Tire Story

Something pleasant for me this morning: a flat tire on one of our cars. I was told before breakfast, before I was really conscious, that the air had seeped out of a left rear tire overnight, and was tasked with putting on the spare. Which is really only part one of the repair process, since the spare is one of those anemic temporary tires.

A college friend of mine once told me years ago the he'd driven some hundreds of miles on a highway using a temporary tire, and maybe he did. He had a reckless streak, besides a vast talent for sports writing even as a young man. I occasionally wonder what became of him, but make little effort to find out. His name's common enough that a mere Google search doesn't turn up much; or much that's new, anyway, since he seems to have some professional sports bylines from the late '80s lingering in on-line archives.

Or maybe riding fast on the temp tire isn't really so reckless. I'm not in a position to know. Anyway, I took some Dutch comfort in the tire-changing task. That is, thank God it's no worse. It could have still been raining (the car was in the driveway); it could have been 100°; it could have been out in the middle of nowhere. The last time I changed a tire in the driveway, there was snow on the ground. So today wasn't so bad. Removing the lug nuts, as usual, was the hard part, but they eventually surrendered to the force of my weight pushing down on them.

Yuriko wanted to have the tire repaired right away, or get a new one, but I had things to attend to at the word mill, so she went to the repair facility of a major auto dealer not far from us. Soon I get a call from her, and she tells me something I find a little hard to fathom. She'd been told, alas, that a new tire was needed. Sharp shards had torn up the tire's innards, but good, the bastards (I'm paraphrasing a little). A new tire would be $250.

I ask to talk to the fellow who told her that. I ask him about that price.

"That's, uh, the price for that model," he says. "I think, I'll have to check."

"Two-hundred fifty dollars for one tire?"

"Well, uh, maybe not quite that much. I have to check."

I tell him that yes, he should check on that. That was our conversation. I've had to replace a few tires in my time, and I'm fairly sure our car isn't so remarkably uncommon that we need special, expensive tires of some kind. It isn't like we have (say) a '79 Le Car and the things have to be custom made.

Later, Yuriko tells me that the shop had another look at the flat and decided, by golly, that it could be repaired after all. And so it was, for about $30.

I'd be shocked -- shocked -- to learn that the shop had a (strictly unofficial) policy of special pricing for people whose English isn't native, even though fairly fluent. I have no proof, of course, just my suspicions. But I don't think we'll be going there again. Suspicion is more than enough on which to base a consumer decision.

201 W. Madison, the Poetry Garage

Snow tonight, the kind we usually get often from December through February, not just on scattered days during the winter. The entire day was cloudy, with some drizzle. In the early afternoon, I looked out the window and saw light rain and large snowflakes falling together -- almost straight down, since there was little wind. There was no reason to go out today, so I didn't.

Yesterday I needed to be downtown for a few hours. On the way back to my train, I noticed that the parking garage at 201 W. Madison now calls itself the Poetry Garage. I used to pass by that structure often, but never noticed that it had a floor-remembering scheme. I've seen other such memory schemes, of course, including one featuring a different Chicago sports team for each floor at the long-term parking garage at O'Hare. But this is the first one I've ever noticed, and may be the only one anywhere, that uses poets or any literary figure toward that end.

"Each level will be represented by a culturally significant poet from various historical periods and poetic genres," says the facility's web site. "Sights and sounds of poetry will entertain parkers and enable each guest to remember where to find their car. With a facade designed by Lucien LaGrange, this architecturally significant parking garage was designed to exceed the stringent and evolving city aesthetic code requirements for parking garages."

I'd be surprised if the city's "aesthetic code requirements for parking garages" is actually that strict, but never mind. Good idea, Lucien, if that was your idea (he's an architect I've met a few times). The poets and their floors are as follows:

2nd Level: Billy Collins, "Forgetfulness."
3rd Level: Ernest L. Thayer, "Casey at the Bat."
4th Level: Emily Dickinson, "Success is Counted Sweetest."
5th Level: W.H. Auden, "The More Loving One."
6th Level: Alberto Rios, "The Cities Inside Us."
7th Level: Kay Ryan," A Hundred Bolts of Satin."
8th Level: Carl Sandburg, "Languages."
9th Level: Langston Hughes, "Harlem."
10th Level: Robert Frost, "Mending Wall."

Late '60s Postcard Relics

Ahead of our family's move to San Antonio in the summer of 1968, my grandmother took me to her home in Alamo Heights, mostly (I realize now) so I wouldn't be in the way of moving preparations. During that visit, I went with Grandma to the world's fair -- HemisFair '68, it was called. She got this card for me, and we sent it to my mother and brothers back in North Texas. "We had a good time at the Fair," my grandmother wrote. I signed it with my name.

I don't specifically remember going to the fair with Grandma, but I suspect that any memories of that visit have bundled with a later visit with my mother and brothers, after they'd moved to town. I don't remember the September 15 monorail accident at all, but I must have heard about it.

The card isn't dated, but it is postmarked July 12, 1968. The cancellation mark on the stamp mentions HemisFair. The front depicts the Institute of Texan Cultures, a worthwhile museum that's still in operation.

In summer of 1969, so famed for Apollo 11 and Woodstock's crowd control issues and the murderous doings of the Manson family, we headed out on the comparatively new Interstate system for a drive around the South: Texas to Oklahoma to Arkansas to Tennessee to (briefly) Georgia to Alabama to Mississippi to Louisiana and back to Texas. Chattanooga was as far east as we got, and we stayed here.

