Leg 7
Maryland to Massachusetts
August 16-20, 2012
Thursday August
16-20, 2012
I had to squeeze out some time between soccer games to make
this leg, driving into Chicago after a game Wednesday night to fly out at 6
a.m. Thursday – which meant taking the El to O’Hare without any breakfast. When
I arrived, the security lines were already long and all the exit row seats were
taken, so I decided to upgrade to Coach Plus sop I wouldn’t have to eat my
knees the whole trip, and which gave me security and boarding priority, always
a good thing because I have that phony hip which means I either have to be
x-rayed or get a free massage every time I fly. And today I was given the
opportunity to upgrade to Business Class for only another $35. Not bad, even
more room and breakfast. Done! NOT! I was served the same coffee and juice that
they served in Coach and a scone. One scone. $35 for a frigging scone. OK, I
settled back and read the Hemisphere, featuring an article on Road Trips. I’m
sorry, but to this old road warrior, it was insipid. Candy ass urbanites
pretending to have a great road adventure for two days in a new Corvette Chevy
gave them to be mentioned front and center and evoke the nostalgia of Route 66.
“Placement.” This passes as journalism?
A pittance as to what they did or felt. The whole article was a thinly
disguised advertisement to buy expensive bags and cameras. The article did have
two decent pieces of advice, though: take detours off the main road, and choose
your traveling companion carefully. Yeah, but United Airlines still sucks
rotten eggs!
But they did get me to DC on time for once. Time was at a premium
because I wanted to get to Antietam Battlefield that afternoon with plenty of
time to explore it, so I splurged again on a cab. I gave him the address in
Chevy Chase and in accented English he asked how to get there. I told him I
thought that was part of his job description. He didn’t have a gps, so I
downloaded directions from Mapquest on my smart phone and directed him where to
go. No bad for somebody whose children routinely refer to as a techno-peasant,
yours truly!
So having been pick pocketed by United Airlines and survived
a Washington cabbie with no sense of direction, I safely arrived at my Uncle’s
house late in the morning. We shared some conversation while his (really)
wonderful caregiver/housekeeper fixed me some breakfast. We didn’t have a lot
of time because today was another of his televisions filmings, I forget whether
it was regarding the Japanese reactor or the documentary on Admiral Rickover,
but n’importe, either is really col, it hard to imagine being so brilliant that
at age 90 you have a parade of television crews coming to your house to record
your opinions. So after hasty good byes, sincere apologies for not being able to
stay longer, another promise to give her a ride on the Beemer, and stashing
gifts of salt water taffy and fudge for later, midday found me riding by the
gleaming golden spires of the Mormon Temple off Connecticut Avenue and up I-270
to Rockville, followed by 20 miles on Route 28 through generic office parks
that could have been anywhere in a hundreds of US cities. August in DC can be
oppressively muggy, but not today, just sunny and warm, another beautiful day
for a ride.
All this eventually gives way to real working farms. You
know, cows and shit and stuff. The Appalachians appear on the horizon. There is
no sign here of the drought that has gripped the Midwest. The files are deep
green and lush. But it is hot, and just past Tuscarora I just have to turn
around and go back to the Rocky Point Creamery for some expresso crunch ice
cream. Oh, man, orgasmic. I don’t understand the business plan, because this is
a large, I mean really big sparkling new structure miles from anywhere. It’s
gonna take selling a LOT of ice cream cones to cover the overhead. But help
them out and do yourself a favor if you are ever in the Tuscarora or Point of
Rocks, buy some! Delicious.
Finally I find my way to the visitor’s center at Antietam. I
studied and wrote a report on the Battle of Antietam when I was in junior high
school. Ever since, I have wanted to see what I had only read about. One of
those odd things on my bucket list. So the major objective of my day was to
walk Antietam.
The visit to Antietam also put in perspective what I had
seen at Malvern Hill only a month before. Malvern Hill was easily absorbed from
one vantage point. It capped the Peninsular Campaign, which McClellan was winning,
beating the Confederacy back into their trenches around Richmond - until Joe Johnston was wounded and Robert E.
Lee was appointed to lead the Southern Army. In what is described as a turnaround
unparalleled in military history, within 90 days an always out-numbered Lee defeated
McClellan on the Peninsula and drove his army back to Richmond, then at
Manassas defeated a second army sent down from Washington to rescue McClellan, then
captured Harper’s Ferry in West Virginia and its entire 13,000-man garrison,
and then invaded Maryland. Both Great Britain and France were on the brink of
recognizing the Confederacy, which would have effectively ended the war with
the South’s independence. All that was needed was one more victory on Northern
soil. Everything rode on this invasion, for both sides.
Lee divided his army to capture Harper’s Ferry, and used the
mountains to screen his movements from the Northern Army, which had only a
general notion of where he was and what he was up to. Then came the infamous
General Order 191, Lee’s detailed written plan that was lost, found wrapped
around two cigars by the side of the road by two Union soldiers who recognized
it for what it was and turned it in to their officers. McClellan now had Lee’s
complete order of battle and plan of attack, and he maneuvered to intercept Lee
at Antietam Creek just outside of the hamlet of Sharpsburg before Lee could rejoin
the two halves of his army. That set the stage for the bloodiest single day’s
fighting in US history, a single day when more Americans were killed and
wounded than in all the previous wars in our history combined,
where both sides poured bullets and artillery ordnance into each other at point
blank range incessantly for hours and hours on end, and several times the
decision was finally made with the bayonet.
Lee’s forces were outnumbered two to one, but he had managed
to seize the high ground. However, he high ground ran North-South, so he had to
face East, with the Union Army arrayed along his line of retreat back to
Virginia. This gave McClellan his chance to annihilate the Army of Virginia and
win the war for the Union – and he almost did it that day, twice. In the early
morning, McClellan concentrated his forces and attacked with fully ½ his army
from the North, and by early afternoon he was poised to deliver the coup de
grace to the reeling Southerners with one more push. But fate intervened. Both
of his two generals leading that attack were both carried from the field, badly
wounded, one fatally. Confusion ensued and the charge that could have won the
war then and there ground to a halt.
