Part Two, Day 1: The Great PA Route 6 Pie Epic Begins

Our two intrepid travelers sally forth to find five diners and eat 10 pies before night fall.

(In case you missed it, Part One may be found here. I intended to write about the whole two and a half day expedition in one sitting but there’s too much to fit into one story. Part Two, the final leg of the journey, is in the works! )

Joe picks me up at the hotel in Scranton around 10:30 a.m. with a very specific itinerary: visit five of our 10 diners and eat a total of 10 slices of pie. His plan is to drive west on Route 6 to the Wellsboro Diner, a storied pie destination, and then backtrack east. We’d arrive in Wellsboro just in time for lunch. The other four diners would be stops for mid-morning and afternoon coffee breaks, dinner, and bedtime.

Joe is a very good driver, especially when you consider how often he pays more attention to the side of the road instead of the traffic in front of him. He has a lot of interests knocking around in his brain that demand considerable attention. It’s not just pie establishments he’s searching for now but interesting geological features of the Endless Mountain range that runs along this side of the Susquehanna River. His geology lessons are fancinating. For instance, did you know that Route 6 was blasted through stunning sedimintary rock whose peaks were sheered off by glaciers a zillion years ago? Why they didn’t engineer the road to go around the mountain is something we mull over for awhile. He observes many fracking drills in passing fields and explains how they work. Piles of slate are of interest, too, since Joe intends to learn how to replicate an old stone wall around his house in the coming months. I suggest we pull over to the side of the road and throw a bunch of slate into the back of his car. He points out that will disrupt our schedule and we continue west.

Too soon, we forget all about his schedule as we stop to read the many historical markers on the side of the road. Joe believes that the speed limit on a two lane highway is only a suggestion. There’s plenty of time, then, to lunch at the Wellsboro Diner.

For now, though, we need coffee.

Conveniently, across the street from the Azilum marker, there appears to be a promising diner for a coffee break and possibly pie. We take it as a good sign that there is a vending machine selling various kinds of live fishing bait outside Pipher’s. Heavy metal music hits us at the door. There must have been a busy breakfast crowd because the two waitresses look limp serving the remaining seven customers. The counter waitress in a spotless bright pink sweatshirt ignores the strapping man at the counter who asks about her cancer treatment. His three companions behind him fidget about the day’s plans. The teenage floor waitress with half a tattoo sleeve of angels and fairies, refreshes the coffee of three middle-aged women at a back table. Joe chooses the small table by the door, too far from the men and women to effectively eavesdrop on them. I have to remind him why this is a mistake not to be repeated.

The teenage waitress arrives and Joe begins to engage her in a snappy but confusing patter about our need for pie.

I apologize. “He’s my brother,”

“I’m not all there,” he says.

She’s too world weary to pay him much attention. Pipher’s morning rush has reduced its pie selections to a single slice of pumpkin baked by the older waitress and a cheesecake kind of thing our waitress picked up at Aldi before she came to work. She brings two generous portions of each pie. The cheesecake in a plain graham cracker crust is light and creamy but ultimately too sweet. But the pumpkin pie is perfect, richly spiced in an admirably sturdy yet flaky oil-based crust. Each slice costs four dollars which will prove to be the going rate for pie along Route 6.

One of the singular, often underappreciated, joys of travel is knowing when to quickly amend your well-laid plans. Towanda, the county seat of Bradfort County, proves worthy of slowing down to observe its historic downtown, including a grand court house surrounded by many war memorials. At first, one appears to mark the spot where Abraham Lincoln gave his second inaugural address in Towanda. In fact, it commemorates the local newspaper’s contemporaneous account of the speech by one of its reporters. Still, it is a very handsome memorial.

Surprisingly, peanut butter and chocolate pie appears to be a regional speciality. There isn’t a specific cultural or ethnic connection, but the pie shows up on almost every menu we will scan. The recipe is very specific. Instead of the familiar layers of a custard-y peanut butter and chocolate, there’s only a peanut butter filling sittings on a hard layer of chocolate. It doesn’t matter if the crust is crumb or dough.

Tina’s Iron Skillet’s is rumored to have the best peanut butter and chocolate pie in the area. Wellsboro then moves down our list to become our afternoon coffee break destination.

It is a very homey place to lunch. Various pieces of iron cookware decorate the walls, a welcoming warmth of a fireplace wards off the afternoon chill. We order the surprisingly bad meatloaf and somewhat better Italian sausage and pepper sandwiches. The peanut butter and chocolate layers rise high under a swirl of whipped cream. The Mennonite family at the next table has ordered it, too. The mother is disappointed it’s not her favorite Cool Whip. Joe and I decide Tina’s uses Reddi Wip. Either way, swirled in fudge sauce, it makes us wonder if their reputation is overstated. In contrast, my coconut cream pie is a modest cold affair, just good enough after a big meal.

Back on the road, tragedy strikes. Somehow in all our research, we missed the fact that the Wellsboro Diner closes at 2. No matter how fast Joe may speed, we’ll never make it. Kristies Kountry Kitchen and the Double D Diners also close at 2 p.m. A frantic Google search reveals that few diners in the region offer dinner. Purkey’s and the Mansfield Diner are permanently closed. The kidnappers of Charles Lindbergh’s baby wanted their ransom money to be dropped at the X-Trail Diner. It, too, is gone. This is very sad because Sue Hubbell, the writer who inspired this whole trip, described their coconut cream as “handsome…. whose very pallor guaranteed that no package mix had been used.” She also indulged in a magnificent chocolate-meringue pie at the Hotel Wyalusing (see Part One). Unfortunately, we are too scrubby for a fancy hotel.

We turn around and head back east, our only consolation is more historic signs. There’s the vista down to the land where French loyalists built a town, long since demolished, for Marie Antoinette and her son if only they could have successfully rescued them. Joe slams on the brakes at The Battle of Lime Hill where the last Revolutionary War skirmish took place. The Warriors Path, a somewhat harrowing sliver that runs along a cliff, is packed hard by generations of Indigenous tribes.

We stand for awhile in awe of the Susquehanna River valley and certainly have to stop and read about Stephen Foster’s song Camptown Races, which we discover has nothing to do with the South. The Dorflinger glass factory looks really interesting but sunlight dims.

Route 6 empties with the increasing darkness until we near our hotel in Clarks Summit. The Silver Spoon Diner is actually open and pulling in quite a Saturday night dinner crowd when we pass. Joe thinks we should join them but all I want to do is lie down. So we continue on down the road to the hotel, cart our bags up to our room, and collapse. The receptionist has suggested that we eat in the hotel’s dining room because it’s the best in town. Even before the waitress seats us, Joe asks if they have pie and she mentions a mascarpone cream and blueberry mix.

We order it, along with Guinesses, white wine, and two small entrees for our bulging stomachs. All of this is a fine ending to our first day on the road except the pie turns out to be more of a cake. The waitress is thrilled when we lie about liking it. Then we head off to our room, take several swigs of Pepto Bismal, and sink into sleep.

Be sure to come back Saturday for my attempt to recreate a peanut butter and chcocolate pie!

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Notes on the Historical Marker

Friedenshütten 
Sullivan’s March  
Azilum 
Towanda
The Battle of Lime Hill
Dorflinger Glass Works