Month: June 2016

Day 18

Monday, August 16

This morning we did our laundry at the Sleep In before pulling out. Jo remarked that I wouldn’t need to horde quarters anymore and indeed, after today I will no longer be making cashiers lives difficult. For the last seven years whenever I paid cash I have manipulated the change so that I could get as many quarters out of it as possible. I needed them for the washer and dryer in our apartment building. Now, I won’t but told Jo there’s probably a way to hook something up so we still could still use quarters in our house in Camden for old time’s sake. She didn’t laugh.

When Jo called the Alden B. Dow Home and Studio to make reservations for their tour, the guy she talked to figured out who she was immediately. “You must be Drew’s mother?” Jo’s son-in-law had indeed come to Midland to visit the Dow house after all, but his mother-in-law was still going to have to pay to see it. (Just giving you a hard time, Aaron.) The tour was at two so we had time on our hands and headed downtown. I wanted to get a haircut and asked two other pedestrians where I could find a barber shop. They directed me to “Irish’s” a few blocks away. Jo stayed on Main St. and I found the barber and one of those experiences that make life, or at least mine, all the richer.

I heard a joke that goes like this. “I’m losing my hair. Well, not actually. It’s in my brush.” These days I like to keep what’s left of my hair away from a brush so I have it short. My barber in LA needed about five minutes with my head and didn’t even have to use his scissors.

The door at Irish’s was open and a guy was inside. I just walked in and asked if I could get a haircut. “We’re actually closed Mondays but sure I’ll cut your hair,” he said. His name was Billy Hopkins and as I looked around I realized I’d stumbled into a time warp. I needed to pee and the toilet seat in the bathroom was up which is always a good sign. I’ve liked to listen to barbers talk since reading Ring Lardner’s “Haircut” when I was a teenager and Billy told me that the shop had been open since 1941. It had four barber’s chairs and a lot more regular ones for customers who were in line. He said that on Saturdays they were so busy that the parking lot at the funeral home next store didn’t mind the overflow of cars unless of course there was a funeral.

Billy’s father had bought the shop from its original owner decades ago. He still cut hair. Billy’s son was the third barber. “My grandson is five and we’ve already had him using the clippers,” Billy told me. The mechanical cash register had been in Midland’s old J.C. Penny and was still in service but we didn’t need it. The haircut was $13 and I was happy to make it $20 and as I left Billy said, “If you’re ever in Midland again, I’ll cut your hair and I’ll remember you.” As I went out the door I thought to myself that he actually might.

We had lunch at the Zinc Café which is part of the H Hotel where Aaron had stayed. The waitress talked us into ordering the soup de jour, and I had misgivings when it arrived and looked like the fare I dreaded in my grade school school cafeteria but it was good and the lesson here I guess is that cooks can be deceiving.

The tour at the Dow house was amazing. Too bad we weren’t allowed to take any pictures inside to reveal how interesting an interior it has but those were the rules. Alden Dow was the son of the founder of Dow chemical and a contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright but as our guide pointed out he was on a parallel path with Wright and not a disciple. In fact he once beat out Wright for a project which infuriated the little guy who never spoke to him again.

The similarities between the work of the two men are indisputable and the Dow house has a pond that feels almost like it comes inside the house, which reminded me of Wright’s “Falling Water” near Pittsburgh where a stream actually does. The living room and dining room in Dow’s home are spectacular and there are whimsical touches throughout the house that lead me to believe dinner in the Dow House with its architect would have been great fun. Jo and I had never heard of Alden Dow before and wondered why he isn’t more widely known and admired. Turns out it might be because he did so much of his work in his hometown. Midland, MI has 132 of his projects, most of them homes. And it also was surprising to learn that Midland has apparently the highest ratio of PhDs per capita in the nation due to the Dow Chemical presence no doubt.

Before we left Michigan and crossed into Canada we stopped at a Cracker Barrel hoping to get ice cream. I’d never been in one of these and although they advertise themselves as an old-fashioned country store, they didn’t have ice cream cones nor any crackers or barrels that I could find. In fact what the hell is a cracker barrel? After that disappointment it was time to leave the country. At the border we were asked a few questions and must have had the right answers to be allowed into Canada without delay. The speed limit and distances were now in kilometers and I smugly explained to Jo how to convert them to American. Our destination for the night was London, Ontario and as we got to the city limits a sign said that London’s population was 337,000. I said, “That’s a lot bigger than I’d have ever guessed.” Jo said, “Yeah, but is that in kilomapeople?”

Best line of the trip and it isn’t mine.

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Day 19

Tuesday, August 17

Tonight in front of our chicken Parmesan in Buffalo Jo and I admitted we might be starting to burn out. The signs? Our stop at Niagara on the Lake ended when we decided it was a “been there done that” kind of place for us. Then further down the river at Niagara Falls, which Jo had never seen, we felt like we’d been soaked before even coming close to the water. Parking was $20, not VIP parking but “Walk a kilometer from here” parking.

We were on the more scenic Canadian side where a Who’s Who bank of chain hotels with windows facing the falls screams “Screw with a View”. Jo asked me earlier why Niagara Falls became America’s primo honeymoon destination and Googling tells me that it started over two hundred years ago with Aaron Burr’s daughter followed by Napoleon’s brother coming here to shed their britches after their hitches. Walking to the falls from the parking lot required going through a building and down an escalator and a gauntlet of souvenir shops . It felt like we were negotiating a crowded airport. When we got outside, looking down at the boats ferrying tourists through the mist to the front of the Falls appeared to be an awesome adventure into a vortex best dressed for with Gor-Tex but we skipped it.

