tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-32989174787655256142024-03-17T20:03:36.316-07:00The Tardy TimesLynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadt, newly minted empty-nesters, take victory lap around the United States in a Toyota minivan.Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.comBlogger47125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-2328246865425989832010-01-25T21:21:00.000-08:002010-02-05T12:41:27.264-08:00Table of Content: The Wrapup<span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notes From Lynn:</span><br /><br />A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">– John Steinbeck, “Travels With Charley”</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dear Reader:</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kMXDyY5lZDkzuAGcwga9hAlawSGn0YbywV1KIxGkt57kYGHogOPHs4A7bPvXTVW7lKHDBQEgnMpcIMHDFjn-MQlDi5A5rOkNUelxZTPtIlTEESC3nzVkUsHHGyp2z1gaz-j_RzCNGho/s1600-h/kenny+nd+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 273px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi7kMXDyY5lZDkzuAGcwga9hAlawSGn0YbywV1KIxGkt57kYGHogOPHs4A7bPvXTVW7lKHDBQEgnMpcIMHDFjn-MQlDi5A5rOkNUelxZTPtIlTEESC3nzVkUsHHGyp2z1gaz-j_RzCNGho/s320/kenny+nd+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431964886028751986" border="0" /></a><br />Roadside attractions tend to blur in our minds after three months of driving. To refresh our memory and to devise something like a table of contents, or table of content, this is a listing of most of the places we visited from California all the way to, uh, California. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Kenny and Margo, in Oberlin, Ohio. Below, Lynn studies history at the Oregon beach where Lewis and Clark </span><span style="font-style: italic;">found the Pacific Ocean.)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7aKh_z-Ft-cVGHp0yQugg_t-veFlm5HU2vbd_IE-shBI4Ki28O8XsVUJOdjMqyXbV0e5Hf-CqTSij87KrgNe11IOM_MhpNLUs0QiX5Sk7y2FlpMsQgUfEsqT3LB5NuE4019F5ebOvHsw/s1600-h/lynn+studies+the+iredale.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 296px; height: 257px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7aKh_z-Ft-cVGHp0yQugg_t-veFlm5HU2vbd_IE-shBI4Ki28O8XsVUJOdjMqyXbV0e5Hf-CqTSij87KrgNe11IOM_MhpNLUs0QiX5Sk7y2FlpMsQgUfEsqT3LB5NuE4019F5ebOvHsw/s320/lynn+studies+the+iredale.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431858942675120354" border="0" /></a>We tagged most of these thumbnail items with the title of the article. If more than one refers to the same article, we put the tag at the end of the string.<br /><br />You can read individual reports by checking the “Blog Archive” column on the right side of this page. Or you can go to the search box on the upper left and write a word, such as “Havasu,” and a click will send you to the report entitled “A Tale of Two Cities.”<br /><br />Speaking of cities, at the end of this report is a list of the cities on our circuit around most of the country. In a separate report, "What We Learned," we got into the practical side of our journey. It list the friends and relations we visited as well as campgrounds and motels where we stayed.<br />If you have questions: <span style="font-style: italic;">ludstadt2009@gmail.com</span><br /><br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">Thanks for joining us in this adventure.</span><br /><br /> <div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"> Lynn Ludlow </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /> </span><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;"> Margo Freistadt </span><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINre6t4eAet43sxqOMZJxHOTrQK6GIyY1v7t8tJ7N2ACaX4QBwrCr_rSlnR_Ta2f_oeVNNwKpK9NEVMlPpE9_TGYOWp0TYtjxFLlnAyeIasnGKN4T677K7Gprlulp031cNTJ7vp4rK6k/s1600-h/us+map_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 537px; height: 390px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgINre6t4eAet43sxqOMZJxHOTrQK6GIyY1v7t8tJ7N2ACaX4QBwrCr_rSlnR_Ta2f_oeVNNwKpK9NEVMlPpE9_TGYOWp0TYtjxFLlnAyeIasnGKN4T677K7Gprlulp031cNTJ7vp4rK6k/s400/us+map_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431895380114859874" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;font-size:180%;" >A Dogged Journey</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">(In order of appearance, West to East and back again)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Sundial Bridge,</span> Redding, Calif.: In a riverside park in a city with ambitions to attract tourists, strollers can cross the spectacular o<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOw7EfUaQBwZiU_fSv2tpj8ZEgMwcOscqZ0kOgUn4jAPs0iJllVDdE8T02nbTU7VL6IQcobqHgcbDTP0KyQCdqOUm_oqeAqABaGamqR1kgi4X9nL5nd6vUspPFvOfGksiAEzH2a49vFg/s1600-h/sundial+bridge.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 152px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghOw7EfUaQBwZiU_fSv2tpj8ZEgMwcOscqZ0kOgUn4jAPs0iJllVDdE8T02nbTU7VL6IQcobqHgcbDTP0KyQCdqOUm_oqeAqABaGamqR1kgi4X9nL5nd6vUspPFvOfGksiAEzH2a49vFg/s320/sundial+bridge.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431876733247999346" border="0" /></a>ne-tower suspension bridge <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span> that anchors the Turtle Bay Park project on the broad but surprisingly fast Sacramento River.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Seeking the Yreka Bakery in a Toyota,” Sept. 24)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Crater Lake,</span> near Medford, Ore. (National Park): The water reflected <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5nriYfh8t6FnSiYWfq-sI3kPFNWeO-41nO5sURsVR3DovK8OpMtxD_8JZejGvTOZrkF8Q-p4m8944IhyphenhyphenO0H3F__-ZAhCxD0OvNqz6pLNiHh9yicWaB-XTyEv1XkpR95XeEo1P9-xI6fg/s1600-h/margo+crater.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 212px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5nriYfh8t6FnSiYWfq-sI3kPFNWeO-41nO5sURsVR3DovK8OpMtxD_8JZejGvTOZrkF8Q-p4m8944IhyphenhyphenO0H3F__-ZAhCxD0OvNqz6pLNiHh9yicWaB-XTyEv1XkpR95XeEo1P9-xI6fg/s320/margo+crater.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434846799862503170" border="0" /></a>the blue of the sky as we shivered a cold blue breeze. We needed the park brochure to remind us that the lake <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left, with Margo)</span> goes down 2,000 feet, deepest in the U.S. (Its average depth is third deepest in the world.) But, like the Grand Canyon, the beautiful scene is as quiescent as a painting. We kept going.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Rogues,” Sept. 21)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dee Wright Observatory,</span> Willamette National Forest (State Route 42, McKenzie Pass, Ore.): Despite the name, it’s not for stargazing. The tower of rocks is built on an ancient river of lava. Apertures in the walls allow you to see the Three Sisters and other peaks.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Roadside Distractions,” Sept. 22)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ida Ludlow’s home</span>, McKenzie Bridge, Ore.: We searched for <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-hYoHjnL01vGM2vVtYkMuAwa_m_OHD-vsrCEYNRkeGHPinvhGagmmRO6rDsD6raiSJdrhb8oLLcxDjtsIh_k2fh3cOWwAQ7bh3ov3GtA3LFB2C7jyZHAAHPVNkL3ot4CrvLEs14lSt9o/s1600-h/mckenzie+river.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-hYoHjnL01vGM2vVtYkMuAwa_m_OHD-vsrCEYNRkeGHPinvhGagmmRO6rDsD6raiSJdrhb8oLLcxDjtsIh_k2fh3cOWwAQ7bh3ov3GtA3LFB2C7jyZHAAHPVNkL3ot4CrvLEs14lSt9o/s320/mckenzie+river.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431864987630531074" border="0" /></a>the home of Lynn’s grandmother. The nearby Forest Service camp is a gem of large sites by the lovely river (<span style="font-style: italic;">at right</span>).<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> (See “The Land of Aasland,” Sept. 24)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kennedy School,</span> Portland, Ore.: An amazing demonstration of imaginative reuse of buildings otherwise threatened by the demolition ball.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">City of Books,</span> Powell’s Books, Portland: It’s so big that Lynn got lost. Powell’s sells 4 million books a year. Susan Sontag called it “the best bookstore in the English-speaking world.”<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chapman School,</span> Portland: The inside of its chimney becomes a roost for thousands of swifts every September.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Glenwood Community Church</span>, Vancouver, Wash.: Rev. Richard Schwab, Lynn’s uncle, was the pastor. Now retired, he is still active in Bible study and scholarship. Sunday attendance: About 1,400 in two services.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all four, see "The City of Books,” Sept. 27)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3xlmbhrPSS4BMh9rABa0QmP82T_3YpyKj2Fq0vVN2DYD6isTWHLUPorJHaF8x7W3coU59iHlZAVnkdX7j7iPwyQSBSgFKYzqELpwVEVJ8YQeEdDpJ17YIQZwuwZaqeOQEfVcb0dsYGG0/s1600-h/bike+sign.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3xlmbhrPSS4BMh9rABa0QmP82T_3YpyKj2Fq0vVN2DYD6isTWHLUPorJHaF8x7W3coU59iHlZAVnkdX7j7iPwyQSBSgFKYzqELpwVEVJ8YQeEdDpJ17YIQZwuwZaqeOQEfVcb0dsYGG0/s200/bike+sign.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431919926533182754" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fort Stevens State Park,</span> near Astoria, Ore.: From the Civil War to the start of the Cold War, it was an Army base at the mouth of the Columbia. It could have become an industrial park or a seaside city, but the state of Oregon stepped in to change the swords of defense into the plowshares of…camping. It has more than 3,700 acres, nine miles of bike trails, six miles of hiking paths, three lakes, miles of beaches and, for us, our pick of more than 500 campsites. Then the minivan’s side door wouldn’t shut. Dang.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Astoria Column</span>, atop Coxcomb Hill in Astoria, Ore.: Climbing 164 spiral steps inside a Trajan-type column bedecked on the outside with murals, we stood on the observation deck to gaze west at the mouth of the Columbia River (“the graveyard of the Pacific”) from the South Jetty at Fort Stevens State Park to Cape Disappointment. To the east, we saw the panorama of the cities of Astoria and Warrenton, the Cascade Range in the distance and the Astoria-Megler Bridge (at 4 miles over the river, it’s the longest truss bridge in the nation). An unexpected treat.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fort Clatsop</span> (National Parks), near Astoria, Ore.: An adroit reproduction of the little fort that housed Lewis and Clark and the Corp of Discovery in 106 days of unending rain in 1805.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For these three, see “Graffiti,” Sept. 28)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Columbia River Maritime Museum</span>, Astoria, Ore.: No hard rains or ocean spray hit us when we boarded the Columbia, the last seagoing lightship on the Pacific Coast. It is now on permanent exhibit, berthed at the museum. With seven galleries and narratives about the great river’s shipwrecks, salmon and sailing vessels, the nonprofit museum is one of the best we visited.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Unblogged)</span><br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">7th Street Theatre</span>, Hoquiam, Wash.: The grand old movie house, a temple of entertainment<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-irJ4vYiorVu_xJ3hyn7aI0NL-hy1BalFJa5HjBWMbqV2ihWHS2M7PSF6K9xQt9UeN6TWpumV-0P349292X6DiLQYp-_eLb-Sp6ya8eW2J5QgUhfdGs7Fsm-r_RBj_zwZ8asUYPW0qlA/s1600-h/eat+%26+get+gas.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 241px; height: 178px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-irJ4vYiorVu_xJ3hyn7aI0NL-hy1BalFJa5HjBWMbqV2ihWHS2M7PSF6K9xQt9UeN6TWpumV-0P349292X6DiLQYp-_eLb-Sp6ya8eW2J5QgUhfdGs7Fsm-r_RBj_zwZ8asUYPW0qlA/s320/eat+%26+get+gas.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431862512291602402" border="0" /></a> when built in 1928, is being restored for drama, concerts, and old movies. It’s also a demonstration of what volunteers can do to preserve our past.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Olympic National Forest</span> (National Park, National Forest) Forks, Wash.: It was raining in the rainforest.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For both, see “Rolling Minivan Gathers No Moss,” Sept. 29, and "Wet Spot" in "The Guppy Chronicles, Jan. 24.") </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Royal Museum of British Columbia</span>, Victoria, B.C.: The First Peoples Gallery includes the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnfGq4lnTGsuHqRrYp2Lhy9lkqHytnTljDR48-Azp-IpwRvRSCP96LtRYjVAHSvQg7-xxzldsEqWzFwZchDLmkfAxrVNOU972yAP-z9k83YuJGP0SrW8-JB_uAce8XKVoHbMhTBjSyFc/s1600-h/flowers+victoria+lynn.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMnfGq4lnTGsuHqRrYp2Lhy9lkqHytnTljDR48-Azp-IpwRvRSCP96LtRYjVAHSvQg7-xxzldsEqWzFwZchDLmkfAxrVNOU972yAP-z9k83YuJGP0SrW8-JB_uAce8XKVoHbMhTBjSyFc/s320/flowers+victoria+lynn.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431877086401120514" border="0" /></a>transplanted home of Jonathan Hunt, a Kwakwaka'wakw chief from Tsaxis (Fort Rupert) Other exhibits show the imaginative masks of the Haida, a tribe nearly extinguished by smallpox. Totem poles grow among the flowers <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span>.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Darth Vader Plays the Fiddle,” Oct. 2)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">University of Montana, Missoula:</span> Lynn’s parents met in the late 1920s at the university where in 1956 he spent half a year on the GI Bill before returning to California. It looks pretty much the same, although the city has blossomed with new subdivisions, population growth and a welcoming attitude toward writers. In any of the coffee shops, expect to stand in line behind at least two novelists, an unpublished poet and a laid-off newspaperman. At the university, we saw a traveling exhibit of Pulitzer Prize photos. Included was a great shot by our colleague and friend, Kim Komenich, now teaching at San Jose State.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Mission Range</span>, St. Ignatius, Mont., and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Flathead Lake</span>, Polson, Mont.: This spectacular range <span style="font-style: italic;">(below)</span> is north of Missoula. We stopped to gaze. Then we came to Flathead Lake, which at 30-by-60 miles is half the size of San Francisco Bay, bigger than <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLEKPwFcuWeYWe6wer-cl-8g5TtxYak1BORo5BbCqOXGV2RG-MBfPc8F4-uCtVaZ_HSGOZ1XM-d7rQ-lfZTuy1uVuAy7rgNrqdetLNhRWQULv25_GyblAibPDaK6rYJinslYaKCmB4IDY/s1600-h/mission+range+2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 258px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLEKPwFcuWeYWe6wer-cl-8g5TtxYak1BORo5BbCqOXGV2RG-MBfPc8F4-uCtVaZ_HSGOZ1XM-d7rQ-lfZTuy1uVuAy7rgNrqdetLNhRWQULv25_GyblAibPDaK6rYJinslYaKCmB4IDY/s320/mission+range+2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431882690048345650" border="0" /></a>Lake Tahoe and not nearly so crowded. Sheltered by the Mission Range, the area’s climate is just right for cherry orchards on the east and grape vines on the west.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Corvallis, Mont.:</span> Lynn’s mother, Melda Schwab Ludlow, is buried in the Corvallis cemetery along with her father, stepmother and other relatives. It’s situated in the foothills of the Sapphire Range and looks down at the Bitterroot Valley where her son was born in the Schwab farmhouse.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all three, see “The Montana Ludlow Legacy Tour,” Oct. 7)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Big Hole National Battlefield</span> (National Park Service), Wisdom, Mont.: Unlike the Civil War battlefields crowded with monuments to the slain, the scene is much the same as it would have appeared in 1877. The Nez Perce warriors, still asleep when the 7th Infantry hit their camp and killed many families in their burning teepees, fought back with such ferocity that the soldiers retreated with heavy losses and cowered in rifle pits until it was safe. Col. John Gibbon called the battle a victory.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gibbonsville, Idaho</span>: Named for the boastful colonel at Big Hole. A boomtown in the 1890s before the silver mines played out, the hamlet was the home town of Lynn’s grandmother, Lillian Hull Schwab.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">U.S. Highway 93</span> in Idaho: No Regret, Mt. Corruption, the Riddler and, at 11,850 feet, the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6w5e0qL3x-wN2hFE3GJ-xvFU9l45CXCQm9hkmj-uINB3kNNrNHF1v-W3hC2Kyis-8hlM9__7AsqK5M_k_q_yEBsvw5WClUFmGMzuBYtGJQazGJLPbTGqtodCKt00UCuI9ZY3yn96QDjc/s1600-h/salmon+river+highway.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6w5e0qL3x-wN2hFE3GJ-xvFU9l45CXCQm9hkmj-uINB3kNNrNHF1v-W3hC2Kyis-8hlM9__7AsqK5M_k_q_yEBsvw5WClUFmGMzuBYtGJQazGJLPbTGqtodCKt00UCuI9ZY3yn96QDjc/s320/salmon+river+highway.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431890056572016258" border="0" /></a>Devil’s Bedstead. Some of the West’s most beautiful mountains overlook this road with some of the West’s most memorable names. Starting with the Salmon River Scenic Bypass, the highway heads south between the Sawtooths on the west and the Lost River Range on the east. More than 100 peaks in Idaho are higher than 11,000 feet. From U.S. 93 we could see Borah Peak, named for the isolationist senator. At 12,668 feet, he looms over the Lost River Valley. (We couldn’t see the river because, of course, it had gone underground. After 100 miles under the lava beds, it percolates upward as springs below Twin Falls and flows into the Snake.)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Craters of the Moon</span> National Monument and Preserve (National Park Service), near Arco, Idaho: If the surface of the moon is anything like this park, tell the astronauts to drop you instead in Kauai.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all four, see “The Indian Hater,” Oct. 10)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qZA-858qD5AsJCtjm9DsNyC3GLZZ5L7ewxQUrxnA-0K4rXF0O5aEMRvxM7bARp0sS5sfZ1pDezWUixhPIPl8Nk4aP5aJIW81gdCgG7LQ4Zg_ND-ejsOQ9vrlD004Qv4eRDhhTiKK3jU/s1600-h/dinosaur+scenery.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5qZA-858qD5AsJCtjm9DsNyC3GLZZ5L7ewxQUrxnA-0K4rXF0O5aEMRvxM7bARp0sS5sfZ1pDezWUixhPIPl8Nk4aP5aJIW81gdCgG7LQ4Zg_ND-ejsOQ9vrlD004Qv4eRDhhTiKK3jU/s320/dinosaur+scenery.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431922368261137666" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dinosaur National Monument</span> (National Park Service) near Jensen, Utah.: Forget the fossils. <span style="font-style: italic;">(View from the campground, at right.) </span>Enjoy the palette of red, orange and beige rocks in shapes arranged by Mother Nature the Artist along the Green River – which is really green. Just outside the park we saw hundreds of sandhill cranes snacking in a newly mown field of corn.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Old Bones,” Oct. 12, and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24.) </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Frasier Meadows</span>, Boulder, Colo.: It lacks meadows, but almost everything else is available at this not-for-profit retirement community where Rebekka Struik, Margo’s mother, is now a resident. She likes it. More than 250 clubs, committees, social and recreational activities are available for lifetime members in apartments for independent living and separate centers for assisted living, skilled nursing and hospice care. We stayed two nights in one of the guest apartments, ate well in the in-house dining rooms and met some of Rebekka’s friends. Some, like her, are retired professors. Several others are old friends from her many years in Boulder. She has abundant opportunities to pursue her activism for progressive issues.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Pine Beetles,” Oct. 15)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Red Cloud</span>, Neb.: Hometown of Willa Cather. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxSAyjKa6yeNLIcgBCu7HAR1rWwoYCL8WdUOscF76JZYnz0zSPElJgQk3qn2lvgnPOOovBhl8hZhA5VnJ7cU-8rf3ecnkE3EWhDANthmo7Ba2kkL9TsTTYBfD9e6P3giJ7LBrrMBvPc4/s1600-h/willa+cather+house.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 209px; height: 184px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzxSAyjKa6yeNLIcgBCu7HAR1rWwoYCL8WdUOscF76JZYnz0zSPElJgQk3qn2lvgnPOOovBhl8hZhA5VnJ7cU-8rf3ecnkE3EWhDANthmo7Ba2kkL9TsTTYBfD9e6P3giJ7LBrrMBvPc4/s320/willa+cather+house.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431877367405544402" border="0" /></a>Her family's home<span style="font-style: italic;"> (at right)</span>. Her bedroom.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Polk Progress</span>, Polk, Neb.: We visited the late Norris Alfred’s now-shuttered print shop.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Platte River</span>, near Central City, Neb.: We saw prairie falcons on Alfred’s “birding road.”<br /> <span style="font-style: italic;">(For all three, see “Progress to Polk,” Oct. 18.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Poor Ralph,</span> Polk, Neb.: Across the street from Alfred's print shop, we found his former columnist, Marsha Redman and her husband, Ralph.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzegRZNLof3tMH-ez8bx08N_ZGUNuxcS_9HnJg_h419__DjpuMUawaRb0d5zSo1EhLX73r9TnDWbwNZu29Ju2hGXlyEKYOg3FwIC_qhw7tiXnlwUsn4XVKOpXFxSXyr4fbjS90I-Ndjbs/s1600-h/quilt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 173px; height: 229px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzegRZNLof3tMH-ez8bx08N_ZGUNuxcS_9HnJg_h419__DjpuMUawaRb0d5zSo1EhLX73r9TnDWbwNZu29Ju2hGXlyEKYOg3FwIC_qhw7tiXnlwUsn4XVKOpXFxSXyr4fbjS90I-Ndjbs/s320/quilt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431924516540611570" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">International Quilt Study Center</span> and Museum, Lincoln, Neb.: It’s the world’s largest collection: More than 2,300 quilts. Plus a “virtual gallery” of 800 quilts that have been digitized and displayed on a big screen.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For both, see “Quiltish,” Oct. 19)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Sauk Centre, Minn.</span>: Hometown of Sinclair Lewis and "Main Street." His home. The cemetery. His job at 17.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bemidji, Minn.</span>: Alleged home of alleged Paul Bunyan and alleged Babe the Blue Ox, both memorialized with wooden statues.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For both, see “The Mainstreeters,” Oct. 23, and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24.) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ishpeming</span>, Mich.: We found the former home and department store built 100 years ago by Lynn’s great-grandfather, Frederick Braastad.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Oberlin and Ishpeming,”</span> Oct. 28)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Saugatuck</span>, Mich.: Art Lane, alumnus of the late, great Champaign-Urbana Courier, proved that owning and editing a small-town newspaper can be immensely satisfying.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> (See “The Carmel of Lake Michigan,” Oct. 29)</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNvzjeQDiC7JoSqdmTSKQ5_sKwYr7TH7gk3I-82nMHPdPOGQuONhdGBNYNRnNwlWUeQDD8UyIhlRvnuAXIoLiO8l6nMTcDwlbbFuaAGyJoXeK9esleWm2fLudOGVzK8Li7KInwt0AbpM8/s1600-h/musicale+kenny+lynn+anabel.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNvzjeQDiC7JoSqdmTSKQ5_sKwYr7TH7gk3I-82nMHPdPOGQuONhdGBNYNRnNwlWUeQDD8UyIhlRvnuAXIoLiO8l6nMTcDwlbbFuaAGyJoXeK9esleWm2fLudOGVzK8Li7KInwt0AbpM8/s320/musicale+kenny+lynn+anabel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431926465482665906" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oberlin</span>, Ohio: We found Kenny and her roommates and her friends from San Francisco. Lynn asked each, “How do you like Oberlin College?” All gave the same answer: “I love it.” We stayed in the Victorian home of Maryann and Clyde Hohn. We played a few tunes with Clyde <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right, Kenny, Lynn, Anabel Hirano). </span>Because the town could be taken for Bedford Falls, we expected to see Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed strolling down sidewalks warmed by autumn’s yellow-red maple leaves.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Oberlin and Ishpeming,” Oct. 28)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Niagara Falls</span>, N.Y., and <span style="font-weight: bold;">Niagara Falls</span>, Ont.: This would be one of the rare occasions when clichés are apt. The waterfall is awesome. Totally. It's the bomb, doozy, cat's pajamas. Blew us away. Whatever. On the Canada side, the vision is corrupted by a helter-skelter amusement district with rides, cotton candy and schlock curiosities.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lundy’s Lane Historical Museum</span>, Niagara Falls, Ont.: Just up the hill from Niagara Falls in Canada, the Battle of Lundy’s Lane in 1814 was one of most vicious in the War of 1812 (or, as the Brits say, the Anglo-American War) It wound up with heavy casualties and a standoff between U.S. forces and British regulars with Canadian militias. As a strategic victory for the redcoats, it put an end to invasions of Canada by the U.S. The Canadians celebrate the battle, which today is all but forgotten in the U.S. We celebrate instead the Battle of New Orleans a year later. It put an end to invasions of the U.S. by Britain, where today it’s all but forgotten. At Lundy’s Lane, the history is interesting; the little museum is pretty lame.<br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">For both, see “Niagara Falls,” Oct. 30, and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24) </span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">George Eastman House and International Museum of Photography of Film</span>, Rochester, N.Y.: As you would expect, the museum holds one of the world’s best collections of Brownies, Kodaks, Instamatics, Speed-Graphics, an Edison Kinetoscope, a daguerreotype outfit, an 18th century camera obscura etc. etc. Margo took a look at the palatial 37-room mansion of the bachelor founder of Eastman Kodak Company.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Erie Canal,</span> New York: We climbed the “Flight of Five” locks at Lockport, N.Y., and visited “Long Level” near Syracuse, N.Y., where Ann and Dale Tussing live in the historical ambience of their 200-year-old house.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4HHk4dMNZIzT5UUKCC5rkUYqMMgKV2-8GqP6sruWFJ_7eaStBzm9YiBrTJq0JItK0U5dO6Tcf3H54bC28B_diuFvnai9-6Bwo5IW0Zuoa7hhRTus7fI5fEtYKRzEsXbmQHwNi66ziTWc/s1600-h/walden+mirror+boat.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4HHk4dMNZIzT5UUKCC5rkUYqMMgKV2-8GqP6sruWFJ_7eaStBzm9YiBrTJq0JItK0U5dO6Tcf3H54bC28B_diuFvnai9-6Bwo5IW0Zuoa7hhRTus7fI5fEtYKRzEsXbmQHwNi66ziTWc/s320/walden+mirror+boat.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431932825117604626" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Walden Pond</span>, Concord, Mass.: We walked around the little lake, its glassy surface broken by a rowboat. Would a boat intrude on the reflections of Henry David Thoreau?<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Semitic Museum</span>, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.: This fascinating array of exhibits from the ancient Near East includes a glimpse of the forgotten civilization of the Hurrians. The free museum’s chief exhibit is a life-size reproduction of an Iron Age home in ancient Israel, a “pillared” house of mud bricks over a stable.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all four, see “The Big Stone House,” Nov. 2)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum </span>(National Park) in Hyde Park, N.Y., near Poughkeepsie. Margo hiked up to Val-Kill, the country retreat now open as the <span style="font-weight: bold;">Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site</span>. We saw the typescript of FDR’s message to Congress on Dec. 7, 1941, in which he took a pencil to the unremarkable opening line –“a date which will live in world history” and changed it, memorably, to “a date which will live in infamy.” Wow.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Walkway Across the Hudson</span>, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. : No longer a railroad bridge, it spans the river as a perch for hikers and falcons.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all three, see “First Lady of the World,” Nov. 6)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New York,</span> N.Y.: Our explorations included the Main Public Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Grand Central Station, New York Times newsroom, New York Daily News newsroom and the cold but fascinating sidewalks of New York.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMBq1slqPpH-IsXrbAq56GHMFRP0pYjWyE-ldwlH5I-xbD3kU3HnPsgtIyMmvV20viTp3j_9MYATBh-NPlZlDkNN1mguBY1YaLKQKHvHmFPY1hiGc_3-v4L1oAP7CD9IotSm6FP7IWeNw/s1600-h/margo+phone+NY.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 177px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMBq1slqPpH-IsXrbAq56GHMFRP0pYjWyE-ldwlH5I-xbD3kU3HnPsgtIyMmvV20viTp3j_9MYATBh-NPlZlDkNN1mguBY1YaLKQKHvHmFPY1hiGc_3-v4L1oAP7CD9IotSm6FP7IWeNw/s320/margo+phone+NY.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431933447708349874" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Liberty State Park</span>, Jersey City, N.J.: Originally sloughs and then oyster beds, the tideflats had been filled for railroad yards that turned into toxic brownfields. The state of New Jersey began to reclaim the wastelands in 1976 for a 1,200-acre park with bike paths, walkways, a golf course, science center and the Statue of Liberty overlook. As Margo and Dan North inspected the birdlife, we reflected on the possibilities of a landscape ruined by industry, the military and neglect.<br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">For both, see “Not-a-New Yorker Muses on the Big Apple,” Nov. 18, </span>and “<span style="font-style: italic;">Escape from New York,” Nov. 13, and "Antiques Roadshow" in </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24")</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dover,</span> Del.: The Green’s carefully preserved buildings illustrate the history documented in the nearby Delaware Public Archives.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Not-a-New Yorker Muses on the Big Apple,” Nov. 18)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Washington, D.C</span>.: Margo visited the Smithsonian Institute’s array of museums (Air and Space, American Art, the Freer and Hirshhorn galleries, African Art, American Indian Art, American History, the National Portrait Gallery) She looked at the White House (from outside) Lynn emerged from his sick bed to wander through the National Museum of American History, which may account for his grumpy comments about Dumbo. We had the opportunity to tread sidewalks trembling with emanations of power.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “A Hick in Washington,” Nov. 21, and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24")</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Luray Caverns</span>, off Skyline Drive, near New Market, Va.: Proprietors of this for-profit natural wonder aren’t content with spectacular wonders like Saracen’s Tent (a translucent drapery of flowstone), Titania’s Veil (a stalagmite of crystalline dripstone) and the Washing Well (a 6-foot pool with a mirror surface broken only by the splash of coins for charity) <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgkplcpqLQpluLg-rs6vYU6j-kjsER5KePDInJ8Bjn8XO2kdlxM1WDlzJUyEk_IoA1U09kRoD-TpsUJFkR5mIgSsiEVbCZtyfA6qXD-cbRtFBMILRJ6f56RzU8ecQDGuh5IRzSK20pck/s1600-h/luray+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgkplcpqLQpluLg-rs6vYU6j-kjsER5KePDInJ8Bjn8XO2kdlxM1WDlzJUyEk_IoA1U09kRoD-TpsUJFkR5mIgSsiEVbCZtyfA6qXD-cbRtFBMILRJ6f56RzU8ecQDGuh5IRzSK20pck/s320/luray+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431878180038509538" border="0" /></a> They have added a golf course, a wonderful vintage car museum, a one-acre maze of hedges, a carillon tower and miles of hiking trails. With other tourists, we heard music from the Great Stalacpipe Organ. The console, sort of a player piano untouched by human hands, is wired to little rubber-tipped mallets. They tap dozens of stalactites with just the right resonance. It sounds like the ultimate basso aria in an opera for whalefish, a cross between a sousaphone and Harry Partch’s marimba eroica. We learned that it takes 120 years, according to the geologists, for drips to form just one cubic inch atop a stalactite. At Carlsbad Caverns National Park in New Mexico, where nobody is allowed to touch anything, the rangers must shudder when told about the Luray’s bonus attraction. They might even stop dusting for lint.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Unblogged)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5VrpAxZ0-1S62bsfRJDZ6OflWtAnAkma81l5qHuLnp3u2nF3Q2QmTExKLLE1Uy3MbNr7HN3xSURHUvEaBcnc2AfZd6OWI3sGKp91HCHTn3wo35xPS5MLH3gig3jrApbcfsAFgVrLHNU/s1600-h/fern+bar.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 212px; height: 205px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhc5VrpAxZ0-1S62bsfRJDZ6OflWtAnAkma81l5qHuLnp3u2nF3Q2QmTExKLLE1Uy3MbNr7HN3xSURHUvEaBcnc2AfZd6OWI3sGKp91HCHTn3wo35xPS5MLH3gig3jrApbcfsAFgVrLHNU/s320/fern+bar.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431863351581870274" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Blue Ridge Parkway</span> (National Parks), western Virginia: After a hundred miles of the same scenery, we cut over to the Interstate (U.S. 95). We don’t remember anything. This highway could be anywhere. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At left, a Fern Bar.)</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>Next time we’ll try to see the back roads of Tennessee.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />(See “Heading Home,” Nov. 21)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum</span>, Nashville, Tenn.: We live in a world where Conway Twitty gets more gold-plated status than Michael Tilson Thomas or Bix Beiderbecke, but this gilded shrine to the accomplishments of public relations is a lot more entertaining than, say, an afternoon in Costco.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Nashville Dreams,” Nov. 25, and "Beaten to the Punchline" in </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24")</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Madisonville,</span> Ky.: The sign called it “The Best Town on Earth.” We hurried past Innovative Hair Design and the Giggles and Grins consignment shop. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0kfk9Sb-JKRa6jnRd1fksxBtdARMJpCjyDzHPQxuEX9SZc9FltnPV6cM4mCyKRJNUMkAqpxchDJ70yJkxVGHnMLmgbw0aR3B_h9LKMgyRMBxgkB4CrQz7BMhKkt-DvtS7OhUQii-7I0/s1600-h/diner.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf0kfk9Sb-JKRa6jnRd1fksxBtdARMJpCjyDzHPQxuEX9SZc9FltnPV6cM4mCyKRJNUMkAqpxchDJ70yJkxVGHnMLmgbw0aR3B_h9LKMgyRMBxgkB4CrQz7BMhKkt-DvtS7OhUQii-7I0/s320/diner.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431936205578132786" border="0" /></a>We had been urged to buy lunch across from the courthouse at the Dinky Diner. It was dinky enough but, sadly, closed that day.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">National Quilt Museum</span>, Paducah, Ky.: Billed as a “portal to contemporary quilt experience through traditional and non-traditional quilt exhibits and quilt workshops.” Three galleries. Until 2008, it was the museum of the American Quilters Society.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">New Madrid</span>, Mo.: The site of the nation’s worst recorded earthquake back in 1815, the Mississippi River town gets no respect. No tourists. No hotels. No cable cars.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For all three, see “Palooka from Paducah,” Nov. 30</span>)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Walton 5 & 10</span> and Wal-Mart Visitors Center, Town Square, Bentonville, Ark.: In a canyon a few blocks from the tidy Town Square, cranes and construction crews are building the $400 million <span style="font-weight: bold;">Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art</span>. It’s a hobby of Alice Walton, the billionaire daughter of Wal-Mart’s founder, Sam Walton. She lives near Dallas, Texas. Strangely, only two other people were visiting Sam Walton’s first store, a museum and shrine. (We never saw a Wal-Mart that didn’t have parking lots crowded with cars. We ventured inside only once – to use the lavatory – but took note of all the happy shoppers who might otherwise have been buying stuff in the vanished haberdasheries, shoe stores and dress shops in downtowns that are now, in a word, kaput.)<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Mister Walton’s Store,” Dec. 7)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Hot Springs National Park</span> (National Park Service), Hot Springs, Ark.: They call it The Golden Age of Bathing, when eight luxurious bathhouses pampered men and women in what the park historians call “an era of leisure and grace.” It’s not likely that John Muir would have regarded Bathhouse Row as the equivalent of Yosemite and Yellowstone, but in 1921 it became a national park. When people stopped coming, the great bathhouses fell into disrepair, leaving only the Buckstaff in operation. The Park Service is now restoring the others, but not necessarily as temples of curative waters. The Quapaw reopened in 2008 as a bathhouse, but the Ozark is to be an art museum. We walked through the Fordyce, the park visitor center. We found a museum of empty bathtubs, massage tables, hydrotherapy gear and a billiard table, not exactly what the Sierra Club envisioned.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Notable:</span> The Park Service’s only public campground, in nearby Gulpa Gorge ($10), doesn’t have showers or water hookups. That’s odd. The 47 springs produce about 700,000 gallons of hot water every day for the bathhouses and fountains in a resort with too many innkeepers and too few tourists. It’s a mystery. Not really.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(Unblogged: We didn’t write a report on Hot Springs or the next item, the Cabildo.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cabildo:</span> Louisiana State Museum., the French Quarter, New Orleans, La.: The scene of the Louisiana Purchase ceremonies in 1803, the Cabildo kept<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3D9ueMrdzpHxx93kZQjR0bBs6iMDfOSzmt6zDHLbU9yy8ND3EoGnFa1CNt8skyKe-u1K0X92IM8bxMotfCECc6AjQX0dHsNx3nhw7onT3NktTxvYkbk-Kq5HcTqHik95r4VYhZUXdASQ/s1600-h/lynn+french+quarter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3D9ueMrdzpHxx93kZQjR0bBs6iMDfOSzmt6zDHLbU9yy8ND3EoGnFa1CNt8skyKe-u1K0X92IM8bxMotfCECc6AjQX0dHsNx3nhw7onT3NktTxvYkbk-Kq5HcTqHik95r4VYhZUXdASQ/s320/lynn+french+quarter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431877949982753906" border="0" /></a> us until closing time with fascinating exhibits, historical paintings and well-written background statements.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Café Du Monde</span>, New Orleans: Like other tourists, we stopped for beignets and coffee. The obligatory street band (black and white with a Vietnamese trombonist) tuned up on the sidewalk while we brushed away the powdered sugar. The buskers told the obligatory jokes and performed the obligatory tune about the saints. They were pretty bad. In their humble way, the musicians showed why trad jazz, even its birthplace, is as dead as Jelly Roll Morton. Entertainment: B minus. Jazz: F.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “We Didn’t Learn Our Lesson,” Dec. 5)</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwtExj-mjZgTa77dXL51jQ0OcLf-oM4BEb0rhbb-fipAFtyBNgWVesoaNVSLLCe-4sVvYyuPnVCfV0GR8ndLraxnIRwYphfUPlzBhF5bX1XwP6DBGiefItVr13hoU22L-44ZiAwJWy7I/s1600-h/katrina+4+-+marked+door.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 149px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwwtExj-mjZgTa77dXL51jQ0OcLf-oM4BEb0rhbb-fipAFtyBNgWVesoaNVSLLCe-4sVvYyuPnVCfV0GR8ndLraxnIRwYphfUPlzBhF5bX1XwP6DBGiefItVr13hoU22L-44ZiAwJWy7I/s320/katrina+4+-+marked+door.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432242238645251474" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Lower Ninth Ward, </span><span>New Orleans: </span><span>Four years after </span><span>Hurricane Katrina brought catastrophic flooding, we saw scores of houses still </span><span>unoccupied and many a vacant lot where people once lived in their own homes. The issues of rebuilding and blame are too complex for us to discuss intelligently, but even a tourist can be appalled at the evidence of boondoggling at every level of government. </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />(See notes and photos at the end of “Mister Walton’s Store,” Dec. 7)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />Acadian Culture Center </span>(National Park Service), Lafayette, La.: It’s one of six sites of the Jean Lafitte National Historical Park and Preserve. Missing from our schoolbooks: In Nova Scotia, cruel British and rapacious New Englanders in the mid-18th century expelled about 20,000 prosperous French-speaking Acadians, burned their communities, crammed thousands into pesthole ships (thousands perished) and scattered the broken families throughout the colonies, Canada and France. As the new planters stole farms and fisheries, they of course bad-mouthed their victims. Many survivors were welcomed in the former French colony of Louisiana, where the Acadians came to be known as Cajuns.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See "Long Waltz Across Texas," Dec. 8)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum</span>, Austin, Texas: In spite of giving the impression that Texas and the Confederacy won the Civil War, this well-organized museum helps visitors with imaginative displays, useful timelines and vivid biographical sketches.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Joyce Gross Quilt History Collection</span> (currently seen at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, Austin): Put together over the years by a woman in Mill Valley, her collection and library somehow wound up at the Center for American History at the University of Texas. More than 170 quilts and hundreds of written materials document the history of quilting in 20th century America.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(For both, see “Austin City Limits,” Dec. 12)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Roadrunner</span>, Fort Stockton, Texas: A dinosaur-sized statue of the cartoon character greets motorists.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb5767A20lryPAK-iju0EWDrAJrCrevrT8Hdy8IxjJvcPauLeXySKZumpzApHs8gAgnNWJMBIVEqmjtYIP21jDA6Bx8dzWu_SXWSuedwtKutcCQU7iV1SdEQyfWB9AOR1s2MjGgCIY5ko/s1600-h/roadrunner.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjb5767A20lryPAK-iju0EWDrAJrCrevrT8Hdy8IxjJvcPauLeXySKZumpzApHs8gAgnNWJMBIVEqmjtYIP21jDA6Bx8dzWu_SXWSuedwtKutcCQU7iV1SdEQyfWB9AOR1s2MjGgCIY5ko/s320/roadrunner.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431960238580524642" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “Race Across the Desert,” Dec. 16)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Carlsbad Caverns National Park (</span>National Park Service), Carlsbad, N.M.: In a word: Unforgettable.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> (See “Carlsbad Caverns,” Dec. 14)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">London Bridge</span>, Lake Havasu City, Ariz.: We saw an artificial span on an artificial canal next to an artificial lake.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “A Tale of Two Cities,” Dec. 23)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Ludlow,</span> Calif.: A mini-hamlet on old Route 66 in the Mojave Desert.<br />(<span style="font-style: italic;">See “Race Across the Desert,” Dec. 16, "The Castle and the Ghost Town," Jan. 25, and </span><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Guppy Chronicles," Jan. 24)</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">California Valley</span>, near Bakersfield, Calif.: A 7,500-acre scam.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;">(See “A Tale of Two Cities,” Dec. 23)</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Cities – Small and Large – We Visited</span></span><br /><br />Oroville (Calif.); Medford, Bend, Portland and Astoria (Ore.); Vancouver, Olympia and Port <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJggDBXWJc3xm_qdR_We6w4ARFWyzU9MKBlrACCRURVZQVWpvQ2hXb8WJAN_eG8INobhmg_AAY7zf8FbN3-nc56HzBU5iYLogLrHz8EgG4d0_6U0nbRM7B8SCjAqYDWAO_dmt3-D2RNyI/s1600-h/fire+in+the+sky+at+sunset.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 186px; height: 346px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJggDBXWJc3xm_qdR_We6w4ARFWyzU9MKBlrACCRURVZQVWpvQ2hXb8WJAN_eG8INobhmg_AAY7zf8FbN3-nc56HzBU5iYLogLrHz8EgG4d0_6U0nbRM7B8SCjAqYDWAO_dmt3-D2RNyI/s320/fire+in+the+sky+at+sunset.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431864401959485634" border="0" /></a>Angeles (Wash.); Victoria (B.C.); Missoula (Mont.); Salt Lake City (Utah);<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsI0IK1K_A9OVxjxH9e66FFCnL3M2xgKc9fv7zs25HVJXhvkAdyLhGsp6TkVYY4NF204ixYDcPYo1UEkzzM_16KGYfjIgvtDpAPvXwUKOnYkMLt3fgDLuy5SghJE-YQXP1criXfuef3Ag/s1600-h/guppy+wheat+fields.