Bloggin' Umholtz

Welcome to the Land of the Slow Bump

Well folks, it looks like this Coal Crackin’ Ridge Runner is going to survive the month of November. There were some minor and major glitches along the way, but Linda and I are now safely ensconced in Harrisburg. There is absolutely no truth to the rumor that real estate values have gone down in the Union Deposit area, but one might expect to see a reduction in the gray squirrel population soon. (Yum, tasty)

I know I have often referred to this area as the Land of the Flatlanders but I have since changed its moniker. In the past, those of us in government employ elsewhere in the state would refer to Harrisburg as “The Emerald City” or “Disneyland on the Susquehanna” because it was generally felt that the people who mold shape and guide our regulatory world were out of touch with reality…and now I’m here. Hmmmm…

So you see Harrisburg has many names. Right now my favorite is the “Land of the Slow Bump” Down here they actually call them speed bumps, which probably gets back to that out of touch with reality thing. Quite frankly I’ve driven over a quadrillion of them since moving here and not one of them speeded things up. No temporal shift, no G force change, no acceleration at all. In fact they all very consistently slowed me down. Hence the name, Slow Bump.

Now when I mentioned this to one of the local Flatlanders as we were riding the bus to work, he looked at me like I was from Mars...or from “up thar on da ridge” He said, “they’re called speed bumps because they’re suppose to slow down your speed.”

I smiled contentedly, and said, “Thanks for making my point.”

Exasperated, he grimaced, and asked, “Don’t you have anything like that back up on the ridge?”

Certainly,” I replied. “We got a couple of things. We got “Thank you mam’s” and deer.”

I could tell by the puzzled look on his face that I would have to explain.

“You know that da-thump you feel every time you go over a slow bump?” I asked.

“Yeah” he responded cautiously.

“Well back up on the ridge we call that a Thank you, Mam.”

“Why?”

“Because we ain’t hicks you know. We got manners and we always thank our women folk.”

“Thank them for what?”

“For the good time, of course.” You flatlanders don’t know much, do you?”

He couldn’t give up there, so he just groaned and asked about the deer.

“They give you the same feeling.” I replied. “Every time you hit a deer with your pickup you get the same “da-thump” when your rear wheels bounce up over the carcass.

And they all moved away from me on the bus.