Bradford, PA and Olean, NY

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Bradford, PA - Olean, NY
Wednesday June 2 Prism flew Jana and me from Wichita, KS to Buffalo, NY. There we met Eva and Debbie from Wisconsin and the 4 of us got our rental car and drove through NY to our hotel Bradford, PA. Bradford is in the northwestern part of Pennsylvania and has a population of about 9000. It is the home of the Zippo lighter and Penn moter oil. The area is lush with green trees. I could not believe all the dense, deep, dark forests in that area. If anything was to be built, trees had to be cleared from the land first. Houses set half in and half out of forests like Aunt Lizzie’s house in Beverly Lewis’s Amish novels. It was beautiful.
When we got to out hotel it was raining so we ate there. Later that night Jana and I went to the Goodwill and some good cheap books. Then we went to the library to play on the computers. We discovered that alot of people walk there. The town is so small you can walk almost anywhere.
Early the next morning we all got up and ate and then drove the half hour to Olean, NY to start our next Staples store. Mike W. and Mike F. who was our Prism coordinator rounded out our team. Todd was our Staples coordinator. This store went very well and seemed very easy. I got the least hours here than at any other store.
Everyday on our way to and from work we drove by a small house in Olean that I nicknamed the "Hobbit House" because the front door is maybe 4' tall and even with its 3 stories its still very small. We asked one of the ladies we worked with about it and she told us it was built for a little person, but he no longer lived there and an average sized person lived there now.
Unfortunately we didn’t discover much to do at night in that area. We went out to eat a few times at some neat places such as Beefeaters which is in the old library building. And went to the Beach Bar where I had 2 drinks which was 1 too many. We didn’t discover the town had a Wal-Mart until the second week we were there. Monday Jana and I did laundry and went to the library and Wal-Mart. Our last night there Jana, Debbie and I ate at Togi’s a mom and pop restaurant with a wide variety of selections. I got a meatball sandwich and they got each got the spaghetti dinner. I liked mine, but they didn’t much care for theirs.
I’m used to larger metropolitan areas and Bradford and Olean were too small for my liking. The best part of that area of our trip was just seeing the beautiful landscape and the trees. And the people were very friendly and open.

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