Summer's almost gone . . .

 . . . but I did get away in this year that wasn't, once.

Summer's almost gone; Summer's almost gone; Almost gone. Yeah, it's almost gone; Where will we be; When the summer's gone?

The call came in on a Saturday at the end of August from a friend out west who I met in my college freshman dorm from whom I hadn't heard in years.  It was the first call from him that I can recall.

It concerned a college roommate, about whom he (and other dorm mates) was concerned who had recently suffered a compound leg fracture and waited for several hours (until the next morning) before dragging himself to his car and driving himself to the nearest hospital 30 minutes away.  (Roomie had dialed 9-11 when it occurred but, despite having insurance, engaged in the Republican health care plan of shopping for the best price option before committing by asking how much an ambulance ride would cost.  When the exasperated operator said she didn't know, he said he'd "call back" and dragged himself off to bed, leaving behind a bloody smear across the floor.)

My friend pointedly asked how long it would take me to drive down to roomie's house.  He obviously already had looked it up on Google because when I fudged by an hour or two and said about eight hours, he expressed disappointment and said he thought it might be a mere five and a half or six. The truth lies somewhere in between.

I drove down the next day.   I stayed at his house (and slept on his screened-in porch for five nights, it was so hot) and did what I could to make his situation more comfortable.

So I took a summer trip!  I was afraid up to that point that I would not a) go anywhere this summer or b) take a dip off a beach somewhere.

Mission accomplished.  I even threw in several attempts at capturing a picturesque sunup and a visit to the Civil War battlefield (several "battles," largely troop maneuvering that either succeeded or failed in dislodging the enemy from the river port city) of New Bern.  I will add here that Google seems to have commandeered Blog, "updated" it (which makes it more difficult to use) and rejects every attempt of mine to import pictures from my computer into a post like I used to do and hence has destroyed my ability to post pictures here and dramatically diminished my enjoyment in blogging here.

So this summer wasn't a total waste in this year-that-wasn't, I spent all or part of five days in rural North Carolina.  I swam off a "beach" (actually a river bank upon which the city had dumped a load of sand), sat around for an hour palavering with some southern good ole boys in a local convenience store, spent a half-hour speaking with the mayor at my roomie's house (she "dropped" by--I'm sure she was interviewing me to discern whether I was likely bringing the coronavirus to her region and hence should be quarantined) and enjoyed a subsequent fish dinner (cooked by roomie as he gimped around his kitchen in his rigid "boot") in this coastal village.

What I did during my summer vacation

I toured the South by car during July, getting out of town over the July 4th week rather that watch the spectacle of our president bringing tanks onto the Mall to shore up his lilliputian affect.  In August I toured the midwest by car for a few days.

In western Pennsylvania I drove by a beer distributorship on a back road that just begged me to come on in.  It was a time machine that transported me back to the decade when I was an adolescent standing in line at the corner candy store, buying sugar daddies and Mad Magazines, and the next decade when I was making midnight runs to the supermarket to lay in a six-pack of beer for the late movies on TV, which, when they ended, the station played the national anthem and then went to a hissing snow field for the rest of the wee hours of the morning.

This place had the register alcove stacked with bubble gum cigars, candy cigarette packs, boston baked beans and best of all, those tiny wax bottles of colored fruit nectar that you would bite off the top and drain the 1 ounce of syrupy colored sugar water for refreshment on hot summer days.  But they also had beer in that vast warehouse space, brands that I knew well as a young man in New York where the drinking age was 18 then and that I hadn't seen in decades since then.

Schaeffer, Schmidt, Knickerbocker, Rheingold and Schlitz.  I happily laid in a case of Schmidt and thought that perhaps I would come back next year and maybe they would have Ballentine and Valley Forge beer.

My summer vacation

Nothing could compare to being in Normandy in April and treading upon the very beaches where giant men from America, Britain and Canada stormed ashore on June 6, 1944 and thrust a dagger into the heart of Nazi Germany.  But my seven-day 2500-mile car trip through five states had its salient moments, most notably in visiting with my sister and her family in Corolla, NC, visiting with my college roommate in Vandemere, NC, and visiting with my best friend in ninth grade at Staten Island Academy before I went off to boarding school. (My nephew, my sister, and my friend from CU.)

