hazleton

The center of the most fundamentalist Roman Catholic area in the US if not the world. Town that sits in isolation in the PA coal region. Populated by descendants of Southern Italian and Slovak peasants who were taught by their priests never to think for themselves. Their descendants in Hazleton today have given up most of the pretty or interesting things about their ethnicity (throw fits when newcomer immigrants speak Spanish), but managed to keep the deeper and more negative traits like: "never act on your own initiative" (because that may be willfulness which is a sin). To learn more about the cultural core of this town, look up the Penn State/Hazleton professor who writes papers on superstition and Satanism in the area. The Hispanics might be the only hope to save this town in the foreseeable future.