Month: May 2016

Day 8

Friday, August 6

“What you’ve done becomes the judge of what you’re going to do — especially in other people’s minds. When you’re traveling, you are what you are right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road.”

–William Least Heat Moon in Blue Highways

“Blue Highways” was written in the 70s by a guy who, after leaving his wife and losing his job, set out on a trip across America traveling by back roads and avoiding Interstates and cities. It’s one of my favorite books, although Jo might tell you that’s not much of a claim since I read so few. Although Interstates might make it easy to think you’re seeing the country, much of what’s wonderful to discover isn’t near them. Today we were fortunate because we got off I-90 to take the road less traveled. We stopped in Philipsburg, which we thought was just another tiny Montana mining town that had seen better days, and while drinking my coffee I learned that Philipsburg has been making a comeback because of a candy store.

I met the owner of the Sweet Palace who had come to town with her husband about a decade ago. They started a candy store figuring people on vacation eat stuff they wouldn’t at home and, point taken, Jo and I walked away with nearly $20 worth of chocolate. Apparently, candy lovers from around the world make pilgrimages to this place which does over a half million dollars of business a year in sort of the middle of nowhere.

As we were making the walk to the car with our chocolate motherlode something happened that we had both bet never would on this journey, we bumped into people we knew. A friend of Jo’s of many years from Rockland, ME was on a fishing trip with three other guys. One of them turned out to be a college classmate of mine at Dartmouth who now lives in Camden which I hadn’t known. There was a moment of mutual shock among all of us and as we drove away and saw some lightening we decided we’d better not get out of the car and risk getting hit twice.

We made two other stops later in the afternoon at Superfund sites. Yes, call me the environmental accident(al) tourist. One was in Anaconda to see a golf course that Jack Nicklaus designed on the scarred remains of a mineral smelter. The sand traps don’t have sand, they contain finely ground black slag. Our federal government paid for the construction of the course and then gave it to the city. I happen to think this is a pretty cool way to put an exclamation point on man cleaning up after man’s harm to his environment. Golf isn’t usually associated with that but at least here it is.

The other place isn’t cool at all and you actually pay $2 to look down on an unquestioned and un-remediated environmental disaster. The Berkeley Pit was an open pit copper mine right beside downtown Butte. It was productive to say the least. A billion tons of copper and other minerals were extracted from it before it was closed in 1982. At that point the water pumps that kept ground water from seeping into it were turned off and the pit started to fill up. Some years later a flock of migrating geese were found dead in the pit’s water and the consequences of its mining became clear. Heavy metals and dangerous chemicals had turned it into a toxic waste can.   The pit is a mile long, a half a mile wide, 900 feet deep and so toxic that the life forms that survive in it are thought to possibly provide clues to cures for cancers– the theory being that the bad can be destroyed by the even worse. I’d seen the Pit before when I did a story about this place. It never aired on World News Tonight. I don’t think it was because the story wasn’t worthy. What I suspect was the reason was ageism. The correspondent with me had simply fallen out of favor and was in his 50s. At the time I realized my own age had also become a liability in my workplace.

We got to Bozeman and walked from our motel to the rodeo that was the main attraction tonight  and only several hundred yards away. It featured calf roping and bull riding and barrel racing accompanied by a 20 mile an hour wind. Jo noticed that nearly all the kids were blond and as I looked around in the stands I couldn’t find a single Black, Latino or Asian. Jo and I looked at each other and she said what I was thinking that we were likely the only Jews there as well. I added that it was also Friday night and Shabbat. We certainly didn’t feel unwelcome, just aware that we had left behind the diversity of the big city here in the Big Sky.

I saw two kids in cowboy outfits and got permission from their parents to take their picture. Afterward I said to Jo that I thought I’d taken the best picture I’d have from the entire trip.

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Day 9

Saturday, August 7

We went to Walmart in Bozeman this morning and got a science lesson. The ice in the cooler we have in the backseat melts by the end and water has been leaking all over the stuff we’re trying to keep cold. An employee in the store told us that double zip freezer bags were the solution– we’ve been using ordinary plastic bags –and then suggested that we should add a little water and salt to the ice and make sure the freezer bags were on the top of the cooler.  He talked about the physics and chemistry behind all this and when I said he sounded like a teacher he told me he had been— driver’s ed.  But he also explained before that he had worked at Caltech as an astronomy technician.

We hit the road and other riddles popped up throughout the day that I could have used his help with. Why were so many horses standing in pairs by the Interstate as we passed them? Why in this one field were there both rectangular and round bales of hay and not just one or the other? At lunch in a park in Billings why did my hardboiled egg when I cut it up look so much larger than one scrambled egg? And why did I buy the bag of kosher dill flavored potato chips at the gas station? As I was beating myself up over this last one I ate most of them.

We stopped at the Little Big Horn Battlefield National Monument in the afternoon. Until 1991 the site had been called the Custer Battlefield National Monument but the first George Bush signed a law to change it. I have to add that after watching the orientation film in the Visitor Center political correctness may have played in a role in this and sometimes that seems to me to be changing what’s right to doing what’s stupid.

The finale of the film went out of its way to call those involved on both sides heroes who did what they believed in for their respective nations. It reminded me of youth sports where there are no losers and everybody gets a trophy. What kind of lesson is that? Hey, I know the winner gets to write history but I guess with Custer and Sitting Bull when we write about losing, things can get confusing.

We went through Sheridan, Wyoming and I spotted a bunch of different kinds of chiefs. I bought a bandana in a Western clothing store. I use bandanas as handkerchiefs as opposed to kerchiefs but if I wanted to do that now that I’ve left Los Angeles I won’t have to avoid red or blue ones.

