Pleasant Hills, East Hanover, Manada Gap. Union, not to be confused with the Union near where my wife's extended family lives, nor Mount Union, which has several more websites devoted to it. Irving and Ravine. Frailey. Frackville, which made me think of the new 'Battlestar Galactica,' but which was in actuality named for one Daniel Frack. Mahanoy City, which is near to Tuscarora State Park, land of anthracite. Tuscarora meaning "hemp gatherers," because of the Tuscarora people's use of dogbane (apocynum) in sewing and rope-making and hunting. Apocynum is also an anti-diuretic, so they probably used it for that, too.
Delano, Quakake (Do they pronounce it "kwah-KAH-keh," like the Indians might have, or "kwuh-CAKE"? "KWEY-cake"?), which at one time shared its name with a railroad. The mining country of Hazleton. Drums. Nuangola, Mountain Top, Sugar Notch. Wilkes-Barre, home of iron, steel, and the Mohegan Sun. Avoca, after the river in Ireland, or possibly the town. In The Meeting of the Waters, Thomas Moore wrote:
Sweet vale of Avoca! how calm could I rest
in thy bosom of shade, with the friends I love best,
Where the storms that we feel in this cold world should cease,
And our hearts, like thy waters, be mingled in peace.
Duryea, Pittston, Moosic ("Oh how charming are the radiant bounds of Moosic, Moosic, Moosic, Moosic"). We stop to eat at the Panera on Montage Mountain, evidently a ski resort. It is a long, dark, wet drive to the strip mall, where we stand in line with overstimulated teenagers who so clearly want to be bad, but have nothing better to do on a rainy Friday night in Moosic, PA, than order broccoli-cheese soup at the Panera.
Craig and Scott - brothers, perhaps? They lie in Lackawanna County near Lackawanna State Park, Lackawanna meaning, like so many other native place-names, "river that forks." Names that conjure Sacred Harp songs in the dark: Lenox ("The year of jubilee has come") and New Milford ("If angels sung a savior's birth on that auspicious morn).
Great Bend, which one passes just before crossing over into New York. The name of the town comes from the sharp turn made by the river marked "Sasquesahanough" on a map by John Smith, he of Pocahontas fame. Sasquesahanough, in turn from "Susquehannock," an Iriquoian-speaking people whose name, like so many names we know native peoples by, was not the one they used for themselves, but rather a derogatory Algonquian appelation: "people of the muddy river."
Deep night now, hills and waters blurring by. On into the suburbs of Binghamton.