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 203px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsI0IK1K_A9OVxjxH9e66FFCnL3M2xgKc9fv7zs25HVJXhvkAdyLhGsp6TkVYY4NF204ixYDcPYo1UEkzzM_16KGYfjIgvtDpAPvXwUKOnYkMLt3fgDLuy5SghJE-YQXP1criXfuef3Ag/s320/guppy+wheat+fields.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431868145789156290" border="0" /></a> Boulder (Colo.); Red Cloud, Lincoln, Polk and Brownville (Neb.); Des Moines and Boone (Iowa); Sauk Centre, Gully and Bemidji (Minn.); Appleton (Wis.); Ishpeming and Saugatuck (Mich.); Oberlin (Ohio); Niagara Falls (Ontario); Rochester, Lockport, Niagara Falls, Syracuse, Pleasant Valley, Poughkeepsie and New York City (N.Y.); Boston (Mass.); Jersey City (N.J.); Dover (Del.); Washington (D.C.); Nashville (Tenn.); Maddisonville and Paducah (Ky.); Rogers, Fayetteville, Bentonville and Pine Bluff (Ark.); New Orleans, Algiers, and Lafayette (La.); Austin and Pecos (Texas); Carlsbad and Deming (N.M.); Sun City and Lake Havasu City (Ariz.); Ludlow, Buttonwillow and California Valley (Calif.).<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-rvLvcL_TNB7dahY5cqA3NdUH89kQo9r69-itQmOzQVd6X7fgB2OxQfDltgAXkyLpgnHEw69TVbsKHoN7GGNmmEhX3-W3pkNjD4STUQWhzCH0d-BYDYl8jCqpwdrr2R8jvOO718ry1v4/s1600-h/us+map_1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 379px; height: 259px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-rvLvcL_TNB7dahY5cqA3NdUH89kQo9r69-itQmOzQVd6X7fgB2OxQfDltgAXkyLpgnHEw69TVbsKHoN7GGNmmEhX3-W3pkNjD4STUQWhzCH0d-BYDYl8jCqpwdrr2R8jvOO718ry1v4/s320/us+map_1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431893917359937698" border="0" /></a>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-73304961659446401412010-01-25T21:02:00.000-08:002010-01-31T15:56:11.202-08:00Game of the Name: The Wrapup<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsUjd6cNXS0uP3-peUl5Ccn_DVg4R4ziazm35mbIuVvyU2no7VmiJOidC3SWtvC7BJRTMwtyITkcjMIx5StpAgRNcq3EsSgOqtxBp0H0MyxM0btIBoBTPUWlU8NxfhikI1IK01HYUhYU/s1600-h/FancyGap-707396.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 123px; height: 159px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFsUjd6cNXS0uP3-peUl5Ccn_DVg4R4ziazm35mbIuVvyU2no7VmiJOidC3SWtvC7BJRTMwtyITkcjMIx5StpAgRNcq3EsSgOqtxBp0H0MyxM0btIBoBTPUWlU8NxfhikI1IK01HYUhYU/s200/FancyGap-707396.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431566211423813698" border="0" /></a><br />Thrilled as bird watchers at a warblers’ convention, we spotted side roads on the Blue Ridge Parkway for Fancy Gap, Deep Gap, Roaring Gap, Horse Gap and, near Roanoke, Va., a town named Low Gap. It wasn’t chance. Any experienced name dropper knows how to mine the nation’s two-lane highways for rare collectibles among the names of places, plants and players.<br /><br />Let’s start with towns. Every state has specimens suitable for framing. In California, we’ve got Shrub (near Shingle Springs), Teakettle Junction (Death Valley), Cabbage Patch (near Bear Valley) and Hellhole Palms (near Borrego Springs), but these are blinks on the road. They should be thrown back as too small to be netted for the National Museum of Rare Nomenclature.<br /><br />Our road trip around the U.S. convinced us that the natural state of Arkansas is the nation’s leader in notable names. Sure, we’ll get objections from place-name curators in Kentucky <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVRLjgSrTCgOzzbm-N23QR6iD_8QDirdhtAyNC7fHB4ANHQZxf6OfIh3PcF0UNRCp5dSxuX7yevGpGlizZdXU0-fESy03tBw6q4jXkyncjdlRUi5NOIZ1huIgfKNALoSStwJmtgxi8xFA/s1600-h/hogeye.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 96px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVRLjgSrTCgOzzbm-N23QR6iD_8QDirdhtAyNC7fHB4ANHQZxf6OfIh3PcF0UNRCp5dSxuX7yevGpGlizZdXU0-fESy03tBw6q4jXkyncjdlRUi5NOIZ1huIgfKNALoSStwJmtgxi8xFA/s200/hogeye.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431569861016407234" border="0" /></a>(Rabbit Hash, Do Stop, Beaver Lick, Oddville, etc.) and downstate Virginia (Goosepimple Junction, Goochland, Bumpass, etc.). Let them sue. No other state can match the Arkansas gallery of Old Alabam, Hogeye, Blue Balls, Possum Grape, Turkey Scratch, Bald Knob, Toad Suck, Greasy Corner, Okay, Ash Flat, Snowball, Birdeye and Cotton Plant. Besides, Arkansas stamps its license plates with a one-of-a-kind motto: “The Natural State.”<br /><br />After studying the map of the Natural State, we hoped to visit Morning Star, Evening Star, Red Star and Star City. No such luck. Same with Ben Hur, De Queen, Sunset, Bull Shoals, Marked Tree and Gin City<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1kv0XTb6YbRfqrDFTkXiqGavwENX6mStg4n7l51OTRsz3LUAWD76857JLrt4TnYQVP6uQ9de1ZMH-Tas8RO2s5GolgC-Q1ioVk1Mzmvh4b6hbEBnp9-lkuzT5YTPzsn7N8NVbczBirG8/s1600-h/images.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 90px; height: 90px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1kv0XTb6YbRfqrDFTkXiqGavwENX6mStg4n7l51OTRsz3LUAWD76857JLrt4TnYQVP6uQ9de1ZMH-Tas8RO2s5GolgC-Q1ioVk1Mzmvh4b6hbEBnp9-lkuzT5YTPzsn7N8NVbczBirG8/s200/images.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431574028992986402" border="0" /></a> (the cotton machine, not the main ingredient in a martini). We also yearned to experience Delight, Heart, Amity, Economy and Friendship. A route along the state’s southern counties could have given us Hope – Bill Clinton’s home town. It’s not too far from Smackover (“Home of the Buckaroos”).<br /><br />Instead, we drove from the state’s northeast corner and found that it’s a long way to Tipperary. It’s a long way to go, at least 10 miles off our route on U.S. Highway 62. With regret, we passed up the chance to take a swing through Knob and Hooker to get to Tipperary.<br /><br />After a motel night with Pocahontas, we headed across the north tier of the Natural State on <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3OaEQc2DMwIh38C7IV0NJUNU0KL8E7c3o-ix8ZLsQWGj_cAmOOV6qc5Zmw3_VEQu3-KzgkjztKgizHGiC8viS78tEegFHBT6bxXwbJpJ_JvBUx5Ru07ryVm9e78ItcfO88EGPbDUxnw/s1600-h/yellville.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 119px; height: 108px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhq3OaEQc2DMwIh38C7IV0NJUNU0KL8E7c3o-ix8ZLsQWGj_cAmOOV6qc5Zmw3_VEQu3-KzgkjztKgizHGiC8viS78tEegFHBT6bxXwbJpJ_JvBUx5Ru07ryVm9e78ItcfO88EGPbDUxnw/s200/yellville.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431574950259127922" border="0" /></a>Ozark roads that took us through Flippin, Snow, Little Flock, Gassville and Yellville, the seat of Yell County. By two weeks we missed Yellville's annual Turkey Trot. It's true: Live turkeys are dropped from low-flying airplanes. Considerably less messy are the National Wild Turkey Calling Contest and the Miss Drumstickz Contest (the judges see only the legs).<br /><br />Next came Pea Ridge, site of a bloody but largely forgotten Civil War battle. War and peas.<br /><br />Next time we’ll take State Route 12. That would be Best.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-0-<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwD_gOKGiqaxghkrfpvvIk58FUIqDnMQlaaZE9-L5f6uwTvfq5FujD0p_ijtc8mperNKd_Avzh4UDDJaAvEPIgpY2EnzB84KpgVgiEmbIo_aoOHVIXeXZRPIZimd-vTp63Fj-ChYKdt48/s1600-h/purppop.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 86px; height: 81px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwD_gOKGiqaxghkrfpvvIk58FUIqDnMQlaaZE9-L5f6uwTvfq5FujD0p_ijtc8mperNKd_Avzh4UDDJaAvEPIgpY2EnzB84KpgVgiEmbIo_aoOHVIXeXZRPIZimd-vTp63Fj-ChYKdt48/s200/purppop.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431573291425934946" border="0" /></a>As for botany, our visit to Red Cloud, Neb., allowed us to add Purple Poppymallow to our list of lovely weeds with seductive names. Ms. Poppymallow, whose name leaves no doubt as to gender, is a neighbor to Rough Fleabane, Dotted Gayfeather, Slimflower Scurfpea and Butterfly Milkweed.<br /><br />Together with many others, they grow wild a few miles south of town at the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie. The author, who grew up in Red Cloud and reproduced her hometown in many of her novels and stories, once wrote, “The shaggy grass country had gripped me with a passion that I have never been able to shake. It has been the happiness and curse of my life.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-0-<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">As we drove by Jefferson High School in Portland, we spotted a banner: “Home of the Democrats.”<br /><br />We braked in Nebraska for Republican City, population 200, which moved to high ground in 1950 after the old site was drowned by a reservoir. The town was named <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehC_Mx0pJJSUKTMliTTWetJ4YQh0KBrTISFNNIxEzxtiEzIIt4PshL7eOCZZn3_AHNoNnc0IhQMhqeBQh163czHkpAZ8JacU668i4EtkDIEaUb4CP4kRdOMVInr1kIMQ5qje28UEBt5k/s1600-h/republican+city.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 181px; height: 136px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiehC_Mx0pJJSUKTMliTTWetJ4YQh0KBrTISFNNIxEzxtiEzIIt4PshL7eOCZZn3_AHNoNnc0IhQMhqeBQh163czHkpAZ8JacU668i4EtkDIEaUb4CP4kRdOMVInr1kIMQ5qje28UEBt5k/s200/republican+city.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431587182397892722" border="0" /></a>for the Republican River, we are told. French traders in the 18th century believed, incorrectly, that Pawnee Indians had a republican form of governance.<br /><br />We kept Republican City as a trophy to begin our collection of place names like Tennessee's Bucksnort and Sweet Lips, or Oklahoma's Bowlegs and Slapout, or Pennsylvania's Scalp Level, Gobblers Knob, Fear Not, Intercourse and Virginville, or... We a have lot of collecting to do. We did the same for the Jefferson Demos, a key acquisition for our proposed Mascot Hall of Fame.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-0-<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Our interest in another author, Sinclair Lewis, coincided with the search for team names. Our relentless itinerary, sad to say, kept us from tarrying in the writer’s birthplace in southern Minnesota. Although he was an unathletic loner who despised all sports, we dearly wanted to attend a football game in his honor so we could shout “Go Mainstreeters!”<br /></div></div></div></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHXEswqWZz-cujtshxTWhFeU-tMYRH6xNa2DCZjy58QMs_hXtiBaMxAi2nys7iTlgsnJDp_ztX4fNz68IrICZiAVDOv941VZY51QQvk9ZdV0SKnTh7UJmR81l6737n9ozo_DZBNo2Y1U/s1600-h/main+st.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 147px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipHXEswqWZz-cujtshxTWhFeU-tMYRH6xNa2DCZjy58QMs_hXtiBaMxAi2nys7iTlgsnJDp_ztX4fNz68IrICZiAVDOv941VZY51QQvk9ZdV0SKnTh7UJmR81l6737n9ozo_DZBNo2Y1U/s200/main+st.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431588088820347842" border="0" /></a>Thus do the people of Sauk Centre celebrate the iconographic Midwesterner who in 1920 wrote “Main Street.” This is a surprise. His novel indicted the fictional city of Gopher Prairie as typifying the meanness, smugness and bleakness of small town America. But everybody back in Sauk Centre knew that the acne-spotted boy called Red had dunked his home town in the toilet.<br /><br />“Main Street” scorned the city’s fathers, businessmen and social upper crust for their “unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear respectable.” Half a year went by before the weekly Herald even mentioned the national best seller. Offended, Sauk Centre’s poobahs of 1920 never considered a welcome-home celebration until Lewis won the Nobel Prize in 1930. He stayed away for many years. Librarians in a nearby Alexandria banned the book, and students in rival high schools began to refer derisively to the Sauk Centre teams as the “Main Streeters.”<br /><br />In “Travels With Charley,”John Steinbeck wrote, “I had read “Main Street” when I was in high school, and I remember the violent hatred it aroused in the country of his nativity.”<br /><br />Never underestimate the power of tourism.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSFcJQRSZy5BnytR65hFukzJre-K6eKIwPm6Ujt986BEzUMKGeEYhIl_pBkdjPfssYmsHlCzIvHqGF-EiBiwM5oKLXPKAQKDzOhnjWlmq2DNv5r14msmoppaPi3wz-5gQogaITkO8sYDs/s1600-h/main+street.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 386px; height: 297px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSFcJQRSZy5BnytR65hFukzJre-K6eKIwPm6Ujt986BEzUMKGeEYhIl_pBkdjPfssYmsHlCzIvHqGF-EiBiwM5oKLXPKAQKDzOhnjWlmq2DNv5r14msmoppaPi3wz-5gQogaITkO8sYDs/s320/main+street.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431588509244521378" border="0" /></a><br />When we drove into Red’s home town, we soon discovered that Sauk Centre had anticipated Howard Gossage’s maxim: “If you have a lemon, make lemonade.” The townsmen (Lewis had called them “the quiet dead”) turned the Minnesota town into a tourist stop. We drove past Main Street Real Estate, Main Street Auto, Main Street Coffee and the Main Street Theatre on what’s been renamed as Original Main Street. The Chamber of Commerce made a cottage industry out of the hometown ingrate who, when he went off to Italy to die of a heart attack, left word that his ashes be buried in Sauk Centre’s cemetery.<br /><br />For me, the highlight was learning that the high school football team adopted the epithet hurled by opponents.<br /><br />Mainstreeters rule!<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-0-<br /></div><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also true:</span><br /><br />At northern Idaho’s Clearwater River, we stopped in Orofino. We didn’t know then that the local high school is represented by the Maniacs. When we visited our daughter at Oberlin College in Ohio, we were reminded that its players are called the Yeomen – and that her mother, the alumna, once played basketball for the Yeowomen. (“Yo! Women!”)<br /><br />In Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we passed up the chance to shout, “Go Hematites!” The Hematites, who sound like one of Assyria’s ancient tribes, play for my grandmother’s alma mater, Ishpeming High School. The name is a mineralogist’s term for iron ore. The mines died years ago, but the name didn’t.<br /><br />We have been to Sonora, a mining town in the Gold Rush, where students at Columbia College root for the Claim Jumpers. In a visit to Earlham College in Richmond, Ind., our daughter learned the teams are called the Hustlin’ Quakers. At UC Santa Cruz, of course, it’s the Banana Slugs.<br /><br />A fat file of whimsical high school nicknames beckons us to towns we’ve yet to visit: The Battling Bathers of Mt. Clemens, Mich. (a former spa); the Fighting Grape Pickers of North East, Pa.; the Fighting Cocks of Cocke County, Tenn.; the Screaming Penguins of Bellingham, Wash.; the Awesome Blossoms of Blooming Prairie, Minn., and the Headless Horsemen of Sleepy Hollow, N.Y.<br /><br />As aficionados of the name game, we’re all too familiar with the hundreds of team mascots christened unoriginally as Panthers, Falcons, Bobcats, Tigers, Lions, Bears, Wolves, Huskies, Buffalos, Wildcats, Jaguars, Grizzlies, Hawks and just about every other ferocious beast or bird in the zoo. Even a couple of Rattlers.<br /><br />So far, no Vampires. But we exulted as giddily as claim jumpers when we drove through the desolate Carizzo Plains west of Bakersfield. On the outside of a 46-pupil K-8 school, we saw a banner that says with pride, “Home of the Polecats.”<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-0-<br /></div><br />Mainstreeters gets our nomination for the first annual team award of the American Academy of Mascots. Polecats is a strong second choice. We haven’t yet documented third place, but we hope someday to sit in the frozen bleachers of a tiny southern Montana town, Belfry, where we can shout “Go Bats!”Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-76371820365213683582010-01-25T19:46:00.000-08:002010-02-02T10:48:59.500-08:00The Castle and the Ghost Town: The Wrapup<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxRUbr2TMwlN8_AzzKsgN6fMaUEmOPmyZzqzYNq-I3uuk1zp8jzCIYYoxHwSyoJZe-N3zF-8hZWNbadzYbPz_Rx9n5BR9ABKXWp6tRG0fOUmmrjxmgWNnbsOid4j68QuIHgV9tNij9FBc/s1600-h/batwing+gas.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 684px; height: 302px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxRUbr2TMwlN8_AzzKsgN6fMaUEmOPmyZzqzYNq-I3uuk1zp8jzCIYYoxHwSyoJZe-N3zF-8hZWNbadzYbPz_Rx9n5BR9ABKXWp6tRG0fOUmmrjxmgWNnbsOid4j68QuIHgV9tNij9FBc/s320/batwing+gas.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431228636353046290" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Notes from Lynn: </span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When a few years ago we arrived in a quaint English town, the first in the world to be named Ludlow, we stayed in a B&B over a pub. Margo signed the register with my name. In a weary voice, the burly bartender/landlord asked only, “Couldn’t you be more original?” </span> <span style="font-style: italic;"><br /><br />When we arrived in mid-December in an unquaint Mojave Desert town, the last in the world to be named Ludlow, we stopped at the only restaurant. I told the sun-dried waitress my surname. But in a weary voice, she asked only, “What would you folks like?” </span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">This is a message to all Ludlows:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Go to County Shropshire in the west of England. And if you do…</span><br /><br />Find the ruins of a Norman castle atop a hill. It’s surrounded by picturesque Ludlow, described by Country Life magazine as “the most vibrant small town in<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0EZr8naF5Hci_d4JJ8wEW9AJueAx6YqJBlvGjn3XMDdGhP1kEI9ygswtuH0UWopNFQxsdFTt1xCyvlkFhdkrto62yY_DSGMICw0HwJei-mPAN45ZCDmG9nzy7uqmBAimyChjRxD16evo/s1600-h/ludlow_distant.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh0EZr8naF5Hci_d4JJ8wEW9AJueAx6YqJBlvGjn3XMDdGhP1kEI9ygswtuH0UWopNFQxsdFTt1xCyvlkFhdkrto62yY_DSGMICw0HwJei-mPAN45ZCDmG9nzy7uqmBAimyChjRxD16evo/s320/ludlow_distant.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431222311753944994" border="0" /></a> England.” Before it grew, it was a medieval walled town. A lot of history. Two Michelin-starred restaurants. Cobbled streets. Half-timbered Tudor buildings. At the historic St. Laurence Church, the poet A.E. Houseman (“A Shropshire Lad”) is buried next to the stump of a cherry tree.<br /><br />They say the castle is alive, in a manner of speaking, with ghosts.<br /><br />The town, according to several sources, was named by the Britons for <span style="font-style: italic;">“hlud”</span> (meaning “loud”) and “<span style="font-style: italic;">hlaw”</span> (meaning “hill”), as in “hill by the loud river.” Hludhlaw, its name changed by the Normans to Ludelowe, goes back about 1,000 years, give or take a century. The population today is about 10,000.<br /><br />Victor L. Ludlow, Ph.D., a professor at Brigham Young University with a Mormon fascination for genealogy, writes in his website that one of the denizens in the 12th century town moved out and settled elsewhere in County Shropshire. Believed to be a sheepman, he would have been called “de Ludelowe,” meaning “from Ludlow.”<br /><br />A footnote: “As can best be determined by Ludlow family historians, almost all individuals throughout the world with the Ludlow surname are one extended family descending from this common progenitor.”<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jnqcli5C467zfyuU1oQ6tkKqF-e0pscEER4SmBAwaD9euX6wVRmE_Hrz0YqjRKipvjVJ-CG-HgaNiBdTsY1iqajTGQzTqeBHqmYsZeLopkYtSI70leqnEv44-0dJklv_Z4b0PWPtqqI/s1600-h/ludlow+england.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3jnqcli5C467zfyuU1oQ6tkKqF-e0pscEER4SmBAwaD9euX6wVRmE_Hrz0YqjRKipvjVJ-CG-HgaNiBdTsY1iqajTGQzTqeBHqmYsZeLopkYtSI70leqnEv44-0dJklv_Z4b0PWPtqqI/s320/ludlow+england.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431224581176259250" border="0" /></a><br />Whatever.<br /><br />Sheepishly, let’s quote Cole Porter: <span style="font-style: italic;">It’s delightful. It’s delicious. It’s de-lovely. It’s de Ludelowe.</span><br /><br />(Note to “the extended family”: According to the phone books of County Shropshire and San Bernardino County, neither of the Ludlow towns has anybody listed by the name of Ludlow.)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Shopping tip:</span> Buy souvenirs, such as Ludlow Castle coffee cups, to present to Ludlows who stayed back home.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Don’t go to the Mojave Desert. But if you do…</span><br /><br />Find Old Route 66 and the ghostly town of Ludlow about 50 bleak miles east of Barstow. Find the ruins of wind-tattered barns, abandoned gas stations and tumbledown stores. Find wooden crosses leaning crazily in a forgotten cemetery.<br /><br />The town with my name was founded in 1882. It’s popular with photographers.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH76kxQEjBP1EF1wpFhO-t9toE-70J1pcBFwOTz1u1cAvhIi1Encj2BXNCAO3-9GHp-84T9K7GuipP1NG5G1mjvj2N7XzJlFt6i7weyfQAb4ZxsBZs93sHgzOPVD8pmJseBI-eBTHIhFc/s1600-h/route+66+logo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 99px; height: 99px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhH76kxQEjBP1EF1wpFhO-t9toE-70J1pcBFwOTz1u1cAvhIi1Encj2BXNCAO3-9GHp-84T9K7GuipP1NG5G1mjvj2N7XzJlFt6i7weyfQAb4ZxsBZs93sHgzOPVD8pmJseBI-eBTHIhFc/s200/route+66+logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431226451460148674" border="0" /></a> They must like shooting a moody picture of a godforsaken gas station with a huge batwing canopy in a land of little rain and lots of sun.<br /><br />With creosote bushes in front and the Sawtooth Mountains in the background, Ludlow-of-the-Desert is the bipolar opposite of Ludlow-of-the-Castle.<br /><br />The crossroads hamlet was founded in 1882 as a railroad water stop on tracks laid by the Southern Pacific but soon leased to the Atlantic & Pacific, a subsidiary of what would become the Santa Fe Pacific Railroad. The station was also a depot for the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, which hauled borax from Boron from 1907 to 1940.<br /><br />I once liked to speculate that the town’s name came from a drunken ancestor who fell off the train. Instead, the dubious honor goes to William B. Ludlow, a master car repairer for one of the railroads. His name has disappeared from the records, but he was probably too wise to move eponymously to a forlorn crossroads so isolated, unshaded and cheerless that the average desert rat would prefer to go north to Death Valley.<br /><br />In 1898, a roadmaster with the A&P searched for springs in the hills to find water for his steam <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiookJQz0tuqMLGzro36xjXNZx7b-sr9KK65XV7yFSiBf585LZQJXTUNWarSok_hcMCvYOLkGhAQoNaVXYp1lgajSFwIsvQb14sMAZts2FtnOUeBkJ3NHt0hi1HSG2jL_cIHWdqbHRViGQ/s1600-h/ludlow+abt+1900+posted+by+dwindslow+on+ghosttowns.com+.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 217px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiookJQz0tuqMLGzro36xjXNZx7b-sr9KK65XV7yFSiBf585LZQJXTUNWarSok_hcMCvYOLkGhAQoNaVXYp1lgajSFwIsvQb14sMAZts2FtnOUeBkJ3NHt0hi1HSG2jL_cIHWdqbHRViGQ/s320/ludlow+abt+1900+posted+by+dwindslow+on+ghosttowns.com+.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431225643179741218" border="0" /></a>locomotives. He failed. Instead, he found copper and gold. Prospectors and miners showed up by the hundreds. A spate of prosperity came to Ludlow, along with nearby Amboy, Bagdad and other railroad towns. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Ludlow a century ago.)</span> The rail yards were home to the Ludlow and Southern, Tonopah & Tidewater and the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe. The town in the early 20th century had two general stores, three cafes and saloons, a pool hall, two rooming houses and a barber shop, but water had to be delivered by rail from Newberry Springs.<br />It took decades, but the mines eventually gave out. They left hundreds of holes in the hills (in all of San Bernardino County, about 22,000). The railroads withered.<br /><br />Most of the West celebrated when Congress voted for the Federal Aid Highway Act of 1921. Five years later, work began on a paved highway on a diagonal course that tied together hundreds of isolated towns from Chicago to Los Angeles.<br /><br />Inhabitants of Ludlow didn’t rejoice. The new U.S. Highway 66, soon known to all as Route 66, missed their town by more than 1,000 feet. That was enough to cripple the old town by the tracks. Ludlow moved up to Route 66 to see what could be mined from the new bonanza of cars and trucks. (Included in the westward migration were many if not most of 200,000 refugees from the Dust Bowl’s parched fields, failed banks and Simon Legrees. When John Steinbeck wrote about them in “Grapes of Wrath,” he called Route 66 the Mother Road. The name stuck.)<br /><br />In 1940, the Tonopah and Tidewater went out of business. The tracks were torn up in 1942. Up on what old-timers called “the hard road” motorists could stop at the Ludlow Café, buy gas, look for a motor court and replace the radiator. By 1941, Route 66 carried 7,500 trucks a day and became a legend.<br /><br />Bobby Troup wrote the song. He sold it to Nat King Cole:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">If you ever plan to motor west</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Travel my way, the highway that's the best.</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYjTVAuv0MQ7pTp-hGU7rgSdquJdn1f9rMrVeI68I8D7o_clQNcYcnkUDmZr_fddgclVB1IVvuw57I6gd7CPyJTnY9MUbWrr6WORHpC3KBh9OTzWcrEFqt8QLoLanDUJSme5BN2_yNKCk/s1600-h/corvette+66.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 173px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYjTVAuv0MQ7pTp-hGU7rgSdquJdn1f9rMrVeI68I8D7o_clQNcYcnkUDmZr_fddgclVB1IVvuw57I6gd7CPyJTnY9MUbWrr6WORHpC3KBh9OTzWcrEFqt8QLoLanDUJSme5BN2_yNKCk/s320/corvette+66.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431233309131618930" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> Get your kicks on Route 66!</span><br /><br />Starting in 1960, Tod (Martin Milner) and Buz (George Maharis) climbed into their Corvette for weekly adventures in the CBS series, "Route 66." <span style="font-style: italic;">(Buz is on the right, Tod on the left.)</span> When ailments forced Maharis to drop out, Lincoln (Glenn Corbett) took over. The show lasted until 1964. It was the heyday of the highway. In his Road Wanderer website, Guy Randall describes Ludlow as “a welcome stop for the tired and thirsty traveler, a place to get away from the heat of the Mojave Desert.”<br /><br />But that was before the arrival in 1984 of the Interstate and the dismemberment of the Mother Road.<br /><br />We had driven through Needles, headed for home, when we pulled off the four-lane freeway to explore a stretch of Old Route 66 that hadn’t been covered by U.S. Highway 40 (the Interstate). We drove past the ruins of Bagdad, a hamlet turned into dust when bypassed by the Interstate. In Amboy, they say Roy’s Café, once a familiar landmark, is being reopened by the investor who now owns the entire town. (Amboy’s population was about 700 in 1950; today it’s about five.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMOAzn2g_x4bAcU5BlHOb_wzN4Sm3aoRrcH9hvba0t1MRCs5VJn2J13Nx42m0xmTJszQ9YTHYSk_7sW9fOm9qWWO1e2SnDfEq-yMZabROUb39TXaLljw234JFIezWmotH3iOwFrLt1Z0/s1600-h/LudlowCafe2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 332px; height: 279px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRMOAzn2g_x4bAcU5BlHOb_wzN4Sm3aoRrcH9hvba0t1MRCs5VJn2J13Nx42m0xmTJszQ9YTHYSk_7sW9fOm9qWWO1e2SnDfEq-yMZabROUb39TXaLljw234JFIezWmotH3iOwFrLt1Z0/s320/LudlowCafe2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431238682614176674" border="0" /></a>As we approached Ludlow, we stopped to look at an abandoned gas station with a soaring, 1950s batwing canopy <span style="font-style: italic;">(see above)</span>. The old Ludlow Café is boarded up. Half a dozen other structures, their original functions now difficult to diagnose, stand empty.<br /><br />The Ludlow Motel appeared to be closed, but it’s the slow season.<br /><br />We didn’t have time to do more than a quick look, but we saw a couple of trailers, industrial-type properties and the A-frame of the area’s only restaurant. It was renamed the Ludlow Coffee Café after the first Ludlow Cafe down the road went, so to speak, belly up. We stopped for lunch. The décor included rusty farm tools and horseshoes on the walls, but there was nothing rusty about the service or the food. We had escaped for a half hour from the world of Applebee's, McDonald's and Denny's. In the spirit of Route 66, we could glimpse the variety of life outside the berms of the freeways and the interchanges with self-serve gas stations and "food marts" that look the same from the Mojave to Des Moines.<br /><br />Installed in front of the restaurant are relics from the Ludlow Mine and a brass plaque engraved with the history of the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad. The plaque was contributed by E Clampus Vitus with the approval of the Knoll Family. A stroll through the Internet tells us that the family owns most of Ludlow, including the restaurant <span style="font-style: italic;">(see below, left)</span>. At the nearby Ludlow Exit from I-40, the Knolls are listed as owners of the two new gas stations on either side of the freeway.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCzA-hhPSpZDThr2x-D5r0t-NJCwEMIssc-pI402HwvJhyphenhyphen_BT2vZyu_9gJop4Kk-MyqTnD8ao5C0b_bKvPMHKa45zYJ3K0Ux5ifHq-Efz6SP6TNYbpFqogPLMDF47xcBGmiytqqFmWs90/s1600-h/ore+cart.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 424px; height: 316px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCzA-hhPSpZDThr2x-D5r0t-NJCwEMIssc-pI402HwvJhyphenhyphen_BT2vZyu_9gJop4Kk-MyqTnD8ao5C0b_bKvPMHKa45zYJ3K0Ux5ifHq-Efz6SP6TNYbpFqogPLMDF47xcBGmiytqqFmWs90/s320/ore+cart.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431227581917409378" border="0" /></a>In “Travels With Charley,” John Steinbeck wrote, “And the desert, the dry and sun-lashed desert, is a good school in which to observe the cleverness and the infinite variety of techniques of survival under pitiless opposition.”<br /><br />That being true, except when it’s not, someone coined a slogan for Ludlow: “The ghost town that refuses to die.”<br /><br />Maybe so. Senator Dianne Feinstein submitted legislation in December to create, among other desert-related proposals, the Mojave Trails National Monument. It would ban most development, including solar and wind farms, from 914,000 acres of land along 105 miles of little-used Route 66 from Ludlow to Needles. (Wildlands Conservancy bought the railroad land with private donations; the rest is federal, administered by the Bureau of Land Management.)<br /><br />A National Monument? Who knew?<br /><br />Most motorists speed past without looking back at the barren landscape around Ludlow, but Feinstein’s words would make the town’s ghosts burst into spectral tears. “This magnificent land and its lonely beauty are a significant part of our history,” she writes, “and we shouldn’t give it up.”<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Shopping tip:</span> Buy “Julie,” a video recording by an Atlanta-based pop rock band called Last November. The performance was taped in beautiful downtown Ludlow, with derelict buildings and barren hills as backdrops. To save a trip to the ghost town that refuses to die, you can watch the show on YouTube:<br /><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4SPe8MfGVw">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4SPe8MfGVw<br /></a>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-46307919400509731262010-01-25T17:10:00.000-08:002010-02-04T22:28:52.100-08:00What We Learned – and Spent: The Wrapup<span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Notes From Lynn:</span><br /><br />Anyone to the east of San Francisco could have told us lunkheads that car camping on a cross-country road trip is difficult in late fall and winter. It’s not because it’s too cold inside the warm bed of the toasty minivan. It’s because the <span style="font-style: italic;">outside</span> is too cold. And too dark.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoorB4ksPm6sYrH8dRSFUMXT4INFY8J749wQTk_mY1BOlbmG2j95Y2UNHWaQec0EGMur6seKntSOxnmnqLfRP5wbLEZgLX_xeCgCB1EW5w91fYOBxNRPmMUACEcqtGjRbdUreXHr2Zak/s1600-h/lynn+mandolin+fire.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWoorB4ksPm6sYrH8dRSFUMXT4INFY8J749wQTk_mY1BOlbmG2j95Y2UNHWaQec0EGMur6seKntSOxnmnqLfRP5wbLEZgLX_xeCgCB1EW5w91fYOBxNRPmMUACEcqtGjRbdUreXHr2Zak/s320/lynn+mandolin+fire.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431667285663370562" border="0" /></a>We haven’t been winter camping even in California ever since Kenny began to play sports. Weekends were out. Accustomed to the relatively warm nights and long days of summer camping in California, we forgot that the winter sun declares curfew at about 5 p.m. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At left, the blogger with mandolin.)</span><br /><br />Even if we could find a campground that wasn’t shuttered for the season, we faced up to 14 hours of darkness. After mid-October, it was too cold and too dark to fix dinner at the picnic table. We would make sandwiches in the heated car. We would crawl into bed in the van as early as 7 p.m., read with a night light, fall asleep by 8 p.m. – and wake up at 3 a.m. Unable to go back to sleep, we would try to read until dawn.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwVvLBTlaPb4TUB7zzbx9e9HhTo_yNuaWaXKherfD31VOabC4ezeTwNCIK3cQHMxajPJqVwh8ns5gdHfAGGMFp5B5sxebOjQvoK00MxLMxMgAF6dt33ajElvef1709VplItjiAbjvBHyg/s1600-h/awning.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwVvLBTlaPb4TUB7zzbx9e9HhTo_yNuaWaXKherfD31VOabC4ezeTwNCIK3cQHMxajPJqVwh8ns5gdHfAGGMFp5B5sxebOjQvoK00MxLMxMgAF6dt33ajElvef1709VplItjiAbjvBHyg/s320/awning.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431684097543176818" border="0" /></a><br />When rain thrummed on the tin roof of the Toyota, the predawn trip to the restroom made us long for home and the bathroom down the hall. At first light we would shiver while making coffee and fixing breakfast – or we would just break camp and head for the nearest coffee shop. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Margo rigged an awning for our breakfast at Fort Stevens.)</span> If we weren't staying with family and friends, we headed for campgrounds or rest-stop parking lots until November. We would pull into one of the franchised service centers that pop up every 20 miles or so on the toll roads in the East.<br /><br />A 24-hour restaurant, usually a McDonald’s, would beckon with restrooms, coffee and Wi-Fi. McDonald’s planners specialize in inoffensive architecture, the bland leading the bland. No doubt they want to induce us to order inoffensive food. We would skip the food and buy coffee at the McCafe (not bad). We could plug in our laptop at one of the tables or just read a book for as long as we wanted. But it’s not what we had in mind. We wanted to see, hear and smell the quirkishness of America.<br /><br />In November and December, we rented rooms in motels (see the list below) if we weren't <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3LtI5b8r4civYoKbce7IabKCaonK5aE9L_b545xC4f1a9klxfVjUiRFmk1keYw2FLc4t5hBsEYo_K9zY5LGtOWQp7ln7Un-rHjbwE8SgEyFraAA_Zxvz6AtlQe_KvFArTwmi7RWo1Mc/s1600-h/guppy.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 131px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC3LtI5b8r4civYoKbce7IabKCaonK5aE9L_b545xC4f1a9klxfVjUiRFmk1keYw2FLc4t5hBsEYo_K9zY5LGtOWQp7ln7Un-rHjbwE8SgEyFraAA_Zxvz6AtlQe_KvFArTwmi7RWo1Mc/s320/guppy.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431670699988152546" border="0" /></a>enjoying the hospitality of friends or relations. Budget motels aren't all that expensive, but on a long trip the credit cards became a bit worn from overuse. Fees for campgrounds ranged from $5 (with a federal Golden Age Passport) to $15. We paid more than $30 for our first (and only) overnight amid the giant mobile homes in an RV park <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span> near Portland. Motels charged anywhere from $40 to $75. We spent one comfortable night in a luxurious B&B in Victoria, B.C., which cost us $150, but it was worth every penny because of Shelagh's hospitality and her bountiful English breakfast.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Visitations with Friends and Family: </span></span><br /><br />The asterisks mark names of our hospitable hosts.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3b0Fwcol3-fWOK8bSQjf-3S212-zSByLvDMskqzOoWAzjS3syXcfdM8mszMjPiPaQWOy_tNA-9ARoRak6qm1A8Fct6IvSrQxDYFAAA0WN-eTHE8MgoNe4oxulwLEXLPzTH13XZ0GhDdY/s1600-h/home+comfort.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 214px; height: 286px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3b0Fwcol3-fWOK8bSQjf-3S212-zSByLvDMskqzOoWAzjS3syXcfdM8mszMjPiPaQWOy_tNA-9ARoRak6qm1A8Fct6IvSrQxDYFAAA0WN-eTHE8MgoNe4oxulwLEXLPzTH13XZ0GhDdY/s320/home+comfort.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433085570478797090" border="0" /></a><br /><br />*Hans and Sherry Freistadt, Oroville, Calif.<br />*Dorothy Kantor, Medford, Ore.<br />*Duane and Marilyn Aasland, Bend, Ore.<br />Barbara and Hector Leslie, McKenzie Bridge, Ore.<br />Barry Locke, Portland<br />*Richard Schwab, Vancouver, Wash.<br />Jamie and Joe Brand, Hoquiam, Wash.<br />*Mark Ludlow, Olympia, Wash.<br />*Emily and Mark Lennon, Missoula, Mont.<br />*Perry and Maria Francis, Polson, Mont.<br />*Conrad and Joy Ludlow, Salt Lake City<br />Jenna and Elliot Ludlow, Salt Lake City<br />Lauren Ludlow, Salt Lake City<br />*Rebekka Struik, Boulder, Colo.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Gn8iMLDEBdtPDCWMcxW39gSZYEqoxM5iekWQigBzlRRC0GJZwOJbCEABTF0lxoq0Sbf14sCV-cxbaBgH2B_3mwIpm3Ckh3HW-oRqGu2nY-O6W3gogaeDTy27Zo2-3oTxEMcY7jnKQLc/s1600-h/cemetary+rules.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 163px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-Gn8iMLDEBdtPDCWMcxW39gSZYEqoxM5iekWQigBzlRRC0GJZwOJbCEABTF0lxoq0Sbf14sCV-cxbaBgH2B_3mwIpm3Ckh3HW-oRqGu2nY-O6W3gogaeDTy27Zo2-3oTxEMcY7jnKQLc/s320/cemetary+rules.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433085895464859506" border="0" /></a><br />Linda Slobodin and Kevin, Arvada, Colo.<br />Jean and Al Slobodin, Westminster, Colo.<br />Harold Davis, Brownville, Neb.<br />Marsha Redman, Polk, Neb.<br />Amahia Mallea, Des Moines, Iowa<br />*Bob and Jeannine Schaub, Boone, Iowa<br />*Karen Mallea, Trail, Minn.<br />Judy Canter, Appleton, Wis.<br />*Art Lane, Saugatuck, Mich.<br />Kenny Ludlow, Anabel Hirano, Will Rubenstein, Oberlin, Ohio<br />*Clyde and Maryann Hohn, Oberlin, Ohio<br />*Dale and Ann Tussing, Syracuse, N.Y.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmr44b9FcBh9Gc9iaBZl1TqxyZbL9ek0OzNqTCpuba_R4Kv4pXU8_bISS7a-i5fp2rd46xJXL5ZpnIdI7L_UV_IZ_-nEH9ci6Skt1e0RVGSdbEpAYrxDqDec2yVK8FYg-GPwAKv_5nY3U/s1600-h/alcohol+gun+sign.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 195px; height: 250px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmr44b9FcBh9Gc9iaBZl1TqxyZbL9ek0OzNqTCpuba_R4Kv4pXU8_bISS7a-i5fp2rd46xJXL5ZpnIdI7L_UV_IZ_-nEH9ci6Skt1e0RVGSdbEpAYrxDqDec2yVK8FYg-GPwAKv_5nY3U/s320/alcohol+gun+sign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433085332223323714" border="0" /></a><br />Anne Macchi, Arlington, Mass.<br />Rick Macchi, Belmont, Mass.<br />Zoe Marmer and Maya Sussman, Tufts University, Boston, Mass.<br />*Kathy Podmaniczky, Pleasant Valley, N.Y.<br />Bill Hutchinson and Lisa Amand, Brooklyn, N.Y.<br />*Dan North and Tara Levy, Jersey City, N.J.<br />Marlene Bagley, Jersey City, N.J.<br />Mireya (Mia) Navarro and James Sterngold, New York City<br />*Tibby Speer and Alex Neill, Washington, D.C.<br />Bud Liebes, Bethesda, Md.<br />*Sheila Downey and Jack Desrocher, Rogers, Ark.<br />*Curt Feldman and Megumi Ishiyama, Algiers (near New Orleans)<br />Marion Freistadt and son Shafir Wittenberg, New Orleans, La.<br />Jim Wittenberg, Metairie, La.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexpKsh1brPrr9pSRKlI7UEpuqzqTJ9iDkyiwIpBjW8nfET9iPvc54CqPf3Bw-3tCxlcsevnhQdfdJmpDYCiUBD7wc8P8mpReXzDafeISubqFf2Vip2AdZOzShwhV0oIkgBTdZcontZCY/s1600-h/big+trout.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 198px; height: 113px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiexpKsh1brPrr9pSRKlI7UEpuqzqTJ9iDkyiwIpBjW8nfET9iPvc54CqPf3Bw-3tCxlcsevnhQdfdJmpDYCiUBD7wc8P8mpReXzDafeISubqFf2Vip2AdZOzShwhV0oIkgBTdZcontZCY/s320/big+trout.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433117897989803954" border="0" /></a><br />*Kathy Macchi and Faye Rozmaryn, Austin, Texas<br />*Ingrid Wiegand and George Dolis, Austin, Texas<br />*Norma and Jerry Bowkett, Sun City, Ariz.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Campgrounds:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Thielsen View Campground</span> on Diamond Lake, Umpqua National Forest, near Crater Lake, Oregon. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Most memorable: Morning mist shrouding the lake.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">McKenzie Bridge National Forest,</span> Willamette National Forest, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgqBXqFjAAzab-6GrhtdVUL8k2iUQuQBoqEGDFhb8bbqjm345Nyv314m8Npd7d6zDZ-52mLtS2eQOdJE-haPCPfDxS0dNACskOefZFA69fzlO7QJ2IHtlz6CZNNubdRCN3eqVa21RfK4/s1600-h/loading+guppy.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 235px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEgqBXqFjAAzab-6GrhtdVUL8k2iUQuQBoqEGDFhb8bbqjm345Nyv314m8Npd7d6zDZ-52mLtS2eQOdJE-haPCPfDxS0dNACskOefZFA69fzlO7QJ2IHtlz6CZNNubdRCN3eqVa21RfK4/s320/loading+guppy.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431666923847617650" border="0" /></a>State Route 126, McKenzie Bridge, Ore. <span style="font-style: italic;">(A beautiful camp at the river’s edge.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fort Stevens State Park, </span>Astoria, Ore. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Showers, big trees, nearly 600 sites on a former Army base. Raccoons.) </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Willaby Camp</span>, Olympic National Forest, near Quinault, Wash. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Rainy, of course.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dosewallips State Park</span>, near Bremerton, Wash. (A big campground, lots of room, nearly empty. Frost.)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Fishhook Camp</span>, Army Corps of Engineers, Lake Sacajawea, near Pasco, Wash. (<span style="font-style: italic;">Full, despite heavy rain. Only one slot.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">May Creek Campground,</span> Beaverhead National Forest, near Big Hole National Battlefield, Wisdom, Mont. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Cold, traces of snow.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Craters of the Moon National Monument,</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>near Arco, Idaho. (No trees. Cold.)<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Dinosaur National Monument</span>, near Jensen, Utah. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Margo packs the Guppy at Dinosaur campground.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stillwater Campground</span>, Arapaho National Forest, at Lake Granby, west of Estes Park, Colo. <span style="font-style: italic;">(No trees, just stumps. Pine beetles?) </span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"> Harlan County Lake,</span> near Alma, Neb. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Beautiful sunset.)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Pawnee Lake Campground,</span> Army Corps of Engineers/State Recreation Area, near Lincoln, Neb. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Gunfire at sunset. Duck hunters?)</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Brownville Recreation Area,</span> Brownville, Neb., on the mighty Missouri River. (<span style="font-style: italic;">No facilities. One other camper.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our (ugh) Parking lots: </span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiylmiG3gYd1RFqIFbjPKWqxFmOuJUALzIIdJthPkfPeoLxZtKaFUWxGpSQKkhmg80M8eftukBVXtVQyFlnld-1HhIpdfGjBZNTvGG0TNxBrCS2UwYe5ChCjYVBG2OZcXZvdlvwXhw11gg/s1600-h/guppy+and+big+truck.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 141px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiylmiG3gYd1RFqIFbjPKWqxFmOuJUALzIIdJthPkfPeoLxZtKaFUWxGpSQKkhmg80M8eftukBVXtVQyFlnld-1HhIpdfGjBZNTvGG0TNxBrCS2UwYe5ChCjYVBG2OZcXZvdlvwXhw11gg/s320/guppy+and+big+truck.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431669501012386162" border="0" /></a><br /><br />-- At a closed truck stop near Lena, Mich. <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right.)</span><br />-- At Service Centers with all-night fast-food stores on toll roads in New York State and Massachusetts.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Motels:</span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Namaste,</span> travelers: Learn a few phrases of Gujarati. Astonishingly, 37 percent of America’s lodgings are owned and managed by networking Indian-Americans originally from Gujarati or its neighboring states in India. For budget motels near the highway, the percentage might be <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2Z-XA2cQ21y9qcRc5suj3uK1upKLhEl8fL5NlxWdMZN2uhuy_dmxsMOBZvcH7fcFn0UP-7drdHA2Nsg4im6lH2qjvEXfUgk1SourAaanDe2wQwhhH7hVVpyLmj6rOuuaP9eeYKDdGsY/s1600-h/enterance+sign.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 278px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU2Z-XA2cQ21y9qcRc5suj3uK1upKLhEl8fL5NlxWdMZN2uhuy_dmxsMOBZvcH7fcFn0UP-7drdHA2Nsg4im6lH2qjvEXfUgk1SourAaanDe2wQwhhH7hVVpyLmj6rOuuaP9eeYKDdGsY/s320/enterance+sign.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431673729641689698" border="0" /></a>double. The phenomenon began in the 1940s, says a New York Times writer from India, when Kanjibhai Desai bought the Goldfield Hotel in San Francisco. As every traveler has noticed, the most common surname of the innkeepers, in a serendipitous rhyming with “motel,” is Patel. If you say “<span style="font-style: italic;">shub sham</span>” instead of “good afternoon,” will you see a discount in the Total Patel Motel bill?