On that trip, we'd previously stayed only in one- or two-story properties, so a five-story motor lodge was positively enormous. When you're eight. Again, my memories of the place are sparse, though there was the thrill of staying on the fourth floor, and I'm pretty sure a vending machine at the Chattanooga Howard Johnson's cheated me.

Cursory investigation reveals that there's only one Howard Johnson's in metro Chattanooga these days, in Cleveland, Tenn., which isn't the property on the card. If the structure is still there, it's flagged by another brand, and probably renovated beyond recognition. HoJo is a Wyndham Hotel Group brand now, incidentally, and I can't remember the last time I saw one. I never did associate Howard Johnson's with ice cream or food; for whatever reason, we didn't eat at them much when on the road. Mainly, they were the motels with orange roofs where we occasionally stayed.

According to Wiki at least, the brand is a b-school example of how not to deal with an adverse economy, especially if you're in the customer service business. The spikes in the price of gasoline beginning in 1973 cut into U.S. car travel, and so the company "attempted to streamline company operations and cut costs, such as serving cheaper food and having fewer employees. It proved disastrous as guests were finding this new era of Howard Johnson's restaurants and motor lodges unsatisfactory, compared to the services they had come to know for years." Oops.

Car Meets Tree

Icy roads this morning. And ice has its consequences. Today I noticed evidence of a recent car-tree encounter (in the morning, probably) in my neighborhood and decided to document it. I saw tire tracks, made by one side of a vehicle, running from the street straight into a tree. A fainter, parallel track runs the same direction. I assume that that side of the car didn't gouge the ground very much.

This shot gives a better idea of the size of the tree -- fairly large -- and that the car must have glanced off it back toward the road. The car must have been damaged, but maybe not so much that it couldn't drive away. As the next photo shows, other tire tracks led away from the tree.

I took a pic of the base of the tree, but it's hard to see anything that in the image. It looked like the tree suffered some chipping near its base, but otherwise it didn't look too badly damaged. No evidence of paint flecks or the like, but then again it was too cold for me to linger. Still, it's an example of speeding car + patch of ice = bad day for someone.

Fill 'Er Up With Premium Electrons

On Saturday, we went to Chicago Premium Outlets, which is actually in Aurora, Illinois, just off I-88. I saw something there I've read about, but never seen before: an electric vehicle charging station.

Cool. A U.S. Department of Energy web page tells me that there are currently about 75 nonresidential charging stations in Illinois, though as a state, Illinois' total is fairly low. California has well over 500, and Florida, Michigan, Texas and Washington state all have between 100 and 200. Then again, some states have none, including the yawning stretches of Montana and the Dakotas.

Behold the Man Somewhere Else

Recently I drove on US 20 from the northwestern suburbs of Chicago to Rockford, Ill. I recommend it over I-90 for that particular trip, and not only because much of the road is the U.S. Grant Memorial Highway. On a clear day in early November, the rural route has its charms, including the remaining leaf colors, newly bare branches, farm fields now at rest for the season, tumbledown barns, signs large and small, towns only small, and unexpected sights.

At an intersection not far east of the town of Marengo, a large billboard announces that the Ecce Homo Shrine isn't far away, promising an unexpected sight to see. The billboard said something about baroque design, though I didn't make note of the exact phrasing. But the tone of the thing was, C'mon now, visit our shrine! Not far away!

How could I resist? A baroque shrine out in exurban Illinois: for all I knew, that could be the 1,001st thing you have to see before you die. Or maybe an unexpectedly quiet place for reflection and prayer. Either of those kinds of places would be worth stopping for.

So I turn off US 20 and then take another turn, and before long I see the shrine on the left side of the road, I drive up to the gate -- which is closed by a rope hanging between two posts. A sign on one post, like the sort you might buy in a hardware store, says KEEP OUT. On the other post another sign says PRIVATE PROPERTY.

I sat there for a few seconds, taking that in. I confirmed that this was, indeed, the shrine I'd been looking for. A sign not far away from the gate told me that. Then I noticed that two security cameras were pointing right at me, one on each of the posts also sporting the unwelcoming signs.

Fine. Maybe the Chicago-based Fraternite Notre Dame, which owns the shrine, has had trouble with vandals. Still, I hadn't felt that unwelcome at a religious site since I was brusquely ordered to leave the grounds of the Masjid Sultan in Singapore, though I'd visited no prohibited areas. Why the billboard, if all you see at the shrine are signs telling you to get lost? It was hard to think of the place as a House of God. More like a Gated Community of God, I think.

Down Calumet Sag Way

Back again on June 1, after Memorial Day, Observed. Which happens to come the day after Decoration Day this year.

As usual, there's much to do before the weekend actually starts. This morning I drove down to a part of Cook County I don't visit often for a meeting and a fine lunch. Now I know a place in Orland Park that serves a terrific Reuben -- a fine balance between the corned beef and the sauerkraut. All too often the sauerkraut mugs the corned beef.

I also enjoyed a stretch of road I never knew existed, the part of Calumet Sag Road connecting La Grange Road with the Kingery Highway. It's a two- or three-mile section of Illinois 83, which is a major road through the thick of suburban Cook, DuPage and Lake counties. Calumet Sag Road roughly parallels the Calumet Sag Channel, site of a massive fish kill just now. The fish gave their fish lives so that the invasive Asian carp might be kept out of the Great Lakes. But the channel mostly isn't visible from the road.