Tonight we’re in Gillette and had dinner at a place that has electric yellow palm trees out front with phony coconuts. Maybe this would have looked nice if it had been neon but it wasn’t and didn’t. We didn’t find any better choices. For a town of about 30,000 it sure has a lot of fast food outlets. According to its Wikipedia page there are: 2 McDonald’s, 2 Burger Kings, 5 Subways, 2 Pizza Huts, 2 Papa John’s, 2 Domino’s, 1 KFC and 1 A&W. Maybe this is normal. We’ve had good luck with motels so far but tonight’s was a bit shabby. I’m afraid this Gillette unlike the shaving company didn’t look or feel sharp.

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Day 10

Sunday, August 9

We knew this day was coming from the moment I talked to a couple outside our motel room in Eureka. They were about our age and traveling by motorcycle to Sturgis, SD. It’s the 70th anniversary of the world’s largest motorcycle rally and as we sped along today it felt like we were being strafed by Messerschmitts on the highway and swarmed by locusts when we got out of the car. A local told us that 800,000 bikers (I checked this stat and it’s accurate.) are expected to show up and as she put it, “We won’t have to have a personal income tax in South Dakota for at least another year.”

The bikers we’ve seen are almost exclusively middle aged and older and attired to the hilt with tattoos, sleeveless tee shirts, leather chaps with lots of gray hair sticking out of their bandanas. The women dress the part, too and if they have cleavage, it’s as prominently on display as the Harleys, although this week you’re probably going to be more in demand here if you can turn a wrench than turn a trick.  They all may think they have the hearts of outlaws but are more likely to have the hands of orthodontists and all of them we’ve met are as pleasant as can be— think Ted Danson playing Charles Manson.

Our first stop out of Gillette was at Devils Tower (There’s no apostrophe because it was misspelled the first time.) and that was when we realized that because of the Sturgis rally we were going to be gridlocked throughout our time in the Black Hills. My picture does not come anywhere close to conveying the number of motorcycles everywhere we’ve been.

Devils Tower was famously the geologic oddity that Richard Dreyfus replicated with his mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Some climbers were scaling it today and if they were also bikers I’d say they’re automatically uninsurable.

Our next destination was Blackwood, which is South Dakota’s gambling capital and now so lucrative that the once dilapidated little town has a four story parking garage. We felt like we were back at Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks. The noise of the bikes drove us inside for lunch where thankfully the windows were closed. An Israeli couple with four young kids sat down beside us and we talked about how big America is. In Israel there’s a joke that goes when you travel over 20 miles you take your pajamas with you.

Mt. Rushmore’s viewing area has been completely revamped since I was last here, no doubt to accommodate more visitors but I’m afraid it has tarnished the majesty of the Presidents’ chiseled in the cliff. The new parking garage costs $10 (That’s $2.50 a head… Get it!) and once you leave your car you walk up a flag lined entry way that looks like something Ferdinand Marcos would have built to honor himself. And compared to the understated former visitor center that’s in a famous scene of Hitchcock’s North by Northwest where Eva Marie Saint shoots Carey Grant, the new one someone said (not me) looks like it belong at Big Schlock Candy Mountain.

In any event bike noise serenaded us as we paid homage to the sculptees and the sculptor who created such a powerful tribute. It was then that Jo told me she’d read a book about him and that he was a rabid anti-Semite. My reverie was ruptured. Now, I know why there aren’t any Jewish presidents included with George, Thomas, Theodore and Abraham but then again when we walked to where we got close enough to look up their noses, Jefferson’s made me think there’s possibly more to his story.

Dinner tonight was the best meal since the Kingdom of Dumpling in San Francisco and a surprise at an Italian restaurant on Main St. in Rapid City. We watched Madmen in our room and I need to amend my claim that we haven’t had the TV on before. This was the second time. I think Don Draper needs to make a road trip to get his head together.

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Day 11

Monday, August 9

Before pulling out of Rapid City we made our second purchase of the trip. Jo had seen a platter in a store window and we went back to buy it. It’s got pictures of buffalo baked on it around the border that were taken in the 19th century by a white man who documented the Indian way of life. Looks better than my description.

On our way out of town I grabbed some daylight pictures of neat neon I either had missed or it just wasn’t turned on the night before. After the last shot as I backed the car out of the parking space I had a little accident. Insignificant damage to our car, enough to the other vehicle to make me think the lower auto insurance rate I was counting on in Maine could now be history.  Did you know that “Shit happens” has a Wikipedia page?

Onward we drove almost without a care, which is a hell of a lot better than almost without a car. The signs had started on Sunday but now they seemed like they were appearing every half-mile. “Veterans Get Free Coffee and a Donut”, “Honeymooners Get Free Coffee and Donuts”, “Coffee 5 Cents”… did they miss anyone? Yes, it’s the signage for Wall Drugs, which was possibly the country’s first tourist trap, but how it happened is actually a good story.

A pharmacist and his wife moved to Wall, SD to open their own business. They picked Wall because it had a Catholic congregation and the couple went to church every day. Business was awful and they were ready to make a mass exodus so to speak when one hot summer day the pharmacist’s wife had an idea.  She put up a sign on the highway with three prophetic words— Free Ice Water. The rest as they say is history. All I can add is you know all those believers who ask the Lord for a sign? She got one.

Into the Badlands we headed. We’ve had exceptional weather so far but now the sky on the horizon looked scary. In fact I made a  joke about Pennsylvania Dutch funnel cake and what appeared like funnel clouds both being able to kill you that didn’t get a laugh. As we stopped at viewpoints I tried to get a decent shot of the lightening we were seeing. Luckily the weather kept its distance and we sped away and crossed into the Central Time while still in South Dakota. It’s one of those states that has two different time zones within it.

