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        BILL’S PLACE, Pennsylvania — Technically this place is no longer on a map — the realignment of the Pennsylvania Turnpike in the 1960s ended its tiny dot. However, for over 30 years, if you were traveling up and down the Lincoln Highway along the Bedford-Fulton county line, you were greeted with billboards bearing this charming rhyme:

        “You may be from Massachusetts

        You may be from Tennessee

        Even from the state of Washington, it matters not to me

        Tourist friends, we’re glad to greet you

        And to help you on your way

        Our hope is when you leave us

        That you’ve had a worthwhile stay

        Bill’s Place, Pennsylvania”

        The Bill in Bill’s Place was William C. Wakefield, an Everett, Pennsylvania, man whose gimmicky way to attract tourists in the early days of the great American road trip on the country’s first coast-to-coast highway opened his door to the American dream.

        The dream became a successful business that lasted almost 40 years — because shortly after he put up the billboards, the cars started pouring in and never stopped until the day the business closed.

        Wakefield started the business with $150, $110 of which was used to construct a 10-by-100-foot stand as a means to be able to afford to resume his studies at Pennsylvania State University. He had tried three times to afford classes, according to the local newspaper.

        The first day he made 37 cents. But he was not deterred.

        Wakefield put up a tent behind the stand and lived there for quite a while until business started to take off. First, he added a 6-foot porch, and then a diner, a gas station and, before too long, a gift shop with knickknacks, toys and chinaware pendants that read “Bill’s Place Pennsylvania.”

        He married and had two sons, George and Bill, in quick order. By the time the boys were 6 years old, they were pumping gas.

        His best business moment happened thanks in part to his success selling postcards. It was because he did such a brisk business with them that tourists always followed up with a request for him to mail them. At first, it was annoying, but ever the entrepreneur, Wakefield came up with his greatest gimmick of all: a post office. And not just any post office, the country’s smallest post office, with the postmark Bill’s Place.

        It was not only tiny in size — it was a 10-square-foot shack — but it was also tiny in population: Wakefield, his wife, a hired hand and his two boys.

        Word spread quickly and everyone wanted to stop at the country’s smallest post office. And, of course, they wanted to buy a trinket, gas up and eat at the diner.

        Bill’s Place became so iconic that he convinced a salesman from Rand McNally who had just happened to stop for gas to pinpoint it on all Rand McNally maps. I can remember it on my father’s old folded-up travel maps in the car that I loved to pore over as a child.

        Wakefield also built a lookout perch that sat high on Ray’s Hill for tourists to climb to take in the breathtaking scenery of three Appalachian states below and seven counties.

        When the turnpike first opened with an interchange at Breezewood, Wakefield’s business boomed even more. When the commonwealth decided to reroute it to add larger tunnels, the end was inevitable. Where Bill’s Place was is now essentially gone. It is basically just the side of the mountaintop. Wakefield had sold just a few years before its demise to the Paul Miller family of Jeanette.

        Where Bill’s Place once sat was a tavern during the stagecoach period. There was a large stable that offered accommodations for the horses. It was also a toll house for those heading east-west long before the invention of the automobile.

        Bill’s Place wasn’t just a place to set a spell, browse, laugh or create silly memories with your family in the same way Bill Wakefield wasn’t just a guy looking to make a buck. He was a good citizen in his community, volunteered, led the business district, and raised two sons, including William Wakefield II, who died a few years ago. He clearly learned from his father’s knee what serving your community meant.

        When the younger Wakefield passed, his obituary was a tribute to all his parents taught him about work ethic, giving back, the importance of education and embracing life to its fullest. He joined the military while studying civil engineering and participating in ROTC at Penn State.

        Wakefield II had a career in the Army Corps of Engineers, became an airborne ranger and served two tours in Vietnam, earning numerous awards for exemplary service. He coached soccer and basketball for his children for dozens of years. He was married for 49 years and in his lifetime visited over 107 countries on all seven continents.