<br /><br />We stayed in 20 motels, and only six appeared to be in local ownership. We found only one that was an original. In Newfane, N.Y., the Lake Ontario Motel is about 10 long miles from Lake Ontario, but misleading motel names go with the territory. So to speak. The outside of the motel looks like a barn, but the rooms on the inside open into a central lobby/game room. We found our room on an upstairs gallery around the open lobby. It was ingenious, but the room was so small that the refrigerator<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyphenhyphenXFP1M1FI2HherZjXiRBCJyNaGTaiKcTd3P7RAtKVA7z-amqMq87gBQbervKAZcEbnMrqo-K7ZYd473EQ-O29cQGOlDkE5lb_GDK09nls_2N6b8nfE9PfA-WienxSjna5Kp21MtUPWM/s1600-h/plunk+%26+bunk.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 162px; height: 290px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhyphenhyphenXFP1M1FI2HherZjXiRBCJyNaGTaiKcTd3P7RAtKVA7z-amqMq87gBQbervKAZcEbnMrqo-K7ZYd473EQ-O29cQGOlDkE5lb_GDK09nls_2N6b8nfE9PfA-WienxSjna5Kp21MtUPWM/s320/plunk+%26+bunk.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431673946282196434" border="0" /></a> and microwave stood just outside the door. It wasn’t cheap ($65) by winter rate standards. Complimentary breakfast? No. Go to the café across the road. About the other five non-chain motels, the best that could be said was that they were relatively cheap ($40 to $58).<br /><br />We avoided upscale lodgings with the same fervor that kept seedy motor courts and hot-sheet motels off our shopping lists. As true-blue enemies of franchise chains and ardent supporters of local businesses, we made an uncomfortable discovery. When you’re on the road, just looking for a room with clean sheets, a good mattress, a shower and Wi-Fi, what you don’t need is architectural stimulation, stained <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2A_GE7Z-PBiwnIUf4_boKm74CYhCVli3jwT9uig9aLbPlFZrILCS3wd5hhU4ygk1clFkpR8Zg92BW4A0-IU3HjEKRMIzEuSq2xlWOdpOQqyBCK_agSd_pT8aQMaT4B1e4JiOsLEmQKg/s1600-h/gopher+prairie.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR2A_GE7Z-PBiwnIUf4_boKm74CYhCVli3jwT9uig9aLbPlFZrILCS3wd5hhU4ygk1clFkpR8Zg92BW4A0-IU3HjEKRMIzEuSq2xlWOdpOQqyBCK_agSd_pT8aQMaT4B1e4JiOsLEmQKg/s320/gopher+prairie.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431686718947853122" border="0" /></a>furniture and noisy celebrants down the hall. We took a pass on the Plunk and Bunk <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right) </span><span>and had already booked a room at the AmericInn before we noticed the Gopher Prairie Motel <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span>, named for the fictional city of Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street." </span><br /><br />It’s time to confess. Accomodations were much better in the budget chains: Econolodge, Days Inn, Comfort Inn, Best Western, Super 8 and our favorite, the slightly pricey ($77) but relatively luxurious AmericInns we found in Sauk Centre, Minn., and Thorp, Wis.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Minivan:</span></span><br /><br />We lucked out. We scanned Craigslist for a month, looking for a camper van that would carry us around the country but wouldn’t cost a lot. If the transmission or the engine went out, we <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHycVwtD44De1SROZ0PDgeZfUgj0vyB8Hd-xOv1mT273ScevUBbUs5IZgWqa8ptVh4NkOFUcNvnmZNzx25jBz_L2e9ExD8bEjyzy8usLLdjQA3xT90nNLhYCxjds9aU5Ers81bPJjrALc/s1600-h/guppy+w:margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 456px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHycVwtD44De1SROZ0PDgeZfUgj0vyB8Hd-xOv1mT273ScevUBbUs5IZgWqa8ptVh4NkOFUcNvnmZNzx25jBz_L2e9ExD8bEjyzy8usLLdjQA3xT90nNLhYCxjds9aU5Ers81bPJjrALc/s320/guppy+w:margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431675722821962930" border="0" /></a>wanted to be able to walk away. After looking at VW Westfalias and various camper vans (Dodge, Ford, etc.), we settled on a 1996 Toyota Previa with a rebuilt cylinder head, 137,000 miles, good gas mileage (4 cylinders with overdrive and supercharger), new tires and everything else in good shape. The price: $3,900.<br /><br />Margo removed the middle chairs and the rear seats. She built a bed on a platform with compartments for luggage, camping gear, etc. We carried a folding table, two folding chairs and kitchen stuff. A foam mattress was fitted for the bed, and Margo’s sewing machine produced a duvet and curtains. She tried to improvise an awning, but it’s a work in regress. We added wire baskets for clothing and storage, a rug and seat covers. We also bought a porta-potty and a frame for our laptop (we never used either one).<br /><br />Altogether, Previa prep cost us about $710 – and about a week of Margo's labor.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Note to other Californians: </span>To drive in other states is to get used to the alarming sound of a rumble strip. It emanates a racheting racket of grinding noises. It rattles the car with scary vibrations, as if you have run over a very large rock – a flash in the pan, perhaps. Rumble strips, from 4 to 8 inches wide, are corrugated belts grooved into the pavement on the shoulder, or the stripe down the middle, or athwart the road at a railroad crossing or intersection – or all of them.<br /><br />In Astoria, Ore., the sliding mechanism broke on the side door. It cost us $326 and took four days for delivery of the broken gizmo. In Golden, Colo., we needed a new battery ($100). Oil changes and other maintenance brought the upkeep budget to $767.<br /><br />We decided to keep the Previa as Margo’s work car.<br /><br />We had a flat tire. But it wasn’t ours. At about 75 mph<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1n9_D8GdCZt3GhF3UiT1sLP33QwTxDolPZCUIT9UGpYMdtN4Kel_oATcgd9beHmmqnY2NcE0A13DDXgwjtQ7BAf7C0jrTS7zPI6pVx0Ll94JG6rjiPD0Ohxb3ZzajAf6V55siBld4C0/s1600-h/flat+tire.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgB1n9_D8GdCZt3GhF3UiT1sLP33QwTxDolPZCUIT9UGpYMdtN4Kel_oATcgd9beHmmqnY2NcE0A13DDXgwjtQ7BAf7C0jrTS7zPI6pVx0Ll94JG6rjiPD0Ohxb3ZzajAf6V55siBld4C0/s320/flat+tire.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434634095142430594" border="0" /></a> on I-10 in the sagebrush flatland of west Texas, we saw a tire come off the car ahead. It looked like a wheel, coming right at us. I had a split second, not even time to duck, warn Margo or contemplate might happen to the windshield (and us). We heard a loud thud. I hit the brake.<br /><br />It wasn’t a wheel. It was a shredded tire. It had sloughed off the wheel like the hide of a rattlesnake in molting season. Squished by the bumper, it thumped and passed below the minivan. The only damage was to the Buena Vista PTA Alumni license plate frame. We lent our jack to the driver of the sedan. He replaced the wheel, and we continued onward. We were lucky, and we knew it.<br /><br />We checked our mileage only once. It was good but not great, about 23 miles to the gallon. Highway speed 55 to 80 mph. Freeway/toll road (approximate): 75-80 mph. The statements for our debit card show that we spent $1,600 for gas at 42 filling stations, averaging about $38 per fill up. We put about 13,000 miles on the odometer. The cost of gas per mile: 8 cents. The price per gallon varied from $2.40 to $3.20.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUlT39vTxi5vETD2Jz77Wa4GFNQZcVuUf9knd8hgQ7Y0_AEQtQTSmr5b2aXHLRDteRLYNxTtMFnFsjUWPZ2G0uYgRT6VWoQQGlQ7MebgB5W2_dOWB4XBMFVsh9y0ZkudW2-BTi4o6Z28/s1600-h/rumble+strips.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 171px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqUlT39vTxi5vETD2Jz77Wa4GFNQZcVuUf9knd8hgQ7Y0_AEQtQTSmr5b2aXHLRDteRLYNxTtMFnFsjUWPZ2G0uYgRT6VWoQQGlQ7MebgB5W2_dOWB4XBMFVsh9y0ZkudW2-BTi4o6Z28/s320/rumble+strips.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433082081672377250" border="0" /></a>Rumble strips warn inattentive or drowsy drivers. They help drivers stay on the road during bad weather. They also generate acronyms, as in: DOTs report a high B/C for CSRS (SNAP) to reduce ROR (DOR). <span style="font-style: italic;">Translation: State Departments of Transportation report a high benefit/cost ration for Continuous Shoulder Rumble Strips (also called Sonic Nap Alert Problem) to reduce Run-Off-Road (aka Drift-Off-Road) accidents.</span><br /><br />It’s a lot easier to talk about Botts Dots, the device preferred in California and invented by a CalTrans research engineer, Elbert Dysart Botts, Ph.D. He died in 1962, never knowing that his successors would glue more than 25 million 4-inch “raised pavement markers” to California highways.<br /><br />Botts Dots are unsuitable wherever winter roads need to be scraped with snowplows. That’s why rumble strips are preferred in most other states. Safety engineers were convinced in the 1990s of their benefits. They quote many studies, including a New York state report that showed ROR crashes dropped an astonishing 88 percent on the New York Thruway – from 588 ROR crashes in 1993 to 74 in 1997; from 17 fatalities in 1991 to 1 fatality in 1997.<br /><br />What’s not to like about rumble strips? Ask the bicylists.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our Food:</span></span><br /><br />When contemplating this adventure, we never thought it would lead us to the best series of dinners imaginable. And I’m not referring to the myocardial infraction pastrami at New York's 2nd Avenue Deli or any of the fine restaurants we <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBzHvG84Vt16Y7ugJHQQbpnOdMfyvAL80ymORPYVA2DLRXE97VrigHJYcaKCd9ZCsfGu4Jc6YjDA30MYjO4BoWsHuF8wplP-3GzjKw_v1keCvhrEvzjn30wsL-rqu9KJ8ZgffUu0c_dY/s1600-h/alex+and+tibby+at+home.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 390px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiBzHvG84Vt16Y7ugJHQQbpnOdMfyvAL80ymORPYVA2DLRXE97VrigHJYcaKCd9ZCsfGu4Jc6YjDA30MYjO4BoWsHuF8wplP-3GzjKw_v1keCvhrEvzjn30wsL-rqu9KJ8ZgffUu0c_dY/s320/alex+and+tibby+at+home.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431678598705335074" border="0" /></a>visited from Poughkeepsie to Jersey City to Fayetteville. Instead, the great chefs of our journey were our hosts. They welcomed us with hugs, hospitality and memorable dinners. If we named them, we would exhaust our stock of superlatives and, more to the point, subject them to pleading mobs of passionate gourmets outside their kitchen windows. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Alex Neill and Tibby Speer with Margo in their home in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.)</span><br /><br />On the road, we kept it simple. Dry cereal, milk and coffee for breakfast; sandwiches, milk and grapes for lunch. Until it turned dark at 5 p.m., we would get out the propane stove and fix dinner on the picnic table, usually pasta, salad, bread and a beverage. (I lost 12 pounds.)<br /><br />Later, when we looked for motels, Margo would inspect the coupon books and linger over the word “breakfast.” To stay competitive these days, many motels have moved a step upward from the “continental breakfast” of rolls and coffee. At the AmericInn’s comfortable lobby, with leather chairs and a fireplace that’s almost real, a self-serve breakfast includes coffee, orange juice, a do-it-yourself waffle outfit, bagels, sweet rolls, toast, hard-boiled eggs, yogurt cups, three kinds of dry cereal, packets of oatmeal and copies of <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgMfUkZecDkDoLAJ-CfIh_d2ZklTiaeLH87o4gp2aF5AATXnUO5sZLQZ9NYeqS9y3gEf0xFsDE4n6EeIwxn6Oee3v8EYOWbNnQEJHboohyI2lxWOEOD0ZurUrOPtYqtO5FzzJVObl64qY/s1600-h/catfish.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 265px; height: 413px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgMfUkZecDkDoLAJ-CfIh_d2ZklTiaeLH87o4gp2aF5AATXnUO5sZLQZ9NYeqS9y3gEf0xFsDE4n6EeIwxn6Oee3v8EYOWbNnQEJHboohyI2lxWOEOD0ZurUrOPtYqtO5FzzJVObl64qY/s200/catfish.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434637225590900738" border="0" /></a>USA Today. We saw similar waffle layouts at Days Inn and Comfort Inn.<br /><br />Rare is the budget motel that doesn’t offer at least a doughnut or two along with coffee in the lobby, but at the shabby Oak Tree Inn we were told to walk to the adjacent truck stop for coffee. It must be a motel without a Patel (see above).<br /><br />We take for granted the presence of at least one Chinese restaurant with take-out delivery in any town, anywhere, with enough people to support a high school (that seems to be the limbo stick). It wasn't always the case. I'm old enough to remember when the only Chinese restaurants in San Francisco were in Chinatown. Half a century later, with hundreds of Chinese restaurants all through Frisco, we weren't surprised when we saw ads for the Great Wall and New China in Bemidji, a city of about 14,000 in the remoteness of the northwest corner of Minnesota.<br /><br />But another culinary transformation has engulfed the towns and rural villages that we saw from Oregon to Louisiana. In Bemidji, T Juan's is the best known of the city's three Mexican restaurants. We drove past Hamilton, Mont. (4,500 population), where Fiesta en Jalisco offers an alternative to Bamboo Garden. In Madisonville, Ky. (18,000), it's El Bracero and China Jade. In Pine Bluff, Ark. (52,000), where we spent the night, Bei Jing leads the list of eight Chinese <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFUhf1DiRgXO_ztzYFNYYcOJh54odLD_DDeFSeK7nzHKhFK_e0HpWI7Scdp9kPbKMkRqsin-cLpUjA5jEOFAR7d1IoCSTviZIjeI9S6iiLH8jOQi02WIIaeBq10CR0ntSiW23Eu8nAQM/s1600-h/atomic+burger.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeFUhf1DiRgXO_ztzYFNYYcOJh54odLD_DDeFSeK7nzHKhFK_e0HpWI7Scdp9kPbKMkRqsin-cLpUjA5jEOFAR7d1IoCSTviZIjeI9S6iiLH8jOQi02WIIaeBq10CR0ntSiW23Eu8nAQM/s200/atomic+burger.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434636995590788306" border="0" /></a>restaurants; El Matador is one of the newcomers in a city with eight Mexican or Tex-Mex restaurants. And it seemed that everywhere we went, enchiladas and tostadas have joined General Tsao's chicken and mu shu pork in liberating the palates of middle America. But for immigration, they might still be dining on tuna casserole and Jello salad.<br /><br />We stopped for take-out coffee in a doughnut shop in Pecos, an ugly little city in the sagebrush country of west Texas. We knew that Cambodian-Americans now dominate the nation's doughnut shops (2,000 or so in California alone). But in Pecos, nearly 80 percent of the 10,000 residents are Latino. Only one-half of 1 percent of residents are listed as Asian, and it's a long way from Ankgor Wat. Nonetheless, Margo smiled as she emerged with the coffee and said, "Cambodians!"<br /><br />We thought immediately about how much we missed San Francisco and the Ankgor Borei restaurant on upper Mission Street (at Cortland Avenue) in what might be called Bernal Depths.<br />Let other Cambodian-Americans get rich with doughnuts. What we needed at that moment was clay pot shrimp, green curry and pan-fried fish fillet with garlic sauce. We ignored the billboard directing travelers to the museum for Judge Roy Bean. We headed west, imagining cashew chicken, Cambodian style.<br /><br />As for dinner in restaurants on our trip, the low point came a few days earlier. It was Thanksgiving Day in northwestern Kentucky. We tried to buy lunch at the Dinky Diner. It was <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd44CbVlY1-zkE7cZqu1xcy0Y4hvLLetPoYnWwj0uSONBU3-Dtvs9JyoIozTXhG9l7Q0IZoo_9kY-GGTwmsP8Jd8QKxnU4jRKtMp6jFrYjI4-RXESI5bFqO9XYo2MxzziCl_pQ63nLUvk/s1600-h/diner.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 310px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd44CbVlY1-zkE7cZqu1xcy0Y4hvLLetPoYnWwj0uSONBU3-Dtvs9JyoIozTXhG9l7Q0IZoo_9kY-GGTwmsP8Jd8QKxnU4jRKtMp6jFrYjI4-RXESI5bFqO9XYo2MxzziCl_pQ63nLUvk/s320/diner.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5434637423039724610" border="0" /></a>dinky enough, but closed. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right, Margo measures it. Ten feet, exactly.) </span>We went to the big city, Paducah. By the time we began to look for a good restaurant, the downtown district had shut down. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>Out on the highway, three miles later, we finally saw the lights on at Applebee’s Neighborhood Grill and Bar. The “neighborhood” is an unplanned highway mishmash of businesses and light industry, but we were lucky to avoid munching in Burger King on Thanksgiving hamburgers with all the trimmings.<br /><br />At Applebee’s, I ordered “Margherita Chicken,” with bruschetta over chicken breast. How many other diners did the same in a worldwide chain of 1,997 Applebees? I had the distinct impression that the menu, décor, atmosphere, uniforms of the waitresses and even the recipes come from a computer somewhere in Kansas City. But I need to get rid of my snobbishness. Maybe big is, in fact, better. The Margherita Chicken was pretty good, a compliment to the late Queen Consort from Savoy. And who are we to question the corporate investors who bought the chain from other investors who bought it from other investors who bought it from a husband and wife in Atlanta? Pass the garlic.<br /><br />---------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:180%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"> OUR EXPENSE ACCOUNT</span></span><br /></div><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">RESTAURANTS: $746<br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXdJRGx-b9XfnYOXQjlQym8kxyGZNe2lYLq52PCPbN2wQX-LlwwuXJwhUj4if1OeM2NiEwpUdW8C-AQLHi6EC0nSu68jXFPMWq4la0I8cPsA_DtOatkv6ktpVKJaTfpXqqCqrlNi-dJI/s1600-h/Idrows+in+borscht.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 278px; height: 415px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgpXdJRGx-b9XfnYOXQjlQym8kxyGZNe2lYLq52PCPbN2wQX-LlwwuXJwhUj4if1OeM2NiEwpUdW8C-AQLHi6EC0nSu68jXFPMWq4la0I8cPsA_DtOatkv6ktpVKJaTfpXqqCqrlNi-dJI/s320/Idrows+in+borscht.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433119503112277298" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">COMPUTER REPAIRS: $200<br /><br />MISCELLANEOUS: $1,800<br /><br />CAMPGROUNDS: $100<br /><br />MOTELS: $1,337<br /><br />TRANSPORTATION : $7,302<br />-----------------------------------------</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">GRAND TOTAL: </span>$11,485<br /><br />Subtract Minivan: $4,810<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">ADJUSTED TOTA</span>L $6,675<br />-------------------<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Explanatory Notes</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">1. Miscellaneous: </span>Admission to museums and<br />exhibits, groceries,coffee to go, books and<br />newspapers, gifts,postcards, postage,<br />sandwiches (approximate): $1,800<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">2. Transportation: </span><br /><br />Repairs, oil changes, and maintenance: $767</span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieU-ixzmiQ-JbeO2BZAVxwkP1SfmCbPdaUgN1_KLtk_Rcku85qFTFd1EtgL64z1oF5QNkIO2efe3v4hO85jHlm9AL2D94F8IdkxPI3Q9c-R7v-w10_aNEW_Vpcoj3WGl1O20nbDsUWDpQ/s1600-h/CIMG3184.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 326px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieU-ixzmiQ-JbeO2BZAVxwkP1SfmCbPdaUgN1_KLtk_Rcku85qFTFd1EtgL64z1oF5QNkIO2efe3v4hO85jHlm9AL2D94F8IdkxPI3Q9c-R7v-w10_aNEW_Vpcoj3WGl1O20nbDsUWDpQ/s320/CIMG3184.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5433121254095456546" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Gas: $1,600<br />Train, Taxi, Metro, PATH, NYC subways: $125<br /> ---------<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">On the Road total</span> $2,492<br /><br />The Minivan:*<br />Purchase of the Toyota Previa: $3,900<br />Registration, etc.: $200<br />Prep and camper conversion: $710<br /> ---------<br />MINIVAN TOTAL $4,810<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">TRANSPORTATION TOTAL: </span> $7,302<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">3. Motels and Hotels</span> <span style="font-style: italic;">(Off-Season) </span><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span><br />* <span style="font-style: italic;">Franchised or owned by chains</span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQvyGNAGXms8l7s6V4_IiwUAHSavH60ZS-AmDXb8tcMBNQ5IrJ6jr5pIjlOz3ZwV954_kBh_P9Dz0ZNslLW8kl1pTsvmnFIBx_ewE-qp4mgsDGdqEsMYM0u3dWLw2BbNGFpAwnQhuusc/s1600-h/happy+travelers.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 374px; height: 441px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilQvyGNAGXms8l7s6V4_IiwUAHSavH60ZS-AmDXb8tcMBNQ5IrJ6jr5pIjlOz3ZwV954_kBh_P9Dz0ZNslLW8kl1pTsvmnFIBx_ewE-qp4mgsDGdqEsMYM0u3dWLw2BbNGFpAwnQhuusc/s320/happy+travelers.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431676873595791906" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />*AmericInn: Sauk Centre, Minn. ($76)<br />Sunset Motel, Ignace, Mich. ($45)<br />*Econolodge, Niagara Falls, N.Y. ($61)</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Lake Ontario Motel, Newfane, N.Y. ($65)<br />*Quality Inn, Lexington, MA ($60)</span><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">*AmericInn, Thorp, Wis. ($77)<br />*Econo Lodge, Bellmawr, N.J. ($55)<br />*Comfort Inn, Dover, Delaware ($67)<br />*Days Inn, White Pine, Tenn. ($44)<br />*Knights Inn, Verona, VA. ($49)<br />*Econolodge, Paducah, Ky. ($45)<br />*Comfort Inn, Nashville, Tenn. ($72)<br />Cottonwood Inn, Pocahontas, Ark. ($56)<br />Redwood Inn, White Hall, Ark. ($55)<br />*Travel Inn (2 days), Metairie, La. ($101)<br />*Super 8, Beaumont, Texas ($55)<br />Oak Tree Inn, Pecos, Texas ($58)<br />*Best Western, Deming, N.M. ($66)<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">*Days Inn, Lake Havasu, Ariz. ($54)<br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Homeland Inn, Buttonwillow, CA ($40)<br />-------------------<br />($1,187)<br /><br />Cozy Cottage Bed and<br />Breakfast, Victoria, B.C. ($150)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">TOTAL MOTEL EXPENSES:</span> $1,337<br /><br /><br /></span><div style="text-align: center;">-30-<br /></div>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-52402675830263756782010-01-24T11:23:00.000-08:002010-02-04T08:30:59.266-08:00Guppy Chronicles: The Wrapup<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ht0yBWsPzAEfNQT3O_4RhET2B9_2vybyboldwZ3N9BulTI9KDNTMWAPfr3Ooqsw19ZCKKElg4SH4C_cENTe09zm57H42qfdrlGZhm3lIqrn3h7Kwmz345fULXEJ2YnQVLSJ8rPy6PvQ/s1600-h/falls+and+leaves.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 651px; height: 323px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3ht0yBWsPzAEfNQT3O_4RhET2B9_2vybyboldwZ3N9BulTI9KDNTMWAPfr3Ooqsw19ZCKKElg4SH4C_cENTe09zm57H42qfdrlGZhm3lIqrn3h7Kwmz345fULXEJ2YnQVLSJ8rPy6PvQ/s400/falls+and+leaves.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431332603426652050" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />From the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, befogged by mist, we expected to hear the awesome thunder from Horseshoe Falls and American Falls. We hadn’t expected to hear a relentless clamor for tourist dollars no more than a city block uphill from this spectacle of nature’s power and beauty. In the neon jumble of Clifton Hill, we <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZgtq-NpwmEcrJMeU2tdr3ihdOMl4o38fPznjUNFvdxOM1RI9Y2Q_vtMNE8iHijS55CBICD_aLh7NdglROcIa6j3JbeTfi4wlxW0UAZfSTdA_VWwRjydWtfBlgblxdnAn8sRnwZZwdHJ8/s1600-h/clifton+st+2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 403px; height: 244px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZgtq-NpwmEcrJMeU2tdr3ihdOMl4o38fPznjUNFvdxOM1RI9Y2Q_vtMNE8iHijS55CBICD_aLh7NdglROcIa6j3JbeTfi4wlxW0UAZfSTdA_VWwRjydWtfBlgblxdnAn8sRnwZZwdHJ8/s320/clifton+st+2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431298694677787042" border="0" /></a>walked past the towering Niagara Sky Wheel, the Nightmares Fear Factory, the Dino Rampage 4D Simulation Ride and dozens of similar amusements. We saw a plastic statue of King Kong hovering over a street fragrant with pizza, stuffed pretzels and, according to the Wild Wing restaurant, 100 flavors of chicken. We couldn’t have been more surprised if the Grand Canyon were to sprout a ferris wheel.<br /><br />Surprise. That’s the unexpected answer, of course, when Margo and I are asked about what we experienced in our 13,000-mile, three-month, tour of America’s byways and cities, big and small.<br /><br />We were astounded at the leviathan Phaetons, Alumascapes, Artic Foxes and other whale-sized motor homes in our first (and last) RV park, Pheasant Ridge, outside the Portland suburb of Wilsonville. In response, we named our minivan camper The Guppy.<br /><br />Surprise came with wonderful place names: Lake Winnibigoshish in northwest Minnesota, South Skunk River in Iowa, Zig Zag Mountains in Arkansas and Dosewallips State Park in <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-Gaz7Q0fpEPhuVHyJV8eOkE3VBNbI23rOEjCWR45cjcaF3nkvB6To6STb0HSBTHCUqwgb4FOfasvRoLqPqFcTASHkaLH1SCbFRRSuvqvx73pMRYj3v8TNakukOpuCXISKXyKh9nTq18/s1600-h/hot+springs+fountain.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 172px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjk-Gaz7Q0fpEPhuVHyJV8eOkE3VBNbI23rOEjCWR45cjcaF3nkvB6To6STb0HSBTHCUqwgb4FOfasvRoLqPqFcTASHkaLH1SCbFRRSuvqvx73pMRYj3v8TNakukOpuCXISKXyKh9nTq18/s320/hot+springs+fountain.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431300409046632226" border="0" /></a>Washington’s Olympic Peninsula. They’re tied for second place. Our favorite appeared in western Virginia on the Blue Ridge Parkway. A sign directs motorists to Sweet Annie Hollow.<br /><br />We weren’t surprised at the near-scalding temperature of 143-degree water spouting from a public fountain in the once-fashionable Arkansas spa city of Hot Springs. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's Margo, who is cool.) </span>But nobody told us a little secret: The thermal water started its journey as rainfall in the nearby mountains at about the time Stonehenge opened for business. Heated far below the surface, it percolates slowly upward. Here, how about a cup of 4,000-year-old hot water?<br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;"> <span style="font-size:130%;">Birds, Birds, Birds</span><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQo3JiEavoUhQ8njIGarb-j9IdSbdMC7Qeh8IKGPVgNhVI87r3k597EwmKNdhWhxgNfaNj09urSdlHVGKQDzPefQFVcE0euElp6dEHaHPGs28JbCLgyr7w7FDpoktedE2BcrQzvZ7Pk3s/s1600-h/sandhill+cranes+v.+blurry.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQo3JiEavoUhQ8njIGarb-j9IdSbdMC7Qeh8IKGPVgNhVI87r3k597EwmKNdhWhxgNfaNj09urSdlHVGKQDzPefQFVcE0euElp6dEHaHPGs28JbCLgyr7w7FDpoktedE2BcrQzvZ7Pk3s/s320/sandhill+cranes+v.+blurry.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432066075481347858" border="0" /></a><br />Margo put aside thoughts about Jurassic fossils when she looked at a field of corn stubble and said, "Herons!" She unsheathed her binoculars. "Stop," she said. She focused on hundreds of ungainly birds pecking at kernels. She was dubious. "Herons? Out here?"<br /><br />Good question. Herons and desert don't seem to go together. The northeast corner of Utah might have been wet enough 150 million years to support long-neck sauropods, but today their fossilized bones lie beneath the arid hills of the Dinosaur National Monument. Besides, herons are birds of a feather who don't flock together.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj58s8Lx4tOTnhEVy_Xl94nZbN5g0mztoQn8Aw1zz1sTBbHM9P7k19ZHGvulY1GQGoBdmqwj4gyUKK2pxO371hqfVF04lPVizmL1fRKyZg1nrV4fpMW3sax2_vRoTEwNv7wvmswW_c3Ps/s1600-h/SACR_CEly.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 176px; height: 128px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj58s8Lx4tOTnhEVy_Xl94nZbN5g0mztoQn8Aw1zz1sTBbHM9P7k19ZHGvulY1GQGoBdmqwj4gyUKK2pxO371hqfVF04lPVizmL1fRKyZg1nrV4fpMW3sax2_vRoTEwNv7wvmswW_c3Ps/s320/SACR_CEly.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432067354503691682" border="0" /></a>When we arrived at the Visitor Center, Margo asked a Park Service ranger about the herons. "Herons?" she said. "Those were sandhill cranes!" <span style="font-style: italic;">(At left, photo from California Dept. of Fish and Game)</span><br /><br />Minutes later we were back at the corn field to celebrate the happiest surprise of Margo's fascination with birdlife, an allurement she took up fairly recently. As she peered through the heavy spyglasses, she was so excited that she could scarcely speak. "They have little red hats! They'll so beautiful!"<br /><br />Our trek by minicamper was punctuated by similar outbreaks of bird-driven excitement. On the Hudson Walkway, a former railroad bridge near Poughkeepsie, Margo and her friend Kathy Podmaniczky saw a peregrine falcon taking it easy 4 feet away on a board<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTflADdcO5xkUwmi_7wV53Qqbyi7UnAEsKCKhx2EKd3iFhRbAfkQmkhTokV1OwAViHDyu6IGd7Cz5wOSqbNiRB8ffWpRdKKXms1tSyzCqCOst4aVIAtBK46Jzkk0sV1tEN1Dm-HoAVlSc/s1600-h/prairie+falcon.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 78px; height: 146px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTflADdcO5xkUwmi_7wV53Qqbyi7UnAEsKCKhx2EKd3iFhRbAfkQmkhTokV1OwAViHDyu6IGd7Cz5wOSqbNiRB8ffWpRdKKXms1tSyzCqCOst4aVIAtBK46Jzkk0sV1tEN1Dm-HoAVlSc/s200/prairie+falcon.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432068714259853442" border="0" /></a><br />behind the railing. They stared at each other until the falcon, evidently bored, took off.<br /><br />As we drove down a gravel road next to the Platte River in central Nebraska, Margo got out and nailed another falcon – this one a prairie falcon – that was poised on a telephone pole while scanning the fields for prey. In Idaho's Lost River Valley, Margo was delighted when The Guppy was buzzed by two bald eagles. We were lucky enough to spot eagles, in fact, a number of times – in Minnesota, Washington and Montana. White pelicans welcomed us into Louisiana and a cardinal – a flash of bright red in a winter-barren shrub – welcomed us into lower Michigan.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw1yrB1IeA3zGxZQk2UdGtdqJCPEpo1-RxsuJMa8gS78SpaoMPb01y9Rk3tn8a488F8v33Xh9cp5ugrPvUTuqN1qaXnsPTSPtrWk94oMXp6Vy0msf1CLuoABLeRN-Ez8Yc0SajYbL-xSo/s1600-h/crowd+at+swifts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 307px; height: 188px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw1yrB1IeA3zGxZQk2UdGtdqJCPEpo1-RxsuJMa8gS78SpaoMPb01y9Rk3tn8a488F8v33Xh9cp5ugrPvUTuqN1qaXnsPTSPtrWk94oMXp6Vy0msf1CLuoABLeRN-Ez8Yc0SajYbL-xSo/s320/crowd+at+swifts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432060064082607394" border="0" /></a>In a grassy slope at the rear of an elementary school in Portland, we waited with scores of <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBGauHV_GF0QVXWCJzC3UqtohRCKyiwCZ8nvYdQoVsBjf5hjYGGr7GMNwAW3IvyvjAtlAn_VwJH8Ojob2EKwpjjbsiMsvTtf8bmDABSbzeats8NN40zeR3-nTPLQSmH3GwA62nelRRBc/s1600-h/swifts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 171px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqBGauHV_GF0QVXWCJzC3UqtohRCKyiwCZ8nvYdQoVsBjf5hjYGGr7GMNwAW3IvyvjAtlAn_VwJH8Ojob2EKwpjjbsiMsvTtf8bmDABSbzeats8NN40zeR3-nTPLQSmH3GwA62nelRRBc/s320/swifts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432064809585609298" border="0" /></a>families and friends for the sunset dive of thousands of swifts in September. It was one thing to be told of the sleeping habits of these tiny birds, who dine on flying insects, But when they formed a huge vortex and <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span> dive-b0mbed into the chimney, Margo (and I) gasped with surprise.<br /><br />When we visited Liberty State Park next to Jersey City, Margo <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxnCo48PH6UfVlu01mBpWESMgPJ3G5TE9okuvfzvIhPMLMhF6wB9TYQ45lkha8zdnUnvJTl3Qrq72262QlZOwweRazsY9dEXpOaEn-ZDVzn1Wp79blA2q12yI-Tq9UhN9U1zjCMYbf34E/s1600-h/margo+and+liberty.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 206px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxnCo48PH6UfVlu01mBpWESMgPJ3G5TE9okuvfzvIhPMLMhF6wB9TYQ45lkha8zdnUnvJTl3Qrq72262QlZOwweRazsY9dEXpOaEn-ZDVzn1Wp79blA2q12yI-Tq9UhN9U1zjCMYbf34E/s320/margo+and+liberty.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432059690718646162" border="0" /></a>exulted in spotting one bird after another – blue herons,<br />American coots, widgeons, mallards, mute swans, and a gazillion brants.<br /><br />We had known that the wild dances of sandhill cranes are a familiar and welcome sight in California's Central Valley, where the state sponsors guided tours near Lodi in September, "the season of the sandhill crane." We knew that another subspecies winters in the Platte River's shallows in Nebraska. But it's a shock to find that some states, including Utah, allow hunters to kill them. The books say they prefer to sleep by standing all night in shallow water so the coyotes won't get them. As we watched, the impossibly slender cranes took off, straightening their legs behind them (instead of tucking them in, like most birds). Margo was in love.<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;">Wet Spot</span></span><br /><br />Gardens of moss on the wet picnic tables didn’t astound us. After all, Quinault is the wettest place in the 48 states. Lots of moss would be inevitable in Willaby Campground, a loop of empty tentsites in northwestern Washington’s Olympic National Park. We looked more closely. Surprise! We found the tables aren’t made of wood. The tufts and belts of green moss somehow grow on concrete.<br /><br />Well, we wanted to experience the delights of the rainforest. So we did. And then we decamped to a roadside café near Lake Quinault. The local newspaper is called the Rain Barrel. Average annual rainfall is from<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNm5Ujt9gJpVu3zUOPqiaAt-UleiqTL_Aa0hzGo_xM7pXUPxlrCh6rbSQlhnO3Tey_nHv_20wTj3vOx1Ue5iy8T0PRFfpP56vv0hjFyBLaRsAnnw8tu7nvPmUigEPDBcoO1z4ScOWdh4/s1600-h/mossy+concrete.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 286px; height: 297px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivNm5Ujt9gJpVu3zUOPqiaAt-UleiqTL_Aa0hzGo_xM7pXUPxlrCh6rbSQlhnO3Tey_nHv_20wTj3vOx1Ue5iy8T0PRFfpP56vv0hjFyBLaRsAnnw8tu7nvPmUigEPDBcoO1z4ScOWdh4/s320/mossy+concrete.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431301981645460850" border="0" /></a> 150 to 200 inches. (In San Francisco, annual rainfall is about 22 inches.)<br /><br />We ordered breakfast to the tune of “Goodbye Mrs. Durkin” on the sound system. We were told that the cook, who owns the place, is addicted to Irish folk songs. It figures. The soft rain that morning reminded us of the greenery in the west of Ireland (about 50 inches a year in County Mayo), so I assumed the cook is an Irishman. “The Wild Rover” came next. Then “Whisky in the Jar.”<br /><br />As he scrambled our eggs, the chef may have been singing to himself about sweet Molly Malone’s cockles and mussels. But he’s not from Dublin’s fair city. Our waiter told us the owner came to the rainforest from sunny Mexico. I imagined someplace dry and hot, like Chihuahua (6 inches a year). In any case, he gives us a new entry in our growing file of Busted Assumptions.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Antiques Roadshow</span><br /><br />Dumbo. Fittingly, that is exactly the term I would pick for the producer-directors (I can’t say curators) of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History. They made it obvious when they enshrined Dumbo the Flying Elephant to celebrate “the blend of imagination, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4OzEK2xtTpGNL6cwu_K9ijmKqKeLQlcgD4aQV3EyceW29p9MKekQnrDK2w135befb1Nd_mrsb_BggbIdML6uwyeCNTpcVHSaDYdZMcvHM5MiVUFwcf6fMs_1RIu8yVXJLaFhB07TkxQY/s1600-h/dumbo.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 205px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4OzEK2xtTpGNL6cwu_K9ijmKqKeLQlcgD4aQV3EyceW29p9MKekQnrDK2w135befb1Nd_mrsb_BggbIdML6uwyeCNTpcVHSaDYdZMcvHM5MiVUFwcf6fMs_1RIu8yVXJLaFhB07TkxQY/s320/dumbo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431310458060612418" border="0" /></a>technology and business acumen that makes up American entertainment.” This is not a joke.<br /><br />The purple fiberglass car, a gift from the popular Elephant Ride in Disneyland, was installed last year as a “landmark object.” She anchors the third floor’s west wing in what should be the nation’s most important museum of history. Instead, the disappointing jumble of artifacts looks like the Antiques Roadshow.<br /><br />It’s not that we weren’t interested in Julia Child’s kitchen, Judy Garland’s ruby slippers or the 1903 Winton that was the first horseless carriage to cross the continent. But the Dumbo producer-directors must have forgotten that 1.4 million visitors came in 2009 to what was billed as a history museum, not a Barnum sideshow of curiosities displayed for the entertainment of busloads of impatient schoolchildren.<br /><br />The museum doesn’t lack for items that, when on display, might help visitors apprehend the realities behind the abstract words of history books. Among the 100,000 artifacts in the government collections are Lincoln’s top hat, Cesar Chavez’s union jacket and the candle stand on the desk where George Washington wrote his Farewell Address.<br /><br />Just as visitors at Auschwitz-Birkenau are stunned by a room filled with two tons of human hair, so museum tourists could be shocked by two tons of deadly weapons from the Smithsonian’s armory of 3,000 rifles and pistols. But it needs the context of history. We forget that weapons (and disease) buried more than 500,000 young Americans in the uncivil Civil War. But at the history museum, as far as I could see in a one-day visit, his<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gAVt-rBXlwRFePmgwH9Kt7ThZJ4Q3OCOejqO6V6uhatZnHdi_uBLFMPz27Q6O_Aq-Kq9oDF16PFoJmoAdACdntfRFwofkCLUmL_xwQwRtI823qDUw2pnEw3shYRBKDfjIXDVbRrDXEg/s1600-h/3pio+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6gAVt-rBXlwRFePmgwH9Kt7ThZJ4Q3OCOejqO6V6uhatZnHdi_uBLFMPz27Q6O_Aq-Kq9oDF16PFoJmoAdACdntfRFwofkCLUmL_xwQwRtI823qDUw2pnEw3shYRBKDfjIXDVbRrDXEg/s320/3pio+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431311487296369682" border="0" /></a>torical context is skimpy in a building filled with gee-whiz exhibits. Perhaps the place could be renamed as the National Museum of American Culture.<br /><br />Kids (and adults) are fascinated by an exhibit that includes C-3PO, the brainy and brainless android from “Star Wars.” <span style="font-style: italic;">(Margo is the one not clad in titanium.)</span> It’s understandable. That’s because they know his story. History. It demands context, but that’s what’s missing from most of what we saw during our all-too-brief visit to the Disneyland of American history and its abiding symbol, Dumbo.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmV03bzVfD00HuYreRpkm7oxoZNkwBm5P821O_oUFvfaGo5GJinMUrdEKMNfzvYpDEhZxrL6wtJh2r_DFwj90l8H7xdYIZDswByExFKtem7_-nt-FsKF0OyBNIYVHm2wLy1cL4NHo1JgU/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 22px; height: 25px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmV03bzVfD00HuYreRpkm7oxoZNkwBm5P821O_oUFvfaGo5GJinMUrdEKMNfzvYpDEhZxrL6wtJh2r_DFwj90l8H7xdYIZDswByExFKtem7_-nt-FsKF0OyBNIYVHm2wLy1cL4NHo1JgU/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431338404278950018" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Stumped</span><br /><br />Rain washed our dusty minivan as we pulled into pitch-dark Stillwater Camp at Lake Granby, a mountain reservoir in the Arapaho National Forest. Margo remembered attending <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgweLgRMKUtNhxJdQ5uwUkeBxQZMbBMThyphenhypheneaxSSVCYIg6mIEiyKQ5bdXmsiUlarI8oZLJSRKfs8m6Mze2AJd4Q51hSAs5SjrtGqsDNQL7qVOC9_rlrEI2A4gWZ0-UAddj_ga5cEy7vOCfw/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 25px; height: 26px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgweLgRMKUtNhxJdQ5uwUkeBxQZMbBMThyphenhypheneaxSSVCYIg6mIEiyKQ5bdXmsiUlarI8oZLJSRKfs8m6Mze2AJd4Q51hSAs5SjrtGqsDNQL7qVOC9_rlrEI2A4gWZ0-UAddj_ga5cEy7vOCfw/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431336622990662306" border="0" /></a>a nearby summer camp when she was growing up in Colorado. The ranger booth was closed. Except for two motorhomes, the rainswept campground was empty.<br /><br />We ate snacks, got out our books, climbed into bed and listened to the rain. At dawn, our <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshtYfFsAoRhfBJ9j47VZW_WHJFlC1CWZ3NK2_1xVUkD3BRekgo9L83p2zziPKauihNBwsnfnhNyWW8CmI2bt56dRRSocP-c0vyeS8qLPdbfw2jS8JQRvKgKOyawNfodIc7rf0UHZLM5E/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 24px; height: 27px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhshtYfFsAoRhfBJ9j47VZW_WHJFlC1CWZ3NK2_1xVUkD3BRekgo9L83p2zziPKauihNBwsnfnhNyWW8CmI2bt56dRRSocP-c0vyeS8qLPdbfw2jS8JQRvKgKOyawNfodIc7rf0UHZLM5E/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431340234589562210" border="0" /></a>exhalations had clouded the windows. We opened the sliding door. We found astonishment.<br />On a scalped hillside, no pines. Just stumps. They looked like tombstones after a tsunami.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8-Mbt72aUgVBbKRC0lAe9gssOBvygecq9d8AZQpsX_SZmkxDnQfdv1zwWhSKsdrgEl08-Zza20oB4ASi27R51SWTDEkGnws7aXBz_gpiThgtcysI4t86Vj_VPz7A1atFUGOIJkL09j8/s1600-h/beeltles.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 248px; height: 181px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ8-Mbt72aUgVBbKRC0lAe9gssOBvygecq9d8AZQpsX_SZmkxDnQfdv1zwWhSKsdrgEl08-Zza20oB4ASi27R51SWTDEkGnws7aXBz_gpiThgtcysI4t86Vj_VPz7A1atFUGOIJkL09j8/s320/beeltles.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431317332985734866" border="0" /></a>The analogy isn’t so far off the mark. In Idaho and Montana, we had been appalled at the sight of entire hillsides painted in yellowish green and orange brown, the autumn colors we don’t want to see on conifers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtOT5i3eA3kSWhD2zY5NcpZeJ6hAA8zfSKdk0X6cPyP0D4bST5ukaoQV6VZkJstRzIA7EqGSAx6zxOWORb3OyyANhD_AyF9SGHRGEuubH1CqJIznRJrcaojapy6ECD5O4KIv6wtfahG8/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 26px; height: 27px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjWtOT5i3eA3kSWhD2zY5NcpZeJ6hAA8zfSKdk0X6cPyP0D4bST5ukaoQV6VZkJstRzIA7EqGSAx6zxOWORb3OyyANhD_AyF9SGHRGEuubH1CqJIznRJrcaojapy6ECD5O4KIv6wtfahG8/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431336023651610946" border="0" /></a>We learned that the larvae of mountain pine beetles have snuggled beneath the bark in millions and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaRLc1MGGbGpdFEnIqvbOb-KEcfH9Tttg9I9BC01gmBDLHejq2_kFHJ65VEvKQDlVCv-kzElJNvtAH49-Kmt1bRPr8gDHpF8iuiOnWNxjgPj-44v7mmld-p7ETfzJnUIVjNrSov2RBYY/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 23px; height: 26px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOaRLc1MGGbGpdFEnIqvbOb-KEcfH9Tttg9I9BC01gmBDLHejq2_kFHJ65VEvKQDlVCv-kzElJNvtAH49-Kmt1bRPr8gDHpF8iuiOnWNxjgPj-44v7mmld-p7ETfzJnUIVjNrSov2RBYY/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431336434692506034" border="0" /></a>millions of lodgepole pines, ponderosa pines, western white pines and even high-elevation whitebark pines. In June and July the pupae of Dendroctonus ponderosae emerge as adults, about this size: @#. Then they lay the tiny eggs that suck up the tree’s nutrients, kill their hosts and litter the forests with fuel for fire.<br /><br />That wouldn’t be the case at Stillwater Camp, where the stumps dot <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpjeEPAPmrenzBsA_rmD-kD3lcI8fCpNmyfWPrfqfP_r_RnRkyRQRUp6TY-4l4WP7BEQ8LODm38vridvM-7IV4PVGVpXVr8BbHUnlfgdr2_v_5G4Z0cgV2lEiNYEo2UhoxiZNOcrpp2Q/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 24px; height: 27px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdpjeEPAPmrenzBsA_rmD-kD3lcI8fCpNmyfWPrfqfP_r_RnRkyRQRUp6TY-4l4WP7BEQ8LODm38vridvM-7IV4PVGVpXVr8BbHUnlfgdr2_v_5G4Z0cgV2lEiNYEo2UhoxiZNOcrpp2Q/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431317538529568706" border="0" /></a>the hill like graying day-old whiskers. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA8TMnKoe2WWVfkJ1r4Jonmv20I7nsaV66Fut9ZpmCTNtrROVfW0ti58Td2XwWjimCw_U6Oj3L9dPLD2DBKqmJqf_UMMFSKP-F6gZGyNL8jE3IiCdDvijUUMjPM_sR4ZVU_Oqgld3Vbb8/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 24px; height: 27px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA8TMnKoe2WWVfkJ1r4Jonmv20I7nsaV66Fut9ZpmCTNtrROVfW0ti58Td2XwWjimCw_U6Oj3L9dPLD2DBKqmJqf_UMMFSKP-F6gZGyNL8jE3IiCdDvijUUMjPM_sR4ZVU_Oqgld3Vbb8/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431336241613184258" border="0" /></a>A few saplings have been planted, pale green glimmers of the future. We wanted to ask the absent rangers about the massacre of their beautiful pines. It had to be pine beetles. We assume the Forest Service had ordered a preemptive strike.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyMBqWGIZCRWRZUcTIZEyV8e4_kMkWNvGEB0M_e7Sey7XTr1sh5YAfQ4Dwll29lMjZgK9jsP7ylhm3g8ENikojPIqc6mDGRlV9OkvygaGPfiUQ_qdUhPiDteWepXBE_EVC9hdZOm08Rto/s1600-h/bug.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 21px; height: 25px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyMBqWGIZCRWRZUcTIZEyV8e4_kMkWNvGEB0M_e7Sey7XTr1sh5YAfQ4Dwll29lMjZgK9jsP7ylhm3g8ENikojPIqc6mDGRlV9OkvygaGPfiUQ_qdUhPiDteWepXBE_EVC9hdZOm08Rto/s200/bug.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431340035766350578" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >On the Road: Surprises </span><br /><br />√ At Bertha’s Pump & Pay, a gas station in rural Tennessee, Margo noticed a whiteboard behind the cash register. It displays names of customers whose checks had bounced. We assumed that small-town humiliation pressures would impel apologetic locals to show up with Bertha’s money. “Those names have been up there forever,” said the clerk. “It doesn’t seem to work.”<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><br /><br /></span>√ As travelers from a city where an ordinary bungalow sells (at a <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutawO0P8kp7FNO_j4PMCcfzbo2eD8KFi6eLYrMVFx0WCGE2fWrKyKGkXBRqtkkV8NfjkXBcEPjPRilYSFp0wd4kVoitCPH6zcRE51VqsS3kTdBd9wJd_KVM4nWnKENNVikMQcrY5Tg9Y/s1600-h/braastad+house.