At the point on the road where we saw the sign marking this I checked my cell phone and the time had already adjusted. Felt like we had been hit by a silent Cruise missile or could have been.

I don’t know when this started but tonight at dinner I heard it again so it must be everywhere. When our waitress brought the bill she said, “I’ll be your cashier tonight when you’re ready.” Another job outsourced.

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Day 12

Tuesday, August 12

I can think of only four reasons to stop in Mitchell, SD… You need medical care, you need auto repair, you’re falling asleep at the wheel, or you want to see the corn murals at the Corn Palace.  When I asked at the motel desk if it was worth a visit, the question got such a dour response I thought I should report the woman to the Mitchell Chamber of Commerce but of course when you’re in Rome you’re going to go Latin and the Corn Palace is the ultimate lend me your ears experience.

The original Corn Palace was built in the 1890s to brag about the area’s fertile soil. It was a wooden structure and only after the entirely corn made murals were affixed to it did the locals realize they had erected a colossal fire trap that even Orville Redenbacher would not have approached without an extinguisher. Actually, Mitchell, SD might have become America’s original “pop” art shrine if the city hadn’t torn it down and started over with a metal frame that supports the present building.

Mitchell changes the murals every year– an all volunteer effort –and even though they’re stuck with an amber waves of grain color pallet we were impressed, especially by one of a locomotive that looked like it was moving. By the way the high school basketball team plays its games in the gym inside and yes, their nickname is the Kernels.

As we got back on I-90 East, Jo asked me the difference between a plains and a prairie.  Anybody, know? The only Plains I’ve moseyed in is called White and contains half of my relatives and the only prairies I’m familiar with are the ones with the Little House and a Home Companion both of which I avoid. Garrison Keillor should have Larry David as a guest sometime. Curb Your Enthusiasm visits Lake Woebegone would certainly be a show I’d listen to. To me Keillor’s brand is bland and I’d like to see it kicked to the Curb.

Anyway out on the plains/prairie, I noticed some signs by the road that sort of sum up Middle America for me. Some serious anti-abortion messages alternated with others from Olivia and Annabelle who appear to have dueling “Adult Supercenters”. Also saw one on a silo claiming it was made by the Sukup Silo Company. I’ve checked this out and they are legit. “Hey, got some excess grain? We’ll, Sukup all of it for ya!”

We diverted briefly to Sioux Falls and as I was refueling the car I scored free ZZ Top tickets or could have from a nice guy on his way to the Sioux Falls Fair. He told me he’s a vendor who travels with his son from fair to fair around the country selling cell phone accessories. The economy in the Midwest he thinks is better than elsewhere in America because people still have jobs here due to farming and he added, “Everybody has cell phones so business is good.” I’m always impressed by the niches people find for themselves to make a living.

We caught up to the rain for the first of  what would be several times today at a rest area. I got soaked before I could get the umbrella deployed. I’ve never seen a sky so dark. We had crossed from South Dakota into Minnesota and immediately ranches had turned into farms. As we were standing inside the place watching the deluge I asked a guy in a park ranger uniform how the corn crop was doing this summer. He told me it’s going to be a record yield and I wondered if it was too late to call a commodities pit in Chicago–from corn spectator to corn speculator all in one morning.

By the time we got to the next rest area for lunch we had sun again. It was a beautiful spot for a picnic called Clear Lake. The quick drying shirt I’d bought at REI lived up to its billing. We’d spread it above the dashboard and as I drove topless, Jo remarked that if she’d done that she’d have been arrested. I told her that me with my shirt off was exactly the opposite, I couldn’t get arrested.

Our next stop was in Blue Earth, MN and it was short but planned. When traveling lengthy stretches on the Interstate you’ve got to find reasons to get off and I wanted to see the world’s largest statue of the Jolly Green Giant.  It’s about 60 feet high and the Green Giant company had nothing to do with it. It was built by a Blue Earth radio station owner who was upset that Interstate 90 had bypassed the town. Yes, he wanted to lure tourists to visit Blue Earth but the guy also had his own radio show on which he interviewed travelers and gave them Green Giant vegetables as a gift. Many apparently asked him if in fact there was a Green Giant. So, I don’t know if the statue has helped Blue Earth any but nobody need ask about the existence of the Green Giant. However, I’m afraid the Giant needs to relocate. He stands behind an abandoned gas station and the neighborhood just doesn’t look like a place where he should be vegging out at this point. Blue Earth had him draped in a tee shirt promoting cancer awareness this day, and I hope he was doused with sunblock.

Austin, MN is the home of Hormel and something I was looking forward to visiting even more than the Jolly Green Giant. By now you know what appeals to me and Austin had something that was a four star attraction. Its Spam Museum wasn’t a disappointment but it wasn’t a grand slam home-run either which just proves that there is only so much you can do with Spam. We truly loved the door that leads into the movie theater.

The film was fun and when a guy came by with a silver tray handing out pieces of Spam on the ends of pretzel sticks, I was obviously in hog heaven.

In the gift shop I bought a can of Spam spread– I didn’t know there are a dozen different kinds of Spam and could have chosen bacon cheese or Jalapeño– but what was really startling to learn was that making all the Spam in the world, which is all the Spam produced here in Austin, takes only a dozen people. That’s so few jobs for such an iconic item that no matter what you might think of Spam as nourishment, it certainly doesn’t seem to be nourishing the local economy much anymore.