The road is unlike any other part of Illinois 83 that I've driven. It's two lanes with a 55 mph speed limit, and for a while it's surrounded on both sides by the woods of the Cap Sauers Holdings Nature Preserve, which is so lush now that the trees nearly form a tree tunnel in places. Otherwise the sunshine was bright. There wasn't a lot of traffic. It was hard to believe I was in populous Cook County.

Item From the Past: New England Ramble

October 18, 1989

I set out early and headed north on Vermont 100, which turned into a valley road of exceptional charm. A lot of the color was already gone, but the remaining reds and yellows went well with the browns and grays in the background. Fog clung to the slopes and bushes like cotton. I arrived in Waterbury just after noon and after lunch went to the nearby Ben & Jerry's ice cream factory and took the tour -- essentially a slide show of the process, bragging about how socially conscious the company is, and an overlook of the ice cream-making room, which isn't really that large. Free samples after that, and I bought a milkshake ("reverse chocolate").

Later in the afternoon, I drove to Montpelier down I-89, one of the best-looking stretches of Interstate I’ve ever seen, hilly and colorful. The capital of Vermont is a small place, as if the capitol were flung into the sky and happened to land in this spot, so that a town had to be built around it. I’m sure there are actual historical reasons for its location, but I like my idea better than looking up those reasons. Spent some time in the elegant capitol (state house, it’s called, like in Massachusetts) and the attached museum.

Found the hostel before dark and was given an empty room filled with six or seven folding beds, though I remained the only occupant. In summer, things are probably more crowded. The place was cluttered, so it reminded me of home. The fat, bearded, goofy proprietor didn't remind me of home. For a while I was in the common room with a few of the other lodgers, and the proprietor would come in periodically and make lewd comments about the movie on TV, Gorillas in the Mist, and then laugh at himself. "So you're watching Gorillas in My Pants?" was one of the cleaner ones. Cost of the room, plus the low-grade entertainment, $10.

October 19

Left early without a word. Spent a few minutes in a graveyard along US 2 down the hill from the hostel. Mostly 19th-century graves, very austere. It was cold, so I moved on into New Hampshire. Drove into nice views of the Presidential Range.

At the foot of Mt. Washington, I looked into taking the cog railway up to the top. They wanted $32. No. So I drove away and along a little road and came to Jefferson Notch, elevation 3009 feet. Ice crystals hung from the trees. I got out of the car, walked around, then ate lunch.

October 20

Long driving day into Maine, through driving rain sometimes. It was pouring in Gorham, NH, when I had breakfast at McDonald's, just ahead of a busload of French Canadians.

"A bus is coming," said one of the McDonald's workers to another one.

"Hear that?" the second one said, calling back to the food prep area. "There's a bus on the way!"

"A bus of what?" asked yet another worker behind the counter, a gawky teen. [Actually, they probably were all teens.]

"A bus of people!" the first one said, and most of the workers laughed, but not the guy who'd asked.

It was indeed a bus of people -- elderly Québécois on tour, it seemed. I finished my sausage egg biscuit, read the Manchester Union-Leader and listened to their familiar yet unfamiliar tongue.

The Vacation Circle

Back to posting after this year's late Labor Day. I read this recently about the holiday, on the CNN web site: "More than 39 million Americans will be traveling on vacation -- at least 50 miles from home -- this Labor Day weekend, slightly more than the 37.1 million who traveled on the Fourth of July weekend, according to AAA. July Fourth is typically the busiest automobile travel holiday of the year."

Reading that got me in a literal-minded mood: Vacations start at 50 miles. Less than that and it's what -- an excursion? According to my beat-up Rand McNally road atlas, one inch represents about 19 miles on the Illinois page, so that's roughly two-and-a-half inches to achieve a AAA-defined vacation.

So when we visit our friends in Grundy County, as we did a week and a half ago, that's just about enough to technically be on vacation. Likewise, we could go about 50 miles are reach the following places: Rockford, Rochelle; Paw Paw; the Norwegian Settlers State Monument (LaSalle County); Wilmington (home of the Gemini Giant). All those are places in Illinois. We could also reach metro Hammond-Gary in Indiana, or Kenosha, Wisconsin. Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, a resort area, is too close to count.

No plans this long weekend to drive past that imaginary circle with a 50-mile radius, however. Luckily many interesting things to see lie well within the circle.

Tercels, Clunkers & Government Cheese

I checked today, and neither of our cars meets the U.S. government definition of a clunker. The program, easily the biggest federal hit since government cheese, is officially known as the Car Allowance Rebate System. That name's about as interesting as an exit ramp designation, so it's little wonder that "Cash For Clunkers" is the name that stuck, and will probably stick in future books and articles that describe our time.

My old Tercel gets far and away too many miles per gallon to qualify for government-ordained destruction -- 29 combined city and highway mpg, according to the CARS web site. Good thing, I'm too fond of it anyway to have it euthanized.

Last week, I pulled up to the drive-by mailbox at our local post office just as an employee was unloading the boxes, so he took my mail directly from me.

"How many miles you got on that car?" he said, with a hint of admiration in his voice. I told him -- it's not all that many, considering how long I've owned the car -- and he made a remark about the car's durability. About a month ago, when I went for minor maintenance on the same car at a Toyota dealership, one of the mechanics voiced a similar opinion, and I don't think he was being sarcastic.

