Date: Fri, 9 Feb 2007 15:42:26 -0600
Reply-To: joel walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: joel walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Frydaye Phollies: a bigger long road trip - part A
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someone mentioned Route 50 some time back when Route 66 was being
discussed, and i found this in another old magazine ... might make an
interesting road trip. :)
The Heartland Highway
Running U.S. 50 from sea to shining sea,
Across the best of America in the Teutonic Tomato.
By Larry Griffin
Car and Driver
If anything good can be said of it, the dead of a Michigan winter at
least
brings your brain to a boil. You steam about how late spring will
arrive,
and you make hot plans for balmier days. I plan big drives. A year
and a
half ago I planned a drive that promised the best of everything from
sea
to shining sea. Only one road fills the bill, and that’s U.S. 50.
Beginning at the Atlantic in Maryland and pressing all the way to
California
and the Pacific, Route 50 rumples and reaches across 3100 miles of
everything
America holds near and dear. No other road, big or small, samples so
many of
our national facets. The Congress should rename U.S. 50 the Heartland
Highway.
May would be the proper month to go, and a Porsche 911 Cabriolet would
provide
the proper means. Porsche said do it, so I phoned old Santa Barbara
pal Dale
Jones, who once ran the best BMW store I’ve ever seen and twice sold
me cars.
Jones is a good friend, a find amateur photographer, and one of the
half-dozen
road drivers I trust. His smooth driving is a match for his quick New
England
wit. In a trice he was primed to desert his high-roller insurance
clients and
his California girls for two weeks of touring over the Heartland
Highway.
But we had to wait four months.
-------------------------------------------------------------
The month of May in Maryland comes out of the blocks with a rush. The
Sheraton
Fontainebleau Inn & Spa sits along an array of high-rises on an Ocean
City sand
bar, and our red 911 convertible sits in front of the lobby. We have
packed the
car in the cool Atlantic dawn. Top down and buckled in, we point the
growling
Porsche west. A sign on the bridge over the Sinepuxent Bay says
“Sacramento,
California—3073 miles.” Then it’s rolling grasslands, everything
clean and
manicured, thick stands of pines, and a couple of meadowlarks playing
slap-and-tickle in a meadow. (Where else?)
Spring is just climbing into the trees as Route 50’s four lanes run
their fingers
through the woods. Running east to west has romance. By the time 50
slims down
to two lanes in Virginia, we’ll be following the route of the
pioneers.
We bitch about the 911’s archaic character. Related controls are
strung all
over the interior, the mirrors quiver as if in a seizure, and the
cruise control
reengages with full-throttle glee after a downshift. But the rowdy
flat six
feels as if it will push the drag-inducing ragtop within a whisker of
the
coupe’s 150 mph.
The 911 burbles over the Choptank River, named for the Indians who
once populated
Maryland and now populate Michener’s tome Chesapeake. We’re headed
for Kent Island,
in 1631 the first English settlement in Maryland, to go crabbing and
boating with
a pal of a pal. The pal is Tom Hall, an infamous navy PR flack who
once finagled
me a most memorable ride in an F-4 Phantom (for which I will one day
get even),
and his pal is Jack Robinson, a former air-force PR flack who
introduced himself
to Hall by horning in on his date quicker than you can say “Jack
Robinson.”
Tom calls Jack the King of the Eastern Shore.
These days, Jack sells almost-unsinkable rescue boats. “They’re a
meeting of
three technologies,” says Jack. “Inflatable keels, deep-vee
fiberglass racing
hulls, and lightweight outboards. You sit in the middle, straddling a
saddle
like a snowmobile’s, with stirrups. You can turn full-lock at 40
knots!
Ever tried to put a basketball underwater? Foop! Almost can’t.
“On a different subject: You’re on the Delmarva Peninsula – for
Delaware,
Maryland, and Virginia – and the whole world went right past here.
Kent
Island’s 21 miles long and a mile wide, and people make a living by
farming
and being watermen – crabbing, oysters, and so forth. Just across the
bridge
to Annapolis, it’s like light-years away from us. The whole Eastern
Shore of
the Chesapeake is a state of mind. And James Michener ruined it, the
son of
a bitch! But we go crabbin’ all summer and goose huntin’ in
inters --
there’s a million geese on this peninsula. So it just runs a little
cycle;
you throw in a little sex and you stay busy! Actually, I got to know
Tom
‘cause I was trying to rehabilitate him. There’s no hope.” Jack
cackles
in his beer.