At midday the attack shifted to the South. 2,200 Confederates
held the center of a defensive line against repeated assaults by10,000 Yankees
at the Bloody Lane for over three hellish hours - before being flanked and slaughtered by
enfilading fire. But the Union soldiers were by then too bloodied and exhausted
to push further.
At 10 in the morning, General Ambrose Burnside began his attempts to force a crossing of Antietam Creek at the far Southern edge of the battlefield. 500 Confederates occupying the heights above the bridge held him off for 3 hours. Finally at about 1 o’clock the Union forces pushed across the bridge with overwhelming force, and after organizing themselves at the river bank, spent the afternoon driving theSoutherners from the heights and up the hill to the outskirts of Sharpsburg. If Burnside could capture the town and its roads, he would, cut off Lee’s route of retreat…but just as they were on the verge of doing at the very end of the day, other half of Lee’s Army came arrived after a 17 mile forced march from Harper’s Ferry. With the timing of a Hollywood movie, they charged straight into the battle, crushing the Union Army’s southern flank and driving them back down the hill toward the creek.
Twice in one day McClellan had Lee’s army on the brink of annihilation. Twice in one day McClellan almost won the war. Twice in one day his generals could not seal the deal. The next day, McClellan did not resume the attack. He did not know how many troops had joined Lee’s forces on the heights, and both armies were exhausted. They declared a truce to gather the wounded. The following day the opportunity was gone. Lee‘s army snuck away in the night back across the Potomac River to Virginia. When the Federals awoke the next morning, the only thing occupying the fields were tens of thousands of dead bodies, so many that they couldn’t all be buried and so were left rotting where they lay. The Europeans did not recognize the Confederacy and the Union was saved, but McClellan was fired by President Lincoln and the Civil War went on for another 3 bloody years.
Antietam was the first military engagement where triage was
ever used to prioritize who received medical treatment for their wounds. That’s
the nice way to put it: those who make triage decisions decide who will die and
who might live. It was also the first battle when army field ambulances were
used. Without them, there would have been no Farewell to Arms! And Clara Barton
was at the field hospitals, helping wounded soldiers of both sides – 20 years
later she would found the Red Cross.
All this from a bloody fight over a creek running through a
farm field, a place and an event so disregarded by average Americans today that
most do not have a clue where or even what an “Antietam” is. Even local
residents neglect to keep up the road signs directing people to the park.
Antietam reminded me of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War,
roughly 100 years later. Tet was a military disaster for the Viet Cong and the
North Vietnamese in every respect, but most people think it was a VC victory.
The US Army and the South Vietnamese were not surprised, they were prepared.
The Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese held nothing that they attacked, and
their casualties were staggering. The spontaneous uprising against the South
Vietnamese government that was supposed to happen never did. But US television
coverage of the firefights made it seem that the US and its allies had been
surprised and that the attacks were widely successful. The North Vietnamese
used that to convince an American public wearying of the war that the US was
losing. As with Antietam, the side that lost the battle used it to win the
political war. Does anybody under 50 remember?
After 50 years, scratch one off the bucket list. Now to find
my B&B, the Antietam Overlook Farm. It’s set on 95 acres at the top of the
hill off a winding country road, as advertised with a panoramic view of the
battlefield. Inside, rustic modern, wide board floors and whirlpool baths, and very comfortable with a massive fireplace
in the kitchen for the winters. Very, very cool place. Highly recommend it even
if you aren’t a battle-buff, just for a getaway.
Dinner at Captain Bender’s Tavern on Main Street in
Sharpsburg, still a small country town that seems scarcely bigger and little
changed from what it must have been like in 1862. I forgot to ask who Captain
Bender was, but his tavern serves very good food! It’s definitely a tavern,
with pool tables and multiple televisions showing sports and a long bar running
down one side of the joint lined with stools and dotted with locals. The
restaurant part consists of four or five tables up front as you walk in. The
waiter is the bartender, size extra large in his tee shirt and very friendly.
Funny, in the US most people pass up places like this, while in France the same
tourists would flock to small, quaint crowded “cafes” to savor the local food.
Let me tell you, the food at Captain Bender’s is good and cheap! No crab
cakes could be found in Waldarf, but Captain Bender had big lumpy fresh juicy
crab cakes, with fresh rough cut French fried potatoes with the skin on, and a
salad that was simple but a real salad, in a large bowl with all kinds of
chopped tomatoes, carrots and other stuff with homemade pistachio lime
dressing. I started with a taco or enchilada soup, whatever the Mexican name
was scrawled n the blackboard as the special of the day, and it was wonderful,
served with a dollop of sour cream and full of highly spiced ground meat and
strips of tortilla – nothing shy about this soup. Washed down with a large draft
of the local brew, Antietam ale, hoppy and hearty. In its own special style, it
was every bit as good Michelin-rated country cafes that I have “dined” at in
Provence. All for less than $20, no jacket required.
After dinner, I rode back up Route 34 in the twilight right
through the battlefield and up the narrow Porterstown Road to the top of the
mountain, scaring up 5 whitetails in the field as I pulled up to the B&B
gate. Apparently, I had the place completely to myself, so I poured myself a
snifter of brandy and settled down on the grass to watch the sunset over the
battlefield, a big orange ball of fire settling slowly down over misty corn
fields, pastures and woods, looking pretty much the same as it did 150 years ago
when there was so much blood and carnage right down there, except for the monuments
to the fallen that you can just barely see dotting the ridgelines.
Well, not entirely alone. When I was watching the sun go
down, the resident cat, Mowser sniffed me out and decided that I was cat friendly.
