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I was born and raised in Central Pennsylvania, so I feel like that gives me a certain license to comment about how weird it is there. There are plenty of communities with lovely hometown charm. There are also plenty of Rust Belt backwoods where unemployment, meth, heroin, gonorrhea, and rampant poverty is the dominant issue. Sometimes those two forces of pleasantness and ugliness converge.
Shamokin, Pennsylvania is dead center in the middle of nowhere. A rundown coal mining town, Lewisburg, Bloomsburg, Hazleton, and Harrisburg are all *close*, but not close enough to justify the drive for a cup of coffee.
The town is in the middle of a crisis since Saturday night, when a teenager started an arson fire in the bathroom at the local Dunkin Donuts. A Northeastern Pennsylvania news crew interviewed town locals about not being able to get their Dunkin fix and they’re completely devastated. Especially this guy, who now has nowhere to meet with his lawyer about whatever undisclosed legal issues he seems to be having:
Watch the interview above. It’s more Central PA than Sheetz and a bag of UTZ potato chips.