Downingtown = Meridian

Since their arrival in Pennsylvania, the Taters have been temporarily living in a furnished apartment in the Philadelphia suburb of Downingtown. Downingtown is about 40 miles from Philly and is among the farthest west of the string of 'burbs between the city and Harrisburg (to the northwest) and Lancaster (to the southwest).

Unlike Idaho, where the towns and cities fall along fairly obvious geographic features (ie, the Boise River), several hundred years of development have made eastern PA more of a web than a string. For further reference, Vanguard's headquarters and Tater Kenn's office is in Malvern.

A feature that's probably less obvious to our western friends is the rather pastoral nature of the area. Most have read that the Pennsylvania Dutch near Lancaster live mostly on family farms, but it's surprising how much open land is around the towns and cities in this area. Unlike the West, most of the land here is privately owned, so one can't just go traipsing across with dogs in tow, but it's at least nice to look at. In fact, there are so many horse-y types in this area that we've come to agree with the sobriquet given by a traveling companion on a recent flight into Philly: "Pennsyl-tucky."

Like Meridian Idaho, Downingtown sits among these forests and fields as multiple clusters of new shopping centers, strip malls, chain restaurants, and car dealerships. Many of the homes and commercial buildings in the original town of Downingtown, about 3 miles from the apartment, date as far back as the early 1700s. With such a long history, there are many styles of architecture, including plenty of classic mid-Atlantic field-stone houses. However, the predominant feel to the "neighborhood" in which the Taters currently reside is "late 20th century prefab."

The apartment complex sits near the intersection of a major road (Lincoln Hwy) and an even more major road (US 30). The closest analog is Meadow Lake Village near the intersection of Eagle Road and I-84 (no cracks here about the Taters age, if you please). In fact, the marketing material even looks similar:

AVE Downingtown

Aside from its location, the size and finish level of the Taters', furnished apartment is in sharp contrast to the small Boise bungalow in which they lived. While the apartment is certainly adequate to sustain two adults, two mid-sized dogs and a imperturbable cat, it unfortunately lacks in the personal touches that make a house "home." Here's the photo from AVE's website:

Allow your mind to expurgate the flowers, pillows, fashionable lamps, and window coverings (and add a sheen of pet hair) and you have our two bedroom, 1150 sq/ft  abode. 

There are some advantages: 

• The indoor/outdoor carpet gives excellent purchase to the dogs' toenails, so they love chasing each other about. The Taters are, needless to say, less enthusiastic about this feature. 
• The apartments are surprisingly well sound-insulated, so the neighbors and their dogs aren't obvious unless they're outside.
• Small spaces mean no place to store "stuff", so no need to go shopping for anything other than essentials.

The Taters will move - finally! - into the house they've rented (would that be permanently temporary housing?) next Tuesday, November 1st. It's a colonial-style home built around 1940 that's much larger than what they really want or need - 5 bedrooms, 3.5 baths, full finished basement, etc., sitting on 2.75 acres. The house and neighborhood will undoubtedly be the topic of upcoming blog posts, but as Tater T has said, around Thanksgiving the K-Bar-T B&B will be open for business!

This Little Tater Goes to Market...

We regularly enjoyed the Capital City Public Market while we lived in Boise. We spent many Saturday mornings browsing for veggies and the occasional steak; Tina even sold hanging flower baskets several years ago.  It's an event that transforms the downtown streets with which we're so familiar into a park of sorts, where we always ran into friends.

Given that CCPM was a touchstone for us, we looked forward to our visit yesterday to Philadelphia's rough equivalent, the Reading Terminal Market.

We knew about the most obvious differences before we arrived: Reading Terminal Market is open daily and is permanently housed indoors in a space that consumes a full city block. It's home to about 80 merchants that sell everything from flowers, fruits and veggies to seafood, meats and spices. And it's old: The RTM will celebrate its 115th anniversary next February.  Generations of Philadelphians have visited the Market to browse or to buy their daily groceries; a couple of the original vendors remain.

The thing that stood out as the most salient takeaway was the large number of purveyors of prepared foods. Like Boise's CCPM there are a number of vendors selling baked goods, a creperie and a "booth" representing a local winery. In addition to these, though, there are food-court sized sellers including Thai, sushi, cajun, a ton of delis and of course cheesesteak sandwiches (editors note: in Philadelphia these sandwiches are simply called "steaks"; to refer to them otherwise, especially as a "Philly cheesesteak", is to mark oneself as an ignorant outsider, akin to someone visiting Boise referring to the city as "Boy-zee" and assuming the city is simply a cluster of buildings among the potato fields.) Restaurants make up the largest category of vendor type on the RTM's website by a large margin.