We stood, we gaped, we left without really feeling very inspired. The crass man made surroundings seemed to negate the awe of nature’s creation. But full disclosure. On our way out we bought four souvenir shot glasses and now, knowing more of the Fall’s history, I wish I’d have found something with “I’d rather be here than Elbe” written on it. Family legend has it that Jo’s grandmother from Ohio saw Niagara Falls and was even less barreled over than we were. Her testimonial: “Take away the water and what have you got?” which in the original Yiddish was, “Shpritz?” (accompanied by a shrug) “Schwitz?” (then a bigger shrug) Feh!” (punctuated with her own spritz)

Our trip has probably been more of a voyage of gluttony than discovery (at least on my part) and it was at lunch much earlier that we had our surreal moment of the day.  But let me go back first to London. Our GPS (Get Places without having to ask Strangers) took us through a boring part of the city and then put us on what it called the Q and we call a freeway. A sign advertising the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame was tempting but to possibly see a statue of Ferguson Jenkins (Can you think of any other Canadians in the American Baseball Hall of Fame?) also indicated it was 57 kilometers x 2 out of our way. An exit for the Wayne Gretsky Parkway a short time later didn’t get us to reroute either. Sorry, if that’s a slap shot in the face, Wayne.

But when we did get off the Q to P we decided to dine at the Egg and I Family Restaurant in Ancaster. Yes, that’s the name, the L must have fled to Lost Vegas. Wendy’s and the ubiquitous Tim Horton’s were options but we have diligently avoided restaurant chains of any nationality. The first thing that hit me after we sat down were the chandeliers, there must have been a dozen of them, but then I noticed the art. Hanging on almost every available millimeter of wall space were paintings with eggs embedded in them in some way, shape or form.

But there was even more going on than that with the egg art. One was done in the style of a Mondrian, another a Magritte. There was a Warhol and a Lichtenstein and a Green Eggs and Ham and, my favorite, a triptych of a moored egg dirigible splitting apart at the yoke. I’d have maybe shelled out for the sunny side down Hindenburg but Jo had her own favorite and an idea for our kitchen in Camden. We asked our waitress about the artist. “He works here,” she said. “What does he do?” I wanted to know. “Other than paint these?” she asked and then told us she didn’t really think he did anything except create the pictures for the restaurant. When we asked his name nobody in the place was sure. It was either Cullen or Collins, that’s the best they could do, but by the time we left we had a cell phone number for the Egg and I’s artist in residence and Jo is seriously thinking we should commission him. Maybe he’d do an omelette to Van Gogh?

This evening I have complained to the desk here at the Comfort Inn in Cheektowaga that their Wi-Fi sucks. They reached down and pulled out an Ethernet cable for me. Back in the room it didn’t bring the ether any closer. After so many easy days getting on the Internet the last two places we’ve stayed have been unfilled information potholes on the information super highway. In the parking lot I saw an SUV with a Washington State license plate and then the couple it belonged to. I learned they were crossing the country like us but not because they chose to. The guy told me he couldn’t find a job at home but had landed one in Ottawa and was taking it. It made me think of The Grapes of Wrath.

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Day 20

Wednesday, August 18

Calvin Trillin is my favorite food writer. I once got him and Julia Child to agree to be part of a Nightline program idea I wanted to produce for the 4th of July to celebrate apple pie, fried chicken, hot dogs, corn dogs and all the things that make this country burp but Nightline wouldn’t bite. I think they missed out on what could have been a great show. Because of Trillin it was imperative for me to eat barbeque in Kansas City and chili in Cincinnati when I had the chance. Today, we left Buffalo without sampling its contribution to American obesity — chicken wings in hot sauce. But before you cry fowl, I want to tell you about Buffalo’s other bones. (Some days the pun engine works better than others and after almost 5,000 miles it feels tonight like it just had an oil change. You may have hoped I had let the engine seize.)

This city is proud of its architecture so before leaving it Jo and I did a cursory tour. Our first stop the Darwin Martin House Complex and, even though we didn’t get to go inside, from the outside it is a stunner and considered a Frank Lloyd Wright masterwork. When you realize that it was built in 1905 this wasn’t just “There goes the neighborhood” this was there go neighborhoods forever. It is like Jules Verne if he’d imagined the Nautilus as a practicing Zen Buddhist and, as Jo said, this is where the ranch house comes from as well as the craftsman and the bungalow. And let’s give credit to Darwin Martin, the client, who footed the costs of the overruns.

Next, we headed down Delaware Ave. or “Millionaires Row”. Buffalo once had more of them per capita than any place in the country. Downtown we stopped so I could get coffee and I was standing in line behind a policeman when I noticed that his badge read “Chief”. He was one indeed and explained to me that Buffalo has five of them who each handle a portion of the city. This was his turf. When he heard me order black and no sugar he said, “That’s a real man’s coffee.” Nicest thing a cop has ever said to me.

Onto the New York Thruway, destination Saratoga Springs. We’ve rounded the backstretch and are heading for the finish line of our journey now. We’re not in a hurry but we passed on the Jell-O Gallery, the Boxing Hall of Fame and the Women’s Rights National Park in Seneca Falls, which I’m sure we would have considered checking out three weeks ago. We stopped near Syracuse for lunch at Wegmans and if you’ve never heard of it think Gelson’s in Socal and multiply by ten. Yes, it’s a super sized, super stocked high-end supermarket. My mother introduced me to Wegmans. She’d travel 45 minutes to shop at the one nearest to her home in Reading, PA and she actually wrote letters to the company pleading with them to open a store nearer to her. Hasn’t happened although Jo and I think it would be a slam-dunk for the company.

People in Reading may not be that high-end but from their rear ends you can tell they have no trouble supporting a supermarket. It’s a city that runs on pretzels and potato chips and where the VA stands for voracious appetite and the local airport needs a runway almost as wide as it is long.

Anyway, you can buy lunch and sit down and eat it at Wegmans. And yes, I have contradicted myself after writing yesterday that we don’t do chains… In the end we’re all hypocrites. Jo got pot stickers and a piece of pizza and pointed out that I had amassed selections from four different Asian cuisines. My Chinese and Indian were good. My Japanese and Thai less so.

Back on the road I called ahead for a place to stay and we ruled out Saratoga Springs as too expensive. Instead, we would do Amsterdam, not the one with the canals and the Van Gogh’s of course but the one with the Mohawk as in River and canal as in Erie. Our ice cream break this afternoon was in Herkimer, NY and as we were searching for soft serve we passed a diner with a banner that made me pull over. If you ever see a bumper sticker that reads, “I Brake for Weirdness” buy it for me and I’ll reimburse you. The banner read “World’s Largest Omelet Pool Table”. As I was bounding through the door I rethought things and concluded I’d misled myself. Surely, what this really meant was the diner made huge breakfasts and had a room to shoot billiards in after you ingested one.