But Spam and Hormel’s history was well worth hearing about. There was an interactive exhibit featuring Hormel’s big celebrity pitch people back in the golden age of radio. Music by Artie Shaw and jokes by Burns and Allen. In one bit George asked Gracie, “What would you say if another man asked you out for dinner?” To which Gracie replied, “SPAM!” But before I leave you with the impression Hormel has been just another company interested in trimming its costs for a fatter bottomline take a look at the video below… America and Americana at its best!

We made it to Minneapolis tonight and had the best dinner of the trip at a place called the Modern Café, everything was really wonderful. At the end of the meal Jo asked me what I was going to do now with my can of Spam spread. I told her, “Buy a really good piece of bread.”

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Day 2

Saturday, July 31

“To be where little cable cars
Climb halfway to the stars!”

San Francisco and Tony Bennett are inseparable now but did you know that the song was written in Brooklyn in the 1950s and before Bennett was offered it Tennessee Ernie Ford turned it down?

“Sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt!”

It’s hard to make the case that there’s a prettier city in America than San Francisco and why would you try? During my career with ABC News I loved getting to do stories here whenever I could. Spent a day once on the Golden Gate Bridge with a man who after 9/11 walked across it daily for months waving an American flag. Another time followed a guy as he made the rounds of ethnic restaurants collecting their used cooking oil to fuel his car. Spent an evening in the San Francisco Bay floating in “McCovey Cove” with the flotilla of souvenir hunters hoping to retrieve a Barry Bonds home-run ball. And yes, on another night was on hand to actually see Bonds break Hank Aaron’s record and then be sternly reprimanded for not observing press box etiquette– I jumped up and clapped when he hit it and as I learned there’s no rooting allowed in the press box.

We had a great day and a typical SF one– cool and overcast. Drew’s husband and Jo’s son-in-law Aaron is an urban explorer of the highest rank. From a bacon donut to a synagogue with an exterior that looked like a half pipe from the X Games he led us on a wonderfully eclectic urban safari during which we filled our senses to the hilt. Two other highlights were Paul’s Hat Works, a tiny store that dates back to 1918 and the Kingdom of Dumpling, a hole in the wall that’s to Chinese dumplings what Langer’s in LA is to deli pastrami. Did I mention I have always loved eating here? I’ll miss my mostaccioli and shrimp fix at Caffe Sport in North Beach and the incomparable meat pies at Hunan in the Embarcadero. And on an earlier visit Jo introduced me to the cannoli at Stella. I think I could have been a food writer. Only problem my book would have been titled “Weight, Weight Don’t Tell Me!”

One of our last stops was by the ocean and a place I knew nothing about. Aaron ushered us into a restaurant called the Beach Chalet where there are murals painted during the Great Depression. Stunning murals painted by artists commissioned by the W.P.A. Go there if you get the chance! And if you like them thank FDR and his generation for all they have provided us.

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Day 3

Sunday, August 1

Had a tough time starting the car when we left San Fran. I figure our Volvo wasn’t used to the cold weather. In LA the only time it got near anything resembling Sweden was the Ikea parking lot. We headed north up the 101 and then turned west toward Mendocino on the 128, a wonderful road. The town sits back from a bluff above the ocean and we hiked along it and marveled at the beauty.

Before we left Mendocino I took a photo through a store window. It’s the “wood stock” edition of Jerry Garcia on sale no less to mark his birthday. This one was cherry Garcia, but he also comes in mahogany or teak– and if you believe that, then you don’t know me very well. Jerry would have turned 68 on August 1. I have to confess I never got what the fuss was all about. I didn’t need a particular band as a reason to get stoned.

Driving north on the 1 afterward required a lot of concentration. Endless sharp turns on a narrow road. I don’t remember ever turning a steering wheel so much and this was an unexpected challenge that I don’t recommend if you have any history at all of vertigo or carsickness. Overnighted in Eureka which is another place I got to with ABC News several times, often enough in fact to look forward to breakfast tomorrow at the nearby Samoa Cookhouse serving flapjacks to lumberjacks for over a hundred years.

By the way if Archimedes ever really said “Eureka, I’ve found it!” it’s ironically apropos when uttered here, especially by airline pilots. Flying to Eureka can present a navigational challenge. When the Navy built a runway at this location just before WWII it soon discovered that the area had the third foggiest weather in the world. Flights into the tiny airport here get cancelled frequently.  I’m not big on instrument landings.

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Day 4

Monday, August 2

Today we continued up the coast to Bandon, Oregon. It’s a stop I chose for a reason and a friend of ours suggested we stay at the little motel we’re in tonight. It has as stunning a view of the ocean out the window as I think you’ll ever find for under $100. In fact the Oregon coastline we just traveled to get here is for my money just as majestic as Big Sur.

By the way there is a b in Bandon but no brie in Bandon. We wanted to buy some to go with bread and wine while we enjoyed our ocean front vista at the motel but the supermarket didn’t have any, plenty of Tillamook cheddar though.

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Day 5

Tuesday, August 3

My friend Brian Rooney used to think I worked people too hard when we were in the field doing our pieces for ABC. He called my shoots “Imber Death Marches”. Well, I finally wised up and found a story about an uniquely fabulous restaurant in the Oregon wine country, booked us into an exquisite B & B and got us two  dinners and a lunch gratis from the subject of our story the master mushroom and truffle hunter, chef and owner of the Joel Palmer House. I never heard another complaint from Rooney.

Well, today I introduced my wife to my old way of doing business and it was only fitting that we are back in Oregon. I didn’t mention previously that Bandon, Oregon has in the space of only a decade become a premier golf destination in the United States. A guy who made a fortune in greeting cards has now built four golf courses in the dunes by the Pacific and every year hundreds of private jets bring golfers from around the world to Bandon. Golf has also meant plenty of new jobs for this area which badly needed them. And yes, I did manage to sell this story to ABC News and produce it. Click below if you want to watch it:

I helped the local economy myself today and played the newest of the golf courses, getting Jo up at 6 to make my tee time. She had never walked 18 holes before and at Bandon everybody walks, no golf carts are allowed so that the experience resembles Scottish golf where nobody rides around the links. Jo agrees that even if this weren’t a place with little holes with flags in them, it would still be a most worthwhile hike.