Hall stays on the dock to supervise, watching through yellow
binoculars big enough
to spot the Canary Islands. Jack and his son David load us into a
cardboardy
troller and show us how to crab, lowering a line tied at intervals
with chicken
necks. You give the crabs some time to latch on, hook the rope over a
spindle
on the boat, and troll along, madly netting the crustaceans as they
ride up.
The more beers you down, the faster Jack runs the motor. Satisfied
that we’re
in the mood now, Jack has David show us how the hot-rod rescue boat
works,
and it’s a snap, even for a landlubber like me. Within minutes, I’m
making
wall-of-water U-turns at 50 mph. Eventually we make for the house to
gorge
on crabs and corn on the cob cooked by Jack’s daughter.
We say our glassy-eyed goodbyes and hie off to Washington. The
Hay-Adams Hotel
faces the White House. At $300 per night, our double is worth every
penny. We
order a snack, scrub up and lounge around in Hay-Adams robes.
Sun streaming through the balcony doors wakes us, and the sprint is on
to beat
the crowd to the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. Its
Milestones
of Flight Hall hosts fourteen million people every year. This
towering aviary
displays the Wright 1903 Flyer, Lindbergh’s “Spirit of St. Louis”,
Yeager’s
Bell X-1 rocket plane, John Glenn’s Mercury spacecraft, and the Apollo
11 module
that carried Armstrong and Aldrin to the moon. These are not
replicas; these
are THE machines that flew. Visitors stare at the enormous Saturn V
aft end,
whose rocket nozzles lifted six million pounds of spacecraft.
Astronauts reach
their work by sitting on explosions. A wondrous IMAX film shot by the
space
shuttle crews wraps views of Earth on a huge dished screen, back by
rocket
thunder and a score that celebrates Earth’s majesty, and offers the
bittersweet
sight of Judy Resnik, so lovely and intent, on an early flight.
Washington is an extravaganza of great buildings, greenery, and
monuments.
Along the Mall, a cute blond girl of thirteen sprints alongside to get
a picture
not of a landmark but of the 911. But a brush with angry marchers in
front of
the White House, chanting “Reagan, Reagan, liar, liar, we’ll set your
goddamn
ass on fire!” and eyeing our Teutonic Tomato, makes us aware of our
top-down
vulnerability.
Across the Potomac and into Virginia, we pause at the massive memorial
to those
who raised the flag on Iwo Jima and skirt Arlington National Cemetery.
Scads of construction sites clot the route, but it soon trades
suburban clutter
for gentle farms. A 70-foot lavender wisteria tree grows beside the
Little River
Inn. Old stone fences pile high around the fields the stones were
cleared from.
Nearby, Virginia designates 50 the Mosby Highway, honoring John
Singleton Mosby,
the famed Gray Ghost of the Civil War.
Beyond Hogue Creek, a mountain range rises steeply, its corners
wearing mustaches
of gravel. Just after Shaffenhacker Mountain, we pop over the crest,
squinting
into the sun to see 50 turn into a weaving river of silver amid the
fur of
gray-green forest. Route 50 is a road of many names. Around here, it’s
the
George Washington Highway.
In West Virginia, the lights of Clarksburg spread across its valley.
The service
at the “Sherato” Hotel (burned-out letter, not to mention staff)
borders on
nonexistent. Was it only this morning that we basked in the
Hay-Adams?
The next morning we set off to find Clarksburg’s vaunted Stonewall
Jackson statue.
We find Stonewall amid Education Fair Day, whose entertainment is a
grade-school
choir, watched by proud moms, early shoppers, and a few sugar addicts
who have
pulled off a dawn raid on Dunkin’ Donuts.
The plan calls for hitting Cincinnati by dark. Skeptics back in the
C/D compound
in Michigan have started a pool on how many speeding tickets we’ll
get. (Our goal
is zero, and we’ll meet it) Jones and I have our own bet regarding
chance romance,
but so far, zero across the board. We stop in Spring Run Road to
shoot pictures
of a likely moonshiners’ route – a hillside dirt furrow back into the
folds,
surely sprayed 40 years ago by dust thrown by the slewing Ford coupes
favored
by generations of bootleggers.
A flash of lightning bashes overhead. We leave the top down but pick
up the
pace, leaving the rain high and us dry. By the time we reach
Parkersburg
and a gas station on the Ohio River, steady drizzle thrums us. A pop
of
the easy-up top and we’re cozy.
