May Day 04/01/2006 - Harrisburg Country Club

"He wanted to see Edith - Edith whom he hadn't met since one romantic night at the Harrisburg Country Club just before he went to France" (page 72).


The Country Club of Harrisburg
Website- http://www.ccharrisburg.com/
Address- 401 Fishing Creek Valley Road
Harrisburg, PA 17112
The Country Club of Harrisburg was founded in 1896, so this is probably the same club mentioned in “May Day”. However, Gordon does refer to it as the Harrisburg Country Club but I think there’s a pretty good chance that these two are one and the same.


Driving up to the club house I passed this pitiful excuse for a pool. I hadn’t thought about it until much later but I swear I’ve been in bigger pools in people’s back yards. Next to the “starter” pool was a well placed mound of dirt. The parking lot was half full; an assortment of high end sedans. The club was generally depressed, depressed that the club that Fitzgerald had so generously described in May Day had been neglected by the very people that pay for it’s upkeep. Harrisburg Country Club has seen better days. The cloudy weather did not help either.
It was a lot smaller than I had imagined. The club only really consisted of one large building in dire need of a paint job, a pool house, and a golf course. The club was so spectacularly normal and dry. Despite some of the club looking like the neglected step child of an Elk lodge; it was situated on a beautiful piece of land. From the golf course I could see the Susquehanna.
The club was just so average. It's just when I read Fitzgerald, I always imagine the most decadent; beautiful ballrooms, stunning women, exquisite food, and dance floors that have been waxed once an hour for an entire day. The only thing that caught my eye was older men giving me the stink eye for taking pictures of their shitty clubhouse. I’m disappointed and amazed. My expectations were sorely disappointed but I continued to be amazed by Fitzgerald’s ability to describe even the biggest pieces of shit in such beautiful, jaw dropping detail.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. “May Day”. Tales of the Jazz Age. First Pine Street Books: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 2003.