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 190px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiutawO0P8kp7FNO_j4PMCcfzbo2eD8KFi6eLYrMVFx0WCGE2fWrKyKGkXBRqtkkV8NfjkXBcEPjPRilYSFp0wd4kVoitCPH6zcRE51VqsS3kTdBd9wJd_KVM4nWnKENNVikMQcrY5Tg9Y/s320/braastad+house.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432074441538901778" border="0" /></a>loss) for $700,000, we spotted a classified ad in Fairfield, Nebraska, for a “great family home,” seven bedrooms and two baths, walk-in closets, “beautiful.” The price: $55,000.<br />In Eagle Bend, Minnesota, a 10-acre “hobby farm” with a four-bedroom, three-bath home, has guest quarters over the big garage, “apple trees, seclusion”: $155,000.<br />In Ishpeming, Michigan, I saw a real estate sign outside my late great-grandfather’s impressive 100-year-old Victorian home (5,300 square feet, four bedrooms, three stories, two fireplaces, well kept, two blocks from Main Street): $99,500. <span style="font-style: italic;">(On right.)</span><br /><br />√ In Frazee, Minnesota, we saw a billboard: “Home of the World’s Largest Turkey.” A brochure calls Red Cloud, Nebraska, “One of the most famous small towns in the country.” Booster boasters in Madisonville, Kentucky, put a banner on the railroad underpass that says, “It’s the best town on earth.”<br /><br />√ In 1970, when Sam Walton’s company had grown to 15 stores, the Arkansas entrepreneur went public with stocks at $16.50 per share. At our visit to the first store of what would become the Wal-Mart empire, we learned that 100 of those shares would have split and resplit by now into 204,800 shares. The investment of $165,000 would be worth about… $10 million.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Lost in Books</span><br /><br />Something about booksellers impels them to separate copies of the same book– new and used, hardcover and paperback – and stack them on different shelves in different places. Walter Powell, a retired painting contractor, didn’t agree – or maybe he didn’t know better.<br /><br />With 100 boxes of books he bought at a rummage sale, he opened Powell’s Books in 1971 in what was then Portland’s wino-and-whorehouse district. He clumped together all books with the same title. Perhaps that’s one little reason why Powell’s Books, now owned by the late bookman’s son Michael, is so highly regarded that the late Susan Sontag, a New Yorker not shy about ridiculing the provinces, said Powell’s “is the best bookstore in the English-speaking world.” It’s certainly one of the biggest, selling 4 million rare, used and brand-new books every year.<br /><br />The 400 or so employees are unionized. As we walked into the City of Books, one of them handed us 10-page Map & Guide. He didn’t want us to lose our way among the mazes of 1 million books in nine, color-coded rooms the size of basketball gyms. I bought a Donna Leon paperback, “A Sea of Troubles,” which I hadn’t been able to find anyplace else. It sat next to a hardcover edition, just as Walter wanted. Then I got lost.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >The Penitence Sentence</span><br /><br />“A haunting world of crumbling cellbocks,” says the brochure. It promises a tour of “surprising, eerie beauty.” The brochure is easily the ugliest, weirdest and strangest enticement in all the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUPWblPF9Vv-0azq7tyyNeag_l5GHbkmFC6Dc-7eMvacWWm4iq_X_6GxZlyNUr4c012K5QvdbWXsp18AT724srKMHQkhmvmeGGaCR52XmecEoc6-R5eALZTOO04o2L3ws2MALfcOcc2p0/s1600-h/eastern+pen.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 235px; height: 434px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUPWblPF9Vv-0azq7tyyNeag_l5GHbkmFC6Dc-7eMvacWWm4iq_X_6GxZlyNUr4c012K5QvdbWXsp18AT724srKMHQkhmvmeGGaCR52XmecEoc6-R5eALZTOO04o2L3ws2MALfcOcc2p0/s320/eastern+pen.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431326591251867058" border="0" /></a>hundreds of folders and flyers in all the racks in all the motel offices, convenience stores and state-sponsored welcome centers in all of the highways and byways of our quest to circumnavigate this great nation.<br /><br />Other brightly colored leaflets shouted at us with urgent advice to visit the local tourist attractions, lodgings, eateries, roadside museums and anything else that will persuade us to spend a little money. But a prison?<br /><br />In a rest stop in Pennsylvania I was taken aback when I picked up the brochure. With a dismal design of bleak black and blood red, the ad copy plugs “America’s Most Historic Prison.” It’s not Alcatraz. It’s Philadelphia’s Eastern State Penitentiary, now empty, that held more than 75,000 men and women in 142 years of misery and despair. Says the grim brochure: “This was the world’s first true <span style="font-weight: bold;">penitentiary</span>, a prison designed to inspire <span style="font-style: italic;">penitence</span> – or true regret – in the hearts of criminals.”<br /><br />It’s open to visitors ($12). We could thrill to Death Row and see the cells of Al Capone, Babe Andreoli and Slick Willie Sutton. We could marvel at the escape tunnel in 1924 that freed Leo Callahan. He must have gone straight rather than work on his penitence. He never returned to the haunting world of surprising, eerie beauty. Unsurprisingly, we agreed with Leo.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Good Dog</span><br /><br />The University of Oregon’s athletic teams call themselves the Ducks. That’s no surprise. While camping in light rain at Fort Stevens State Park at the mouth of the Columbia River near Astoria, we visited the nearby Fort Clatsop Historical Monument. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDREUr8JSS6bt6HTa8mqjcEvi39F12SSXA793uFyJs3BsIN5b0YWmOl_Doe0vmWIVbcxneXjaTCaLhzTObhjJkSwMODYdztR6XqZfN2Akdkgyjx-k0Z2XBILlwxFxSZwvuPcGNVTvrgKU/s1600-h/lynn+at+clatsop.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 147px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDREUr8JSS6bt6HTa8mqjcEvi39F12SSXA793uFyJs3BsIN5b0YWmOl_Doe0vmWIVbcxneXjaTCaLhzTObhjJkSwMODYdztR6XqZfN2Akdkgyjx-k0Z2XBILlwxFxSZwvuPcGNVTvrgKU/s200/lynn+at+clatsop.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431327440009417042" border="0" /></a>The simulated fort marks the place where Meriwether Lewis and William Clark holed up with their fellow explorers in the Oregon winter of 1805-06. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's me in the window.) </span>Of the 106 days of “repeated fall of rain which has fallen almost constantly,” a dozen days were rainless. Only six were sunny.<br /><br />Hey, kids, your schoolbooks left out the best surprises hidden in the journals of the Corp of Discovery. (OK, OK, it’s supposed to be Corps. Nobody said an explorer had to spell, and the spellcheck app was 200 years in the future.)<br /><br />When the eastward-bound explorers finally left Fort Clatsop and reached a Cathlahmah village, Capt. Meriwether Lewis yelped about hygiene:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> They have also a very singular custom among them of baithing themselves allover with urine every morning.</span><br /><br />After negotiating with the Chinooks, Lewis wrote tastefully about food:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> I also purchased four paddles and three dogs from them with deerskins. the dog now constitutes a considerable part of our subsistence and with most of the party has become a favorite food; certain I am that it is a healthy strong diet, and from habit it has become by no means disagreeable to me, I prefer it to lean venison or Elk, and it is very far superior to the horse in any state.</span><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >Beaten to the Punchline</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKe8v7CXK0J80PmHG8hnd68m9iOnU9avLgytNE3GpjHlPLkTnWaZcv88pSgJ4NX2qi7Co5KBEN3Ppe4rT03j9UTtQ6mP18P92_7gKvaZmpjmIpX-iV9D_5jYDRj2R1dhvrq6FMV0VBbU/s1600-h/bellsouth.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 376px; height: 466px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLKe8v7CXK0J80PmHG8hnd68m9iOnU9avLgytNE3GpjHlPLkTnWaZcv88pSgJ4NX2qi7Co5KBEN3Ppe4rT03j9UTtQ6mP18P92_7gKvaZmpjmIpX-iV9D_5jYDRj2R1dhvrq6FMV0VBbU/s320/bellsouth.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5430395139307200354" border="0" /></a>We gaped at Tennessee’s tallest and weirdest skyscraper. We learned later that the 33-story telephone temple in Nashville was built in 1994 for Bell Central South, which became Bell South. Now it bears the name of AT&T. The corporate name would impel Lili von Stupp to say, “Oh…how <span style="font-style: italic;">ordinawy.</span>”<br /><br />The late Herb Caen gave us San Franciscans the Jukebox (Marriott Hotel), the Washbag (Washington Square Bar & Grill), Berserkley (home of the university) and Baghdad-by-the-Bay (rarely heard these days).<br /><br />In the columnist’s spirit, we looked at the AT&T tower and gave it a much better name. We were too late.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ASlnsoDufobJEzE5M_wUIGKvuctAR-62oTNuMs-U82YEoAiO7TiueT_i3EUP6lH1SMqZ174PtkIsyZKyGbKXMafGAVUEvLpYAVsgjkHknSe5Auu1pqenKHOKdFbGAXtJUs6tLPqAgNc/s1600-h/bellsouth+batman+ch.+5+nashvillepg.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 55px; height: 82px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ASlnsoDufobJEzE5M_wUIGKvuctAR-62oTNuMs-U82YEoAiO7TiueT_i3EUP6lH1SMqZ174PtkIsyZKyGbKXMafGAVUEvLpYAVsgjkHknSe5Auu1pqenKHOKdFbGAXtJUs6tLPqAgNc/s200/bellsouth+batman+ch.+5+nashvillepg.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5431329205549945042" border="0" /></a>Our name for the spire had already been coined by the chuckling citizens of Nashville.<br />They call it the Batman Building.Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-1238841511856901502009-12-27T13:00:00.000-08:002009-12-29T14:04:08.566-08:00We're Home<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />We’re home.<br /><br />Lynn and I played a game the last few days of our Victory Lap, proclaiming awards: “Best celebrity home” (FDR house on the Hudson River). “Most egocentric exhibit” (Sam Walton <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkYDdvMGns9deUAjkSo2LHaSU1ibIWcLryIwZovBaCyF4mX6Lhfv2IvixzK59Sorwdodo-wnIdJSFj15QATlpHLOcwn5C5317X0eaNWegiUPy-7PJ0PGFD8JyFLaWy_RuaJ0knEfhKGs/s1600-h/jack,+sheilah+and+walton+museum.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkkYDdvMGns9deUAjkSo2LHaSU1ibIWcLryIwZovBaCyF4mX6Lhfv2IvixzK59Sorwdodo-wnIdJSFj15QATlpHLOcwn5C5317X0eaNWegiUPy-7PJ0PGFD8JyFLaWy_RuaJ0knEfhKGs/s320/jack,+sheilah+and+walton+museum.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420108489988136930" border="0" /></a>museum in Bentonville, Arkansas, extolling the founder of Wal-Mart). <span style="font-style: italic;">(Jack Desrocher and Sheilah Downey stand in front of the Walton Museum, at right.)</span> “Most original art” (totem poles made of golf bags in Washington, D.C.). “Most spectacular national park on our trip” (tie: Carlsbad Caverns and Niagara Falls). “Best bird sighting” (tie: peregrine falcon in the Hudson River Valley and sandhill cranes at Dinosaur National Monument in Utah). And so forth. “The greatest pleasure,” however, was arriving safe and sound at our home on Bernal Hill.<br /><br />What did I miss the most? I missed my bed. I missed my bike. I missed puttering among my own things. I missed my friends. I missed burritos in the Mission and clay pot shrimp at Angkor Borei. But most of all, I missed the cycle of events, major and minor, that make up our family’s calendar. We missed Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur at the synagogue. Those were the days I felt the most adrift. And we missed Thanksgiving with our family. That was the day I felt the most homesick. We missed three months of birthdays and gatherings with family and friends – the get-togethers that tie us to our <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRPjP_3uK3lTkFd6XFkX5hyphenhyphenLOYS1X5r-5N-oWBLRzij3288OHD99RgoC5SETplh0oXx_3t-Xvqjxk5QRdn5WGizxGV-77rl24Wr7dQNdWPJanVuYB50cVZQMhi81VH0cx61Y9RjzZo958/s1600-h/musicale+kenny+lynn+anabel.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRPjP_3uK3lTkFd6XFkX5hyphenhyphenLOYS1X5r-5N-oWBLRzij3288OHD99RgoC5SETplh0oXx_3t-Xvqjxk5QRdn5WGizxGV-77rl24Wr7dQNdWPJanVuYB50cVZQMhi81VH0cx61Y9RjzZo958/s320/musicale+kenny+lynn+anabel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420109200893316546" border="0" /></a>family and friends, to our community. I missed the monthly meeting with my reading group, and my weekly Torah study and the Or Shalom choir practice every two weeks. Is our community a calendar? Well, sort of. It’s an assurance that at a specific hour in a specific place, other people are making time for us, and we’re making time for them. <span style="font-style: italic;">( "The best musicale" of the trip: In Oberlin, Ohio, Anabel Hirano, Will Rubenstein and Kenny came over to the Hohns' house. </span><span style="font-style: italic;">At left:</span><span style="font-style: italic;"> Kenny and Anabel sit in with Lynn. Not in the photo is guitarist Clyde Hohn, the host.)</span><br /><br />The great pleasure in being back home is not meant to diminish how much fun we had on our Victory Lap. It was a great trip, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The gatherings that we missed were replaced with once-in-a-lifetime reunions with far-flung folks. We saw huge chunks of the country that we’ve never seen before. We saw the Olympic rainforest in Washington state, a plethora of museums in Washington, D.C., the Mississippi as a creek in upstate Minnesota and as a mile-wide river in Arkansas and Louisiana. We saw cornfields in Kansas, Colorado, Iowa, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtEMWCTW3C0RyKqphOCdNJFK9Z1bCFzuJcYMnrpYBLtVmZ3nvdfhNeg9WDAtfzeHEYUJFl2SX7NgZSeZeNsyQ27EB_zlBTA9ndxGCiC10r8zRbju-fGlYTDWIQ0hewNFTanVqaGCnfHAs/s1600-h/brownville+bike+path.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 235px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtEMWCTW3C0RyKqphOCdNJFK9Z1bCFzuJcYMnrpYBLtVmZ3nvdfhNeg9WDAtfzeHEYUJFl2SX7NgZSeZeNsyQ27EB_zlBTA9ndxGCiC10r8zRbju-fGlYTDWIQ0hewNFTanVqaGCnfHAs/s320/brownville+bike+path.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420110549799139378" border="0" /></a>Indiana, Ohio, New York and, actually, just about everywhere.<span style="font-style: italic;"> (At right: "The best bike path" of the trip, along the Missouri River near Brownville, Nebraska, snakes past a cornfield.)</span> We saw windmills in most states, too, and a huge solar power plant in the Mojave Desert. We saw hundreds of Subways and coffee shops.<br /><br />We planned our itinerary mainly as a way to see friends and relatives we’ve missed over the years. As we look back on the trip, our mental map of America is dotted with friendly, welcoming homes. We were able to see almost all the people we wanted to. We missed J.P. Uhlrich, Stephanie Salter, Mike Gray and a few dear friends in the middle of the country, because our route hewed toward the nation’s perimeter. But we found Lynn’s long-lost cousins, and mine. We made contact with friends of Lynn’s that he had lost touch with for many decades. And we had great pleasure in visiting friends and relatives who were never lost.<br /><br />We’ve been home a bit more than a week now, and when we talk about our trip, we talk about luck. Let’s start with the car: We drove more than 12,000 miles, and the closest we came to an <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdvs9mnvMcQjcQ7IlLn5xuIHiGAGwczn4pNjJ7ezCTDHIC3Dhp4aAi8MGGQmQ9yXw88NvpogYfH2248VIxWXNbB9ye629MkUBXsY_TpZXGz6wlyUu3mTUQMBx7A06AtV8UDldOcwqk4nc/s1600-h/guppy+and+whale+truck.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 141px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdvs9mnvMcQjcQ7IlLn5xuIHiGAGwczn4pNjJ7ezCTDHIC3Dhp4aAi8MGGQmQ9yXw88NvpogYfH2248VIxWXNbB9ye629MkUBXsY_TpZXGz6wlyUu3mTUQMBx7A06AtV8UDldOcwqk4nc/s320/guppy+and+whale+truck.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420112872161904482" border="0" /></a>accident was running over a runaway tire. It had come off the wheel of the car in front of us. It was scary, but it did almost no damage (except to the Buena Vista Elementary School alumni frame for the license plate). After the folks in the tire-less car borrowed our jack and pulled out their spare, we drove on. We had two minor mechanical problems (the sliding door acted up, and the battery needed to be replaced). Neither slowed us down for more than a day. Big luck with the car! <span style="font-style: italic;">(The photo above, of our hardy little car with a whalefish in Wisconsin, illustrates why we called it The Guppy.)</span><br /><br />And weather luck: We had some cold. We had some rain. But we managed to avoid any bad storms and all but the tiniest bit of snow. Some of that was planning. The final leg of our trip was <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFhqO77ApzDDugbn0GoLFVWiqPDdjxa52OVuZeEy00XAiVTAm_qtm-2Xa6pX_rvpv9Ci1NhtQeyrlCx3KRF-pGglzbrvxprvKnKqIivc3BrwiGiF2gE9StP34iB3js_iLQGliXyKspvRs/s1600-h/lynn+french+quarter.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgFhqO77ApzDDugbn0GoLFVWiqPDdjxa52OVuZeEy00XAiVTAm_qtm-2Xa6pX_rvpv9Ci1NhtQeyrlCx3KRF-pGglzbrvxprvKnKqIivc3BrwiGiF2gE9StP34iB3js_iLQGliXyKspvRs/s320/lynn+french+quarter.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420114256978662306" border="0" /></a>going to be a drive up the eastern side of the Sierra on Highway 395 – Owens Valley, Mono Lake, and then over Donner Pass on Interstate 80 and back home. The weather report showed snow for the whole week on Donner Pass, and we changed course at the last minute. We followed a more southerly route through Bakersfield, the Carrizo Plain and up Highway 101. So we missed a big snowstorm by paying attention. But most of our decent weather was just dumb luck. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At left: It is cold in New Orleans, and we complained. About a week later, we saw news reports of torrential rain and flooding. We retract our complaints.)</span><br /><br />Medical luck: The one time we needed medical help, we happened to be in one of the few areas in the country with a big Kaiser presence. Lynn got sick with some sort of lung infection (possibly pneumonia) in Washington, D.C. Our dear friends Alex Neill and Tibby Speer have a guest apartment downstairs in their Georgetown house. It is so luxe that they were able to make us feel like we weren’t underfoot for the week that Lynn was recuperating. That week in a campground, a Days Inn or <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA278YDlHI3HzBDvuAGRGCP6W5nwYuphky0a-zgY9g1SnewVFd1py4b_4957Yodkv_VV7fqmAktO21THk6BpkiZfD-0uosnC-1hBYHA_hK424kI3CPbrKzAGgZtFZ9NoX7vWBwPEx5rlU/s1600-h/Alex+and+Tibby.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA278YDlHI3HzBDvuAGRGCP6W5nwYuphky0a-zgY9g1SnewVFd1py4b_4957Yodkv_VV7fqmAktO21THk6BpkiZfD-0uosnC-1hBYHA_hK424kI3CPbrKzAGgZtFZ9NoX7vWBwPEx5rlU/s320/Alex+and+Tibby.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5420114915500724818" border="0" /></a>on someone’s couch would have been more problematic and a lot less comfortable. And if that week had been in one of the many states with no Kaiser presence, well, it would have been a lot more complicated. So let's say we were lucky on the microbe front.<span style="font-style: italic;"> (At right, Alex and Tibby, win the Victory Lap award for "Most agreeable hosts when the guest is ailing.") </span><br /><br />As for the other meaning of “What did you miss?”: The Everglades is near the top of my wish list. But the southern tip of Florida just seemed too far, so we skipped the Deep South in favor of visiting Jack Desrocher and Sheilah Downey in Rogers, Arkansas. We also put off a visit to Selma, Alabama, where Lynn had covered the 1965 march to Montgomery by Martin Luther King and hundreds of other brave demonstrators for voting rights. So the Everglades and that visit to the South will have to wait. And, similarly on the northern end of our itinerary: We'll have take another trip to see Montreal. But for now, we’re home, and we’re definitely staying right here for a while.Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-11095920396089174842009-12-23T14:08:00.000-08:002009-12-23T15:51:42.045-08:00A Tale of Two Cities<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMU1h_sAp9FO8vHtEDUb3jw-wRt90mt4DP51WaI7SzivchcFWYIZ3V0VXwjVuK-l8uqW_sGwULMTKez8lVgyf1wZuGU6NsRim8Qyp7oZZg3dpBlrbjTaepi8yt1VIEGfX08ddgaIdukKQ/s1600-h/bridge+view.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMU1h_sAp9FO8vHtEDUb3jw-wRt90mt4DP51WaI7SzivchcFWYIZ3V0VXwjVuK-l8uqW_sGwULMTKez8lVgyf1wZuGU6NsRim8Qyp7oZZg3dpBlrbjTaepi8yt1VIEGfX08ddgaIdukKQ/s400/bridge+view.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418561450282390434" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >Editor’s note: Near the end of our Victory Lap, we happened upon two isolated land developments. Lynn had heard about them in the 1970s when he wrote a series of </span></span><span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;" >articles about high-pressure sales of lots in unlikely corners of the West. Think of this too-detailed report as a long follow-up story. We start here with a short version for those not sufficiently fascinated by a 40-year-old history of dreams, ripoffs and the absurd. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"> </span> <span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />We looked at the jagged mountains and rows of palm trees before we strolled across the London Bridge (no tolls), its solid British masonry looming over Bridgewater Channel. We saw a rowboat tricked out as a Venetian gondola (rides for $6) and a banner that labeled a square barge as “Kon <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVGMyYqG18BwCBO9qVbAMLP-sqN_t3Rb0V0gDdIYcOn0q9IuKyYXvDx7l1zE-Zy1p9iFgIalIrzRfQy2PUsXZ_hh46wxfSUe1X5vBbFzmzE9GcBFAHK7pglCb2nxBE5Swbjum-t_XCwA/s1600-h/Dixie+Belle.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoVGMyYqG18BwCBO9qVbAMLP-sqN_t3Rb0V0gDdIYcOn0q9IuKyYXvDx7l1zE-Zy1p9iFgIalIrzRfQy2PUsXZ_hh46wxfSUe1X5vBbFzmzE9GcBFAHK7pglCb2nxBE5Swbjum-t_XCwA/s320/Dixie+Belle.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418563125725059714" border="0" /></a>Tiki” ($15). We looked at a bogus Mississippi paddleboat, the Dixie Belle ($15). We admired the half-timbered, half-rented English Village, which included an empty pub and the shop for London Bridge Psychic ("What does your future hold?").<br /><br />Margo had a solemn comment.<br /><br />“This is the hucksterism,” she said, “that made America great.”<br /><br />We had just motored across the Arizona desert to Lake Havasu City (population 56,000). Our vow to search for roadside attractions led us to walk in damp silence across the former London Bridge. It’s now an artificial span on an artificial canal in an artificial lake. The concrete core of the five-arch bridge has been artificially clad with blocks of stone, a granite costume for a fantasy of Old England amid the imported palm trees of a developer’s 50-year-old mirage.<br /><br />We shivered in the cold reality of rain. It’s rare (3.5 inches per year) in the barren mountains and tumbleweed valleys of western Arizona. But that’s where an oil-and-chainsaw entrepreneur’s risky venture became the most successful lot-sales promotion of the 1960s. We forgot to sing “London Bridge Is Falling Down,” but later I looked up one of the lesser-known verses. It seemed to fit.<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;"> Build it up with silver and gold,<br />Silver and gold, silver and gold,<br />Build it up with silver and gold,<br />My fair lady-o.</blockquote>Two days later we arrived in California Valley (population about 400, probably less): After saying goodbye to Arizona and spending the night in a bleak California town with the entrancing name of Buttonwillow, we had driven The Guppy westward on a curving road through the calm hills of the Temblor Range. We didn’t take the one less traveled by. It was the one least traveled by, and that has made all the difference. “No services for 75 miles,” says a blue warning sign on State Highway 58. No cars, either.<br /><br />Soon we dropped into the flat, arid, inhospitable Carrizo Plains, site of what is undoubtedly – despite a lot of competition – the Golden State’s most fraudulent lot-sales promotion in the 1960s. We passed the Carissa Plains Elementary School (46 pupils, three teachers, eight grades and a variation of the name). It displayed a banner with a name unique among the Panthers, Cardinals, Giants and other school mascots. It could also describe California Valley’s long-gone developers or, to be more accurate, non-developers. It says: <span style="font-style: italic; font-weight: bold;">Home of the Polecats.</span><br /><br />***<br /><span style="font-family: verdana; font-style: italic;">Editor's note: The (much) longer version begins here:</span><br /><br />In very different ways, California Valley and Lake Havasu City are legendary among old-timers in the high-pressure sales of remote investment lots. Both promoters relied on flogging the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfkNo0XKb3kgHW3zYYl3g0vGko5xbSpEc_wZRKRe6Hig3kTnfz2HRlIy3aiFhC601GsSVQh-Wk9TtR4zj5UMSU0Oj0V6snGrjlkJydsqb237TfCOKkSrpW-_huRVd70KWcxhHaxnjqW-g/s1600-h/tale+of+2+book+.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 312px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfkNo0XKb3kgHW3zYYl3g0vGko5xbSpEc_wZRKRe6Hig3kTnfz2HRlIy3aiFhC601GsSVQh-Wk9TtR4zj5UMSU0Oj0V6snGrjlkJydsqb237TfCOKkSrpW-_huRVd70KWcxhHaxnjqW-g/s320/tale+of+2+book+.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418562289404119954" border="0" /></a>dreams of their customers and ignoring the potential problems of harsh reality. The fast-buck memerizers of California Valley got out while the getting was good. The founder of Lake Havasu City did something rare in the annals of hucksterism. He did (nearly) everything he could to make his promises come true.<br /><br />Three decades have passed since our mailboxes bulged with jiggery-pokery brochures that pitched the delights of investing in lots in dozens of faraway developments. I invented names for them: Caveat Emptor Country Club Estates, Lake of the Canards and El Rancho Gullible. The promoters varied from flim-flam men to subsidiaries of Boise Cascade and other big corporations. Most of them increased the revenue stream of big-city newspapers by buying full-page ads. The newspapers trusted the bamboozlers to be truthful.<br /><br />In 1970, when I was a reporter at the San Francisco Examiner, city editor Gale Cook assigned me to look into the promises and assumptions of the lot-sales developers. His boss, editor Ed Dooley, convinced publisher Charles L. Gould to fend off the outraged manager of his display advertising department. I posed as a prospective buyer at Brooktrails, Shelter Cove, Lake of the Woods and other remote subdivisions. I wrote a five-part report (“Boom in the Boondocks”). It told how promoters offered free flights to free lodgings in rural subdivision projects outfitted with streets, a country club, golf courses, swimming pools and promises of a “gated community” to keep out the riffraff. Other projects, often called “ranchos,” offered acreage for horses and homes without promising a water supply or a sewage system.<br /><br />Super-friendly salesmen, so gifted they could sell vacuum sweepings as cancer cures, would talk almost anyone to buy a lot as an “investment,” or a place to play golf, or a second home – but usually as a dream of real estate profit. At a project in the hardpan acres east of Madera, sales brochures stressed the investment opportunities of a setting ideally positioned halfway between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Of course, the reverse is also true. No site in the San Joaquin Valley could be any further from the two big cities.<br /><br />It wasn’t necessary to bribe the boards of supervisors in rural counties, according to Harold Berliner, then the district attorney in California’s Nevada County. “All it takes,” he told me, “is a good lunch with two martinis, a good steak and someone to tell them that they have Vision.” He later teamed up with a deputy state attorney general, Marshal Mayer, for a lawsuit that was settled by Boise Cascade for $70 million.<br /><br />Leo McCarthy, then a San Francisco assemblyman, said the Examiner articles inspired him to sponsor reform legislation that he pushed through the state legislature. Signed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1976, it gave teeth to the feckless California Department of Real Estate. It also put an end to the state’s lot-sales era of direct-mail pitches, full-page newspaper ads and free flights to Hornswoggle Acres. It put a compress on the headaches of rural counties once so eager to support developers with pointy shoes and Vision. Once the promoters packed up their alligator bags, they left multiple ownership of little lots by urban folks who eventually woke up to the rural problems they just bought.<br /><br />A housing development out in the country is a house of cards. In most cases of projects based on dreams and promises, the fall of the cards often left buyers bereft, salesmen unpaid, contractors in court, developers bankrupt and the counties holding the bag. Undeveloped properties eventually reverted to the county for non-payment of taxes and assessments. Except for a few buyers who build houses and then expect county services and school pickups, the land itself is paralyzed; like Humpty Dumpty, it can’t be put back together again.<br /><br />As I learned something about the history of land-sale campaigns, I interviewed a veteran of the hard-sell campaigns of the lot-sale swindlers. He recalled with amusement that no state or federal agencies bothered then to interfere with some of the famous land-sale promotions of the middle years of the 20th century. At the top of his list were Lake Hasavu City and California Valley. They vary in many ways, but the key difference comes as no surprise to students of the history of the West.<br /><br />It’s not the silver and gold. It’s water.<br /><br />* * *<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >California Valley:</span><br /><br />The predatory polecats in 1960 put their pencils to the map and created 7,250 parcels from 18,400 acres in a big part of an old Spanish land grant, El Chicote Rancho. The unborn city’s total of 24,083 acres is four-fifths the size of San Francisco. With streets named Beverly Hills <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil6IXcjJuUhEahmCcJW4IVOraAUZTNtIS7SCeHY3G6ymNnAe9bYKSQ_1zIZ50frVa1ttJDH-G4QwkwEfwXtTJBkmtyYNm5dgl5jqgIJ-eJvCoF9IL94cZ2malbUGDm6Mz8MH3TN0nWn-E/s1600-h/ca+valley+aerial+.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 293px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil6IXcjJuUhEahmCcJW4IVOraAUZTNtIS7SCeHY3G6ymNnAe9bYKSQ_1zIZ50frVa1ttJDH-G4QwkwEfwXtTJBkmtyYNm5dgl5jqgIJ-eJvCoF9IL94cZ2malbUGDm6Mz8MH3TN0nWn-E/s320/ca+valley+aerial+.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418565610872206658" border="0" /></a>Trail and Cambria Road, most of them existing only on plats, the 2.5-acre “ranchos” were sold to thousands of suckers intrigued by the chance to invest in “the geographic center of this spectacular California growth area with unbounded future.”<br /><br />At free breakfasts in big cities and barbecues at the lodge in California Valley, potential buyers watched slide shows, ingested get-rich tales of investments in Palm Springs and peered at charts showing the increasing value of most California real estate. Salesmen came to their homes with stories of the romantic history of a 50-mile valley where the Chumash People gathered for ceremonies at Painted Rock, where outlaws hid from sheriffs and where the vaqueros spun their lariats on the historic cattle ranch. Sight unseen, lots within sight of 13,000-acre Soda Lake were promoted for “lakeside views.” Doubters were told that the State Water Project, then in the planning phase, could pass through the valley <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXKDbSnxwHIpclwieC3gg3B29SmFcQLromlrea5Ii-VR6FUvNI-tw6dGn6Cdx666_87HncLF01D4H2qbLgNCSWI19f6XW4zIZ6ZlYphdyIe7fFcSpmwAOjRXrN7-SsE9mpFSMqWfxOiuc/s1600-h/ca+and+saf.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXKDbSnxwHIpclwieC3gg3B29SmFcQLromlrea5Ii-VR6FUvNI-tw6dGn6Cdx666_87HncLF01D4H2qbLgNCSWI19f6XW4zIZ6ZlYphdyIe7fFcSpmwAOjRXrN7-SsE9mpFSMqWfxOiuc/s320/ca+and+saf.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418566181473851666" border="0" /></a>en route to Los Angeles – and turn the desert into gardens. Nothing was volunteered about the ever-present danger of earthquakes from the San Andreas Fault <span style="font-style: italic;">(map at right)</span>, which runs past Carizzo Plains and abuts the aptly named Temblor Range. It attracts geologists from all over the world. “The area has long been regarded as a site of world-class examples of strike-slip faulting,” says Stanford’s J.R. Arrowsmith in his Ph.D dissertation, “The San Andreas Fault Zone in the Carrizo Plain.”<br /><br />If all 7,250 ranchos were to be built out, California Valley would today hold at least 25,000 people, hundreds of their pet horses, a prodigious appetite for water, a multimillion-dollar sewage system and at least one Wal-Mart.<br /><br />Instead, the developers disappeared. A San Luis Obispo County report says they went bankrupt. Buyers complained to the county without effect, then became discouraged and left their sad little ranchos to the tax collector. The county’s Board of Supervisors waited until 1980 before adopting a land use plan that noted many a problem for home buyers, including “remoteness, poor access, inadequate roads, poor soils (alkaline), lack of water and poor sewage drainage.”<br /><br />Half a century later: The 400 inhabitants occupy scattered houses with deep wells and/or potable water delivered by truck. A Community Services District maintains a fire and rescue station, a one-day-a-week county library and boxes for mail. No gas stations, no medical services, no sheriff’s substation. Trees are few. Summer temperatures rise above 100 degrees. Annual rainfall is about 7 inches in a good year. Three streets are paved. Other roads of packed dirt generate dust in the summer, mud in the winter. A motel/restaurant, no doubt constructed for the buyers of a half-century ago, appeared to be shut down when we drove by. Abandoned lots are leased for grazing. Some residents want to install fields of solar cells; others insist on solitude.<br /><br />The alkaline water of Soda Lake, which is dry in the late summer and fall, is undrinkable by man or beast.<br /><br />The California Aqueduct’s planners wisely bypassed Carrizo Plains and the San Andreas Fault.<br />Travelers to California Valley and the Carrizo Plains are urged to take their own water.<br /><br />That’s the news, mostly gleaned from the Internet. We took a quick look and headed to Paso Robles and our road to home. I thought at first of California Valley as a civic tragicomedy for gullible buyers, but the greed of unscrupulous polecats didn’t really change anything. That can’t be said about the desert city with a bridge from London.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br />Lake Havasu City:</span><br /><br />As we began our windy walk across London Bridge the Seventh, a D.A.R. plaque told us the transplanted span symbolizes a British-American friendship that “establishes a bond between two very different municipalities.”<br /><br />Very different? True enough.<br /><br />Population in Lake Havasu City is counted as 56,000, plus 10,00 to 20,000 visitors and snowbirds. It’s 12 million or so for the London metropolitan area. London was founded about 2,000 years ago. Lake Havasu City, only 46 years old, wasn’t incorporated until 1988.<br /><br />Even the lingo is different. Just as G.B. Shaw said a common language separates the English and Americans, so the Londoners can’t always understand the talk of the Old West. “Blag,” “blarney” or “ballocks,” for example, don’t translate well into “hornswoggle,” “slumguzzle” or “whopper-thumper.”<br /><br />Next to the plaque and flagpole we saw Robert P. McCulloch and C.V. Wood Jr. dressed in what appeared to be greenish bronze. The life-size statues are beaming with the pleased expressions <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRuQHYQEzE_JwXWzOOitUPM_cmxy6qG6e8Zyu-iDKyW8TUQvgd6rsWqwqQyM74dqfFyXqPE7uxQN-Aqm4ltkuxSxSfjXnQGI6jxKNX8vOb4AzXG09bkqoIiCycT4ia9xaGSEMTEuUgTw/s1600-h/robert_mcculloch.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 283px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRRuQHYQEzE_JwXWzOOitUPM_cmxy6qG6e8Zyu-iDKyW8TUQvgd6rsWqwqQyM74dqfFyXqPE7uxQN-Aqm4ltkuxSxSfjXnQGI6jxKNX8vOb4AzXG09bkqoIiCycT4ia9xaGSEMTEuUgTw/s320/robert_mcculloch.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418581281266987138" border="0" /></a>that Londoners would call “over-the-moon,” as in the cow’s famous jump. The resort city’s founder and planner are inspecting bronze blueprints of the bridge they built for their town or, more accurately, the town built by their bridge.<br /><br />Bob McCulloch <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span> grew up in Milwaukee, an heir of streetcar and power plant mogul Stephen Foster Briggs. He often said he was more proud of his victories in hydroplane boat races than his degree from Stanford in 1932, the depth of the Depression. Over the next few years the energetic entrepreneur-inventor formed companies for racing cars, aviation, oil exploration and small gasoline engines for lightweight chainsaws and outboard motors.<br /><br />Looking for a test site in 1958 for his outboard motors, he flew over Lake Havasu – a big but half-forgotten reservoir on the lower Colorado River. It had drowned about 40 miles of ancient Indian encampments, abandoned hamlets, fishing camps, old mines, boat landings and groves of cottonwoods. The concrete-arch Parker Dam was finished in 1942. Its powerhouses pump water into the 242-mile Colorado River Aqueduct, a gift by the federal Bureau of Reclamation to the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0Ru6YKMAPW6nmqs3ObHFLGoTvI_X_q4KKBNOxkNEJ1Qqlhgqix49wDcWm7LJbz0fpq_unjdHoVA9DQUPHWTqD_ZQheIpJm-IJ3yeEKhFrUN0eIdml3421ngedsf8NnrhvmFx0wb1eqw/s1600-h/havasu+map+google+credit.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 290px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-0Ru6YKMAPW6nmqs3ObHFLGoTvI_X_q4KKBNOxkNEJ1Qqlhgqix49wDcWm7LJbz0fpq_unjdHoVA9DQUPHWTqD_ZQheIpJm-IJ3yeEKhFrUN0eIdml3421ngedsf8NnrhvmFx0wb1eqw/s320/havasu+map+google+credit.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418575412626478354" border="0" /></a>real estate industry in 12 cities in thirsty Southern California. (Court decisions later allocated half the surplus river flow to the real estate industry and cotton fields of Arizona.) On the map <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left, from google)</span>, the reservoir looks like a pregnant rattlesnake. A flat peninsula pushes like a big boot into the wide bulge in the middle of Lake Havasu (an Indian name, it means blue-green water).<br /><br />Bob landed there at an abandoned Army Air Corps airfield. He bought 3,500 acres of sagebrush and blowing sand on the peninsula at Pittsburg Point.<br /><br />Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood Jr., a fun-loving chili chef known as “Woody” or “C.V.”, went to work for Walt Disney as general manager and master planner of the first Disneyland. It opened in 1954, but a year later he lost his job for taking too much credit for the success of the first theme park. Walt solved that by erasing Woody’s name from the annals of the Magic Kingdom. The engineer/planner then designed other theme parks. Six Flags in Texas was a big success. Three busts followed – Pleasure Island (Boston), Magic Mountain (Denver) and Freedomland (New York City). His team was absorbed in 1961 by McCulloch, who was already determined to add “planned communities” to his portfolio of oil and chainsaws.<br /><br />In 1964, he bought a lot more land from the federal government – 26 square miles of barren desert for less than $75 per acre. With Wood, he designed the streets, parcels and utilities for Lake Havasu City.<br /><br />In a desert land promotion, it was no accident that “lake” became part of the name. But McCulloch didn’t just rely on watery prose and promises of a future of jobs and industry. By 1966, he had installed his chainsaw factory and three more plants in the infant city, swelling its population by 400 wage earners. They lived in air-conditioned trailers in the 100-unit park built by McCulloch on the peninsula. He also bought Holly Development and its force of real estate salesmen, who would later be called “Hello Hollies.”<br /><br />Persuasive advertisements in the nation’s newspapers and magazines induced readers to sign up for free visits, meals and lodging included, in the Lockheed Electras acquired by McCulloch as his own airline. “Fly before you buy” was the sensible slogan that he used to counter competitors who, like California Valley, preferred to sweet-talk buyers into buying a lot sight unseen.<br /><br />McCulloch’s fleet would eventually grow to 11 airplanes slow enough for the Hello Hollies to persuade passengers about the investment opportunities that awaited them as they circled the lake – and circled again, and again. In 1978, when the aviation campaign ended, 137,000 prospective buyers in 2,702 flights had, in Old West lingo, seen the elephant. In 40 white Jeepsters, a battalion of 50 salesmen (and some saleswomen) would haul dazed travelers to examine a wasteland converted into a dreamscape by the power of relentless rhetoric. The buyers would stay at a newly finished hotel with a waterfall roof. In an oasis of newly transplanted palm trees, many would sign the papers proffered by the smiling salesmen.<br />But something else was needed.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" >The Grand Gimmick</span><br /><br />Both are dead, and so it’s unclear whether Bob or Woody should get credit for suggesting the unthinkable. Could they acquire London Bridge No. 7, now sinking inch by inch into the sandy bottom of the River Thames, and ship the pieces to the desert as a roadside attraction? Lake Havasu City, a community otherwise focused on speedboats and fishing, had grown to 4,000 inhabitants in 1968. Houses were replacing the trailers now being called “mobile homes,” but McCulloch had a long way to go before he could reach his goal of 90,000 population and a reputation rivaling that of Palm Springs. A grand plan evolved.<br /><br />McCulloch bid $2,460,000, a sum gratefully accepted by the Greater London Council. Three years and another $7 million would go by as the granite blocks were numbered, shipped through the Panama Canal to Long Beach and trucked 300 miles to a hole in between the peninsula and what would now become the mainland. Wood had proposed a canal, the Bridgewater Channel, to separate the boot-shaped Pittsburg Point peninsula from the shoreline. A bridge, of course, is supposed to be a bridge to somewhere. On a concrete base across the canal, the blocks of granite <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGJalurWP4JurbOvlJJigR5T0s4VlxjhO8wkQd2vCh7zGvPzSZFpnGq1HRkIOvJ8rw2NC7J8OpscrVYdq3KqRxVafVEveBEdT1LM06amwO1e_CPpHjYbZn3bk0bP8Swsl28mzsDPWWVM/s1600-h/Lynn+and+Bridge.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizGJalurWP4JurbOvlJJigR5T0s4VlxjhO8wkQd2vCh7zGvPzSZFpnGq1HRkIOvJ8rw2NC7J8OpscrVYdq3KqRxVafVEveBEdT1LM06amwO1e_CPpHjYbZn3bk0bP8Swsl28mzsDPWWVM/s320/Lynn+and+Bridge.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418577000566458098" border="0" /></a>were attached to give the impression that John Rennie’s 1831 five-arch span had been rebuilt intact. Who knew? On the walkway are elegant brass lampposts molded from cannons captured from the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Wood, the theme park veteran, arranged for an “English Village” with a British phone booth in imperial red.<span style="font-style: italic;"> (That's Lynn with the bridge, at right. The coots are American.)</span> Hotels, condos and a marina surround the bridge.<br /><br />The Lord Mayor of London showed up at the official dedication at 1971. You might think that the scene was so absurd that Bob and Woody would have been laughed out of town, but you would be wrong. By 1980, the population had almost quadrupled to 15,909. It was 24,363 in 1990, 41,938 in 2000 and, as of 2009, an estimated 56,603.<br /><br />And those figures don’t include the retirees who escape the northern snows and park their RVs and boats in McCulloch’s city. Thousands of collegians show up to frolic in the lake for spring break. And in the summer, tens of thousands of tourists show up to look at London Bridge No. 7, many of them disappointed that it’s not the Tower Bridge.<br /><br />McCulloch and Wood took their billion-dollar road show in the 1970s to three other scrub-bush and chaparral sites, each with a “Fly Before You Buy” campaign modeled after the sales pitch at Lake Havasu City. As of this year, Pueblo West (near Pueblo, Colorado) had grown to 4,500 population, and Spring Creek (near Elko, Nevada), is listed at 10,500. The landmark gimmick also helped Fountain Hills (30 miles from Phoenix, Arizona), where Woody designed what is billed as “the world’s highest fountain.” Every 15 minutes, like Old Faithful, it spouts 560 feet upward. Population: 23,000, and growing.<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;font-size:130%;" ><br />Reality check:</span><br /><br />We picked up a copy of the News-Herald, “serving Lake Havasu City and the Lower Colorado River Area.” In a letter to the editor, longtime resident John Dixon writes:<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Who among us Havasuvians can claim any form of community pride or any type of Americana exercised here since the old man on the hill died? And with him the dream of a peaceful, clean and profitable society that would be Palm Springs and the shining new light on the mighty Colorado.