NOTE: BECAUSE OF THE WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA STRIKE, THIS BLOG WILL NOW BE TAKEN OVER BY NON-UNION SCABS. THIS WEEK'S BLOG WAS WRITTEN BY A 14-YEAR-OLD SCANDINAVIAN BOY.

P.S. Battlestar Galactica writers - If you need someone to take over while you're gone, I'm willing to do it. Did someone say Cylon dance party on New Caprica? [Nerd alert!]

My girlfriend and I drove to Ebensburg Saturday morning, not because I have any particular affinity for the town (other than its courthouse, which is totally awesome), but because it's about halfway between Pittsburgh and State College. And the reason this is important is because my dad wanted to meet for lunch, because in a few days the farm he lived at, the farm that I've grown up with for 21 years of my life, was going to be sold - and he wanted to see me one last time before the closing went through and he moved away.

I didn't really like growing up on the farm. I didn't like that it was in the middle of nowhere. I didn't like animals, so the horses my parents boarded didn't interest me. I think I can also attribute at least some of my social awkwardness to the fact that there weren't any other kids to play with for at least a couple of acres in every direction.

When I was in fourth grade and my parents moved us to a suburb of Pittsburgh, I didn't really miss the farm like my sister did. And when my parents got divorced and started up their joint custody arrangement, while I loved being able to spend more time with my dad on the weekends, I wasn't particularly thrilled with the prospect of returning to the farm.

My dad got remarried and he and my stepmom renovated the place quite a bit - it looks better than ever now. Still, for those of you who haven't lived on a farm, it's a crapload of work to keep the thing from falling apart. And back when they told my sister and me that they were selling it and moving to a home that would require a lot less upkeep (and be in 80 degree weather most of the year), I figured it was a good move.

Ebensburg is tiny. We were able to take a walking tour of pretty much the entire downtown metropolitan area in a matter of minutes. Some of the buildings, including the parenthetically aforementioned courthouse, are beautiful. There's a lovely gazebo near the center of town. It was almost Twilight Zone-esque in its seemingly innocuous charm, as if Rod Serling were waiting to jump out from behind a corner and tell us that half the townspeople were secretly alien communists or something.

When my dad showed up we walked around for a little bit and talked about this and that. I immediately realized that there was a different tone about this get together than there was to any other time I met with my dad: for some reason, I had trouble looking at him - and unlike other times, when I find myself talking forever about everything, I kept mostly quiet.

We finally decided to drive to a family restaurant where we had eaten one time before - I remember I liked it and figured it would be nice to give it another shot. I ordered chicken parmesan; my dad ordered meatloaf. And as he sat and talked to my girlfriend about law school, I just stared at the advertisements on my paper placemat and thought about the farm:

• I thought about the day my sister stepped on a rusty nail outside the kitchen door. The thing went straight through her plastic sandal and into her foot. I remember us frantically trying to remember when or if she recently had a tetanus shot.
• I thought about the time I decided to take up rock collecting. I filled up an entire bucket with little rocks I found outside. After that, I didn't know what to do with my collection -- I wasn't cool enough to have a rock tumbler -- so I somehow figured the best way to dispose of the rocks would be to dump them down the bathroom sink. Before I did this, I ran the idea past my mom, whose answer was a strong "NO." So naturally, I dumped the rocks down the sink anyway. I still don't know how (or if) they managed to get them out of the pipes.
• I thought about mowing the grass on the riding mower. My allergies would flare up as I cut wavy paths behind me and sprayed cut grass all over the place. Eventually I was told I couldn't cut the lawn anymore because I couldn't drive in straight lines.
• I thought about mornings when the front yard would be covered with hundreds of turkeys. It was like the end of Hitchcock's The Birds, except scarier, because turkeys are some of the ugliest creatures on the planet.
• I thought about hearing periodic gunshots coming from the yard of our neighbors, who were into target practice; and about stapling "no trespassing" signs to trees with my dad and my sister in the days before hunting season. Throughout my time at the farm I was convinced that I would eventually get hit by a stray bullet and die.
• I thought about discovering where my mom hid the Christmas presents in the guest bedroom. And when I figured out there was no Santa Claus, and I told my sister, who was just as not surprised as I was.



• I thought about a talking dollhouse my sister and I played with in the living room. We would always have the nuclear family who inhabited it experience some horrifying natural disaster - a tornado would rip off their roof and send them flying or an earthquake would destroy their home and send them falling into the earth's molten core.

I thought about all these things and more - memories that are still flowing through my mind - as I sat there and ate my chicken parmesan (which turned out not to be particularly good).

My mom just sold her house. My dad just sold his. My sister and I can't go home anymore, at least insofar as "home" is "the place where we grew up."

My dad and I parted ways. My dad drove in one direction, I drove in another.

We stopped at a gas station, and as I sat there in my car, I couldn't hold it in any more. I cried. I cried like the farm was a person who died, a person who was there for me all my life, a person who took care of me and molded me in ways I never realized, a person I never really appreciated until she was gone. (Or he. The farm could have been a dude.)

Basically, I was a huge wimp about the whole thing.

But I've had some time to get over it, and now I'm looking to the future. I'm going to be out of Penn State at the end of the semester, which means saying goodbye to friends and the Collegian and everything else I've grown attached to over the past three years.

I don't know where I'll end up next. But wherever that is, I hope that when I leave I'm just as sad as I was this weekend and just as sad as I'll be in a few weeks when I leave Penn State.

Because while moving on sucks, in the end, it's a good kind of suck.