He put the top of his head down against my thigh, in a prayer position
literally begging for attention, and when I accommodated he promptly started
purring, closed his eyes and snuggled in with his chin resting on my leg like
we were long lost buddies.
Inside, a long soak in a hot tub drinking a chilled glass of wine before bed. Only traveled 120 miles today, and at least 20 if that was backtracking when I took that wrong turn, but it was a very satisfying day.
Sign of the day: I didn’t see it this day, but I remembered
it as I looked down Bloody Lane and again when I walked across Burnside’s
Bridge, chiseled in the base of the Iwo memorial: “Uncommon valor was a common
virtue.”
Friday August 17
The day starts with a fabulous B&B breakfast on the
screened porch. I’m telling you, this place is worth a visit, you won’t be
disappointed. Not only that, but the cook offered to be my bitch on the back
all the way to Boston. Hmmmm…
Back through Boonsboro and turn left on Alt Route 40 to next
traffic light and turn right on MD 66 to Smithsburg and then turn right on MD 64
for a mile and a half until you turn right on MD 77 (Are you following al this?
This is riding the back roads. A little
different than “take I70 to Exit 45”, or whatever!) to Cunningham Falls on
Catoctin Mountain, just a stone’s throw
from Camp David. I understand that among all the Presidents, OBama has used it
least. Somehow that makes perfect sense. Catoctin is very rocky with second
growth forest that is now probably over 150 years old, so it’s almost like
virgin forest. And Cunningham Falls is a real surprise to me, beautiful,
several cascades over granite cliffs a couple of hundred feet high. The only
thing wrong is all the wooden platforms at the bottom for “Wheelchair Access.”
Is it heartless and insensitive to me to think that we just really have don’t
to make wilderness areas wheelchair accessible? Does everything have to have ramps and platforms? Sort of detracts from
the whole natural experience. Yeah, ok, heartless and insensitive and not pc – but I still feel that way.
After Catoctin, I head northeast into Pennsylvania through more serene countryside dotted with decrepit old manufacturing towns. Taneytown. Hanover. Littlestown. York. NE Salem. Past Bo Rhodes’ Auto Repair and Sensations Exotic Dancers – this part of Maryland and Pennsylvania has a surfeit of topless lounges! It’s now 2 pm and I have made only 100 miles. Construction is everywhere.
Once I crossed into Pennsylvania, it seems that the road was
one long never ending yard sale. Honest to Pete, I think that several
communities got together and decided to encourage their residents to host the
biggest yard sale the world has ever seen! Their junk is somebody else’s
treasure. And with every mile, the world seemed to be getting more and more
crowded, bit by bit, more farms being crowded out by more subdivisions the
further East and North that I traveled. It’s hot and traffic is moving slowly
as I ride through York at 2 pm. No time to stop for a world famous frankfurter
at the deli in downtown York. Sigh…Lots of time for the mind to wander.
The news is full of more turmoil in the Arab world. It seems
to me that the Middle East is coming apart even as we try to ignore it, going
about our daily lives. The Arab Spring will prove to be a disaster. That is
(and was) entirely predictable. “Those who do not study history are condemned
to repeat it.” Every US high school student who studied world history has heard
of the Balance of Power. Every now and again we even hear it referred to by
some foreign policy talking head. Unfortunately for most of us, including those
in Washington, the theory of the Balance of Power is where understanding of
world power begins and ends - with a theoretical construct that is demonstrably
false. It’s like Keynesian economics, a
simple to grasp academic theory that is a panacea to those who espouse it despite
the fact that it has never, ever worked, anywhere. The Balance of Power theory
is that a balance of military and economic power among a group of countries
prevents war by denying any of them an overwhelming advantage. In fact, history
demonstrates that reality is 180◦ apposite. No country starts a war that
it expects to lose. An aggressive greater power might invade because it
knows it has overwhelming superiority, as the European colonial powers did for
decades after the Industrial Revolution, rifles and cannons against spears and
bows. However, a lesser power will not start
a war with the expectation of certain defeat. It may expect to win with less
military force than their opponent, because of ideology or religious fervor or
through politics or timing, but it will expect that it will, or at least can,
win. Thus, the closer to a real balance of power, the more likely that a lesser
power will risk a war, as it sees its opportunity to get out from under. Thus
the South seceded and boasted they would win against the North because they had
better generals and better soldiers despite smaller numbers and an inferior
industrial capacity. Hitler’s Germany adopted the same mythology in World War
II. It follows that an imbalance of
power, especially an overwhelming imbalance of power, where the lesser power
recognizes that it has no chance of victory,
is the best deterrent to war. Thus the Roman Empire lasted until its
adversaries sensed the legions were no longer invincible. Thus the Britannia
ruled the waves” for 100 years through its omnipotent navy.