</span><br /><br />That would be Mr. McCulloch. He wasn't that old.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I am enduring the latter part of my third decade in Havasu and I raised my three kids here. But I’ve got some bad news for you – we are dying with that dream… I’ve worked downtown as a bouncer. Have you been downtown between midnight and 2:30 a.m. lately? It’s like playing dawn of the drunks with absolute zombies wandering, staggering, fighting and weeping. I don’t have time to talk to you about the synthetic heroin trade that transfers from back door to back door.</span><br /><br />The writer yearns for the “the university we just talk about” and for medical buildings with a national health and cancer treatment research center. He says we might try “to get our children to rejuvenate the truth of the old man’s dream.” In the meantime, it’s time to clean up the lake and the town from “its alcohol-fueled, jail-filling, played-out resort-dreaming legacy…”<br /><br />Other problems face the inheritors of the not-so-old man’s dream. For a time, says Havasu Magazine, recreational boaters turned Copper Canyon’s bay into “an infamous gathering spot, where hundreds of boats crowded in.” Wall-to-wall boats. No escape. Drunken skippers. Lethal dives from the cliffs. When the boat police shunted people away, social boaters coalesced at the sandbar north of the city.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QxfisX4Escp5OMRnXszhD0L2lMYmXuoByh5BN8EfmPso8G1CAvcIYwAZ49kahvenJDkJYA2Fnxcd2mu1f33vYlScUis8oIc2FhHMcmCaaCk5TOK1CS4s9ixzkXjEoygyqfmCCC4OEuY/s1600-h/roofs+and+mtns.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 221px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_QxfisX4Escp5OMRnXszhD0L2lMYmXuoByh5BN8EfmPso8G1CAvcIYwAZ49kahvenJDkJYA2Fnxcd2mu1f33vYlScUis8oIc2FhHMcmCaaCk5TOK1CS4s9ixzkXjEoygyqfmCCC4OEuY/s320/roofs+and+mtns.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418582013242001202" border="0" /></a>The canal created by C.V. Wood has become so packed with boats in swimming weather, says the magazine, that it’s only a matter of time before somebody is poisoned by odorless but deadly carbon monoxide fumes.<br /><br />As for another form of pollution, McCulloch and Wood must have put aside any thoughts of a sewer system away from the waterfront. The city’s aquifer began in the 1990s to seep contamination into the lake. On a July day in 1994 with a high of 128 degrees Fahrenheit, the hottest in the 40 years of records, coliform readings compelled authorities to ban swimming. It got the attention of a citizenship not normally in favor of tax assessments. A $463 million bond issue was approved in 2001 by a 3-1 margin. As of this year, with treatment plants in place, 14,000 septic tanks had been “decommissioned” with 7,000 more to go.<br /><br />Arizona’s traditional opposition to governmental oversight left Lake Havasu City with a jumble of bad zoning, confusing street patterns and a downtown that is small and hard to find. But gated communities are as abundant as golf courses (four) in a city where McCulloch and Woods neglected to set aside space for playgrounds or parks. (Sara Park and Rotary Park came along later.) We looked at real estate prices: $153,000 for a new home with three bedrooms, two baths, a three-car garage, a boat garage and other amenities; $76,000 for a five-bedroom home tagged as “immaculate”; $69,000 for a lot on Trimaran Drive; $25,000 for a mobile home with a fishing boat and golf cart; $499,000 for a large home with a pool and lake views, and so forth.<br /><br />When we walked through the English Village, many restaurants and shops were empty. The economic downturn has been particularly hard on resort businesses, we were told. Of concern to many boosters is the role of the Houston-based company that gobbled up the McCulloch holdings after the founder’s land development business went sour in the mid-1970s. The details are confusing, but we know only that the developer was only 65 when found dead on Feb. 25, 1977. The authorities said he took 100 sleeping pills, 10 to 50 codeine tablets and an unspecified amount of alcohol. The Los Angeles County coroner somehow ruled it an accident.<br /><br />C.V. Wood died of cancer in 1992.<br /><br />The absentee owner is Charles Hurwitz, a corporate raider who forced out McCulloch’s son and Wood in 1979. He is notorious in Northern California for his failed but scary campaigns to harvest the old-growth redwoods owned by the Pacific Lumber Co. he acquired, bankrupted and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWFK47TcFIoSpGfW7nZb_SjC_RLnvZXus4gjCt0f9FpyYR2Lvfr3vkGYvcyiB3PQnfJYJ7BWyBWsUYLcpSr9o93kDVA0utoNxIeACK7F6GAYjErKfNvEmS3NE_RUPPQzEbzegHWvwwns/s1600-h/psychic+shop.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaWFK47TcFIoSpGfW7nZb_SjC_RLnvZXus4gjCt0f9FpyYR2Lvfr3vkGYvcyiB3PQnfJYJ7BWyBWsUYLcpSr9o93kDVA0utoNxIeACK7F6GAYjErKfNvEmS3NE_RUPPQzEbzegHWvwwns/s320/psychic+shop.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5418579621373284178" border="0" /></a>then sold. His corporation, Maxxam, still has a grip on Lake Havasu City, but nobody knows what the future holds for the old man’s dream. <span style="font-style: italic;">(But we could visit the London Bridge Psychic, at left, for some insight.)</span><br /><br />Prospectors for irony may find that the remarkable past success of Lake Havasu City’s developers could have negative consequences in the future for the growing community in the isolated valley of the lower Colorado River. McCulloch’s dream led to a teeming resort, millions of dollars in profits – and unexpected concerns about air and water pollution, dense crowds of speedboats, allegations of too many midnight drunks and an understandable uncertainty about investment by the faraway corporation that founded the city.<br /><br />A greater irony is visible in California Valley. The rapacity of developers (and many a buyer) left the 24,083 acres of former ranch land available to the kit fox, the giant kangaroo rat, rare leopard lizards and a list of plants crowded out of the San Joaquin Valley. The acreage butts up against the Carrizo Plains National Monument’s 250,000 acres of habitats critical to the survival of California condors and a home to the pronghorn antelope, Tule elk, sandhill cranes and mountain plovers. And nowhere in the valley is there a bridge from London.<br />One last verse from “London Bridge Is Falling Down”:<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">Silver and gold will be stolen away,<br />Stolen away, stolen away.<br />Silver and gold will be stolen away,<br />My fair lady-o.</blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> If you've come this far, you should know that this footnote has nothing whatever to do with the Trail of the Guppy. You won't be tested on this part.<br /><br />Perhaps it's just as well that McCulloch didn't buy London Bridge the Sixth, which was demolished in 1831. Otherwise the Lake Havasu tour guides would be obliged to tell the tourists about the royal decorations in the 16th century, a time when Merrie England wasn't all that merrie. Pikes at the bridge's Southern Gateway featured the shriveled heads of Thomas More and John Fisher (both were sainted 400 years later). Next came paranoid Henry VIII’s once-closest adviser, Thomas Cromwell, and the alleged lovers of the obese king’s fifth wife, the doomed teenager Catherine Howard. The tradition had begun more than two centuries before when the head of Scots hero William Wallace, now known better as Braveheart, went on display in 1305. Later came the heads of rebel leader Wat Tyler and Gunpowder Guy Fawkes. At one point (in 1598) a German visitor counted 38 severed heads as outdoor advertisements to warn renaissance Londoners of the royal penalty for dissension. (Missing were the promoters of California Valley, but that came much later.)<br /><br />According to the London Bridge Museum’s website, at least three bridges were built and unbuilt across the River Thames in the 900 years after the Romans floated pontoons for a crossing in the first century A.D. (The numbering of the bridges is mine because the authorities, as you might expect of Londoners, disagree about details.) In the ninth century, London Bridge the Fourth was built of timber. In the first years of the new millennium, it was fortified and blocked by King Canute and his army of Danes, but King Ethelred the Unready was, surprisingly, ready. In 1014 (accounts vary as to the date), he assembled a force of Norsemen and Saxons to put roofs on barges to fend off Danish arrows and boulders from the bridge. Then they tied ropes to the pilings and pulled away. Everybody knows what happened. That’s the number one explanation as to the origin of the nursery rhyme.<br /><blockquote style="font-style: italic;">London Bridge is broken down,<br />Broken down, broken down.<br />London Bridge is broken down,<br />My fair Lady Lee.<br /></blockquote>London Bridge the Fifth, also a timber structure, was replaced in 1209 by a stone span of 19 arches. By my count, it was London Bridge the Sixth. Destroyed by storms and fires but rebuilt several times, the medieval span lasted more than 600 years. It was festooned by a church and about 200 businesses, many of them connected by rooms over the narrow, congested roadbed. Its image still survives as the London Bridge, but it didn’t fall down. Instead, it was so decrepit that a new bridge was commissioned, constructed and opened in 1831.<br /><br />The seventh London Bridge, not nearly as scenic, would last only 136 years on the Thames. Burdened with 10,000 vehicles and 50,000 pedestrians each day, it began to sink – one inch every eight years. By 1924, the east end was about 4 inches lower than the west end. By then, the Thames was crossed by 17 tunnels and 23 bridges, including the Tower Bridge of 1894.<br />The London Bridge No. 7 wasn’t falling down. It was sinking down. By 1968, it was on its way to Arizona. The Guinness Book of Records would list it as “the largest antique ever sold.”Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-35912994308193297442009-12-16T22:47:00.000-08:002009-12-17T00:34:40.611-08:00Race Across the Desert<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWY8BR-A972b_B2TLgJH-dC4I8CLShICQCIax48meFvfJXC3uDK_gLnYaOXXnp0XU9epUT0-AhUAW7Hy-fGzxXS_vlEsQ6TLY3ux-p370F4roWsKLeWY0zD-cmF9sqpAy0WFAoNVhzfxo/s1600-h/sagebrush+restaurant.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 177px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWY8BR-A972b_B2TLgJH-dC4I8CLShICQCIax48meFvfJXC3uDK_gLnYaOXXnp0XU9epUT0-AhUAW7Hy-fGzxXS_vlEsQ6TLY3ux-p370F4roWsKLeWY0zD-cmF9sqpAy0WFAoNVhzfxo/s400/sagebrush+restaurant.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416119852885893634" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />We usually preface the noun “desert” with a modifier like “vast,” “endless” or “empty.” And the 1,800 miles we covered in the past week have been a rapid pass through exactly that – a vast, endless, largely empty desert.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4k7OBvJbGat2wffaU1PknekF5B6wqvTYjxUc20HKITO1yqK7xNSoC9gWFDWTeQ-3JHgFcpdDwRlW5GQkuNFUXJTy7RXEn59iXTZkco1Q46JR28oifAU4O2DZlHcrhUTtLRPGhMbkFljo/s1600-h/long+hwy.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 172px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4k7OBvJbGat2wffaU1PknekF5B6wqvTYjxUc20HKITO1yqK7xNSoC9gWFDWTeQ-3JHgFcpdDwRlW5GQkuNFUXJTy7RXEn59iXTZkco1Q46JR28oifAU4O2DZlHcrhUTtLRPGhMbkFljo/s320/long+hwy.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416119127300885938" border="0" /></a>But vast and spare don’t mean the deserts are boring. We were surprised and delighted by how the landscape offers endless change. Around Lake Havasu City, the red-tinged Arizona desert is split by the Colorado River and bounded by jagged, barren rock formations. It wouldn’t be confused with the desert around Phoenix, flat as a chess board and dotted with saguaro cacti. In the canyons and mesas above Carlsbad Caverns in southeast New Mexico, the prickly pears and other cacti grow so thickly that it seemed the Chihuahua Valley could easily support other (non-desert) vegetation.<br /><br />Driving across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and southeastern California, we noted variations of sagebrush, yucca, agaves, dried ground cover, prickly pears, saguaros and mesquite. But in other <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuL_8wJLmniUpPz-Vu8GMqSydLdkKfeItqgAYXjg8PP1ymBr-QC5L6IuQLA5AESVwL4YAhk7XBP49U0v7cOf6IQ4I0-bUzWRcw2bYFIYI-n_UhENqhzqiYWt6l_EeP6-80BnxVyaa-rg/s1600-h/locomotive.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 295px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuL_8wJLmniUpPz-Vu8GMqSydLdkKfeItqgAYXjg8PP1ymBr-QC5L6IuQLA5AESVwL4YAhk7XBP49U0v7cOf6IQ4I0-bUzWRcw2bYFIYI-n_UhENqhzqiYWt6l_EeP6-80BnxVyaa-rg/s320/locomotive.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416118540399735074" border="0" /></a>parts of the desert, as in stretches of western Texas, the only crops are gravel, boulders and sand; the soil quality and lack of rain don't support a single cactus.<br /><br />We drove through windstorms and even some rain, which mostly evaporated before it reached the ground. Empty blue skies changed to dramatic skyscapes with clouds that produced neon orange and vermilion sunsets.<br /><br />Much of the desert is level, but then we'd pass volcanic craters (for example, in the Mojave Desert near Amboy, California). Who'd have thought, Lynn asked, that an alien spaceship would leave such a mess when it landed? We saw weird rock formations that looked like sand castles. And just when we thought we’d seen all the variety of cacti we were going to, up would pop some new sort of plant life. We saw cacti shaped like old-style hand-operated water pumps at Carlsbad Caverns. Joshua trees, looking like cheerleaders holding pompons in their upraised arms, posed near the two-lane road that was once a piece of historic Route 66 near the teensy hamlet of Ludlow, California. (We checked the historical markers and information on the Web. We quizzed the waitress at the Ludlow Café. But we still don’t know why that dusty, windblown crossroads is named after my husband.)<br /><br />After we visited my cousin Kathy Macchi in Austin, we were running out of time, and I, for one, was ready to head for home. Our trip made a sudden change of pace, logging almost 300 miles a day for the last week. That’s about twice the average mileage of the earlier part of our journey, <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuKGZbn_hLjAHvX2pimf75A6WFbDUGI8XTkXhY8SL_xO541eId8i0mG3h73bUtlZLCkQTV8TJJT2_kBjxE5ZqAZTZJ-xGfq0DvhlThMz1OCzpJPQaWEDIj3GsmRyTrfyd7Arfg1DMJIrA/s1600-h/rock+graffiti.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 224px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuKGZbn_hLjAHvX2pimf75A6WFbDUGI8XTkXhY8SL_xO541eId8i0mG3h73bUtlZLCkQTV8TJJT2_kBjxE5ZqAZTZJ-xGfq0DvhlThMz1OCzpJPQaWEDIj3GsmRyTrfyd7Arfg1DMJIrA/s320/rock+graffiti.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416118545694038226" border="0" /></a>and we took much a much more direct course with almost no detours. Total mileage through arid territory: Beaumont, Texas, to Tehachapi, California: 1,863 miles.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> In the Mojave Desert, on old Route 66, we saw our first rock graffiti. It went on for miles, mostly on a berm paralleling the highway that might have been an old road bed or rail bed. It was just normal graffiti, "Stephanie luvs Jason" and so forth. But all the writing was with rocks, the medium available where there's no hardware store to buy spray paint, and no walls to spray your tag on. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Photo at right.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also Notable:</span> One disappointment: In more than 1,800 miles of desert, we never saw a single roadrunner. We don’t count an 11-foot Roadrunner statue billed as a tourist attraction in Fort Stockton, Texas. The cartoon character is <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsAlci8P6tddGM8z0oillITDlfjAAiJ39Uo4B7-2PiKG6__apPyuMu6c7RBiVYWnlbD_lnCI_Ffb2An6LcYrSTRC5CxEYYx6SKt4z9mW5_eXHKVmgdGvChyphenhyphen5WTHt7qTXZH2Ltt-srTOo/s1600-h/roadrunner.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgsAlci8P6tddGM8z0oillITDlfjAAiJ39Uo4B7-2PiKG6__apPyuMu6c7RBiVYWnlbD_lnCI_Ffb2An6LcYrSTRC5CxEYYx6SKt4z9mW5_eXHKVmgdGvChyphenhyphen5WTHt7qTXZH2Ltt-srTOo/s320/roadrunner.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416119122618147154" border="0" /></a>dressed for the season in a Santa outfit. Rooted to the ground, he looks silently at traffic without so much as a “meep meep.”<br /><br />Two unexpected thrills: Cactus wrens in the saguaros near Phoenix and long-billed curlews (shorebirds!!) in the arid hills near the Carrizo Plains west of Buttonwillow and Bakersfield. There are seasonal lakes nearby, it turns out, but it was a surprising and lovely sight. A dozen curlews flew over us, then landed and proceeded to peck around in the dirt around the sagebrush for food, just as they do in mudflats. It was a preview of being back in our non-arid homeland, San Francisco.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NUZT0hhnfyyF-IMsnMTWffnJVjnskM3l7V45WcOxVfjjC-FKXjy3eMa3MIPjPklLnBL3FJR88BiwhCvzRWLXBz7C8ZZCMlLwrgo8z48sFD5MbqyAPvpKmC_vfIql3K3Yi5jYxlbYtMk/s1600-h/desert2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-NUZT0hhnfyyF-IMsnMTWffnJVjnskM3l7V45WcOxVfjjC-FKXjy3eMa3MIPjPklLnBL3FJR88BiwhCvzRWLXBz7C8ZZCMlLwrgo8z48sFD5MbqyAPvpKmC_vfIql3K3Yi5jYxlbYtMk/s320/desert2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5416118530731528498" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Our final odometer readings:</span><br /><br />From Beaumont, Texas, to Austin: 280 miles<br /><br />From Austin to Pecos: 431 miles<br /><br />From Pecos, Texas, to Carlsbad Caverns, New Mexico, and on to Deming: 347 miles<br /><br />From Deming, New Mexico, to Phoenix, Arizona: 328 miles<br /><br />From Phoenix to Lake Havasu City: 202 miles<br /><br />From Lake Havasu City to Buttonwillow, California: 341 miles<br /><br />From Buttonwillow through Paso Robles to San Francisco: 288 miles<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Total mileage of our trip: 11,983</span>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-28135300789650700942009-12-14T08:24:00.000-08:002009-12-16T14:00:53.341-08:00Carlsbad Caverns<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />My father, John Ludlow, loved to talk to us about things he had seen – and we hadn’t. Oh, he would say with sympathy, you should have heard Schwarzkopf as the Marschallin in 1948, or, you visited Guanajuato and missed the Náhuatl carvings on the baptismal font at Iglesia de San <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKafFWenLeef3e9ImgKvuNFBG8pyjYgFoZVAUfjeeNnlL1_Gm9Wdk0U5wYJhg9pbQ-HwalnYgZIjNGL52GRUkaYHhXy26shlLH2VnXEPPHo7hVXgGV90a1HImDz7ompkSCtsfMf9IOK0/s1600-h/carlsbad+nps+2+temple+of+sun.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 213px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKafFWenLeef3e9ImgKvuNFBG8pyjYgFoZVAUfjeeNnlL1_Gm9Wdk0U5wYJhg9pbQ-HwalnYgZIjNGL52GRUkaYHhXy26shlLH2VnXEPPHo7hVXgGV90a1HImDz7ompkSCtsfMf9IOK0/s320/carlsbad+nps+2+temple+of+sun.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415129049295383250" border="0" /></a>Diego? Oh, my. Too bad. Most memorably, our family placedropper would thicken his voice and unfocus his eyes when he told us in rapt memory about the incredible beauty of Carlsbad Caverns. Sure, I would say to myself. Sure.<br /><br /> My father must have visited the newly anointed National Park in the 1930s, before elevators were installed. Margo and I arrived about 70 years later, but the caverns hadn't changed much in the last half-million years.<br /><br /> It took millions of years for water to percolate through fractures and create the enormous caves in the limestone bedrock.<br />It took 500,000 years for calcite-laden water to decorate this cavern, drop by drop, with statuary, ornamentation and phantasmagorical shapes that no sculptor could dream up.<br /> It took me 70 years to get to the southeast corner of New Mexico and check out the best of my father's stories.<br />It took me less than a minute to discover to my surprise that my father had, if anything, understated the wonders of a fantastic art museum created by nature.<br /><br /> Margo and I took the elevator downward and found ourselves 750 feet below the Chihuahuan <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kBj_MkHPEDuIJ_LK1aNH7gGLoLpJRdCRdF5B3S5EgIU76O2qSqJPwrKH7mnSxAHGBSxTVkLuPqkC7XHZzgKr9vx8-e-HvTz2H4LBguo2PUz34Sq0Fl-uNvSX7b_JRkhYQpYG7-J7LPs/s1600-h/carlsbad+nps+1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2kBj_MkHPEDuIJ_LK1aNH7gGLoLpJRdCRdF5B3S5EgIU76O2qSqJPwrKH7mnSxAHGBSxTVkLuPqkC7XHZzgKr9vx8-e-HvTz2H4LBguo2PUz34Sq0Fl-uNvSX7b_JRkhYQpYG7-J7LPs/s320/carlsbad+nps+1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415129042537109922" border="0" /></a>Desert in an S-shaped cathedral a little more than an acre in size. <span style="font-style: italic;">(</span><span style="font-style: italic;">P</span><span style="font-style: italic;">hotos at right come from the National Park Service.) </span>We spent almost two hours on an unforgettable trail illuminated by hundreds of concealed lights, none of them colored, in a Technicolor world of formations in hues of yellow, bronze, copper, green, red and black.<br /><br />We stared at tens of thousands of stalactites that hang like icicles from the ceilings. (Margo called it "underground at the carrot farm.") We saw stalagmites rising like pointed candles, twisted arrows or sand castles built by demented children. When a stalagmite marries a stalactite, it's called a column. <br /><br />We marveled at dripstone draperies, nodules that look like popcorn and the tiny stalactites called soda straws. We saw cave pearls and flowstone lily pads in pools of water. The park rangers have names for their favorites, a kind of geological <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-lZ9A5QvCtw_SDTcs7f5a13R2QTLXEj9odDjkytkxBDeUvyqKuWMQGV8O2zP8ymnnd9aXozipn_9f-Tp4L0TgHqAMsLzMRwgP40tqBEey3jSbwW6PoZR1sgXD8o436DGotmZOYH-mamU/s1600-h/carlsbad+face.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 179px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-lZ9A5QvCtw_SDTcs7f5a13R2QTLXEj9odDjkytkxBDeUvyqKuWMQGV8O2zP8ymnnd9aXozipn_9f-Tp4L0TgHqAMsLzMRwgP40tqBEey3jSbwW6PoZR1sgXD8o436DGotmZOYH-mamU/s320/carlsbad+face.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5415129314244517250" border="0" /></a>anthropomorphism. We were introduced to the Witch’s Finger, Temple of the Sun and the Big Room; Rock of Ages <span style="font-style: italic;">(it's at left, shot by our totally inadequate camera)</span>, Hall of Giants and Totem Pole; the Chinese Theater, Painted Grotto and the Bottomless Pit (it isn't.)<br /><br />The park, now encompassing 46,766 acres on the surface, has more than 100 other caverns not open to the public. Slaughter Canyon Cave is available for guided tours; take a flashlight. Research scientists have access to the biggest cavern, Lechuguilla Cave, with 110 miles of chambers and vaults. It was discovered only 20 years ago when someone noticed a draft from a small cave called the Misery Hole.<br /><br /> We pretty much had the Big Room trail to ourselves, probably because early December is not a time for crowds of tourists. Moreover, economic malaise is blamed for a huge drop in attendance from about 800,000 in 2000 to a reported 430,000 in 2007. The high cost of gasoline could be a factor – the caverns are a long drive from any big cities or any other tourist attractions.<br /><br />Carlsbad Caverns, named for a nearby city, is not the largest or deepest of the hundreds of big limestone caves in this country. But its appeal is stated well by former ranger Edward J. Greene: "What it is, is overwhelming. Nothing else in our experience prepares us for the combination of immense size; intricate, delicate shapes, and overpowering beauty that is Carlsbad Cavern."<br /><br /> My father couldn't have said it better. To him, my apologies.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> The posted speed limit on Interstate 10 in west Texas is 80 mph, but we are told by locals that the troopers don't care. When we averaged 80, even the 18-wheelers passed us.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Carlsbad, New Mexico, to Phoenix, Arizona: 580<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 11,152<br /><span style="text-decoration: underline;"></span>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-53771293067045645292009-12-12T20:36:00.000-08:002009-12-14T08:40:27.604-08:00Austin City Limits<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />The last time Kathy Macchi invited another cousin to her house in Austin for a little visit, she stayed for 10 years. Some folks would learn to make the invitation a bit less welcoming. Not my cousin Kathy.<br /><br />When I e-mailed that we'd like to visit her and her partner, Faye Rozmaryn, she answered with a <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqYoPbiZCtUFRuZ1K8gWWx_Ae4H56gtmR4Mq9gAyfUzN5npMa1jyLDz1uvf_5unN_rR-sk3_ZG6KwpIQI1yZ-IF8GHJSVOw7Ghwa6Qp3FGXr4Pdxmb6UZucs3GoNL9TTd3kZLCv39bwM/s1600-h/kathy+and+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 266px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMqYoPbiZCtUFRuZ1K8gWWx_Ae4H56gtmR4Mq9gAyfUzN5npMa1jyLDz1uvf_5unN_rR-sk3_ZG6KwpIQI1yZ-IF8GHJSVOw7Ghwa6Qp3FGXr4Pdxmb6UZucs3GoNL9TTd3kZLCv39bwM/s320/kathy+and+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414575451834123554" border="0" /></a>big Texan <span style="font-style: italic;">"Mi casa es tu casa"</span> e-mail, and then a list of questions: <span style="font-style: italic;">(Are you vegetarians? Any allergies? Any special likes or dislikes? What beverages do you drink? Beer? Wine? Do you like desserts? What do you eat for breakfast? Coffee? Tea? And so forth.)</span> I answered with excessive detail and sort of expected a reply like: <span style="font-style: italic;">“A little too much information, but thanks.”</span> Instead: <span style="font-style: italic;">“That’s exactly what we needed!!”</span><br /><br />Austin is a beautiful, isolated, culturally rich, relatively liberal city surrounded by the vast conservative nation of Texas. So I'm guessing, from a very small sample, that people here are keen to show off the city. They seem happy to receive visitors who somehow find their way through the Lone Star State's endless flat, bleak expanses and arrive in the Hill Country of Central Texas.<br /><br />I hadn't seen my cousin Kathy since we were teenagers. She moved to Austin 30 years ago from her home town, Boston. We've kept in touch on and off over the years with holiday cards and letters and the occasional e-mail, as well as updates from other members of the family.<span style="font-style: italic;"> </span>No phone calls. No real visits. There was a bit of ice-breaking to be done, for sure. But in the ice-breaking department, this was the tropical sun. Hugs. Come on in. What are you drinking? Here's where you're staying. Shall we do the grand tour of the house now or later? And can we lay on an incredible home-cooked dinner for you this evening?<br /><br />The four of us talked through lunch at a local Tex-Mex place. We took a break, and then talked <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBdhgLTomsSuJnCDXanORj2ghowmYGLN1-LZb_A6XhoxEJs-5w_JdTnZ6i-OeKnZT7ZHKqUH6loiBafd-5q6i3KoEANjqMpXgiOD9tRsnXseMZk9UyRxHZSS4CLd22qM-4oAdduCLDMU/s1600-h/kathy+faye+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWBdhgLTomsSuJnCDXanORj2ghowmYGLN1-LZb_A6XhoxEJs-5w_JdTnZ6i-OeKnZT7ZHKqUH6loiBafd-5q6i3KoEANjqMpXgiOD9tRsnXseMZk9UyRxHZSS4CLd22qM-4oAdduCLDMU/s320/kathy+faye+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414575461871842626" border="0" /></a>through dinner. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's Faye and Kathy and I at left.)</span> Faye is a gourmet cook, and we, of course, are an appreciative audience. She served up a perfect roast chicken that had been marinating since the day before, with salad and squash soup. The conversation continued through the evening – families, opera, travel, work, politics. Then just Kathy and I talked until well past midnight. Wow!<br /><br />I'm feeling some regret for all the lost years. But the main thing is that the friendship is renewed, and we'll see Kathy and Faye in San Francisco sometime soon.<br /><br /> They live in north Austin in a house that they've slowly remodeled over about 15 years into a beautiful, comfortable retreat where they can relax and host their friends – expanses of wood, gorgeous tiling, walls painted in the rich, mellow colors of the Southwest. The house is laid out with the living areas open to the outside patio and pool, clearly taking advantage of the many months of good weather that Austin normally enjoys. Kathy said the city gets about five days of winter a year. The rest of the time, she can lounge around in shorts. It was drizzly and a bit cold while we were there, so it's just that our timing was a bit off.<br /><br />We also visited Ingrid Weigand and George Dolis, who extended the same Austin hospitality. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdohhg2WFZCBb_eTYBRPCu7UQN4Xkxz13yRNHB0JTHChgoLdww_Hmmkg7NKVHMVk2tSPy-x_B-cH3RwcUwZ2iKxids_XWUkEIAZ9vplDk0hLRaKPc0Vohu7bkUCG5fPkYkXxmIF_6NKcY/s1600-h/ingrid+and+george.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdohhg2WFZCBb_eTYBRPCu7UQN4Xkxz13yRNHB0JTHChgoLdww_Hmmkg7NKVHMVk2tSPy-x_B-cH3RwcUwZ2iKxids_XWUkEIAZ9vplDk0hLRaKPc0Vohu7bkUCG5fPkYkXxmIF_6NKcY/s320/ingrid+and+george.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414575930544739170" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">"Come on in, make yourself at home; let's enjoy this fish dinner from my mother's family recipe and one of George's famously complex salads." </span>We felt completely blessed and welcomed after the long drive from New Orleans. Like Kathy and Faye, they have slowly remodeled their home over many years. Now it's a showplace for the homey warmth of wood and the earthy and elegant beauty of tile. Their home is also open to the outside, with a greenhouse on one of the decks. The upstairs bedroom gives the feel of a tree house among the branches of the huge, mature, live oak trees outside.<br /><br />While we were in Austin, we visited the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, where we got the distinct impression that Texas and the Confederacy won the Civil War. But the highlight, for me, was a temporary exhibit of quilts made by ordinary people for ordinary purposes. When we toured the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska, and at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, we saw the work of professional quilters for display in shows or museums – quilts as art, rather than quilts as quilts. In the Austin museum, the Joyce Gross Collection <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbFVtjU565A-MwupxRnLscBatm_iJ5MkIwA5a9cl4oazGE0YKYLz0yKmiTH-9VfnUh-Oz7sLAs1A1XPYP8xEsjW4oH2xnF-6EmNEGnZ8LZtBqlJ221gknE_xrRLchhJsDJwaS6lsqCCkk/s1600-h/west+texas+land+II.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 296px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbFVtjU565A-MwupxRnLscBatm_iJ5MkIwA5a9cl4oazGE0YKYLz0yKmiTH-9VfnUh-Oz7sLAs1A1XPYP8xEsjW4oH2xnF-6EmNEGnZ8LZtBqlJ221gknE_xrRLchhJsDJwaS6lsqCCkk/s320/west+texas+land+II.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5414575937306710690" border="0" /></a>contained beautiful, expertly made quilts in traditional American block patterns, whole cloth quilts, appliqué techniques and Hawaiian quilts. Quilts as quilts.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable: </span>Kenny came through the surgery to repair her broken nose just fine. Whew!! I didn't think I was that worried about it, but when Clyde Hohn called after the surgery to tell us how things went, I couldn't breath for a few minutes. Watching the weather report makes me conscious of what a bad idea it would have been to fly to Ohio right now. The Midwest in buried under snow. Kenny is cognizant, I think, of how concerned we've been, so she is calling every day to let us know she's OK. And Maryann Hohn e-mailed every day with a report. We are reminded again and again of how lucky we are.<br /><br />We are now hightailing it across the vast open landscapes of the Southwest, putting in some of the longest mileage days of our trip. We're heading home.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Austin, Texas, to Carlsbad Caverns National Park: 527<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 10,572Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-47997845202234443872009-12-08T06:32:00.000-08:002009-12-16T14:19:28.368-08:00Long Waltz Across Texas<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />The sign as we entered Texas at the Sabine River: "El Paso, 875 miles." Yikes!! Daunting!! That's a long waltz across Texas. It's about four states wide.<br /><br />We stayed an extra day in the New Orleans area to visit across the river in Algiers with our friends Curt Feldman and Megumi Ishiyama. Our trip's fourth and last crossing of the Mississippi was on <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbYKkIlO6_zCdVkqkDFP1xFcGG5HBh_ZsUuiC10Ul8tpLTI0zGKrt5UBsYzeOO-Oz0BZF-eEe0hINofzECp-ZbhgNF1HMIZPX6a4oAtnYCgKVOrahrN9RgInm8E7TxE5TYk3ILosYDFk/s1600-h/ferry+to+algiers.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixbYKkIlO6_zCdVkqkDFP1xFcGG5HBh_ZsUuiC10Ul8tpLTI0zGKrt5UBsYzeOO-Oz0BZF-eEe0hINofzECp-ZbhgNF1HMIZPX6a4oAtnYCgKVOrahrN9RgInm8E7TxE5TYk3ILosYDFk/s320/ferry+to+algiers.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413412758937733618" border="0" /></a>the Algiers ferry<span style="font-style: italic;"> (at left) </span>-- a wonderful ride, right on the water, over before it starts, ending at picturesque Algiers Point. Curt and Meg, who moved to Algiers from the Bay Area, are blogging about the transition: <a href="http://www.megandcurtinneworleans.blogspot.com/">www.megandcurtinneworleans.blogspot.com/</a> Check out the papayas.<br /><br />My sister Marion and 11-year-old nephew Shafir came over, and we laughed when we realized that all the adults in the room were bloggers. Check out Marion's blog, too, at: <a href="http://www.ateardropintime.blogspot.com/">www.ateardropintime.blogspot.com/</a><br /><br />Meg, working as a nurse in a cardiac intensive care ward, saw up-close and in deadly detail the results of the Southern diet -- high in saturated fats, sugar, salt and alcohol. Even some of her co-workers live this life. It sounds like some sort of denial mechanism: Let's go out for a smoke after reviving (or failing to revive) a heart attack patient. Because of Lynn's history of heart trouble, we had only two real New Orleans-style meals, delicious and dripping with fat: (1) A po'boy with deep-fried shrimp for Lynn, a po'boy with hot-link sausage for me, and (2) fried catfish for both of us. It was a full-employment guarantee for the cardiac repair folks. (It's not just Louisiana. In north Arkansas, we stopped for coffee and "homemade" pie, and it turned out the "pies" were deep-fried turnovers! And delicious.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu8GuZaH1wfEUfmHNbq2ixWihi1nxwK0QIh66cREwrlTW3j4VKRLgYAHlpq1tE9xtlCKDWaTUqA99sSZOxMoWVCtD0j5EYHxJoQErvZfI9NGkk228qgKAz7nPksEWj6byE2p_15gbTaHM/s1600-h/meg+and+curt.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 261px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiu8GuZaH1wfEUfmHNbq2ixWihi1nxwK0QIh66cREwrlTW3j4VKRLgYAHlpq1tE9xtlCKDWaTUqA99sSZOxMoWVCtD0j5EYHxJoQErvZfI9NGkk228qgKAz7nPksEWj6byE2p_15gbTaHM/s320/meg+and+curt.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413413597274099842" border="0" /></a>Curt works for an internet business that deals in virtual worlds, like Second Life. So we had this odd conversation about avatars and virtual experiences. It was sort of like a virtual conversation, using words that I sort of understand, talking about virtual purchases and virtual experiences. It almost made sense, but not quite. Lynn, the former science fiction fan, says the conversation seemed to come out of a 1960 Philip K. Dick novel about the future – and the future is now. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's Curt, Megume and their mellow dog, Anton, in front of their home in Algiers.)</span><br /><br />While in New Orleans, we struggled with a parenting decision. Our daughter Kenny, the freshman at Oberlin College in Ohio, got her nose broken in an intramural basketball game. She's going to need surgery to set it, which will happen Wednesday. And it's possible that I should go up there to be the mom at the bedside. That would leave Lynn alone in the vastness of Texas for four days. (He wouldn't really be alone. He could find refuge in Austin, I'm sure. My cousin lives there, as do our friends Ingrid Weigand and her husband George Dolis, who offered to take Lynn in if we decided that I should fly to Cleveland.)<br /><br />Lots of factors came in -- but the swing factor is the weather report showing two waves of winter <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6lWaY7chyVpopddzpGuIx__ZLf6J30XPnF5a_IEFIflzeIzTcTw931V6XtsjAoDE1uHCwuyaoPpDHN30wW4GbQyxHB7jb2YPBo31cTei7lHv7mVxJKDcCsZlQd3foPlCVZIs84ufmJ4/s1600-h/oaks+and+houses.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 245px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv6lWaY7chyVpopddzpGuIx__ZLf6J30XPnF5a_IEFIflzeIzTcTw931V6XtsjAoDE1uHCwuyaoPpDHN30wW4GbQyxHB7jb2YPBo31cTei7lHv7mVxJKDcCsZlQd3foPlCVZIs84ufmJ4/s320/oaks+and+houses.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413414683084370258" border="0" /></a>storms set to hit the whole midsection of the country. That would surely not be the time to fly in and out of Chicago and Cleveland. Our friends Maryann and Clyde Hohn in Oberlin have promised to take care of Kenny as if she were (Maryann's words) "our own little princess." But this is the first time we've left Kenny on her own in this sort of situation, and it's hard.<br /><br />Leaving New Orleans, we headed out into Cajun country to the Acadian Cultural Center in Lafayette. We left the freeway and drove down two-lane Highway 182 under live oaks dripping with Spanish moss. We cruised past plantation mansions fronted with massive white columns. The signs outside called them "antebellum homes."<br /><br />We shouldn't have been surprised – but we were – to see endless fields of sugar cane interspersed among the horse pastures and rice fields. We stopped to look at great clouds of <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlldnBtSyZa-VDJZjbcZNuBZu-RH2M6E2K6uNeMehzlEvYBas5uwPZ0PyHHU2k3EkGZ7lHeW1jDDV7IyyxEIZQJ_YszxQBQUBybejR30jdNLBeu27nyMPgOEn5PTcV8IQ1szqsNHxATak/s1600-h/sugar+mill.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 233px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlldnBtSyZa-VDJZjbcZNuBZu-RH2M6E2K6uNeMehzlEvYBas5uwPZ0PyHHU2k3EkGZ7lHeW1jDDV7IyyxEIZQJ_YszxQBQUBybejR30jdNLBeu27nyMPgOEn5PTcV8IQ1szqsNHxATak/s320/sugar+mill.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413415386234690898" border="0" /></a>white smoke billowing out of a sugar refinery. Huge trucks pulled into and out of the muddy loading area with towering loads of cane, even on a Sunday, even as the New Orleans Saints (11-0 at the beginning of the game) were on TV. The smell of burning sugar reminded me of the acrid odor of the old sugar-beet processing plant when I was in high school in Manteca. The conveyor belts at their crazy angles look like the abandoned and rusted sugar refineries we've seen in Kaua'i.<br /><br />The Saints pulled out out an amazing come-from-behind victory on the radio as we drove past pirogues drifting on the cocoa-colored bayous, where white pelicans glided above the waterways and egrets fished, elegantly.<br /><br />The Acadian Cultural Center, operated by the National Park Service, showed us how, in 1755, the British overlords in Canada expelled the French farmers and fishermen whose families had <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs4j5ZFcY5PcRVTnyNqlknvMWLOEbomK9SvcNiaHh3aMmD0GyuO0EAEFukZi90yciJ9FVH49FOcL0hbQBck6LerCq3w4FIZgocahbqf-NVy7sInI1cuzxPnzvSxIP6fejs6JQBHWiBHt4/s1600-h/alcohol+gun+sign.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 250px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs4j5ZFcY5PcRVTnyNqlknvMWLOEbomK9SvcNiaHh3aMmD0GyuO0EAEFukZi90yciJ9FVH49FOcL0hbQBck6LerCq3w4FIZgocahbqf-NVy7sInI1cuzxPnzvSxIP6fejs6JQBHWiBHt4/s320/alcohol+gun+sign.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5413417720695110002" border="0" /></a>settled in Nova Scotia even before the Pilgrims landed in 1620. Shipped to Louisiana's swamps and prairies, the survivors blended with other groups and became the gumbo-cooking, accordion-playing and French-speaking folks who evolved from Acadians to Cajuns. Their journey from Nova Scotia was horrific, and many thousands died of disease and starvation. Their history in Canada was one of cooperation with Native people. They carried that on in Louisiana, mixing with Native Americans, free blacks from the Caribbean, escaped slaves, Canary Islanders, and numerous other groups. Our souvenir (French word!) is a CD of Cajun music, which is carrying us along as we head for Austin, Texas.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> We stopped for coffee at a roadside store and gas station between Beaumont and Austin. The notices outside told us that we're really in Texas now. One: No weapons in here. That's a felony. And two: You can't drink liquor on the premises, but that's only a misdemeanor. About three feet inside the door was an open cooler of ice where you could buy beer one can at a time, ready to go. But I guess you have to get it all the way to your car before you start drinking. (I've since noticed that lots of the roadside stores have the same signs. I'm in favor of both those restrictions, and I suppose it never hurts to be explicit about behavior expectations, but still....)<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from New Orleans to Austin, Texas: 543 miles<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 10,045Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-5474940953888282962009-12-07T21:51:00.000-08:002009-12-16T14:14:37.294-08:00Mister Walton's Store<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />Sam Walton began his Wal-Mart journey in 1951 as an obsessed skinflint, an owner-manager far more concerned about the bottom line than the bottoms of people invited into his tiny office in Walton's 5 & 10. The proof is a Sweet Sue <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibgt3UkDYNsrx1IeBmC-3YnE5wXiRnkA2515jgKH9clu3nnmIFpN7FSb-CxRXR593FX5_mUTX5DiFBzLXafZQAhiL0CCz98Q7WTa40kb47QvzvxiaBD1o6BLS8UhPYkaXacHnUxIfWhnk/s1600-h/+walton+office.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 314px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibgt3UkDYNsrx1IeBmC-3YnE5wXiRnkA2515jgKH9clu3nnmIFpN7FSb-CxRXR593FX5_mUTX5DiFBzLXafZQAhiL0CCz98Q7WTa40kb47QvzvxiaBD1o6BLS8UhPYkaXacHnUxIfWhnk/s320/+walton+office.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412740043562165954" border="0" /></a>apple box in Bentonville, Arkansas. We saw it next to <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PordWEpMrIv__O6kc3mleYbvLwgArgaVRmjDC0Qz-lI_VkpdK0vAUJd7W2oKews0mLZLfgA5jO3Yke_0uIU-S51E8dT-uUP1F9enMttYSuLOQNRqN1IfaSOV5cwl6V36_rNCISermvE/s1600-h/+sam.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 87px; height: 111px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0PordWEpMrIv__O6kc3mleYbvLwgArgaVRmjDC0Qz-lI_VkpdK0vAUJd7W2oKews0mLZLfgA5jO3Yke_0uIU-S51E8dT-uUP1F9enMttYSuLOQNRqN1IfaSOV5cwl6V36_rNCISermvE/s320/+sam.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412740439716434242" border="0" /></a>his battered old desk and a nail-keg wastebasket in his first store, now a museum and shrine to the late Samuel Moore Walton. Preserved behind glass, like George Washington's bedroom, Sam's old office is now an exhibit for parsimony.<br /><br />The apple box was a seat for his guests.<br /><br />Another kind of exhibit is planned these days in Bentonville by Alice Walton, youngest of Sam and Helen's four children. She was 18 months old when her dad furnished his office with an apple box. He went on to found a worldwide chain of 8,055 (at last count) of enormously profitable Wal-Mart discount stores, Wal-Mart supercenters, Sam's Clubs and thousands of huge stores with assorted names in 15 countries (Bhati in India, ASDA in Britain, etc.) When he died in 1992, he was the nation's richest multibillionaire.<br /><br />After leaving the shrine, we walked down a curving bike path to an observation deck above what would have been known, in the the Ozarks not too long ago, as some dark holler. It is filled now with earthmovers, concrete trucks, two towering cranes, a regiment of men in hard hats and the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBL_TKY5y-_TjiD4IQqRZFVpIp_tt1aKaUuIwIePCs0m6r5NBXx0bDkWAKXMGyjDWvkyTdiMcT2UZVAPuq4be7A4oTo-waRGhpc9cLkActIbqR7P1NcI8CIQMt4EtmIPrhTPWUi8-WUI/s1600-h/+alice%27s+folly.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 199px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibBL_TKY5y-_TjiD4IQqRZFVpIp_tt1aKaUuIwIePCs0m6r5NBXx0bDkWAKXMGyjDWvkyTdiMcT2UZVAPuq4be7A4oTo-waRGhpc9cLkActIbqR7P1NcI8CIQMt4EtmIPrhTPWUi8-WUI/s320/+alice%27s+folly.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412741180495956482" border="0" /></a>columns of a temple under construction.<br /><br />The temple is not for Alice's guests. It's for art.<br /><br />Parsimony is never mentioned. The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, a nonprofit project envisioned and mostly financed by Sam's very rich daughter, is budgeted at $417 million – with about $350 million for the complex of galleries, auditorium, fountains and gardens. Alice, whose wealth is said to be $18 billion or so, now lives among the horsey set in Mineral Springs, a Texas town near Dallas.