I was wrong. I mean, I was right the first time. The owner, Scott Tranter has huevos big time and was more than happy to show me his pictures of the 41,040 egg finished project which was hatched outside the diner just last month. It didn’t even qualify for the Guinness Book of Records, he said, “Because the Europeans think the way we raise our chickens is cruel.” Jo thought I might be cracking up because I was asking so many questions and as soon as we left I assured her my egg encounters on this trip were over.

Tonight I played what I consider Jo’s golf— we went to the movies. Jo grew up at the movies in Rockland and one of our perks moving to Maine will be a lifetime free pass at the Strand Theater that her grandparents built. Jo loves the movies. All kinds of movies. We went to see Inception and walked out after an hour and a half when Jo turned to me and said, “This is awful.” I already had my review ready or at least a theory about Inception’s conception. If you had Timothy Leary tripping and had him playing Grand Theft Auto and then put that inside the snowy shaky from the last episode of St. Elsewhere… It was that weird. I felt bad about our fleeing this disaster of a movie because I had picked it. Jo wanted to see Eat Pray Love but I had her check the website Rotten Tomatoes and it had gotten a dreaded green splat from the critics, whereas Inception was rated red and therefore the obvious choice to me. Again, I have to admit I’m a film snob and won’t do green. Now, that’s wouldn’t do green. Rotten Tomatoes is no longer going to rule my life and ruin my wife’s evening again. At dinner my face was red with apology and had egg all over it.

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Day 21

Thursday, August 19

There is no reason to ever go out of your way to visit Amsterdam, NY, but there is no denying that there is something powerful you can take away from seeing it. As we drove out of town we passed a half dozen big old factory buildings, rotting shells of American industry. Some were dead and empty, others appeared to be still breathing but barely. Less than a century ago hundreds of towns like Amsterdam were no doubt like hundreds in China today, roaring with the noise of production and alluring with the availability of jobs. Getting to Amsterdam we had passed the homes of Remington, the gun maker and Beech Nut, the baby food. Both looked as they probably have for decades, still alive but not outwardly modernized and so appearing majestically worn out. Opportunities here are now probably greatest at hospitals and Indian casinos, taking care of the damaged or taking advantage of the dreamers.

And then it was on to the racetrack in Saratoga Springs. I’d come to the town once before for a date with a girl from Skidmore about 40 years ago. My memory of it does not serve me well and ends sometime about halfway through happy hour. The town is bigger than I thought. Jo stopped to look in the window of a store called Lilly Pulitzer. I know the Pulitzer Prize but had never heard of the dress designer and Jo couldn’t believe it. She said this Pulitzer’s work in prints was popular when I was in college. I thought, but didn’t say, that in college I never noticed the skirt, only what was inside it.

While she went inside to browse at the clothes she used to wear (I would have noticed Jo back then.) I found a store that turned out to have what has to be one of the largest collections of books about horse racing anywhere. I think I’ve only ever read two books having to do with the Sport of Kings. One was Sea Biscuit and the other was many years earlier entitled Laughing in the Hills. It was non-fiction and terrific and about a racetrack and its characters near San Francisco called Golden Gate Fields. The author was Bill Barich. I discovered on a shelf that he’d written a follow up after moving to Ireland and purchased it.

After lunch where we both had Rachel sandwiches— that’s a Reuben with turkey (Who knew?), we headed for the track. I had taken Jo to Santa Anita last year where we sat in the clubhouse and saw Mel Brooks and the headmaster of Harvard-Westlake among those parked in handicapping spaces. Saratoga Springs track is quaint (in operation since 1864) and well maintained but Santa Anita is a lot prettier. I was determined to win a race and accomplished that easily by betting on all seven horses in the 2nd race to finish first. That cost me $14 dollars and I’m sure is pretty stupid but the winner paid $12 so I considered that a reasonable return on my investment, especially when I compare it with my ex-broker’s work before I got out of individual stocks and went all mutual funds on my own this sping.

Jo sat down out of the sun and I roamed a bit underneath the grandstand looking for something interesting to photograph or somebody interesting to talk to. For the former I found the IRS camera window. It’s where, I was informed, you have to go to be photographed if you win more than $600 on a bet or if your winning ticket was on a long shot of 300 to 1 or more.

For the latter I found myself in a dilemma. It happened when I saw a man in a wheelchair with a respirator and other people tending to him. I thought I knew what I was looking at— an ALS patient. When one of the men with him went to the water fountain and sat down I sat down beside him. I introduced myself and asked some questions. Yes, his father had been diagnosed with ALS over a year ago and now could no longer speak or move. He communicated only by blinking his eyes. He wanted to come to the races and his family had made the trip from Massachusetts. The son said it has been really hard to deal with his illness.

I told him about the friend I had who died from ALS two years ago. I only really got to know him just before he was diagnosed and during the last year of his life spent a lot of time with him. I told him about how the progression of the disease had played out with my friend and how incredibly brave he was. I told him what a horrible disease ALS is since the victim’s mind is totally unaffected but gets isolated by a body that locks itself up and throws away the key. We sort of compared notes and when we finished he thanked me for the talk. My dilemma was my motivation for wanting to have the conversation in the first place. Did I really want to see if I could help the guy or did I just want another story to write about? I still don’t know how to answer that but do know that I don’t miss asking people who have lost their homes in a fire or loved ones in a plane crash to give me a soundbite.

We left after the 4th race and headed for Manchester, VT. At 4:01 p.m. we crossed into New England. For a while finding a place for dinner was a bit of a drama. Yelp was no help and, despite all the shi-shi shopping, Manchester hasn’t apparently yet made the rounds with the ChowHounds. So, we looked in the windows. The first place under glass we checked was the fanciest and called Bistro Henry. It had chicken Parmesan for $25. The second spot had a party going on and we departy-ed quickly. The next was like a homey hunting lodge and had chicken Parmesan for $25. Finally, we settled on the “neighborhood” Italian that had chicken Parmesan for $25. So, as far as restaurants go here it’s laissez-faire home economics or let’s just call it Manchester united. I thought of complaining to the local restaurant association but I know what they’ll say, do you?