Tercels never used to get that kind of praise. During their production run (1978-99), they were the Gummo Marx of the Toyota line. A few years ago, I remember a moment early in Night in the Museum, when Ben Stiller's character was being established as a failed inventor and a sympathetic loser, you briefly see his car, which has a Denver boot on it: a beat-up '80s Tercel. A losermobile, in other words.

Now they're cars that last a long, long time and get fairly high mileage. These are desirable things in our moment in history.

Speaking of moments in history, I'll bet that if I mention "government cheese" to Lilly, I'll get a peculiar look.

Sabine National Wildlife Refuge, Interrupted

The things you learn after you visit a new place. Just today I read, on the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service web site, that the "124,511-acre [Sabine National Wildlife Refuge] coastal marsh... is currently closed to all public uses because of damages sustained during Hurricane Rita."

Two weeks ago Monday, I drove from San Antonio to Lafayette, Louisiana, as the first leg of my return home from Texas. Naturally, the drive was more than just about getting home, so I took a few detours of my own devising. But not as many as I'd dreamed of. When I look at a road map, I see more than points that designate cities and towns or lines that designate roads. I see a candy shop.

Like candy, I can only take so many destinations, but it's still a fair amount. Just west of Lake Charles, Louisiana, I left I-10 and headed south on Louisiana 27, also called the "Creole Nature Trail." It cuts down the eastern edge of the Sabine NWR in extreme southwest Louisiana (Cameron Parish) and then eastward along the Gulf coast.

Also, according to the National Scenic Byways Program, a division of the Federal Highway Administration, the road is an "All-American Road," which is the program's term for a major-league scenic route. (But don't expect a reasonable description of Louisiana 27 from byways.org. It's just as bad as a hack travel brochure: "... when you travel the Creole Nature Trail, you will get an up-close and personal view of Louisiana's unique environment. The trail travels through thousands of acres of untouched wetlands, which reflect an area blessed with some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable.")

That isn't to say it wasn't one fine drive, through intensely flat, intensely grassy, intensely wet territory in June. A sublime green all around. This is a view from a platform at a place called Blue Goose Trail, which didn't seem to be closed. At least the parking lot was open. So was the trail, which winds through the background of the picture.

So I took a walk, with a hat and water. It was just as hot as in Texas. I'm not sure if these posts used to be part of something that blew down four years ago or not, but they were trailside.

"Untouched" isn't quite the way I'd describe the Sabine NWR. Again, from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service: "Refuge recreational areas along Highway 27 received varying amounts of damage to bridges, piers, observation towers, boardwalks, restroom facilities, fences, and parking lots. These facilities need to be repaired before the areas can be re-opened for public use."

The bridges I saw connected Louisiana 27 with side roads, crossing the large canal that often ran next to the highway. Most of them looked intact, but one not far from Blue Goose Trail had been completely wrecked and not restored yet.

In case I had any ideas about heading down one of the Sabine NWR's canals to gig some alligators, "West of Highway 27, Sabine refuge canals and marshes were severely impacted by storm wind and water.... Canals and marshes are clogged with seven million cubic meters of debris from off shore rigs and coastal communities.... Tanks and barrels containing hazardous liquids and gases have the potential to explode or break down and release toxins into the environment. Over 1,400 hazardous material containers have been identified and are estimated to contain between 115,000 and 350,000 gallons of hazardous liquids and gases."

Lest we forget, Hurricane Rita was stronger than Katrina. But it didn't hit New Orleans. Instead it washed large parts of the oil industry into a wildlife refuge. It also thumped a lot of places in southwestern Louisiana and southeastern Texas, and destroyed the the town of Holly Beach, Louisiana, on the Gulf, which I passed through after walking on the Blue Goose Trail. I can't compare what I saw to the pre-2005 town, but the place did look ragged and improvised. At least the new buildings were far up on stilts.

My plan had been to cross the Calcasieu Ship Channel by ferry and continue along Louisiana 27 and loop back to near Lake Charles. Or maybe even follow Louisiana 82 to Abbeville, though it was getting late in the day. But after waiting in line a while, I decided to retrace my route back to I-10, especially after a truck driver came by telling everyone, "the ferry's broke."

I Heard It in Austin on the Weird Radio

I'd been warned. But I arrived in metro Austin late in the afternoon of June 10 anyway, making use of the main highway through town, I-35. My memories of driving into and through Austin on that road had been created in a different age, in terms of traffic. I remember buzzing right through in the '70s and '80s.

Austin has grown since then. Somewhere around Round Rock, north of Austin, traffic on I-35 glued up without an immediate visible cause -- not because of construction, or an accident, or anything I could see besides traffic volume. From there on, movement inched along. I-35 has upper and lower decks as it passes through Austin, and I could see that both decks in both directions were equally jammed.

I've experienced traffic jams in my time. I've driven in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington DC, Houston, Atlanta and a lot of other places with snarled roads. I've seen traffic slowed or stopped by wicked pile-ups (with ambulances rushing by on the shoulder), or by jackknifed trucks, or by orange cones that suddenly funnel three lanes into one, or by windy thunder- or ice storms. Rush-hour Austin in the summer of 2009 topped them all for sheer, dogged refusal to move for long stretches.

