Month: August 2016

August 5 to August 13, 2016—A Layover in Tennessee;  Western and Piedmont North Carolina

 

It is a neat sight, coming southbound downhill on Interstate 75 and seeing the hills of Tennessee framed in the distance through a cut in the Kentucky stone lining he highway. We are making a quick run through Tennessee on this leg. We might return in the fall but on this pass we only had time for two nights.

 

En route to our camp we took a detour at the urging of a mandolin player we had met in Berea to see Cumberland Falls. It was only twenty-some miles out of the way, but a long twenty miles. I could barely go fifteen miles an hour the whole way the road was so tortured. The front wheels of my truck were entering a right turn hairpin curve before the trailer tires had come out of a left turn hairpin. Our informant got my attention by calling Cumberland Falls “the Niagara of the South.” Indeed, the falls are widely known by that moniker. Who could resist.

The Niagara of the South is to Niagara Falls as the Grand Canyon of Pennsylvania is to the Grand Canyon. The falls are  seventy five feet across and seventy five feet down. The remarkable thing about the falls, which we could not witness, is that under the right conditions the full moon will produce a rainbow in its mists. It is said to be the only waterfall in the western hemisphere that produces such a “moonbow.” Now that is some bragging rights and might be worth a detour when the astronomical details align. Actually we were glad to have visited there, making a lunch and leaving the cats in the trailer while we took a walk around.

 

Arrived at our camp in Milton Hills Dam outside of Knoxville, TN. Another on-the-cheap campsite, on land owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority (and bordering the Oak Ridge National Research Center where they play fast and hopefully not loose with every form of matter and energy). The camp is built around one of the TVA hydroelectric dams on the Clinch River, a relatively small dam built in 1960. Talk about a social engineering project, the TVA takes the prize. It was a concerted effort to not only bring electricity to an impoverished region but an overhaul of agriculture and manufacturing practices. A massive federal project started in the 1930s and still going on. I want to hear candidates for national office in an hours-long debate in which the TVA is the only topic of discussion. The damming of the rivers for hydroelectric power displaced some 15,000 people and presumably disrupted natural biological flows. Was it worth it? “Who can say?” if I may quote the estimable Mr. Hines.

We spent a day in Knoxville. I had passed through here in January of this year, arriving late at night on a weekday and found it deserted and dead (although I did have a genteel conversation in a bar with a high school latin teacher waiting for his wife. I managed on that occasion to dredge up a Latin joke he hadn’t heard before. It would take too long to tell and really isn’t funny at all, but ask me about it next time I see you if you care. It really isn’t funny.) On this occasion, a Saturday morning, Knoxville was popping. There was a huge farmers’ market in the town square—scores of vendors offering beautiful produce, baked goods, etc, (free samples of peach slices I relished until I imagined Brenda saying “They didn’t advertise lunch.”) and an entertaining sampling of buskers, including a nose flute player. Crowds were flowing in and out of little shops and restaurants. Brenda bought a backpack. We took in that scene for a while, walked to other parts of town, and down to the site of the 1982 Knoxville World’s Fair. The Sunsphere was the symbol of that event which had Energy as its theme. Knoxville is nicknamed Scruffy City. I thought this was an old appellation used by truckers but it only started in the 1980s when a national newspaper reporting on the idea of a world’s fair in Knoxville called the town “scruffy.” The town adopted it as a badge of honor. Scruffy City Hall is a nice bar where you might have the chance to talk to a latin teacher, or a place to avoid for the same reason.

 

It has been grotesquely hot and humid since Ohio; makes everything a drag and even in the mountains of Tennessee we were affected. Stayed in the shade of the camper and watched the comings and goings of locals in the campground. A girl recognized a guy from high school. An old woman berated her 40ish mentally feeble son. Not what I signed up for but the day passed and we headed east.