Here goes: “How you gonna keep em down on the Parm after they’ve seen Bistro Henry?” (Remember, you can stop reading any time.)

We have now completed three weeks on the road and we’re going to make it home tomorrow night. So far, we’ve traveled 5,014 miles. We’re tired but happy.

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Day 22

Friday, August, 20

The motel we stayed at outside Manchester last night is owned and operated by a Polish couple. They bought it after living in NYC for a number of years. For the husband Vermont was love at first sight, for his wife it’s still a work in progress. Jo and I know that there is a risk we might not cozy up to Camden as much as we hope to. It’s small, the winter is cold and long. I haven’t lived through real winter since 1972. Jo hasn’t since 1986. We’ll give it our best shot. New England days like today though make you glad you came, mid 70s, nice breeze, biscuit clouds. I played my third and last round of golf of the trip at Equinox Golf Course. It sits between two gorgeous green mountain ranges and once again golf has expropriated an exceptional landscape just so people like me can self-flagellate themselves on a beautiful day.

Although Vermont is over a hundred miles from the ocean I managed to hit into seven sand traps on the first eleven holes. Might as well have been at the beach. For a number of shots my direction marker was the tallest steeple in the village. I was playing alone and couldn’t tell anyone until now that it made me imagine I was a rebel priest, reveling in taking aim at the church. Do you think mixing puns with putts might rile the steeliest nerved competitor? I might try it when I sign up for senior tournaments at my new home course in Rockland. The strategy might also land me a DQ, which in golf doesn’t stand for Dairy Queen.

Jo didn’t walk with me today because she wanted to explore Manchester and now, after casting about she wants to learn how to fly fish. There’s a school for that here, she discovered, and it has the ultimate pedigree. Manchester is the home of the Orvis Company, founded by Charles Orvis in 1856. Orvis claims to be the oldest manufacturer of fishing rods and America’s first mail order company. I’m all for us learning, fly fishing has devotees as obsessed as golfers. It’s done in beautiful places and, I assume, has highs that keep you hooked and lows that leave you reeling.

We rolled out of Manchester without enrolling on our way to Hanover, NH for the evening. Jo’s close college friend Judy Colla lives there and her husband Stan is a Dartmouth alum who was at the college both before and after I was. He took time out to serve in Vietnam. Vermont’s mountains and trees had rendered our GPS almost useless or maybe because there were so many back road options it was paralyzed with indecision.  So, the moment for the rarely used old veteran to come off the bench and enter the game had arrived.  I opened a map. It showed a reasonably straightforward route to Hanover that I decided we’d take and then at the last instant I changed my mind and picked what I thought might be the more scenic ride. What happened next was truly serendipitous.

Outside Weston, VT we saw something that startled us— a whale. Not just any whale, but a whale we knew. A magnificent whale we had encountered for the first time several years ago in South Thomaston, ME and had remained in our consciousness ever since. The Art of the Sea Gallery in South Thomaston has mostly miniature models of ships and paintings and photographs with nautical themes. It also has carvings of whales and we almost bought one the first time we went in but then decided to wait until we finally moved to Maine. Now, an example of our whale was hanging on a signpost with an arrow pointing down a dirt road to “Whales of Vermont”, the workshop of Wick Ahrens. Two Australian sheep dogs greeted us at the door. Inside Wick was seated at his desk and hooked up to oxygen for his emphysema. We had a nice visit and learned that Wick had lived in California for a good part of his life after growing up in Vermont. He told us he learned to carve whales from a neighbor when he was young.

He’s been doing it a long time and one thing he said about that really made an impression on me. “You’d think I’d get tired of doing it but I don’t because it isn’t crap!” I thought about my taking a buyout to be rid of my job at ABC News and realized that for too many years I had no longer found it fun or fulfilling. What I was being asked to do was mostly crap. Add to it that I was often working for people I didn’t respect much and you have the end of what had been a lovely love affair. We had to decide on which whale we wanted to take home and after a tough deliberation we chose the white one Jo is holding in the picture. We drew out the checkbook and harpooned our Moby Dick.

While we were with Wick he asked me to get him another tank of oxygen from outside where he had them stacked like firewood. Years of smoking and inhaling sawdust have left him as dependent on supplemental air as an astronaut on the moon. He took us into his workshop before we left and although I know very little about woodworking it appeared to be a place used by somebody who was very good at what he does.

We got to Hanover and told Judy Colla as many stories from our trip as we deemed sufferable for her. After so many that were exhilarating Judy asked me what has been the low point of the trip? I looked at her and said, ”There hasn’t been one yet.”

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Day 23

Saturday, August 21

Tom Rush was a folksinger I liked and listened to in the 60s. I don’t know if he’s still performing or even alive. My favorite song of his is called Urge for Going and it starts “I woke up today and found snow perched on the town. It hovered in a frozen sky and gobbled summer down.” Joni Mitchell composed it but when Rush sings it, he owns it. Last night at the Colla’s in Hanover I put on my fleece. This morning by the time we hit the road I didn’t need it and there certainly wasn’t any snow on Dartmouth’s green but Jo and I had had our first welcome back to the seasons as we both used to know them. Summer is winding down and if it decides to grant an encore it will come back on stage as Indian summer.

Indian summer… I know what it means but did you know how we came to adopt the expression? Best guesses are it was the time of year when Indians harvested their crops, or, like the term Indian giver, it was meant to be denigrating as in false summer. This is a bit of an awkward way to make a point, but for days I’ve wanted to and haven’t. As we’ve traveled across the country the only Native Americans I’m aware I’ve encountered were those working at the visitor’s center in the Badlands of South Dakota. We may have lassoed their lands and cow punched out their culture, but every day on every highway I’ve noticed we haven’t bothered to take down their signs. From Coos Bay to Chippewa Falls, from Spokane to Seneca, Walla Walla to Winnebago so many things in so much of the country are named for Indians. They gave us the Mohawk haircut and the Shasta soft drink. We gave them measles and smallpox. Do I feel guilt over this? Do you? But what it does make me realize is how short our (as in since Columbus, the colonies and wagon trains) country’s history really is.