Having starved Jo until after we finished playing at noon we picnicked in the parking lot of an Indian casino in North Bend and then drove several more hours up the coast before heading east for the first time on our journey to a town named McMinnville. I’d been here before, too (I’ve been a lot of places.) and wanted Jo to see its incredibly well preserved main street. When I was here the first time I thought Jimmy Stewart was going to run out in front of my car and kiss the hood. Didn’t happen but this time I did indeed have my own Donna Reed (Wasn’t she the hottest sitcom mom ever?) with me today.

After dinner we finally got to our lodging for the night at 10 p.m. just over the Columbia River in Vancouver, WA. That’s about 16 hours door to door for the day– a certifiable Imber Death March experience. We’ll head back in to Portland to explore in the morning.

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Day 6

Wednesday, August 4

“We had a great many horses, of which we gave Lewis and Clark what they needed, and they gave us guns and tobacco in return.”– Chief Joseph

“Such a deal!”– Me

We started our day in Portland’s Japanese Garden on a hill above downtown. It’s lovely and we bought our first art of the trip at the garden’s gallery. It’s a print of a Japanese family in kimonos having a picnic in front of Mount Fuji. But there’s more. The family is looking up at the sky at a squadron of fighter planes. I don’t know the artist’s intent but now I have the rest of my life to guess.

We drove past Portland’s renowned Powell’s Books, a city block of books, but didn’t stop, figuring shelves of books look the same everywhere. Lunch was special though. Jo found a Thai restaurant that a couple runs out of their house. When we entered we said hello to the wife in the kitchen as if we were coming over for dinner. The food was great.

We drove away and to the east on the Lewis and Clark Trail, which is highway 14 and runs on the Washington State side of the Columbia River as opposed to the faster Interstate that hugs the river’s southern bank. Jo asked me if I knew the first names of Lewis and Clark and since I didn’t have a clue I said Jerry and Dick, which got a chuckle but gave me no chance of returning tomorrow to defend my title on Jeopardy. Then I thought about it and realized that if Jerry Lewis and Dick Clark had really made first contact with the Indians instead of Meriwether and William American history probably would not have been all that different. Instead of alcohol and smallpoxed blankets, our Native Americans would have been introduced to dumb movies and boring awards shows. With such a mind numbing media barrage I feel sure we could have still robbed them of their spirit and stolen their land.

Our first stop along the Columbia was at Cape Hope and this is definitely a must see. One of my top ten vistas in the U.S. when I come up with the other nine. Our second stop was the Bonneville Dam. You know those fish ladders that are supposed to provide safe passage around the dam for the fish? Well, turns out they don’t work for all our fine finned friends. We learned that 30% of the “juvenile spawners” don’t find their spillway exit and end up passing through the blades of the power station turbines. Some make it out alive but a bunch of them end up as ceviche or sashimi– a sort of existential bait and switch.

We ended up tonight in Richland, WA. The mural on the wall of Richland High School here tells this town’s story. Ever heard of the Hanford Project? No, it’s not a low budget horror movie, for horror it’s the real deal, it was the site nearby where plutonium was produced for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki. The Richland H.S. sports teams are called the “Bombers”. The center of the school’s basketball court has a drawing of a mushroom cloud. Needless to say, over the years there’s been fallout over this but one resident put it this way. “It’s like the Civil War — we killed a lot of our own brothers, but it ended slavery.”

So tonight we had dinner in town at the Atomic Brewery Pub and Eatery. Jo asked me if it was safe to drink the water. I told her it was, figuring by the time any possible radioactivity we were being exposed to here could affect us we’d already be very decayed material.

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Day 7

Thursday, August 5

Up until now I could say there has not been a dull moment during our trip but the drive this morning from Richland to Spokane put that observation to rest– straight, flat and empty. But after picnicking for lunch we had some drama. Outside of Cour d’Alene, Idaho Jo realized we had left our pillows at the Red Lion in Richland. Yes, our pillows, not theirs because we had brought ours from home. We like them that much. But not to worry we won’t have to bury our heads in sorrow for long, the hotel found them and they will now get to Maine before we do. Thank you, Red Lion Richland! We’ve brought way too much stuff in the car for sure but are getting our unloading, loading routine down. I haul, Jo packs.

Today was pretty much a driving day. In Spokane we had stopped downtown briefly to check out the over the top lobby of the Hotel Davenport, a real period piece circa World War I. We got off I-90 to cruise the two main streets of Wallace, Idaho, an old silver mining town that could still serve as the set for Gunsmoke.  By the way even as a kid I knew Gunsmoke wasn’t shot in Kansas. Occasionally, you’s see there were mountains in the background. I had to move to California to learn that the Simi Valley set was actually an appropriate stand-in for Dodge City with so many of Simi’s residents lawmen commuting to jobs as cops in LA.

We crossed into Montana which is one of the states Jo has never been and wanted to see. The business about this being Big Sky Country is not hype. The sky seems bigger here. Why? Maybe because Montana has the least number of people per square mile of any state in the lower 48 with the exception of Wyoming.

This evening we’re staying in Missoula, MT, home of the University of Montana Grizzlies and a pretty gentrified little city. Jo pointed out that having the option to actually choose steamed vegetables with our dinner was an indicator. When I got the bill that was another.