Stayed at a fairly luxe RV park outside of Ashville after the harrowing trip through the Smoky Mountains. Actually we were driving the dividing line between the Smokies and the Alleghany mountains—all Appalachian to me. The Smokies are smoky looking, owing to the mists and fogs that are always shifting around between valley and summit. Magical to look at if you can take your eyes off the road for a second which you can’t towing a trailer.

Took advantage of the park’s pool the first night and explored Asheville the next two days. Spent a  day at the North Carolina Arboretum and took a long, grueling hike after looking at the extensive displays. Came back to the camper and checked on the cats, showered, then went back into town. An outside jam at a small funky bar in West Asheville (WesAsh? WAsh?) which I would have liked if one of the half dozen players had invited Brenda to join in. She had her fiddle case sitting in plain sight on our table not twelve feet from the circle of players but after an hour not one of the musicians had reached out. Brenda would have fit in fine and maybe even have taught them a thing or two. In consolation we had a nice conversation with a couple at the next table who lived in NYC in a neighborhood I know well near St. John’s cathedral. After a while they said they were going to a contra dance and we followed them there. It was in an on old industrial part of the city, a big space with a tacqueria and a bar. Danced a few dances with the other hundred-or-so dancers in the cavernous hot space, had some delish tacos and couple locally-brewed pints, watched some Olympic action, had a nice chat with the bartender. All-in-all a first rate day excepting the lack of courtesy of the local old-time jammers.

Next day we walked all over Asheville’s downtown and spent the evening at an Irish bar featuring a local cajun/zydeco band. (On the steet I spotted the faded remains of a painted NuGrape soda ad on the exterior of a building; a special treat for me. Do yourself a favor and google the NuGrape Twins singing a weird jingle for the product circa 1930.) The evening was made special  by some old guys and gals who knew how to two-step to the music. One guy had alligator boots that must have stuck  out a good six inches from his toes, coming to a spectacular point, the kind that can kill cockroaches in corners. I still don’t get the dance step but they looked cool doing it.

There seems to be trouble brewing in Asheville. It has grown faster than St Mary’s county in recent years and the newcomers are driving up the cost of living space and the bohemian-types are having to relocate to smaller surrounding towns.

 

From Asheville we descended into the piedmont region of North Carolina. We took advantage of a cheap campsite at the NC State Fairgrounds in Raleigh. An unremarkable camp with no shade, but the cool thing is we had the run of the fairgrounds which were empty of people. (I recognize this is the second time I have mentioned being enamoured of a place because it lacked humans.) The cop who oversees the place gave me a tour of the whole complex, driving me around the grounds in his police cruiser. We (Brenda and I, that is, not the cop and I, tho we had become close) used the showers in the equestrian section of the fairgrounds.  I don’t think Maryland’s state fair can compare to this –stables to house over 300 horses individually, a huge open arena for jumping and cantering or whatever horses do in contests, and an equally huge covered arena for same. It was a strange and beautiful space to wander around it in silence.

Three or four hours then to Nags Head, NC. We were to meet up with our children and their spouses and their children AND our friends and neighbors Donald and Lucy and their children and their respective mates and proto-children, at an oceanfront house. We are giddy at the prospect.

August 1 to August 5, 2016—”Berea, I Just Met a Town called Berea”

From Cincinnati our destination was Berea, Kentucky, just because it was the right driving distance, I had heard of the town, and the campground was $10/night cheaper than elsewhere. In hindsight we should have stayed in Lexington, KY as we wound up driving there two nights, 40 minutes away.

The first night we went to Lexington so Brenda could play with an old time mountain music jam. It was worth the trip—a small gathering of nice people who gather every week in a bicycle repair shop/café in the North Limestone neighborhood of Lexington.( I saw the neighborhood  referred to more than once as NoLi and, honestly, this practice needs to stop. SoHo in NYC and London is SOuth of HOuston Street, and Tribeca in NYC is the TRIangle BElow CAnal Street—these are ancient and longstanding shorthand references and should be honored, but every berg on the planet is turning neighborhoods into these types of abbreviations and it has gotten old. We have time to say “South Limestone” or “North of Massachusetts Avenue,” don’t we?) I was quite impressed how Brenda handled herself with the jam group– jumping in, starting a song, even teaching them a number (Year of Jubilo which they did not know presumably because it is a northern yankee song. Seriously.) It was a fun trip even if the downpour flooded the streets of North Limestone.