        His final resting place is at Arlington National Cemetery — his father would be proud.

        You have to wonder how many other lives Wakefield Sr. touched or inspired when he showed them the fruits of embracing the American dream or the consequences of hard work. Or how many his sons’ lives touched as well.

        That’s the thing about leading a life of example. Wakefield has been gone for decades, and Bill’s Place has as well. Yet the examples through the lives they lived still live on today through the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren whose parents shared an imprint of their visit that day at Bill’s Place and passed it on to their family and friends.

        All you have to do is take a ride due west on U.S. 30 until you hit Iowa, and you’ll see a little bit of Bill Wakefield when you see the signs for Wall Drug hundreds of miles before you hit their iconic store in South Dakota. Thirteen years after Bill Wakefield placed his little signs along the Lincoln Highway in 1923, Dorothy Hustead started enticing road trippers to visit their out-of-the-way store — and make their mark on American culture by employing the same tactic Wakefield employed when she came up with a catchy and simple jingle:

        “Get a soda

        Get a beer

        Turn next corner

        Just as near

        To Highway 16 and 14

        Free ice water”

        Nearly 100 years later, Wall Drug is now an icon — you’d like to believe that maybe Bill Wakefield had something to do with it.

        Salena Zito is a CNN political analyst, and a staff reporter and columnist for the Washington Examiner. She reaches the Everyman and Everywoman through shoe-leather journalism, traveling from Main Street to the beltway and all places in between. To find out more about Salena and read her past columns, please visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

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Note: I am on vacation this weekend. I hope you will enjoy this reflection from 2019, written outside the Lenten season. I also have Lenten reflections on this passage below, including one from 2019.

This morning’s Gospel reading is Luke 15:1–32:

Tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to listen to Jesus, but the Pharisees and scribes began to complain, saying, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” So to them he addressed this parable. “What man among you having a hundred sheep and losing one of them would not leave the ninety-nine in the desert and go after the lost one until he finds it? And when he does find it, he sets it on his shoulders with great joy and, upon his arrival home, he calls together his friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ I tell you, in just the same way there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous people who have no need of repentance.

“Or what woman having ten coins and losing one would not light a lamp and sweep the house, searching carefully until she finds it? And when she does find it, she calls together her friends and neighbors and says to them, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found the coin that I lost.’ In just the same way, I tell you, there will be rejoicing among the angels of God over one sinner who repents.”

Then he said,
“A man had two sons, and the younger son said to his father, ‘Father give me the share of your estate that should come to me.’ So the father divided the property between them. After a few days, the younger son collected all his belongings and set off to a distant country where he squandered his inheritance on a life of dissipation. When he had freely spent everything, a severe famine struck that country, and he found himself in dire need. So he hired himself out to one of the local citizens who sent him to his farm to tend the swine. And he longed to eat his fill of the pods on which the swine fed, but nobody gave him any. Coming to his senses he thought, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have more than enough food to eat, but here am I, dying from hunger. I shall get up and go to my father and I shall say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I no longer deserve to be called your son; treat me as you would treat one of your hired workers.”’ So he got up and went back to his father. While he was still a long way off, his father caught sight of him, and was filled with compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you; I no longer deserve to be called your son.’ But his father ordered his servants, ‘Quickly bring the finest robe and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Take the fattened calf and slaughter it. Then let us celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead, and has come to life again; he was lost, and has been found.’ Then the celebration began. Now the older son had been out in the field and, on his way back, as he neared the house, he heard the sound of music and dancing. He called one of the servants and asked what this might mean. The servant said to him, ‘Your brother has returned and your father has slaughtered the fattened calf because he has him back safe and sound.’ He became angry, and when he refused to enter the house, his father came out and pleaded with him. He said to his father in reply, ‘Look, all these years I served you and not once did I disobey your orders; yet you never gave me even a young goat to feast on with my friends. But when your son returns, who swallowed up your property with prostitutes, for him you slaughter the fattened calf.’ He said to him, ‘My son, you are here with me always; everything I have is yours. But now we must celebrate and rejoice, because your brother was dead and has come to life again; he was lost and has been found.’”

