I Live Here Now
The town of Emmaus, Pennsylvania is bisected length-wise by Chestnut Street. At one end of Chestnut Street is Emmaus Moravian church. At the other end is a Little Caesar’s pizza. It takes about 25 minutes to walk from one to the other.
Emmaus is a small town with no ambitions to be anything greater. The coffee shops close at 3pm on weekdays and the bars close at 10pm on weekends. There’s one beer supplier, one liquor store, one 24-hour diner, a violin shop, and a farmer’s market every Sunday at 10am. The mail arrives early each morning and the trash is collected curbside on Wednesdays. Most people know each other.
Driving into Emmaus from the south side—the side with the Little Caesar’s—sees rural Pennsylvania give way to Emmaus’ newer half. To enter the town proper, you zoom past two fringe establishments (Pickles Bar & Grill—two stars on Yelp—and the Trapp Door Gastropub—decent cheeseburger; lonely live music on weekends) before going over a short curvy bridge that, at night, feels fast and dangerous enough to recall memories of Space Mountain at Disneyland. Navigating this hairpin turn brings you to the more enfranchised portion of Emmaus, which, after the preceding miles of forest and fields and grazing animals, is like someone shining a flashlight in your eyes.
Enfranchised Emmaus runs from the curvy bridge to about Seventh Street—a good mile or so. It’s dominated by the only grocer in town, a Weis, and is pockmarked by classic intrusions on smalltown America. There’s a McDonald’s PlayPlace and a Wendy’s. There’s a Rite Aid, which competes with a CVS up the road, and there’s a liquor store that sells everything except beer (you go to Shangy’s Beer Authority for that). It’s the part of town with the biggest parking lots, the most cigarette butts, and the cheapest of the three gas stations. The breed of Emmausian you see here is usually a dilapidated one. The oldest specimens are puffy and bent. The parents are desperate and forsaken. The young ones, usually found behind the cash register at Weis, have dyed hair and wear too much makeup and look like prisoners who have accepted the situation, like inmates with life sentences. Everyone drives trucks that are too big, sports cars with too many stickers, or minivans. You don’t linger anywhere unless you’re taking a smoke break, which is apt because just across the street from Weis is the Emmaus Smoke Shop, which has a drive-thru. The Christian bookstore is three doors down from that.
After you’ve refilled your Honda, infected it with the smell of Baconators, and found the Lord, a drive up toward Seventh Street sees a reprieve from corporate chains and a greater presence of the businesses those chains hustled out. Most of these failed mom-and-pops reside in the husk-like homes that line Chestnut. Their signs are faded and their screen doors are torn or chewed by dogs. There’s a family hair salon, a piano repair store, and a local realtor, but you never see anyone going in or coming out. Walking down this row of homes on a Sunday, you’ll pass porch-dwellers in sweaty trucker hats and too-small t-shirts. They watch you go by and they turn their heads to follow you instead of just their eyes. Sometimes a dog will be laying in the weeds in front of the porch. Teenagers in crop-top Emmaus High School t-shirts (Home of the Hornets) will be standing in the front window between the curtains, and they’ll watch you too. No one says hello. The sidewalk smells like rotting trash.
Seventh Street is where the pride of Emmaus begins to take hold, which is to say that the sidewalk becomes a bit more level, rusty furniture begins to disappear from front lawns, and old Emmaus standbys take root. Montero Violins stands at the corner of Chestnut and Seventh. Montero hosts lessons on weekdays and if you live in one of the apartments above the shop you can sometimes hear the shaky, try-it-again music come up through the floor. Montero’s windows are lined with antique instruments. You wonder if he’s ever been robbed. Probably not. The Emmaus police force is highly visible in a we-don’t-have-anything-to-do-so-we’re-just-driving-around way.
