We started at the Mason-Dixon Line, Exit 1 of Interstate 81, the highway that slices through central Pennsylvania and then veers northeast to the New York border, in a small town appropriately called State Line.

Photographer/videographer Paul Kuehnel and I set out to travel I-81 through the center of the state – the heart of the commonwealth and an area often referred to as Pennsyltucky, as if it were a rural monolith – to take the state’s pulse and see how people were feeling as we slouch toward 2020. Pennsylvania is expected to be a key battleground state, and if the 2020 election plays out as it did in 2016, Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes will be key in determining whether Donald Trump is re-elected.

The outlook, of course, depends on whom you ask. We spoke with rural folks and urban dwellers, shopkeepers and union workers, white people and people of color, those who are doing well and others who are not.

If there is any conclusion to be reached, it is that there is none — at least at this moment. It’s more of a snapshot of the state, a moment in time that could be described as the calm before the storm that is sure to rage in 2020.

Prosperity on the Mason-Dixon Line

Earl’s Market is the heart of State Line, a town of about 2,700 just off the interstate on the, well, state line. The town was founded in 1812 and named Middleburg, because it marked the halfway point between Hagerstown in Maryland and Chambersburg in Pennsylvania.

The name was changed in 1830 when the town got a post office, the change prompted to avoid confusion with other towns named Middleburg. At one time, the town had the nickname Muttontown, bestowed upon it because of the large flocks of sheep that used to graze in the pastures that have since been paved over with interstate highway.

Its historical claim to fame is that John Brown stopped in town in 1859 on his way to raid the armory at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and try to initiate an armed slave revolt.

The post office is still right on Main Street, sharing a building with the market, founded as Binkley’s Dry Goods early in the last century. The name changed to Earl’s Market when Earl Leckron bought it in 1951, the name sticking through two subsequent owners not named Earl.

The market does a good business, current proprietor Bob Myers said. It is well-known for its hoagies — selling about 150 a day — its old-school smoked Virginia hams and its wheels of Wisconsin farmer’s cheese.

The market also does a good lottery business, attracting Maryland residents seeking to hit the jackpot in the Keystone State. The store sells Coke in the old-fashioned glass bottles, the soft drink imported from Mexico, where it is still sweetened with real sugar instead of high-fructose corn syrup.

It’s a true mom-and-pop operation, with Bob, 62, and his wife, Angie, 60, manning the deli counter. They’ve lived in State Line for 43 years, in the neat, gray-sided farmhouse across the street from the market, the house where they raised their six children, including triplet boys. Bob had worked as a machinist before buying the store in 2012.

“State Line has been good to us,” Bob said. “We love it here. It’s nice and quiet.”

That doesn’t mean things aren’t happening there, Bob said. The economy is doing very well in the region, he said. A new car dealership and a Sheetz opened up on the north side of town. To the south, just off Exit 1, new warehouses are going up, and bringing jobs. A large Target depot is just north of town.

The downside is that the nature of the place has changed. “We’re losing a lot of landscape around here,” Bob said. “It’s still country to us – still more country than a lot of places – but things are catching up to us. Traffic is getting busier up front (on Route 11). There’s a lot of growth.”

The town was solidly for Donald Trump in 2016, and nothing has changed that, Bob said. The only thing that could change voters' minds is the economy tanking so badly that it has a local effect.

“Trump’s really strong here,” he said. “His support still holds up here. I think it’s because there are a lot of new jobs here. That’s the big thing.”

Restaurant owner supports Trump's immigration crackdown

Two opposing views emerged in Chambersburg.

At Johnnie’s Family Restaurant, on the south edge of town, a man named John — “Just John” — was having coffee at the counter alone. He said he thinks Trump’s going to win a second term, and that’s more than fine with him. “I think there’s a silent majority out there that’s going to elect him,” he said. “I think (the Democratic candidates) are ultra-left and I don’t believe they’ll be able to overcome a sensible person.”

A few blocks away, at Pompy’s Barber Shop, housed in an old fire station at the east end of town, barber Andrew McKeovey said, “It’s just kind of weird right now. It’s like 'The Purge' or 'The Hunger Games' could really happen with (Trump)."

John, 75, who described himself as an Air Force veteran and former intelligence worker with the CIA, said he supports Trump’s immigration crackdown and favors construction of what’s come to be known, simply, as The Wall.

“Once we allow immigration to the point where we bring all these people to the United States, what is the United States?” he said. “If we take in all these poor people or people with problems, then what is the United States?”

McKeovey, 22 and a Bernie Sanders supporter, said, “This is Donald Trump’s America now. Everything’s weird.”