In addition to having been here before for work I was here for the first time in the summer of 1968 with a college friend. We’d hopped in my parents’ car after watching the televised police riot outside the Democratic Convention in Mayor Daley’s Chicago. Just took off and drove from Pennsylvania across all of Canada stopping to see a Canadian Football League game, Joni Mitchell’s hometown of Saskatoon, Banff and Lake Louise and to flag down a kindly truck driver who towed my parents’ car out of a ditch we had landed in near Kamloops, British Columbia. On the way back through the U.S. we detoured to Missoula to watch Evel Knievel jump his motorcycle over 13 parked cars. I’m no stranger to “make it up as you go” road adventures.

We have now completed our first week of travel and the odometer says we’ve driven 1,798 miles. We’ve been in five states and today crossed our first time zone. Tonight we did our first laundry and we have still not turned on the TV anywhere we’ve stayed. We have gone by four serious accidents and seen way too much animal road kill.

The first few days we listened to All Things Considered but now we just keep the iPod on most of the time. The driver gets to choose the tunes and we’ve pretty much split the driving 50/50.

Tonight also is the first time we have decided to alter our planned itinerary. We were going to go to Yellowstone but have decided that we want to avoid the traffic and crowds and if we hike, it will be better to do so off the beaten path.

We haven’t been booking motels ahead more than a day but tonight I had trouble finding a room for Friday night in Bozeman. A quick Google search showed me why. It’s a big weekend there and tomorrow Jo will be going to her first rodeo. Hey, there must be a name for using cliches when they’re not actually being used as cliches. Don’t you think?

I like to shoot pictures of neon signs and Missoula has some nice ones.

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I guess a Forward is what comes before a Prologue but I don’t know nor really care. So let me explain the journey I am about to describe and you may elect or not to take. First, it’s already happened. Jo and I drove across the United States using a northern route during the summer of 2010 when we left Studio City, California and moved to Camden, Maine. It was a great trip and we both recommend that everyone do a coast to coast drive at least once to have your own experience and make your own discoveries crossing our truly magnificent country. I kept a running diary that I emailed to friends as we traveled and what I’ll post here are the observations and commentary I saved from six years ago that I’m sure I’ll tweak a bit… I hope you’ll want to travel along.

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Prologue

It’s 3,201 miles from Studio City, CA to Camden, ME and according to my favorite directions giver website (http://drivingtimebetweencities.com/) the trip could have taken us just two days and four hours by car if we had worn adult diapers and did that other type of speeding. Instead, my wife Jo and I took three weeks and used bathrooms in 14 American states and one Canadian province and slept normally.

It was a journey home for Jo who was born and grew up in Maine and had lived in Los Angeles for 24 years, feeling for most of that time like she was in exile. I had been in California even longer and after a career that had been mutually dissolved by my employer and me in the spring of 2010 was ready and able to get back closer to where I once belonged myself which is Pennsylvania.

Jo and I had dreamed of making our cross-country trip for a while. We’d bought our Maine house in the fall of 2009 and had moved most of our things there right away with the intention of moving ourselves there permanently in 2011 at the end of my contract with ABC News. My buyout from Disney/ABC moved up our timetable. The plan for our route was simple. Jo had never been to Oregon nor Montana and had never seen Mt. Rushmore nor Niagara Falls. We both wanted to explore Michigan’s two peninsulas. The dots were not going to be difficult to connect and I had a list of golf courses I hoped to play and some offbeat attractions I wanted us to visit along the way.

A good friend of ours threw us a wonderful going away party and since there was a substantial gap between it and our actual departure date we kept saying goodbye to the same people who had been there until we felt embarrassed we were still around.

In the meantime I had our 2004 Volvo S40 serviced, printed out maps for daily driving plans and addresses and phone numbers for cheap motels and local non-chain restaurants. We began packing clothes into suitcases and tote bags that would go in the trunk along with my golf clubs that already lived there. We made lists and then gathered or bought the supplies we thought we’d need. Our picnic basket filled up quickly with things for lunches by the side of the road and we made a trip to REI for a serious cooler. There were low-tech no brainers like a first aid kit, flashlights, and a Swiss army knife and hi-tech necessities like our cameras, laptop, GPS and iPod. We even took our two foam pillows we cannot sleep without. The back seat began to disappear. It would prove a challenge to make it all fit but hey, that’s why cars have rear view mirrors.

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The Day before Day 1

Thursday, July 29, 2010

We still had a lot of things left in our apartment to ship to Maine and were worried about the whereabouts of our mover. A friend had recommended him to us and our departure date had already been pushed back because he told us his pet cat had gotten sick. He was actually coming from Maine, delivering art objects on the way and it had been tough getting a hold of him for updates about his progress. It was mid afternoon on the day he said he’d arrive and we were waiting with our packed boxes and getting nervous.

I’ve never been very good about getting rid of stuff and so I had clothes I’d packed that I’ll admittedly never manage to wedge into again and Jo had plenty of her own that did still fit her. Along with other boxes filled with books, kitchen items, office supplies, our desktop computer, widescreen TV and memorabilia such as my ashtray collection from imploded Las Vegas casinos there wasn’t much room to move around in the front of our apartment.

We’d lived in this apartment for seven years and called it an Ikea showroom since nearly all of our furniture was purchased there in flat boxes with their wordless but surprisingly adequate assembly instructions. All of it had served its purpose admirably but we weren’t taking any of our “popup” furnishings to Maine. I had placed ads on Craigslist but nibblers hadn’t taken the bait and when I called the National Council of Jewish Women and asked them to come take everything away for free they scheduled a pick up but didn’t show up. My son had wanted the bureaus, a lamp and one of the chairs that required our unscrewing each of them to fit it all in his car. With reassembly on the other end Gil and I spent a nice day together and also learned that stuff from Ikea is not really made to be taken apart and put back together a second time.

