Hartville to Hoboken 12/30/25 – A Critical Review

Alas, another rain-green Xmas in Hartville comes to pass like a dream: the antique malls & popcorn popping, giddy holiday conversations loop while we stuff our guts with goodies & booze & wash it all down with a giant fat capped pork butt smothered in plenty of gravy gratitude. We all laugh through the effervescent perfume of rottweiler wind while watching chumps in wise-man work boots argue blue collar philosophy on the boob-tube.

Sat back in the rear of Evans automobile on our way back to Hoboken, I pay my attention to the many humble try town churches of Christ as they whizz by my window. Look there- strewn upon every porch & lawn, sweating off the morning dew, lay defeated & deflated inflatable tubemanesque Santas & snowmen collapsed upon each other like hungover hobos. As we roll up onto the highway home, red barns glow against snow-dusted fields & grain silos rise like medieval cathedral spires over dry towns & sour puss gas-station coffee shops.

Mile markers—Shippingport, Allegheny, Clarion, Brockway & DuBois are all bygone now. Snow drifts cross-cut the highway & the mind drifts to the quiet unbroken rhythm of squall after squall filling the atmosphere & obscuring the romance of an otherwise lovely rural winter landscape. Just then, the hypnotic trance of horizontal snow is dashed by multiple caravans of aggressive Amazon delivery trucks sprinting to rendezvous with impatient online consumers of post-holiday super deals.

Time is precious, its cold outside and we are restless to get back home. Then, as conversation turns to pop stars past and the now of Chappell Roan, suddenly & unexpectedly random pockets of baby blue crack open the otherwise gray skies; bare trees twinkle in narrow bands of gilded light while the first New Jersey potholes drum their welcome beneath our comfy metal tube. It’s a low erratic percussion of almost home for 2026.