Trump distracts us from 'bigger issues'

The former convenience store formerly known as the K Street Deli is on the main drag in Shippensburg, a college town. It had been re-christened Billy O’s by a former owner and the new owner, a young woman named Micayla Alatorre, kept the name, at least for now, even though the shop no longer operates as a deli. You won’t find pastrami or prosciutto behind the counter. Instead, you’ll find vape pens, rolling papers, flavored cigars, bongs and something called “synthetic urine,” apparently used to cheat on drug tests. She plans to change the name of the place to Psychedeli.

“I’m a child of the '60s,” Alatorre, 25, said.

She’s originally from Carlisle and only recently moved to Shippensburg. She likes it. The college town atmosphere suits her.

And it may seem odd that she says drugs are a big issue in the area — specifically opiates. She favors legalization of drugs “across the board” as a means of regulating drugs and reducing the number of overdoses.

She doesn’t have a lot of faith that things will change.

“I think a lot of (what Trump does) is a distraction to keep away from the bigger issues,” she said. “We’re more worried about what the president’s posting on Twitter than about what’s happening in Europe or in the Middle East.”

She doesn’t think Trump is “a bad person,” but she said, “The president needs to be able to speak to more people, not just a select few.”

'He's normalizing not-OK ideas'

Carlisle is also a college town, home of Dickinson College, a private liberal arts school founded in 1783, making it the first college to be chartered after the Treaty of Paris created the United States following the Revolutionary War.

At lunchtime a week before classes began, the dining hall was crowded with students who arrived on campus early — incoming freshmen, international students, athletes and others who simply came back to school early.

Among them was Cecilia Ribordy, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in environmental, Latin and Latino-American studies. Ribordy is an immigrant, her parents having moved from her native Brazil to California when she was young, her father taking a job with a nonprofit religious organization. (He now teaches at a Catholic high school in Los Angeles.)

She remembers being excited about coming to America. “In other countries, America tends to be idealized,” she said. “People look at America and think, ‘They have it so much better than us.’”

Her experience has tempered that idealism. Don’t get her wrong; she loves it here, loves the opportunities she has been given and loves that this country has so much to offer. But, she said, “My experience has been different, especially when you look at race.”

“I’m considered a white person in Brazil,” she continued. “Here, I’m considered Latina.”

And because of the president’s rhetoric when it comes to describing Latinos, she said, she feels that she's been marginalized, placed in a category that defines her by her race rather than her worth as a human being, that she becomes a symbol.

“I think he’s a psychopath,” she said. “He’s normalizing not-OK ideas. To a certain extent, it’s not just Donald Trump. It’s a reflection of what some people think.”

'Trump has done a lot of good things'

Aeri and Daewoo Lee have lived and worked in uptown Harrisburg for 30 years, running a bodega a block away from the governor’s mansion at the corner of Third and McClay streets, called, of course, The McClay Street Market.

They came to America from Seoul, South Korea, and bought the corner grocery store. “We grew up on a handful of rice a day,” Aeri said. “We appreciate everything this country has given us.”

The neighborhood has changed vastly over the years, but they have stayed and adapted. Now, Aeri said, “Everything is great. We have no complaints.”

The store sells everything from cigarettes and cigars to groceries to wigs and beauty supplies. The customers are all from the neighborhood, and the Lees seem to know all of them, greeting them by name as they walk in the door and asking about their families.

“People are very protective of us,” Aeri said. “And we look out for people.”

One example: They give people a second chance. If they catch someone trying to steal, they don’t call the police. They talk to the person and find out why he or she was stealing. They do ban them from the store for two weeks, but often the ban expires before that. They’d rather help someone out than get them into trouble with the law.

The customers call Daewoo “Uncle Lee.” Aeri recalled that once they were out having dinner when a customer saw them and said, “Hi, Uncle Lee.” The person with the customer was puzzled. “That’s your uncle? Really?”

Photos of their son hang on an overhead beam. He is in the Marines, an officer serving with the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, the NCIS made a household name from the popular TV show. In one of the photos, their son, in his dress blues, is shaking hands with former President Bill Clinton.

They have also met Gov. Tom Wolf and like him very much. “He’s a good guy, a nice guy,” Aeri said.

But they are bipartisan when it comes to their politics.

“Trump has done a lot of good things,” Aeri said. “I like him because he is a businessman. I think he’s a good person, but he just says things he shouldn’t say. He should think before he speaks. But we all make mistakes. We’re all human.”

Trump 'can't be any worse' than other politicians

Shenandoah, in Schuylkill County, the heart of Pennsylvania’s coal country, is the hometown of Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, who achieved fame as big band musicians, backing up, among others, Frank Sinatra.

