CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE: ROAD TRIP!!!!

CHAPTER SEVENTY NINE: ROAD TRIP!!!!

On Sunday the 19^th we went on a road trip: Destination – Land of Kisses, Hershey, Pennsylvania. The trip was planned around a visit to the LGL guru, Dr. Thomas Loughran, and his research assistant, Kendall Thomas Baab, on May 21 at the Penn State Hershey Medical Center. But what’s the point of driving straight through to Hershey from the Atlantic Yacht Basin and then returning right after the visit? Where’s the adventure in that? Besides, we have grown so used to our boat travel pace of 50 to 80 miles a day, it is hard to wrap our minds around moving 300 miles in just one twenty four hour period, air travel excepted. When we travel on water or on land now, we want to SEE things – bald eagles, pelicans, turtles, wildflowers, waterside and roadside attractions. And boy, did we see things on the road to Hershey.

Let’s start with the eastern shore of Virginia on the Chesapeake Bay. Did you know that this area’s claim to fame is not only the inhumane Perdue and Tyson chicken CAFOs (Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations), but more importantly – and hopefully more humanely – the aquaculture farming of clams and oysters. We had stopped at the Virginia Visitor Center and picked up a pamphlet on the highlights of the eastern shore. The one that caught my attention was the aquaculture for clams at a place called Willis Wharf. The Admiral was not keen at first on going off the roadway for this side trip. But I convinced him that the side trip was short and that you don’t see how clams are grown every day.

We followed the signs to Willis Wharf. After we passed through the one half block town, we headed toward the water. I spotted a guy walking among a bunch of large open cylindrical buckets or canisters, spraying water into the contents of each one from a hose. The Admiral suggested we ask him where they grow the clams. I walked up to Jim Kelly and asked him if he knew where the clam aquaculture was, and he pointed down into one of the buckets. He said “Do you see them?” I said I thought I did, as I peered down into what looked like a silty, muddy, sandy goop, where I thought clams were hiding. He said “Do you really see them?” I said I wasn’t sure. He said: “You’re looking at more than a million clams. That’s all clams in there, no dirt whatsoever, pure clams, each one three microns large.” I was gobsmacked. How could millions of clams be inside one oversized white bucket? Mr. Kelly explained that he and other clam growers (the Ballards and the Tuckers, who had been farming clams for a century) got together with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and over the years, through trial and error, figured out how to grow millions of clams in the smallest space possible. From the buckets, these microscopic clams go to a safe bed in the water and are fed until they are the size of a thumb nail, then they are transferred to another grower (usually), who continues to feed them until they are ready for harvesting for market. The variety of clams that Mr. Kelly was growing were little necks. I asked about the cherrystone clams, and he said that the name is just a marketing ploy, a very successful one. One of the long-time clam families, perhaps the Ballards, lived and clammed on Cherrystone Creek, so they started marketing their clams as cherrystone clams. They’re the same kind of clams as the little necks; they just started growing in a specific creek. And the growers named their business, and the clams themselves, after the creek. After getting the impromptu Clams 101 lecture from Mr. Kelly, I googled him and found a Dr. Jim Kelly, who had worked for the Maryland Department of Agriculture in 2002 and gave a seminar on “Biosecurity in Aquaculture: What you need to Know”. Coincidence? I think not. Thank you, Dr. Jim Kelly, for introducing the Admiral and me to your clam aquaculture. I still can’t get over it – millions of clams inside one bucket.

We wanted to go to the ocean, so we headed to Ocean City, Maryland, the favorite summer spot of families within a 300 mile radius. My sisters and their families spent many summer vacations enjoying all that Ocean City has to offer. It was kind of a foggy day, but a Sunday, so there were plenty of visitors from Washington, D.C. still strolling on the boardwalk. I could see the Ferris wheel at the very end of the boardwalk. But around 9^th Street, where we boarded the wide wooden walkway, there were kites, kites, kites – and not surprisingly, a Mother Kite Store directly across from the high flying kites. The gray day was immediately obliterated by the profusion of colors carried by these kites of all shapes and sizes. Most people were flying multiple kites on one string – small, medium and the humongous dragon kite above them all. I spotted a candy store, the ubiquitous Candy Kitchen, and we loaded up on chewy Runts and banana and chocolate pieces of taffy. A road trip with candy to munch on is even sweeter. The beach in Ocean City is wide and long, with nary a piece of litter. The waves were crashing down – surfer alert!

