Rolling Down the Mississippi Shoreline

Terrorizing corn fields

I got ahead of myself.  We're not ready to head south to Tennessee just yet; more tales to tell.

The very first sign of Spring was our first bug splatter on the windshield for the season.  Now if this had been July, we'd be dodging grasshoppers the size of Nikes in Kentucky (I saw the biggest garden spider possible in the Pyrons' yard many years ago.  A sight like that does not leave you).  But I was not dodging bugs, rather noticing the bizarre place names that ticked by:  Pig Eye, Gassaway, Pinchgut Gulch, and Bucksnort are a few in Maryland and West Virginia (also there's the town of Accident, which should probably be avoided).  We had to get off the highway to check out Flintstone of course, since the all-seeing iPad told us there was a Stone Age Cafe there.  Disappointing, since it only looked like one of those diurnal beer joints; no Brontoburgers being skated out by carhops in fur bikinis (sigh...).  It was all good though, as we spotted -- wait for it -- a rock quarry just outside of the village.  Fred must have been out to lunch, though, since his distinctive car was not there.

A stop in Cumberland, Maryland, to check out the Puccini Restaurant proved to be a good choice.  It's in a pre-Civil War building decorated with old Harper's Weekly prints, and has a fine menu, great plate presentation and an even finer looking bar (off limits to us devil-may-care Honda drivers).  I spoke to some locals who told us the building was used as a hospital during the Maryland campaigns during The Late Unpleasantness; I asked them if they knew of their most famous resident, writer John Michael Greer, but they did not.  They did know where to find good pizza, though.

After a night in Charleston, we pushed through the aforementioned freak snow storm and enjoyed several busy days with Nancy's brother Tom and his Mrs., Cherry Pyron, who not only fed us extremely well with such delicacies as bourbon-cured bacon (even better than it sounds), but made food for a pot-luck dinner at their church, where we chatted with people who acted like we'd known them for years.  We've never found anyone in or around Clinton, Kentucky, who didn't treat everyone like an old friend. 

A curious thing popped into my head as we passed a full classroom down the hallway, though.  I had seen a map chart a week previously online which showed the dire lack of real estate tax revenue that has been stopping local progress and rebuilding:  almost half the town properties are either non-profit or vacant.  Despite being the county seat, Clinton is small and has limited prospects until this problem is addressed; however, in that classroom a good many people were looking at a slide of a map titled "Old Jerusalem."  I couldn't help thinking -- and I mean this not as a criticism -- these agreeable and intelligent people should really be looking at the one about their town and considering what to do about the looming problem.  Jerusalem, old or new, couldn't be as relevant to their lives and futures.

Tom volunteers one day a week as an outdoor guide at the new Discovery Park in nearby Union City, Tennessee.  Just opened a few months ago, it's an amazingly ambitious project to have been conceived and funded largely by one person.  The main building design is big-city bold, almost Gehry-like, while the grounds contain everything from a Japanese garden (much abused by the recent winter, but it will bounce back) to reconstructed "dog-trot" style log cabins and a fine collection of old tractors.  There are well-designed theme areas inside the main museum, of course, but one room was a charmer:  it just housed every sort of thing that didn't fit in anywhere else.  I liked that spirit.

 

 

Okay, we're just barely in Tennessee now, so let's keep on Route 51 and find Memphis!






 

Motoring West

(another fine creation of Nimrod Studios, Richmond, VA)

Alright, Spring, if you are still hesitating to come here, we'll go find you!

So begins the Big Fat Southern Road Trip, a 2100-mile loop from home, through western Maryland, West Virginia, the length of Kentucky, up to Paducah and down to Memphis along the Mississippi, then to Music City, lots more of Tennessee and up the spine of western Virginia to get back to the beginning.  Despite lots of country dirt on the old Honda, empty water bottles everywhere and blowing a tire just 35 minutes from home, we're glad we went; the washing machine quivers in dread.  Blackberry the cat is glad to have us back, offering his furry belly up as a warm greeting.

WTF weather

Only an airbrush of light green is to be seen on either side of the highway, the hills still brown, until the redbuds lead the way and the grass thickens in West Virginia.  The soapy-white sycamores and the oaks are still all branch and no leaf.  A first stop in Charleston shows some flowering trees and our hopes are up before a snowstorm gathers and follows us all the way to Lexington, Kentucky.  I think we must be responsible in some way.