When I visit the south, I like locating the town square and seeing its usual statue of a Rebel sentry, and reading that town's notion of why the war was fought on its base, because of my interest in the Civil War.  I do the same thing in northern towns.  (Ellaville's Rebel sentinel, still on duty.)

The major-league baseball game I saw in Atlanta's new baseball stadium in a Cobb County suburb far from downtown was fun, and I was glad to see a Bryce Harper home run, but that park isn't in the hallowed spirit of hoary baseball because it has no connection to Atlanta anymore, it's just a suburbanite's destination site for an evening of expensive entertainment.  What kept me going alone in my car during the hours of driving wasn't Siri giving me often wrong directions as I tooled along the highways but my Sirius radio subscription, listening to rock and roll songs on the Classic Vinyl station, till I discovered the same songs would be played each day at about the same time, so I switched over to the Comedy Channel which didn't suffer from day after repetition.  (Hammerin' Hank's statue is inside SunTrust Park, you'll have to get there by car, pay for parking and purchase a ticket that can be displayed on your hand-held device to see it.)

The best part of my vacation, beside seeing people dear to me, was my trip to the site of the Andersonville Civil War POW camp, because it was so haunting to be in a place with so many displaced souls (thousands of Union soldiers perished there) and at a place where heroes, giant men, trod.  I also liked visiting the D-Day Memorial and Appomattox in Virginia, again because I was following the path of giant men who altered history not too long ago.  (A beautiful sunrise in NC.)

Virginia

And so my seven day car trip came to an end after my last stop at...Appomattox, the tiny hamlet where the Civil War came to an end and America was assured to be a world superpower and free.  Lee signed the surrender terms on the afternoon of April 9, 1865, men died on both sides on the morning of the ninth.  (The Confederate Cemetery at Appomattox; it has an unknown Union soldier buried there also with an American flag at his gravesite.)

The great war was over and the southern men made their way south to return home in the best way they could, the trek of the vanquished.  But they soon set about terrorizing the freedmen of their communities and instituted another century of slave-like Jim Crow dominance before federal power finally broke to pieces the ways of the past.  (The Civil War ended here, at the McLean Hose behind me.)

In wandering about the McLean house yard, in which the armistice was signed in its parlor, where the slave quarters were behind the main house, the obscene difference between the single room with loft shack out back and the mass'a's 3-storey house was stark.  A South American couple was examining the placards describing the conditions of lifetime enforced servitude and I could sense their disapprobation and I felt embarrassed to be an American.  (The big house and the shack in back.)

But slavery was abolished there at Appomattox, in effect, and the great country was bound up to heal from its divisions.  A century and a half later, after yet another great war and many, many little ones, are we better now?  (The slave quarters at the McLean House.)

Chattanooga

On the penultimate day of my 2500 mile car trip through five states, I toured the Civil War battlefield of Chickamauga in Georgia, where in September 1863, Union General George Thomas, a Virginian, earned the permanent sobriquet of The Rock Of Chickamauga when he saved the Union army from destruction with a heroic stand upon Snodgrass Hill a few miles outside of Chattanooga after the army was sent reeling in disarray during the battle when a gap inadvertently, due to a confusing set of order, opened in its battle line.  Thomas organized a defensive line among disorganized fleeing troops upon the high ground in the background of the picture below and held the position until nightfall, when the army retired to Chattanooga where it was besieged by the Rebel army.

The dominant position in the siege of Chattanooga was on lookout Mountain in Georgia, just south of the city, where Rebel artillery made the Yankee position below practically untenable.  However, U.S. Grant was appointed commander of the Union army in Chattanooga, and with forces he brought with him from his own army which had just captured Vicksburg, he drove the Rebels away in the Battle Above The Clouds on Missionary Ridge and Lookout Mountain in November 1863, thus opening up the Deep South to the Union invasion which occurred the next spring with General William Sherman's army's march through Georgia to Atlanta.

