Chocolate City...

So friends, this was what I was looking at just before I came in here and turned on my laptop:

 

 

Regular readers will remember my great 2015 distance challenge, which is was run/cycle/swim/walk 2209 miles, or the equivalent of the distance from Houston TX to South Portland, ME.  I've been marking milestones with different towns along this virtual route. A few days ago I got to 1655 miles, which was the mile-equivalent of reaching Hershey, PA (the previous marker was Hagerstown, MD; the next is Morristown, NJ).

 

So, what will the a quick bit of googling let me say about Hershey?  Well, the good folks at Wikipedia offered me this image of the wonderfully named intersection of Chocolate and Cocoa Avenues

 

"Hershey, Pennsylvania" by Original uploader was Bronayur at en.wikipedia - Transferred

from en.wikipedia; transferred to Commons by User:Rlevse using CommonsHelper.

Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

 

A good friend of mine is a native of Hershey.  She tells me that despite this, none of its schools have chocolate themed mascots (google and Wikipedia agree).  I have to say, I found this a bit disappointing.  I mean, what self-respecting schoolkid wouldn;t cheer on a mascot who appeared to be a first cousin to Freddo Frog ...

 

Image from here.

 

or Caramello Koala?

 

Image from here.

 

The same friend did, however, tell me that the street lights on Chocolate Avenue look like this -

 

Image from here.

 

I must ask someone if the good people of that town cop a lot of Oompa-Loompa references.  In case you're wondering, I can assure you that chocolate factories are not in fact staffed by pygmies with orange skin.  I found this out as a young lawyer when I needed to arrange a site-inspection at the Cadbury's factory at Ringwood, where one of my firm's clients had suffered a knee injury (that particular worker, at least, was not orange, did not have green hair, and was not a pygmy.  She had a bit of a limp though).

 

I did a google images search for the town after typing this.  I still get a lot of chocolate-themed images.  But I have to say, there were also lots of images of streetscapes and homes and parklands.  It's pleasant to think that, for somewhere that began its life as a Company Town, it clearly is for many people also a home-town.