Welcome to Hometown

Some time ago one of my friends passed on a little information to me about a little town in Pennsylvania named Hometown. Given the name of my trip I couldn’t believe it. C’mon, I couldn’t go to all 50 states on the Hometown Invasion Tour without stopping in Hometown, PA. For a while I didn’t think I was going to make it to Hometown because of my dates and locations. Plans change for the good all the time. Take a side trip to State College for the weekend while coming from Erieville and boom, you’re just 20 miles from Hometown off the interstate.

Erieville is a small town, no more than 1,500 people. I’m thinking it would compare to my hometown of Baraga or maybe Justin, TX. I was anxious to find a welcome sign, big or small, where I could take a photo of myself and the Compass in front of it. Sadly, no such sign existed. I even asked a police officer and surely he would know. Supposedly there are no t-shirts are anything. Somebody could be sitting on a gold mine, those Hometown, PA shirts would sell like hot cakes.

One fellow tracked me down. I needed a photo of something, so I pulled up next to a sign that said “Hometown” pointing that-a-way, just 7 miles. Well, it’s not like this hasn’t happened before, but there was a guy who parked his car across the street from me and proceeded to stare at me as I took a photo of this sign. He was quite curious, of course there I was with this crazy car in Hometown, I’m sure everyone driving by was thinking, “What’s going on?” So Joe (we’ll call him that, his full name had five syllables, but I think it at least started with Joe). Joe was a good guy, great to meet him.

And that was Hometown, PA. They could have a lot going for them. Joe and I discussed that we believe it’s the only true “Hometown” in the country. They could market a lot of things out of that place.