A Caravan Tour of the United States - Part Ten

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A Day at the Beach

Lake Sebago State Park, Maine

A few days ago we went to see The Dark Knight. I was impressed by the performance of the actor who played The Joker. I asked Mrs Phred yesterday who the actor was, expecting great things in the future. She tells me that he died of an overdose before the movie was released. That got me thinking about my old room-mate, Jim Morrison, and other people born in 1943: me, Janis Joplin, Keith Richards, Joni Mitchell and Mick Jagger to name a few. Some have managed to handle life fairly well, others failed along the way. I think Keith Richards possibly had the best quote of that generation: 'I've never had a problem with drugs. I've had problems with the police.'

We spent a relaxing day here on the beach. We dragged our lawn chairs down to the sand, under a shady elm, and watched the kids and families play and swim. We read for about six hours in the shade.

Phred on the beach under a tree

A little boy asked me if I had a boat or a jet ski. I told him no, but that I had a bicycle. He stared at me dubiously and told me that I was too old to ride a bicycle. This is a popular family park in the summer, full of tents, hammocks and children.

Today we head south 200 miles to find a base camp between Boston and Cape Cod. The water should get warmer as we move south.

Non-Rhoticity

Boston, Massachusetts

The traditional Boston accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the phoneme [r] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant, as in some types of British English. Thus, there is no [r] in words like park [pahk], car [kah], and Harvard [hahvad]1.

The train into Boston takes us about 55 minutes. On both the departure and return we get on board 30 seconds before the train leaves the station. We also purchased a pair of tickets on a Boston sight-seeing trolley, but the first 45 minutes all the trolleys are full so we decide to walk.

Boston Commons

We hoof it to the town center. While we are staring at a map, a nice lady stops and gives us a tip on a local basement restaurant. I have chicken farfalle. Mrs Phred has gazpacho soup with a big blob of goat cheese and bread side dish.

We wander though the Boston Commons, past the State House, up to Beacon Hill, back through the Commons, to the theatre district and then into Chinatown.

We decide to walk some more and do the harbor, the aquarium and the market. All told we walk five hours, maybe ten miles. My heel hurts the whole time. Strangely, this morning it hurts less than it has since we were in Colorado, two months back.

We want to see Harvard. I received a letter of acceptance there in 1962. My father was a house-painter and didn't see how he could swing the cost. My life would have been completely different. No Air force or Vietnam. No Mrs Phred. No son or grandchildren. Maybe I would be running for President now? Maybe not.

Irradiated Chicken vs Chlorinated Chicken

Cape Cod, Massachusetts

Cape Cod has about 80 miles of "National Seashore". It is undeveloped white sand beach and sand dunes. It cost $15 for a vehicle pass, unless you are old like us, then it's free.

Beach at Cape Cod

The trip over to Cape Cod involves a lot of traffic in the summer. We saw one traffic jam of stopped cars backed up for 15 miles trying to leave the peninsula.

We drove out to Provincetown at the end of the Cape. The small seashore town is jammed with cars and pedestrians in mid-summer. The only thing not crowded in Provincetown is the barber shop. I get a haircut and we have lunch and do a little shopping.

The beaches are lovely and the water is clear and cool. It all reminds me of Jaws which was filmed on one of the nearby beaches in a summer setting.

The pungent odor drifting out of a local shop tells me that the local police are not much into drug law enforcement.

Obama has been over in Europe discussing chlorinated chicken in Berlin with crowds of 200,000. Europe bans our chicken because we disinfect the carcasses in a chlorine bath. This running for President stuff is more complicated than I first thought. I've always been fond of the concept of nuclear irradiation of foodstuffs to kill germs like salmonella. I think they might go for that in Europe. Wrap them in plastic and nuke 'em. That should result in a shelf life of 100 years or more. I know how to say nuclear without sounding like a Texas hick. This is also a neat solution for what to do with high-level radioactive waste. A glowing chicken in every pot.

There are a number of motor homes parked right on the beach at the Cape Cod National Seashore. But for the traffic, we'd be tempted to drive here and camp for several days. Maybe next time, in a different season.

Not the Battle Hymn of the Republic

Providence, Rhode Island

John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave

John Brown's body lies a-mold'ring in the grave

His soul goes marching on

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

Glory, Glory! Hallelujah!

His soul is marching on....

One of my personal heroes is the abolitionist, John Brown. John believed that slavery was wrong. John thought that the American pacifist abolitionist movement of his time lacked the conviction of action. He demonstrated the sincerity of his beliefs in 1856 by murdering five pro-slavery men in the Pottawatomie Massacre. His raid on the Harper's Ferry Arsenal in Virginia in 1859 to foment a slave rebellion is often credited with igniting the American Civil War. The Harper's Ferry rebellion was meant to arm the slaves. Robert E
Lee was called upon to quash this rebellion, led, as it was, by outside agitators.

