Hometown Advantage
My husband G. Grod and I were visiting family near Philadelphia. G. flew home on his own so I could stay for a longer visit with 4yo Drake an 2yo Guppy. As he went through security, G. was stopped for a search of his bag.
“What’s this?” asked the guard, holding up a brick-sized, foil-wrapped item in a Ziploc bag.
G., appreciating how suspicious this looked: “It’s a pound of scrapple. My mom froze it so I could take a loaf home.”
“OK,” the guard shrugged, replacing the package in G’s bag, as if that were the most reasonable thing he’d heard all day. Next he pulled out a heavy, paper-wrapped cylinder. “What’s this, then?”
“It’s an Eagles beer stein,” G said. “I took my son up to training camp at Lehigh.”
The guard then asked who they’d seen, and how the Birds had looked. He waved G. through the checkpoint.
Only in Philly, G. thought, would a loaf of scrapple not raise an eyebrow, and a heavy beer glass spark a conversation among fans. It’s good to see some things don’t change.