Travel up the Sandburg and down the Neversink Valley on Route 209, then continue across the Delaware River, and you'll soon arrive in the village of Milford, PA. It's an attractive town, with some nice 19th century architecture, a place I passed through occasionally during my hitchhiking days and, in more recent years, during twice-annual drives to visit my brother, who lives south of Allentown. I have twice spent a night in Milford, so the place has a few memories for me. But for nearly four years, as I'll explain shortly, I dared not risk even passing through the village.

The first time I stayed overnight in Milford was in the latter part of April, 1975, returning home from a hitchhiking trip down to Gulfport, Mississippi, where I'd spent a week with a friend I'd met out in the Ozarks a year earlier. I'd crashed the previous night at Bridgewater College in central Virginia. From there I made it north as far as Scranton in such good time that I decided to forgo the interstate in favor of a more interesting and circuitous route through the coal towns of Carbondale and Honesdale, the starting point of our D & H Canal.

I soon came to regret the decision, for rides were hard to come by. It was well after dark when I was finally left off near Milford, and I walked into the town and began looking about for an inexpensive place to spend the night. Someone suggested a small guest house on Broad Street, right next to the Tom Quick Inn, which I knew would be pricey.

It's a two-story frame building, Victorian in style, dating to the turn of the century, and as soon as I entered I could see that it had remained virtually unaltered since the time of its construction. Behind an old desk sat a heavy-set woman in her seventies, dressed and groomed for comfort rather than fashion. She seemed glad to see me — I may have been the only prospective guest to walk through the door in days. I recall having an immediate vision, an image in my mind, of this woman as a little girl, playing in the room, with her mother sitting behind the same desk. As I only recently have learned, the place was the annex to the once-grand Fauchère's hotel, then still maintained by descendants of the original proprietor, and so perhaps my vision was quite literally accurate.

The elderly woman and I greeted each other and I inquired, "How much would it be for a single room, just for the night?"

"Seven dollars," she said. Her voice was labored, a sort of hoarse whisper.

"Do you have anything cheaper? I'm just hitchhiking through, I expected to make it home by tonight."

"I tell you what," she said. "Six dollars."

"OK, that sounds reasonable," I said, "I'm gonna check next door just in case they have anything cheaper, and I'll probably be right back."

"I'll save you a trip. Five dollars."

The room was clean, small but with a private bath, and the furniture was of elegant hardwood construction. I spent a comfortable night.

The second time I stayed in Milford was just four years ago. A friend and I took a little road trip through the interior of Sullivan County, visiting some of the river towns along both sides of the Delaware and crossing the D & H Canal aqueduct bridge in Lackawaxen. We passed high above the Delaware on the Hawk's Nest scenic drive, arriving late in the afternoon at Milford, where we had made dinner and overnight reservations, this time at the Tom Quick Inn. I parked my car on the street in front of the Inn. With fair weather, it never occurred to me that there might be a wintertime ban on overnight street parking. But there was. The next morning, there was a parking ticket on my car.

I had spent a pretty respectable chunk of change in the town, and resented being shaken down for another $15. I decided to ignore the ticket — out of state, you know. Three weeks later, I received a summons in the mail informing me that, due to my failure to respond, the fine had increased to $25, and there were now added court costs that brought the total amount due to $78.

Another five weeks went by, and I received a copy of an arrest warrant "command[ing]… any authorized person" acting in the name of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to "take [me] into custody if the defendant be found in said Commonwealth and bring the defendant before" the named judge. "You need to respond to this" was handwritten on the bottom.

In early May I received another copy of the same arrest warrant, with "Warrant to remain until this is responded to" written in red ink (or was it blood??? And didn't the court realize it's bad form to end a sentence with a preposition?). The next message came during the second week of September: "Your license is suspended." And another, in late October, added "Your state has been notified."

Of course, all this huffing and puffing was to no effect as long as I stayed out of Milford. I had checked — from a safe distance — and learned that the arrest warrant was not on record elsewhere in Pennsylvania. I had already begun taking an alternate route on visits to my brother: down the Thruway to Suffern, then south on I-287 and west on 78 — a few extra miles, though actually a bit quicker. But the new route lacks the scenic ambiance of the ride down the Delaware Valley to the Water Gap and thence the dogleg south on Pennsylvania Route 33, over the mountain and through Wind Gap. And, in a small way, Milford itself was part of my personal history. I missed it.

I heard nothing from the venerable Milford magistrates for three years, and of course made no effort to contact them. And then, just last October, there appeared in my mailbox yet another envelope bearing the return address, "Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, District Justice Magisterial District 60-3-01" etc. etc. What were they gonna do now, extradite me for an unpaid parking ticket? I opened the envelope. In place of the same old arrest warrant was a new document, signed by a new judge and titled, "Notice of Withdrawal of Charges":

"This is to notify you that pursuant to Rule 457 of the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure, this Court has agreed to the withdrawal of the charge(s) in the above captioned case."

And so, I can travel through Milford once again. I did so in time to spend Christmas with my brother, niece, nephew and two little grandnieces. On the way back, I stopped in at Fauchère's, where I'd once spent a night in the annex for $5. After being converted subsequently to professional offices, the main building was expensively renovated and reopened as a hotel three years ago. Just for fun, I inquired and learned that the present cost for a single room for a night starts at $200. The annex is now called the Emerson House and used for banquets and corporate conferences.

I'll be sending a copy of this column to Fauchère's new host. And, with a brief thank you note, to Milford's new judge — from a safe distance, of course (just in case).

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