Tuesday 11/1 Virginia
Greetings from Atkins, Virginia. About 50 miles from the Tennessee line, I think. It was a beautiful travel day. Great weather, smooth traffic. We headed out of Elmwood Park, NJ, at 6:59 am, right on schedule. It was so good of Marty and Joanne to have us.
I was still thinking, this morning, about our experience in the Village last night. It really was a scary time for 40 or 50 minutes. Being in a huge sea of people, all crushing together...you could feel a palpable vibe that people were really tense, and when you looked each other in the eye, it was really apparent. If anyone had chosen to freak out, the whole situation would have gotten really out of hand in very short order, and people would have been hurt, or worse. Hope not to go through that again. Anyway, a beautiful sunny day to drive. Garden State to 78 West, into Pennsylvania. Picked up 81 South, through a few miles of Maryland, a few more of West Virginia, then south to Atkins, with a side trip to Lynchburg(!?!). We were making really good time, so we were looking for a good side stop. As we went through the Delaware Gap, Jersey into Pennsylvania, I noticed a traffic jam going the other way. I try not to speak aloud of such things, fearful of drawing such luck to myself, but had to exclaim aloud after it was still a parking lot over there TWENTY MILES LATER. Yikes! The Crayola Experience and Factory presented itself at this point, but it was still early, and the map indicated that we would pass close by to Hershey, PA, so....
We stopped in Hershey. This was amazing. You really can smell the chocolate as you approach the town. It seems like the Chocolate stuff takes up literally half the town. There is a big theme park, stadium, factory tour and experience, hockey rink...amazing. We went in and took the tour, which was, to my disappointment, not of a factory at all, but a faux-Disney thing. You get in a little car, and ride through an exhibit that shows how the chocolate is made. Not a real cocoa nut in the place. They even pump in chocolate smell. What the hell, it was all free, not very crowded, and had a Hershey-themed mall of candy stores, apparrel, etc. Clinically clean and expensive. Total time spent, 30 minutes. (Our photos didn't come out there) Actually, one did, speaking of clean:
I'm afraid we had a bad photo day. We'll make up for it tomorrow...
We headed south from Hershey determined to make the other side of Roanoke, VA (home town of Cary Hazelgrove and Andy Bullington) by nighttime. It seemed as though we had mountains on either side of us the whole way down the Appalachian spine. When it became apparent that we were ahead of schedule, we decided to take a side trip to Lynchburg, VA, where I had lived with my family from 1959-1963, age 1-5. The drive through the mountains on 501 down to Lynchburg was really curvy, up in the mountains, and beautiful.
My dad was a young executive at GE there, and we lived in a rental while he and mom built their first house, a modest brick, with carport and picture window view of the Blue Ridge mountains. This is the house now:
The cliches are true. This is the second childhood home that I've revisited years later, and, yes, everything seems so small... This house had no trees or vegetation to speak of when I last lived there, uh, oh yeah, FORTY-TWO years ago. Lynchburg was memorable to me for a few things. For me, that long ago period in my life is a very gauzy memory, but some things really stick out. My parents were northeastern liberals in a very racist, backward (to us anyway) place. My parents had black friends and socialized with them. I remember running home crying because a friend called me "nigger-lover". I vividly remember my mom's friend leaving her kids to play at our house. A friend of mine ran up to me and said "There's a colored girl in your carport!". These were terms that I was not familiar with, carport, and colored.
"What?", I said.
"There's a colored girl in your carport!"
Then, of course, I had a vision in my head of a young girl with rainbow colored stripes all over her.
I can still see that vision.
We ran to the carport, and there she was. I turned to the idiot and said "That's no colored girl, that's just Cece...". I was so disappointed.
True story.
The other true story is that, on my fifth birthday, the priest at our Episcopal church, and the head deacon, came to our house to ask us not to come to the church anymore because we insisted on socializing with colored people..
Needless to say, my family was not cut out for Lynchburg life in the late fifties/early sixties. Dad would get a job with Xerox in Rochester, NY. We would move there in the autumn of '63, and while mom and dad were in Rochester getting us a house, I was in Elmira, NY. On November 22, I was there alone with my grandmother, who ran out into the yard and wept to her 5 year old grandson that the president had been shot, because I was the only other person at home with her....
Lynchburg left a nasty taste in our mouths, so it was cathartic to return...The other cool thing about our Lynchburg visit was that I got to use the cool GPS and software that Marty gave me yesterday. We drove to the center of Lynchburg, fired up the laptop, plugged in the GPS/USB unit. The program found us on the map, I entered the address of my childhood home, and the computer gave me directions from the spot where we sat.
Amazing.
Now I'm trying to book us a nice room in Memphis for the next two nights. I thought I'd be a hotshot and book my hotels online from the road. Now it seems like every nice hotel in Memphis is booked the next two nights.
I'll let you know how we make out....
Thoughts and observations:
A hungry traveller on the Interstate will not want for pancakes or waffles...
James Dobson and Focus on the Family are scary, and way too popular...
Gas prices: (regular unleaded)
Bethel PA- 2.16
Lexington VA- 2.29
Lynchburg- 2.05
Cigarettes (not that I care anymore. Next Tuesday is my 1 year anniversary, no smoking. 30 years, 2 packs a day.):
Bethel, PA- 4.11
Lynchburg- Generics- 2.15
Marlboros- 3.19
Don't touch that dial!
