PENNSYLVANIA – Coming from New Jersey, it feels a little like swimming out to the middle of the ocean and treading water.

It feels perhaps like the end of the world must feel. Signs run up the length of the center median on the highway: Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump. Then a big one up ahead, as if I didn’t already get the message: TRUMP. Then the smaller signs again. I’m going 75 miles an hour and each time I see one of those signs it feels like a rumble strip hit head-on.

Will I be able to keep the car on the road?

Finally, I see a sign that says “toll” and it occurs to me that I have no change, so I pull off at the next stop and follow an arrow with the word “mall” written next to it, in letters you have to scrunch your eyes up to see.

There’s a Barnes and Noble ahead.

Why?

Do they really think people are going to buy books out here?

I’m sorry. It’s just that I’m agitated from all the driving.

The maze of cement navigated to get to the magical building in the distance feels like a botched job. In New Jersey, you would just conclude that a cement mixer intentionally over-paved and overcharged and it was an inside job. Here, though, it feels like an excess of poured cement is supposed to be a willful sign of progress. It doesn’t matter that it serves no purpose. But making the world uglier means industry is afoot.

It’s America, after all.

Now the bookstore finally looms.

At least from the outside, the facade, it looks like the most magnificent Barnes and Noble ever built. It’s the Segovia Castle of bookstores. But the parking lot is dead. A handful of cars nuzzle right up to the building in an otherwise oceanic infinity of concrete.

I bring her in for a landing still feeling very unsettled, the way a New Yorker must feel in New Jersey. That’s the way a New Jerseyan feels in Pennsylvania. Does a Pennsylvanian feel the same way in Ohio? I open the car door and gingerly set a boot down on the parking lot. What, do I unroll an American Flag and ram into the parking lot island like Neil Armstrong on the moon? In a sudden tentative cold sweat, keep going, something tells me. Don’t appear to have misgivings about getting out of the car. The boot’s already down. Don’t pull it back in. Don’t go halfway.

It’s ok. There’s no one watching. The place is dead. But I stride across the absolutely barren, flat and empty parking lot trying to look like Burt Lancaster in Gunfight at the OK Corral. I still have a hard time believing there’s a Barnes and Noble out here. Then I see the toys, games, and kiddie-ware take shape through the window as I get closer. Now, I get it. There aren’t actually any books inside. I swing the door.

Well, there are books in here, and only a few people – almost all women. As I roam through the place I wonder where the men are, and unwittingly have a sudden vision of a bunch of guys dragging bloody animal carcasses through the woods somewhere in the vicinity. I can’t help it. It’s Friday night. A bunch of women are in here. Just from a sociological standpoint I find it interesting – and – given the election – not altogether surprising. The women are reading, educating themselves, and the guys are back home watching Fox News, and getting enraged by the minute.

The bookstore opens up on the rest of the mall, and I walk out there, remembering the real reason I’m here, which is to make change from an ATM machine to pay for the turnpike toll.

Ah, the other males are out here. Not many but a few, alone and alarmingly dislocated. One of them is walking around frantically in circles in front of the movie theater. Is it exercise or something else? Is he getting ready to explode? It’s hard to tell. Another guy approaches. I don’t make eye contact at first, then can’t help it. He’s staring right at me. Of course he is. A lunatic mad dog bloodshot eyed Friday night at the empty mall stare.

I don’t know whether to be unsettled or just completely depressed. Everyone looks like he showed up to find the audition room for the next Halloween movie. And the mall itself – well, it’s overbuilt, as though they made it before online shopping became a thing, and the airport hanger proportions meant to impress with supersized excess simply swallow up all sense of space and time. It doesn’t help that there are only a few open stores, with the impressionistic outlines of people inside slumped over phones in front of utterly gloomy looking and unmoving cash registers. It feels like it takes a half an hour to get to the food court, where a woman at Barnes and Noble told me there might be an ATM machine, but she couldn’t be sure. The court is boarded up except for a single stall where some guy serves noodles, and a mall worker waits patiently while the guy takes his time ladling out a cupful of the steaming stuff he sells.

I grab a twenty-dollar bill from the ATM machine and get charged $4.25 for the service, before summoning the nerve to take the long, frightening walk back to Barnes and Noble in a hallway flickering overtime with deadening florescence. I’m so unnerved by the time I make it back to the bookstore that I don’t even notice myself practically running over the other people online to get to the front. No wonder the rest of the world thinks of New Jersey as obnoxious. I’m so rattled that when I open my wallet to pay for the coffee I ordered, I notice a twenty in there and think, “Look at that, I had the money the whole time.” Of course, it was the twenty I just took out of the machine. I pay sheepishly and head for the door.

Great, the car was stolen.

No, I remember, I borrowed someone else’s car to get out here.

It’s one of a handful in the lot.

It takes another half an hour to get out of the place, and finally redirected onto the highway. It turns out I didn’t need the money. They take a picture of your plate over here and bill you later. They probably do the same thing in Jersey, I’m just so acclimated to interface with human beings that I usually practically jump the median to get in front of a stall that has another person inside.

The highway is packed with cars. Bumper to bumper. Why? Isn’t it the boondocks out here. Where is everyone going? Is this coast-to-coast traffic barreling through? I see the corner of a massive building through foliage that looks like it must be a mega church or a warehouse, or maybe both. It isn’t clear. I’m boxed between trucks barely moving so I can’t see anything but by my very crude calculations I assume I’m getting closer to my destination. There’s a sign ahead. I squint to read it.

“Trump. For the people.”

Dear God.

It’s hell.

There’s another sign.

“TRUMP. For the people.”

They give you a second billboard dose just in case you missed the first one.

I take the exit ahead and rumble off the main road past a raggedly shutd0wn gas station with red paint profanity sprayed on what must have been the place where you pay for gas, but it’s practically unrecognizable as a structure now.

The guy at the front desk of the hotel asks if I want to see a list of local restaurants. He looks like he feels sorry for me. Does he understand that I’m far from home and maybe a meal will do me good? The only reason I mention it is because I’m hardly used to this kind of response. If you check into a place in Jersey, they don’t ask you if you want to eat. They just fling the room key at you.

So, I’m blearily sticking that key in the door a moment later when I realize I left the list of eateries down on the front desk. The door closes behind me. Click. It feels good to be inside at last. I decide I’ve had sufficient Pennsylvania adventures for one night and plan to stay in and order pizza. Then it occurs to me that you don’t eat pizza in Pennsylvania when you’re from New Jersey. It seems I’ll have to go out again before morning.

Maybe there’s a liquor store around.