<br /><br />She paid $35 million for "Kindred Spirits," an 1849 painting by Asher B. Durand, and more millions have been spent on one of Charles Willson Peale's portraits of George Washington and paintings by John LaFarge, Thomas Eakins, George Bellows, Eastman Johnson, Charles Bird King, Jasper Cropsey, Winslow Homer, Marsden Hartley and many other American artists.<br /><br />Will art lovers find their way to the Ozarks when the museum is ready in a year or two? Who knows? Four years ago, we made our way through Spain's Basque country to visit the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, also an unlikely place for a world-class museum. (The cost of construction <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrybb3gO0qZctMAXyl37YZ1F3PkvGnjWyUuv_Hgg3Z5Iq78mTNNzKIy_czWyET2jHMNYerySk78uqhpcFwnqHGiMGt6kYm5e9f9QDY6BWzDfwy9S2TKXgZ-Br4SgXjUgiuAu3BLtmv7P0/s1600-h/+walton+5%2610.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrybb3gO0qZctMAXyl37YZ1F3PkvGnjWyUuv_Hgg3Z5Iq78mTNNzKIy_czWyET2jHMNYerySk78uqhpcFwnqHGiMGt6kYm5e9f9QDY6BWzDfwy9S2TKXgZ-Br4SgXjUgiuAu3BLtmv7P0/s320/+walton+5%2610.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412742499177476898" border="0" /></a>in 1997, including Frank Gehry's shimmering outside walls of titanium, is estimated at a mere $100 million.) Other Guggenheims are under construction in Guadalajara, Bucharest, Lithuania and Abu Dubai, but none in so isolated a town the size of Bentonville.<br /><br />If you build it, according to Shoeless Joe Jackson in W.P. Kinsella's "Field of Dreams," they will come. But first the art lovers and tourists will have to find Bentonville in the once-rural slurbs of northwest Arkansas. It's now a land uglified by an acne of strip malls, industrial parks and dying villages along U.S. 540 and U.S. 62 from Rogers to Springdale to Fayetteville.<br /><br />Exceptions include Bentonville's tidy courthouse square <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span>. The centerpiece is the statue of a Confederate lieutenant in the 18th Arkansas, James H. Berry, later a governor and senator. Mounted on a cenotaph, he can look down on the 5-and-10 where Sam once touted his retail system as a way to encourage American-made products and to breathe life into the downtowns of America. But in 1962 he opened his first Wal-Mart in a bigger store away from the courthouse square. Then he <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJC9R45cURGugxbigaGhUro7tguH01TVnZHJNOwevRxTQtw-I6DbMbrj64NAU_mCKxT5THG4uxe5kgWQhJkIXOS19qg4OZ5V5Coc5BALF69CfekheJzxOlEsQg_Y21y40d9mc46s6LAQ/s1600-h/+first+wal-mart.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 314px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdJC9R45cURGugxbigaGhUro7tguH01TVnZHJNOwevRxTQtw-I6DbMbrj64NAU_mCKxT5THG4uxe5kgWQhJkIXOS19qg4OZ5V5Coc5BALF69CfekheJzxOlEsQg_Y21y40d9mc46s6LAQ/s320/+first+wal-mart.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412743060451646642" border="0" /></a>built his own store on the edge of town, a strategy applied to all but a few of the 8,055 stores that would follow. And rare is the merchandise that isn't imported from China. <span style="font-style: italic;">(The first Wal-Mart storefront is now a heating and cooling outfit, at right.) </span><br /><br />Bentonville's downtown is so pretty, painted and pristine that I wondered if the Walton overseers, conscious of the corporation's reputation as a destroyer of Main Streets, own or somehow subsidize buildings on the square. It's not typical of the half-abandoned downtowns so common in the 4,142 American communities where Wal-Marts are installed on the outskirts.<br /><br />The story means little to friends and neighbors back in the inner Bay Area, one of the world’s few regions where Wal-Mart is known only by its reputation as an enemy of the people. That's balderdash. Sam Walton and his successors are hardly responsible for America's love of the automobile, our understandable quest for low prices and our indifference to the poverty-level wages, anti-union ferocity and ruthless business practices.<br /><br />After all, Wal-Mart is no different from Home Depot, Target, Lowe's, Costco, Kroger, Levitz and other retail vampires that drain economic blood – and city sales tax revenues – from the downtowns of America. Let's not forget McDonald's, Denny's, Applebee's, Waffle House and all the other out-on-the-highway franchises that stuck a knife in the heart of the mom-and-pop cafes of yesteryear. The list goes on. Don't blame Sam or Alice or the other heirs for the devastation of Main Street, but few of Wal-Mart's workers will be able to afford entrance fees to the Crystal Bridges Museum. They are the ones sitting on apple crates.<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWtMOudrBLnwGLyFE4QOJvzzEN_Q9tiRVJLac3Z9PtpXVG8p-GSQ5YXEn-jkZuAzMDQKc4n3YzazJzcZPjMuv0ZUe2fV-51UeI9tlo2V9MfC213B74X8B6Kbch7mMCxPS6HnvSienKjpk/s1600-h/katrina+2+-+new.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 314px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWtMOudrBLnwGLyFE4QOJvzzEN_Q9tiRVJLac3Z9PtpXVG8p-GSQ5YXEn-jkZuAzMDQKc4n3YzazJzcZPjMuv0ZUe2fV-51UeI9tlo2V9MfC213B74X8B6Kbch7mMCxPS6HnvSienKjpk/s320/katrina+2+-+new.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412744543244450594" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> On a street called Desire, we saw so many damaged houses that we remain in a state of shock.<br /><br /> Katrina hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005 with hurricane winds and flooding that broke though inadequate levees. It devastated the Crescent City and displaced thousands of people, mostly from the poorest wards.<br /><br />Four years have gone by in the world's most affluent nation, and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6KIQtrvsj1Zd8wb6yxfgjQcMKY_W24ah7xvH-FYSJg38zE3TY4nk5EXK2HBorts6hVWaqK-mgrC-W6W7ViqkkOIYFYGVtQEOelMXrY5AYIIJ66V9JH5HtF_42Uj52MfY57NVqaOd27fA/s1600-h/katrina+4+-+marked+door.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 149px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6KIQtrvsj1Zd8wb6yxfgjQcMKY_W24ah7xvH-FYSJg38zE3TY4nk5EXK2HBorts6hVWaqK-mgrC-W6W7ViqkkOIYFYGVtQEOelMXrY5AYIIJ66V9JH5HtF_42Uj52MfY57NVqaOd27fA/s320/katrina+4+-+marked+door.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412746027867001826" border="0" /></a>on a drive-around through the Ninth Ward we saw hundreds of homes that have been restored or rebuilt and occupied <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right is one)</span>.<br /><br />And we saw hundreds more where nothing has been done to repair homes damaged by wind, flood, mold and bureaucratic apathy. We saw countless empty lots and apartment complexes with no signs of life except for official graffiti <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span> that declare a house to be uninhabitable.<br /><br />At first we were just curious, interested to see the area that we'd watched <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjINWWH5mezVeFPe5ru9TQA6dutBIn6-Z5qyyaVlkbjNzo3wkb-OfpRyZZImVZdA_wEqF77mTtnVeyLglgJhnH1wgmpnU7De2x4hCsOQibe5Q1U6bHh8-ssmY_vJzaSc4Sve3PYR_82jBo/s1600-h/katrina+1+empty+apts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 182px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjINWWH5mezVeFPe5ru9TQA6dutBIn6-Z5qyyaVlkbjNzo3wkb-OfpRyZZImVZdA_wEqF77mTtnVeyLglgJhnH1wgmpnU7De2x4hCsOQibe5Q1U6bHh8-ssmY_vJzaSc4Sve3PYR_82jBo/s320/katrina+1+empty+apts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412744535649868834" border="0" /></a>on TV during the hurricane's aftermath. Then we were horribly saddened. "Each boarded up house, each barren foundation, was the end of someone's dreams," Margo said. Words don't mean much. Snapshots tell the story.<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv0nVm3wWIcSlVITquJ0FUv2_U_pRcMPaWs-E6Lu-tHnN_nR6vk_ZbkyCPcmL1ZAYRfUpcmU9GltzEHFalp8Xu8H4f0-3rUYqetPJKKXycMJB5Sj3ywY7AG49Ap_p2D_owPD2pQyioOTQ/s1600-h/katrina+7+-old+house,+razed+lot.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiv0nVm3wWIcSlVITquJ0FUv2_U_pRcMPaWs-E6Lu-tHnN_nR6vk_ZbkyCPcmL1ZAYRfUpcmU9GltzEHFalp8Xu8H4f0-3rUYqetPJKKXycMJB5Sj3ywY7AG49Ap_p2D_owPD2pQyioOTQ/s320/katrina+7+-old+house,+razed+lot.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412745515333446178" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgupSJjj0yLOHOE6mDDO1YOxI46l82gHHck6oqklSsFZd-faW2rzLGOEkN2_9EY_6wo7kNlAeHUeYdnl7nVAepAg_u-un8V6lCyO-4tvX6y_nb-KysZPQiDC2_ZvLDNnCdAbbTJlUWnTwU/s1600-h/katrina+6+-+foundations.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 202px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgupSJjj0yLOHOE6mDDO1YOxI46l82gHHck6oqklSsFZd-faW2rzLGOEkN2_9EY_6wo7kNlAeHUeYdnl7nVAepAg_u-un8V6lCyO-4tvX6y_nb-KysZPQiDC2_ZvLDNnCdAbbTJlUWnTwU/s320/katrina+6+-+foundations.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412745513894442258" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFlUcPhtlXdHg6QbQunTqhEJ0nDa4epb1mw1dMU9R6gU8MQYLxpV4uR1fXjyuLs_jfyJaLZfZBwRvBGwZB2gWoY2qALhcUo5bFyFRJzRbuSh-T1UCkfiB64NFjZ5ePQcNx3qcIY2fW4M/s1600-h/katrina+3+-+lamppost.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 291px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFlUcPhtlXdHg6QbQunTqhEJ0nDa4epb1mw1dMU9R6gU8MQYLxpV4uR1fXjyuLs_jfyJaLZfZBwRvBGwZB2gWoY2qALhcUo5bFyFRJzRbuSh-T1UCkfiB64NFjZ5ePQcNx3qcIY2fW4M/s320/katrina+3+-+lamppost.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412744550355619426" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeXkxif6CHqKskGEDPJoTeg85oGySX4hrFTo9AzEvK8eP4oLs-Zl9L2RSFa4IsCQkgoNaiVocta6FOxniqZxk_DGmAB3q_WqxTzQ9WJmWYNLW03GMrPg55lINYMWoqXECmt3TKrQuKZ2Y/s1600-h/katrina+5+-+new+apts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 272px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeXkxif6CHqKskGEDPJoTeg85oGySX4hrFTo9AzEvK8eP4oLs-Zl9L2RSFa4IsCQkgoNaiVocta6FOxniqZxk_DGmAB3q_WqxTzQ9WJmWYNLW03GMrPg55lINYMWoqXECmt3TKrQuKZ2Y/s320/katrina+5+-+new+apts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5412747309497752034" border="0" /></a>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-52014090296513916812009-12-05T05:29:00.000-08:002010-01-25T20:56:18.412-08:00We Did Not Learn Our Lesson<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />We did not learn our lesson. We drove more than 7,500 to get from San Francisco to Boston, a 3,100-mile drive. We zig-zagged across the West and Midwest, trying to see everyone and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2QUGJINqtOU1ZKhjy-8mF3mcUHVhIPEB1cYFLTCGLkPInkk6mpNHPga-dtwTt4lhvIjxVSPf2Boh3otNy3K5IxtcUogL14WnFzcZ3asJj0FlFKD81Er01MAcJ3Rz9rzYKbj9-gSFm9Eg/s1600-h/marion+and+shafir.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 248px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2QUGJINqtOU1ZKhjy-8mF3mcUHVhIPEB1cYFLTCGLkPInkk6mpNHPga-dtwTt4lhvIjxVSPf2Boh3otNy3K5IxtcUogL14WnFzcZ3asJj0FlFKD81Er01MAcJ3Rz9rzYKbj9-gSFm9Eg/s320/marion+and+shafir.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411751598020293778" border="0" /></a>everything. So on the way home, I thought we might just head west and drive hard in a straight line. We’re both a bit homesick, and a bit tired.<br /><br />But no. We got as far west as Northwest Arkansas, and had second thoughts about skipping New Orleans, where my sister Marion lives with her son, Shafir. So, we wheeled around, headed back east and south about 12 hours – recrossing to the east side of the Mississippi River. We were rewarded with Shafir’s winning smile and several really nice visits with Marion and Shafir <span style="font-style: italic;">(that's them and me)</span>, and a visit with Shafir’s dad, Jim Wittenberg.<br /><br />We also had the New Orleans treat of drinking coffee and eating beignets at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter. A band played on <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LZQPfZnDlb8JqL06Aif149wKbAPsnX_MhSD4E0of2sUZazGXQAfN0IYEKIQeNbNJB5CxglCioFZAofQRd20xdhegVmoJxewQk7OhVpU6xnMnzrWvqj9ARhCRM-iP1eZr0RDDqF7ZpzU/s1600-h/cafe+du+monde.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 204px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-LZQPfZnDlb8JqL06Aif149wKbAPsnX_MhSD4E0of2sUZazGXQAfN0IYEKIQeNbNJB5CxglCioFZAofQRd20xdhegVmoJxewQk7OhVpU6xnMnzrWvqj9ARhCRM-iP1eZr0RDDqF7ZpzU/s320/cafe+du+monde.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411753640791440482" border="0" /></a>the sidewalk outside for tips. The trumpet player and singer improvised "When the Saints Win the Superbowl" to the tune of "When the Saints Go Marching In." He pushed the band's CD, saying it's better than a souvenir T-shirt. You don't have to wash it. The band<span style="font-style: italic;"> (at right)</span> was mixed – black, white, young, older. But what caught our eye was the trombone player, an tiny old guy who appeared to be Vietnamese, snapping his fingers and bopping and nodding along to the rhythm.<br /><br />The mileage takes its toll. But still, every day brings surprises and gifts. The distances across Arkansas and Mississippi and Louisiana are vast, reminding me of northern Wisconsin and the 11-hour drive to Lynn’s cousin Karen through the lightly populated flatlands of northwest Minnesota. The Mississippi Delta is also flat and seemingly endless, but it's totally different – lots of little towns, many in states of disrepair and deterioration, but lots of life nonetheless. The fields show the remains of the season's cotton and rice crops.<br /><br />The radio stations carried us along – bluegrass and gospel, and more bluegrass and gospel. The Ludstadt team of atheist and Jewish travelers loves gospel music; we just tune out the sermons. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxhRjb1HAFlALvDFfIOMPnLFnGPBNwamPA16r9FiW4NOLFQCmpn6dZfdkBRw2GLNfa49z6M_IaeXUFYNdG-wOKpKfwgH7fKL_SOaJR4DJ33F5tCcSL01fsfDP9M_7OjI1S7eI6gqXf14c/s1600-h/catfish.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 205px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxhRjb1HAFlALvDFfIOMPnLFnGPBNwamPA16r9FiW4NOLFQCmpn6dZfdkBRw2GLNfa49z6M_IaeXUFYNdG-wOKpKfwgH7fKL_SOaJR4DJ33F5tCcSL01fsfDP9M_7OjI1S7eI6gqXf14c/s320/catfish.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411751929792002946" border="0" /></a>Then as we got into southern Mississippi and Louisiana, closer to New Orleans, old-style blues came over the airways in the darkness. And we drove on.<br /><br />In southern Arkansas, we stopped for coffee at a roadside café. The sign outside: “Catfish You Can Trust.” And how could we pass that up? While the white waitress poured Lynn a cup to go, the black cook asked how we were doing. He answered our return query with: “I’m still above the grass.”<br /><br />In Northwest Arkansas, we had a really restful three-day visit with our old friends Jack Desrocher and Sheilah Downey. They are the only other couple we know where both played pickup basketball. Sheilah, once one of Lynn's students at SF State, was a reporter at the Examiner; Jack, an amazingly talented illustrator/cartoonist at the newspaper, was the best man at our wedding 20 years ago. Shortly after that, they packed up their daughters, Addy and Hannah, and moved to a former goat farm a few miles out of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. They lived there for about 10 years. We visited them once at their ridgetop home, where they had their own basketball court in the driveway. They had acreage, and they had created a dream playland for the kids – a zipline down the hill, full-size playhouses outdoors, ponies, dogs, cats.<br /><br />They eventually tired of that, and moved to St. Louis, and then to Pensacola, Florida. After Hurricane Ivan came within a few yards of destroying their house, they sold out and moved back to Arkansas, this time to Rogers, about 30 miles from Eureka Springs. The area is the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgna7VVcoLP4aFBm4o6RLAQZYtsGqHo5uuAdSKEG95fDh-6nBcUPtIX_Qvs5bRO4MLq-qYCmsADM_QrP1x2E6NKO3iFCtliXcu9zZPIH2ZUuAladGF1Mu6sOFeBT9YB2B8ACcgOSsVfVi4/s1600-h/itsie+and+sheilah.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 291px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgna7VVcoLP4aFBm4o6RLAQZYtsGqHo5uuAdSKEG95fDh-6nBcUPtIX_Qvs5bRO4MLq-qYCmsADM_QrP1x2E6NKO3iFCtliXcu9zZPIH2ZUuAladGF1Mu6sOFeBT9YB2B8ACcgOSsVfVi4/s320/itsie+and+sheilah.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411752130000652914" border="0" /></a>center of the Wal-Mart empire <span style="font-style: italic;">(more on this later, from Lynn)</span>. But our most peripatetic friends are about ready to move again – they are talking wistfully about being closer to the East Coast.<br /><br />Through all the moves, Jack has free-lanced his illustrations, first by Fed-Ex and now by email. Sheilah has done free-lance writing and editing along with various odd jobs. They get by, although Jack says the illustration business pretty much dried up in the past year or so, as the economy has tanked. Illustrations seem to be something that publications can do without. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's Sheilah, at right, feeding Itsie some broccoli with a fork. Their cat is bigger than both of their dogs.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> Pileated woodpeckers, with their bright red caps, were pecking at the suet in the bird-feeders at Jack and Sheilah's in Rogers, Arkansas. And a flock of white pelicans circled over us as we entered Louisiana.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4r3mfikjvtzVN0hzEA6GKjQ7fpWJHq5yBIUKY3TV4LNZT2WLp91Lci9SLy6aJCIuEUunLLUGjVSeX6WPHH9EBFp533L5MWMursipusv6m6vHJVulZFLOULk35jpLB6OSF0vMy59TEDzA/s1600-h/mississippi.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 129px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4r3mfikjvtzVN0hzEA6GKjQ7fpWJHq5yBIUKY3TV4LNZT2WLp91Lci9SLy6aJCIuEUunLLUGjVSeX6WPHH9EBFp533L5MWMursipusv6m6vHJVulZFLOULk35jpLB6OSF0vMy59TEDzA/s320/mississippi.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5411755148479550082" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also notable:</span> We crossed the Mississippi River for the second and third times on our trip. We crossed it going west in Northern Arkansas, and that felt great – a big step on the way home. Then after we changed directions, we backtracked across it going east from Louisiana into Mississippi further down-river.<br /><br />We remembered the little creek that we crossed in Minnesota, with its big sign, "Mississippi River," and compared it to the river down here that actually looks like the Mississippi – a huge muddy waterway flanked by wide flat alluvial plains. We'll cross it again, for the fourth and last time, when we leave New Orleans heading west.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Rogers, Arkansas, to New Orleans, Louisiana: 734<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 9,502Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-41072247725841550742009-11-30T08:33:00.000-08:002009-11-30T17:56:45.924-08:00Palooka from Paducah<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />In 1935, the title on the marquee of the downtown Columbia Theatre was "Palooka from Paducah," a comedy. Starring Buster Keaton, it drew unwanted attention to a place with a silly name, like Podunk, that evokes laughter from people slightly higher on the tree of sophistication. Paducah, unlike the mythical Podunk, was then a prosperous city with an abundance of brick buildings, a thriving downtown and a river-and-railroad hub that generated blue-collar jobs.<br /><br />In 2009, we saw "Tale of Two Cities," a civic tragedy. It wasn't a movie.<br /><br />That's my impression after an all-too-brief visit to this town of about 25,000 population in the far-west corner of Kentucky, an appendage known as the Jackson Purchase (don't ask). We liked the National Quilt Museum<span style="font-style: italic;"> (see Notes from Margo, below)</span>. We took note of a brave attempt to establish an art colony in LowerTown. But we don't need a six-month study by a panel of urbanologists to see what is happening to Paducah and too many of the communities we've seen in our two months of our travel across America.<br /><br />The old Paducah, a 194-year-old city at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers, has a unique heritage of history, architecture, disaster, war, patriotism, business and, we are told, a sense that the inhabitants cherish their differences from the rest of western Kentucky. But the downtown district suffers from semi-terminal anemia. The Irwin S. Cobb Hotel, the city's only high-rise building, is now an apartment house. We saw boarded-up businesses, vacant parking lots and empty streets.<br /><br />The new Paducah is identified by exits on Interstate Highway 24. We drove about four miles inland from the old town without seeing a single pedestrian. We found hodgepodges bunched around Exit 3 and Exit 4, a grotesque mishmash of unplanned development. It's a jungle of bright lights and traffic confusion. Auto emporiums and hardware depots. Twenty-two hotels and motels (clerks speak Hindi and Farsi.) Sixty-foot sign poles and billboards galore. Vast auto emporiums. Scores of fast-food stores and restaurants in chains.<br /><br />It could be anywhere.<br /><br />From Medford to Missoula, from Boone to Poughkeepsie, from just about any medium-sized city on our path, we found the same thing: A city's unique personality disappears in the franchise-o-rama of quick-buck investments by out-of-town corporations who wouldn't know the difference between Paducah and Madisonville -- and don't care. In the end, cities will be as depersonalized as the McDonald's service centers on the toll roads of the Midwest.<br /><br />Margo recalls that 30 years ago, the citizens of Oroville, California, held a celebration when <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggStijMQ91U0mNls5cpAZfv047J0om_ICEo-rdQQ1GjJCbZwHLWIDpeLA_VIKPLlqG8CbJpuxz5TA2bwowpZul85n-wLsLnyz99rT17hy3D28Vd_RpdqrOOLWRuTwlO2vwtkl-gb5n7Os/s1600/new+madrid.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 278px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggStijMQ91U0mNls5cpAZfv047J0om_ICEo-rdQQ1GjJCbZwHLWIDpeLA_VIKPLlqG8CbJpuxz5TA2bwowpZul85n-wLsLnyz99rT17hy3D28Vd_RpdqrOOLWRuTwlO2vwtkl-gb5n7Os/s320/new+madrid.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409962234346430658" border="0" /></a>McDonald's opened a hamburger outlet; today the town is engulfed in chains. You would think that people would have learned, but in Astoria a woman exclaimed with pride that Wal-Mart is coming to town. Won't that hurt the local businesses? Not at all, she said. Happily.<br /><br />Don't look for a rerun of "Palooka from Paducah" at the Columbia Theatre. The downtown movie house is boarded up.<br /><br />In other notable municipal news:<br /><br />As San Franciscans with a devout interest in earthquakes, we stopped in New Madrid in Missouri's southeast corner, or Boot-Heel, at the epicenter of the most powerful quake this side of Alaska. The three New Madrid earthquakes, in 1811 and 1812, are estimated at 8.3 on the Richter Scale. That's just a number. Try this: Church bells rang in Boston. Citizens in Charleston felt the earth move. And the little settlement on the Mississippi River was destroyed. Almost 200 years later, we arrived in New Madrid (pronounced MAD-rid) and found the town's little museum was closed for the season.<br /><br />On the road into Madisonville, Kentucky, a sign on the railroad bridge says, "It's the best town on earth." Our goal was dinner at The Dinky Diner, a restaurant recommended by a native son, Lucien Ruby, now a venture capitalist in San Francisco. More importantly, he and his lovely spouse, Caryl Welborn, are parents of Kenny's onetime basketball teammate, Cameron Ruby, now a senior guard at University High School.<br /><br />Lucien told us about the etymology of Pennyrile, local name for this region of west Kentucky, as coming from a flower known elsewhere as Pennyroyal.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCsq-1J6BkiTSQJy7tBF7KFPit6E26noKUZF2Er8-zUGy3XU-MMiu8lX1qV9od9h8cirGCaPWDeOKE5_75rlpOZTVeH7SHEOK_cEaaMTpTwClVpq5wJ63WTTGu6MK7r6IFMkXWPqnZfCM/s1600/diner.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCsq-1J6BkiTSQJy7tBF7KFPit6E26noKUZF2Er8-zUGy3XU-MMiu8lX1qV9od9h8cirGCaPWDeOKE5_75rlpOZTVeH7SHEOK_cEaaMTpTwClVpq5wJ63WTTGu6MK7r6IFMkXWPqnZfCM/s320/diner.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409962227270476482" border="0" /></a>He didn't tell us that the Chevrolet dealership is kaput, that a consignment store is called Giggles and Grins, that a beauty shop is called Innovative Hair Design and that Wal-Mart has drained most of the businesses from downtown (see above). He didn't tell us that The Dinky Diner would be closed on Thanksgiving, but we got out our tape anyway and measured the restaurant's frontage at a truly dinky 10 feet.<br /><br />Before leaving Madisonville, we stopped in front of the county courthouse to look at a monument extolling the men of the town who died in the fight for the Confederacy. We took a photo of the statue of a Confederate officer. He is mounted on a column above the poetry chiseled in the marble base. His hands are missing.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTa89LOjONOOTJ9wwLlDrnT5JZMcWRDaBl7eDnf9cPZakSWkN9v_pvptZzB1kQGRV7gs87pcUGCZHdQsNlS4tkkuqQIosFW7ModL0DV2Kx8pT4weRKANfHkGHbO36OIyZXxkL2ZperuKY/s1600/statue.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 242px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTa89LOjONOOTJ9wwLlDrnT5JZMcWRDaBl7eDnf9cPZakSWkN9v_pvptZzB1kQGRV7gs87pcUGCZHdQsNlS4tkkuqQIosFW7ModL0DV2Kx8pT4weRKANfHkGHbO36OIyZXxkL2ZperuKY/s320/statue.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5409962242561391474" border="0" /></a>Lucien explained that the statue had been damaged by high school pranksters in the greatest town on earth. I took the rebel's handlessness as a meaningful symbol of something, but what?<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo: Giving Thanks for Quilts</span><br /><br />Moving worshipfully from one work of art to the next in the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, I was feeling admiration, awe, excitement. But mostly I was feeling inadequate. Profoundly inadequate. Needlework-inadequate. I've been quilting most of my life, in my amateurish way. And I generally like the quilts I make, and the people around me act like they think the quilts are lovely. But shoot! The quilts in Paducah are made by people who actually know what they're doing.<br /><br />One quilt's stitching is so fine and its pattern so intricate, it looks like an ornate Persian Rug <span style="font-style: italic;">(below)</span>. Most quilts have stitching so small and so closely sewn, it was hard to see individual stitches. I kept taking off my glasses to get really close to see the needlework, and then putting the specs back on, and backing away to see the whole designs: An elk at attention; floral arrangements; a bedroom with the curtains caught in a summer breeze; <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znlsfAcwe7RgXvrKV06_YMZheMGOYRBPZIgdg2Nt9FYrTF55a2_Nfgb_mr42d-6tB82Zo5yUNp-DinvWMgXiVCRuWZ3oQfb3Ma9d6ISY3GUD724QqnnFlwIEGqIv0iKFQRce0lENP-s/s1600/2009-Best-of-Show_000.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 210px; height: 209px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3znlsfAcwe7RgXvrKV06_YMZheMGOYRBPZIgdg2Nt9FYrTF55a2_Nfgb_mr42d-6tB82Zo5yUNp-DinvWMgXiVCRuWZ3oQfb3Ma9d6ISY3GUD724QqnnFlwIEGqIv0iKFQRce0lENP-s/s400/2009-Best-of-Show_000.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5410077822626978242" border="0" /></a>modern adaptations of traditional American block patterns in beige and white; or alternately, in brilliant primary colors. It was awe-inspiring, like finally seeing the Platonic ideals of quilts after having been around the real-world shadows of quilts my whole life. I don't know if I'll ever feel adequate to sew on a button again.<br /><br />My favorites are the old-fashioned traditional-looking quilts, in gentle pastels and beige-like colors. One was patterned after stamped metal ceiling patterns from Victorian-era homes. Lynn was captivated by the more brightly colored works with imaginative, modernistic designs. One was called "Submersible," and it evoked the feel of looking up at the sun-dappled surface of water from below.<br /><br />The day before, on Thanksgiving, we drove from Nashville to Paducah. It was a bit weird. We hadn't worried about Thanksgiving much, thinking that it's just one year that we won't be home cooking and welcoming family and friends to our table. But on Thanksgiving itself, it felt profoundly wrong to not be at home cooking, following the routine that we've had for more than 20 years – the bird in the oven all day while we make stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, fresh bread. And then there's cleaning the house, wrestling the extra table into the dining room, getting out the holiday plates and setting the table. It's a lot of work, and I didn't think I'd miss it.<br /><br />But I did. I missed the warmth in the house from the cooking, and the rich smells. I missed Amy and Roy and their kids. I missed Kenny. I missed Wellyn and Rose, and wondering how late their surf session would make them this year. I missed wondering whether Aviv would make the drive from Los Angeles. I missed Paula and Stephanie and Jerry.<br /><br />Lynn didn't complain. But I did.<br /><br />When we got to the hotel in Paducah, I asked the clerk to suggest a place to eat. She said, in a pronounced Southern accent: <span style="font-style: italic;">"Go on up to the next exit on the freeway, and they have EVERYTHING you could EVER want: Burger King, McDonald's, Outback Steakhouse, Applebee's..." </span>Her voice trailed off in admiration.<br /><br />We decided to head the other direction, and try downtown. We figured in a sophisticated town with the National Quilt Museum, there should be a local restaurant open. We scoured the town, and didn't find anything open except the hospital. We headed back to the freeway, and had dinner at Applebee's. Strange.<br /><br />Lesson learned. Next year, we'll be at home, and I'll be conscious of how lucky we are to be there.<br /><br />We talked to Amy later. They had had a lovely Thanksgiving, but they also missed being together at our house. So next year, we'll set it right.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Nashville, Tennessee to Paducah, Kentucky: 136<br /><br />From Paducah to Rogers, Arkansas: 414<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 8,768Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-8547830136977067472009-11-26T20:16:00.000-08:002009-11-26T20:42:14.315-08:00Nashville Dreams<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />We looked in the barroom door at one guy's dream: A young man played guitar and sang country music in a Broadway honky-tonk in Nashville. But the music had the hard edge of sound waves bouncing off bare wood and brick walls, not being softened and absorbed by the gentle <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHABONByNi5WwpY3FuU9_eKxUTloQFiWQUphXypIZBlIAtnZGdFYa6BP1KDkW20Yv9pMTC2aiz2Vu25jJSt8cTKc63jo7kC5ma2voIZanRJiJzViV5NN5jzNzPUhvDrhx4z1eK9kPhSg4/s1600/monroe.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHABONByNi5WwpY3FuU9_eKxUTloQFiWQUphXypIZBlIAtnZGdFYa6BP1KDkW20Yv9pMTC2aiz2Vu25jJSt8cTKc63jo7kC5ma2voIZanRJiJzViV5NN5jzNzPUhvDrhx4z1eK9kPhSg4/s320/monroe.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408635197599417122" border="0" /></a>contours of an appreciative crowd. Maybe six people were listening, scattered widely among dozens of empty hardwood tables. It was weird. He's living his dream; he's on stage in Nashville. But it probably didn't look quite like that in his dream. I think I see the material for a country song.<br /><br />When we arrived in Nashville, we went directly to the Country Music Hall of Fame, where we saw Bill Monroe's mandolin (<span style="font-style: italic;">with Lynn, at right)</span><span style="font-style: italic;"></span>, Willie Nelson's bandanna, and Jimmie Rodgers' guitar<span style="font-style: italic;"> (below)</span>. My favorite was film clips of old-time country stars, like Patsy Montana singing "I Want To Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart" and the white Jordanaires harmonizing on a black gospel song, "Working on a Building." Lynn loved the little newsnotes – Baldemar Huerta took the name Freddy Fender, maybe to sound more Anglo; and Harold Lloyd Jenkins changed his name to Conway Twitty, maybe to sound more ... what? Ridiculous? Authentic? Backwoods?<br /><br />Then we headed to downtown Nashville to see the real hard-scratch musicians of today. The clubs were mostly blaring really loud music. We poked our heads into the one club with the gentle beckoning sound of a single voice accompanied by a solo guitar. That's where we had that terrible feeling of someone living the dream that wasn't quite what he had dreamed.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlEE85BLB2FVCC_oOHbB3OMuA5gPmKeeiWRKdmR8DnBDarCJFBlf0AdhVC44RhcI1S8oEK_yiy015xQSY0BVRqkqX9hjSeWdjWq2ES90oCQIYgTzzSVa4tK7gnslgqIgyf_iWAyNG0kI/s1600/jimmie.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdlEE85BLB2FVCC_oOHbB3OMuA5gPmKeeiWRKdmR8DnBDarCJFBlf0AdhVC44RhcI1S8oEK_yiy015xQSY0BVRqkqX9hjSeWdjWq2ES90oCQIYgTzzSVa4tK7gnslgqIgyf_iWAyNG0kI/s320/jimmie.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408635192066316754" border="0" /></a>We talked to a busker, Mike Slusser, who sang us a Jimmie Rodgers song, "It's Peach-Picking Time in Georgia," and accompanied himself on the mandolin (the world's sexiest instrument). His Gibson top was terribly scratched up. It was worn right through, he explained, from hard use – 17,000 hours of busking on the streets of Nashville and elsewhere. We put a few bucks in his case, and he insisted that we take a CD of his music.<br /><br />Broadway and Second Avenue are crowded with bars and honky-tonks, but they are outnumbered by shops selling cowboy boots and hats. The music venues aren't the only places where sound waves bounce off the walls without hitting paying customers. Every store had signs out: "50% Off" or "Buy one pair, get a second pair free." One store is offering TWO free pairs. Too bad I didn't want a $1,900 pair of pointy American-made, embroidered, snakeskin boots. There were deals to be had.<br /><br />The hotels must also be hurting. I went into a Comfort Inn to find how much it would cost. While Lynn and I mulled our options in the car, the desk guy actually came out to the car and flipped through a coupon book for us that would take $10 off the already discounted price he had quoted me. The bill: $59 plus $11 tax. He extolled the virtues of his hotel – the free breakfast, free internet, much nicer rooms than the competitors, safer neighborhood, free parking. OK. OK. We stayed there, and a good choice it was. I'm going to guess that's the only jacuzzi we'll see this trip.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Verona, Virginia, to Nashville, Tennessee: 516<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 8,218Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-27813700021590891732009-11-25T05:20:00.000-08:002009-11-25T11:47:29.833-08:00Heading home<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />Beneath the dripstone icicles of Titania's Veil, as Lynn put it, we heard eerie bassoon notes resounding through a limestone cave about 200 feet below the surface of an Appalachian hill.<br /><br />For the first major leg of our return trip, we had decided on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a scenic route angling southwest through western Virginia and North Carolina. So, about two hours west of Washington, D.C., the Guppy was shrouded in impenetrable fog at the entrance to the "Skyway," the northernmost section of the Parkway. A cheerful ranger greeted us: <span style="font-style: italic;">It's socked in like this the whole way. Visibility almost nil. Expect no views. And by the way, it's actually a bit </span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0U5fHxtglIguwhSUjN1xBdLSRzrTIVWirWWacBYBfifyZkhN6NGXOxj1jqXDsRkWQTwnXDhiC1ELmBC2doBAG3Zu43LpftUmqAxm-BiajmPyEMQyYHnxVCLjNLnyTlHAKwmfM1455mAw/s1600/luray+margo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 293px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0U5fHxtglIguwhSUjN1xBdLSRzrTIVWirWWacBYBfifyZkhN6NGXOxj1jqXDsRkWQTwnXDhiC1ELmBC2doBAG3Zu43LpftUmqAxm-BiajmPyEMQyYHnxVCLjNLnyTlHAKwmfM1455mAw/s400/luray+margo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408031899765393762" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">dangerous because you won't see the deer until they're crashing through your windshield. So be careful out there!! </span><br /><br />Hmmm. We turned around and drove down the hill to the Luray Caverns, the roadside attraction with the biggest, yellowest, brightest billboards. For one adult and one senior, $40. And, of course, it was amazing. It was a bit like snorkeling, because we walked slowly through these huge, dimly lighted, underground caverns with incredible shapes, canyons, stalagtites, stalagmites, columns, drapery in stone. They resemble underwater coral formations. Something about the different tenor of the light also suggested the dreamlike state of snorkeling. On the other hand, the caverns featured the Great Stalacpipe Organ (said to be the world's largest musical instrument!!) Rubber-tipped mallets tap stalagtites for the notes. Nothing like that off-shore in Hawaii. We are suckers for that stuff. And it made up for not getting to see the northern end of the Parkway.<br /><br />We ended up on the Interstate for a while, and then went back up to the Parkway the next day, when the fog cleared up. We had a lovely day of driving on the ridgetop road. The Parkway was a WPA project, and it shows: rock arches for the roads, fences of hewn logs, picnic areas from the '30s. Taking in the scenery was a bit like flying. On both sides of the road, you look down on tiny little houses, fields and roads in the valleys and hollows.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjupRuK_-Y3XO-2iXzH8jqzucwgXM8xlfunoPZ4XVGZ7Jrd7JMfGualZn12DeRXVW0gQBivo_7S17UmEJm6SgOXJb-tyByoFGEJ4srvyo6X60MOGJ3HRTC1iisIguyEQRp3Yp3OdeVBP84/s1600/smart+view.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 306px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjupRuK_-Y3XO-2iXzH8jqzucwgXM8xlfunoPZ4XVGZ7Jrd7JMfGualZn12DeRXVW0gQBivo_7S17UmEJm6SgOXJb-tyByoFGEJ4srvyo6X60MOGJ3HRTC1iisIguyEQRp3Yp3OdeVBP84/s320/smart+view.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408032909462313858" border="0" /></a>We both thought the Blue Ridge Parkway was just fine for a day's drive, but we decided to skip the second and third days. So we're back on the Interstate, heading for Nashville. I think we're both feeling the draw of home, although it's still at least 2,600 miles away. We're not avoiding the Interstates. Florida's off our list, and we are heading more west than south. And we're thinking of not going to the Gulf Coast at all. We're wavering now, trying to make decisions about what we want to see, and whom we can visit along the way.<br /><br />It was hard saying goodbye to Alex Neill and Tibby Speer, our dear friends and Lynn's former students in Washington, D.C. But if we had stayed any longer, they were going to have to adopt us – and commit to taking us on-leash twice a day for walks, with their dogs Scout and Candy.<br /><br />We had arrived in Washington with the expectation of staying for three or four days, visiting Alex and Tibby <span style="font-style: italic;">(that's them below, at home in Georgetown</span><span style="font-style: italic;">)</span> and seeing the sights while they went to work. Tibby is in charge of the merchandise at the gift shop in the Capitol Visitors' Center; Alex is a senior editor with Gannett's chain of military newspapers.<br /><br />We stayed for eight days.<br /><br />In addition to standard-issue <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlKhlsHE8xLhs03VLjIcriu3FqCPrINjAPYXH7-_s-Nk8AGNpsQbHlLuns7DXY4MOMjnyQhLp_dy7Jvv5hfHya9nxzlf0VE1mXYf5rnJV1ErlMSY2ZcuYAMAmePWvwkGIJEmfzRS85nZE/s1600/alex+and+tibby+at+home.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 232px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlKhlsHE8xLhs03VLjIcriu3FqCPrINjAPYXH7-_s-Nk8AGNpsQbHlLuns7DXY4MOMjnyQhLp_dy7Jvv5hfHya9nxzlf0VE1mXYf5rnJV1ErlMSY2ZcuYAMAmePWvwkGIJEmfzRS85nZE/s320/alex+and+tibby+at+home.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408111545127555906" border="0" /></a>sight-seeing, we played tourist at the District of Columbia’s Kaiser system. Lynn was tentatively diagnosed with pneumonia, which called for a powerful, non-generic antibiotic (co-pay was $130, and well worth the price). His former-smoker’s cough, which he’s had for at least 30 years, had gotten progressively worse over a few days, and he had an off-and-on-again low-grade fever. His energy level was also very low.<br /><br />So Lynn rested as I went out on a dream-come-true sweep of the Smithsonian's collections – the National Museum of American Art, the Portrait Gallery, the Hirshhorn, the African Art Museum, the Freer Gallery. We couldn't have been luckier. He was warm and comfortable with a nice big cable TV in the basement rooms that Tibby and Alex have set up as guest quarters in their 1810-era brick townhouse in Georgetown.<br /><br />When it became clear that rest wasn't enough, we went to the North Capitol Kaiser Permanente clinic. It was a bit odd for white tourists like us, because almost everyone was black – from most of the clientele to the parking garage attendants to the pharmacists and x-ray technicians. But no one seemed to mind the white tourists who seemed to have lost their way – they acted like it was an everyday thing. And maybe it is. Dr. Cesar Torres listened to Lynn's chest and decided on pneumonia. He called back later, having seen the chest x-ray, and sounded less certain. But the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. And the mucous pudding in Lynn's lungs cleared up within a day or two with the antibiotic.<br /><br />We took a trip to Mount Vernon as a test outing to see if Lynn was up to traveling again. And what a beautiful place that is, with a view out over the Potomac River. It's been restored to its <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4mNp1NrZ7YgP2Hkh_MlT0kwIYbuFsGbt2A8_LQUR3na2ZoywGdeP2s-X5AM1-pCosnNslkN_lihOTs4kFjF9ze9Tnul3gdRF2p_Uyc2s3iUgIg6cu8x2nD_FqVc5HGsQ7Ahxf7mrIWn8/s1600/lynn+didn%27t+poop+here.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 230px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh4mNp1NrZ7YgP2Hkh_MlT0kwIYbuFsGbt2A8_LQUR3na2ZoywGdeP2s-X5AM1-pCosnNslkN_lihOTs4kFjF9ze9Tnul3gdRF2p_Uyc2s3iUgIg6cu8x2nD_FqVc5HGsQ7Ahxf7mrIWn8/s320/lynn+didn%27t+poop+here.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408115690395045778" border="0" /></a>conditon in 1799, when George Washington died. It was a big-production farm in its day, with about 400 workers raising wheat, corn and other crops. About 300 of the workers were slaves.<br /><br />Aside from field labor, workers seem to have been assigned to little outbuildings: smoke house, laundry house, kitchen (separate from the main house), spinning cabin, weaving cabin, stables, carriage houses, a composting structure, salting room, greenhouse, and so forth. The restoration is so complete that even the "necessaries" (outhouses) are on display. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's one at right, with Lynn.) </span> A gazillion schoolkids come through every day. If I were marketing bumper stickers, I'd print up a batch: "George Washington pooped here."<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Washington, D.C. to Verona, Virgina: 152<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: 7,702Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-76102069004945914992009-11-24T06:50:00.000-08:002009-11-27T18:42:22.150-08:00Going to the Mall<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />Since moving to our nation’s capital five years ago, Bud Liebes spends so much time in its museums that he knows the guards by name. For the emeritus professor of journalism, exploration of museums is a full-time job. Tourists come and go in a town that welcomes every year about 6 million visitors, each with but a day or two to devote to serious gawkery. It takes a relentless retiree to return again and again to the ever-changing shows in the marble palaces of Washington. (The D.C. stands for Displays and Collections. Thanks for asking.)<br /><br />Now in his mid-80s, the vigorous B.H. Liebes devours the Washington Post and the New York Times. He joins other geezers every day for coffee near his condo in Bethesda, Maryland. He no longer owns a car, so he takes the Metro to the National Mall. He soaks up history, arts, science, technology and lots of lore from the Smithsonian Institution’s scattered exhibition halls: Air and <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhceIYZGZKqrdhqctj7u5xxsp5FeD87PpCpzcDiRvzSknXj2uVIusz5x-XdKfq4G2Ympu4i5on58dksBiLe1hUk1O0Xhrwy8dxOkraWyQze4tmITTcdeMEsGjXh_fx3OQxHo3GlKnk1upc/s1600/bud+and+lynn.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 368px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhceIYZGZKqrdhqctj7u5xxsp5FeD87PpCpzcDiRvzSknXj2uVIusz5x-XdKfq4G2Ympu4i5on58dksBiLe1hUk1O0Xhrwy8dxOkraWyQze4tmITTcdeMEsGjXh_fx3OQxHo3GlKnk1upc/s400/bud+and+lynn.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407685945600285202" border="0" /></a>Space, American Art, the Freer and Hirshhorn galleries, African Art, American Indian Art, American History, the National Portrait Gallery. These are free, but for a few bucks the ardent fan can pore through at least a dozen private or nonprofit museums devoted to journalism (the Newseum), women in art, natural history, architecture, crime/punishment, the booming technology of international spies, and many more.