The picture below taken from downtown Chattanooga shows how Lookout Mountain dominates the landscape.  In the city I also visited the National Cemetery and stopped at a few jazz sites before I headed northwest through central Tennessee to return to Virginia.

Along the way I saw a nice rainbow, although it signified encountering rain on the drive.  The next day I wished to see a couple of landmark sites in Virginia before I returned home.

Dalton

Leaving Andersonville National Historical Park in central Georgia mid-afternoon on the Fourth, I drove west across Georgia on Highway 26 before turning north on Interstate 85/75 to drive to the Tennessee border so I could tour the Chickamauga and Chattanooga Civil War battle sites the next day.  At Ellaville on the highway to the west I came across a Rebel sentry guarding a raft of Amrrican flags planted in the city square for the Fourth.

A few miles further west I stopped at the town hall square in Buena Vista to read the myriad monuments on its grounds. One ballyhooed the "Poet and Confederate Hero, author of the Great Poem 'All Quiet on The Potomac Tonight'"Thaddeus Oliver, who died in 1864 during the war at age 38, and another was proudly dedicated by the Marion County High School class of 1971, the first "intergrated" class as mandated by federal legislation.

Far north in Dalton I encountered a statue of Confederate General Joseph Johnston downtown, who harassed Sherman's army on its drive from Chattanooga to Atlanta, and then again after Sherman's March to the Sea that made Georgia howl and, basically, made the morally bankrupt Confederacy lose the war as the Union eastern armies manned the trenches outside of Richmond and Petersburg.

On the top of a hill just west of downtown Dalton was a cemetery with a small, lonely part enclosed as the Confederate Cemetery, with a Rebel sentinel watching over 425 graves of Confederate soldiers and four unknown Union soldiers, victims of nearby battles.  Meanwhile at the Whitaker County Courthouse, acres of American flags were planted on its lawn and along the main avenue, with no tanks in evidence as the proud banners waved gently in the cooling breeze.

South Carolina

On the 3d day of my vacation, I arose early in Vandemere, North Carolina, to capture the sunrise, then headed out to drive to Charleston, South Carolina, to visit a friend from high school who had recently moved there.  Enroute, I stopped in at a seaport town for lunch at the Trolley Stop in search of the perfect hot dog in North Carolina; a quest that was stymied in January because the restaurant was closed that day when I was in that town with my host of the prior two nights, Jimmy, who was looking around for a house to buy.

Entering South Carolina I drove by Myrtle Beach and could see its carnival atmosphere from the roadway, a ferris wheel loomed on one side and King Kong swung from a building on the other side.  Reaching Charleston, I met my high school friend Lew, and we toured some nearby beaches that were prominent in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War.

Then we had dinner at the Poe Tavern on the main street of the beachfront community.  Poe was a soldier stationed in Charleston when he was in the service so the community has an affinity for this Baltimore native.

Getting up early the next morning, I ran 3 miles in the coolness of the predawn hour and then headed out for Atlanta by driving over the very unique-looking Cooper Rive Bridge.  I had to make a baseball game that evening at the Braves' new stadium in the far northwestern suburbs of Atlanta, SunTrust Park, one of two existing major league venues at which I have never seen a baseball game (new Yankee Stadium in the other park).

North Carolina

I went away for my summer vacation, a 2500-mile car trip in seven days, driving through North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee and Virginia to see people and things. I went on average 357 miles a day, an exhausting daily regieme but I saw and did things that I have been meaning to see or do for a long time.

Primarily, I wanted to get away from the District over the July Fourth week before our president took over that celebration of our nation's birth and turned it into a military hardware show (look at my tanks!) and further displayed his colossal ignorance (the Continental Army captured all the airports in our region, a strategy that led to us winning the Revolutionary War, during which it soundly defeated the British on the ramparts of Fort McHenry).  I certainly didn't want to stick around to see the despicable Proud Boys strut around the National Mall in support of their reprehensible idol or hear the see-no-evil nonsense spewing forth from the moronic brains of the cult-leader's base.