Despite the many attractions of Ocean City, we decided to press on. We drove along the ocean and within a half hour, or so it seemed, we came to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. Ah, Rehoboth, so dear to my heart for the many gatherings I have shared with the Bethlehem Babes at the B and B, At Melissa’s. The Admiral has a strong aversion to B and B’s, however, an irrational one, in my opinion. But we accept each other’s quirks for the most part. He doesn’t like B and B’s. I don’t like tunnels (actually, I fear tunnels as they arouse a strong claustrophobia). The upshot for this evening was that we went in search of another place to stay and found the Sands Hotel, right on the Rehoboth Beach boardwalk. This boardwalk was nearly empty. There were a few walkers. Our hotel room had a balcony, and you could step out on it to watch the ocean. The waves were powerful, bigger than I had ever seen during my October BB reunions. The hotel was definitely a little funky, but basically clean, and the mattresses were firm. We walked around looking for a place to dine. I saw Thrasher’s French Fries. I saw the place where I bought all my Fresh Produce Tees. I saw the jewelry stores and the other specialty stores where the BBs spent some, but not all, of our hard-earned money. The Admiral was not in a “fine dining” mood, so we looked for, oh for lack of a better phrase, a hole in the wall. Nicola’s Pizza fit the bill. It was crammed with locals and tourists who wanted their pizza or their spaghetti or the Nic-O-Bolis. Aha! What is that? Well, if you have ever heard of the Stromboli invented by Romano’s in Essington, PA, then you know that Nicola has created a knock-off of the Stromboli. The Admiral had to try it, his Philadelphia taste buds salivating at the aroma of sausage and cheese and tomato sauce. His Nic-O-Boli had all of that and a lot more – including anchovies. Eeeww! I had a meatball sandwich, with two meat balls, each the size of a beach ball. Next time it would be a good idea to heat the meat balls. I’m just saying….

It was odd to be in Rehoboth without my BBs, but staying at a different place and eating at a very different place made the experience stand on its own feet. Still, as we left Rehoboth the next morning, once again we passed all the shops where my BBs and I had contributed so mightily to the local economy. I remembered our great discussions, Melissa’s cookies, our laughter, our walks along the beach, our fantastic meals, and our lasting friendships. Rehoboth will always be special, both for my BB memories and for the new memories the Admiral and I fashioned in our one night sleepover.

As we left Rehoboth, we returned to our blue roads and headed toward the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal, more specifically toward a bridge to cross it. Some day, perhaps this summer, we want to take Slow Motion through this canal on our way north into the Hudson River Valley. It looked lovely from the bridge we crossed (Summit Bridge, US 301, Delaware). We shall return. After crossing the bridge, we drove past more chicken CAFOs and fields of grain. Delaware seemed much larger than depicted on the maps. Then we bumped into the Maryland border, and just as soon as we started getting used to that state, we were welcomed to Pennsylvania. I didn’t see any CAFOs along the roads in Pennsylvania. There were many old stone farmhouses and lots of pastures for horses and cattle. It’s refreshing to see “old-fashioned” farming, where animals are still raised and treated naturally. They get to feel the sun on their backs, eat real grass and hay, and they only get antibiotics if they get sick. Ah, but I wax nostalgic.

On a previous road trip in Pennsylvania, the Admiral had introduced me to the train museum in Strasburg, PA. It is really cool, not just for kids and retired train men. What I didn’t get to see on that visit was the working steam engine across the road. So we headed back to Strasburg to visit the “other roadside attraction.” As we got closer to the museum, more and more Amish horse and buggies came out on to the road from every feeder road of every farm in the area. This was a Monday, the 20^th, not Memorial Day, but apparently a very special day for this Amish population. For lo and behold, as we pulled into the parking lot for the steam engine, so did most of the Amish horses and carriages. There were already a lot of Amish families milling around the train tracks, and orange cones marked off their horses and buggies, so no one could miss them. Plus, most of the men and boys were wearing long sleeved, electric blue shirts that you could see from at least a mile away. What a contrast with the black slacks and vests! It was sunny and hot, so they all had matching straw boaters. Still, it was the bright, bright blue that emblazoned them in my memory. The Admiral said you could just see the sewing bee when the bolt of neon blue cloth arrived and all the Amish women were feverishly churning out long-sleeved shirts of all sizes, until the last remnant was used up. Hmm, wonder what color the underwear is – don’t go there. The women and girls had some color with their gray pinafores – purple or green—but not nearly as blinding as the men’s shirts.

Clearly, there were a lot of photo ops that presented themselves to us, as we approached different gaggles of Amish families. But can you really invade the privacy of other people, just because they look different from you? And their differences happen to be very photogenic? Let’s see. I remember when I was at Yale, a Japanese tourist approached me in front of the Rare Book Building and asked if I would pose for a photo. It seemed really odd at the time. I imagined he would label the photo “Average White Girl”. However, seeing no dark motive in the request, I willingly posed. With the Amish, it did not feel the same at all. As I left the bathroom, an Amish woman and her daughter were coming my way, and this woman glared at me with total disapproval. Come on – modest Bermuda shorts down to my knees? A jacket, a hat and sun glasses? Only skin below the knees visible? What was she so angry about? I didn’t even have my IPhone out. Nevertheless, I got the message that just looking at some Amish people could set them off, so I became very wary of taking any pictures. I approached three “parked” horses and carriages to take a photo of that, when I realized that the carriages still contained in their shadowy folds some Amish young’uns. I went up to the oldest boy and asked permission to take a photo of the horses and carriages. He said: “Not us.” I said: “No, not you, the horses and carriages.” And he gave me permission. I guess he’s in the photo, but it’s so dark inside the carriage that he has to be just a silhouette. The picture of the horses and carriages is great. The Admiral decided to take photos of the steam engine, which had started up and was waiting until 12 noon to take off for Paradise, a mere 4 and ½ miles from Strasburg. Somehow, every time he snapped the steam engine and the attached cars, some Amish families got in the way. Was that subtle enough? Apparently so, because no one confiscated his I phone.