<br /><br />When he bought us lunch in an upscale restaurant near his condo, Bud kept the conversation in a positive direction. He had just returned from Colorado Springs, where he visited his granddaughter, a captain in the Air Force, and his new great-granddaughter. He expressed happiness in sharing his condo with Rachel, his younger granddaughter, who plans to resume her med school studies next year. She took a leave of absence to help care for Bud’s beloved daughter, Michelle, who died of cancer earlier this year. She was only 49. (After retiring more than 20 years ago from San Francisco State, Bud moved to Seattle's Mercer Island with his wife, Georgette, to be with Michelle and his granddaughters. After Georgette's death, he accompanied Michelle when she landed a new job in Washington, D.C.)<br /><br />And soon he began to collect museums.<br /><br />Bud is a donor to the Holocaust Museum, but for some reason he hadn’t heard about the little museum that Margo visited, the National Museum of American Jewish Military History. That was surprising – Bud had been a waist gunner in bombing runs over the Third Reich in World War II, but he seldom mentions it. And Bud said nary a word about his years as professor and journalism department chairman at San Francisco State. At lunch, the conversation veered instead to his genuine pleasure in absorbing as much as he can from the plethora of museums in his adopted home town. His future, as it were, is in the past.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSQAXnD5r6UCJ-V7zQ71xAjGDVnY53J3ReW7HO0SLcmZtqNOPjOyuHjBdtDwTPtPew5axFjf4W9uyKBEw4vdpKGKiXcgD3iGofujYsO1aN1QfDsIuuvaEcIvujPXo6WrYPFMk96jOVaM/s1600/npg_george_bush-1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 221px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifSQAXnD5r6UCJ-V7zQ71xAjGDVnY53J3ReW7HO0SLcmZtqNOPjOyuHjBdtDwTPtPew5axFjf4W9uyKBEw4vdpKGKiXcgD3iGofujYsO1aN1QfDsIuuvaEcIvujPXo6WrYPFMk96jOVaM/s320/npg_george_bush-1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5407683995097089186" border="0" /></a><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> The National Portrait Gallery's exhibition of paintings of the nation's presidents could have been entitled "Men in Black," at least until Dwight D. Eisenhower appears in his Ike jacket and John F. Kennedy is portrayed in swirls of color. George W. Bush's official portrait, painted by a fellow Yale buddy, shows him in shirtsleeves, just a regular guy with his regular-guy smirk.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Un-notable:</span> With its 3 million collectibles in storage and a recently renovated exhibition hall, the Smithsonian's Museum of American History calls itself the nation's attic. Instead, it's a hoarder's nightmare, a hodgepodge of miscellany, with no apparent attempt to sort out the good stuff (an 1840 puffer billy locomotive) from the silly icons of pop culture (Dumbo as a car in a children's merry-go-round from Disneyland).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Quotable:</span> The dictionary defines "socialite," a term coined by the newspapers, as an active member of fashionable society. We were intrigued by the National Portrait Gallery's description accompanying a daguerrotype <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span> of Lola Montez (1818-1861), the free-spirited divorcee who became the mistress of the Mad King of Bavaria and further scandalized the Victorians with her erotic Spider Dance. The museum people cited "her <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYrb0_509BTvDFR4hEHUOppVzec7eRhQdzbltQS9vK3n80zZQN2up4806izVOT3-0tzy9MdszqPvA2ia4ksQJQiVo51uAv4z8NO11hnkHfBGxYxLWPaz6Bh-FIzsuAptTskgLrYaaHUwU/s1600/lola.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 77px; height: 101px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYrb0_509BTvDFR4hEHUOppVzec7eRhQdzbltQS9vK3n80zZQN2up4806izVOT3-0tzy9MdszqPvA2ia4ksQJQiVo51uAv4z8NO11hnkHfBGxYxLWPaz6Bh-FIzsuAptTskgLrYaaHUwU/s320/lola.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408126147392457602" border="0" /></a>notorious reputation as a courtesan and a cavorting socialite." It brings to mind the deck on an Examiner's front-page headline in the mid-1960s. It referred to Sally Stanford, the victim of burglars who stole her jewelry and a fur coat, as a "socialite." When reminded that she was San Francisco's most famous brothel keeper, copy editor Jack James growled and defended his headline. "If she's got a fucking fur coat," he said, "she's a fucking socialite."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuqqJMUII6RUZlnn1wWGLdPyDwsIWQ0a7LcikM8OtwaextV7jLBq96qZrjEOw9i6WIDf8-YRSHGo_kfo1_cyx-8aL8vQ6LJzAxmsoRBMXXTQ9LfeJuRe1uzEQCqc5_5gNNL5Qyt8XibI/s1600/totem+golf+bags.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 262px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJuqqJMUII6RUZlnn1wWGLdPyDwsIWQ0a7LcikM8OtwaextV7jLBq96qZrjEOw9i6WIDf8-YRSHGo_kfo1_cyx-8aL8vQ6LJzAxmsoRBMXXTQ9LfeJuRe1uzEQCqc5_5gNNL5Qyt8XibI/s320/totem+golf+bags.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5408567537898904914" border="0" /></a>From a distance, it looked like a Native American or Mexican mask, but maybe from a culture I'm not familiar with. As I got closer, it became clear that it was a mask made from very large basketball shoes. I'm sold!! Three of my favorite things: Indigenous masks, basketball, and creating art from everyday objects.<br /><br />In the National Museum of the American Indian, I suppose I expected baskets, pottery, arrowheads, rugs, etc. And plenty of those were displayed. But upstairs, in the traveling exhibits, was Brian Jungen's work. I turned the corner and was just floored by the beauty, the originality, the skill, the vision. I had never heard of Jungen, who is part Canadian, part American Indian. He makes sculptures of everyday objects – basketball shoes, baseball gloves, golf bags, garbage cans for recycling, beach chairs. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right are totem poles made of golf bags.)</span> 'Nuff said. You gotta see this stuff.Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-77249218719734349692009-11-21T18:23:00.000-08:002009-11-22T05:47:22.499-08:00A Hick in Washington<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />I’m a San Franciscan. So that makes me a bona fide city sophisticate by California standards. But man!! A few days of walking around Washington makes me feel like a hick.<br /><br />You expect to be awed by the White House. And I was. 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is, as the tourist information sign said, “the most famous address in the United States.”<br /><br />What I didn’t expect are waves of amazement as I walked the streets. That’s Blair House, across <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3CszJBpjXLPyj_1gVgxwiLtXKF9CJwB3NPKFaTFnSLSFpWS6_qKAQ60srSCp1DiuCpEDRVQogmVRCXy4VnySPITCq-9f-Pxd2zb8wng84M5VbgcBzFcDYtUNFkl8ceIMGqBtLfCE0K_o/s1600/lib+of+congress.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3CszJBpjXLPyj_1gVgxwiLtXKF9CJwB3NPKFaTFnSLSFpWS6_qKAQ60srSCp1DiuCpEDRVQogmVRCXy4VnySPITCq-9f-Pxd2zb8wng84M5VbgcBzFcDYtUNFkl8ceIMGqBtLfCE0K_o/s320/lib+of+congress.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406916019075715794" border="0" /></a>from the White House, which you read about every time a foreign dignitary pays a visit to our president. The Justice Department! The EPA! The Supreme Court! The Internal Revenue Service! These icons of the nation – we usually think of them as acronyms or relatively abstract entities. They actually exist; they have street addresses; the addresses are in Washington. <span style="font-style: italic;">(The Library of Congress, inside the actual building, not the number assigned to the book you're reading, is at right.)</span><br /><br />Not only that. I walked down the street with our friend Alex Neill. That’s Ben Bradlee’s house, he said. And that’s where Jackie O lived after the assassination. And on the way from the bus stop to the Smithsonian Institution museums, there was Ford Theater, where Lincoln was shot. And there’s the alley where John Wilkes Booth, his assassin, limped out the back and fled on a horse that an accomplice held for him.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRO86aASFSk_Q4cWLAJYI5cDP59PHfxtNc6VprnwrYge33KZT8WWp6zePGL6R76df_m0ptgOoKWaRjsDDcSl4v3BcszTzLaTKF2WZsGxqvbk_rvtll0io2-ZYNqtc8U01Gipd-Q0OA1k/s1600/tibby+at+capitol.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfRO86aASFSk_Q4cWLAJYI5cDP59PHfxtNc6VprnwrYge33KZT8WWp6zePGL6R76df_m0ptgOoKWaRjsDDcSl4v3BcszTzLaTKF2WZsGxqvbk_rvtll0io2-ZYNqtc8U01Gipd-Q0OA1k/s320/tibby+at+capitol.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406921731033980066" border="0" /></a>And our friend Tibby works in retail. Except that her job is in the Capitol Visitors' Center. What's their best-selling item, by dollar value, Lynn asked, thinking postcards, paperweights, or copies of the Constitution. No, that would be the Congressional Cookbook, she said. <span style="font-style: italic;">(That's her, at left, on the steps outside her place of employment.)</span><br /><br />After a while, I just felt like a big hick – gawking at every historical plaque, every monument, feeling like I’ve never seen a place so dense with history. Lynn and I stopped in our tracks as we left the American history museum. The floodlit Washington monument (at 5 p.m., darkness had already fallen) was a brilliant white obelisk against the night sky. The last little bit of the sunset <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj341UQh1f2mMi8_qrAnsbCNFivbFD67yYtbUEcvC7Rlh06wW6ZVxbovuBHynDhfOzSkYKgs_x_1auzmWVlvqtpdUXwAOFyqgN2ibxuYIyMxopQq4tagfjmtbx-DAzUqqnFWpVFUSRjmVE/s1600/wash+monument.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj341UQh1f2mMi8_qrAnsbCNFivbFD67yYtbUEcvC7Rlh06wW6ZVxbovuBHynDhfOzSkYKgs_x_1auzmWVlvqtpdUXwAOFyqgN2ibxuYIyMxopQq4tagfjmtbx-DAzUqqnFWpVFUSRjmVE/s320/wash+monument.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406918534499072738" border="0" /></a>at its foot silhouetted the flagpoles circling its base. Man! We are in the Nation's Capital! For real!<br /><br />I walked by the White House three times in one day, going back and forth from museums in a disorganized half-lost way. Each time, I passed protesters – an antinuclear vigil that's been in place for 25 years, a group of Tamils with a big banner publicizing their plight in Sri Lanka, and boisterous protesters who object to the bank bailouts. What struck me is that the various cops – the Secret Service, the Park Police – are so accustomed to dissent that their expressions don't change. In one way it was disappointing. You bring your cause to the White House, and not only do the spectators not share your outrage, they are visibly bored. No reporters. No TV cameras. Even the cops are suppressing yawns. On the other hand, I said to myself, I bet there are folks in Burma and Tibet who wish that dissent were so commonplace that the cops aren't interested.<br /><br />I had a number of weird little harmonic convergences as I cruised from one museum to another. I've been reading Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay," which is about, among other things, the early days of superhero comic books. So, in the Renwick Gallery of American Crafts, I ran across an exhibit by Mark Newport. He does some odd superhero-based artwork. He knits these huge, sagging, lumpy beige outfits that look like what Batman would wear if his grandmother knitted his bat-suit with heavy-gauge woolen yarn.<br /><br />Also, I went over to the Dumbarton Oaks gallery, and almost tripped over a docent-led tour about bird imagery in pre-Columbian art. It fit right in with my amateur birding-across-the-country.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> Starlings are doing some odd-ball flocking. I noticed it two days running, and then saw a little squib in the Washington Post. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of starlings flock together around sundown, and make boisterous swirling descents onto some selected trees. When we arrived at Alex and Tibby's house, we parked across the street. As we got out of the Guppy, the whistling song of hundreds of starlings surrounded us. A starling party! And then the next day, when I was waiting for the bus around sundown, hundreds of chattering and whistling starlings swirled into the trees next to the bus stop. As a superhero might comment: Shazzam! <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGNOPaP12g0w4yqABJ5ip490MUBdl17yHMQag6s3Yi4JCAPFJKRk3aD_iaOrU9lkNL1P434C-9rS-pPf56uLbHz-Bw8Mi2CVgV3HMuGAPbGy8gE9JzPbDn7IzJyDMkXbm1lyabRrwQME/s1600/famous+address.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdGNOPaP12g0w4yqABJ5ip490MUBdl17yHMQag6s3Yi4JCAPFJKRk3aD_iaOrU9lkNL1P434C-9rS-pPf56uLbHz-Bw8Mi2CVgV3HMuGAPbGy8gE9JzPbDn7IzJyDMkXbm1lyabRrwQME/s320/famous+address.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406917423059849458" border="0" /></a>Then I saw a little write-up in the Post about huge flocks of starlings and a concurrent rush on the google search engine of "starlings" and "Washington." Sign me, just another googler.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> The tourist information sign, referenced above, outside the White House, which said 1600 Pennsylvania is "the most famous address in the United States," got me thinking about its writer. In my years as a copy editor – writing photo captions and figuring out if descriptions in news stories were accurate – one task was to place brackets around claims. The biggest rodeo in the West; the highest peak in the contiguous 48 states; the oldest continually operational synagogue in California. But what a pleasure that must have been to write: <span style="font-style: italic;">the most famous address in the United States.</span> And that's unquestionably true. But the immediate next question: Is it the most famous address on Earth?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage:</span> None for the past week. We've stayed in Washington with Alex and Tibby, as Lynn recovers from a bout of respiratory distress. Details to come.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> so far: still 7,550Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-5391012120695185512009-11-18T06:17:00.000-08:002009-11-21T17:42:18.021-08:00Not-a-New-Yorker Muses on The Big Apple<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />They are built like sacred spaces, soaring structures intended to awe us -- the acres of marble, the grander-than-human scale, the arches echoing the architecture of Rome or medieval Europe. While we were in New York, I visited, briefly or not-so-briefly, the Main Public Library, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Grand Central Station. All are massive public spaces – monuments to monumentality.<br /><br />In Grand Central Station, tourists like me took photos of the refurbished zodiac formations on the enormous vaulted ceiling. At the Met, some people soaked up the art, and others just gawked at the grand stairway, the huge lobby and the gigantic balconies and archways leading to the galleries. At the library, the famous lions guard the way to the lobby <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span> that makes you feel <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_OMBXuZzBa8NDD8gMjNWUnV5gAl4HHoUJrMQau_xjOwX7gK8oi28YoDfCjrIxE_JjYHv0MWE10JyE0_t2fdXd8svQLXBCG26DK6QIh-_Z4DDWLb_eJWk6tXGWJDch09eaaX96GVgjtwY/s1600/NY+library.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 300px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_OMBXuZzBa8NDD8gMjNWUnV5gAl4HHoUJrMQau_xjOwX7gK8oi28YoDfCjrIxE_JjYHv0MWE10JyE0_t2fdXd8svQLXBCG26DK6QIh-_Z4DDWLb_eJWk6tXGWJDch09eaaX96GVgjtwY/s400/NY+library.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5405452097871706210" border="0" /></a>worshipful as you enter the House of Books, even though it doesn't really house books anymore. (I was entranced by an exhibit of maps of New York, ranging from Henry Hudson's map of the river in 1609 to this year's google maps.)<br /><br />Aside from the people like me being awed by their monumentality, all those places were crowded in their everyday usage by hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It made me think how lucky all those urbanites are who rush through the station every day, not through some ugly, dirty, gray, utilitarian warehouse of train tracks and platforms, but through a massive work of art. They probably don't stop every day to wonder at it, but in some recess of their subconscious, they know that they are part-owners of a cathedral of commuters or a landmark of bookishness.<br /><br />It seems clear that the cultural landscape of New York allows for maintaining those awesome public spaces. It seems a bit against the grain of where we keep reading our culture is headed – each person caring only for him- or herself or his or her own family/crew/tribe, people creating and living in their own private landscape, writing their own blogs (like us!), without much interest in common spaces or the common good. New York may be evidence to the contrary. We noticed also that the less monumental public arena – the streets, the sidewalks, the subways – seemed cleaner and more civilized than we remember them from 10 or 15 years ago. No graffiti, very little litter, and – my favorite development – the subway stations, their staircases and walking tunnels no longer reek of urine. The buses and subway cars are clean. Times Square is now devoid of porn shops, adult video stores and hookers. Parks seem safe and well-maintained. Lynn is pretty sure even the level of horn-honking is down, too.<br /><br />That said, the noise level is still deafening. I think people who live there just stop noticing it. But for someone like me who just shows up once in a while, the noise is like a big dark pervasive cloud. Lynn has difficulty hearing over background noise, which is commonplace among older people. So his cell phone was useless on the street. He couldn't hear the ring, and he couldn't hear anything through the earpiece. When we resurfaced in Jersey City, after the subway ride on the PATH train, the first reaction is: "Wow! It sure is quiet here!" And that's just across the river. I'm not sure what the deal is. I'm wondering if it's that perfectly normal traffic noises get amplified by the hard surfaces of the canyons of high-rises. Maybe sound waves bounce back and forth indefinitely, instead of dissipating into the distance.<br /><br />Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed our time in New York, visiting with friends and seeing the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBJMLYCoH1gu7lCIU9U5e_GDU9BBBVN5v0Vb04GkOvqqwv4iIHrqjY-TstWh3GFAilwV0KHXK704pbFgJbxYfbrIisiYJ7fpMasdOfIuA8H_5pn6ghQGalfchrYXmXaVUKCsvYq6_AiM/s1600/dover+correct+house.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXBJMLYCoH1gu7lCIU9U5e_GDU9BBBVN5v0Vb04GkOvqqwv4iIHrqjY-TstWh3GFAilwV0KHXK704pbFgJbxYfbrIisiYJ7fpMasdOfIuA8H_5pn6ghQGalfchrYXmXaVUKCsvYq6_AiM/s320/dover+correct+house.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5406733268144417298" border="0" /></a>sights. We then took a day in Dover, Delaware, where Lynn did some research in the state archives for his book on a double murder there in 1898. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right is the house </span><span style="font-style: italic;">where the victims lived and died. It has been </span><span style="font-style: italic;">remodeled into offices for a state agency.)</span><br /><br />While there, we joined a walking tour of "The Green" in historic downtown Dover. Our leader was Abby Wilson, a young woman (probably in her early 20s), in colonial garb – a white cotton covering on her hair and a thick green wool cape. She was so animated and excited by colonial Dover that we got caught up in her stories. She was interested in everything about historical Dover, historical Delaware, taverns in colonial life, women in colonial society, the suffrage movement, the abolitionists. The tour included a few comments on the "Poison Candy Murders," which is the Delaware end of Lynn's research subject. As she pointed out, it was the first interstate murder case to be prosecuted. One issue was whether it should be prosecuted in Dover, where the poisoned candies were eaten and the victims died, or in San Francisco, where the perpetrator mailed the chocolates. As it turned out, the trial took place in San Francisco. Anyway, it was lovely to see someone so young to be so caught up in old stories.<br /><br />We're now in Washington, D.C., where our friends Alex Neill and Tibby Speer seem to have remodeled their basement into a guest apartment in preparation for our arrival. To show appreciation for the comfort here, Lynn has developed a little fever and a cough, and is taking a few days to rest up while I see the sights.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Pleasant Valley, New York, to Dover, Delaware, and D.C.: 343<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage </span>so far: 7550Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-23954957098129085122009-11-13T10:03:00.000-08:002009-11-13T15:10:20.422-08:00Escape From New York<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn: Towering Anthills</span><br /><br />When Tara Levy and Dan North decided to buy a home in 1992, they found a condo ground-floor flat in one of the hundreds of Italianate rowhouses that line the streets of Jersey City. Built in <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsI_byG48fWNaTHdArltcCruWcPIu4vqtqSQzxts3NZjzv-i3Yn-gnPDMFO8ImU-QUUpqywAhX31iB_E0jsjel3dxWPdn9x6Bat6s7RtwEjH1Co4tz4ayin5uS-s5CzWx0byDNxMdFVFc/s1600-h/dan.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 185px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsI_byG48fWNaTHdArltcCruWcPIu4vqtqSQzxts3NZjzv-i3Yn-gnPDMFO8ImU-QUUpqywAhX31iB_E0jsjel3dxWPdn9x6Bat6s7RtwEjH1Co4tz4ayin5uS-s5CzWx0byDNxMdFVFc/s320/dan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403651404909446626" border="0" /></a>1870 in the Paulus Hook neighborhood, the four-story brick building had been falling apart through landlord neglect and the poverty of tenants in a shrinking blue-collar city with a reputation for crime and corruption.<br /><br />“Gentrification” and “developer” share equal space in the vocabulary of urban distaste, but “renaissance” might be more apt for the scene on Sussex Street. One by one, dilapidated tenements are renovated into townhouse condos and apartments for refugees from Manhattan’s towering anthills. As Dan <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right) </span>pointed out not many years ago, he could gaze at the spectacular skyline of New York from the rail of the Liberty Harbor Ferry ($5), while the investment bankers in their costly Manhattan offices could look across the Hudson and see the Colgate sign. It's still there, although the Colgate-Palmolive plants are long gone. Instead, the old industrial waterfront is the new home for Jersey City ’s mini version of Wall Street – the 42-story Goldman-Sachs Building and a growing crop of high-rise offices and apartment towers. It came as something of a surprise to Dan, who assumed he was settling down in a funky old neighborhood. It was a reminder of his old haunts in Brooklyn and Manhattan, where everybody considered New Jersey in general and Jersey City in particular to be a foreign country inhabited by demented people <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMA4-dmc0AzbteJOcfR8OXw5kFdRMqDUDNonP7vv1zjZV5YVaCUbLVfbky_lkuMnB-C0Noc7Z_kMwHF-XkC9LYxL9F3jHgUgZXqGJ3xyoaJXRi-ovLOFE1E9CSrYukWpiDPqhDA7rN0g/s1600-h/tara.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMA4-dmc0AzbteJOcfR8OXw5kFdRMqDUDNonP7vv1zjZV5YVaCUbLVfbky_lkuMnB-C0Noc7Z_kMwHF-XkC9LYxL9F3jHgUgZXqGJ3xyoaJXRi-ovLOFE1E9CSrYukWpiDPqhDA7rN0g/s320/tara.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403652032599338642" border="0" /></a>who spoke a different language. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Nobody says "Joisey," we are told by an internet expert. To be helpful, he offers authentic gibberish: Joey: Hey Vinny, yew dewsh-bag. What-sup-witch-yew? Where-yew-go last night? Yew hang in Jerzee? Vinny: Nah, I hung out in duh-siddy wid-dat chick Merry wit da Brooklyn ax-cent.)</span><br /><br />The new Jerzeeites also hang out in duh-siddy. Dan, a deft rewriteman when I met him in the early 1960s at the old San Francisco Examiner, is retired from his longtime post as news editor for Local 1199 of the Hospital and Health Employees Union. But he still boards the PATH subway under the river to teach journalism and media studies at City College of New York. Tara <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span>, an attorney with the National Labor Relations Board, works in an office in Newark but commutes regularly to concerts, plays, meetings and the other attractions of Manhattan.<br /><br />When they return, it’s to a comfortable home with foot-thick walls that rise 11 feet from polished wooden floors. They have a big backyard garden, a fireplace, thousands of books and two bathrooms. One bedroom is an office/den; the other is upstairs, accessible by a wrought-iron spiral staircase. These comforts and amenities are worth mentioning whenever I hear the sneers of New Yorkers.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH7mORDG7BFwqKYZX9wtFZQR5RfZbSbQ0K_wICt6_GM_UibTD37m6bSTlLqmOIKM0ayH53HQ9_pcL1-uqj2VEOyNwF0rXnbdwFi3T9NNcZnVvwO6-3Dj1vHx62AZPxJA3dWPO-tVVvTCg/s1600-h/lisa+amand.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 203px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiH7mORDG7BFwqKYZX9wtFZQR5RfZbSbQ0K_wICt6_GM_UibTD37m6bSTlLqmOIKM0ayH53HQ9_pcL1-uqj2VEOyNwF0rXnbdwFi3T9NNcZnVvwO6-3Dj1vHx62AZPxJA3dWPO-tVVvTCg/s320/lisa+amand.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403652875534837426" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> Roadside attractions on the Victory Lap included tours of the newsrooms at the New York Daily News and the New York Times. Both have been transplanted into new and expensive quarters that test one of the pet theories of the late C. Northcote Parkinson, to wit: Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions at the point of collapse.<br /><br />Desks and cubicles at the upmarket Times are generally pretty tidy, as you might expect in offices evidently designed to look like display windows. However, desks and cubicles at the proudly plebian News are piled with old newspapers, discarded notebooks, forgotten handouts and misplaced printouts -- evidence that this valuable old-time newspaper tradition hasn’t been suppressed by fancy offices.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRhDatVBcY88vqdgFgkXVDaCmvNeuc5d8-PE8ef0uYYghrF2QLywYP2i0rWNRUYRpMGumt-JUbRztaWHQCpi20bynjmMNEkbZ302IW5MwR0J-WwHvT4lLUfCsziTUiy0DZiQvYyTk62s/s1600-h/hutch+and+bill+gallo.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCRhDatVBcY88vqdgFgkXVDaCmvNeuc5d8-PE8ef0uYYghrF2QLywYP2i0rWNRUYRpMGumt-JUbRztaWHQCpi20bynjmMNEkbZ302IW5MwR0J-WwHvT4lLUfCsziTUiy0DZiQvYyTk62s/s320/hutch+and+bill+gallo.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403656622966065026" border="0" /></a>In any event, we noted that rewriteman and reporter Bill Hutchinson, an SF State journalism alumnus, is called “Hutch” by his colleagues at the News. We dined on giant heart-attack pastrami sandwiches at the 2nd Avenue Deli (which isn't on 2nd Avenue) with Hutch/Bill and his wife, our treasured friend, Lisa Amand <span style="font-style: italic;">(above)</span>. She is recovering in their Brooklyn home from hip surgery and awaits with trepidation another operation on her other hip. In the newsroom, we met a legend: Bill Gallo<span style="font-style: italic;"> (at right with Bill)</span>, the sports cartoonist, whose career began in 1941.<br /><br />At the Times, we were shown around by Mia Navarro, the super-talented ex-Examiner writer. She covers environmental issues. We were reunited with friendly Marlene Bagley, another Examiner alumna. She is a copy editor at the Times. Like Dan North, she now lives in Jersey City. Mia then took us to dinner at a ribs palace, Virgil's, with her husband, Jim Sterngold, who has moved to New York with a <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAomPrh3iPJ2zWcirDq5wX2JSpdRMdGJQ5CdB9X5Jk9Q9MjnZamswwtsZlZdKV2KpIMiAAHqKx94tDsPHJYtSZ1NTiKVd1NlPfoFQduejJocf8QELs9g0LZuSFjdK0-jUzYGrvqO29Q9c/s1600-h/lulu+and+joe.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 292px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAomPrh3iPJ2zWcirDq5wX2JSpdRMdGJQ5CdB9X5Jk9Q9MjnZamswwtsZlZdKV2KpIMiAAHqKx94tDsPHJYtSZ1NTiKVd1NlPfoFQduejJocf8QELs9g0LZuSFjdK0-jUzYGrvqO29Q9c/s320/lulu+and+joe.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403654020496061858" border="0" /></a>job at Bloomberg News as an investigative reporter. And they, too, are moving to New Jersey.<br /><br />Add Margo's sister, lulu, to the list of those who have abandoned the cramped quarters and intense noise of Manhattan for the relative calm and spaciousness of Jersey City. Lulu and her partner Joseph Illidge <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span> met us for a Thai dinner at one of their favorite Jersey City haunts. Their new apartment is at least five times the size of the Hell's Kitchen apartment that lulu lived in for about 10 years. The old place was so small that when the dog, Nana, paced the apartment, she went forward into the bedroom, and then backed out -- because she couldn't turn around in there -- and then walked into the kitchen and backed out. Nana, who doesn't have to throw it into reverse anymore, is clearly in heaven. Just like lulu and Joseph.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKoAYljgPj_gmqIrktGuLVXvkoU6XY_8zQ8pP70YLfRx5de3huqkT3A8eG2itCjkSD9LLI7avfkos6QShGDQtjbnRyvQm05pywXeXabjX2deHzDsOy6aWUTL-OqsD3yv8YoUTPeivCIY/s1600-h/brandts.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 116px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSKoAYljgPj_gmqIrktGuLVXvkoU6XY_8zQ8pP70YLfRx5de3huqkT3A8eG2itCjkSD9LLI7avfkos6QShGDQtjbnRyvQm05pywXeXabjX2deHzDsOy6aWUTL-OqsD3yv8YoUTPeivCIY/s400/brandts.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403656157960892978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo: The Allure of the Bird</span><br /><br />Hundreds of brants gathered, chattering, on the grass, pecking for food. The collective term for geese, according to my iPhone’s bird-book, is "blizzard," "chevron," "knot" or "string." Through my binoculars, I could see blizzards, chevrons, knots and strings of the small black-headed geese. We had driven to Liberty Park with Dan North, Lynn’s dear friend from the old Examiner days who now lives in Jersey City, for a little urban bird-watching. In the background, instead of <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbGoKF9rSJtIM9a8SIkVpSL1x1C3AEaec-Dx4WIpdHmf-TAOmSniYcvXsWnpIIdV1KCgcK2sscM33urpifGzZ7orXFPXd8eVitCjfzpCzGY5Z9N92qcztzYaYAKD5nxtEdGC1Cq9HyLyA/s1600-h/margo+and+liberty.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 258px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbGoKF9rSJtIM9a8SIkVpSL1x1C3AEaec-Dx4WIpdHmf-TAOmSniYcvXsWnpIIdV1KCgcK2sscM33urpifGzZ7orXFPXd8eVitCjfzpCzGY5Z9N92qcztzYaYAKD5nxtEdGC1Cq9HyLyA/s400/margo+and+liberty.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5403658456818698674" border="0" /></a>quiet marshes or towering hills, were the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. We got nothing particularly exotic – a great blue heron, a few American coots, some widgeons, mallards, mute swans, and a gazillion brants – but the really remarkable thing, as Lynn noted, is that we were within 10 miles of 10 million people (wild guess). And we are soaking up this abundance of nature anyway.<br /><br />One of the reasons that bird-watching is so alluring, I think, is that no matter where you are, birds can give you a little feeling of being in nature. The starlings and Brewer’s blackbirds in every parking lot in every strip mall in the country are singing and whistling every time you finish your grocery shopping and head for the car with the plastic bags hanging from your hands. You just have to listen and you’re in nature. Just a little, of course. The asphalt is still there. But maybe it’s enough.<br /><br />I don’t usually think of the urban centers of the East Coast as nature preserves. But that’s been a big part of our experience here on the outskirts of New York. In three days with Kathy Podmaniczky in the Hudson Valley north of New York, we went hiking one day, bird-watching one day and biking one day. All three days brought the kind of immersion in nature that I think of as less urban and Eastern and more rural and Western than the “current location” on my navigator would have caused me to expect.<br /><br />We decided not to push our luck, and left the car with Kathy in Pleasant Valley, and rode the train down the Hudson River into Manhattan, and landed with Dan in Jersey City. Lynn had taken the 90-minute scenic train ride a few days before me, allowing me a few more days with Kathy. (Kathy and I went bird-watching with a friend of hers, and started the day thrilling to a bald eagle circling overhead. The rest of the walk was lovely, with titmice, bitterns, northern flickers, and many other fine birds, but sheesh!! being welcomed to the riverside by a bald eagle! No way to beat that.) I followed Lynn a few days later on the train, made my way through a relatively bird-free Midtown Manhattan, and found Dan and Tara's place in Jersey City. Being the perfect host, Dan offered a spot of bird-watching first thing, hence the Statue of Liberty and the blizzard of brants.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">In other news:</span> The laptop's hard drive died, and needed to be replaced. We found a spot in New York for the work. Most of our stuff was backed up on our little flashdrives, so very little harm was done, and we're back in business now.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Pleasant Valley to Manhattan (on the train) 91 miles<br /><br />From Manhattan to Jersey City (by subway, approximately): 5 miles<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Total mileage</span> so far (on The Guppy): still 7,207Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-39889228593090979752009-11-06T15:03:00.000-08:002009-11-08T14:25:32.197-08:00First Lady of the World<div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCX_RuQUKKjETd9ImpUzqJFVscr2qYr9Ji2I8p-YFNr3s9WyQQFvZ_Ahlhi96Ad5mWEAoFykq4VntvhHZ2dEpCOLcQe5RXjbLnn1nnT3y0WI9h8QYcbi_9HnrdsnROvaRUOxJXVEDGyL8/s1600-h/falcon.jpeg"><span style="COLOR: rgb(0,0,0); -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none" class="Apple-style-span"><i>Notes from Lynn:</i></span><br /></a><br /><div><div><div><div><div>She answered the door herself, a tall woman with a grandmotherly smile familiar to everybody <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQyrn24ET4EH4hdn42dHLD0e5jStvz0pv4nak_NWU2fZaYxQtB9amMQlZMtSVrDhdG_vCmp5lSOuFGnqU6ZSh1xevkQD47tA09QRxYguPeDGAhjXYHIpwQrmMd9kXIDEUe0Yq-FE6IIgk/s1600-h/lynn+and+el.jpg"></a>who came of age in the Depression and World War II. Editorial cartoonists had prepared me for <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaaYcDk8OQXIFigW3CQ5rbEqZHqO_8FqTfOiHfRQOjPiI_Hsmaaufw7loRZJa4-Uq0VFQ6c8fGQy5-6kcLl8X6IvQyAfyvXuGnzfVszxsJ-N8CcdY2CYIen_T-dXl7AgoICjDVKcPboA/s1600-h/lynn+and+el.jpg"></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRaaYcDk8OQXIFigW3CQ5rbEqZHqO_8FqTfOiHfRQOjPiI_Hsmaaufw7loRZJa4-Uq0VFQ6c8fGQy5-6kcLl8X6IvQyAfyvXuGnzfVszxsJ-N8CcdY2CYIen_T-dXl7AgoICjDVKcPboA/s1600-h/lynn+and+el.jpg"></a>the receding chin and prominent teeth of Eleanor Roosevelt, but I was struck instead by the welcoming warmth of the First Lady of the World.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaGgL76Gojms1A70haVYi2HqF1UrJ5N3WhukC_0eFdFBGBsLxkOZdw3eGgLhnZlR7MnuG2i0bsgFcbTa2MJNEf5lTsi0kx-rBYPMUqMKTrZUqPxkJm58R7P_P1PkPEVbSzMANmF449MU/s1600-h/falcon.jpg"><br /></a>I was 26, a newspaperman for four years, but this wasn’t just another interview. Nobody else in the first half of the 20th century came close to her greatness in regard to human rights,<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix0fQkR5YhY-NlGR6Qw8kR512BVikMC9z_KmamFF5w9EPY3bP6OhrPVptddU1RIoSGJATbogCXJ81TiOs4AguHvEXaRPlmH9vuYwuIi17UYrB17SA2AXdi5reXUTeVaiXGDv8oiOMkdAQ/s1600-h/lynn+and+el.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 300px; FLOAT: left; HEIGHT: 400px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401134533492477490" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEix0fQkR5YhY-NlGR6Qw8kR512BVikMC9z_KmamFF5w9EPY3bP6OhrPVptddU1RIoSGJATbogCXJ81TiOs4AguHvEXaRPlmH9vuYwuIi17UYrB17SA2AXdi5reXUTeVaiXGDv8oiOMkdAQ/s400/lynn+and+el.jpg" /></a><div>women's liberation, racial equality and support for peace, and I was lucky enough to get the assignment. We shook hands. She brought me a cup of coffee, sat down on the sofa and said, brightly, “I know you’ve got a lot of questions for me.”</div><br /><div>She waited. </div><div><br /></div><div>I froze. </div><div><br /></div>Questions? If asked, I couldn’t have told her my name, the year (1960), my newspaper (the Champaign-Urbana Courier), her hotel (the Urbana Lincoln) or why she had come to my beat, the University of Illinois (to lecture and support the presidential campaign of Senator John F. Kennedy).<br /><br /></div><div>I was speechless.<br /><br />That (rare) moment of silence came to mind this week as we walked up to the imposing portico of Springwood, the 35-room Dutch Colonial mansion administered by the National Park Service in Hyde Park, N.Y. Kathy Podmaniczky, Margo’s dear friend and basketball teammate 30 years ago at Oberlin College, drove us from her home in Pleasant Valley to the Hudson Valley home of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum (admission $14). In our tour group of 28, I counted 14 gray-haired oldsters who looked to have grown up during FDR’s four terms in the White House. For me, born in 1933, Eleanor Roosevelt was the first lady for the first 12 years of my life and powerful advocate thereafter for the disadvantaged, the poor, the oppressed, the United Nations and causes we now take for granted.<br /><br />The museum’s exhibits cover everything that one might expect in Roosevelt’s life from his privileged youth to his political successes to his polio to his leadership in peace and war, but afterward we talked instead about the little things. We saw the presidential wheelchair<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1sX2-oXKZPnDGNrWG-0367yP4XeqcKuRwf_5-ezhrzi2plCTpoDaPzRWA0z3yPiRJe6uuzceG0HchyphenhyphenxH7CKCkzScv2NNi9bOc8OyCEjzh9eoQSrVAgUMWD-ny06KcQxidlTj8PBx_hE/s1600-h/statue+of+fdr.jpg"><img style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 10px 10px; WIDTH: 400px; FLOAT: right; HEIGHT: 300px; CURSOR: pointer" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401135798595296018" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhn1sX2-oXKZPnDGNrWG-0367yP4XeqcKuRwf_5-ezhrzi2plCTpoDaPzRWA0z3yPiRJe6uuzceG0HchyphenhyphenxH7CKCkzScv2NNi9bOc8OyCEjzh9eoQSrVAgUMWD-ny06KcQxidlTj8PBx_hE/s400/statue+of+fdr.jpg" /></a><div>fashioned from a kitchen chair with an ash tray on one arm … the 1936 Ford Phaeton convertible that FDR drove himself with the clutch on a lever … at least 40 paintings of ships-of-war, mostly of the War of 1812, that the onetime assistant secretary of the Navy had collected and hung on the walls … a green quilted presidential bathrobe on a chaise lounge … a handsome cigarette case that must have been shoved into a desk drawer on Dec. 7, 1941, because it came from Japan. </div><br />Well, you can see for yourself the museum and the wing devoted to Eleanor Roosevelt, but you won’t find any mention of Lucy Mercer (Rutherfurd), Eleanor’s social secretary from 1913 until the day in 1918 when she found the love letters from her husband. We didn’t hear about that (or other reputed romances of FDR and Eleanor) until well after both were buried in the Rose Garden near the Coach House.<br /><br />After the president’s death in 1945, his widow gave the mansion to the government but continued living at Val-Kill, a relatively modest house of fieldstone about two miles east of Springwood. There she wrote her daily newspaper column, “My Day.” There she wrote articles and books when she wasn’t in her New York apartment, traveling around the nation for an average of 150 lectures a year and giving hundreds of interviews for newspapers, magazines and radio shows. She had been a frequent visitor to Urbana and the university.<br /><br />Over the years, many a journalist has noted that not every public proponent of justice and goodness is considerate in private to underlings, including starstruck reporters. When I sat mute in an armchair in her hotel room, a tongue-tied worshipper with a blank notebook, the Great Lady took charge.<br /><br />“Well, young man,” she said after a moment’s pause, “I just know what you’re going to ask me about.”<br /><br />She launched into the answer of an unasked question. I took notes furiously, gratefully, and got my tongue untied.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>Notes from Margo:</i></div><br /><div><em></em></div><div>Kathy and I were on the Walkway Across the Hudson, an old railroad bridge that’s been remade into a pedestrian way across the Hudson River. We were high above the river, in an icy wind --walking, talking, laughing. An older gentleman caught our attention with a wave, and a silent come hither gesture with his hands. Then he put his index finger to his lips in the universal sign for “sush!” And then more beckoning gestures. We both went into the urban “Is he a wingnut?” mode and made ready to ignore or hurry past. Then he said, softly, “Can you see the falcon?”<br /></div><div><br /></div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaGgL76Gojms1A70haVYi2HqF1UrJ5N3WhukC_0eFdFBGBsLxkOZdw3eGgLhnZlR7MnuG2i0bsgFcbTa2MJNEf5lTsi0kx-rBYPMUqMKTrZUqPxkJm58R7P_P1PkPEVbSzMANmF449MU/s1600-h/falcon.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5401859645866226818" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaGgL76Gojms1A70haVYi2HqF1UrJ5N3WhukC_0eFdFBGBsLxkOZdw3eGgLhnZlR7MnuG2i0bsgFcbTa2MJNEf5lTsi0kx-rBYPMUqMKTrZUqPxkJm58R7P_P1PkPEVbSzMANmF449MU/s400/falcon.jpg" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 10px; width: 400px; float: right; height: 300px; cursor: pointer; " /></a><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAaGgL76Gojms1A70haVYi2HqF1UrJ5N3WhukC_0eFdFBGBsLxkOZdw3eGgLhnZlR7MnuG2i0bsgFcbTa2MJNEf5lTsi0kx-rBYPMUqMKTrZUqPxkJm58R7P_P1PkPEVbSzMANmF449MU/s1600-h/falcon.jpg"></a>Oh. That changes everything. A peregrine falcon perched on a rusted I-beam about 2 feet outside the railing of the walkway. He was protected from us, and seemed completely comfortable showing off his handsome yellow bill, black and yellow eyes, his white and brown flecked chest and his frighteningly long talons. We admired him openly, with cameras, with binoculars, with joy. People stopped to gawk -- birdwatchers, bicyclists, old people on fitness walks, children on scooters. What a bonus!</div><div><br />We’re staying with Kathy here in Pleasant Valley for a few days, visiting with her, seeing the sights of the Hudson Valley, getting an oil change for The Guppy, and readying ourselves for the dive into New York.<br /></div><div><br /></div><div><strong>In other news:</strong> Our laptop computer seems to be dying, and we are posting today from Kathy’s computer. It may take a while to repair or replace our laptop, so be patient and stay tuned.</div><div><br /><strong>Mileage</strong> from Boston to Pleasant Valley: 197<br />Mileage so far: 7,207 (yikes!!)</div><br /><p style="TEXT-INDENT: -6px; MARGIN: 0px 0px 16px; FONT: 16px Georgia"><em></em></p></div></div></div></div></div>Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-31690452130031892482009-11-04T08:27:00.000-08:002009-11-05T06:56:09.861-08:00The Big Stone House<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />Dale and Ann Tussing, fairly sane back then, enjoyed driving past the big old stone house on East Seneca Turnpike. They traded conjectures about its history, stories, secrets. It’s not as if <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtx55z8qugkczebrxhnYB5dphPgKxWCJFI-ikUXYTyWCCCqpCtmZMQCeS3nGER9Xm1hBujtBv4dkuvcgwVIaiRz9eTg6Aa4UpSm3GYICbLPwyEEN7zApd-wp02nZoZm4-ickxhe0WHUfE/s1600-h/dale+house.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 216px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtx55z8qugkczebrxhnYB5dphPgKxWCJFI-ikUXYTyWCCCqpCtmZMQCeS3nGER9Xm1hBujtBv4dkuvcgwVIaiRz9eTg6Aa4UpSm3GYICbLPwyEEN7zApd-wp02nZoZm4-ickxhe0WHUfE/s320/dale+house.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400286643783979442" border="0" /></a>they didn’t have other ways to spend their leisure time in 1969. Dale confronted the challenges and pressures facing an assistant professor. Ann blended the needs of her growing family with a plethora of serious quests and enthusiasms. They lived then in a nice house in Syracuse, but upstate New York is a very long way from their roots in Berkeley and San Francisco. Perhaps they imagined they would someday go back to California.<br />One day they learned that the stone house was for sale. They couldn’t afford it, Dale told Ann. She thought otherwise.<br /><br />* * *<br />Forty years later, Dale tapped on his laptop in the double parlor of a house built when James Madison was president. Ann brightened as she answered my questions. The house is usually classified as Federal (or Georgian) as influenced by Dutch and English colonial styles. Built in about 1810 by a tanner named John Gridley, the stone house has been listed since 1971 with the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBufoNpDrVeLbDATWE1RoSkAXDbuVGGVZligyN3Vu4Pkbnj0fWBN1uX-_hBfeaiSEFchsFf4mv6mX5Wkcygx8wTwtjdNXWfeH_6nE7fKBWlrLla-VK86PXJ2_bESoBTuuEEE4285xLQSY/s1600-h/dale.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 150px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBufoNpDrVeLbDATWE1RoSkAXDbuVGGVZligyN3Vu4Pkbnj0fWBN1uX-_hBfeaiSEFchsFf4mv6mX5Wkcygx8wTwtjdNXWfeH_6nE7fKBWlrLla-VK86PXJ2_bESoBTuuEEE4285xLQSY/s200/dale.