Eventually, I'd had enough, and slowly made my way to an exit, some miles north of where I had planned. I knew enough about Austin streets to navigate to my destination south of Town Lake (since last year, called Lady Bird Lake) and west of Congress Ave. But the access roads to I-35 were also jammed. So much so that it took many blocks to change lanes just to get off the access road onto a city street.

As luck would have it, I turned onto 6th Street. Well known even 20 or 30 years ago as an entertainment district, I got the sense as I drove through that there's a lot more of it now than there used to be. Fortunately, since it was late afternoon, the street wasn't as jammed with pedestrians as it probably would have been after dark, but some people were still out and about, no doubt gearing up to visit the likes of Esther's Follies, the Dirty Dog Bar, Custom Tattoos from the Soul, Peckerheads, Mooseknuckle Pub, the Thirsty Nickel, the Black Cat Tattoo Parlor and Midnight Cowboy, among many others. Not really my kind of street, but it sure was fun to drive down.

I turned southbound onto Congress, also a major thoroughfare, and followed it a few miles. The further I went, the odder things felt. I'd been to Austin many times, even lived here for much of a summer, but I had the strange sensation that I'd absolutely never been there before. But 15 or so years is a long time to be away from a place like Austin. Much of its growth seemed to be on Congress south of Town Lake (called South Congress, or the too-cute "SoCo"), where I recall there being not so much, once upon a time. Whole new business districts seem to have sprouted ex nihilo, as far as my memory registered, with more emphasis on workaday and boutique shopping -- a lot of them with the look of independent retailers -- than entertainment, but with some of that in the mix as well.

All the while, beginning back on I-35, through the traffic jam, then the pre-party vibe of 6th Street, and then the strange unfamiliarity of Congress Ave., I was listening to weird radio. There isn't much weird radio in our time, maybe there never was. Even Austin's list of stations has homogenization between the lines, with certain exceptions, such as KOOP (91.7), "Community Radio for Austin" or the UT stations, KUT (90.5) and KVRX (also 91.7), though often enough university or public radio stations follow their own predictable formats.

What was I hearing as an unfamiliar Austin rolled by? I didn't make any notes (I was driving), I don't remember the station number, and there was no station identification to tell me the call letters. The show did remind me of Ken Nordine's Word Jazz, Firesign Theatre and The Bald Soprano, all at once. One segment was a bogus radio advice show, "Ask Dr. Beanbag," with both the questions and answers becoming increasingly demented, with odd sound effects thrown in. Then the show -- show isn't the word, the voices coming through my dashboard -- started a discussion on robots. An increasingly demented discussion on robots. With odd sound effects thrown in.

It doesn't happen very often, but that moment of weird radio became the soundtrack for the terrain going by. It fit. Keep Austin Weird, after all, though living so far from Austin, I can't say how much that slogan really means. The drive, which could have merely been about fighting traffic, felt a little weird, and was a better drive for it.

The Solo Southern Loop of 2009

The price of gasoline, which has been upsliding since its mid-winter, post-bubble lows of much less than $2/gal., makes me want to mutter gripes like Muttley. Especially during the last two weeks, when I was a more frequent buyer of gas than usual, along a route of roughly 3,000 miles.

During the spring, we planned two June trips. One for Yuriko, Lilly and Ann -- a visit to Japan, which began on June 4 and which will end the day after tomorrow. For me, a drive to Texas and back that began June 5 and which ended yesterday, though that description is a little too spare to capture the route I took, which was outbound from Illinois to Missouri, Oklahoma and the parts of Texas along I-35; and then a return by way of East Texas, Louisiana (Acadiana), Mississippi, West Tennessee, Jackson Purchase Kentucky and a long drive just yesterday from the southern tip of Illinois. All together, the loop beginning at metro Chicago ranged as far west as San Antonio, touched the Gulf coast in Louisiana, and proceeded northward by more-or-less paralleling the Mississippi.

Along the way, I wanted to visit as many people as I could. I saw my mother, both my brothers and my sister-in-law, two of my three nephews, both of my aunts, some relatives of one of my aunts, both of my first cousins, two first cousins once removed, and six old friends from high school, some of whom I've seen in recent decades, but others I hadn't seen in nearly 30 years. I met two of the children of two of these old friends for the first time, one a high school-aged girl, the other a baby girl only six months old. I even had a pleasant lunch with an editor of mine, one of the few not based in New York, but rather metro Dallas.

The other component of the trip, which should be no surprise, was to drive roads I've never driven, visit cities and towns I've never visited, and tour museums, historic sites, parks, churches, cemeteries, factories, and oddball attractions. I wanted to hear the dialects of the South and listen to the intense noise of the bugs at night. I wanted to find a store that sold Moon Pies and eat one.

I succeeded in these ambitions, though when planning the trip I naturally found more places to visit than I possibly could. Along the way, I shaved off destinations because I was tired, or wanted to spend more time with some of the people mentioned above. But I'm not complaining. I managed to pack in good variety, which is all I ask from the road.

I also planned it to be an inexpensive trip. Gasoline ended up being far and away the largest single expense, though I haven't tallied it up just yet. Everywhere south of Illinois, prices were around $2.50/gal. (add 30 cents in Illinois). I ate at few restaurants by myself, and on long drives especially, meals tended to be a sandwiches and grocery-store items at roadside picnic tables.

Of the 15 nights I spent away from home, I spent ten with relatives and a friend. I'd say that I sponged off them, but no. Reciprocity was at work. Anyone I stayed with would be more than welcome to stay with me and raid my refrigerator, as well. I camped four nights, with the most expensive site coming in at $13/night.