Lexington, with its immaculate horse estates, should be seen in its summer glory, and it did not disappoint us:  the nasty weather abruptly stopped and we cruised along the state's lovely parkways (light on traffic and especially on trucks -- love it) to find the Pyron's farmstead, and their driveway, just before we run out of southwestern Kentucky completely and fall into the the always-brown river.  Now this is no mean feat, given the lack of signage or landmarks in the spiderweb of narrow local routes, but it's not our doing, but that of the fine GPS on Nancy's new iPad.  The reassuring voice of Siri and her impeccable navigational skills deliver us with not one delay.

I hadn't been to visit in probably a dozen years, and their home and land have changed considerably.  The only animals (where once chickens and sheep roamed) in residence are Coco the lab, a mature female cat and Little Buddy, a yellow kitten who had lost his home along with some skin and fur in a neighboring house fire.  Cherry Pyron had him fixed up at the vet, and he lives in the barn.  We tried to warm him up to people, and urged him to stay very near his barn, since the plentiful coyotes are a nightly danger to small animals.

Kentuckians just like to have fun

We're eager to see Tom's current projects, a new Habitat house just starting in the old river town of Hickman, and a new church in the country outside of Fulton.  Despite having recently retired, his expertise is in more demand than ever, and he's finding out that being a project manager for the big church construction involves, primarily, being on the phone about 18 hours a day.  The foundation trench in Hickman keeps filling up with water, delaying everything there, and that's only one of his dozen problems to solve each hour. 

We all relax for lunch at Miss Martha's Cornbread and Sweet Tea, a roadside cafe in Fulton that will feed you well, and make you feel welcome.  Go on meatloaf special day.  Trust me.

Not only can you take a long slow walk on the old tree lined country road that fronts the Pyrons', but you can do so without watching for any traffic.  During our stay, one pickup truck went by (later on, while on I-81, we could hardly believe that's possible when you're imprisoned on all sides by tractor-trailers, mile after mile).  Then we took a longer route on their Scorpion go-kart, with no worries about law enforcement, other cars, or anything except staying out of the ditch.  I think Nancy is a more daring driver than me; when she was in the driver's seat, the pedal stayed all the way down and the dirt flew.

 

Richmond, someone's gaining on you

We headed north an hour to Paducah, a nice little city with a long history at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers.  The floodwall (which is tall enough to convince you they must have reason to take floods seriously) is covered end to end with a historically-themed mural, and the old downtown is a delight to the eye.  Nineteenth-century brick buildings are beautifully designed and restored, and there are a few Art Deco treasures scattered among them.  The first floors are sometimes  marred by those awful modernizations done from 1945 to the mid-60s, like everywhere else.

Our destination is a lively arts venue, nicely restored, called the Maiden Alley Cinema which tonight hosts a local band of almost ten years duration called Bawn in the Mash.  All I found out about the name is that it comes from Mark Twain somehow.  They (there are six of them) play a sort of psychedelic bluegrass, switching instruments alarmingly often, and those instruments are an object of wonder in themselves:  a strange drum kit consisting only of a tom, bass drum and two cymbals.  The lively percussionist also plays what looks like an edited version of a marimba and something I've seen in old photos of minstrel/early jazz groups.  The fiddler also played what looked like an electric mandolin, but it had five strings.  And it was on loud.  Every seat and all standing room was filled, and one could enjoy a microbrew from the concession stand.  Which we did.

The dogwoods, this week dressed in their Southern best, are plentiful in the carefully done yards of Jefferson Avenue, and were featured by spotlights.  A recent tradition in this neighborhood of outstanding residential architecture, it's a good idea that has caught on like the arts downtown because, I think, Paducah has a rare spirit among small cities -- it has managed to foster both the new, fast-growing shiny suburbs and excitement in the old established areas simultaneously.  Paducah is a place worth keeping an eye on, and we'd like to go back.

Tennessee is calling me

There are a lot of religious signs along the road in this part of the country, and one in particular speaks to us as we head further south from the sweet, quiet countryside to the higher-voltage sprawling city of Memphis:

                                          "YOUR SINS WILL COME TO LIGHT."

Well, we haven't had much chance to yet, but that could be a fair warning.

--more adventures to relate, tomorrow--


                                                  









 

"...they PULLED me back in"

Graphic by Nimrod Studios, Richmond, VA

Am I stuck in a nightmare?  I wake up to the alarm and go to work day after day, just like in the OldTimes when I had a real job.  I have to plan my day in advance and have information at the ready.  Yesterday Nancy even packed up my old blue and white Igloo lunchbox.  And there's more laundry to do than a man of leisure should be accumulating.