Before leaving New Hampshire we stopped for booze near Concord. The state liquor store was mobbed with out of staters like us taking advantage of New Hampshire’s “Live Free or Die” no sales or income tax tradition. Their license plates should perhaps be revised to read, “Tax Free so Buy”.

Now, it was time for one of the bigger moments of our journey. We were going to cross into Maine over the Piscataqua River Bridge on I-95. The deal would become official and at the border we would hand in our designer cupcakes and precious sushi in exchange for whoopi pies and lobster rolls. Soon my rigueur le drive would be history, too. The only time I’ve worn shoes in three weeks has been to play golf. I love my Rainbow flip-flops. And the only time I haven’t been in shorts is when we went out for dinner to Café Sport in San Francisco and when I ran out of clothes in Midland. But not so fast!  Wait a second. What’s this? Where are we? Our trip had begun with a terrible traffic jam on the way out of Los Angeles and now we were in one just as horrendous within a mile of the Promised Land. Worse, we had to pee. As Ms. GPS squawked orders we disobeyed them. We desperately sought relief before refuge.

Minutes later and feeling much better we proceeded through Portsmouth and Jo learned that there is a second lesser bridge to Kittery that we took across state lines. And there it was, the sign stating we had arrived— “Welcome To Maine— The Way Life Should Be”. Jo was pumping her fist and uttering yeses exponentially. It reminded me of Meg Ryan at the deli with Billy Crystal in When Harry Met Sally. I was excited, too but thinking to myself, how does Maine back up this claim? And could I see the language in the warranty? Not to worry. I know what Caveat Emptor means and what happens if the natives don’t like ME? That could make me Persona Au Gratin like I hear the French Canadians are hereabouts and then I’d be fried. We passed the smaller but equally user-friendly other Portland and headed down the coast. Yes, DOWN the coast to the northeast. Get used to it. I have.

We passed Freeport, home of L.L. Bean and Brunswick, home of Bowdoin College. Next was Bath where they build Navy ships, then Wiscasset where Red’s, a little hot dog/lobster roll stand had a line longer than Pink’s in Hollywood. Waldoboro, Damariscotta, Thomaston then Rockland and a required stop at Jo’s parents’ house— not just to see them but to get a key to our house. I had stupidly packed ours and it got here before us and was locked in our house. Jo’s daughter Drew and her husband Aaron were there as well as Jo’s sister Lynn. It was great to see them all and I got a beer from the fridge and toasted myself. The last seven miles and our best view of the Atlantic Ocean after we left Rockland to go down to Camden. For natural beauty the Penobscot Bay can hold its own with any in the world and although our house doesn’t have an ocean view we can walk to one in five minutes.

It was after six when we arrived at 10 Kim’s Way and the house we bought last fall. The woman who built it named it after her daughter. She took the street sign with her when she left. When the town replaced it without our even having to ask, another apostrophe made a clean getaway. Jo and Peter’s Drive to Maine was over after 23 days, 14 states and one province. Final mileage: 5,365. In front of our door was a box that had been sent from the Red Lion in Richland, WA. Our wayward pillows had made it, too. We have seen a great deal of America but not nearly all there is to see. Some day soon we want to do another road trip. Maybe the entire length of U.S. Route 1 should be next from Fort Kent at the top of Maine to the last note in the Key of West. Route 1 is just a couple blocks from us and is Camden’s main street.

But right now we have to unpack. I’ve got to call on Monday to have our propane service restored so we can use our stove and have the cable company come out to wire us for the Internet and TV. Contrary to what some people believe, Maine is not off the grid, it merely has to stretch a little to reach it. I’m going to have to make a run to the town dump, join the Y, the public library, Rockland’s golf club of course and its little local synagogue in due time, get an oil change, new drivers licenses, change some light bulbs, buy a lawnmower and an ironing board. One of our neighbors has invited us to a pizza party next weekend. There’s an Italian movie we want to see tomorrow night at the Strand…

I guess you can say Jo and Peter now live in Maine. Come see us.

Postscript

I had great fun writing about our trip and maybe one day I’ll pen something as immortal as this. But until then it qualifies as the epitaph…

Get your motor runnin’

Head out on the highway

Lookin’ for adventure

And whatever comes our way

Yeah Darlin’ go make it happen

Take the world in a love embrace

Fire all of your guns at once

And explode into space

— Mars Bonfire

 

 

Day 13

Wednesday, August 11

“90% of life is just showing up.”— Woody Allen

We got a late start this morning and I was feeling tired. Have motel air conditioners given me this cough? But we had ambitious plans for the day and so I rallied and we set out and got lucky right away. Although we were taking a break from roadside America to explore the artistic side of a big city, we had a couple nods to pop culture to make and the first one was to find the house where Mary, Rhoda and Phyllis lived.

There it was at 2104 Kenwood Parkway and the added bonus was driving through the neighborhood, which is upper upscale. Being that Minneapolis is the home of Betty Crocker and the Pillsbury Dough Boy I’d say these digs were built with flour power. The lakeside that Mary is seen walking along at the beginning of every show is nearby and Jo observed that the reason she was always broke was no doubt because she was renting in the poshest part of town.

From Mary’s hood we went to the much heralded Walker Museum and it was here that my cough and fatigue just disappeared. The building is deservedly an architectural landmark. Excuse me for sounding crass but even the bathrooms are worth checking out, which for aging baby boomers isn’t going to be going out of your way.

“In the future everybody will be famous for 15 minutes.”— Andy Warhol

I’m not a big conceptual art fan. I like art to be more simple and direct so I can pronounce judgment on the spot. I vote with my feet and so I usually move through many museums pretty fast. But the Walker’s exhibit called Talent Show blew me away. It really had everything to do with Warhol’s quote, which he amended presciently before he died to, “In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.”

Two pieces in Talent Show in particular made me linger. Both were related to the Internet. One was created by an artist named Adrian Piper in 1970 before cyber space replaced outer space or open space or any other kind of space in becoming a place where we live. She had people write anything they wanted on a blank piece of paper. They could see what others wrote and respond to it or not. What she had strangers create 40 years ago we now know as message boards and chat rooms and the blogosphere.