I paid for only one room. I got a late start leaving home on the first day, which always seems to happen, and packing for only myself didn't change that. So I was too tired by the time I got to mid-Missouri to want to find a campsite and pitch my tent in the gathering darkness. Exiting I-44 in Lebanon, Missouri, I saw a sign for an oddly named motel, and went to take a look.

The Munger Moss Motel lives off of Route 66 nostalgia. I can take that or leave it, but the desk clerk (and motel co-owner) was so personable and well-informed about the history of the motel -- vintage 1946, with an addition in the early '60s -- that I decided to stay. It was a good choice. I got one of the 1946 rooms, which had a TV but otherwise had a pleasant '40s sort of look. Small, but nicely appointed. And at just over $40 a night including tax, not too high a price to support Americana.

Pigs! Run! Run!

Intensely rainy weekend following Friday's clear warmth. Somewhere along the way last week, the Sienna's left rear tire found a nail, and tried to be one with it. The tire started a slow deflation, unable to keep the air I put into it. So this morning grease monkeys -- that is, automotive maintenance professionals -- removed the mail and then repaired the hole. I was practically first in line at the shop as it opened, the result of waking early for no special reason, but the kind of waking that you know isn't going to go away.

Remarkably, the tires are still under road-hazard warranty, which was no extra charge back when I bought them in late 2007. How often does that happen? The joke being that the tire would normally wait until just after the warranty expires to make trouble. I guess the tire couldn't wait that long to find its nail, so I escaped an auto repair shop without paying anything, which is as rare as rocking-horse dung.

As part of my daily scanning of Google News, I noticed today that the swine flu scare had the following consequence already, according to a roundup of stock news on Bloomberg: "Smithfield Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork processor, tumbled 12 percent to $9.04. Tyson Foods Inc., the largest U.S.-based meat producer, retreated 8.9 percent to $9.96."

A fellow I know seriously believes -- or used to believe -- that on the whole, investors in the equity markets behave rationally. I don't particularly believe that. This could be an example to buttress my case. Selling off pork-processing shares because swine flu, which presumably has been in pigs for a long time, has jumped to people? Sure, I can see that. Actually, what I see are brokers yelling, "They handle pigs? Sell! Sell!"

Orders aren't traded like that, but the mental picture is fun all the same.

Biscuits & Gravy at Toomey's

Yesterday evening, after spending much of the day with a friend of hers, Lilly came home and asked if we could play Monopoly. At her friend's house, she said, she'd played "Chicago Monopoly."

"What's that?" I asked. "You have to get your alderman's approval to buy a house or hotel?"

"Huh?"

"Never mind."

It look me a moment to realize she meant the Chicago variety of the game, the one that features Chicago place names, rather than Atlantic City's. I might have mentioned this before, but I'm a purist in matters of Monopoly -- you have to be a purist in something -- and consider all variations bogus, mere exercises in expanding market share, except for the Waddingtons UK version, which was created not long after the US version.

I might feel differently if the variations I've seen made any socioeconomic sense. Highly expensive real estate always substitutes for Boardwalk and Park Place, but poor or scary neighborhoods never take the place of Mediterranean and Baltic avenues, for instance. No doubt Hasbro figures that would be inviting angry reactions.

Anyway, as we played, I looked through my wad of receipts from the trip and came to the conclusion that we spent $357.29 on gas over the ten days, though that only counts gas purchased away from home. Since the tank didn't come back quite as high as it was when we left, I'll add about $30 for the actual gas expense and then round it up: $390. I'd estimated a 2,000-mile trip would take $400 in gas money, so I was pretty close.

I didn't write down per gallon costs at each purchase location, and it turns out that not every receipt states the price that way, though many do. Generally speaking, though, the further south and east we went, the lower the price got. In Indianapolis, we paid $4.16; in East Tennessee, $3.90; Nashville and Frankfort, Ky., were somewhere between those.

Most of the gas stations were only fuel acquisition points, units of corporate multi-facility owners and operators with mostly familiar brands, out to sell high-margin food and other items besides gasoline. Then there was Toomey's Country Market, not far from Crosby, Tenn., which also sold gas and grocery items, but had a little restaurant in back.

On July 3, we constituted a lot of the breakfast rush. Besides us, there was a table of three -- a man, his daughter, and her son, probably -- and a man by himself. The waitress was also the cook, the only person attending to breakfast, so it took a little while to get our order. It was a good find on the whole, especially the biscuits and gravy. A backroad restaurant in the South that can't do biscuits and gravy might as well close up.

The Roads Ahead

The best-known road that we drove last week was the section of US 441, also known as the Newfound Gap Road, that crosses Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is a windy little road, ascending to a point near Clingman's Dome, Tennessee, and then descending into North Carolina -- or the other way around, depending on which way you drive it. Verdant beyond belief in early July, the road also has pretty much everything you'd want in a mountain road any time of year, such as winding switchbacks and access to various historic structures and hiking trails. Plus scenic overlooks. A lot of scenic overlooks; after the first few, you quit getting out of the car.

At about Mile 10 (I think), still in Tennessee, there's the Mother of All Switchbacks, a place where the road loops completely around and passes over itself -- or loops around and passes under itself, depending. The warning sign describing this particular bit of road topography is pictured here (see November 10) -- a memorable sign.