So now I made a last minute deal with the two Latino guys who were fixing up a vacated apartment in the building. They could have the rest of our Swedish interior collection (dining room and coffee tables, futon, sofa chair, bookcases plus the refrigerator) in exchange for helping me load everything else with the mover if and when he showed up.

When he finally did and I saw his panel truck towing its small trailer outside on our street I had a panic attack. There was no way in hell we were going to get all our things in there. I had damn near lost faith in this guy’s sense of time and now I enlarged that continuum to include both time and space. Fortunately, spatial relations have never been one of my stronger abilities. In fact in 10th grade biology I screwed up the dissection of a fish so badly that my teacher told me to take out some other homework and forget about medical school. After I calmed down and the mover assured me he could make everything fit I shifted from crisis mode to blind faith.

Almost four hours later his truck and trailer looked like the sides of a Rubick’s cube. The man was a master packer if there is such a designation. That evening we had the final of our multiple farewell dinners with a good humored good friend and then went back to our empty apartment to spend our last night in Los Angeles.

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Day 1

Friday, July 30, 2010

Everything fit in the car this morning and although there would be no room for passengers or even small reptiles in the back seat, at least it was still possible to see around our gear through the rear view mirror. Jo and I met my son at Mel’s Diner in Sherman Oaks for a farewell breakfast. Neither of Jo’s kids still lived in L.A. but Gil does and leaving him was obviously the most bittersweet aspect of our move to Maine for me.

After breakfast we had one final stop to make on our way out of the San Fernando Valley. I thought it would be a simple drop off but when I walked in the door at the cable company in Van Nuys it was take a number like a bagel store on a Sunday morning. You can do a lot of things at home through the Internet that you used to have to show up at places to do just a few years ago but returning your modem and DVR when you’re leaving town isn’t one of them apparently. I waited nearly an hour to do it.

We headed for the freeway, the 405, which is one of Los Angeles’s coronary arteries in need of a quadruple bypass, and after it rejoined the I-5 heading north near Magic Mountain we slowed to a halt. In LA it’s easy to find a traffic report on the radio and as soon as we did we heard the dreaded words “Sig Alert”. In LA this means a bad accident and/or a serious traffic jam and we were stuck in one. And since we’re not moving forward so quickly in our narrative, I’ll take a moment to tell you what most Angelinos don’t know. The “Sig Alert” is actually named after a man named Loyd Sigmon who came up with the way to automatically transmit a radio signal from the police department to Los Angeles radio stations whenever there was a need to. Now, he’s immortalized and unrecognized at the same time.

Another hour went by before we passed the scene of a nasty accident involving two semitrailers and twice as many passenger cars. But our escape from Los Angeles was still not complete. After getting around the highway wreckage we saw a huge smoke plume in the direction of Palmdale before turning west to go up the coast— “Sig Alert” and wildfire in the rearview mirror we had completed our escape from LA.

Lunch was at La Super-Rica in Santa Barbra (pictured here), Julia Child’s and our favorite taco stand, and then another 300+ miles on the 101 to San Francisco to visit Jo’s daughter Drew and her husband Aaron. Our GPS mysteriously lost its voice just when it came time to really want to rely on it as we hit the city and then just as mysteriously regained it as we parked the car. What’s that about? Drew made an incredible dinner. Aaron introduced me to some new music and it’s about 50 degrees in San Francisco in July.

So, we’re off. After thirty-one years in Los Angeles it will take a while for it to sink in.

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Hard to believe that over 50 years have gone by since Bob Dylan composed “The Times They Are A Changin’.” Many of us might disagree on many things but I’m guessing there is an ever growing consensus that unfortunately, there are a lot of ways the times —our times since those times— have not changed completely for the better.

Talk radio is one of those developments that I’m pretty certain I could live without. My father used to have his car radio tuned permanently it seemed to Rush Limbaugh and so when I visited and borrowed the car I sometimes got a quick earful. When I was in the car with him and Limbaugh was on I got a serious earful. About the only thing I learned from Rush and his cohorts was that there’s no issue too complex that it can’t be reduced to fear and loathing. And if you’ll excuse my own rant, I’ll contend that the majority of talk show hosts are egomaniacs and most of their callers either stridently xenophobic on the right or blindly naïve on the left.

The late former sane governor of Texas Ann Richards was once asked why she didn’t have a talk show. Her answer: “The people who have time during the day to listen to me on the radio are not the people I want to be talking to.”

But I remember a kinder gentler time when talk radio was in its infancy and I was not much older. There was a program on WHUM in the city where I grew up in Pennsylvania on weeknights that I’d often go to sleep listening to. Its theme music, big band clarinetist Artie Shaw’s “Nightmare”, would play and Reading’s Night Mayor was on the air.

It might not have been the first radio talk show in the country but I’ll bet it was close. Paul Barclay was the host, a high school school teacher by day and back then, I’m guessing, his radio gig was barely making him vacation money. I don’t think he was even much of a local celebrity and he certainly wasn’t into spouting his own opinions to his audience. No diatribes, no insults, no spin but something else was missing from Barclay’s show that, despite his objectivity and neutrality, made him a very singular voice back in his day. His was in fact the ONLY voice.

In that pre cell phone and Internet era of long ago either the technology didn’t exist or his radio station couldn’t afford it. So listeners only heard one side of the conversation— the Night Mayor’s. Because of this much patience was required from its devotees. Calls all started the same way: “Hello, Night Mayor!” followed by a long silence as the caller made his point and the listener waited to hear Barclay repeat, and no doubt condense, what that point was. Each call was literally translated from English into English and even then, listening to the program plod along, it was awkward to the point of painful.