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400290130054166898" border="0" /></a>National Register of Historic Places. Ten rooms plus attic and basement. Seven fireplaces. Interior walls of nearly 12 feet, barely high enough for an 11-foot gold-framed mirror for the bustles and bows of the Gilded Age. Nonetheless, the house has the comfortable look of a home where Dale and Ann’s five children grew up, sang songs around the piano and scattered from Buffalo to Australia, each with graduate degrees and one with a doctorate. They appear on the walls as an ongoing gallery of framed snapshots amid scores of paintings, drawings and old photographs that Ann has collected over the years. Her kitchen includes an old-time Kalamazoo wood range and a foot-thick butcher’s block turned into a work table, its surface so beaten by cleavers that it looks like a slightly rumpled newspaper page.<br /><br />* * *<br />Who knew? I worked with Dale in 1952-53 when I was editor and he was managing editor of the Golden Gater weekly at San Francisco State’s old campus on upper Market Street. I was 18; he <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3fCXrXRANk34iUq4CliV_JgvsCUSeDdszOsKYiCvTpqkavBVtd01b0kAxTm7ZsASizbgZff6grJkzDC2wL6kSEZAYWZIVggw08aUO6YiZAYqSKSzfiiL3lEVDIZQ74xSH8m5XaeP83Is/s1600-h/ann.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 137px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3fCXrXRANk34iUq4CliV_JgvsCUSeDdszOsKYiCvTpqkavBVtd01b0kAxTm7ZsASizbgZff6grJkzDC2wL6kSEZAYWZIVggw08aUO6YiZAYqSKSzfiiL3lEVDIZQ74xSH8m5XaeP83Is/s200/ann.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400289745500680642" border="0" /></a>was 17. We were better at beating each other in one-on-one basketball than as rookie editors. Within a year, I was a draftee at Fort Ord, and Dale had married pretty, vivacious and brainy Ann Underhill. (Her mother, Katherine Gibbs Underhill, had been an acclaimed architect of homes in Berkeley before dying at 49 – and leaving Ann with an abiding interest in architecture.) Dale dropped out of journalism to study what he never considered to be the dismal science. He would earn his Ph.D in economics at Syracuse University. After two years at Washington State, returned to Syracuse to become a full professor of economics, author of books on the health and educational systems in Ireland and, as of this year, a retiree in a big old stone house that he and Ann regard with undiminished pleasure and satisfaction. They won’t be returning to the Bay Area.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyRRBSksNyg8ylRbZazfLxq7ivI0zYbe8v4C0WYK97X261j_Rn7TJsm6z8qYDMXx-h5hqQkg_jK4rSLCxfVoIkzXC9-KufU_4e_MXrOMsC_y_L8WytDs20X-c9Blicu9GY9XZ1C1Rt7XE/s1600-h/walden+mirror+boat.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 237px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyRRBSksNyg8ylRbZazfLxq7ivI0zYbe8v4C0WYK97X261j_Rn7TJsm6z8qYDMXx-h5hqQkg_jK4rSLCxfVoIkzXC9-KufU_4e_MXrOMsC_y_L8WytDs20X-c9Blicu9GY9XZ1C1Rt7XE/s320/walden+mirror+boat.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400287413657939074" border="0" /></a>We meandered along a Massachusetts byway, looking for the route from Concord to Lexington, enjoying the bright yellows in the understory of the fall foliage. Lynn pulled over, as he often does, to let cars pass. A lovely pond was across the road, with the foliage perfectly reflected in its glassy early-morning surface. I said something like: I know that can’t be Walden Pond, but that looks a lot like where my grandfather used to take us. And we looked up at the sign: Walden Pond. A sharp turn into the parking lot and we began a walk around the pond, on the trail my grandfather used to walk.<br /><br />Let’s call that a metaphor for our whole trip. We couldn’t have planned a gorgeous fall outing to <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6tI0JqMI_9vInLcIa8VAJyCqhOrcyIPglwG_jHIFSjhe-eFVmRRsotG-BICnvSViLoPXLCQ_Ot8mUr9zgLLEWjgDtRW87AQjegPZRd4VduB9_iGDczM9iaZIwcc8gDBhCkVI1NqIauuA/s1600-h/walden+margo+on+phone.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6tI0JqMI_9vInLcIa8VAJyCqhOrcyIPglwG_jHIFSjhe-eFVmRRsotG-BICnvSViLoPXLCQ_Ot8mUr9zgLLEWjgDtRW87AQjegPZRd4VduB9_iGDczM9iaZIwcc8gDBhCkVI1NqIauuA/s320/walden+margo+on+phone.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400287620293455602" border="0" /></a>Walden Pond, walking with the ghost of my grandfather. But by taking it slow, and allowing doors to open, we’ve had some magical times. My grandfather, Dirk Struik, the Dutch immigrant, loved Walden Pond so much that he led Appalachian Club hikes there till he was in his 90s. We could see what sparked his love. Through clear water we glimpsed schools of tiny fish and bigger fish hunting the smaller fish, frogs trying to look like tree roots, and pebbles and leaves resting on the bottom. The mirror-like surface reflected a single rowboat in the distance as well as the trees and their foliage. <span style="font-style: italic;">(At right: I called my mom to tell her I was walking her father’s path.)</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Erie Canal:</span> Since our stop at Niagara Falls, we’ve had a few high-mileage days, and we rested a few days with our friends Dale and Ann Tussing, in Syracuse. We made a hobby for a <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJNqldMlFytwHiqXoOa9nZPD-VYz7TLrepjkejAPEtg7cGSjP0K9a2RhhmlWUU3-ncRL_dKCK3mBf0p7vxjclipqOzfeu2P8A06LNNqEv8Bf-IAl7ThWiJGg-I6KbdjfQ0gAwV3tXPKE/s1600-h/erie+canal+m%26l.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguJNqldMlFytwHiqXoOa9nZPD-VYz7TLrepjkejAPEtg7cGSjP0K9a2RhhmlWUU3-ncRL_dKCK3mBf0p7vxjclipqOzfeu2P8A06LNNqEv8Bf-IAl7ThWiJGg-I6KbdjfQ0gAwV3tXPKE/s320/erie+canal+m%26l.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400288507221700018" border="0" /></a>while out of following the Erie Canal, mostly because we’ve sung that folk song all our lives: <span style="font-style: italic;">“Oh the Ear-eye-ee was a-rising, and the gin was a-running low…” </span>At Lockport, we saw the “Flight-of-Five” locks that lifted barges and boats 49 feet over the Niagara escarpment. Opened in 1825, they allowed the boats, as their skippers would say, to sail uphill. I’m thinking that might be why the Ear-eye-ee was a-rising. <span style="font-style: italic;">(Lynn’s insert: The canal, mostly dug by hand with a horde of about 2,000 men from 1817 to 1825, was enlarged from 1835 to 1862 and again from 1905 to 1917. Upstaged by the coming of railroads, the greatest engineering feat of the early 19th century is mostly forgotten – except in folklore. Nancy Schimmel sent us a message: “I hope you sang a song,” and we beat her to the punch with another favorite: “I’ve got a mule and her name is Sal, fifteen miles on the Erie Canal”…)</span> We crossed and recrossed the 363-mile canal on the backroads as we drove across upper New York. Near Syracuse, we walked with Dale and Ann along the “Long Level” no-lock stretch of the 50-foot-wide canal. No boats, no barges. On the towpath: Joggers, dog walkers, bird watchers.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">The Semitic Museum:</span> We’re in Boston now. It would, of course, be impossible to do the town justice in sightseeing, so we just pulled one museum out of the the AAA Tour Guide: the Semitic Museum at Harvard. A small but truly wonderful museum. My favorite bit was cuneiform tablets, excavated from Nuzi, a town from a Middle Eastern empire previously unknown to me: the Hurrians. Some tablets are the ancient equivalent of legal transcripts, showing that nothing is new. In about 1500 B.C., a Hurrian official testifies (I’m paraphrasing from memory): <span style="font-style: italic;">“It is all lies. I did not have sex with that woman.”</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9J8ctQDHytQo_FJYgNwj0YxJMktmUdh03VWtf48xa4lR_vnoPmAVeLCPEgCmjTmeyL1Wew6hGzeZksHBrZTmIpr_oQmQmxIWah2Fd8njm0UfnM6jXlHM5mll_xApaFga3nqjj7WzWsg/s1600-h/map.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 295px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu9J8ctQDHytQo_FJYgNwj0YxJMktmUdh03VWtf48xa4lR_vnoPmAVeLCPEgCmjTmeyL1Wew6hGzeZksHBrZTmIpr_oQmQmxIWah2Fd8njm0UfnM6jXlHM5mll_xApaFga3nqjj7WzWsg/s320/map.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400291290921308850" border="0" /></a>Other tablets are thought to be student practice work – columns of the same words written over and over again. It is evidence, the caption said, of how hard it was to learn cuneiform. (The tablets look like cuneiform versions of my Hebrew study papers.) The Hurrian trove includes what is believed to be the oldest extant map <span style="font-style: italic;">(at left)</span> – an appropriate artifact for our current study of highway maps. Another exhibit shows a typical Israelite home from days of King David. Lynn and I thought we had stumbled into a house from the Mesa Verde cliff dwellers of the American Southwest: Rectilinear structures with rows of small rooms – terra cotta-colored plaster on walls of mud bricks, wooden ladders from one story to the next, ceramic jugs for storing food, wool being spun and woven, cisterns for rain water. It makes sense, really. The two cultures developed in similar desert-like climates. Our image of the Israelites is wedded to the stories <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSYrMx4jhNNazwQ8TdFLKlRtinIDPF6TklgW0mKLkDf8Qg3wwqiobdMkoxXQekEzBhHB2UptDGwgda_3r0oBYYhmawmlDqXkTcCUj-ODUxI0atIRX2oAYAmeZt06JXqod_16O6SSgQwfM/s1600-h/aunt+anne.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 170px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSYrMx4jhNNazwQ8TdFLKlRtinIDPF6TklgW0mKLkDf8Qg3wwqiobdMkoxXQekEzBhHB2UptDGwgda_3r0oBYYhmawmlDqXkTcCUj-ODUxI0atIRX2oAYAmeZt06JXqod_16O6SSgQwfM/s320/aunt+anne.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400291755408749634" border="0" /></a>about traveling in tents for 40 years through the desert. It’s hard to envision the centuries after the Israelites settled the Holy Land.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Aunt Anne:</span> We visited in the Boston suburb of Arlington with my mother’s younger sister, Anne Macchi <span style="font-style: italic;">(at right)</span>, whom I haven’t seen in years. She’s retired from teaching school and volunteers at the library two mornings a week. We sat in her cozy kitchen for several hours and had a comfortable, lively conversation that ranged far and wide: Rush Limbaugh, favorite writers of mystery books, travels in Holland, and the grandnieces and grandnephews in New Zealand.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Kenny’s Far-flung Pals:</span> In the evening, we met up in Cambridge with our young friends Maya Sussman (<span style="font-style: italic;">below, left)</span> and Zoe Marmer <span style="font-style: italic;">(below, right)</span>. Kenny’s schoolmates from San Francisco, they just started their studies at Tufts University. They directed us to a Sushi restaurant near campus, and we got to hear from two more budding college students (like Kenny and her friends at Oberlin) who love their roommates, love <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-Pq-UX5pz4JRuHk4vUzGCJOqe6hdCg20P-SZyjVs3WGWPOVq50UAXDDaOi0iP4SPaOyKF7WeClo7JddaVoPtNnrYkR1WhgIGHrZN7fkztxZIhLGbrwiyc4h-SqI53IG41mE48yAhcps/s1600-h/maya.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 138px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjp-Pq-UX5pz4JRuHk4vUzGCJOqe6hdCg20P-SZyjVs3WGWPOVq50UAXDDaOi0iP4SPaOyKF7WeClo7JddaVoPtNnrYkR1WhgIGHrZN7fkztxZIhLGbrwiyc4h-SqI53IG41mE48yAhcps/s200/maya.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400292547966414978" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh6YquLqPW7AouRnwhJXJQFeJyhfdNSfijf8fqrk1FZYYBF5d82-gTF3Pk-dbRebnx7uPcV8FPdjvfOngcdbKQH13a53bT0LLcVF6PrUkgGjqGQJd0iNDOT69Azc3C1Ol53omLr8sYDOw/s1600-h/zoe.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh6YquLqPW7AouRnwhJXJQFeJyhfdNSfijf8fqrk1FZYYBF5d82-gTF3Pk-dbRebnx7uPcV8FPdjvfOngcdbKQH13a53bT0LLcVF6PrUkgGjqGQJd0iNDOT69Azc3C1Ol53omLr8sYDOw/s200/zoe.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5400292540890407506" border="0" /></a>their classes, love their teachers, and are just generally happy with the way things are going. As in Oberlin, if Lynn is looking for whiners, he isn’t finding them.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> The George Eastman House and Photography Museum in Rochester, New York. The multi-millionaire father of American photography built himself a huge mansion, even though he never married and had no children. (His mother lived there with him for a few years before she died.) He gave piles of money to many educational institutions, including the University of Rochester and Tuskegee University. He was obsessed with creating a more logical calendar, with 13 months of 28 days, and spent millions to promote it. The only place he was able to impose it, though, was the place he had absolute power, the Kodak company.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Lockport, New York to Syracuse (by way of Rochester): 147<br /><br />Syracuse to Boston, Massachusetts: 311<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Total mileage so far:</span> 7,010Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-24848584837518187582009-10-30T06:26:00.000-07:002009-10-30T07:33:33.849-07:00Niagara Falls<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />When we first started making a list of the must-see people and places for our Victory Lap, Niagara Falls pretty much topped my list. I’ve wanted to see it for most of my life, and just never made it happen. So I knew there was a good chance that I’d be disappointed when I finally saw it – just because of its reputation, the build-up, the anticipation.<br /><br />Didn’t happen that way. The falls are spectacular, completely deserving of their iconic place in the list of American and Canadian scenic wonders.<br /><br />Our visit didn’t start out so great. Once again we ended up driving after dark, so I was driving and Lynn was navigating. Lynn’s night vision is not particularly good, especially if he’s tired or if it’s raining, so I’m the night driver on our crew. Lynn is, to stay within polite discourse, a careless navigator. So, as expected, we got off course and ended up on the American side of the <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEileJl-_oqkBaSUUJyyEgOl6RcR7smnxzUOY0TfSpqfpiBmV01BfWfzbOX7IOc-fy__zppNYCgcj1Huu5MRzxkR6O320OJmBHPUPKjb3N4RNU2nC7Lf4BC1u6ueYbrNT0NMhtCGXtxdLOQ/s1600-h/niagara+rapids.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 254px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEileJl-_oqkBaSUUJyyEgOl6RcR7smnxzUOY0TfSpqfpiBmV01BfWfzbOX7IOc-fy__zppNYCgcj1Huu5MRzxkR6O320OJmBHPUPKjb3N4RNU2nC7Lf4BC1u6ueYbrNT0NMhtCGXtxdLOQ/s320/niagara+rapids.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398390056127781874" border="0" /></a>falls, not the Canadian side that had been our goal. It was dark and late, and we were tired and not exactly sure where we were. We found a motel and sacked out for the night.<br /><br />In the morning, following the motel clerk’s directions, we rolled through Niagara Falls, New York: down about three miles of dull, ugly, industrial zoning and then strip zoning and then just plain tired-and-ugly zoning. We were thinking that if your city contains one of the world’s great scenic wonders, you don’t have to try very hard. The city was pretty drab until the edge of the Niagara River, where we entered a lovely, narrow park now in just-past-prime fall foliage, still very beautiful. We walked across a bridge over wild, churning waters a few hundred feet above the American Falls. (We couldn’t see the waterfall, except for a bit of mist). I don’t know why I thought the river would be quiet and tranquil just above the huge drop-off, but I was surprised by the tumult.<br /><br />We walked downriver a quarter-mile or so and then had a spectacular view from Luna Island of the most amazing falls ever. Whew!! If I looked over at the edge, where the water hurls itself into the abyss, I got dizzy right away. Lynn said it was the sound of the jet engines when you’re on a long plane ride. The roar is deafening, but it almost immediately becomes background noise. Drops of water are cold and misty on your skin. And the falls take up your whole visual field. So the experience is visual, aural, tactile and visceral.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinvcAGNrkAdalXUIPW-VL6b6Up-j928h0iw0Rnb7fgj_d9ulA6Xq3l6260P6J8DDKmavXm0-_Trkp5pq_yTunlSRpMHGbkdQTHtWGCXcg-tHqWfOJPlhpuV6TlTTqE91jQnPy4MQuS9g/s1600-h/falls+and+leaves.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 396px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiinvcAGNrkAdalXUIPW-VL6b6Up-j928h0iw0Rnb7fgj_d9ulA6Xq3l6260P6J8DDKmavXm0-_Trkp5pq_yTunlSRpMHGbkdQTHtWGCXcg-tHqWfOJPlhpuV6TlTTqE91jQnPy4MQuS9g/s400/falls+and+leaves.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398390546435990754" border="0" /></a>We were Niagara-saturated already when we drove to the Canadian side, where we had intended to be anyway. Well! That was really something!! Way bigger, even louder and generating even more thick mist than the American side. The iconic photo that we’ve all seen a thousand times is in Canada, called the Horseshoe Falls, about three times as wide as the American Falls. We walked along part of the mile-long walkway. If it had directions, they would be: “Take your time. There’s an incredible view of both the American and Canadian falls from anywhere along here, and it’s way better than any view from the American side. So walk as far as you like, get as wet as you want, and then turn back. Enjoy.” So we did.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> Some maple leaves from trees below the Canadian walkway fell up, not down. The draft from the falls across the river was strong enough that the multi-colored leaves drifted up over the walkway and then down on us. Unexpected and charming.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also notable:</span> Lots of gulls flew around the falls, but my favorite bird sighting was a pair of mallards, male and female, paddling hard against the current at the top of the American Falls, dunking their heads for food. I said to Lynn: “They really should find a safer place to feed.” And he looks at me like I’m crazy, and says, “Honey, they can fly.” Oh. Yeah.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Also also notable:</span> We saw a black squirrel. Very cute. That’s a new one for me.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />As we motored through Niagara Falls (U.S.), we saw the honeymoon city of the past is now a municipal version of the portrait of Dorian Gray: Wrinkled, blowsy and disheveled by civic dissipation. When we crossed over to Niagara Falls (Canada), the promenade along the river suggested a tidy little city adorned with flowers, dull but nice. Then I steered the Guppy away from the river and up the street into what a sign called Clifton Hill, a tourist district.<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPumQGEcauSpcdFbqJct_heYF3RILvu0vGCivQMPR2cjYjm6hJynS_lW9Rzzp0C7HoIfJNL4vINhwpIkkd3Dt6RMqUiK2moRlw2c7YJmijh_3ssduUaYPUZdDQSfqUTUlOm3YeDRt5tU/s1600-h/clifton+st+2.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdPumQGEcauSpcdFbqJct_heYF3RILvu0vGCivQMPR2cjYjm6hJynS_lW9Rzzp0C7HoIfJNL4vINhwpIkkd3Dt6RMqUiK2moRlw2c7YJmijh_3ssduUaYPUZdDQSfqUTUlOm3YeDRt5tU/s320/clifton+st+2.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398391855552383298" border="0" /></a><br />Margo screamed with laughter.<br /><br />We saw a street transformed into something like a nine-ring circus with a dozen sideshows, each with enormous marquees and neon promises of great adventure. In three short blocks and a couple of side streets, dinosaurs compete for attention with the Great Canadian Midway and a score of other clamoring attractions that would have impressed the hell out of P.T.Barnum. King Kong roars on the Empire State Building, which is on its side, a colossal advertisement for Ripley’s Believe It or Not (700 bizarre exhibits!) … A ghoul carries a smirking witch from the portcullis of the Haunted House (“a skeleton in every closet!”) … Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe, Lucy and Desi, Dorothy and Batman await tourists at Louis Tussard’s Waxworks.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2PKvmdX2d6KBAl4VsD5L6CmbW29624lw5ApScq2bvU2wN43vOgcFkMYBQY33FdXR7xZX-9vUHOvHMSNeJXOO9bL8BIzBGXDOIosQJTeTIWFonGvQJA5kSVluhoymQFsn4wOd__H4khZY/s1600-h/clifton+3.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 223px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2PKvmdX2d6KBAl4VsD5L6CmbW29624lw5ApScq2bvU2wN43vOgcFkMYBQY33FdXR7xZX-9vUHOvHMSNeJXOO9bL8BIzBGXDOIosQJTeTIWFonGvQJA5kSVluhoymQFsn4wOd__H4khZY/s320/clifton+3.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398391850312105378" border="0" /></a>Looming over Clifton Hill is the Niagara SkyWheel, a 175-foot ferris wheel with dozens of bubble-shaped, fully enclosed, climate-controlled gondolas so that tourists can view from 175 feet the vistas of the two great waterfalls that everyone else sees for free.<br /><br />So much for the image of tidy, dull Canada. Somehow the drab indifference of Niagara Falls (U.S.) is preferable to the gaudy carnival of Niagara Falls (Canada). Margo disagrees. She has a soft spot for the visual chaos and excesses of Clifton Hill. But, as we left, she said: “I’ll never criticize Fishermans Wharf again.”<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEy0uzWyLICumM1VhaOaDi34FbFoBBBG-YFvWaPtY5mnx9GqPAzHC69QvhMrn3Qrv4pxSNGI-lwVZz3mOUiEoEgI3TNYfmQ2SrPRBXeXJ8fvU_UCD7jb46jcAyVpWUdc1NTBgPFPiMbL0/s1600-h/lundy+lane.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 311px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEy0uzWyLICumM1VhaOaDi34FbFoBBBG-YFvWaPtY5mnx9GqPAzHC69QvhMrn3Qrv4pxSNGI-lwVZz3mOUiEoEgI3TNYfmQ2SrPRBXeXJ8fvU_UCD7jb46jcAyVpWUdc1NTBgPFPiMbL0/s320/lundy+lane.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398394577952368674" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> Seeking carnival-free entertainment, we visited the Lundy's Lane Historical Museum, in honor of our dear friends, the Gold family, who live on Lundys Lane in San Francisco's Bernal Hill. There we learned more than anyone needs to know about the 1814 battle of Lundy's Lane, which holds the distinction of being the bloodiest battle of the War of 1812 in which no ground was gained or lost, about 800 soldiers on each side were killed, and neither side really won or lost. Canadians consider it a great victory.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Niagara Falls, New York, to Lockport: 35 (by way of Lake Ontario)<br /><br />Total mileage so far: 6,552Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-44344622459351196442009-10-29T06:52:00.001-07:002009-10-30T06:27:46.381-07:00The Carmel of Lake Michigan<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br /> When I knew him in Illinois many years ago, young Art Lane was a mild-mannered newspaperman given to understatement and laughter. He never struck me as a serious art lover, zealous historian, talented harmony singer or the future editor, publisher and co-owner of a weekly newspaper in one of the most attractive towns in the Midwest. He was a dedicated bachelor. And he looked like a typical copy editor – far more comfortable wielding a No. 2 pencil than, say, a golf club.<br /><br /> I was wrong on every count.<br /><br /> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY6A-KbAiSlFSCdAEoAh0yT8gYjhWVL5PoWU9o3c2x0NF7hzSZyDBOtJ4urP50uVanGrvA_5GSk1hBxBWlJMqBDJl-__9qEiOItz6WrU9DOS7oSCRbTJvD4PHDrS7tO1dbr8S4eyahcsw/s1600-h/art+lane.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 289px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY6A-KbAiSlFSCdAEoAh0yT8gYjhWVL5PoWU9o3c2x0NF7hzSZyDBOtJ4urP50uVanGrvA_5GSk1hBxBWlJMqBDJl-__9qEiOItz6WrU9DOS7oSCRbTJvD4PHDrS7tO1dbr8S4eyahcsw/s400/art+lane.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398019849324746098" border="0" /></a>When we visited my old friend the other day in Saugatuck, western Michigan’s answer to Carmel, Art was preparing a talk for the local historical society: “Golf and Other Passions – The History of Golf in Saugatuck.”<br /><br /> It had been more than half a century since we worked together at the late, very lamented Champaign-Urbana Courier, but the news and gossip could wait. He took us on a guided tour of his personal art gallery. The walls of his home are covered with paintings, watercolors and line drawings, mostly by local artists, and each with a vision of Art’s adopted town.<br /><br /> He’s been busy, he said, with the Barbershop Harmony Society (it’s still the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barbershop Quartet Singing in America). He was honored by the society in 1999 with an international award for his public relations work, and he sings bass at least once a week to practice with a 35-man chorus for competitions and local performances. Who knew?<br /><br />Art’s days of singlehood ended when he left the Courier for Carbondale in the 1960s to become news editor at another daily in the Lindsey-Schaub chain, the Southern Illinoisian. There he met and fell in love with one of the writers, a refugee (like him) from the Detroit area.<br /><br /> For Art and Kit Lane, the happy results included a family of four sons and a risky decision to leave the paycheck life and become their own bosses. They managed to buy the Commercial Record, a weekly newspaper since 1869 for Saugatuck and its next-door neighbor, Douglas. Although the year-round population of the two villages and the nearby countryside is only about 5,000, the number is multiplied in summertime by thousands of tourists and vacationers. Art and Kit pasted up the weekly themselves and instituted something new – regular coverage of local government sessions. In the meantime, Kit wrote and published more than a dozen books of local and regional history. (We missed seeing her by a day as she winged her way back from a birdwatching trip in Brazil.)<br /><br /> The newspaper prospered over the next three decades until Art and Kit decided to sell to Kaechele Publications, leave the news to somebody else and work on their own projects in their home next to the local golf course. From time to time, Art drives down to Champaign-Urbana for reunions with that dwindling group of newspapermen from that magic era of the Courier’s face-to-face competition with the News-Gazette. They gather to tell stories about their late editor, the unforgettable Robert W. Sink Jr. Included are Bob Gold, Stan Slusher, George Wilhite and Bob and Jeannine Schaub (A report on our visit with the Schaubs in Boone, Iowa, is in the blog entry “Brownville”.)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbHuPK75L66wkD2_8kS2VAfJZug3h5qBQajUs6kwJB806RrwPsfti9jCfOnZA1ao9-6KLKLExokZ3kHdNypPwFH6JsnUvJXzjtFOyTxUJiVDWKpmQp0VTpx24O46wD0Shh95nJhoror4/s1600-h/fall+foliage.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 330px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJbHuPK75L66wkD2_8kS2VAfJZug3h5qBQajUs6kwJB806RrwPsfti9jCfOnZA1ao9-6KLKLExokZ3kHdNypPwFH6JsnUvJXzjtFOyTxUJiVDWKpmQp0VTpx24O46wD0Shh95nJhoror4/s400/fall+foliage.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5398020773069974642" border="0" /></a>For Art, it’s back to Saugatuck and a round of golf, a new arrangement for a song in four-part harmony, another exploration into the resort town’s history, more searches for art work and continuous proof that assumptions can be dead wrong.<br /><br />Postscript: Art is still given to understatement and laughter, lots of it.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> We had heard all our lives about the beauty of autumn leaves in New England and the Midwest, but nothing prepared me for the foliage fireworks of dark crimson, bright scarlet, burnt orange and yellow hues of impossible brilliance. Just as the flames of a campfire can’t be described, I can’t find the right words for the explosions of color that turned our October highways into a kaleidoscope of burning embers. I would like to say that such-and-such a roadside grove is painted in, say, old gold. But I have never seen old gold. If I did, I would say that it looks like a Michigan maple tree in October.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage</span> from Oberlin, Ohio, to Niagara Falls, New York: 247 miles<br /><br />Total mileage so far: 6,517Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3298917478765525614.post-19118483901532749112009-10-28T07:52:00.001-07:002009-10-28T21:42:46.858-07:00Oberlin and Ishpeming<span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Margo:</span><br /><br />A bit of a time warp for me, visiting Kenny in Oberlin. She’s the student now, and seems to be having something of the same intellectual experience that I had here 30 years ago. She felt over her head at first, now she’s starting to get her land legs, seeing a huge world of knowledge and thinking opening up for her. She’s very happy with her roommate, her friends, her classes. Could it better? Maybe not.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdnzs4B08OdV98zfpF7KEyI1J5y6aExeVRuYEgkYbTPaMyubLxpesO749ZsCx4QRXrnL87sRMv0cj2ZbHoSEQAbHbhGH3dSkzyqyD264wODvqTMJmkA7Z13oiztANu7hTwxRT-LUEEU4/s1600-h/roomies.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 360px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsdnzs4B08OdV98zfpF7KEyI1J5y6aExeVRuYEgkYbTPaMyubLxpesO749ZsCx4QRXrnL87sRMv0cj2ZbHoSEQAbHbhGH3dSkzyqyD264wODvqTMJmkA7Z13oiztANu7hTwxRT-LUEEU4/s400/roomies.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397664176105682162" border="0" /></a>In fact, as Lynn pointed out when we took Kenny and three friends out to dinner, there didn’t seem to be one whiner or griper in the place. All of them are thrilled to be here, loving their classes, happy with their teachers, just happy all around. If Lynn was looking for teenage angst, he wasn’t finding it here.<br /><br />This is Lynn’s first look at Oberlin, and what a good job the college is doing on making a good first impression! Our first day was a magical fall day, warm, sunny, trees in full fall foliage, with leaves drifting down in all their brilliant colors. Groups of kids were studying in the sunlight out in the Wilder Bowl quad. The cross-country team ran past us on a workout. A little band of student musicians was jamming under a tree in a corner of one of the quads. The students were out in force, studying, enjoying the good weather. We dropped in on Tom Van Nortwick, who was my Latin professor when I was here, and we had a congenial talk ranging from reading Harry Potter in Latin and Greek to the Battle of the Big Hole. So Lynn got to see why we all love our Oberlin teachers.<br /><br />It didn’t hurt any that when we drove into town, it was about 30 degrees warmer than it had been two days before on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The snow and scary driving conditions were gone. The sun was out and the skies were clear. We had rolled across three <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNaXBVa8rEdFprqwPyiX3wLEahVUY-AFRP2qxUzp4KfQNwmzb9G8XXhswEUn4eh6jlhQlqucH6E_U4EUYQRbnxQ_MbNgCIrOcgwSOICpYpCzLb2TpwqsXeQSP7ub7epX3qS7miEUSVLww/s1600-h/maryann's+needlepoint.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiNaXBVa8rEdFprqwPyiX3wLEahVUY-AFRP2qxUzp4KfQNwmzb9G8XXhswEUn4eh6jlhQlqucH6E_U4EUYQRbnxQ_MbNgCIrOcgwSOICpYpCzLb2TpwqsXeQSP7ub7epX3qS7miEUSVLww/s320/maryann's+needlepoint.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397666440758352530" border="0" /></a>states, from Western Michigan to eastern Ohio on the Interstate – our first real sustained stretch on an Interstate in the whole trip. It was fine for what it was: We needed to cover some mileage fast. But it was pretty dull, except for a whole charter bus full of Amish people stopped at one of the “travel plazas.” Men, women and children were clustered at the tables outside McDonald’s, eating out of straw picnic baskets. The mothers of babies were in the modern tiled restrooms, changing cloth diapers on babies in old-fashioned plain blue woolen dresses. Even the small children looked terribly serious and 19th century in their black suits and long dresses. To me, it was a visual oxymoron to see them gathered under the red and yellow neon McDonald’s sign.<br /><br />Arriving in Oberlin was just what you’d think: Cue the soundtrack for the joyful reunions with Kenny and Anabel, her dear friend and ours. We found Kenny at the school where she tutors second-grade kids. We waited outside till she was done, and surprised her at the door. Man! Some good hugs!<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHYv0B84terRKYsgEmqmq1OqKJq7H3qdX9JydiGuOhhAGUb6-3pWXnSavvdC83Gw1LkrHQGR5jRr7xxR5otJFN_Sc_hgrubaHzlPUdNyJ3BpmHDK5b-tMz3A1YCQY1BBTtDVEkaKUVIo/s1600-h/clyde.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 180px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHYv0B84terRKYsgEmqmq1OqKJq7H3qdX9JydiGuOhhAGUb6-3pWXnSavvdC83Gw1LkrHQGR5jRr7xxR5otJFN_Sc_hgrubaHzlPUdNyJ3BpmHDK5b-tMz3A1YCQY1BBTtDVEkaKUVIo/s200/clyde.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397670531378872242" border="0" /></a>We’re staying with Maryann and Clyde Hohn. Anabel’s mom, Katherine, and I stayed with them during new student orientation in September. They live in a 100-year-old rambling frame house with a wrap-around porch. Maryann and Clyde were high-powered folks in Los Angeles who decided to leave the rat race. They sold out their life in L.A. and retired here about 17 years ago, at age 45 or so. Clyde helps in organizing the local bike club, and takes music lessons and plays bluegrass with friends. Maryann does wonderfully beautiful and original needlepoint projects <span style="font-style: italic;">(like the one above)</span> and helps with an animal rescue organization. After Katherine and I stayed here during orientation, we told Lynn about Clyde’s music, and Lynn had asked to play some tunes with Clyde. So our second night here, Clyde invited over his friend Keith Tarven, a biology professor at the college who plays guitar and sings. <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxotk-Spxe8LwPsj_hEni3OqxfRaRs2MNatAMMj4NtgTJUk2jmy8Oho6BPY4byaWM-OBsEMwcp0NiQm_oXnwqigr0oXBEb01fEwHi2SsyI17DRFAbwPPvkCIZvwrnS6ZYjKWUIs7EI94/s1600-h/tunes+w+kenny.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 179px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRxotk-Spxe8LwPsj_hEni3OqxfRaRs2MNatAMMj4NtgTJUk2jmy8Oho6BPY4byaWM-OBsEMwcp0NiQm_oXnwqigr0oXBEb01fEwHi2SsyI17DRFAbwPPvkCIZvwrnS6ZYjKWUIs7EI94/s320/tunes+w+kenny.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397665307310963730" border="0" /></a>Anabel, Kenny and Lynn sat in with them for a little evening musicale. Will Rubenstein, our dear friend who went to preschool with Kenny and Anabel, dropped by, and it felt like a Miraloma preschool reunion. Anabel sang the song she wrote about her father, Toshio. And Kenny sang the Dixie Chicks’ “Goodbye, Earl.” If I were the sentimental type, I might have gotten all teary. Well, yeah. I got all teary.<br /><br />It’s great to see Kenny, Anabel and Will so well settled here. They are working hard, loving it, growing fast.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hcNcchFiohoMcqUbJRHJCjiL19ZoJk644a4nBYnPOih6mhLnnqbCEJSP8IaSjvPUSgldwoUSoFIz1wutgMfwELtPFjcIVKQKdVE6r1Gi-dSa72ft6am-JK4rXYnaIKbTFFjTsuYJlnY/s1600-h/tunes+w+anabel.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 194px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hcNcchFiohoMcqUbJRHJCjiL19ZoJk644a4nBYnPOih6mhLnnqbCEJSP8IaSjvPUSgldwoUSoFIz1wutgMfwELtPFjcIVKQKdVE6r1Gi-dSa72ft6am-JK4rXYnaIKbTFFjTsuYJlnY/s320/tunes+w+anabel.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397665659767015538" border="0" /></a><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable:</span> I asked Kenny if there was anywhere she needed a ride to, since she doesn’t have access to a car. So Kenny, her roommate Britt, and I drove to the nearest Trader Joe’s, where we stocked up on food for their dorm room. The store is only about 25 miles away, but we got lost at least three times on the way there, and then again on the way back. So… Kenny has a skewed idea of how Lynn and I have navigated our way across the country. We’ve actually done pretty well, only gotten lost a few times. Really.<br /><br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_2hP0S4rJbIEnzNlKHEebOEC_hljzZzasyPonsK6TwEJVJeSsdqSuNl9fBT5HHu30IyNgqn7KUl0lVuYNOtc-vtPiwS-Xq4DWQSFMGOzPDeeyH531l2U28kZyHgjeTcwumWPZJuDu0tY/s1600-h/fred+monument.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 234px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_2hP0S4rJbIEnzNlKHEebOEC_hljzZzasyPonsK6TwEJVJeSsdqSuNl9fBT5HHu30IyNgqn7KUl0lVuYNOtc-vtPiwS-Xq4DWQSFMGOzPDeeyH531l2U28kZyHgjeTcwumWPZJuDu0tY/s320/fred+monument.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397667315845665746" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">Notes from Lynn:</span><br /><br />Fred Braastad, a vigorous Norwegian who liked to plan ahead, commissioned an impressive family monument for his family plot in the crowded cemetery in Ishpeming, Michigan. Big as a mining cart, it’s a three-tier cake of granite blocks. The top block is engraved with “Father 1847-1917”; the middle block, with the family surname (in Norski, Braastad sounds like “BROAstad,” but in the Upper Peninsula it morphed into “braysted” when people talked a century ago about his fabulous department store).<br /><br />The monument is bracketed by two parallel rows of 11 headstones, each about a foot high. All but two bear names of some of Fred’s children, grandchildren and a couple of spouses. The exceptions are “Mother, 1855-1942,” and again, “Father, 1847-1917.”<br /><br />Missing is my grandmother, Ida. I put my hand on the cold monument. I wanted to ask my great-grandfather why he disinherited his oldest child.<br /><br />It’s what the late Norris Alfred called a Great Truth: By the time you come up with questions about family mysteries, nobody is left to supply the answers.<br /><br />Fredrik Braastad grew up on a farm near the Norway village of Ringebo in the Guldbrandsdalen Valley near Lillehammer, where at age 16 he began to work for five years as a store clerk. He arrived in the U.S. in October 1868 and got a job as a laborer just as winter began in the Upper Peninsula’s booming iron mines. Wisely, he switched to clerking in a store in Negaunee. Four years later he moved next door to Ishpeming, then a growing city on a former cedar swamp covered with cartloads of rocks from a half-dozen mines. “Ishpeming followed the classic pattern of iron-range cities everywhere,” writes Stewart Holbrook in “Iron Brew.” “It budded and grew out of a hodgepodge of mine ‘locations.’ … For 40 years, this range of hills was the biggest producer of iron in this country.” The miners came from Cornwall, Finland, Italy, Sweden, Norway, Poland and almost everywhere but the U.S.<br /><br />At 26, the clerk-turned-entrepreneur opened the doors for what would become F. Braastad & Co., Dealer in Dry Goods, Groceries, Crockery and General Merchandise. In 1880, he purchased the entire stock and fixtures of his rival. Within 10 years, his store was described as the most extensive in the U.P. He married a girl from Norway, Ingeborg Knutson, and in due course his family grew as fast as his businesses. A Democrat, he was elected to a term as Michigan's state treasurer in 1891. He organized a streetcar system for his adopted city. He was a key force behind the formation of an association to promote the Norway sports of ski jumping and cross-country skiing. It would become in 1904 the National Ski Association (he was the founding vice president). In the 1894 city directory, he is listed as proprietor of his mercantile store, as vice president-general manager of the Winthrop Mining Co. and as owner of Ames Mine (“Hematite Iron Ore of Superior Quality”). His big but not ostentatious five-bedroom home was built across Cleveland Avenue from his stores.<br /><br />The only other Braastad in the directory is Ida, my grandmother, at the same address. Three years later, she was married to Ernest Talma Ludlow. He grew up in Benton Harbor, Mich., and is variously described as a salesman, a YMCA director, an organizer of service clubs like Rotary and the Lions, a would-be actor and, most significantly, as an employee of his father-in-law. Family photographs show the new grandfather with Ida’s little sons, including my father, John Ludlow.<br /><br />As the 20th century began, F. Braastad & Co. changed from a small-town emporium into a glittering department store. In 1903, the Miners Journal published a breathless story about the demolition of the old buildings and construction of “a fine three-story block which will be a credit to the town and and a source of much pleasure to Mr. Braastad.” It would become a landmark with a clock tower jutting above the thick walls of pressed brick. The bells would ring every 15 minutes, audible reminders of the glories of merchandise on Cleveland Avenue. The store opened in November. More than 5,000 people came to gawk and shop. Each was handed a free carnation. It may have been the most satisfying moment in the career of Frederick Braastad (who had long since added an “e” to his name). He was 66. After that, things began to be less joyful. In Norwegian-speak, the operative phrase can stand for overwhelming dismay or "oh, my": “Uff da,” they mumble. “Uff da.”<br /><br />One year later, the grand new store burned down. It was rebuilt and restocked in a year but at a heavy cost in money and hard work. A year later, Braastad persuaded his son, Arvid Conrad Braastad, to take over as general manager. What became of that we know not, but in 1906 the old man announced that all his holdings were for sale. The Miners Journal commented, “He has long worked in this city, has practically taken no vacation in 35 years and he feels he is entitled to a rest and the reward that such service should give.” He must have changed his mind, because a few years later he ordered carpenters to begin work on expansion of the department store to provide space for increasing business. He gave many an uplifting statement about the future prosperity of Ishpeming and the iron mines because, as he put it, “the country needs ore.”<br /><br />At some point not recorded in the newspaper or ever explained by my father, Ida and<br />Ernest Ludlow left Ishpeming for Eugene, Oregon. They took the costly furniture, gold-trimmed dinner service and other wedding gifts, mostly gifts from her father. But something dreadful must have happened to sever the relationship between an independent-minded young woman and an Old World father accustomed to obedience. She was disinherited.<br /><br />Did his son-in-law (my grandfather) try to take over the family business? Worse, did he NOT try? Did his wife (my grandmother) have such a showdown with her father that she forced her husband to leave? I guess we’ll never know. (For the story of our search for her home in McKenzie Bridge, Oregon, see the blog entry, “Roadside Attractions,” from September.)<br /><br />In the meantime, the iron mines began to play out. Ishpeming’s population dropped dramatically from a high of 13,255 in 1900. (It was 9,238 in 1930 and 6,700 in 2000.)<br />Then came the chains. The Woolworth company opened a branch store in 1915. J.C.Penney arrived in 1917.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF_2In4lbMjyPAs55jLu_T31mBJqvIavVB1PI__JxVpVvOw6_khqmzckPRQp942upSgV3Qjrmr3ct6uOjljlwNTyUM1gdm5Vt2bV4nZbRld1fehXtrXxyxAL4fQy45c5rIWmL5WLce5I/s1600-h/the+old+store.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEF_2In4lbMjyPAs55jLu_T31mBJqvIavVB1PI__JxVpVvOw6_khqmzckPRQp942upSgV3Qjrmr3ct6uOjljlwNTyUM1gdm5Vt2bV4nZbRld1fehXtrXxyxAL4fQy45c5rIWmL5WLce5I/s320/the+old+store.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5397667777459352578" border="0" /></a>By then, the Braastad family had begun to scatter. The children gathered again when Fred Braastad died in 1917. Ida didn’t come to the funeral. F. Braastad & Co. closed its doors two years later.<br /><br />H.W. Gossard Co. took over the building in 1920 as a factory for women’s intimate apparel. It pulled out in the 1970s. The clock tower was torn down in 1959. A developer renovated much of the building in 1986 and named it Pioneer Square, but the few tenants today include a company that makes bows and arrows, a travel agency, a typing service and a preschool called “Mini Miracles.” The only evidence of 1903 affluence are the stamped-metal ceilings now covered with a burgundy paint job.<br /><br />Ishpeming isn’t close yet to ghost-town status, but the movie theater is for sale and many a downtown shop is vacant. The only flourishing retail businesses seem to be thrift stores, and one of them is on the ground floor of what was once Fred Braastad’s proudest achievement – his three-story department store.<br /><br />Across the street is the old Braastad home, built in 1900 and preserved for generations by family members. Now it’s for sale. Five bedrooms, 5,300 square feet, two fireplaces, good condition: $99,500.<br /><br />At the Ishpeming Carnegie Public Library, front desk librarian Cindy Mack helpfully went into the basement archives to come up with city directories, local histories and squibs from the Mining Journal that somebody had typed and pasted into folders. When asked about my distinguished pioneer great-grandfather, she said, “Braysted? Sorry. Never heard of him.”<br /><br />Uff da.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Notable: </span>San Franciscans who think they’ve seen everything should visit the Ishpeming restaurant where we had a light lunch. “Don’t look now,” I warned Margo, “but in the corner you’ll see something you won’t see in Frisco.” It was true. Two women in a booth were smoking cigarettes. When we asked about it, the waitress said, “It’s discretionary.” … Another memorable name for a tavern: Tee Pee Bar (“We bring you happiness”).<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Mileage </span> from St. Ignace, Michigan, to Saugatuck: 281<br /><br />From Saugatuck to Oberlin, Ohio: 302<br /><br />Total mileage so far: 6,270Lynn Ludlow and Margo Freistadthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10301343795093958299noreply@blogger.com1