On the road to Gotham

Well, we made it back from our trip last night and I failed to keep updating as we went along. I’ll pick up the story where I left off.

We celebrated the 4^th of July by driving to the Monroeville Mall to see fireworks in the parking lot. If it sounds strange, it kind of was. It was a great idea because there is a lot of open space, plenty of parking, and lots of ways to leave after the show is over. Still it was a weird spot to watch fireworks. I am used to a big open field or a baseball stadium. Ultimately, it was probably the most appropriate way to celebrate the birth of our nation—a nation now inextricably wedded to mass consumerism. I watched fireworks come up between Don Pablo’s Mexican restaurant and K-Mart surrounded by cars in a parking lot for a big mall. The only thing lacking was fireworks with corporate logos to remind us that our great capitalistic experiment was founded on liberty and justice for all corporate persons. After our national rite of intensification, we returned to Irwin where the kids shot off their own fireworks.

Somehow that felt closer to what I think we are all about, but that is just me. When I was a kid the 4^th of July started when my dad got up early, lit off a pack of firecrackers, and blasted John Phillips Sousa The Stars and Stripes Forever. We grilled various meats, had a family target practice with our gun collection, and ended the night with our own fireworks. I can remember as a kid my dad even shooting a muzzle loader he had as part of the celebration. The 4^th of July always was really a celebration of our country’s founding ideals. Would you expect anything less from my dad who, during most of my childhood, expected a popular revolution to happen (we actually had packs hanging near our door for a while, ready for the revolution)? We are both still waiting for it.

After celebrating another year of corporate freedom, the next day we all loaded into the minivan and went to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh. It is a great museum with lots of cool dinosaurs, gems and minerals, and a nice Ancient Egypt display. I was a little disappointed to discover that I really wasn’t that interested in the Egyptian stuff…yawn. What really got my attention was the architecture hall where they had casts of all sorts of architectural bits from the Ancient World. I now understand why someone would get all caught up in cathedrals, gates, and statues in Europe. That was cool stuff and old. And I think I deal with old, cool stuff? The art museum was right next door and had a nice exhibit on Impressionists. They may be passé to most, but the Impressionists are by far my favorites.

I left the Carnegie comforted to know that great private museums can still thrive (in this age where people don’t want to spend money to support the arts and cultural centers) even if those great private museums were funded on the backs of exploited workers during the early days of industrial growth—thank you Mr. Carnegie.

We left our friends and Irwin the next day and traveled to central PA to visit my wife’s family. They live near towns with great names like Gallitzin and Nanty Glo. I’ve driven by those towns a hundred times and wondered how they got their names. Thanks to the wonders of the internet, now I know. Gallitzin was named after Prince Demetrius Augustine Gallitzin. Deme was a Russian aristocrat cradled in the arms of Catherine the Great who, after traveling as part of his education, rebelled against his family (and their Russian Orthodox Church) by coming to America and becoming a Catholic priest. He founded the nearby town of Loretto and was quite a popular guy. He was called the Apostle of the Alleghenies and has been under investigation for canonization since 2005. Honestly, that story is better than I could have made up. How about that moniker? Someday I want to be known as something…or at least have a bridge named after me.

Nanty Glo has a different story. Its original name was Glendale until the postmaster (not sure how he got to do this) changed the name in 1901. Actually his wife gets credit for coming up with the name, which is from a Welsh phrase (nan ty glo) meaning ravine or brook of coal. Apparently there is a town in Wales of the same name and it is not clear whether the name refers to that Welsh town or to the creek that bisects the PA town. That creek is named Blacklick Creek because in its banks you can see seams of coal. Either way, Nanty Glo is fun to say. Someday I’ll send out post cards from Nanty Glo.

It was a hit-and-run on the family. We blew into town, ate at the finest restaurant in Ebensburg, and spent the night at my sister-in-law’s house. The kids got to play with their beloved cousin and we all got to meet Bernard the giant tabby cat. That cat had a head the size of a grapefruit, really. He took a liking to my sandals and spent a lot of time laying on them, hugging them, and mauling them with his back feet. He is also under suspicion for chewing up an IPhone charger cord. I give Bernard the benefit of the doubt.