Today, the world senses the West is weak. The old European
powers ceded leadership to the US during World War II, and perhaps France under
deGaulle aside, have since shown no inclination to reassume that mantle. The strength of US resolve was found wanting
in Vietnam, and the US has done little to rebuild its reputation. Grenada? Get
real. Desert Storm? That proved that US warriors are still the best trained and
best equipped and best led, and that nobody can withstand the US military in a
battle it fully commits to – but it did nothing to dispel the lesson of
Vietnam, that the US has no staying power. The US never lost a major engagement
in Vietnam, and lost the war. It is
difficult for a democracy to sustain a long war because of strategic
imperative. Unless they are carefully taught, voters do not understand such
things or their importance. They see body bags and amputees as the only fruits
of war. The citizen draftee army died in the US during and as direct result of
the loss of faith I our leadership in Vietnam. The citizen soldier refused to
participate: “Hell no, We won’t go.” Our leaders took the easier path, and
rather than educating our people as to the importance and role of our military,
they vilified the baby killers to get elected and created a standing
professional army. What that has gotten us is one hell of a fighting force and
a population that shudders when it is announced on the morning talk shows that
“two Marines were killed yesterday in a broad ranging Taliban attack.” Over
20,000 were killed and maimed in one day at Antietam. Tragic as those deaths
are, the deaths of two soldiers on a day in World War I or World War II or
Korea or even in Vietnam would not even have been a footnote. War weary? No,
Londoners surviving under Goering’s bombs and missiles were war weary. Russians
in Staingrad were war weary. Americans complaining about the price of gasoline
on their way to the movie theatre to watch Batman are not “war weary,” they
aren’t even inconvenienced. War weary is journalistic hyperbole. Americans just
don’t understand or believe in what we are doing “over there” so they really
don’t care. Voters who did not have to study history because it is “not
relevant” or economics because it is “too hard” or who don’t even have a high
school education do not understand that the comfortable world they live in is
based on what gives their economy strength, and in our case, that is oil for
our cars and factories and a steady supply of cheap goods manufactured abroad
by cheap labor. In every case, if the choice is “keep jobs in America” or “pay
less at Walmart,” Americans flock to Walmart. And if their leaders in
Washington cannot even agree on why we
are “over there,” why should voters support a long war? It has been 11 years
since 9/11. Our own Revolution lasted only 7 years. Our Civil War less than 4
years. Our World War II less than 4 years. 11 years of a “War on Terror.” What is that? Who is that?
Terror is a tactic, not an enemy. War on terror is pc-speak for a war with
fundamentalist radical Islam. Our enemies who know their enemy is. The US, the
Great Satan, the world dominant non-Islamist society based on individual
freedoms of a people who choose, who do not submit. A country that today does
not even speak the rubric War on
terror. We can’t even agree that we are in a war.
“In unity, there is strength.” Today, the United States are
not united. We share no common purpose, no common vision. History will judge
that O’Bama’s greatest failing will not be his failed policies applying failed
economic theories (after all his education is that of a lawyer whose
transcripts have never been released, and his only experience is as a
“community organizer.”), or his insufferable arrogance (a man who actually said
and believed that he understood the Arab
Muslim world because he lived a few years as a child in Indonesia with a Muslim
step father- that’s equivalent to saying I lived a few years in Brazil as a
child so I am an expert on South America, or that any American is an expert on
Europe because they were raised in a Christian household in America. How does
he get away with spouting such nonsense?), or that he is a socialist ideologue
(if you haven’t seen 2016, you should – even if you quarrel with some if
its conclusions, the disturbing facts it sets forth are documented and the
quotations are Obama’s own words and writings). His failing is that he had an
unprecedented opportunity as the first minority-race President to unite this
country, but instead has divided us more. “United we stand, divided we fall.”
The United States is not united. The Western European powers are not united. We
have no single unifying ideology, religion, race, ethnicity or even common
belief system. “In diversity there is strength?” Give me a break. “Peace
through Strength” used to be the motto of the US Army. Is it still? Perhaps
today it should be “Follow the Rules of Engagement.” Our enemies sense our lack
of resolve, our lack of cohesiveness, our weakness. They think they can win.
Our country has squandered what we won in World War II. We
emerged as the sole victor with an unravaged homeland, preeminent in economic
and military power, and prestige. Today that image is terribly tarnished. We
eschewed “empire” and rightly or wrong beginning with the Marshal Plan gave
away our economic and technological advantages. Today with the Internet that
genie is forever out of the bottle. The west educated the third world in its
universities, mainly in the engineering and technical schools and too many with
too little emphasis on the principles behind our political systems. That was
secondary to why the students were allowed to come here, and once here was left
to leftist professors at places like the Sorbonne and Berkeley and Harvard. It
is little wonder that so many of the third world leaders who have been against
us were educated in western universities. You reap what you sow.
My world view is not rosy. The best hope to salvage the Arab
Spring is to support our allies, proselytize our values, exploit the divisions
among our enemies and ruthlessly quash armed rebellion. I don’t see us doing
these things, do you? I do not believe it is alarmist to say that we may be
witnessing the beginning of World War III in the streets of Cairo, especially
if Tehran gets the bomb. What a comforting thought, Pakistan and Iran both
nuclear powers.
