So every summer, from like about 1969 to about 1984, my mama would have a booth at the Arts Festival, and we would haul all her crafts up to State College and set up and sell her stuff for four long days in the hot sun.
After a while, we stayed with a family that also worked at the festival, and it was very cool. Every year, there would be this intense long weekend with this set of very cool friends... that I would never see, or talk to at any other time.
Because it was a college town, it had three different pinball arcades. They'd give you five balls per quarter, where every place I ever saw elsewhere, had eventually converted to three.
Three balls per quarter, people. What a rip-off.
As a kid, I would save up quarters for this annual State College weekend. When I wasn't needed at the booth, I would haul ass to those places and play for hours straight.
State College wasn't that far, only about two hours away from home; but to a little kid, in a VW Squareback packed with crafts and shit, trying to make it up and down the hills seemed like a crazy faraway adventure. There was this one
hill climb that actually challenged the 1970-era car. Like one time, after making it to the top, the car could only manage to do 40 MPH for a good five minutes, until it somehow recovered.
The last Arts Fest I worked, I'm 19, and now the place has a whole different vibe to it. Aside from the fact that I had caught up in age to the college chicks. The arcades are still interesting, but now I realize there are three amazing independent record shops within that same area. I'd browse for two hours straight...