A couple of my favorites: “Finally, legal graffiti.” “This makes me feel important.” “Thanks for giving me the opportunity to remain anonymous.”

The other project by Amie Siegel was one you or I could do at home if we wanted to take the time but I’m thankful that she thought of doing it for us. My Way is a video compilation from off of YouTube of men singing the song Paul Anka wrote about and for Frank Sinatra.

What grabbed me was the intimacy of most of the performances. Men of all ages alone in their offices or basements singing their hearts out into cyberspace. Some sang really nicely, too. One version that wasn’t sung well at all but was haunting was from a guy with an M-16 hanging on the wall behind him and colored lights flashing all around it and the bottles on the wall of his bar. It was sort of Rambo meets Lawrence Welk and not funny nor sad, but like watching a little kid with no talent who you feel sorry for.

But the best thing that we happened upon in the Walker was a total surprise after we thought we were done. Some months ago the museum hung about 50 paintings from its permanent collection on two walls in one room. The paintings are displayed from floor to ceiling. I didn’t know this was called salon style even though I’ve been to the Barnes in Philadelphia where the eccentric collector who did it this way with his collection even put in his will that his paintings never be rearranged or moved. You may have heard about the documentary “The Art of the Steal” so you know how that worked out.

Anyway, Barnes collected mostly French impressionists. The Walker’s room is full of a lot of the New York School artists and works of other Americans. There’s a wonderful Georgia O’Keefe, and an Edward Hopper that Jo wanted to take home— we bought the kitchen magnet version instead. My favorite was of a guy holding a flower that was painted by Marsden Hartley.

Our only meal out today was a late lunch at a Pizza place called Punch and again the food was outstanding.

After a quick cruise past F. Scott Fitzgerald’s house on the most scenic street in St. Paul we decided the Twin Cities are not identical twins. Think about it. LA has Long Beach, New York has Newark, Philadelphia has Camden, NJ… It’s not a stellar lineup. They’re more like shadows on an X-Ray but St. Paul at least has the distinction of being recognized as Minneapolis-St. Paul, making it seem at least a blood relation to its more highfalutin neighbor.

Back to Minneapolis and our trek to the Mary Tyler Moore statue downtown seemed more like we were fulfilling an obligation. I’m sure MTM will be tossing her hat forever in front of Macy’s but if you ask me, and you shouldn’t, it’s a statue of limitations– doesn’t look like Mary.

Our final event pushed our day here off the charts. After standing in line for an hour for Rush Tickets we got to see a great performance of A Street Car Named Desire at the Guthrie Theater.  What a wonderful place and, as we were in Rush limbo we noticed a lot of young people were waiting with us. Neat! A common denominator among them and us was none of us had tattoos, at least visibly.

“I’m not going to be hypocritical, I’m going to be honestly critical.”— Blanche DuBois

I’d only seen Elia Kazan’s film of Streetcar with Brando. Tonight, Jo and I agreed Blanche’s performance was a knockout and Stanley’s took a back seat but the revelation of the evening for me was how much Jackie Gleason and the Honeymooners cribbed from Tennessee Williams– “One of these days Alice–pow! Straight to the moon.”

So it was another fabulous day, a Frank Stella Kowalski day you could say and I just did. So give me a W please Vanna and it’s on Wisconsin.

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Day 14

Thursday, August 12

A day of crossings for us. This morning it was over the Mississippi River, this afternoon we reached the Eastern Time Zone and in between we crossed off Wisconsin, perhaps unfairly, as a state we would devote enough time in to only hustle across its belly.

There were stretches of the Dairy State where Jo felt we could have been in Maine and there were others where it looked like the part of Pennsylvania where I grew up. I was checking the countryside for cows and surprisingly, saw very few. I have a soft spot for cows since I milked them for years on the kibbutz where I lived in the 1970s and got to know many personally.

Cows are woefully, no make that udderly in need of union representation since theirs is indeed a life of indentured servitude. Other than providing the basic ingredient that made Ben and Jerry rich, they get to do three things— eat, shit and sleep. If you are searching for evidence that there is a God, I believe cows may be a place to start. The almighty lobotomized the species so they can get through the day. Cows are dumb. Not as dumb as poultry, which is nothing to crow about, but cows are like the guy who worked his entire life in an unappreciated menial job, retired with his gold watch and dropped dead the next week. Fortunately, we don’t recycle ourselves as hot dogs.

We did have a dandy dairy experience in Wausau, WI though when we stopped for lunch at a restaurant where I noticed that Jo was the only woman in the place who didn’t have white hair. Our hamburgers, we were told, could come with cheese curds. Neither Jo nor I had ever heard of cheese curds and although the cheese part was enticing, the curds part made me think of Iraq. We both opted for them although Jo had hers on the side.

So, what’s a cheese curd? Seems to me it’s like a piece of unfinished business down at the processing plant. You know those orange cheese twists? Cheese curds look like that on the outside but when you bite into one the melted cheese inside stays attached like a kite string from your mouth back to your plate. Jo offered me her curds but I said, “If I ate your curds, I’d have to weigh myself immediately.” (Jo is a good sport to put up with such constant punishment, wouldn’t you say?)

We got to Escanaba (rhymes with ass-ya-fa-the) at dusk and walked around its lighthouse on the shore of Lake Michigan before dinner. I asked some teenagers to go jump in the lake for a picture. Had them do it twice actually. It’s great to stage shots now for pleasure instead of work.

The place we chose for dinner tonight was because an Internet reviewer claimed Barons served the only good food on the upper peninsula. We both had fish and I got linguini with clams as a side. Never had that option before. The meal was fine but nothing to Yelp about and the place was from a different era. Waitresses in uniforms serving in the dark, cloth tablecloths and napkins and music from the past. The Four Tops may rule in Detroit but the Four Freshmen own Escanaba.

We have now completed two weeks on the road and Jo and I agree we have not tired of traveling nor each other. Our Volvo has taken us 3,737 miles into ten states. We are still over a thousand miles from Camden.