I started off by driving to Vandemere, North Carolina, to stay for a couple of days with my college roommate, Jimmy Sherwood.  He had recently visited me in Falls Church and I wanted to return the gesture.

Life in Vandemere, a dirt-poor small town on North Carolina's Inner Banks, is simpler than up here in DC--taxes are low, government pensions aren't taxed by the state, you can go around half naked and barefoot and there are no policemen around anywhere to watch out for or to tell you what you can't do.  When I got there after a seven hour drive, I hung out with Jimmy on his porch in his house on stilts overlooking his wrecked dock, a casualty of hurricanes Irene and Florence, and we ate a po' boys' dinner of chicken parts, mustard greens and taters, purchased from the Piggly Wiggly for under $2 total.

Minor League Baseball in West Virginia

After my second day of rafting on the New River last summer, I drove to Princeton in West Virginia to catch a doubleheader where the Princeton Rays were hosting the Bluefield Bluejays in the Rookie Short Season league, an entry-level class of minor league baseball that is one step below Class A.  The stadium, as it were, was hard to find as there were no signs anywhere indicating where it was.

The ballpark was hard to see until you were right on it because it was basically a chain link fence enclosing a field with a few bench seats in the traditional horseshoe pattern enclosing the backstop from third base to first base with a low concrete causeway behind that. The two teams split the games, I don't remember much of the game beyond that, although I recall that sundown as seen from the stadium was nice.

I did have my picture taken with Roscoe the Rays' Rooster and that was fun.  The only other thing I remember is a motorcycle endlessly and noisily circled the stadium on the street outside all game long during the second game and that grew to be annoying.

After the games I drove down to Wytheville, Virginia to spend the night in a motel there.  The next day I arose to a misty mountain viewing splendor right outside my front door.

West Virginia State Capitol

(Abe Lincoln in front of the West Virginia State Capitol, depicted in his night gown during nocturnal wanderings while pondering how to save the country which had torn into two irreconcilable halves upon his election.  Sound familiar?)  

After seeing the minor league baseball game in Charleston on the first day of my summer vacation in August, I went over to the State Capitol to wander around some before I retired to a motel for the night in preparation for rafting the next two days in the New River National Gorge.  The capital grounds had lots of memorial statues which I always enjoy, in addition to having the Governor's Mansion right next door overlooking the river which flows by just across the local highway.

(West Virginia pays homage to the working men and women who made the state great.)

A long time ago I was a Colorado State Trooper assigned to the Governor's Executive Security Detail in Denver for a couple of years, stationed at the Governor's Mansion there, which was about five blocks from the State Capitol which we also patrolled.  One of my most notable moments on that detail was when then-Vice President George H. W. Bush (Bush the First, father to the Decider) came to speak at the Capitol and he went right by me on his way to the assembly chamber.

(West Virginia honoring the modern American soldier.)

(Abe overlooking the river as seen from the Capitol steps.)

(The instrument of the country's salvation: A Union soldier.)

(A harbinger of greatness to come: A Revolutionary War volunteer.)

Charleston

I started my driving vacation (in August) by taking the scenic route to the West Virginia capital through the Shenandoah Valley and then through hilly terrain in the Mountain State.  The final stretch to Charleston is along a river so it is naturally beautiful.

I was going to attend a minor league game in Charleston but I got a late start and despaired of making the game in time.  However when I got within 15 miles of the state capital I found the game on a local radio channel and it was in the fifth inning.  I hoped there were plenty of hits and pitching changes as I drove closer.

I drove by the Capitol eventually and took the next exit for the ballpark.  With about half a mile to go to the stadium, according to my GPS device, I parked for free and walked the rest of the way.

As I walked up to the park, I saw that all the ticket booths were closed.  A cop and a stadium attendant were lounging by the wide-open gate and I walked in, for free, while they gave me nary a glance.  (I would have gladly purchased a ticket if I had been able to.)