So when we saw a chance to visit the John Brown House in Providence today, I became confused about the opulence of the Georgian mansion, but plunked down the admission fee. "Is this THE John Brown, or some other John Brown" I ask the guide. The guide explains that this John Brown is a very fat robber baron Providence Yankee slaver who once owned half of Rhode Island and established the nearby Brown University. My guide doesn't mention it, but this John Brown was the first person convicted under the Federal Slave Trade Act of 1794.

This John Brown got rich on the three-corner trade: sugar and molasses from the West Indies to New England, rum from Providence to Africa and slaves from Africa to the West Indies. On one especially unprofitable trip over 100 of his cargo perished from disease and starvation and the 30 survivors brought a poor price due to ill health.

John had a piggery to eat the dregs from his rum distillery. Apolitical, he drew 'first blood' in the American revolutionary war. In 1792, he hired mercenaries to burn one of King George's revenue cutters. The cutter had the effrontery to attempt to collect taxes on one of his ships that was bringing in molasses.

So, we wandered around Providence and then found a really nice place for lunch. Brown University is a lovely 'ivy league' school in Providence.

cooked fish, spinach and potatoes on a plate

A Four-Museum Day

Boston, Massachusetts

Museum: A place to muse? Archaic. To gaze meditatively or wonderingly.

We take the train in to Boston and buy day passes on the subway. Our first stop is the Harvard campus to visit the Harvard Museum of Natural History and the Peabody Museum. I later surprise Mrs Phred with a stop at the Semitic Museum in the Divinity School.

Harvard Natural History Museum

We've been told that the 'glass flowers' collection in the Natural History Museum is unique. Perhaps it is, but to me they look just like regular flowers so I leave Mrs Phred to muse there and move on to look at the insects, minerals and old bones. She later informs me that that is exactly the point; the precision and attention to detail is amazing. I still liked the bugs better.

The Peabody has a definite Indiana Jones flavor. There are things here from expeditions to remote places in South America and the Middle East back in the 1930s. The Semitic Museum has exhibits of Ancient Cyprus, Nuzi and the Hurrians and The Houses of Ancient Israel during the Iron Age as well as other small collections.

We have lunch and get back on the subway to visit the John F Kennedy Presidential Library. The library building is impressive. It's on the Boston Harbor, on the flight path for incoming aircraft to Boston International. It's on the campus of the University of Massachusetts.

We've been collecting Presidential Libraries over the past several years, so this visit is mandatory. I like the sail boat display. The sail boat was given to JFK on his 15th birthday by his father, Joe Kennedy, Ambassador to Great Britain. JFK sailed this little boat as long as he lived. JFK visited Berlin, Moscow and London in 1938-39. They have a movie, as you enter the museum, about his life. It's interesting to see him with his eight siblings, smacking a tennis ball at age 20, driving a PT boat in the Solomon Islands or running for his first elected office. He reminds you of Obama in some ways (aside from being born rich and white).

Sailboat at JFK Presidential Library

Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?

Newport, Rhode Island

You probably saw the commercial back in the 1980s. A man riding in a Rolls Royce pulls some mustard from the glove box and spreads it on some roast beef. Another Rolls pulls alongside and the other guy says, "Pardon me, would you have any Grey Poupon?"

Last week a man rolled down his window in Salt Lake City and asked another driver the question. In response, the second driver pulled out a large gun and replied, "Here's your %$*#@ Grey Poupon, you @#%%#@. Now roll up your %$*#@ window. Later the second driver was charged with assault (defined as a threat to commit bodily harm).

So we drove to Newport to see the famous mansions. These were built during America's gilded age, before income taxes, when being a millionaire used to mean something.

Mansions in Newport, Rhode Island

We see a summer cottage called 'The Breakers'. It was built by Cornelius Vanderbilt and contains 138,000 square feet. The rooms are extremely ornate and were built in France and shipped over.

Cornelius was an interesting guy who borrowed his first $100 from his mother to buy a rowing-boat. He rowed people from Staten Island to Manhattan. He ended up with hundreds of steamships and dozens of rail roads. His net worth was about $100 million when he died. Inflation adjusted, that's equivalent to $167 billion in current dollars, considerably more than the net worth of Bill Gates, who currently is only number 20 in the list of wealthy people.

It was very fashionable to have a 'cottage' here in Newport. The first to build were rich southern plantation owners, followed by Yankees who became rich in the Old China trade and, eventually, the Vanderbilts and Astors.

I missed the street with the big mansions and eventually got rained out just when I figured out where they were. The little cottages here were built on some of the surrounding streets. Richie Havens showed up again last week for the annual Newport Folk festival. The Festival was started in 1959 by Theodore Bikel. Bob Dylan performed here in 1965 with a electric band and was widely booed by the purists. Havens went on to play a 3½ hour set at Woodstock with seven encores.