All right, it's not that bad, and it is temporary.  This seemed to be a good year to just get all the remodeling projects done on son Zach's 114-year-old house, even though the dragging-on winter slowed the start.  What prompted this scary scenario was the opening of a ReStore nearby -- the recycling outlet run by Habitat for Humanity.  They have new as well as used items, from windows to furniture to paint, so we went and found exactly what was needed to get started:  all the wall tile for the upstairs bathroom (at 10 cents each) and two unused Andersen windows at very much less than retail.  So we loaded that stuff up and called our trusty contractor and it begins.

I'm mostly painting the outside, doing some small things and finishing up the downstairs 1/2 bath, while the contractor is rebuilding the second floor bath before tackling the windows (which will involve a lot of wall rebuilding -- nothing's as simple as it should be).  Then a new kitchen floor covering* to complete the marathon.  I have nothing left to do at home, so there's time for all this. 

But a morning alarm?  Uncivilized.

----------

*Congoleum Dura Ceramic 16"x16", sort of a vinyl tile with a ceramic floor tile surface.  Not so hard on the feet, and it comes in a hundred colors.  Good stuff.
 


 

Salty Dogs

That's what we were, today, in another installment of the retirement chronicles.

Some explanation.  We have never, believe it or not, used Groupon for a deal.  Now those of you who know my lovely wife know she is the Mistress of Deals, so why it has taken us so long to take advantage of this wonderful device to save while splurging, I don't really know.  Anyway, we were curious about the incredibly high glass tower of the new Revel casino/resort in Atlantic City, and were inspired to try it out by the availability of a great Groupon offer.  It involved a Sunday night stay, so the excitement level was bound to be low, but that's all right, especially since it would be less crowded there and we really don't start the evening at 11:30 p.m. anyway.

Ignoring the problems Revel has suffered from construction delays and rumors of another possible sale, we took off in a nasty rain storm (sometimes -- usually -- fun is found at the end of a trying trip, we've found) and checked our unsophisticated selves into this most modern -- very Euro -- high-rise and resolved to ignore the lousy weather by just staying inside and exploring.

We found two things that those of you who can stand the idea of Atlantic City, and/or live on the East Coast, should definitely try.  Trust us.

First: Iron Chef Jose Garces' tapas restaurant, Amada, is not to be missed.  Huge sea views, walls of candles and old world/modern design are only the introduction to a gustatory binge worth any pain, although there was only pleasure.  Their signature cocktail, the Matador, will leave you feeling that the $14 it runs was well spent.  I only had one, being an amateur bourbon drinker, and that was just fine until next time.  We arrived for the Sunday night special featuring all tapas for $5 each, and wolfed (no other more polite term would describe it) down six plates.  The staff, despite a nasty negative review we found online, were exceptional in their attention, knowledge, and timing.  Jose and staff, you know what you're doing.

Today we couldn't wait to visit the Himalayan salt room at the spa (part of the Groupon deal, of course), and had it pretty much to ourselves since most singles or couples who came in went right back out.  Strange.  It was visually beautiful, with the walls made of salt bricks lighted from behind, a perfect temperature, cool music, and the color palate of the salt walls:  ranging from clear, through pink and amber, to red-brown.  This salt comes from the Khewra mines in Pakistan, the largest in the world.  Although it can be used also like table salt, it seems to be superior stuff, containing anywhere from 10 to 84 minerals in addition to the usual sodium chloride.  Other than the aesthetic experience, it's supposed to be beneficial in treating respiratory and skin conditions.  I know, I know, there are a million claims for a similar million substances that are supposed to stave off inevitable decay and death.  But it probably can't hurt, and a doctor in the early 19th century observed that the salt miners in Poland never suffered from respiratory ailments or caught colds (and that wasn't the beautiful Himalayan stuff).  In any case, it was a very nice experience, and no aging humans were harmed.

We were thinking that this will be the next big thing in luxury mansions, after home theaters and wine cellars.  It will be on "House Hunters" soon enough, I'm sure.






 

Local Hero?

If only finding out the truth were this easy

"What kind of society devotes a huge amount of its resources just to lying to itself?"
                          (Theme of a recent post on the blog Hipcrime Vocab)


Right-wing populism enjoyed a strange and thrilling victory recently in Pennsylvania's York County.  Due to a legislator resigning, a special election was held to fill the post for the next few months.  A wealthy businessman who owns Penn Waste and a trucking company did not like the formal Republican nominee (maybe even more than the Democratic one, who of course didn't have a chance anyway), and not only ran a write-in campaign, but won, with a resounding 47.7% of the vote (in a 14% turnout of registered voters).  This appears to be the first time a legislator has been elected in the Commonwealth in that way.