It was the seventh inning but that still gave me ample time to roam around the stadium of the West Virginia Power, a class A minor league team.  The vantage points were interesting, you could see the gold-domed State Capitol from the third base side seats and up the nearby steep hillside, above the noisy traffic going by on the Interstate halfway up, was a cleared patch of hilltop with a cemetery up there with several large monuments.

I had a hot dog and a beer, and the home team won in the bottom of the ninth when the opposing shortstop fielded an ordinary grounder near the second base bag with the bases loaded and two outs and as he went to toss the ball to the second baseman for an easy force-out to end the inning of the tie game, he just dropped the ball.  He stood there thunderstruck as the winning run scored.

The losing visitors trudged off the field glumly while the home teamers all gladhanded and high-rived.  Apparently it was the fourth straight loss for the visitors because a stadium attendant got atop the visiting team dugout with a broom and slowly swept off the dirt up there (a sweep, get it?).

Minor league baseball, it's fabulous.  The stadiums are so homey and hospitable too, with some hokum mixed in.  In this stadium they had the visitor's bullpen lined up on folding chairs set out in the blazing summer sun in the dirt along the stadium wall down the third base line while the home bullpen was in a shaded spacious area under the stands on the first base side.

The New River day 2

(National memorial to Project Overlord in Bedford, Virginia.)

In August I took a car trip for my summer vacation through West Virginia and extreme western Virginia, rafting for two days on the New River and seeing three minor league baseball games in two different stadiums in West Virginia.  In Virginia I saw the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford and the Natural Bridge.

(Natural Bridge in Virginia.)

The second day on the river, with another outfit, was just as much fun as the first day.  We rafted the rapids, swam in the river, jumped off a tall rock and paddled under the tall suspension bridge, with nary a mishap, although I am certain that we came within a hairsbreadth three times of flipping the raft over.  The guide later allowed as to how, once, he too thought for a moment that we were going over.

(It gets busy in a hurry in the rapids.)

Afterwards, during happy hour at the lodge, they played a videotape of a boat in some rapids from earlier that morning, which was truly spectacular (canoeists precede the raft groups down the river and tape them shooting each rapids).  It was so good I'm going to describe it because, well, that was the same river we went down an hour later.

(That day's swimming hole.)

A boat went into some boiling water in the standard setup--four rowers on each side and the guide across the back gunwale calling out rowing commands, back-rowing and sliding across the back as necessary for balance.  The boat went into a hole in the water, flexed, turned sideways and virtually stopped.  In came the next tall roller that the bottom of the raft rolled up on sideways (the establishment slowed the video action down here for effect) and suddenly the raft was broadside straight up and down.  The four rowers atop this anomaly clung to the upper gunwale momentarily and then started cascading down the open side into the four bottom rowers and took them all with them over the lower side of the boat into the roiling water.

(Different day, different rock, same long ways down.)

Here the boat slammed back down, fortunately upright, into the water.  The only one left in the boat was the guide who stood up, looking incredibly shocked.  His boat was now empty except for him!  The guides in the bar observing this on the tape started cheering and someone said excitedly, "Look, Norm got rid of all of them!"

(Yeah, it was cool on the river.)

As the tape rolled on, you could see the guide immediately get down to business once his initial shock passed.  He ignored the one rower who, though in the water outside the boat, was clinging to the gunwale.  He reached out for the closest person in the river who was detached from the boat and pulled her into the boat.  Then he reached out for the next closest detached person and pulled her in.  Those two started pulling remaining swimmers into the boat as the guide went back to rowing to get close to the remaining swimmers.  The last one pulled into the boat was the bedraggled swimmer who had never once let her death grip upon the gunwale go.

(It's a long way down to the river from the modern suspension bridge.) 

Fortunately the boat never went over which would have made the rescue a lot more difficult.  Also fortunate was that most rapids on the New River, although quite vigorous, are short.  It was fascinating to see how quickly and professionally this rescue unfolded.

(The old and the new: The old 2-lane highway bridge, front; the new 4-lane highway bridge, back.)