It is also the hometown of Charles Fowler, a 35-year-old Navy vet who has been living on the streets for the past decade or so. He said he served from 2005 to 2010, stationed everywhere from Japan to Kuwait to San Diego. “I should’ve stayed in the military,” he said.

He was sitting in the doorway of a now-closed junk shop — the owner, he said, having abandoned it some years back. Through the grimy windows, you can still see the store’s inventory, looking more like the residence of a hoarder than a functional retail outlet, the shelves packed with dusty merchandise, a rack of candy by the door barely detectable beneath a blanket of dust.

Fowler was wearing shorts and a T-shirt, sitting on a Styrofoam cooler, a camouflage backpack containing his worldly possessions between his feet. His legs, arms and face were covered with scabs and sores. He did not look well.

“This town has gone downhill,” he said, his fortunes following those of his hometown.

He bounces from place to place, he said, staying with girlfriends when he can. He has tried to get help, to no avail. “They say they have programs to help poor people,” he said. “Every time I go down there, they say they have no funding.”

He doesn’t have a lot of faith in the political system to help him.

“Donald Trump can’t be any worse than all the other ones,” he said. “As far as I know, most people are greedy. All they care about is money, money, money.”

This CEO doesn't agree with Trump's plans for the coal industry

Route 11, which parallels the interstate from the Mason-Dixon Line to the New York border, winds through the mountains in coal country, passing what appear to be abandoned strip mines along the way. At one, piles of slag border a mine that apparently has been played out. A rusty Caterpillar steam shovel sits by the entrance to the mine, weeds and high grass licking at its treads indicating that it hasn’t moved in years.

In the background, atop the mountains in the distance, you can see the future, a windmill farm, the long blades of the spindly devices turning slowly in the breeze.

Outside of Mahanoy City is the headquarters of the Blaschak Coal Corp., one of the few coal mining companies still operating in what was once a thriving coal region. The company’s signs bear its trademark, a depiction of Santa Claus carrying a sack brimming with coal.

Mahanoy City used to be known as St. Nicholas Village, named after the patron saint of sailors, merchants, repentant thieves, children, pawnbrokers and brewers. Why it was named so is a mystery.

The road in front of Blaschak Coal used to be lined with homes, almost all of them gone now. It wasn’t exactly a company town, the strict sense of the term, but as current company president and CEO Greg Driscoll said, “People lived where they worked back then.”

Driscoll is an easy-going guy, dressed in jeans and an Oxford shirt, casual wear for the CEO of a corporation. It seems like a laid-back workplace. The company headquarters are housed in what appear to be a complex of yellow-sided doublewides, a Trump-Pence sticker adhered to the side of one of them.

The company dates to 1937, when anthracite was king in this region. In 1917, Driscoll said, miners dug 100 million tons of coal from the deep mines cut into the region’s mountains. The industry employed some 200,000 workers at its peak, many of whom were immigrants from Eastern Europe, Ireland and Italy, all giving the region its cultural identity and making perogies and kielbasa and pasta mainstays of the regional cuisine.

Now, Driscoll said, there are maybe 1,000 miners in the region.

Times change, and the demand for the hard, anthracite coal from Pennsylvania has diminished over the years. For background, there are two different kinds of coal – anthracite is often referred to as hard coal and its lower sulfur content makes it cleaner burning than the softer, high-sulfur bituminous coal. Anthracite is more of a specialty item, used in home heating units, coal-fired pizza ovens and such. It’s high carbon content also makes it useful in steel production.

Driscoll said his company is working with researchers to find new ways to use the coal in the manufacture of carbon fiber and other materials. Bituminous coal is typically burned in power plants.

Mining has changed, he said. Miners no longer dig shafts into the sides of mountains to harvest coal, strip mining being more efficient and safer. (Driscoll showed a mining journal from the 19th century that reported that 129 miners died on the job in 1869.)

“We do it responsibly,” Driscoll said, “in a way that’s more sustainable.”

The company, as it digs the coal from the mine, backfills areas that it had previously mined. When the mine is played out, he said, the area is restored to its previous condition. "When we're finished," he said, "you'd never know we'd been there."

For all of the talk from the president about “bringing coal back,” Driscoll said, “It’s hard to see any benefits from anything the president has done.”

The law of unintended consequences

The first person we encountered on the main drag in Hazleton was a 24-year-old woman named Rose Fisher. She had some opinions about the town she has called home for the past four years.

“I think it’s a horrible town,” she said. “All you find are junkies and drugs.”