The new state employee is a libertarian tea-partier who hates government (so why not keep your day job?) and promises to try to reduce the size of the legislature (requires constitutional change, but not a bad goal as ours is huge and the second most expensive in the nation), forgo a pension and free health insurance (pretty easy for a millionaire), and work immediately on the elimination of property tax.  There have been letters in the newspaper every week since the Reagan era expressing a devout wish that this be done, so Mr. Scott Wagner has ready-made support and will campaign for re-election touting this crusade, as un-doable though it will probably be.

Property taxes support public education in the main, and both of these institutions raise the ire of the landed, wealthy elite, both here and now and throughout the long history of aristocracies and oligarchies.  I understand that in France, the resident of any property pays the taxes, which is mighty nice for old-wealth families living off rental income; their law must sound good to self-made American style barons who hold much land and several buildings.  To cover the loss of income from a repealed property tax, Mr. Wagner wants to expand the sales tax to cover now-exempt purchases such as food, prescription medicine and clothing.  Never mind that employees, owners and real-estate investors in outlet malls placed close to the state's borders will lose all those customers who are escaping their states' sales taxes on necessities, but the heck with those losers who live paycheck to paycheck, or on a fixed income, who would be hurt immediately and almost daily by such a broad regressive tax increase.

There is a very serious problem with property taxes poised to rise dramatically in Pennsylvania, one that did not need to happen and which was only partially ameliorated nine years after some of those "smartest guys in the room" pushed the passing of Act 9 in 2001 which increased school (and other public) employees pensions hugely both in the future and retroactively.  In some school districts, so much of the property tax revenue is going to pay for these insane increases, school funding is evaporating while taxes climb each year.  Because there were such good investment returns in the 1990s, it was decided to burn up the surplus by handing it out to current and future public employees.  A few months after the Act's passage, signed by Republican governor Ridge -- yes, that party of fiscal responsibility -- 9/11 happened and everything went south in terms of investment income.  As if all those in charge did not know that stock market bubbles and crashes always happen and upward growth forever is not possible.*    

Mr. Wagner and all the op-ed page letter-writers cite the probably baseless narrative of retirees who live on fixed incomes being forced out of their homes by property taxes.  I think he and his elite class have as much trouble with arithmetic as their honored Rand Paul, the master of Budgets Made of Smoke.  The York County township, Spring Garden, where our new legislator lives is quite posh with lots of homes going for a half-million or more.  The property tax on these is about $13,000 a year, which is indeed high. An average modest retiree-type home in York County would incur an annual bill of around $2380, about what the same home in other mid-Atlantic states would be taxed at (I looked up some in Ohio).  I don't think that larger amount will harm the millionaires any; it's just the idea that a little of their hoard goes to educate the common people's offspring that has them fuming.  Not only could they really care less about the retirees while they cynically stir them up; $2380 a year is not a deal-breaker for anybody unless they're in such bad financial shape already that owning a home is probably too much to handle anymore.  And I guess the spinners of this narrative have forgotten that the state has long had homestead and senior-citizen reductions on property tax easily available for those who qualify.  My grandfather had a pension quite adequate to live on, yet did qualify and used both programs quite happily.

 

And in Cumberland County, this retiree bungalow would only be taxed at around $1900/year

Mr. Wagner, who chafes mightily at paying his property tax, turned over $90,000 to a local conservative political action group (Citizens Alliance of PA) in 2012 alone.  That, I guess, is a more productive use.  And his Penn Waste company contracts with local governments which handle the administrative work and the billing while awarding a monopoly of all the township customers.  That's much more profitable than finding, serving and billing scattered customers, if he had to compete with other companies in the ideal "free market."

The Wonderful Wizard did no harm with his deception and was relieved to be done with hiding behind the curtain.  Our new local hero's deception reminds me more of Mr. Burns:

*The same fiscally responsible governor who sent out an order during his term mandating free dry cleaning and laundry for all high-level state government officials, which I saw while working on the new Keystone State Office Building.  

You're So Fine

I've been thinking of Parade Magazine, found buried in your Sunday paper, lately.  Of all the fish-wrappers...a step above tabloids, I guess, but something that should likewise ignored, shoved aside to the trashcan pile with the other filler in the Sunday paper like all those color ads.  It used to be like a little Life magazine, way back, and that's why I still look at it with faint hope. But its decline seems to be an indicator of sorts, like the ills suffered by amphibians which show, early on, what damage is occurring in wetlands.

Note the format size and volume of content:  it has drastically shrunk in recent years, and they have cut Marilyn's brain teaser column down to one item.  For a while now, the first and main articles are usually about what celebs are up to TODAY and RIGHT NOW.  Like their antics aren't always the same, over and over again.  It has turned into daytime TV or a women's 'zine, with a feel-good article and of course a recipe thrown in to balance the sleazy and self-promoting celeb goings-on.