The lesson of the prodigal son is one of the most compelling of Jesus’ parables because it fits our desires so perfectly. We commit the same sins as the younger son does; in fact, this is a very incisive retelling of Original Sin — the rejection of the Father and the wish to inherit His kingdom as though he were dead. We reject His authority and go out to make the world as we see fit rather than through His will.

And that turns out about as well as one would expect. The younger son makes ruin of his life, realizes and repents of it. As fallen sons and daughters of the Lord, we eventually feel our sins so keenly that we become desperate for forgiveness. We hope to receive at least some crumbs of the table when we return in repentance to the Father, not the fatted calf. That kind of reception is too gracious for us to imagine — and yet Jesus promises us exactly that, if we return as the younger son does.

It might surprise people to consider that the younger son is actually our idealized conception of ourselves. Too often, we are the elder brother — the son who complied out of fear alone, sitting in judgment on others, and jealous to the point of rage over the Father’s love for others. The father forgives the elder son too, but not without a soft rebuke for his stubbornness and scrupulosity. This son also sins in his own way, also seeks to supplant the Father as judge, but unlike the younger son neither recognizes his sin nor repents of it.

In the historical context in which Jesus preached, it’s not difficult to understand which audience Jesus intended for both parts of this parable. The younger son would have been the rank-and-file Israelites who had been lost in sin; the elder brother would have been the temple authorities that used the law as a weapon to protect their own privilege and deny the love of God to others.

But this goes farther than just the historical context, because we find the same tension within ourselves. At different times, we might be the dissolute son thumbing his nose at the Father, or the repentant younger son seeking His forgiveness. In fact, we might swing back and forth repeatedly between these two states, and in between — when we’ve momentarily humbled ourselves and repented — suddenly become the elder brother, willing to cast out those who acted in the same manner as we did. In those moments, we become so determined to follow the law that we forget that the Father who wrote it is the one true judge.

Today’s readings give us guidance on navigating these waters. If any one New Testament figure embodies the elder brother, it is Saul of Tarsus who later became the apostle Paul. Saul persecuted and pursued Christ’s church, being present at and likely directing the martyrdom of Stephen, among others unnamed. He was determined to impose the law by force and ensure that those who crossed it in his judgment could not be saved. Paul writes to Timothy that he was among the worst of sinners — “a blasphemer and a persecutor and arrogant.” Yet Christ forgave and anointed him, in part, to show the boundless nature of the Lord’s forgiveness. “I was mercifully treated, so that in me as the foremost [sinner], Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example[.]”

In our first reading from Exodus, we see the grace that Jesus taught in action. The Israelites have decided to dethrone God just as the younger brother does in Jesus’ parable, relying on their own material wealth to create an idol for the worship that belongs to God. After building the golden calf for idol worship, the Lord tells Moses that His people have blasphemed and must be destroyed. Moses, an elder brother of sorts in the faith, does not run down the mountain to smite everyone in His name. He implores the Lord for mercy on Moses’ younger siblings in faith. The Lord blesses Moses for his love of his family and withholds His judgment, forgiving the blasphemy against Him.

Jesus calls us to be both the younger and elder son, or more accurately, recognize that in the end there is no difference. Sin is our rebellion against God, our attempt to dethrone Him and exploit His inheritance to satiate our own selfish desires. Both the younger and elder son do this in different ways and for different purposes, but both have to recognize this and ask forgiveness. The Father waits for one and all to return to Him in that way, and has a banquet of celebration waiting for each of us who do.

Previous reflections on these readings:

The front page image is “Return of the Prodigal Son” by Cornelis Massijs, 1538. On display at the Rijksmuseum in the Netherlands. Via Wikimedia Commons.