I'm astonished that the photographer got a photo of that sign at all, since stopping or pulling over on the Newfound Gap Road is risky business. While smooth (partly repaved in recent years, I read), most of the road has no shoulder, and traffic is heavy. The park is the most popular one in the entire national park system -- 9.4 million visitors in 2007, according to the National Park Service. One any given day in the summer, a large number of that total seems to be on Newfound Gap Road, which made for a number white-knuckle moments, especially at when traffic appeared three and four and five RVs deep on the other side of the road, just as you hit a switchback. Carefree highway, it's not.

Unsurprisingly, Newfound Gap Road passes through Newfound Gap, a location some distance lower than Clingman's Dome, the highest point in the park, but important enough that the dedication of the park was held there on September 2, 1940. The occasion was considered important enough that President Roosevelt himself came to speak, from a platform of stones built for the occasion by the CCC. A plaque marks the spot now; less obvious is the fact that the Tennessee-North Carolina border runs through the site. Through the plaque, I've read, which is a fitting bit of symbolism to mark the cooperation of the two states in putting the park together.

Ann took this picture of the place, with only a little help from me.

Interstate 40, which skirts the park to the east, has its own share of curves, along with enough mountainous landscapes to count as scenic. Like stretches of I-89 in Vermont or I-10 in Louisiana or the Mackinac Bridge, it makes the case that the Interstate system is not completely a bore.

In fact, a little bit more of a bore would have suited me. Along much of I-40 from the park to Asheville, trucks aren't allowed in the left lane, and are required to go slower than cars. The result was long lines of trucks in the right lane -- six or eight. Drivers of lesser vehicles, such as a dark green Sienna all the way from Illinois, either had to hang behind the trucks, or pass the trucks on the left, between them and the concrete barrier, through a couple of serious curves.

Despite their obvious dangers, I-40 and the Newfound Gap Road were good driving roads. Better, however, was a piece of the as-yet unfinished Foothills Parkway, tucked away just north of the park, connecting the town of Crosby, Tenn., with I-40. At five miles or so, it was an abbreviated Newfound Gap Road, with some similar scenery, but almost no traffic. An obscure gem of a road.

Southland

I have a large wad of receipts in my wallet right now. Tomorrow, if I have time, I might remove them and distill the gas station receipts from the rest, to add up the amount we've spent on gasoline since June 27. That morning we backed out of our driveway and headed generally south and east, leaving Illinois and passing through Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina. We got as far away as Asheville, NC.

All together, by the time we returned to our driveway late this afternoon, we'd traveled 2060 miles -- not actually that far when compared, say, to driving to Alberta and back two years ago (4,800+ miles). So maybe that was our response to high energy costs: cut out a couple of thousand miles.

Actually, no. If we'd had a few more days, we'd have also gone to Atlanta or Charleston, SC, or both. Easily another thousand miles. Travel requires three basic resources, namely money, time and the will to go. Each of those can be, and always is, a limiting factor. Time was a little more constraining this time around than money.

Limited the trip might have been, but it still offered us the cool dampness of Mammoth Cave, the familiar charms of Nashville (including a 42-foot statue of a goddess), intense lush greenery, views that confirmed the accuracy of calling them the Smokies, distant roads with alarming mountain switchbacks, the highest point in Tennessee, and Gatlinburg, which probably has more tourist traps per square foot than anywhere else.

We saw the extraordinary Biltmore, an estate with few peers in North America. We sought out biscuits and gravy, milkshakes from a diner unchanged since ca. 1940, and chocolate balls infused with bourbon. The trip included a visit to a presidential home and a presidential grave site; there were houses along the way at which presidents had stayed; and a place at which FDR came to speak. Besides the presidential grave, I saw slave graves and the picturesque place where Daniel Boone is thought to lie. We pitched our tent (five nights) and also stayed in inexpensive motels (four nights). The girls swam at every opportunity in pools, and found boulder-choked creeks to play in as well. I heard dialects that I haven't heard in years, charming even when spoken by a probable con woman in a parking lot.

To judge by the crowds in some places, and the traffic, and the conversations I had with clerks, waitresses and a park service employee, people aren't letting an average of $4/gal. put them off completely from pleasure trips. I know our trip was, on the whole, a pleasure.

Back to Michigan

Barely a mile from our house, we stopped for doughnuts to take with us to western Michigan. I waited in the car, face-to-face with a couple of newspaper boxes. An above-the-fold headline of USA Today last Friday, May 23, 2008: Gas Costs Cut Into Vacation Travel.

Just down the street, at the gas station we patronize fairly often, the cheapest gallon was some cents more than $4, about a full dollar more than the last time we drove to western Michigan, only two months ago. Should we take this as proof of the peak oil theory, or an oil bubble the size of Texas? I'll leave that for the months and years ahead to sort out.

In the meantime, I grit my teeth, and pay. The high cost isn't enough, yet, to forgo a trip that offered glimpses of the grassy hills and wooded slopes of the Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness, the winding dirt roads of the Manistee National Forest, or all the faint stars of the Little Dipper. The birdsong around here is nice, but it really fills the tent early in the morning in a place miles from any town. In the nearest town, a ship that plies Lake Michigan announced its presence loudly as it docked, and we had the chance that same day to hear and see a game of vintage base ball and note its subtle differences from ordinary baseball, even the sandlot variety we can hear and see played from our back yard.