The fact that the RTM vendors are housed in a permanent structure makes the proliferation of food vendors possible, of course. And while we each had an excellent breakfast prepared by a market vendor - Tina a ham and cheese omelette served by a deli (of sorts) run by an Amish family, while Kenn inhaled a breakfast po-boy sandwich of fried eggs, cheese and andouille sausage offered by the Cajun restaurant - we came away with the impression that Reading Terminal Market is as much a food court as a farmers' market. A really cool and interesting food court, but a food court nonetheless.

A couple of interesting anecdotes that added color to our experience (if you'll pardon the awkward expression): Noticing a vendor called "The Shoe Doctor" on the RTM website, Kenn dropped off several pairs of shoes to be shined while he and Tina shopped and explored. He returned at the end of their visit and asked to have the pair he was wearing shined, interrupting a vigorous and animated conversation among the two African-American men working at the stand and their two compatriots. They quickly wove him into their discussion about the topic du jour (one of the men was having trouble with his landlord) and praised his choice in shoes ("nice, for a white guy" one of the men said with a huge smile and laugh). Four pairs professionally shined for $15; Kenn gave him a $20 and plans to return after the rest of his clothing is released from the movers' storage on Nov. 1.

Tina was pleasantly surprised at the availability of organic and gluten-free foods available at the RTM. And she confessed, while savoring her omelette, to harboring a belief that the Amish vendors she saw at the market were actors wearing plain clothing and head coverings. We'll find out today, when we visit Lancaster PA, epicenter of the Pennsylvania Dutch culture.

"Umm, what?"

Kenn was raised in Georgia and completed his undergraduate education in Alabama, so came honestly by the rather strong (some might say obnoxious) drawl he carried into his early 20s. He realized, though, that those raised outside the South would assume he was as slow of mind as of speech if he didn't do something about that accent, so over a couple of years trained himself to eliminate most of his drawl and speech errors. Having focused so intently on his own speech patterns made him interested in and sensitive to those in others - an armchair linguist, if you will.

In his estimation the fine folks in eastern Pennsylvania suffer from vowel confusion. To wit:

• The long "A" sound (as in "cake") is tinged with a long "I" sound. "OK" sounds like "oak-eye".
• The long "U" sound (as in "union") is tinged with a long "O" sound. "You" sounds like "yo" (this one's easy if you recall Sylvester Stallone's accent in Rocky).
• A "w" sound is added to the beginning of some words that start with a vowel. "On" sounds like "one".

It's not an abrasive accent, certainly not like those television shows set in New Jersey (apologies to my relatives that live there), just kind of odd. It just kind of make you go "huh"?

UPDATE, SUNDAY 30 OCTOBER 2011
Yesterday we learned the Philadelphia/South Jersey equivalent of "y'all", courtesy of our young female server: "yuhs". As in: "Can I get yuhs anything else to drink? OK, thank yuhs for coming into our restaurant."

Somebody smack us if they hear us say "yuhs". Please. Hard.

Wine Store Withdrawal

My status as a wine guy is well-known (as is my debit card number by the wine retailers and restaurants in Boise.) I'll spare you the arcane details of the laws governing alcohol sales in Pennsylvania, but suffice it to say that my consumption's dropped sharply because the selection at the only stores in the vicinity of our furnished apartment temporary corporate housing (home sweet home!) is about as sparse as the hairs on my head.

Perhaps if my new job at Vanguard doesn't work out I can become the wine buyer for the stores, which are all owned by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

My wine-drinking Boise friends: Make the most of Erickson's, Bueno Cheapo Vino and the Co-op. You don't know wha'cha got until you don't have it....

Size Matters, Especially If You Don't Know Where You're Going

Since we arrived in the Philadelphia area by airplane, our first experience with the local environment came as we trudged purposefully, eyes bleary from restless airplane napping and legs stiff from being crumpled into a Munchkin-sized coach seat, through the Philadelphia airport. The pet carrier holding Hobbes-the-cat was slung over Tater K's shoulder.