 
The next day we drove the rest of the way across PA to Quakertown to see my brother and his family. My kids have not seen his daughters for about 6 or 7 years so both sets of kids were excited. I haven’t seen them in that long either and it was fun to see how they had changed from the little kids who called me Uncle Cranky to adults. It was another hit-and-run visit. We stayed a few hours and then spent the night at the Quakertown Hampton Inn. We only stay at Hampton Inns because some in our traveling party refuse to stay anywhere else. And of course they had a pool so after our free hot breakfast the next morning, the kids and I went to the pool. My kids cannot pass within half a mile of a pool without wanting to go swimming. It is not possible to stay at a hotel with a pool and not spend at least an hour swimming in it. Fortunately for me the hotel had free WiFi, the Tour de France is currently running, and I had installed the NBC Tour app on my daughter’s Ipad. I watched the bike race, sweated like a pig (did you know that pigs don’t actually sweat? They wallow.), and timed my kids as they competed against one another in swimming a length of the pool. After a quick stop at Dunkin Donuts (which are everywhere up there), where we ate at least two of everything on the menu, we headed on the next leg of our trip—on to Gotham.

The Great Family Adventure Part 1

There are two things I always forget about Pennsylvania. The first is that it is really green and the second is that the fireflies come out in droves in the summer. I grew up—well, since I was 10—living in Pennsylvania, but I’ve lived in South Carolina for the past 12 years. And I live in the middle of South Carolina right where the Coastal Plain meets the Piedmont. That means it’s pretty flat and vegetation is dominated by scrubby oaks and various pines. Those trees create a different kind of green. It isn’t as deep of a green, and it certainly isn’t as cool of a green. It’s somehow more brown, faded, and dry. And sure, South Carolina has fireflies, but there just aren’t as many somehow. In Pennsylvania it’s like the stars descend each evening to put on a show.

Yesterday we embarked on a grand family adventure. Our plan will take us some 1800 miles from South Carolina, across Pennsylvania west to east, to New York City, and then back to Columbia via rural Virginia. We made the first leg yesterday, starting at 7am. Well, I got up at 5 to load the family truckster, but we didn’t get on the road until 7. Compared to past efforts, we did pretty good this time around. Our first destination was Irwin, PA just east of Pittsburgh (Mark Twain’s hell with the lid off) where some friends live. The drive took us about 10 hours, but it wasn’t that bad at all. I put the back seat down so the kids could sleep and play in the back of the van—probably illegal and immoral because it endangers my kids, but travel rage caused by miserable, bored kids also is a danger to them as well. As a parent, I get to choose the dangers to which I subject my kids…it is in the Constitution somewhere.

We spent a lot of time in West Virginia and I had forgotten that there isn’t a flat stretch of ground to be found anywhere in West Virginia. We drove up and down mountains all afternoon. It is pretty but people must get sick of hiking up and stumbling down hills their entire lives. I wonder how that affects their posture. Anyway, one fun thing we found in West Virginia was that a big chunk of the state was without power (due to storms last week) and so most traffic lights were out. That made driving through areas with lots of cross roads on Highway 19 really exciting. We stopped at a rest stop only to find that we couldn’t use the bathrooms because of the lack of power. I walked my daughter to the woods and we found—from the smell and scatter of used toilet paper— that lots of people had done the same thing. We left the woods with my daughter singing, “Daddy is my human toilet.”

I found the people of West Virginia charming as well. We stopped to get gas and I got to catch the end of a local convenience store conversation that ranged from the weather to gas prices. It ended with a patron informing the clerk that we no longer have a Whitehouse, we have a blackhouse. First of all, I am not sure the President controls the weather—I thought the Russians did that back in the Cold War. Second of all, wasn’t that “joke” played out long ago? I mean, come on. Is that the best you’ve got? This the end of his term and all you’ve got is that? Haven’t you been listening to the talk radio or cable news rants? Can’t you call him a Muslim, a foreigner, a socialist? That’s what you’ve got? Anyway, I am sure not all West Virginians are so clever and erudite and probably have more interesting and less offensive things to say. At least I left the state hoping that is the case.

We entered Pennsylvania near a town I knew only from the lore told by the two guys who lived next door to me on the third floor of Sproul Hall when I was an undergraduate at Penn State—Smokey Mahokey and Bonecrusher Lepore (BC)—two sons of Uniontown, Pennsylvania. It took me back to the days when Smokey used to tell me all he wanted was a job where he could kill people and BC introduced me to the deeper meanings of Bruce Springsteen songs and the importance of labor studies. Those guys were two of the biggest characters and best friends I met in college.

Now I sit in the screened porch of a 150 year old house hidden in a small patch of woods just outside the sprawl of Irwin on the 4^th of July preparing to celebrate the birthday of our great democratic experiment. It is pouring down rain and my kids and their friends are having a proper summer vacation. They are running madly to and fro in the torrent, screaming like maniacs. Later they will have grilled burgers, go see fireworks, come home and make ‘smores and light their own fireworks, and go to sleep happy and secure.