On the north side of Seventh Street are more homes, and these have steps with railings leading up to the porches, and many of the houses fly American flags proudly out over the curb. Occasionally one of the homes will betray its true intentions with a small sign out front advertising the local business inside. The Emmaus dentist’s office is in one of these buildings, as is a massage parlor and the Royal Furniture Store. They’re cruelly segregated from Emmaus’ hustling heart, the Triangle, by the town’s second gas station and a Rita’s ice and frozen custard stand, where you can mix any flavor combination you want, no matter how disgusting, and the smiling fifty-year-old behind the counter will indulge you. A lot of Emmausian high schoolers hang out at Rita’s, the kind that travel in cliques and don’t wear enough clothing. They sit under the red-and-white umbrellas and you have the feeling some of them are hiding tattoos they’ll regret later.
Past Rita’s is the two-block walk to the Triangle that stretches between Sixth street and Fourth street. It’s sort of an entrepreneurial no-man’s land. The New Emmaus Laundromat has been there probably 35 years, judging by the stains on the sign, and across from that is a single building that hosts both Joe’s Pizza II (no one knows what happened to Joe’s Pizza I) and Xtreme Gun Worx (their logo is a skull backed by two crossed assault rifles). Xtreme Gun Worx is the smaller of Emmaus’ two gun stores, but it’s a proud place. You see a lot of bumper stickers with the skull-and-rifles as you move about town.
Further up Chestnut, there’s a Wifi Café that’s hard to spot because they blocked their sign with a Donald Trump campaign poster, and there’s Emmaus Bakery. The bakery is family-owned and regrettably has allowed some of the younger charges to decorate the display window, which instead of showcasing the establishment’s rather tasty apple fritters and chocolatey long johns, instead is packed with glitter, sparkles, and a single hot pink posterboard with printout pictures of generic pastries. The poster says “YUM” in ugly black Sharpied letters. You would never go inside Emmaus Bakery if people didn’t recommend it so often.
Past the bakery is an alleyway where you can sometimes catch more high schoolers smoking cigarettes, and near that is Jonny’s Barbershop, where you can receive a good haircut as long as you can tolerate the fact that nobody bats an eye or looks at you when you walk in to inquire about an appointment. The barbers speak to each other in Spanish and laugh a lot and it seems to be the job of the customer to just sit and look confused and hope that you remembered cash, since they don’t take credit cards. The street corner opposite Jonny’s is sometimes used for advertising, and if you go by on a Saturday you might see a too-thin individual with a glasses tan waving a big sign for Mamma Mia’s Pizzeria, which is several miles up the road. Most Emmausians prefer the local pizza place, Armetta’s, to Mamma Mia’s, even though you have to ask Armetta’s to leave your pizza in the oven a little longer than normal or the crust will be too chewy and soft. More dignified townies will go to Switchback for pizza anyway. That’s a pizza place built inside a recommissioned railway station a block east of Chestnut. There’s also a Pizza Hut down by the Weis. They’re hiring drivers.
The Triangle is named as such because it’s the intersection of three streets: Fourth, Chestnut, and Main. This is downtown Emmaus. Here, people have their shirts off because they’re jogging, not because they’re unhygienic. People order their coffee from South Mountain Cycle and Café (half bike shop, half coffee hut) instead of the McDonald’s drive-thru. People buy their produce fresh from the Sunday farmer’s market instead of the damp Weis displays. There are children here, the kind that prance around in light-up sneakers and church dresses; the engine-revving, burnout Emmaus teenagers dare not approach this safe haven of family values. The Triangle is as welcoming and bright as it is eclectic. For every Swadee Thai restaurant, there’s a Golden Trigger firearms shop (competitor of Xtreme Gun Worx). For every Emmaus Run Inn (look for the inexplicable ceramic horse out front) there’s a Let’s Play Books (children’s bookstore—look for the Harry Potter promotional material still in the window). The Triangle is where you go if you want a cheeseburger and ice cream cone from the same place (Caramella) or if you want your maternity needs (The Breastfeeding Shop) next door to your Indian grocer (Rice & Spice). There’s a park in the middle. They say it’s beautiful in the fall, when the farmer’s market brings in pumpkins and Baked, an organic coffee shop and bakery one block further, puts out fresh pies alongside the Savory Tart of the Day.