Memphis in the meantime...
M & L
I was still thinking, this morning, about our experience in the Village last night. It really was a scary time for 40 or 50 minutes. Being in a huge sea of people, all crushing together...you could feel a palpable vibe that people were really tense, and when you looked each other in the eye, it was really apparent. If anyone had chosen to freak out, the whole situation would have gotten really out of hand in very short order, and people would have been hurt, or worse. Hope not to go through that again. Anyway, a beautiful sunny day to drive. Garden State to 78 West, into Pennsylvania. Picked up 81 South, through a few miles of Maryland, a few more of West Virginia, then south to Atkins, with a side trip to Lynchburg(!?!). We were making really good time, so we were looking for a good side stop. As we went through the Delaware Gap, Jersey into Pennsylvania, I noticed a traffic jam going the other way. I try not to speak aloud of such things, fearful of drawing such luck to myself, but had to exclaim aloud after it was still a parking lot over there TWENTY MILES LATER. Yikes! The Crayola Experience and Factory presented itself at this point, but it was still early, and the map indicated that we would pass close by to Hershey, PA, so....
We stopped in Hershey. This was amazing. You really can smell the chocolate as you approach the town. It seems like the Chocolate stuff takes up literally half the town. There is a big theme park, stadium, factory tour and experience, hockey rink...amazing. We went in and took the tour, which was, to my disappointment, not of a factory at all, but a faux-Disney thing. You get in a little car, and ride through an exhibit that shows how the chocolate is made. Not a real cocoa nut in the place. They even pump in chocolate smell. What the hell, it was all free, not very crowded, and had a Hershey-themed mall of candy stores, apparrel, etc. Clinically clean and expensive. Total time spent, 30 minutes. (Our photos didn't come out there) Actually, one did, speaking of clean:
I'm afraid we had a bad photo day. We'll make up for it tomorrow...
We headed south from Hershey determined to make the other side of Roanoke, VA (home town of Cary Hazelgrove and Andy Bullington) by nighttime. It seemed as though we had mountains on either side of us the whole way down the Appalachian spine. When it became apparent that we were ahead of schedule, we decided to take a side trip to Lynchburg, VA, where I had lived with my family from 1959-1963, age 1-5. The drive through the mountains on 501 down to Lynchburg was really curvy, up in the mountains, and beautiful.
My dad was a young executive at GE there, and we lived in a rental while he and mom built their first house, a modest brick, with carport and picture window view of the Blue Ridge mountains. This is the house now:
The cliches are true. This is the second childhood home that I've revisited years later, and, yes, everything seems so small... This house had no trees or vegetation to speak of when I last lived there, uh, oh yeah, FORTY-TWO years ago. Lynchburg was memorable to me for a few things. For me, that long ago period in my life is a very gauzy memory, but some things really stick out. My parents were northeastern liberals in a very racist, backward (to us anyway) place. My parents had black friends and socialized with them. I remember running home crying because a friend called me "nigger-lover". I vividly remember my mom's friend leaving her kids to play at our house. A friend of mine ran up to me and said "There's a colored girl in your carport!". These were terms that I was not familiar with, carport, and colored.
"What?", I said.
"There's a colored girl in your carport!"
Then, of course, I had a vision in my head of a young girl with rainbow colored stripes all over her.
I can still see that vision.
We ran to the carport, and there she was. I turned to the idiot and said "That's no colored girl, that's just Cece...". I was so disappointed.
True story.
The other true story is that, on my fifth birthday, the priest at our Episcopal church, and the head deacon, came to our house to ask us not to come to the church anymore because we insisted on socializing with colored people..
Needless to say, my family was not cut out for Lynchburg life in the late fifties/early sixties. Dad would get a job with Xerox in Rochester, NY. We would move there in the autumn of '63, and while mom and dad were in Rochester getting us a house, I was in Elmira, NY. On November 22, I was there alone with my grandmother, who ran out into the yard and wept to her 5 year old grandson that the president had been shot, because I was the only other person at home with her....
Lynchburg left a nasty taste in our mouths, so it was cathartic to return...The other cool thing about our Lynchburg visit was that I got to use the cool GPS and software that Marty gave me yesterday. We drove to the center of Lynchburg, fired up the laptop, plugged in the GPS/USB unit. The program found us on the map, I entered the address of my childhood home, and the computer gave me directions from the spot where we sat.
Amazing.
Now I'm trying to book us a nice room in Memphis for the next two nights. I thought I'd be a hotshot and book my hotels online from the road. Now it seems like every nice hotel in Memphis is booked the next two nights.
I'll let you know how we make out....
Thoughts and observations:
A hungry traveller on the Interstate will not want for pancakes or waffles...
James Dobson and Focus on the Family are scary, and way too popular...
Gas prices: (regular unleaded)
Bethel PA- 2.16
Lexington VA- 2.29
Lynchburg- 2.05
Cigarettes (not that I care anymore. Next Tuesday is my 1 year anniversary, no smoking. 30 years, 2 packs a day.):
Bethel, PA- 4.11
Lynchburg- Generics- 2.15
Marlboros- 3.19
Don't touch that dial!
Memphis in the meantime...
M & L
posted by Michael & Li at 7:34 PM
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