Head shops, Vegetarians and Ageing Hippies

Asheville, North Carolina

We pushed the RV hard and made the 1,000 miles from Boston to Asheville in 20 hours of driving time. We stopped to sleep in a vacant lot on the Pennsylvania/Maryland border and cooked tortilla-crusted taplia for dinner. It was hot, so we cranked up the generator and ran the air-conditioner all night. Usually we only use the generator 15 minutes at a time to make coffee while running down the road. I change its oil once a year, usually back in Tampa in the Winter.

We are perched on a mountaintop near Asheville with a great view.

Today we went into Asheville to look around. We saw a good many disreputable old hippies on the streets. Lots of street musicians, head shops, tattoo parlors and vegetarian cafés. The Arts scene is very active here, with many scheduled plays, music festivals and film festivals. If you want to buy a bong, some zig-zag papers, a smoking glass pipe or a Grateful Dead sticker, this is the place to be. The downtown is a great place to stroll; interesting architecture, shops and restaurants.

Karma shop in Asheville

After a while, we drove to Hendersonville, to look at the housing. We also looked at Weaverville, just down the road. Asheville has a population of 70,000. Hendersonville is about 20,000. Weaverville has 3,000. We liked Weaverville the best.

I'd like to look at some of he high elevation places close by. 102 miles up the Blue Ridge Parkway you run into Beech Mountain and Grandfather Mountain, both with 5,000 foot elevations, both very cool in the summertime.

The Town That Couldn't Grow

Marshall, North Carolina

We set the GPS to home in on Marshall. As we get close, we finally see an auto parts store and stop in to get a new set of tow wires. The last set got chewed up somehow on the trip from Boston.

The kid inside offers to build a new set of wires. I notice an overflowing ashtray and ask if they can still smoke inside. They say yes so I light up. I begin to feel uncomfortable about this and go outside. Two of the staff run out holding an ashtray and tell me to please come inside to smoke like everybody else. They tell me about the fellow down to road whose dog likes to chew wires. Every time they get a new truck, the dog comes out and chews up all the wires he can reach. He only does it once per truck. They shake their heads and say there is no understanding how dogs think.

The road down to the Marshall 'hollow' is through a long ravine. The guys at the auto parts store tell me it's in the Guinness Book of Records as the only town completely unable to expand because of the hill on one side and the river on the other.

Narrow road in Marshall

We have coffee in a little coffee shop. They have a bluegrass band coming in that evening and an Open Mic the next day. They have books to read. I pick up one called Southern Dogs and Their Owners and browse though it. A man wearing an 'Alabama' T-shit with no sleeves is the other customer.

Sitting on the dock on the Bay

Annapolis, Maryland

We drove five hours to get here. Mrs Phred is catching a train to New York City to see the US Tennis Open. I'm staying here by myself to watch the dog. Andy left his computer for me to use. My computer died again, so it may be awhile before I blog again. Stop me before I blog again.

Annapolis is a lovely little city on the Chesapeake Bay. Lots of old town homes and row houses. We're staying with friends that have a house two blocks from downtown. I do a walking survey this morning and see many pubs and restaurants. One place, established in 1750 offers a variety of afternoon teas and Shepard's pies. We see the lower class men from the US Naval Academy walking the streets on Sunday, in their whites. The shoulder boards of the lower class plebs are familiar. I wore the same ones in Officer Training School in the Air Force.

Sail boats in Annapolis bay

My knee hurts when I drive more than 30 minutes. They don't make enough legroom in today's little cars. When our Dalmatian got old, we gave him massive doses of glucosamine to help his joints. Eventually we had to put him down but the glucosamine seemed to help for awhile. I think I'll try some myself.

I Never Sausage a Thing

Tampa, Florida

In Fresno, yesterday, a burglar entered a house containing two sleeping men. The 'perp' rubbed spice on the body of one 'vic' and then slapped the other awake with an eight-inch sausage. The perp then bolted though the bedroom window, dressed only in boxer shorts. The burglar left behind his trousers, wallet and identification. The 'weapon' was discarded and then eaten by the victim's dog before the police arrived to take the perp into custody. Local Fresno police characterized the incident as 'slightly odd'.

The 700-mile ride down I-95 was very bumpy in places. Our closet rod collapsed from the stress and dumped our clothes on the closet floor. I fashioned a new rod from a long aluminium cleaning brush handle with a hacksaw. The whole repair took less than ten minutes. The new rod seems to be a much better quality metal.

Hope you enjoyed the trip. I know we did. It's almost time to do it again.

A  caravan and a home

Go to the Post flickr account for larger resolutions of the photos here.

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1For more about the Boston accent, see Jordan's excellent Entry on the New England Dialect. Ed.

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