George Bush was decried as hopelessly naïve by Europeans
when he embarked on regime change in Iraq. The Europeans recognized that the
secular dictators on both sides, like Saddam Hussein and Hosni Mubarak, kept
the radical mullahs and their followers under control with raw power – but
under control. If you study Arabic culture, without exception their history
from Xerxes until today is of leadership by absolute dictators, secular or
theocratic. Mesopotamia may be the birthplace of mankind, and Jersualem of
three of the world’s largest religions, but not democracy. Nowhere has
democracy thrived in the Middle East, with the sole exception of Israel,
founded by transplanted non-Muslim Europeans. Turkey, under Attaturk? Sorry,
Charlie, the Turks are Muslim but not Arabs, and for centuries were in fact
oppressors of the Arabs. The simple fact is that the strongman leader is part
of Arab culture. Bush was playing high stakes poker with our futures when under
cover of supporting democracy he sought to change the rules of Middle East game
and break the stalemate of Arab states vs. Israel that for decades has been the
primary threat to the stability of the world by creating more states along the
model of Egypt and Jordan that could reach accommodation with Israel in
alliance with the US. It hasn’t worked. Egypt and Jordan are autocratic, not
democratic. In order for democracy to work Arab countries, culture change is required. Culture does not change overnight, not
even in a few years. Changing national culture is the hardest thing to do that
there is, and is even more difficult if possible at all from the outside. Tito,
a national hero, kept Yugoslavia together by force of personality for decades,
but when he died even that experiment erupted into Bosnia-Herznogovina,
Croatia, and Serbia. Culture suppression
by external force is possible, but not change, and culture suppression takes brutal
force. How did England finally wrest control of Scotland? Through the
clearances, forcibly breaking the power of the clans first by the slaughter at
Culloden and then by banning the wearing of the kilt and removing the Scots
from Scotland and dispersing them throughout the empire. Not pretty, but
effective -and very similar to what China is today doing in Tibet, banning the
Dalai Lama, suppressing the culture and flooding the province with Hans. I do not advocate that we follow their
example, but it is what history teaches is necessary to effect national change
in the short term – and even today the Scots carp at the “Bloody English” and
have a strong independence movement. Culture takes internal champions and
intense husbandry. Bush’s policy could only have worked if the US persisted
long past his term of office with a comprehensive and consistent policy to make it work. If Bush thought it would
take less than that, he was naive. For better or for worse, that all changed on
November 5, 2008. Obama was elected and the first thing he did was sow
divisiveness with our best ally in the world by symbolically returning the bust
of Winston Churchill to England and equally symbolically visiting Egypt to
announce a “new beginning”, a “new relationship” with the Muslim world,
repudiating the US policies espoused by George Bush. Obama was even more naïve
to think that he could change our relationship with fundamentalist Islamic
radicals by force of his oratory and personality. The US is still the Great
Satan, only now Egypt, Iraq and Libya are all in play. Nothing is a foregone
conclusion. “Islam” is not monolithic. All Muslims are not fundamentalists any
more than all Christians are fundamentalists. Sunnis and the Shias hate each
other way Catholics and Protestants used to hate each other. Othe countries have their own problems with Islam; the Russians, the
Indians and the Chinese all have serious issues with restive Muslim
populations. “It ain’t over til it’s over” but today I am afraid it is much more
likely than before that sooner rather than later there will be terrible
violence and injury to America before this fat lady sings.
On to Lancaster, Pennsylvania Dutch country. The serene
countryside that I am riding through tears me away from such grim thoughts. Funny,
the Pennsylavnia Dutch aren’t Dutch at all, they are German Mennonites, Deutsch
being bastardized to Dutch by their English neighbors. The “Dutch” I see here strike me as “Amish-lite”
compared to those who surround my home, in Shipshewana and Ligonier. Two
children walking by the road in long skirts and bonnets and knee length
britches, but with shoes and socks! In Indiana, they would be barefoot. Even
older women hoe their gardens barefoot. Through Ephrata, and Honey Brook – what
a great name, just makes you want to stick around, doesn’t it? There is an old
factory in Honey Creek, making stuff out of molasses. The name of the company
is Good Food, Inc. Perfect!
Have you ever considered how marketing has affected language
about real property? “Estates” today means anything but, small lots with
usually less expensive houses. Now “Preserve” means a subdivision with a fancy
entry gate, expensive large homes and some acreage set aside for “nature.” Reserve is an exclusive
Preserve, expensive still!
Pushing to make up time as thunderclouds start to gather in
the West, no particular destination today except somewhere near Allentown, but
travel up 309 is slow going. Stop and go and the clouds keep gathering. The
Executive Inn does not look real intriguing, but it looked better than the
Hilltop Motel. Turnaround and go back or keep going? Surely there must be some
chain hotels at the 309/I78 intersection just South of Allentown. Finally I get
there, a few drops beginning to splatter on my windshield – but not a damned
hotel in sight! Black clouds hanging over the mountain ridge dead ahead, not
choice but to turn back or get on the Interstate and try to outrun it going
East. Let’s go East! Up the ramp past the point of no return and wham, straight
into a bumper to bumper traffic jam that extends further than I can see. I’m
screwed! I am going to get absolutely drenched. I don’t even see an overpass to
hide under…
Then miraculously the traffic begins to break. I see no
reason for the jam and no reason for the break but I feel the chill in the air
as the storm blows closer, and gun the Beemer. It’s catching me even at 65 mph.
Next exit is Hellerstown. Any old port in a storm, literally! Right at the exit
is a brand new Holiday Inn Express! Yes, we have a room! I hastily unload
everything as wind is blowing leaves all over and whipping the flag whose ropes begin clanging against the
aluminum flag pole. I say a prayer of thanks to the Weather Gods and promise an
appropriate living sacrifice.
And what’s better, they hand me three menus of local
restaurants, 2 Italian and one Chinese, who all deliver at no charge. I don’t
even have to walk out in this torrential downpour to dine on egg foo young and
garlic pork. Fudge and salt water taffy from my uncle for dessert. Is this a
great country, or what?
All is well until 3 a.m. when I awake to the loud bleeping
of a fire alarm. Along with everybody else, I stick my head out the door to
peer into the hall to see if it’s really necessary to evacuate. It doesn’t look
like it, but like all the other bleary eyed room refugees, I trudge down the
stairwell to mill around the crowded lobby for 30 minutes waiting for the fire
department. A dead hit by lightning tripped the alarm. No other damage. Once it
was reset, we can all go back to our rooms and whatever we were doing. Ok
Weather Gods, a small price to pay for your mercy!
S.O.D. on a church monument sign in PA: “No God, No Peace.
Know God, Know Peace.” I don’t think the pastor had the Weather Gods in mind,
but it seemed a propos. Zzzzzz…
Saturday, August 18
They have great beds and plenty of hot water, but the “free”
Holiday Inn breakfasts aren’t worth sticking around for, so today I travel the
way I love to. Get up early. Hot cuppa Joe. Ride an hour and find a greasy
spoon for breakfast. Despite my recent experience in Georgia, like Mr. Micawber
I am confident something will turn up. And sure enough, through Bethlehem and Easton, across the
Delaware River into New Jersey on a fresh scrubbed morning, I come across the
redoubtable Philipsburg Diner on Route 2. My faith in America is (somewhat)
restored. This is a classic diner, complete with shiny metallic outside and naugahyde
steel trimmed booths. And literally hundreds of breakfast choice and it seems
like dozens of specialties. Let’s see, the Jersey Birder – Ham on potato
pancakes with 2 poached eggs and Hollandaise sauce and fresh fruit. Yum. Hold
the phone! Omigosh. Specialty of the House: Creamed Chipped Beef on toast!