 

 

We drove back to Lexington the next night to meet up with some friends who now live in Lexington. Jenny Neat is a friend from Chaptico, stationed there when her husband Jess was rector of the Episcopal parish. They have traveled all their married lives, relocating every few years,  the 21 years he was an Army officer and the years after he was ordained. Now they are back where they met–Jenny is a native of Lexington KY and met her husband when they were at Eastern Kentucky University. He now has a parish in Frankfort, KY. Jenny arranged for us to meet at a food co-op that served a great hot buffet, really one of the top meals of the trip.

Joining us was an old comrade of mine, Richard Farkas and his wife Julie. Richard was director of manufacturing at a DC publishing house and a customer of mine when I was in the typesetting business. He and I and a handful of others started an association for DC publishing professionals called Bookbuilders of Washington which had a successful run of ten years or so, hosting monthly meetings with guest speakers and publishing  a monthly newsletter which I wrote. Richard retired from the University of Kentucky Press a couple years ago, founded a Buddhist temple in Lexington and wrote a primer on Tibetan Buddhism. The Dalai Lama wrote the introduction to his book!

Having been traveling amongst strangers, kind and well-intentioned as they may be, it was good to hang with old mates and find them doing well.

 

Berea, KY is home to Berea College and the center of Kentucky arts and crafts. The college is noted for its early and unwavering support for civil rights. The weather was brutally muggy but we enjoyed touring the town and the arts neighborhood. The Kentucky state arts center is only a few miles away and worth an hour of your time—textiles, woodwork, printmaking, basketry, and a wide array of foodstuffs flavored with bourbon. There is no comestible on the planet, sweet or savory, that some Kentuckian has not thought could be improved by the addition of bourbon. They are awfully proud of this substance, and rightfully so; strange, then,  that in some places you have to drive through two counties before you can buy any.

 

Brenda struck up a conversation with a docent at the state arts center and told her we were looking for a good hike. She produced a photocopied sheet that gave written instructions and a hand drawn map to Anglin Falls. We sought it out the next day; it was located about 20 minutes from our campsite. Only a few miles in the road became very twisty and almost one lane; we encountered a barrier and huge sign reading “Road Closed.” It was curious to me that the barrier did not actually bar entry to the road entirely so we drove around it. Sure enough a half-mile later a  good half of the road had slid down into the creek below, but there was enough room to sneak by on the intact part and we weren’t towing the trailer so we kept on gettin’. The directions and map were mistaken in some particulars and we had to double back a couple times. The final direction told us to turn onto the dirt road “with the mailbox.” And sure enough a good ways later there was a trailhead. The Anglin Falls hike has become my favorite of the trip. It was only a little over a mile round trip but climbed steep. It was old forest; massive limestone bluffs above;  boulders everywhere that had broken off and fallen from above ages ago and were now completely covered in moss and vegetation. And of course at the top was the Anglin Falls, not a spectacular torrent but a steady flow of water falling 75 feet. What made it special was that we had the entire place to ourselves. “To walk in quiet reverie these ancient hills” was an honor. There were many sights and places recommended to us that were, I’m sure, more spectacular, but we had this place all to ourselves the entire time we were there. You wonder why some people live out their lives in hardship in places of little opportunity with danger of floods and other natural disasters and you see a place like this and you know, it’s the land they love and don’t want to leave. Okay, I’m laying it on a little thick; let’s just say we had a nice walk in the woods.

