When I left Corning before sunrise this morning, the roads were blanketed in a moderately thick fog. Luckily for me, the rising sun quickly dissipated it. At one point, with the sun still low in the eastern sky, I was admiring the green of the surrounding hills laced with rising wisps of fog, the near-empty highway rising and falling and weaving through the land, appearing and disappearing and vanishing in the distance. There was one particular spot where I really wanted to stop and take a picture. I didn't, though, but maybe by re-reading this description in the years left to me I'll be able to recall the beauty of that moment. The rest of y'all will just have to use your imagination.
I had been texting back and forth with my old friend John and we had agreed on a place called Brickerville House for lunch in the little town where he lives now. I trusted Google Maps enough to arrange to meet him at eleven, and sure enough I was there about ten minutes early. The restaurant was pretty nice, easy to locate, spacious, with very friendly staff. It looks like the kind of place that's expanded organically over the years; it's kind of a warren inside. The menu is long and varied, so it took a little while to go through it.
I settled on something called the Pittsburgh Steak Salad. Maybe I didn't read the menu's description of it as closely as I thought I did, because in addition to the plentiful (and perfectly cooked) strips of medium-rare steak, and the various fresh veggies that make up the bulk of the salad, and the hard-boiled eggs that I remember being mentioned in the description, there was a generous layer of french-fried potatoes over the steak. That surprised me. And they were so plentiful that it was nearly impossible to avoid them; I only left probably half of them on my plate.
I had seen John when he was in San Antonio, probably last year, but we still had a good time catching up on people we knew or sort of knew from the old days, and in the things that have transpired since his last visit to Paradise South. Apparently I hadn't told him I'd had a heart attack last December, because I think he would have remembered; but I don't remember who I've told and who I haven't, so I guess this will be news to some of you. And if people later tell me they didn't know about it, then I'll know they don't read my blog and the hell with them, am I right?
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| 1939 Plymouth convertible at AACM |
Down in the basement is a store room that was left open, so I wandered in. There are dozens of cars jammed in higgledy-piggledy together, and there are signs describing them collected against a side wall and interspersed with the vehicles. I saw a sign for a 1929 Stearns Knight, but couldn't get close enough to read the description; I was particularly interested in where the car came from (many of the signs name the owners or donors of the cars). When I was a kid I used to play in a 1929 Stearns Knight in a barn in LaPlace, Louisiana, and while I doubt it's the same one, there's the chance that it is. I asked a couple of the staffers about it, but neither of them knew. One of them offered to go downstairs with me and check the sign, but the building's elevator is out of order and it's about 40 steps down and 40 steps back up, and having done that twice already at that point, I decided I just wasn't that interested.
The museum also has an interactive exhibit called Driving After Sundown, about the development of headlight technology over the past hundred years, from candles and kerosene and acetylene to electrical headlamps and sealed beams to the latest thing, "adaptive headlights" which, according to the materials I picked up, "direct projected beams around oncoming traffic," directed by computers and cameras. I have no idea how that works, or even how it looks on a car at night. Maybe I'll meet someone with a relatively new Land Rover, and they can show me.
Another video exhibit gave me information I hadn't known about early braking technology, and bumper developement, both things I've been thinking about for a couple of years. Maybe I'll remember what it said. (I had not known, for example, that early brakes were strips of animal hide wrapped around the outside of a drum.)
That was the end of the good part of the day. After that I decided I could get to Front Royal, Virginia, by about 6:00pm, so I made a reservation. Then I set out. My planned route was set to avoid Interstate 81 altogether; it's the worst interstate in the country, in my experience, so I told Google Maps not to go that way. There's another, more fuel-efficient route through Frederick, Maryland that would take only about twenty minutes longer, so I selected that one.
Well, don't you know, there was a wreck on the highway going through Harrisburg, a 22-minute stoppage. I figured there must be a way around the stoppage, and I wanted to put the top down and apply some sunblock anyway, so I got off. But it turns out there's a river crossing near the stoppage, and it was getting on toward rush hour, so I didn't gain any time by getting off. And with all the re-routing the program was doing, at some point it put me back onto Interstate 81. (It asked me twice if I wanted to make that change, saying it had "found" a faster route that would save me 18 minutes; I said No both times but it did it anyway.) After a second stoppage for a wreck, in southern Pennsylvania, I gave up and let it take me down I-81. There was a delay for construction at the Virginia line that, it said, I could avoid by taking a detour along some highways just to the east, so I said OK. If it saved me any time I'll be shocked: not only was every over-the-road truck taking the same detour, and slowly, but there was an incident of some sort at a business along the detour route that called for police, fire and ambulance services, and of course meant the highway was blocked off at that location. The upshot is that I did not get to Front Royal at 6pm; it was nine o'clock when I pulled into my hotel's parking lot, and it's 11pm now.
In the morning I'm going to start down Skyline Drive, which runs from Front Royal to Waynesboro; and from there I'm going to take the Blue Ridge Parkway from beginning to end, Waynesboro to some point in northern Georgia. After today, I feel the need for a day of relatively slow, calm driving along a nearly deserted highway. At the end of the Parkway, I may or may not stick to my plan to wander a little through some of the un-visited counties of central and southern Georgia. We shall see: that's a decision to put off until tomorrow, at least.