When the waitress returns, I happily order “SOS, please.”
“What?” she asks?
A fellow in the booth across the aisle bust out laughing.
“Shit on a shingle,” he translates.
“Oh,” she says. “I know what that is!”
Another guy in the booth next to me starts laughing. “You
were in the Army, too!” I say.
The three of us start swapping stories about Army food. This
leads to where are you from and where am I going, and pretty soon they are
telling me their life stories. How their families moved up here right after the
Civil War, from Philadelphia, working on the railroad. Easton and Phillipsburg
was where 5 railroads came together. And before that, 3 canals, the Lehigh, the
Morris and the other I forget. I commented that the old neighborhoods in Easton
looked pretty nice, three story townhouses fronting steep old streets leading
down to the Delaware. One of the guys lives over there, and corrected me.
“They used to be
really nice neighborhoods. Safe. Working people. I grew up here. Still live here.”
But the “”damned politicians” started relocating all the poor people from Philadelphia
up here into government supported housing. “They brought all their problems and
attitudes with them. We used to read about all the shootings and crime down in
Philly. Now we hear it and see it up here. Schools have all gone to crap.
Damned politicans.”
He was one unhappy camper. Don’t blame him. I, thankfully,
can get on my bike and ride. He has to watch his world deteriorate around him,
and doesn’t know what to do – except get angry.
I’m not much of New Jersey fan, but let me tell you,
northwest New Jersey in the Kittatinny Mountains along the Delaware Water Gap
is something special. Roads could be better marked, I took an unscheduled
detour through Belvedere, pretty little town. but it was worth it. 519 to 510
t0 521 along Kittatinny Lake, through forests that looked and felt like the Northwoods,
72 degrees and the road still damp from last night’s rain, seeing moss growing
in rare open areas of sunlight that snuck through the thick canopy, wineries
and Italian restaurants and American flags seemingly everywhere. Very pretty. I
could live here.
I had crossed the Mason Dixon Line and things just felt
differently. Then it struck me; I was out of the land of the front porch! Instead,
many of the houses resembled lake cottages. No more lush open farm fields, now
the roads were narrow alleyways cutting through the thick forests.
On the other side I found a great German brathaus for lunch – and a draft or two. I really wanted to stay at Mohonk Mountain House, I have read about it for years, perched on the cliffs above a large mountain lake. I had called, but they were full. I had forgotten that this was Columbus Day weekend, there must have been a lot of teachers and postmen vacationing in the Catskills, no room at the inn. I mean who else gets Columbus day off? But I still wanted to see it, so I rode up the road until I was stopped at a gatehouse by an obnoxious young man who would have a made a great candidate for the Hitler Youth. “Papers, please. Vhere are you goink?” I was not a registered guest so could not proceed further, but if I paid $35 I could park my motorcycle and take their tram up, and walk their trails, but I was not to dip my fingers or toes in the water of the lake because swimming was limited to overnight guests. Are you f-ing kidding me? $35 for the privilege of looking around? I rode around a while trying to find another way to get in, but to no avail, they obviously had experience and maintaining exclusivity. So no Mohonk Mountain House for me. Back down the hill I rode to New Palz.
But it was early yet and I was determined to get to some
water. And the valley was gorgeous, meadows of blue flowers and reddish purple
flowers alternated with field s of sunflowers with the granite cliffs of Mohonk
as a backdrop. Just before I reached New Palz, there was a traffic jam at a
stop sign. A young hippie guy was strategically placed at the intersection, with
his dog sitting next to him, holding a
sign that read “ Traveling folk, Hungry and broke.” Yet he was steadily
munching on something. I shook my head as woman after woman leapt from their
cars to run over to him and hand him money and food. No guys, just girls. In
any event, a lot of people were turning right at the stop sign, away from New
Palz, so I decided to go with the flow, and a mile or so down the road turned
again toward the fairgrounds and what looked to be the river bottom. There I
found the cause for all the congestion. Ribfest! But having just had bratwurst
and beer, I passed this up to continue on my quest. A few miles past the park
the road tracked along the river, and I found a wide spot where some cars were
parked and a break in the bushes indicated a trail down to the river, probably
used by fishermen, so I parked and explored. Sure enough, a wide expanse of
shallow water meandered through and over a boulder field, with nothing on this
side and only a few cabins across the river. I waded in up to my knees, out to
a big boulder in midstream, climbed on top and lay down in the sun. Cold
murmuring water, hot sun and warm rocks. Nirvana. I interrupted a young couple
also wading in the river (sorry, folks). We chatted and I told them about my
experience at the Mountain House. They were locals and had never stayed there,
couldn’t afford it, but they told me the secret password. “Just tell them you
are there to see Kimberly, the wedding planner. Always works for us!” Why
didn’t I think of that? On the way out, I passed a new arrival, just putting
his line in the water. Delightful spot.
On the way back to New Palz, I passed the same intersection. The hippie and his dog ahd shifted position to be on the away from New Palz side of the road, playing his guitar. Sorry girls, now he was with his skinny, scruffy looking girlfriend. Same sign out. Still munching on something. Begging to acoustics. At least they weren’t in a welfare line someplace. Today.
Sign of day. Not even sure where I saw it:
“I’m what I am,
And not what I’m not.
I sure am happy
With what I’ve got.
I live for love
And laugh a lot,
And that’s all I need.”