 

This area around Berea is Daniel Boone’s stomping ground. I had just started a book by Hampton Sides on Kit Carson and was surprised by the coincidence that Carson was born only a few miles from our campsite. In the early 1800s this area was the frontier. People were pouring through the Cumberland gap and pushing west. It is astonishing how much change came in such a short time. A European guy “discovers” the opening through the mountains in 1750. Daniel Boone and his pals widen it in the 1770s and start leading settlers through. Something like 300,000 settlers come through the Cumberland Gap over the next 40 years, felling trees and natives as they go. Seems like recent history, the older I get.

 

It’s easy to imagine how this rough terrain and a Boone-fed self-image would foster a sense of self- and kin-reliance and a lack of interest in central government, and a political and cultural conservatism. In a region where the topography prevents easy transport of grain for sale it makes sense to turn the grain into liquor for sale, leading to more conflict with government. And of course the original settlers themselves were temperamental Scots and Irish who had already been badly-used by and alienated from their previous overlords. So how did trade unionism among the coal miners take hold and become such a vital part of their story? How did these rough-hewn individualists come to buy into that sort of solidarity across holler and hill? Every mile you go further up into the hills you feel like you are entering a very different world that is older, more primal, and holding some secret. Okay, I’m waxing again; let’s just say I find this area fascinating. And if it weren’t so damn hot and humid we might not head to Tennessee in the morning.

July 27 to August 1, 2016   Hey! Oh, hi. O!

 

From Ann Arbor we drove south to a state campground at Indian Lake. The Cowsills song was, supposedly, inspired by this big lake ringed by resort towns. Well, it used to be ringed by vibrant resort towns; now it is ringed by shells of once-lively resort towns. What is it with lakeside and riverside holiday towns that they are all seem to have fallen on such hard times—grass a foot tall growing up through the holes in old mini-golf greens; rusted remnants of kiddie rides glimpsed in junk shops and peoples’ back yards; little wooden structures that once sold burgers or ice cream falling down, some with the menuboards still hanging over the counter. Have consumers’ tastes changed so much that these little amusements can’t satisfy them, or have the rivers and lakes grown so polluted that people avoid them?

 

The beaches of Indian Lake that we saw were littered everywhere with goose crap, the water warm, cloudy, shallow. The camp was huge and fairly empty in midweek. We found a good hike in a nearby forest and toured the little towns on the periphery of the lake, staying two nights. We left there for Cincinnati, a few hours south, taking back roads. Ohio countryside is  beautiful in this region. It rained as we drove. During our entire trip it has rained only at night or when we were on the road. I don’t think there has been a single day when we were stuck in the camper because of weather.

 

I have a modest attachment to Cincinnati. I lived here part of a year as an infant when my father was lured there by his older brother with reports of a good job at a printing plant. It didn’t work out for reasons unknown to me. (In St Mary’s County we knew a woman whose family owned the printing plant in question.) My first memory images contain details that my mother said must have come from our time in Cincinnati. When I was twenty or so my friend Tim H. called from Cincinnati where he was finishing a year of music school and said that his 1964 blue Dodge Dart that I admired could belong to me if I came to get it; otherwise he was going to leave it in Cincinnati. Brenda dropped me off early the next morning in front of what is now Bert’s Diner in Mechanicsville and I hitchhiked to Cincinnati in ten hours, as long as it takes to drive there; had dinner with Tim and drove the Dart home. It was a push-button automatic. I turned on the lights as the sun went down and all the little lights on the dashboard lit up (P,R,N,D,L) and I felt like a man that fortune had favored.

 

We stayed at a county campground on the edge of the city, Wilton Woods. It was the weekend and the place was packed with local families. They all had campfires despite the fact that the temperatures were sweltering and the humidity was near 100 percent. On Sunday just about the whole camp emptied out and it became a nice place to stay—we could hear the birds, for one thing.

Took a trip into the city. The downtown area was pretty much deserted, like a lot of downtowns on a Sunday. And it was so hot and humid that only the panhandlers were out with us. There are a lot of panhandlers in Cincinnati and they all seem to follow the same protocol—standing still in the median at an intersection holding a small hand-lettered sign. No spoken entreaties, no going from car to car. Maybe the city enforces some code of conduct.