The theme music kind of scared me, too but I couldn’t resist tuning into the Night Mayor when I was growing up. My transistor radio back then brought me the world, although St. Louis was actually about as far as it could reach out into it on a good night. It was rock and roll from Buffalo, basketball from Boston and talk of the stench of Reading politics or on one occasion I recall the real thing– complaints about tardy garbage collection –from the callers to the Night Mayor.

And then one night I decided to call the Night Mayor myself. I had to. Something incredible had occurred on live television that afternoon and the Night Mayor was asking for a witness. I had just gotten home from school and seen it myself on a kitsch variety show hosted by Bert Parks.

It was a stunt gone amazingly wrong. A woman from the audience blindfolded and spun around while a lit fuse running on the floor was racing toward her husband. The studio audience implored to scream directions to help her find it so she could stamp it out with her shoes. Her husband sitting in a chair below a sack of flour hanging from the ceiling. The fuse attached to a firecracker and the firecracker next to the sack of flour and well… she didn’t find it. And when the firecracker exploded the flour ignited and the man instantly became a human torch. Aflame he rose from his seat as Bert Parks ran to him and probably saved his life by quickly covering him with his green master of ceremonies blazer. Yes, this actually happened!

I could barely believe I had seen it but I had and I was obligated to report it to the Night Mayor. I felt it my duty… Well partly, but mostly I just wanted to be the first one to call in. I dialed WHUM from the phone in my parents’ kitchen and as it rang and I waited my nerves started to get the better of me. Stage freight hit and I thought of hanging up. I was a kid, not even a teenager. What was I doing? Only adults called the Night Mayor.

With the suddenness of a car crash it was too late. “Hello, Night Mayor.” His voice sounded different on the phone.  I surprised myself and didn’t hang up and as best I could began my account. The Night Mayor didn’t ask me my age. He had a show to do and now I was part of it and I was relieved that nobody was hearing me but him. He helped me along with tactical “ah huhs” and “um hums” honed from experience. I rambled around them and listened to the Night Mayor edit me as I went along. I reported what I had seen and The Night Mayor was relaying what I told him to possibly thousands of others. Was I articulate? Did I make sense? Who knows? But together we made it work and then it was over. I was alone in the kitchen and shaking a little but not embarrassed or scared. I was now officially a Night Mayor caller. Until writing this I’ve never told anyone.

Years later I became a journalist. I produced accounts of events for many others– millions in fact– to watch on the news for a living. But to this day I have never called another talk show.

Want to listen to Artie Shaw and His Orchestra play the Night Mayor theme? … Click below to get taken there…

My name is Peter Imber. I’ve Googled myself and discovered there are a number of other Peter Imbers in the world. I’m the one who lives in Maine with the hot wife. Sure, I’m bragging but it’s true. It’s also true that I’ve had an interesting life on top of a good one so far. Anyway, I’ve been a Facebook poster for a number of years and I’ve entertained my FB friends with stories from my life and career and now, I want to see if I blast further into cyberspace whether or not anybody will detect my presence.

For most of my working life I was in television news and privileged to work at its highest level. I was a videotape editor and then a field producer for ABC News and was based in its Los Angeles office. I covered bad and sad stuff for the network mostly in the Western United States. Fires, plane crashes, earthquakes, riots, murders– I spent a year on O.J. Simpson and nearly lost my mind. But what I liked most to do were stories that were not in the headlines or admittedly that important but to me were interesting, even fascinating and worth sharing with our viewers. I like to tell people that much of the time my work was introduced with exactly the same words. Peter Jennings or the other ABC News anchors would introduce something I produced with the words “Finally, tonight…”

These stories were called show closers or end pieces or enders. I have uploaded a bunch of them to YouTube and you can watch them by going to:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCDRB2el9OnbUwpDyuB3cKtw

So, this my first post on my blog Pawned Accordion. Yes, there is a story behind my choosing that as its name. I’m sure I’ll get to it. But for now here’s a tale about one of my experiences at ABC News just doing my job…

Twenty years ago I was asked to do a piece about Bozo the Clown. We’d gotten a press release about him celebrating his 50th year in show business and the quirky ABC News overnight broadcast, watched mainly by insomniacs and the incarcerated, wanted it for their show.

The late Larry Harmon was the man who developed and owned the Bozo the Clown empire which he licensed to many local television stations around the country and the world each then hiring their own Bozo. By the late 1960s Harmon had licensed Bozo shows in nearly every major U.S. television market. Harmon’s autobiography is titled “The Man behind the Nose” even though he rarely dressed up as the clown he so successfully marketed. I interviewed him at his office in Los Angeles on Hollywood Blvd.

When we finished Harmon made the rest of my assignment very easy by offering me a large box of tapes with an amazing variety of Bozo milestones– Bozo on safari in Africa, Bozo riding an elephant in India, Bozo with the Pope in Rome, Bozo floating weightless while training with the astronauts… And in the box was also a printout with a timeline of Bozo’s many additional accomplishments, but as I looked at it something else leaped off the page.

Now, I knew Larry Harmon hadn’t been the original Bozo the Clown and had purchased the rights to a character who had already existed. But what I didn’t know and what the timeline let slip was that Bozo the Clown wasn’t 50 at all. He was at that moment actually only 47!

I phoned Harmon to clear things up. “Larry, I think we have problem. According to the information you’ve given me, Bozo isn’t really 50 this year,” I said in a gotcha voice.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line and then Harmon spoke, “So?”

I went ahead and did the story… Please click below if you want to watch it…