Sunday, August 19
But my road did take me through Vassar College, so I decided
to take a look. Pretty. Georgian brick. Oozed prep school wealth. Lacrosse and
filed hockey fields. It was surrounded by blocks and blocks of very small one
story 2 bedroom Capes, the kind that were so prevalent around where I grew up.
I’ll bet I could tell you the floorplan without going inside. Neat and trim,
functional little houses, not todays McMansions, The “big” houses were 3
bedroom square two stories, very modest by today’s standards. Who lived in
them? Professors? They were certainly not the houses of the Vassar students.
And then just at the edge of the campus – probably banned from campus by the
administration worried about offending donors to their endowment fund, while
tacitly (actively?) encouraged by the professors, the neighborhood was littered
with political protest signs. Today’s Vassar cause celebre was Verizon.
“Verizon: 1% Executives, 99%
Workers”
“Keep Verizon Jobs in America.”
There certainly aren’t many 99%ers at Vassar. I wonder if
some of these guilt ridden trust fund college girls were some of those I had
seen running to give sandwiches to the hippie yesterday?
On the way into Connecticut, I drove by Trinity Pawling
School sitting high on a manicured hill, founded in 1907. A tony boarding
school that my tony boarding school used to play in football. It did not bring
back fond memories.
And then through Wingdale, and the Harlem Valley State (Mental)
Hospital, a mammoth institution across from its own New York Central depot,
that is now closed but used to house thousands of patients undergoing brain
shock therapy and drug therapies and lobotomies and employ thousands of local
residents. It is an eerie place. Acres and acres of old brick dormitories that
look like abandoned apartment buildings, covered in vines and with signs
warning you to keep out. Only there was a big banner in front, announcing the
grand opening of a new community, the Knolls of Dover – except the banner was
obviously old, too. Curious as to what was going on, I Googled it, and found
out that the hospital closed in 1994. At that time it was known as the more pc
Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center, I’m sure the locals had a shorter and less pc
name for it. A developer bought it to turn it into a residential, retirement
and golf community, but for years now has been embroiled in battles with the
local city fathers as to the “correct” way to develop it. The city fathers have
visions of a “green” community featuring fancy shopping malls that will produce
big tax revenues, but the developer says that market studies show that the
community cannot support all this and has other ideas. The developers have refused
to invest their money further to develop the property as the city fathers
direct, and so the facility sits and continues to deteriorate and unemployment
in the region remains high. We’re talking years
now. 18 since the facility closed! SNAFU.
And then into Connecticut. Litchfield County. A reputation for quaintness and beauty well deserved. Lakes, streams, farms, mountain glens, ski hills, artsy-craftsy retirement/vacation home communities.
Into Hartford, where nothing much seemed to have changed
except the black slum on the north side was now heavily Hispanic, too, and had
expanded almost to Windsor, site of another mental institute of sorts, my high
school alma mater, The Loomis Institute, nka The Loomis Chaffee School. It is
also known as “The Island” because it sits above the Connecticut River and
every year the spring floods make it into a virtual island. But it’s also an
island of social class: of my graduating class of 104, 29 went to the Ivy
League, mostly Harvard and Yale; only 10 of us went to public universities;
none of us did not go on to college. Three years I spent here, age 14 to 17. It
was boys only then, Chaffee was a sister day school across town that merged
with Loomis several years after I graduate. I parked the bike and strolled the
quadrangle. The “senior path” down the middle that underclassmen dare not
cross. Looked at the concrete threshold of Founder’s Hall worn by decades of
students’ shoes passing to and fro to class or chapel.
At the gymnasium where we used to go to collect our mail, so happy each day to have that lifeline to normalcy and home, and so disappointed when there was nothing there. Looking up at the window of my cell on the third floor of Palmer Hall.
Memories of good friends and lonely times. Melancholy. I didn’t stay long. Why did I stop here? Like a moth drawn to the flame. I am proud that I went there, but I had rarely felt comfortable at Loomis, even though my brothers had attended there before me. I wanted to belong, but I mostly felt like an outsider. Ironic, as I later in life discovered that one of my ancestors was a founder of the town. This trip I had intended to go see the monument to the founders at the center of Windsor, to see if I could find my ancestor’s name there, and maybe banish that nagging feeling of not belonging, but after visiting the school, I just wanted to get on the road and away.
From there I cut across Connecticut to parts where I had
never been before. UConn at Storrs looked like a mini-Michigan State, plain
brick building and huge barns spread across the hill, and “downtown” they were building an incongruous three story commercial
and residential block like I have seen at Marquette in the urban center of
Milwaukee, and even at Notre Dame in South Bend – nice, but strange in Storrs. Stumbled
across the hamlet of Scotland, and had to stop for a rest!
Then through Willimantic where I enjoyed the smell of pizza and hot oven grinders on a corner across from Shan’s Asian market and kitty corner from Cibao Spanish American restaurant. The melting pot, truly. But the housing everywhere was the same, brick, unkempt and clearly poor.
I crossed in Rhode Island on Route 165 through the Beach
Pond and Arcadia Management Areas. I was completely surprised at how remote the
entire southwestern corner of Rhode Island turned out to be. Covered in forest,
and the roads as poorly marked as the rest of New England. I arrived at the
intersection of 4-lane route 3 in need of gas. From my map, it appeared that
Route 102 continued straight across, but it didn’t. Route 165 ended, and 102
didn’t appear, and there were no signs indicating which way it might be, so I
turned South thinking it looked busier and therefore more likely to produce a
gas station, and at worst I could turn east on 138 after 10 miles or so, which
is ultimately the route I wanted to take over to Newport, anyway.
Wrong on both counts. About half way to 138, I got on I95,
which turned into a long parking lot when I arrived at the Wyoming exit where
it crossed 138. I could see two gas stations within a quarter mile West of the
exit, but I couldn’t get there, stuck on the overpass and inching toward the
exit ramp heading East. After several minutes during which I moved about two
car lengths, I decided that I was likely to run out of gas before I could reach
those gas station so I revved the engine and popped the clutch to get back into
I95 traffic at speed, to try my luck at the next exit.