There is more truck traffic now, but the landscape falls flat beneath
our P7s.
The map shows more wiggles near Chillicothe, Ohio. Chillicothe is
where
Junior Johnson served time in a federal penitentiary for moonshining.
Junior once told me he’d made 3000 liquor runs, sometimes four or five
a night, and he estimated he had been chased 1000 times. But they
caught
him only once, at his daddy’s still. A few years after he got out for
good behavior, he won the Daytona 500. Last year, the president
pardoned
Junior. Now he can vote again.
We whistle past a tall, austere farmhouse, festooned with ornate
filigree
and great spiky lightning rods that jab the sky from each peak. Water
for
the crops is easy to come by around this agricultural spongecake of
rich
earth. The enormous fields are sunning themselves and soon will pop
in
the summer’s heat.
Closer to Cincinnati, 50 settles into bottom lands. We stay at one of
Jim Trueman’s Red Roof Inns. In three weeks, Bobby Rahal, who drives
for Trueman, will win at Indy. Days later, cancer will kill his
mentor.
The thought of the battle Trueman is fighting brings sadness.
Wednesday morning brings a visit to Cincinnati Microwave for a tour of
the
high-tech palace that Escort radar detectors built. Nowadays, Escorts
and
their little-brother Passports lead the market. Beavering away in a
spacious, carpeted work bays on ergonomically comfy chairs, among
colorful murals and the makings of thousands of detectors, are several
hundred
tech-talking engineers, fuzzy-cheeked kids, matronly women, and pretty
younger
ladies. We watch a winsome blonde program her huge machine for runs
of
solid-state circuit boards. She pushes the start button and monitors
the
chip-installation head, which is spinning at a pace blurred beyond
comprehension, its half-dozen nozzles spitting a multitude of tiny
chips
precisely into place on each board.
Miss Microwave asks if I get to Cincinnati often. I vow to make a
place for
this tender chip on the circuit board of my heart. Jones groans,
fearing for
his bet.
We scoot out of town through a slum and a sampler of horrible chemical
smells.
Life with an open car isn’t always sunshine and champagne.
Crossing into Indiana, you sense that this is where farming buckles
down.
But what is it that holds up old barns? The rickety structures look
as if
they should have collapsed years ago, but they’re still imploding in
the
slowest of motion.
Pines are in natural harmony with lower Indiana’s weather and stuck
beneath
many of the triangular trees, like gingerbread ornaments at Christmas,
are
slab-cut log cabins. In fact, this stretch of 50 is known as the
Lincoln
Heritage Trail. We cross the waters of the Wabash into Illinois and
put
the Porsche into a lope. A semi-trailer has pulled over at a revival
meeting, where a marquee proclaims “Jesus Christ, His Majesty.” As if
the biggest of guest stars were on stage inside.
You get a great view of the famed arch as you cross the Mississippi
into
Saint Louis. The barges are so humongous that even Mark Twain’s
imagination
might boggle. Immediately west of Saint Louis, 50 mates with I-44 as
the
wrinkles come back into the landscape. Splitting off, 50 curls
through
the village of Useful and past Spud’s Auto Sales, toward the state
capital,
Jefferson City. The pavement narrows sporadically, transforming this
leg
into one of the best GT roads in the country. The pigs around here
are so
big, they think they’re cows.
The capital, named for the Virginian who represented the term
“Renaissance man”
better than any American before or since, contains one of the most
impressive
capitol buildings in the country. In front, an Amazonian state of a
naked lady
looks down, longing for the Porsche.
We give up the ghost at a Holiday Inn south of Route 50 at the town of
Lake Ozark.
The pretty brunette at registration sighs and says, “That’s the only
kind of car
I ever dream about.”
We’re getting close to my land. A year ago, I bought 3.6 acres of
wooded magic
that looks south and west across Lake of the Ozarks. My parcel offers
600 feet
of lake frontage and 90 miles of lake. A clearing on a bluff will
provide an
unobstructed view for the main house, and a cubbyhole in the trees
will nestle
a writing studio that will look out at the panorama through the
branches.
It’s all part of Malcolm Forbes’s Lake of the Ozarks development.
After I signed
the papers on the spot, I began seeing ads for the place in airline
and business
magazines. The view most often used shows MY land! Whenever I spot
these ads
on a flight, I say, “See than? That’s mine.” And whoever is sitting
next to me
looks askance and says, “Sure.”
to be continued ...