Homesick for Hershey... !

This year for the first time since many, many years… no Hershey for us. And it hurts! Early October is the time when the sun gets low, hard winds and rain can blow but whatever the climate says the rolling Penna hills lure nut men from around the globe to chocolate town Hershey. The nerve starts when you meet the first tatty pick-ups hauling their load down the 76 or 81.

First glance at the fields (some still used to be green 14 years ago) and hoards gathering there will always produce the emotion  “ …did I come too late?”. Is that super bargain gone already?  Yet when you enter the fields - best early on Tuesday - and it feels like home. You see the AACA grannies handing out apples and selling the program book that brings no understandable information whatsoever, but who cares. You are there and Hershey is here. You go down the fields and start checking systematically or strictly random.  Did AACA find the wisdom to stop the far fields getting empty?

Everything between The Stadion and Giant Center and the car corral going round. And you never get tired of walking, walking, walking. Hershey is an organism and it will change continuously over the hours, over the days, and depending on the weather. You may want to check with friends; like we usually meet up with old time friends like Bob Swanson, Jim Kruse, with Mark Hyman, with Manny Dragone, with LBI, with Laferriere, with Fillinger, with Shappy, with Robert Pass, with Penbroke Marine Services Transport and with the guys of RM Sothebys, with always tantalizing offers like a barn found 1903 Oldsmobile Curved Dash and - at the other end of the pre-war spectrum -  a streamliner icon: the 1933 Pierce Arrow Silver Arrow.

Let’s say that you survived the fields, the corral and the auction still with a few dimes left in your pocket. For sure you will stay for the fine but club like Concours of the Saturday. No fancy showing like at Amerlia or Pebbles. But a massive crowd of fabulous cars rolling in and parking or the autumn lawns of Hershey. And then it’s over again. Four days that went by like a snap. That’s Hershey, feeling homesick already days before. Either skip it from your bucket list or just go and be there!

(text and photos Joris Bergsma)