My misgivings at eating at Perkins were fulfilled. I ordered home fries and they served me deep fried potato nuggets. The only thing I could taste was salt. In traveling, I prefer to eat in small diners or truckstops that are not part of any chain. There are fewer and fewer of these. Typical of these small places is a chatty waitress with a bouffant hairdo who is a single mom and calls every man "hon". When it is busy, she moves like greased lighning but when it slows down, she loves to talk.. The harried waitstaff at Perkins is young, rushes about, but does not converse, even when the place is dead quiet. Probably against company policy. They do however rudely interrupt you several times while you are eating to ask "how is everything?" I will take the old fashioned diner every time.
Lettuce opium is far milder than opium. More like a tranquilizer.
Old Route 22 was the main highway connecting Bethlehem and Harrisburg until it was replaced with the Interstate Route 78 in 1982. Route 78 is far faster but also far more boring to drive along. Old Route 22 gives you a glimpse of what Pennsylvania Dutch country looked like decades ago. There are still a number of hotels along the way but there is much less traffic to support them. I sometimes drop in at Haag's Hotel in Shartlesville to have their Country Breakfast. Plain food but huge amounts of it. You can ask for unlimited seconds but I simply cannot eat so much. Sometimes you can catch some of the old timers chatting in Pennsylvania Dutch at the bar. This language is actually the South German Swabian langusge. The owner told me that several years ago, a visitor from Schwaben in Germany dropped in and chatted without any difficulty with the locals. This in spite of the fact that the ancestors of the locals left Schwaben centuries ago.
There is no political entity in Germany called Schwaben. It is an old tribal name and was a tribal confederacy which included the Allemannen (roughly translated as all he-men). Their territory includes today's Wuertemberg, Baden, Elsass and parts of Switzerland
The ancestors of the Pennsylvania Dutch were south German protestants who were the losers of the 30 years war. Their choice was to become Catholic, die, or leave. They would probably have chosen to die rather than become Catholic but a third choice was offered. William Penn offered them land in Pennsylvania and this is what many of them chose. These people were highly skilled farmers, blacksmiths, tradesmen, etc. The Kentucky longrifle was actually made by Pennsylvania Germans. Connestoga wagons were invented and manufactured by the Pennsylvania Dutch. Germany's loss was the colonies gain. A former coworker belonged to the DAR. She was Pennsylvania Dutch and was the tenth generation of her family here.
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