Altoona On is a delightful piece I wrote as result of wanting to continue a situation that originally emerged in 22Tango but did not fit any longer.  It was a story that wanted to continue, and the characters were much in favor of my continuing with the love affair, only under different names and ending differently.  From these beginnings, the lifetime love involving a lightly adventurous young man named Alan Dresher from Astoria, Long Island, New York, and a German daughter, Helene Stein, originally from the Lake Constance area (in English terms) and Bodensee (in European terms), a story grew and matured.  It was fun to write, and I felt united with the characters who wrote their own lines and set themselves comfortably and, at times, uncomfortably, in the Victorian Age.  The story starts in 1910, gets its running start in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a Pennsylvania Railroad Town in Blair Country, and ends in the very same place, but to do so, many miles and many years had to pass.

 

DUO control number:  402010

42,382 words