You know the scene in Trains, Planes and Automobiles where Steve Martin and Edie McClurg have it out at the rental car counter? Edie’s upper Midwestern accent is as grating as a day’s worth of Mozzarella at Domino’s. Well, I’ve heard some people talk like that in the past few days but only a few. And maybe it’s because everybody appreciates our profligate spending that people have been extremely nice everywhere we’ve been. Unlike Edie’s final words to Steve, nobody has told us we’re fucked yet.

My big travel tip to this point: Don’t put your motel room card key in the same pocket with your cell phone.

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Day 15

Friday, August 13

We had some unfinished business to attend to before leaving Escanaba. Both Jo and I had spotted neon signs we wanted to get pictures of this morning, old neon on Escanaba’s old main street that hadn’t been turned on after dark last night and probably no longer works anyway.

As I was taking my first shot of the Stardust a guy dressed in camouflage started yelling at me. “What are you taking a picture of that place for? That’s a whore bar!” I explained to him I wasn’t looking for hookers but was hooked on pictures of neon signs and he seemed disappointed. Jo got a great shot of the “Michigan” theater marquee, but as we walked around, old main street smelled like a wet sleeping bag.

So many places we’ve been through have been like Escanaba, although usually less depressing, the old downtowns replaced by “The Strip”, a commercial gauntlet of chain stores and characterless architecture that I can’t begin to imagine anybody feeling nostalgic about 50 years from now.

We drove away up the western side of Lake Michigan and picnicked at a rest area, splitting ham and cheese and cream cheese and olive sandwiches and opening a bag of South Dakota style potato chips that had come on board in Rapid City.

We drove on, and as Jo remarked later, we sort of lost our Mojo for a bit. First, we realized that if we had waited just a few more minutes we could have had our meal lakeside instead of on the other side of the road in the woods. No biggie but the scenery we were seeing barely warranted the little dots depicting the scenic route advertised in our atlas so an opportunity lost to cull the best from it was a misfortune being that luck has shined on us so brightly so far.

Then I started to see signs for pasties. Of course they couldn’t be the pasties I was familiar with and they weren’t. A pastie is an upper Michigan meat pie brought here by miners from the UK and is pronounced past-tee. We stopped at a place that had some and they looked lumpy and ugly, like knishes in need of cosmetic surgery or burritos after getting roughed up at a Tea Party rally. I still wanted to have one but I’d just eaten lunch… usually doesn’t stop me but I kept thinking of Sweeney Todd.

As we passed a long stretch of beach, we thought about stopping for a swim but didn’t. A little further along we walked a breakwater toward a lighthouse and I got my answer as to whether the water in the Great Lakes ever gets rough. We would have had our swim or worse if we had tried to actually reach the lighthouse door.

We crossed the Mackinac Bridge, which straddles Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and for the first time the entire trip paid a toll. Our plan was to take a ferry out to Mackinac Island. It’s like a glitzier Monhegan Island in Maine, but its gateway, Mackinaw City, was crowded and motel rooms were pricey so we decided to pass through and as luck would have it we made the right decision.

I did a fair amount of research for our trip but I missed some things and Bay View and Petoskey, MI were two of them. In an instant the search party for our missing Mojo was called off. As soon as we saw Bay View we knew we were finished floundering about where to stop for the evening. Bay View was founded in the late 19th century as a Methodist retreat and families have passed down its Victorian cottages for generations. It’s definitely a gem just to drive around.

After finding a motel, we drove a little further to Petoskey for dinner and got our second surprise. The name is actually a mangled tribute to an Indian chief and the town is as chic as Mackinaw City appeared touristy. Jo sometimes calls me a reverse snob, by which she means in a nutshell that I get rhapsodic about a cheese steak but look down on filet mignon. She’s right and I’m trying to mend my ways. Yes, I’ll take Petoskey. You can have Escanaba. I’ll drink to that and we did.

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Day 16

Saturday, August 14

I now know that I measure time differently than when I was younger. This morning my pillbox was empty and I thought, “Wow, I can’t believe the week went by that fast!” and now that I’m retired the weekend really isn’t different from weekdays. Truth be told it wasn’t much different during my career with ABC either. Much of the news doesn’t matter what day it is.

We cruised Bay View to see the retreat cottages one last time. Most are modest, one with columns looked to me like a miniature fraternity house, but there were some large homes, too. Undoubtedly, among the Methodists there are both holy and high rollers.

After heading south for at least a half hour I realized I’d gotten us on the wrong road. I haven’t been using our GPS much the last few days because the drives have been straight forward. There was no need to backtrack, we just turned west for the better part of an hour and headed for a town called Charlevoix, pronounced locally shar-le-voy. I don’t know French but I wonder if that would illicit a grunt in Paris.

I’m sort of ambivalent about our car gadgets. The GPS was great for getting around in Minneapolis but my mistake today because we weren’t using it actually allowed us to see some beautiful rolling countryside. This side of Lake Michigan has curves which is, I’m sure, a reason it’s preferred. In addition to water sports, fishing and hunting, this is a big golf destination and there’s skiing, too. It’s a year round playground and we’ve passed several airports with private jets lined up like cars in a parking lot.

But back to the GPS. It’s useful when you’re looking for lodging and restaurants and you have no Internet access through your phone. We don’t and are at the mercy of the kindness of hostelries with free WiFi. It’s hard to remember travel when you used paper maps that unfolded to the size of a kite or when you stopped at gas stations or other businesses to ask for directions. First came the telephone answering machines and pagers and then the cell phones and email– a tether that is also a noose. We’re instantly available and impatient when we can’t get things instantly ourselves.  Convenience has turned into addiction.

I feel somewhat similar about our iPod. It’s great to have two years worth of music in a cigarette case, but part of traveling for me used to be the radio stations I listened to along the way. I enjoyed catching some ag news from stations in Montana and South Dakota earlier on this trip, but the syndicated talk show screamers can sour a sunny day for me. Where did you go Bob and Ray?

We had lunch in Charlevoix as soon as we got there. Jo knows how to bring an Imber Death March to a halt without even screeching. It was a fish and chips place and after the first bite we agreed the best we ever tasted. They used whitefish exclusively and if I’d known that whitefish could be this good, my whole Bar Mitzvah would have ended differently. The cole slaw was incredible, too. We guessed the secret there— sugar.