I watched the gas gauge a little more closely than before, but only a little. Without burning some gas, we couldn't have repeatedly driven through the little town of Free Soil, Mich., or past the rural cemetery down the road; reached a lakeshore beach just like one in Chicago but without the people; or seen the lighthouse off Ludington. It was a good way to spend four days and three nights. At $8/gallon, maybe not. But for now, hang the cost of gas.

D.H. Day, M-22 & the B-52s

Spend enough time along the lake in a certain part of Michigan -- a few hours is enough -- and you begin to notice D.H. Day. There’s the D.H. Day Highway, the honorary name of Michigan 109 (M-109). Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore sports the D.H. Day Campground and the D.H. Day Group Campground, which are some miles apart. Buy a particular postcard locally and you’ll have an image of the D.H. Day Barn, the same picturesque barn you saw on M-109 just north of the Dune Climb.

Just who was this D.H. Day, and why does he have such a concentration of things named after him? an inquiring tourist wanted to know. That would be me, and I thought the answer would have to wait till I had Internet access again, so little did the tourist literature have to say about Day.

But late in the morning on the first of August, we paid a visit to the town of Glen Haven, which is really only a collection of historic structures on the coast of Lake Michigan, and now within the boundaries of the national lakeshore. That day it was nearly as empty of people as the Dune Climb had been full the day before. But in its heyday, late in the 19th century and early in the 20th, Glen Haven was alive as a transshipment point for lumber, a stopover for Great Lakes vessels, the hub of a burgeoning fruit-growing district (cherries especially, also apples) and the focal point of an early tourist industry, bringing in the affluent by steamer from Chicago. It was a little empire. The emperor was D.H. Day.

I didn’t have to wait to learn that, because the park service volunteer blacksmith told us about him in considerable detail. One of the historic structures in Glen Haven is a smithy. If I remember right, it had been other things in more recent years, abandoned for a while, and lately reconfigured by the park service to look like it had in the late 19th century, though the interpreters are necessarily people of our time. “All the original equipment was long gone,” the smith, a woman in her 50s, said. “Do you know where the park service found most of the equipment you see here?”

It was a large number of things: an anvil, bellows, tongs, hammers, and so on. “eBay,” she answered. “You can get anything on eBay.”

As for D.H. Day, I was pleased to learn his remarkable story. That’s the best kind of souvenir. Someone had to bring in cherries, so important to the identity of this part of Michigan these days, since they aren’t native. I hope the woman we saw in Traverse City a little later gives an occasional thought to D.H. Day. Her Kia was decked out with a cherry motif. The antenna had a little plastic cherry on top, the steering wheel had a cover with cherries printed on it, artificial cherries were hanging from the rear-view mirror, and her windshield wipers were tipped with little red orbs.

M-22 was another discovery for me. The road has fans enough such that souvenir shops sell reproductions of the road sign that marks it. The road goes almost as far south as Manistee, and loops up northward through the Leelanau Peninsula, but for me it turned scenic at the national lakeshore, through alternating mixed deciduous forests and open fields lively this time of year with wildflowers. Especially a small light purplish bud, lavender almost, though I never found out exactly what it was. The name hardly mattered as carpets of light purple, punctuated by lone trees, bushes and tall grasses as well, opened up alongside M-22.

M-109 is a much shorter road that branches briefly off of M-22 in the national lakeshore, connecting the Dune Climb and Glen Haven with the nearby tourist town of Glen Arbor. It has the same charms as M-22. After we visited the smithy everyone else went to the nearby beach at Glen Haven – clean sand, a wide view of Lake Michigan, but only about three other families there – while I drove to Glen Arbor to pick up supplies at the local IGA.

On the way back, just before I got back to Glen Haven, a radio station I’d tuned into moments before started playing the B-52s’ “Love Shack,” generally known as a dance number, but which is also a fine driving song. How could I let the opportunity pass?

I rolled the windows all the way down, turned the radio up loud, and sped south down M-109. No one else was on the road. I had the B-52s, the wind, the sun, the fields of purple, the tall grass and the trees to myself as long as the song lasted.

Item From the Past: October 22, 2002.

Various things have happened lately, but I haven’t been much of anywhere, unless you count Elwood, Ill. Elwood is some distance south and a little west of the metro Chicago area, really a small satellite of Joliet. Its distinction is that it’s now home to the largest inland intermodal container facility in North America, so recently developed that the likes of me get to go to the grand opening.

It isn’t what I would call picturesque, consisting as it does of several long strips of concrete with RR tracks running the length, and a number of enormous cranes on parallel tracks to service them. It was fun to drive the length of the concrete, though, to the tent for the festivities. It was like being turned loose on an airport runway in my car -- a most unusual circumstance.

Later that day I visited Peotone, Ill., famous in these parts for exactly one reason, namely that various interests in the state are eager to destroy it by building an airport larger than O’Hare in its vicinity. Other interests are not so eager, so it’s still a toss-up. In any case, it is a plain little town.

Then I went to nearby Governors State University, an institution that unaccountable boasts a major collection of enormous outdoor sculptures, the Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park. It was a cool, clear day, just right for walking around the grounds and looking at these objects, mostly dating from the ’60s and ’70s. Better yet I had the place entirely to myself — hundreds of acres of high-grass fields and queer metal behemoths, including one that looked like a black flying saucer, some twisted and tangled steel I-beams, and other thingambob metal constructions.