And whether the subject is famous this month for being in something or an unknown young athlete who is an inspiration to us all, the theme throughout is: admire this person.  Puff pieces placed by publicists are nothing new, but why do we fall for it?  Photoshop is ubiquitous, and there is no correlation between what is true and what you read in print or hear from TV talking heads in suits.
The hyper morning TV show hosts are well-paid celebrities themselves, but I can find no reason why:  recently I watched in horror, then anger, as all four talked on top of each other and then drowned out their guest at the Olympics, who just gave up.  Ted Cruz, you have a career after politics just waiting for you.

When you dig a little and find out about the whole person, whether political figure, leader, icon, or star, the result is usually the evaporation of superficial admiration.  You must realize, with a sigh, that "out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight and true thing was ever made."  That's hard to live with; it's so much easier to just believe.  The king (or ex-President) is divine, the Pope infallible, the general experienced and wise, the media star perfection itself, the author or scholar always brilliant throughout a long career.  George Harrison, who certainly met everybody and didn't suffer fools at all, said the only person he admired was Ravi Shankar.  Without my ever meeting him, I'd add Pete Seeger.  But my list is really short, like George's.

The problem lies in our confusing physical attractiveness or talent with the whole person, while consistently failing to recognize psychopathic personality traits.  The icons themselves, living in a bubble of praise and admiration, come to believe that, like George W. Bush, being born on third base (with huge advantages in social status or physical/mental talents) means that they've hit a home run.
The media, local or national, is saturated with sports heroes.  I can admire the immense amount of work, that most of us would not ever be capable of, that goes into such achievements, but I can't admire someone for being born with the genes that mean an exceptionally fast, coordinated or strong body, or intense focus or even eidetic memory.  I can't admire the extremely rich and ruthless people, like the ones on "Shark Tank" or in Fortune magazine, we're supposed to be in awe of; they've got the qualities of a salt-water crocodile, not a human being with a spirit or soul.

My favorite financial blogger (speaking of another bunch of mostly scoundrels) suggests a "low-information diet."  Don't trouble your mind or body by accepting the endless junk -- manipulated media or food -- that is thrown at you 24/7.  Even the Buddha had that figured out, 2500  years ago!






 





 
 

Last Flight

Lt Eugene Rice, USAAF, 1943

I have had a half-dozen ideas for posts in the past few weeks, but they seem too trivial to think about, given the events of the past week.

Our father was found unresponsive a week ago in his nursing home near us in Mechanicsburg and was quickly sent by ambulance, not for the first time, to Holy Spirit Hospital.  He had been overwhelmed once again by pneumonia and internal infection.  He never really regained consciousness except to acknowledge my brothers Ron and Jeff when they called; his last words to Nancy and I when we visited him the day before were: "More than you know, I appreciate your visits."  The three doctors involved over the next three days concluded Dad could not get any better; the anitbiotics he had then and many times before just wouldn't work anymore.  We were warned that when the respirator was removed, he may not last long, but he did indeed keep going for 24 hours until 4 p.m., March 1.  Without the medical interventions, poking with needles and the painful-looking respirator, he became more and more peaceful and we saw him breathe his last quietly, with no struggle.

We had never spent so much time together as the last nine months, while Dad was first in the hospital and then a nursing home in Florida, and after August when he was moved here.  Brother Steve gathered up many old pictures and as they stimulated his memory, we heard stories of very long ago, the people and places in the pictures not remembered by hardly anyone still living.  Memories of family visits to his grandparents way up in the country of Perry County were the fondest.  He also asked about old co-workers and schoolmates, and we found a good deal of information that he appreciated hearing.  A way of saying goodbye to everyone, it seemed.

There were about a dozen boxes of pictures, records (even a set of report cards from the early 1930s), souvenirs, letters and  greeting cards at their home, so we have a lot to remember our parents by.  High school graduation announcements, dance cards, awards, newspaper articles -- especially his moment of fame when the hometown paper published a handsome picture and account of his B-24 sinking two Japanese vessels and wrecking a half-dozen more.  They were all recommended for the Distinguished Flying Cross, but got Air Medals instead.  Dad was the bombardier and well deserved it. 

He never told us much about his WWII service from 1941 to 1946, except for two stories about how miserable life was in the Southwest Pacific:  that they learned to wear helmets all the time, since the monkeys loved to drop coconuts on their heads, and a grim one about a tentmate being fatally bitten by a giant spider.  Oh, and how much they enjoyed their banana moonshine.

We will all be speaking at the funeral tomorrow and if I go on like this then, I will take up all the time.  There is so much more to remember about a 95-year life, but I know we can all say,

                                                    "Well done."