There were dozens of children milling around the steam engine and going in and out of the toy store nearby. They were always with their parents or elders. There was no isolated bunch of teenagers. What was remarkable about the children was that not one child was heard to cry, or to whine, or to scream, or to have any kind of public tantrum. You would not know that children were present, if you had closed your eyes. No child glared at me. A few smiled shyly. I also did not hear one harsh word. No one was barking orders to the children. No one was telling them to shush. None of the elders was loud or boisterous. So indeed, by their elders’ example, the children have learned by osmosis at an early age how to conduct themselves in public. There may be hidden vices in the Amish community. Recent headlines from Ohio write about one Amish group seeking revenge on another Amish group by cutting off the men’s beards. That sounds pretty vicious, given the importance of the beards to this culture. But on this day in Strasburg, just 4 and ½ miles from Paradise, the Amish families were peaceful, harmonious, and out for some family fun on an old steam engine.

We landed in Hershey in the afternoon. We were staying, where else, on Chocolate Avenue. The oddest sign I saw was “Cocoa Urology”. Could you give this chocolate branding a rest, please? Those two words should never be right next to each other. Oh, it’s probably true that this business was on Cocoa Avenue, but still, that’s no reason to ruin the image of the best hot drink in the world. Aside from mis-namings, Hershey has a lot to offer.  As a school kid, I went on a field trip to Hershey to tour the chocolate factory. I still remember the overpowering aroma of chocolate – I think it was in my clothes after three washings – that I experienced walking past the vats of chocolate. Now I’m told that no one can visit the chocolate factory any more, except with some “virtual tour”. That’s not going to come even close to the real thing, but you can’t be too careful, when saboteurs lurk everywhere, just waiting to dump anthrax or another poison into the chocolate vats. Really, really? If so, how sad, Hershey, that you have to protect your supply of chocolate by keeping school kids away forever. That was my favorite field trip.

What Hershey had to offer me was a chance to re-connect with a friend from “the neighborhood” in Bethlehem, Joan Kettering (Terwilliger). She had moved to my street in the sixth grade, and we became good friends because of our similar nerdy interests in reading, school work, and more reading. I remember there was a movie about a teenager (Carol Lynley) who got pregnant and, I think, had an abortion. This was a movie we both wanted to see. I think it was Blue Denim. Our mothers seriously discussed whether we should be allowed to go to this show – was it over our heads? Would it turn us into wayward girls? After much hand-wringing, we were allowed to go. We felt so adult. Neither of us had the foggiest idea about how one gets pregnant – at least I didn’t. And neither of us was going to waste our young lives on getting pregnant and having a baby. How stupid was that, when you could be reading or enjoying some other intellectual endeavor. The movie was a tearjerker, as I remember, but it certainly did not make me want to have sex – then or in the next twenty years (or so I thought at the time).

Fast forward to Joan on May 21, 2013. She made reservations for us at Devon’s Grill. The waitperson walked us to the booth, where she and Bob waited. My God, from twenty yards away, it was Joan! She looked the same, except her hair was a little shorter. I had seen her at our twentieth high school reunion about 30 years ago, and she looked fresh out of Wellesley then too. I even remember that she was wearing a little black dress to the reunion. So Joan has not aged – at all. Her voice is still a rich alto; her wit is still very sharp. And she still reads! Yea! The Admiral was not looking forward to an hour of reminiscing about our childhoods in Bethlehem. And we really didn’t spend much time on the past. Joan revealed that she and Carol Hancock had gone to the Lehigh Library to pick up boys. But for the most part, it was a four way conversation, starting with the things we had seen, including the Amish in Strasburg, during our travels in Slow Motion and on the blue roads. The time went way too fast, and we had to leave after an hour or so, with a mutual promise to stay in touch. I hope so. Joan is great.

Alas, our return trip to Slow Motion was not nearly as adventurous as our two day excursion to Hershey. We opted for the big highways to try to make the trip in one day. After the abominable stop and go traffic south of Washington D.C., we limped back to Atlantic Yacht Basin around 8:45 p.m. We put Slow Motion in a boat shed, so it’s kind of like living in a cave (no bats, thankfully). It was already dark outside, so the cave aspect was not as pronounced as we climbed on to the boat and plunked ourselves down into the king size bed we call home. Falling asleep was not a problem. By this time, you’re probably falling asleep as you read this Blog. I hope not. I feel a rant coming on – just kidding! But I’ve only caught you up to what we’ve been doing, as of May 21, and I’m writing this on May 24. Friday, May 24, was a travel day – and what a travel day it was! But I’m saving that for Chapter Eighty. Come back and read me some time, y’hear? Chapter Eighty will be a good one.