Charlevoix was cute and crowded. There was a big arts and crafts fair taking place and frankly, we didn’t want to be around so many people but before we left Jo bought a tee-shirt inscribed with “Lake Michigan/Unsalted” and I got two etchings of baseball parks past (Connie Mack Stadium) and present (Dodger Stadium) from the guy who had created them.

On we drove toward Traverse City where we thought we might do our laundry and I might have my last chance to pick up a pastie to go. But as I called around for a motel it was quickly apparent that rooms were about as hard to get at the last minute on a Saturday night here in 2010 as dates at the then all male Dartmouth College were for me on any given Saturday night in the 1960s. (I wish I were exaggerating.)

Goodbye, Traverse City! We had been juggling two options for the evening that would have required driving out of town anyway. One, was to go to the Cherry Bowl Drive-In which is still in business after 56 years; the other, to attend a recital at the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

But we still needed a place for the night and I had no idea it would end of being a first for us. Tonight, we have our own private log cabin. It doesn’t have air conditioning and I don’t want to sound like a wimp but it was about 90 today and muggy. The plumbing and electrical are funky but the polka party that was going on nearby just ended and the traffic on the highway outside our door is dying down. Hey, who said we couldn’t rough it?

Oh, and we chose the recital at Interlochen over the movies. It was by participants in an adult band camp who had come for a week from all over the country. We were hoping we’d hear performances by people who were this close to Carnegie Hall but what I came away with was a better appreciation for professional musicians and just how good they are. I think my watching these performers was just like them watching me play golf. I put my heart and soul into it but I’m just not that accomplished nor gifted. I can appreciate their passion and their effort though.

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Day 17

Sunday, August 15

Under the heading everything old is new again we travel with a night-light. It’s totally age appropriate. However, in the middle of the night in our log cabin it was still so dark that I wasn’t prepared for the discovery that the way to the bathroom was like walking up a ramp in a parking garage.

As I returned on the down ramp Jo was pushing buttons on the fan. The humidity was still bothersome but it had cooled off. She asked me how to stop the thing. I told her to just pull the plug out of the wall and we went back to sleep. I like when I think I’m a genius.

This morning we got up early and left without showering. The one in the bathroom in our log cabin looked like an MRI chamber turned upright so no shower was no problem and anyway, we were headed to get some exercise at a golf course called Arcadia Bluffs. It’s one I’ve always wanted to play and I assured Jo it would be a great walk.

On the way we passed the Cherry Bowl Drive-In we’d chosen to pass on last night and stopped to take pictures. It looked like a diorama from the 50s. Not a sad one but so low tech with the little speakers you attach to your car window and so innocent with the swings and playground stuff under the big screen.

At Arcadia Bluffs the wind was blowing hard and I expected to be humbled but not quite the way it happened. I don’t like golf carts and I opted not to take one. The three other guys I was paired with had them. Two had their wives riding with them. Jo walked with me and after a few holes I realized we were the only two walkers on the entire golf course. If there had been any mountain goats, they would have had golf carts. We got one for ourselves after nine holes.

Arcadia Bluffs is one of the most fantastic natural settings golf has ever intruded upon. It sits above Lake Michigan and its holes simply follow the terrain and winds through the dunes. Michigan, at least what we’ve seen the past couple days, has surprised us. I sure didn’t know about it. Maybe the people here don’t want the rest of us to show up and spoil it.

At one point I heard one of my playing partners telling Jo that if Michigan had mountains, it would be the most beautiful state in the country. She wasn’t buying it. A little later he tried the line on me and I was ready. “If Marilyn Monroe hadn’t had boobs, would we have ever heard of her?” My new friend was ready, too. “If the queen had balls, she’d be king.”… I hit my next shoot.

There was one other thing about this golf course— the clubhouse. Remember the house in the wheat field in Days of Heaven? (Its director Terrance Malick is the J.D. Salinger of Hollywood.) This one sits atop the dunes like a giant gun turret and fortunately can’t fire back at all of us golfers taking shots toward it. Someday, I bet we’ll see it in a movie. I just hope it isn’t Halloween XXII.

We had lunch on the clubhouse patio so we could take in the view a little longer. I’ve rarely seen a blue as beautiful as the water in Lake Michigan appeared today. Even the clouds above it had a blue tint like my clothes have after I’ve put darks in with the whites in the washing machine.

Most afternoons we take an ice cream break and today when we stopped Jo pointed out that while we’d seen lots of little ice cream places, we hadn’t seen a single frozen yogurt store for days. We really aren’t in California anymore.

Our destination this evening was Midland, MI and our mission was to solve a mystery. Jo’s son in law had been here earlier in the week. Aaron’s a writer/editor for Dwell magazine and we hadn’t been able to reach him to find out the purpose of his visit to Midland.

Googling around we thought it might be to research an article about an architect named Alden Dow whose residence and studio are in Midland and whose father was the founder of Dow Chemical, which is also headquartered here. As we drove downtown for dinner we realized that this whole town is Dow-town, the library, the gardens, the baseball field… Yes you can say the Dows endowed the place but I won’t.

We had a hybrid pizza on Main Street (by that I mean Jo gets her half and I get mine and the difference is that one half probably gets a thumbs up from the American Heart Association and the other spam email from a mortuary) and realized that right across from us was more likely the reason Aaron was here. The H hotel looked very hip and the kind of place Dwell likes to showcase. So, afterward we went over there to ask some questions.

I was virtually out of clothes and all I had left to wear tonight was my Sturgis tee shirt with the biker babe high on the hog. That’s probably why I got the strange looks and no help when I asked at the desk if an Aaron Brit from Dwell magazine had been a guest recently. In fact they probably thought Jo and I were husband and wife bounty hunters. And yes, he’d been there and was doing an article about the hotel. Mystery solved!

We drove back to our motel—The Sleep In—where the desk person was busy texting and didn’t even look up as we walked by–and my Sturgis tee shirt felt totally in keeping with the ambiance. After watching the latest episode of Madmen I took the first Pepsid of the trip before going to bed. The heartburn topping was only on my half of the pizza.

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