Altoona Has A Fan!
-
- May
- 24
Dan Gallo, Sr. of New Rochelle gives me some serious heck for mentioning Altoona, Pa. in a humorous context in Sunday’s column about high school proms. (See angry letter below).
You never knew who you’re going to offend and for what reason. This time it’s somebody who’s been to Altoona and apparently loves the place. I’m sure Altoona is great.
I tried to come up with funny names for towns. I could’ve come up with Sheboygin, or Toledo or Carbon City…or Verplank. Altoona is a funny name and suited my purposes.
As did Voorheesville, a town outside Albany. I used Voorheesville in the column, too, and I haven’t heard squat about it.
But I’m sure Voorheesville has its fans as well, and I eagerly await a call from the Voorheesville Booster Club or from tourists who have been there, sampled the many attractions, drank the water—and lived to talk about it.
“Dear Mr. Reisman,
I think you insulted those living in Altoona, PA with your writing in the subject newspaper on 5/22/07. You wrote ‘There’s probably some tragic 40-something year old guy somewhere who’s been to dozens of proms over the course of an underachieving lifetime and thus has assumed the unofficial title of “Prom King” of, say, Altoona or Vorheesville.’
Your probably were trying to be amusing, but you lead the reader to believe that citizens of a great little city called Altoona (in Pennsylvania) are tragic and underachieving. You are dead wrong. The people of Altoona have built the finest railroad engines and cars in the nation and host the very busy Norfolk Southern Railroad and famous “horseshoe curve”, where over 40 trains a day climb the Allegheny mountains bringing both freight and passengers both east and west. The city of about 100,000 has a great new stadium where the AA minor league team, the “Altoona Curve” play baseball. The air quality of the city is great, while Westchester County’s air is foul and unhealthy. Senior citizens 55 years and older get excellent discounts at restaurants, too. The people are friendly and hardworking. They make eye contact with you and are sincere.
I think you owe a written apology to the readers for misleading them into thinking Altoona is a town of losers.
You have my permission to reprint this Email in any publication.”
This entry was posted
on Thursday, May 24th, 2007 at 2:50 pm by Phil Reisman.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
| 
Phil Reisman is a veteran journalist and native of Westchester County. He began his career in 1977 as the head copy boy of a startup New York City newspaper that quickly went belly up. Reisman was not to blame for the newspaper's failure, or so he claims.
Altoona…fine little town. I spent a weekend there one afternoon. By the way, is there really a Voorheesville and was it named after Jason or his mother Betsy Palmer?
There is indeed a Voorheesville…it’s on the same exit sign off I-90 that includes Slingerland. I have no idea where the name came from.
Here’s another town I could have used—Hoosick Falls. That exists, too.
Hoosick? Yoosick? Not Meesick!
Next time, try “Podunk.”
Or, at the least, stick to unincoporated place names. That way, the area you’re pointing out will be “fuzzy” and no mayor will be able to complain.
Podunk is too generic, almost a cliche.
Well, “Prom king of Podunk” also has alliterative qualities.
It does…you are right!
I hope you would not mind if I put up a part of this on my univeristy blog?