not come back. I tried to blame my own imagination or some hidden paranoia but I snapped out of that zone when I realized that seeing is believing and the sound of silence cannot be mistaken for anything else.

Afterward, I found out that the terrible little face at the podium with the great big warning for me belonged to none other than the person in charge of this big shebang. I found that very hard to believe, at first, but then I reminded myself that this shindig was taking place in Happy Valley, not the real world. I ducked out before lunch was served. They could keep my lunch money, like bullies on an elementary school playground. I'd lost my appetite.

When I tried to figure out what this misdirected hatred toward me was all about, the only thing I could come up with was the fact that this disturbing incident had transpired in Happy Valley, a locally infamous Shan-gri-La where little enclaves of dysfunctional people huddle together against the natural, normal, everyday, outside world. Beyond this unhappy bubble of screwed-up humanity which is incredibly called Happy Valley, telling a complete stranger out of the clear blue that you will kill him, is considered to be a terroristic threat. And inside this bubble (or outside of it, for that matter), any man telling anybody a similar thing means a swift and irrevocable trip to the slammer for him. But, in Happy Valley, PA, whenever a woman tells a man that she will kill him, it's considered to be therapy.

Did I ever volunteer to help out at subsequent senior citizen events? You bet I did. On numerous occasions. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays a Baby-Boomer go-for from the swift completion of his appointed rounds. I just never volunteered for any more events of any kind in Happy Valley, PA, that's all. In fact, if I ever did volunteer to serve my fellow man and fellow woman in such a place as Happy Valley again, it would be either a cold day in hell or an unplanned and unexpected visit to The Real Twilight Zone.

A Cold Day in Hell

Once upon a time, I tried to peddle my books at a bricks-and-mortar bookstore. When I got there I introduced myself and asked to speak with someone about selling my novels there. A couple of minutes later an elf appeared, apparently looking for a man in a suit or at least the latest fashionable attire from that yuppie-loving outfitter L.L. Bean.

When the elf finally realized that I was the author and that yes, indeed, I was wearing a ball cap and a barn coat, her face turned ten shades of elf color and then she spent what little time she gave me by trying to make me feel as bad about myself as she possibly could for 1) being in a barn coat and ball cap, despite the fact that I was clean-shaven and otherwise well-groomed, 2) being a Print-On-Demand author which the elf made very clear to me that there were just so many of them around (as though we bred like flies and had our hands out for the rest of our lives) and 3) that I had interrupted her day to talk about a POD book (and not a real one from their distribution list out of New York City) and that I had the gall to do so while wearing a barn coat and ball cap (despite the fact that it was a new barn coat and an attractive ball cap advertising Martha’s Vineyard).

Despite the fact that almost everyone in the bookstore was dressed casually and some even more casually than I was, I immediately got the picture.  Nobody in that bookstore was dressed up. Nobody had a tie and jacket on. This was a college town. Ball caps were on heads everywhere. But, I got the message this incredible little snob wanted me to get. She wanted me to take my five books and just go away. Fine. I'd do just that but not just yet, I told myself, undeterred by her nasty demeanor. I was determined not to be bested by the snooty FemBot before me, elf or no elf. I asked her if I could leave my card with her and, reluctantly, she took it without even looking at it, like it was alive and already in the act of violating her somehow. Then I thanked her (for what? I later asked myself) and left.

Outside, I asked myself if I would ever sign books in such a place as that, in the unlikely event that my novels would one day appear on some big-time New York City publishing list. Then, without hesitation, I answered myself.

“It'll be a cold day in hell,” I replied.

100% Rag

A year ago I wrote a letter to The Centre Daily Times, which is the only newspaper serving my area. I wasn't asking them for a review of my science fiction novels because I know they don't review self-published books. I was just making them aware of my authorship and Internet presence. There aren't many authors of any kind in my neighborhood and probably not a whole lot of authors in this area have written six science fiction thrillers. But I never even heard from The Centre Daily Times regarding my letter.

If I had been a former housewife (and especially a happily divorced woman writing her first POD book) or a member of Penn State's GLBT "community" or a physically-challenged and perhaps transgendered first-time author, I would have recieved a full-page splash in the CDT local section, regardless of what I wrote about or how it got published.

And this is not intended to disparage these minorities because I support everyone's own lifestyle choices as their personal right to their own lives, whether or not their choices coincide with mine. This is what freedom is all about. What I'm suggesting is that, because I was a 54-year-old divorced white man from Snow Shoe, I was immediately on their "we couldn't care less list".

No wonder The Centre Daily Times didn't cover the Grand Reunion 2000 of Snow Shoe High School, a huge and monumental event in the history of the entire Mountaintop Region of Centre County. A once-in-a-lifetime event that they were notified about by the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee. Maybe it's Snow Shoe the CDT doesn't like, who can say? If it's just plain snobbery, then it's catching, because WTAJ-TV Channel 10 from Altoona didn't want to cover it either. Neither did WJAC-TV Channel 6 from Johnstown. I should know. I was on the Grand Reunion 2000 Committee and I called those television stations myself.

Oh, well, I digress. This posting is really about The Centre Daily Times. As it were, the editor I wrote to didn't even have the common decency to respond. No wonder I don't subscribe to The Centre Daily Times. It should be called The Happy Valley Times or else The Penn State Times.

But that's all water under the bridge now. I just wanted to post a little history here for that day when the great and powerful Centre Daily Times asks me for an interview and I flatly decline.