So it seemed odd that as we walked a few blocks through the downtown area, it appeared that Hazleton was a pretty nice town. It was clean. There were a lot of businesses. It didn’t seem horrible at all. The crime rate, as reported by City-Data.com, was below the national average for most of the 21st century.

Hazleton was at the center of the anthracite industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, its eponymous coal company being a main supplier for the blast furnaces at the former Bethlehem Steel Co. The town became a destination for immigrants — mostly from Germany and Ireland in the 1840s and 1850s, and from Italy, Poland, Russia, Lithuania and other Slavic countries from the 1860s up until the 1920s.

The city was diverse, ethnically, but monolithic when it came to race. In 2000, the year Republican Lou Barletta took office as the town’s mayor, the city was 95 percent white, according to U.S. Census figures.

In 2006, in response to an influx of immigrants mostly from the Dominican Republic, Barletta forced an anti-immigration ordinance through city council, making it against the law for landlords to rent to illegal immigrants and employers to hire them. Another ordinance made English the city’s official language. The anti-immigration stance elevated Barletta to political celebrity status, appearing regularly on network and cable news programs.

The ACLU and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education fund sued in federal court. The courts ruled that the ordinances were unconstitutional and ordered the city to pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees, a sum that approached $1.5 million, leading to a declaration of the city being designated as financially distressed.

Victor Perez, president of Casa Dominica on the main drag in Hazleton, chuckles as he recounts that recent history. The lawsuit and the publicity that Barletta drummed up made Hazleton a magnet for Latino immigrants, he said, a development that has saved the city.

“The Hispanic population was motivated to come to Hazleton,” he said. “We changed Hazleton from a ghost town to a prosperous town. A lot of people came here from other areas looking for opportunities.”

And they found them. The downtown is lined with Latino-owned businesses – bodegas, grocery stores, beauty shops, cell phone stores, restaurants. The manager of the bank branch down the street is Hispanic, as are many of the employees. Hispanics dominate the workforce at warehouses and manufacturers in the city’s new industrial park. Of the 5,000 employees at a new Amazon warehouse outside of town, 4,000 are Latino, including many of the managers.

“We did not come here to take something away from people,”' Perez said. “We came here to be part of the community, to help uplift the community. We are here to work, not fight. We came here for the American dream.”

Perez has been meeting with Census officials in anticipation of the 2020 census. He expects that when the figures are compiled, Hazleton will be a Latino-majority city.

Barletta, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, parlayed his celebrity into a seat in Congress in 2011. In 2018, with Trump’s encouragement and support, he ran against Democratic incumbent Sen. Bob Casey and lost by 13 points.

And in 2018, voters in Luzerne County elected Democrat Matt Cartwright to replace Barletta in Congress.

'When he makes his next term, I’m gonna write him'

The sun was setting, and the shadows grew long in Public Square Park in Wilkes-Barre when we encountered Sean Mooney. A heavy-set man wearing shorts, his long hair flowing out of a baseball cap, he sat on a bench with his worldly possessions, watching as a friend of his danced to some loud heavy metal playing on his phone. Tattoos lined his arms, and his legs were sunburned.

Mooney, an old-looking 54, said he has been living on the streets for 11 years. He had a job hanging sheet rock and had been married, but neither one of those things worked out. He got hurt on the job and couldn’t work and then, one night, he said, his wife threw a glass ashtray at his head, hitting his face and knocking out six of his teeth. He left and has been on the streets since.

He served time in jail, arrested for trespassing after he was found sleeping in an abandoned building by the Susquehanna River. “It’s not like I’m a common criminal,” he said. “I’m just tryin' to live, bro.”

Right now, he said, “All I want is a little tent. I don’t even have a blanket, bro.”

And he likes Donald Trump.

“Donald Trump’s the best,” he said. “He’s the only president with any balls. He took on all of these other countries. When he makes his next term, I’m gonna write him a letter. Let him know I need help.”

And a tent.

'We're in a very bad place'

In Scranton, the city was preparing for its annual La Festa Italiana, setting up in the Piazza dell’ Arte in the shadow of the historic and ornate Romanesque-Revival Lackawanna County Courthouse. Across the street, the Pisanchyn Law Firm was decorated with a large red, white and green banner that proclaimed, “Fugetaboutit.” A kiosk in the piazza displayed handbills of missing children and teenagers, 34 in all, mostly recent, but one dating to 1980.

Scranton is a Democratic city, a blue island in a red sea. In 2012, Barack Obama carried Lackawanna County by 26,753 votes. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won the county by a much slimmer margin, 3,599 votes.