 

We spent several hours in Spring Grove cemetery, one of the beautifully-landscaped, park-like cemeteries of the mid 1800s that the major cities treated as important public spaces. Cincinnati was something like the 6^th largest city then and a manufacturing powerhouse, and the markers of the cemetery are gigantic works of stone, many over twenty feet high—obelisks, angels, trees carved out of stone, a sphinx here, a life-size statue of the decedent there. Cincinnati is considered the first truly American city—the first one to arise after the Revolutionary War and the first inland city in the country. The cemetery is Cincinnati at the height of its wealth and status. It is still an appealing city, a little barren in the downtown area but rich with architectural ornament. It is like a smaller-scale Pittsburgh, with two rivers instead of three, and the remains of an industrial past.

 

 

Jul 24 to July 27, 2016—Ann Arbor, Michigan

Ann Arbor is a nice little city. I had always heard as much and the rumors are true. We got there just at the end of the annual art show that completely takes over the downtown area—something like 4,000 exhibitors and a couple of miles of city roadway closed to vehicle traffic. We saw none of the displays, only the weary artists taking down their display booths.

 

We came so that Brenda could hook up with some friends from Augusta music camp and join in their wekly Cajun jam. The evening of our arrival her friends Terri and Patrick took us on a walking tour of the city which is reminiscent of low-rise San Francisco, a mix of Victorian-trimmed residences and small businesses, restaurants. We had dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant and dropped in on an Irish music jam at a local bar. The next day we rejoined them for rafting on the Huron River. This is not whitewater rafting but leisurely tube rafting down a series of cascades built on a 19^th century mill race. It was very pleasant, shooting through narrow openings and drifting downriver. The trip lasts about 20 minutes then you pick up your tube, hike back, and do it again. We went three times. Later, in the evening, we were joined by a dozen Cajun music aficionados for a jam at a picnic area along the Huron River. The band was strong and passers-by stopped to applaud or dance. The University of Michigan sculling team was holding tryouts on the river, youngsters were  jumping off the railroad bridge in spite of posted warnings, lots of runners and dog walkers along the river path — it was a picture-perfect scene in the Kerrytown neighborhood of Ann Arbor.

 

The next day we went to the Henry Ford Museum which was near our campsite in Ypsilanti. Early in our travels, in Chambersburg PA, we had gotten together with my old mate Glenn and his family. Glenn joined us for the museum tour as he was in Detroit where he has business interests. Henry Ford went around the country buying examples of American life from all periods, styles and regions with the intention of starting a comprehensive museum of such things—furniture, machine tools, locomotives, farm equipment, musical instruments. The museum notably contains the rocking chair that Abe Lincoln was sitting in when he was killed at Ford’s (no relation) theater; covered in blood it was and an unsettling object to behold. I was similarly disturbed by the presence of  JFK’s limo from Dallas. I’m not the most squeamish of people, but something seems not right about exhibiting these things. Also in the museum is the bus in which Rosa Parks took her stand.

Henry Ford also collected buildings to represent the American experience and had them relocated to this site and reassembled as a small town called Dearfield. Noah Webster’s house, a residence of Robert Frost’s, a Cotswald cottage for some reason, most of Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, and dozens of other structures including a 19^th c plantation house from St Mary’s county (it used to be on the grounds of the naval air station in Lexington Park). I would have liked to have seen this village and the museum as it was when Henry Ford, a renowned racist who died in 1947, was supervising it. While the museum and the village tell an inclusive story now I’ll wager that Ford was trying to shape the historical narrative in a different way when he was curating the collection.

For two dollars you can make a plastic, injection-molded figurine of the Ford man himself. I could not pass up the opportunity. Here he is on the hood of my Toyota.