The traveling denizens of PHL (Tater K enjoys the challenge of memorizing the airport codes he visits, a habit Tater T finds somewhat inscrutable) seem more in a hurry, even on a Thursday evening, than those at BOI. Lots of guys in suits with their ties loosened, women teetering on high heels with a bag in each upturned elbow, so forth. As one traverses the concourse one hears more accented voices speaking English and other languages, than would greet the ear in a month in Boise, with the colors of skin to match.  Ethnic diversity is a phenomenon  that Tater K missed when he moved to Boise 12 years ago, so it's welcome if somewhat unfamiliar.

The beauty of BOI baggage claim's 4 carousels is that the traveler can simply stand in the general vicinity of the carousels while listening for the "bags arriving" alarm, snatch up one's luggage and bolt for transportation. Could hardly be easier.

PHL, not so much. The first challenge the traveler encounters is figuring out which set of carousels ones luggage will appear on, which is determined by which concourse ones flight docked at. Don't know about you, but we're not in the habit of paying attention to that fact, so we were left with a guessing game as we approached an apparent point of no return. We shrugged tiredly and descended the escalator that seemed likely.

Our first goal was to reunite with the our dogs Karma (yellow lab) and Bailey (German short-hair pointer), who experienced their first airplane trip not by going to the cockpit to have the pilot award plastic wings, but by being crated and shipped cross-country in the aircraft's hold. We weren't given instructions as to where we'd find them, so quickly headed for the carousel indicated on an overhead monitor only to stand with our fellow travelers awaiting checked bags. This experience is, we suspect, universal: Dozens of tired, impatient people staring expectantly at a chute, then jockeying for position as the bags drop onto the conveyor. Reminds us of nothing so much as a Pavlovian test.

Tater K collected the checked bags - four good-sized duffels and suitcases that we'll live out of until we find permanent housing and the remainder of our belongings are delivered - and heaped them onto a cart while Tater T asked the baggage claim personnel for the dogs' whereabouts. Moments later the crated dogs appeared, pulled on a cart by an able young airline employee. After a brief reunion and on-leash visit to a nearby patch of landscape bark (no grass anywhere in the vicinity) Tater K strode off and leapt aboard the bus to collect the rental car.

Arriving at the rental car center Tater K was dismayed to find himself eleventh in line for service, having made the error in judgement that our two hour flight delay (local time was approaching 8PM) would allow for post-rush hour pick-up of the rental car. If ever there was an unspoken endorsement for joining the Hertz Gold Club, this was it.

Nearly an hour later, and after having horse-traded with the counter attendant for a larger vehicle (Tater K believed the travel agency had reserved a mini-van to accommodate the dogs, cat, kennels, luggage and humans, only to find upon double-checking the email they'd reserved a midsize), Tater K rolled to the curb where Tater T and the pets awaited with the same able young airline employee who'd earlier wheeled the dogs to us. The young man had dismantled the kennels, held the leashed dogs, and otherwise had offered invaluable help to two frazzled newcomers juggling a massive pile of luggage, two anxious and restless dogs, and a cat in a bag.

Welcome to Philly.

Taters "In the Soup"

The most joyous and depressing event of our recent memory was our Farewell to Boise party, held on a beautiful late summer evening at the Idaho Shakespeare. Joyous, because a great many good friends arrived to send us off; depressing, because we must leave behind those friends who have made our lives immeasurably richer.

When we were younger - much younger - we'd have endeavored to stay in touch with those friends and family by writing letters. In fact, we enjoyed writing and and looked forward to receiving letters from our family and friends who lived elsewhere or were travelling. Those days appear to be over; the upside to the loss of intimacy and tactile satisfaction of opening and reading a letter written "by hand" is that a blog post can address many recipients simultaneously. Technological efficiency at its finest.

Welcome, then, to the rather inauspicious inaugural post of Taters "In the Soup", an online receptical for our ramblings and, in its finer moments, a resource for family and friends to track Kenn Lamson and Tina Funkhouser (aka, the Taters) through our adventures in relocating from Idaho and establishing a life on the East Coast (aka, "the soup".)

To be clear, our blog shouldn't be considered a rant against the ways of our new neighbors, but rather a hopefully thoughtful and occasionally humorous comparison, for the benefit of ourselves and our friends in the mountain west, of what we experience here versus Boise.