Scranton is also a union town, owing its inception to organized labor. In August 1877, workers in the steel industry and mining called a general strike in support of striking railroad workers. The strike led to unrest. Four people were killed, and more were injured, including the mayor. The labor issues and growth of industry in the Scranton area led the state Legislature to establish Lackawanna County, splitting it off from neighboring Luzerne County in 1878. In 1902, then-President Teddy Roosevelt went to Scranton to mediate another coal strike.

We stopped by a union hall, a 1960s-style building that houses offices for several unions, including the ironworkers, laborers and electrical workers.

There, we met Beverly Shaughnessy, a secretary for Local 81 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Beverly, a young-appearing 74-year-old, has worked for the 505-member union for 37 years. Her father was in the union. Her 78-year-old husband, Paul, is an IBEW member, having worked for the Scranton Housing Authority until poor health forced him to retire. “He’d still be working, if he could,” Shaughnessy said. “He loved working.”

The union has seen better days. Like most unions, membership has dwindled, the result, Shaughnessy said, of decades of anti-union policies and law imposed by the federal government, lessening the political clout that unions once exercised.

And the dynamic between unions and management has changed. Before, she said, the unions and management saw one another as partners, working toward the same goal. “Thirty-seven years ago, your word meant something,” she said. “If you gave your word, it meant something. “Now...it doesn’t mean anything.”

She continued, “We have someone in office like that right now. Donald Trump has no morals. He lies to your face every day and it’s doesn’t seem to matter.”

She wonders about the state of our world, and our country.

“We’re in a very bad place,” she said. “It’s very disheartening”

'Still Trump country'

The Hallstead-Great Bend Branch Library – in Hallstead, a town of 1,300 on the Susquehanna in the northeast corner of the state - used to be the town jail in the early 20th Century. The jail’s only cell is now the library’s handicapped bathroom, librarian Angie Hall said.

Hallstead, Hall said, is “a great place to raise kids.” It’s rural and the outdoors beckon, as the mountains around the region are teeming with game, small and big, from squirrel to deer to even timber rattlers.

The town is also fairly prosperous, Hall said, having profited from the fracking boom in the region. Landowners made fortunes on mineral rights. Susquehanna County collected millions in impact fees from drillers. Gas workers and their disposable income boosted the local economy.

“It’s been a tremendous economy for the last few years,” Hall, whose husband Alan is a Republican Susquehanna County commissioner, said. “There are tons of jobs open that they can’t fill.”

The county was able to reduce taxes – depending of impact fees to bolster its budget – and farmers in the county still collect income from gas royalties. The county has been able to renovate its courthouse and build a new 911 center while reducing property taxes, she said. And, she said, “It saved some family farms around here.”

The county is very conservative. “It’s a very, very Republican county,” Hall said.

The county went big for Trump in 2016, and Hall doesn’t see that changing. “Nothing has changed,” she said. “We’re still Trump country.”

This gun shop owner supported Trump in 2016

Across the Susquehanna River is Great Bend, a town of 730 so named for being situated on a great bend in the river about two miles from the New York border.

One of the businesses in town is Pennsylvania Guns & Ammo, owned and operated by a 44-year-old New Yorker named Jamie Deninis for the past four-and-a-half years.

“I was never into guns,” he said. “I didn’t think people should own guns. Then, a family member showed me how to shoot a .22 and that made a big difference. It changed my mind.”

He opened the gun shop because, he said, “I got sick of working for other people. I figured I’d give it a shot.”

Unlike Hall, he has noticed the economy slowing down. “When I first opened, the gas money was good,” he said. “But when they stopped drilling, there was a downturn. Once they cap the wells, the money’s just pipelines.”

He’s pro-Second Amendment, obviously, and it has caused him some cognitive dissonance when it comes to politics. He supported Trump in 2016, but had Hillary Clinton prevailed, it would have been better for business.

“When people think new gun control laws are coming, they buy more guns,” he said. “When the polls said Hillary was going to win, the gun manufacturers were pumping out firearms. Now, they have all of this inventory and people aren’t buying them.”

The irony was not lost on Deninis. The candidate who was against any restrictions on gun ownership and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association was bad for business. And the candidate who spoke about “common sense” gun control measures, including expanding background checks, limiting ownership of military-style firearms and prohibiting those on terrorism watch list from owning guns, was good for business.

“People bought a bunch of AR-15s when Hillary talked about banning them.” he said. “It’s like a kid wanting something he can’t have. Once the government says it’s going to ban something, you want it.”

He thought about it a moment and said, “It seems backwards, I know. But that’s how things are now. It’s weird.”

Yes, it is. And as we head into 2020, it's probably going to get a lot weirder.