That evening all our friends from the area, Terri, Patrick and Glenn, came to our campsite. The Cajun musicians played music and Glenn and I discussed and disputed and drank wine until late. We had hosted our first party during our travels and it seemed to be a success!

July 18 to July 24, 2016—Flight out of Canada

This week was a series of long drives and short stays. We had an appointment in Ann Arbor and a lot of ground to cover to get there in time. First was a fiasco in Quebec—I had directions to a campground that sounded good, just north of the city, but had not made a reservation. When we got there they had a site to rent but didn’t allow pets. They gave us a number for a place that allowed pets but had no vacancies. That place suggested another campground which allowed pets, had vacancy, but that’s as far as my French and their English went and I couldn’t understand their directions. We did eventually find it—a strange rv park filled almost entirely with year-round quebecois residents. They had their trailers tricked out with lights and statuary, everyone seemed to have a golf cart, also tricked out, and the evening air was filled with the scent of lighter fluid. At sunset the owner of the campground, Jack, drove a golfcart through his domain with another man in the passenger seat playing various tunes on a flugelhorn, including The Lonely Bull—an endearing tradition. I heard thunder at 6 am the next morning and we beat a hasty retreat out of there just ahead of a downpour. Found a nice old campground four hours south, run by a pretty French girl. When she opened the door to the campground office the strong wind blew her dress up just about over her head—I  saw England, I saw France. The camp had a nice pool, a washing machine, a billiard table, and we had a relaxing stay for one day.

 

Charleston Lake Provincial Park was next, in the country. We stayed three days and it was a great place. Many hiking trails, each with a theme and a little booklet explaining things of interest. There was a geology trail that explained the unusual land forms of the area, a tree trail and a wildlife trail. The park was located in a transition zone in many different ways—the northernmost stand of red cedars and hemlocks, the easternmost habitat of some flowering plants, and one of the only places where the sandstone layer on top of the Canadian shield is intact and exposed, making for noteworthy geological formations. I liked this park a lot.

We had been without internet connection at this point for almost a week, gaining access for a few minutes at this restaurant.

 

We declined to dine there but bought enough odds and ends to justify poaching their wi-fi for a while.

 

A Toronto city park I had reserved for one night. A Toronto native I had talked to at Charleston Lake told me this park was in a rough neighborhood right in Toronto. I was disappointed to find that it was a normal park far-removed from the city. I had looked forward to an inner-city campground.

Then we stayed three nights in a marina campground on Lake Erie. I booked this place over the phone without knowing anything about it; they did not have a website and I had been avoiding places without websites. It turned out to be a really pleasant place—a shady, slightly elevated spot that caught a nice breeze all day and night. The little town of Port Burwell was a short walk away and we went into each night for a drink or an ice cream. The owner of a restaurant took a fancy to us and bought us drinks at the end of each evening after he closed the restaurant at 8PM. The whole town shut down then. It was one of those towns that used to see a lot of summer business from people coming to the lake but time has passed it by and half the town is shuttered or for sale as vacationers seek some higher thrill. The restaurateur who befriended us was loopy, with ideas about who runs the world and who ought to, an odd obsession with Churchill’s son having been captured by the Germans in WWII, and a disturbing fascination with the Hutu slaughter of the Tutsi , but he laughed at my jokes and bought the drinks, so I didn’t mind if he was a little batshit. He was the only Canadian we met who used the interjection “eh?” with great frequency, at the ends of sentences, eh.

Crossed back into the good old USA over the Ambassador Bridge at Windsor/Detroit. Trailers like ours are diverted into a separate area with tractor trailers and the inspection went fairly easily. I know better than to try and make a joke during a border interrogation in these perilous times but it seems to me that the interrogators could lighten up a bit, make a fella feel welcome back to the land of his birth after such a long absence. Took a short drive through Detroit before heading to Ann Arbor; nothing like it in Canada, or probably the US for that matter..

Like I said, the week was something of a forced march through an increasingly hotter and more humid environment.