No luck. Nor at the one after that. Did I say this area of
Rhode Island was remote? So I got off at Hopkinton and headed back up 3
paralleling I95 all the way back to Wyoming, this time approaching it from the
west side. Back into the traffic jam heading toward I95, by now the Beemer
running on fumes. Finally I said to heck with it and pulled through a driveway
and rode down the sidewalk to the nearest gas station! Inside, I found out that
the traffic jam was for the State Fair or County Fair, I don’t remember which, being
held further East on138, which pretty much ruled out taking that route. I asked
the guy if there was a back road to avoid this jam and get back on3 heading
north, and he was kind enough to direct me. So I retraced my steps from Wyoming
all the way back to where I had started on 165, and began looking for 102,
which I never found – but I did find what looked to be a main road just to the
north on the 165/3 intersection, so I took it – and lo and behold, a mile or
three down the road there was a route sign telling me that indeed I was
(finally) on 165! Eureka!
The closer I got to the water, the more populated the
landscape became. 138 leads to a bridge with a beautiful view of Narragansett
Bay as you cross to Conanicut Island, which in turn takes you to another bridge
over the other entrance to Narragansett Bay. Alas there was no beautiful red
dot taking the toll, and they charged as exorbitantly for my “two axles” as
they do for a motorcar, but nonetheless the view from the bridge of Newport and
of Prudence Island and all the sailboats on the bay was spectacular. From there
I headed North on Newport Island and across another bridge to Bristol, an old
shipbuilding seaport that thrived in the slave trade and boasts the first and
oldest continuous 4th of July parade in the nation. The road center
stripe marking the parade route is painted red, white and blue. It is also my
brother’s home.
Monday, August 20
My brother and his wife share duties of managing the
Herreshoff Marine Museum, home of the America’s Cup Hall of Fame and
celebrating Bristol’s history as a shipbuilding center, housed in the original
Herreshoff boat factory. My brother runs it, so gotta visit it, right? So right
after breakfast, I tour the Herreshoff Museum. Even I, hardly a sailing buff
and loathe to give my older brother kudos for anything, find the museum
fascinating. It’s worth a visit.
The town of Bristol itself is an interesting place. New
England maritime charm personified and also tied to the history of Colt
Firearms through the Samuel L. Colt Estate (now a state park). You can walk
virtually everywhere. And at Quito’s Restaurant on the harbor you can feast on
some of the best fried clams to be found anywhere – not clam strips, full belly
clams, absolutely terrific. Bristol is also the site of the Coggeshall Farm
Museum on Poppsasquash Road (I just love those New England Indian names!),
interpreting life on a Rhode Island farm as it was in 1790. As I descend from
the Cogswells whose ancestral home is Coggeshall in Bristol, England, it’s a
fair bet that this living farm museum has something to do with my family
history. Although living there, my brother had never visited the farm, kind of
like living in New York City and never visiting the Statue of Liberty, so we
decided to rectify that. Right after lunch (at Quito’s, naturally) we drove
around the bay to visit the farm. You guessed it. Closed on Mondays.
Note to self: Stop trying to visit historical sites on
Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, or before 10 a.m.! L
Time to leave to get to my brother-in-law’s home in
Massachusetts, where I will drop the bike for this leg. Pretty much interstate
all the way to Boxborough, where I learned that Mapquest is virtually useless
in New England. I mean Mapquest has its problem everywhere, like giving you 16v
directions to get out of your driveway, but here I mean useless! It tells me to
turn left on some road at the end of the exit ramp. Well, there’s a road there,
at the end of the same exit ramp number, but it has a different name. So I go
left anyway. Pretty soon I come to a road on that turns off to the left that I
recognize from the directions – but Mapquest says I am supposed to first turn
right on another road in order to get to that road, not that it intersects with
this unknown road from the left! The road that goes off to the right has a
different name from any on the Mapquest directions. And I don’t even know for
sure if I am on the right first road, to begin with! Hmm. Triple check. Sure
enough, that’s what Mapquest says. I call my brother in law’s house – no
answer. So I decide to explore further looking for the road I am supposed to
turn on, or indeed any familiar road from the directions. After several miles,
I don’t see it, stop and ask a guy mowing his lawn. Yep, the road I am on is
the one I was supposed to turn on when I was at the end of the exit ramp, even
though the road sign at the intersection where I am now calls it by a
different, third name. Clear as mud? Nope, haven’t heard of that other road you
are looking for, maybe it’s one of the small ones that cut off as you go into
Acton. So I head further up the 3-name-rarely-marked-with-any-name road all the
way to Acton. No road. Try Mapquest again. It directs me in a different
direction from where I came, which makes no sense to me at all. So I ride back
the way I came, wave to the fellow mowing his lawn, and just before I get all
the way back to the triple-check intersection, sure enough, there is a road sign
for the road that I am looking for, which goes about 1/8 mile and stops at the
road that went to the left with a different name than the road that ran off to
the left with the correct name…Confused? So I take it and after about a mile it
changes names, and then after about another mile intersects with a road with
the same name as the name of the road used to be that I am still riding on. Am
I drunk? I couldn’t make this up. So In call my brother in law’s house again.,
This time there is an answer. Yes I am on the right track. I get simple
direction and in less than 5 minutes I arrive!
5 days on the road, roughly 1000 good miles covered, another
leg in the book!
Sign of the day: “Suffering is inevitable. Misery is
optional.”
Which leads to this thought:
“The quality of our lives are not
determined by what happens to us, but by how we react to what happens to us –
not by what life brings us, but by the attitude that we bring to life. A
positive attitude creates a chain reaction of positive thoughts, events and
outcomes. It is the spark that leads to extraordinary results.”
