Oh, Hershey, you're our home
We live near Chocolate Avenue Grill, originally the site of The Flying Machine restaurant that’s featured on a Stay tee.
We live near Chocolate Avenue Grill, originally the site of The Flying Machine restaurant that’s featured on a Stay tee.
As I write this, I am only several hours removed from having walked to the grocery store from my home.
It might not seem like much, but it’s a big deal to me. I haven’t done that since I was in college. In Missouri. More than 30 years ago.
I have lived in Pennsylvania’s midstate since 1991, first in York, briefly in Palmyra, and the past 19-plus years in Derry Township.
As of this January, Sara and I reside in downtown Hershey, which is an unincorporated part of Derry Township. We moved five miles east into what is sometimes called the village of Hershey, which is to say Milton S. Hershey’s original planned town.
We are one block from Pronio’s Market, a 100-year-old family-owned gem that celebrated its centennial in 2019.
We bought a 1931 bungalow one block from Chocolate Avenue in the heart of The Chocolate Town, within steps of The Chocolate Avenue Grill and a former Reese’s peanut butter cup factory.
We have a front-porch view that sweeps from Skyrush, Hersheypark’s yellow rollercoaster, to iconic Hersheypark Arena to the Hershey Theatre. From our stairway landing, we can see the 250-foot Kissing Tower at Hersheypark.
As is the nature of old homes, we also are privy to cracking plaster walls, creaking hardwood floors, painted-shut windows. We gave up the garage and central air-conditioning that we knew at our old house.
I would be a liar to say that I haven’t doubted the wisdom of this move, particularly with our kitchen gutted and a month or longer from being renovated.
But in my heart I know what we are doing is right and consistent with the beliefs upon which we are building Stay Apparel Co. At its essence, our move is about being true to ideals about community, preservation, history that we hold dearly and feel compelled to act on.
It’s not enough to watch episodes of “Rehab Addict” on HGTV. Similarly, Stay was borne out of my desire not just to buy American products but to offer some of my own.
Of course, we didn’t make this decision lightly. We built our previous house, raised our children there, created many great memories. But we also knew that if we were going to make this move, now was the time. Ultimately, we wanted to be more in the center of things and not have to drive everywhere.
We found a cute home with a great location that just needs some TLC. (OK, maybe a lot of TLC.) Before our Internet was hooked up, Sara walked to Starbucks to tap into the wifi. That night, we walked around the corner to the bar at Fenicci’s of Hershey, which dates to 1935. (Owners Phil and Kveta Guarno also operate the adjacent Uncle Filbur and Aunt K’s Pennsylvania Gift Shop, which carries a small selection of Stay tees.)
We have 11 dining options within a block of our house. On foot, we can get to a flower shop (Royer’s Flowers, a long-time public relations client of mine), a pharmacy, a donut shop. In various directions, we are within walking distance of the Hershey Public Library, Chocolate World and ZooAmerica.
We had considered downtown Hershey for 20 years, even before we built our house, and every now and again would look at homes that came on the market. We considered York, Lancaster, Columbia, but all roads led back to Hershey.
It’s our home, now more authentically than ever.