Visiting brother Ed

Shippensburg, PA


From Indianapolis to Shippensburg is about a nine-hour drive, so we got an early start from Indianapolis, ,and arrived, as usual, in time for happy hour. My brother, Ed; wife, Mary; and son, Scott moved here about two years ago from Springfield, VA to be closer to Mary’s family and to return to the area where they both grew up. They have a nice house in a quiet neighborhood and have enjoyed converting a large sunroom into a home theater, with multi-level seating, a huge screen and even a popcorn machine.
Ed is my younger brother, by eight years, (he’s the youngest of five) and we grew up in Greencastle, PA (about 20 miles south of Shippensburg. Mary grew up in Chambersburg (just 10 miles north of Greencastle) and they lived for several years in Los Angeles before moving to Virginia. Scott just finished his first year of college and is interested in theater, particularly backstage sound and lighting. Scott cooked a nice shrimp stir-fry dinner for us and we spent the rest of the evening talking about family and catching up on each of our lives.
This area hasn’t changed much since I moved away in the early sixties and I particularly like the unique foods that are available in this part of the country. On our way out of town we stopped at an Amish market and I purchased several of my favorite foods: sticky buns, shoo-fly pie, farmer cheese, Gibble’s chips, and dried chipped beef for making creamed chipped beef (better known as s.o.s.). Since we’re continuing to travel, I took these things to share with our friends, Bob and Fiona, at our next stop in upstate New York.