If you can muster the will to leave the Triangle, you’ll find one last bakery—Sweet Memories, and their sign in the shape of a frosted cupcake—before the final long strip of American flag-lined houses. Then you end at Emmaus Moravian Church. According to their whitewashed sign they were established in 1747. Service is every Sunday morning at 9:30, and they leave their front doors open so you know you’re always welcome. On a sunny weekend you might jog by their immaculate lawn and feel a touch of the spirit yourself, though you have to reckon with their website, which, on the About page, helpfully explains that they claim “Jesus Chris as Chief Elder.” Maybe next week.
Driving past the church yields Shangy’s Beer Authority—right across from the Emmaus Public Library—and a restaurant called Superior (word on the street: it’s not). Then Main street begins proper, and you’re off toward Allentown through a strip of car dealerships and chain eateries.
Emmaus goes as quickly as it comes. You might drive through it and see the shops and signs and think Isn’t that cute before you go back to your audiobook. And truthfully, Emmaus wouldn’t mind if you stayed or went. This is where people see their coworkers buying specialty hot sauce at the farmer’s market and they stop to chat about the Eagles. This is where a chubby kid in an Emmaus football t-shirt checks out at Weis and chooses one line over another because he doesn’t want the pretty girl from biology class to be his cashier. This is where people vote for Trump and are proud of it and where the right to bear arms is invincible.
This is where teenagers fall into trouble because they never leave or are never told they can leave. This is where empty strollers are left outside at night. This is where old-fashioned roadsters share the street with dented beige utility vans. This is where drivers hug the double-yellow line as they drive because of all the bikers zipping around the Triangle. This is where military veterans wave flags for the Marine Corps outside their house. This is where telephone lines criss-cross over Chestnut street like a massive circuit board, because they had to be put in after all the homes and houses. This is where everything is just a little too old, a little too slow, and a little bit off.
This is where the train wakes you up three times a night for your first six weeks of residence. This is where you lean down to pet a dog on your way to work and someone yanks the dog away. This is where people see your Arizona license plate and lay on the horn because they know you’re from out of town. This is where you have to figure out a social life when the bars close at 10pm and you know your New York friends haven’t even started to go out yet. This is where you learn about local music festivals and food fairs and throwback night at the Emmaus movie theater, and all that sounds great, because what other options do you have? This is where people your age meet through exercise groups and bible studies. This is where you take night runs and you wonder what you’re doing here and as you pound the blacktop and climb South Mountain you see the fireflies blinking and you hear the far-off roar of the Emmausian teenagers racing each other down Chestnut street and through it all the same train blasts its horn four times before the crossing guards fall and it barrels through town, never stopping, never slowing, just going on and on until the noise is gone faster than you expect.
This is where you see someone your age walking the other way on the street and you wonder if they might be your friend. This is where you find out that the people at Baked will let you sit in the corner with your laptop and write about movies as long as you order something to eat, which is no trouble because their oatmeal, which is made in the oven and cut into bricks, is pretty good. This is where you go to happy hour with people from work and you look down the bar at the regulars and, while no one says it aloud, you all hope that isn’t going to be you one day. This is where you meet new people and your icebreaker is debating the merits of Tough Mudder versus Spartan Race. This is where you find common ground over the mutual acceptance of a subpar situation, and where laughing feels good because you know you’re not the only one seeing it all. This is where embracing a town means accepting the grouchy old Marine on your right with the fresh-faced fitness nut on your left, and where you decide, between bites of your peach melba bar, that you could work out a truce with those Emmausian teenagers, maybe. This is where, for the hundredth time, you learn to grow up, and how that means a change in attitude as much as a change in scenery.
This is the 2.9 square-mile town called Emmaus, Pennsylvania. This is where I live now.