“Sunday Reflection” is a regular feature that looks at the specific readings used in today’s Mass in Catholic parishes around the world. The reflection represents only my own point of view, intended to help prepare myself for the Lord’s day and perhaps spark a meaningful discussion. Previous Sunday Reflections from the main page can be found here.  

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        California Gov. Gavin Newsom hosts a podcast. Why not? He has plenty of free time.

        In the last few years, California experienced a net population loss of nearly 1 million people. The average price of a home in the state is twice that of the national average. Its K-12 test scores in reading and math place California 37th of 50 states. The state’s January 2025 unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, was the second highest in the nation.

        As for California’s poverty rate, CalMatters, a respected, California-based nonprofit news organization, wrote: “The Public Policy Institute of California, using a methodology similar to that of the Census Bureau, calculated that in 2023, 31.1% of Californians were either at or near poverty. Deep poverty, defined as ‘families with less than half of the resources to meet basic needs,’ was at 3.4%.” (California’s homeless population, at an estimated 187,000, is the nation’s largest.)

        In a separate report, CalMatters wrote, “Nearly a quarter of all unhoused Americans live in California — as well as 28% of all homeless veterans and 44% of all ‘chronically homeless’ Americans (people who have a disability and have been homeless for a significant period of time.)”

        As to violent crime, the Ventura Star in October 2024 wrote: “After achieving a 50-year low of 391 incidents (per 100,000 residents) in 2014, California’s violent crime rate started to increase in 2015 and has been trending upward, with increases in seven of the past ten years. The 2023 rate is 15.4% higher than 2019, pre-pandemic. … While homicide and aggravated assaults are down since the pandemic surge, they are still higher than pre-pandemic levels.”

        The state budget is a mess. In 2022, Newsom asserted, without documentation, the state had a budget surplus of $100 billion: “No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this.”

        So, the supermajority Democrat-dominated legislature proceeded to spend accordingly. CalMatters wrote, “Two years later, buried in its fine print, the deficit-ridden 2024-25 budget acknowledged that sales taxes and personal and corporate income tax revenues would fall well short of the $200 billion a year projection, estimating a $165.1 billion shortfall over four years.”

        Newsom invited to his inaugural podcast conservative Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA. They discussed the term “Latinx,” the supposedly “inclusive” term to describe Hispanics. According to Pew Research, of Hispanics familiar with the word, 75% do not think it should be used.

        Newsom: “By the way, not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx.”

        Kirk: “So can we finally put that to bed? Yeah, what the hell? Where did that even go? No more Latinx, everybody.”

        Newsom: “I just didn’t even know where it came from. I’m like, ‘What are people talking about?'”

        But CNN and other outlets showed clips of Newsom repeatedly using the word, including when he implied Republicans were racist for rejecting the word.

        Here’s more gaslighting. Newsom, dismissing complaints of massive job loss, signed a bill increasing the minimum wage for fast-food workers from $16 to $20 an hour, effective April 2024. Months later, his office issued the following statement: “California has added jobs in limited service restaurants (fast food) both since Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 1228 the FAST Recovery Act in September 2023 and since the law’s new $20 minimum wage for fast food workers took effect April 1, 2024.”

        Don’t tell the BLS. It found that California has lost nearly 16,000 fast-food jobs since the bill was signed.

        In December 2024, the California Globe wrote: “While many stores let only a few employees go, others had more drastic numbers. Pizza Hut alone laid off 1,200 delivery drivers due to the higher costs. Others, including Round Table Pizza, did the same, pushing delivery duties onto services like DoorDash and Uber Eats.” Fast-food prices increased by an average of nearly 15%.

        Voters in November 2024 had a chance to vote for a hike in the minimum wage for the rest of California workers. For the first time in history, California voters nixed a measure to increase the minimum wage. Newsom ignored the massive damage his wage hike did to fast-food worker employment, but California voters did not.

        Larry Elder is a bestselling author and nationally syndicated radio talk-show host. To find out more about Larry Elder, or become an “Elderado,” visit www.LarryElder.com. Follow Larry on X @larryelder. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.