Into the Sunset

Leaving the South, we stopped for one last Southern meal of pulled pork, collard greens, sweet potatoes and fried okra at the Loveless Café outside Nashville, a soul food destination that attracts all the expected country music stars, along with less likely diners like Beverly Sills, Sharon Stone and Martha Stewart.
Arkansas and Oklahoma seemed to go on forever, but we finally crossed into New Mexico and pulled into the campground outside Santa Fe in early evening, celebrating by making a couple of big, icy martinis. The cobalt sky turned to star-studded indigo and we heard the distant yip of a coyote.
Santa Fe has always been a special place for us, possessing an aura both simple and sophisticated. It's a land of religion and ritual, barren landscape and wildly colorful décor. We love its searing chiles, art-filled lifestyle and crisp evenings scented with pinon smoke. It feels like another country, with its artists and curanderas, penitentes and poseurs. We always seem to meet the most interesting people and have fascinating conversations.
The region’s spirituality runs deep in the tiny village of Chimayo, where pilgrims have trekked for nearly two centuries to visit the santuario, reported site of Lourdes-like miracles. I made my way into the tiny church under the watchful gaze of the elderly caretaker, careful to keep my camera zipped inside my bag. Ducking through the low opening to the sanctuary, I slowly walked the perimeter, once again finding the experience extraordinarily moving. A wall of crutches bore testimony to owners now presumably walking. Hundreds of color photos formed a mosaic of faces young and old, but without text, it was impossible to know whether they still lived. The opposite wall was dedicated to police officers and military personnel who’d lost their lives in the line of duty. Over time, the large number of visitors and confined space had apparently limited miracle-seekers to one small photo.
But when we first visited 20 years ago, scraps of paper bearing heartbreaking stories in several languages covered the adobe walls. Handwritten notes seeking divine intervention kept me mesmerized for over an hour until, faint from the heat of so many candles in the small space, I ducked under an even lower opening into a tiny room. There, a circular hole in the floor exposed the sacred dirt of reputed curative powers. We’ve had some in our house for years. I figure, it can’t hurt.
* * *
It was yet another country when we pulled into Chinle, Arizona, a Navajo reservation bordering the spectacular Canyon de Chelly. The gritty treeless town with deeply rutted roads had the usual array of fast-food joints, small businesses and gas stations, with the addition of free-range animals. Dozens of look-alike dogs, none of them recognizable breeds, prowled the streets. Two cows ambled down the road past the Best Western motel and a pack of horses browsed in the weeds near the Shell station.
We camped under golden cottonwood trees in a free campground maintained by the Park Service, among the only other palefaces we encountered. We hired a Navajo guide and, along with a visitor from Georgia, spent half a day in the canyon, bouncing through deep sand, splashing through washes and driving under red sandstone overhangs that rose hundreds of feet above us.
Cottonwoods glowed in the November sun that turned the face of the rock turquoise from one angle, jet- black from another. Horses wandered freely, replaced as farm workers by machinery and left to wander, browsing the leaves of willow and Russian olive at the edge of the wash. A coyote bounded across the trail as we approached.
Much like the Anasazi before them, Navajo still return to the canyon in the summer to grow corn, beans, squash and fruit trees on ancestral lands. A few remain year-round, tending crops and sheep through spring floods and biting winter freezes.
We saw the ruins of Anasazi cliff dwellings and petroglyphs dating back nearly 2,000 years, along with more recent rock drawings created by the Navajo of the mid-nineteenth century.
One such set of drawings depicted the arrival of the Spanish on horseback in the 1700s, drawn to the canyon in search of gold. Two circles representing suns indicate the amount of time it took to kill all of the canyon dwellers the explorers encountered. Centuries of bloodshed and slavery ensued, and the remaining Navajo were driven from the valley by Kit Carson in the mid-1800s. The population of the sacred place would never be the same.
That afternoon we explored Canyon de Chelly from its south rim, marveling at formations like Spider Rock, legendary home to Spider Woman, who taught the Navajo to weave. Later we met a code-talker, still proud of the role his fellow Navajo played in “saving Americans from the Japs” in WWII.
Mist obscured the road and frost had turned the high grass to silver when we left that world early the next morning to return to ours. Next, a stop in Sedona, and in a few days we’ll be home, the journey over.
For the final photo album: Click on first photo to view one at a time.
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast10SW?authkey=Gv1sRgCJy1692Nl56J2wE&feat=directlink

We, the People

Locals could not recall the D.C. Metro ever being so crowded on a Saturday. Riders overwhelmed the ticket gates and employees finally opened them to anyone waving a ticket. The crowd surged forward, carrying us in its wake. Spirits were high and nobody pushed as we shoehorned our way onto the train. There was a woman with turquoise hair and another sporting red devil’s horns. A guy in a gorilla suit shared a car with another in boxing gloves, mask and cape, all of them ready for Halloween.
But most were like us, dressed normally and chatting with strangers, most decades younger, but many with gray hair. The escalator at the L’Enfant Plaza station was turned off due to the crush of passengers, so we climbed to the top and a sea of humanity on the sunny Capitol Mall.
It was the Rally to Restore Sanity, a tongue-in-cheek gathering of citizens weary of political fear-mongering and hyperbole, media sensationalism and political invective -- the creation of satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert. And we were lucky enough to be there!
Of all the wonderful moments on our trip – and there have been many – this was the most unexpected and exciting. We made our way to the center of the street and found a spot behind media trucks where Terry and I could get occasional glimpses of the Jumbotron screen not much bigger than a postage stamp in the distance. Sometimes it’s nice to be tall; our friend Karen never caught a glimpse of the celebrities. Truth be known, it was all about being there among so many people from across the U.S., signs in hand, kids in strollers, dogs on leash, oldsters sitting in chairs where they only saw knees and derrieres. Surely no one really believed the gathering would change things; perhaps some held out hope.
We heard Stewart’s arrival, heard and saw Colbert stepping from his capsule onto the stage. We heard someone with a wonderful voice sing the national anthem. We heard Yusuf Islam, the former Cat Stevens, sing. But the speaker cut in and out and was woefully inadequate for the size of the crowd. For us, the best part was the camaraderie and the crazy signs and, hoping to avoid the crush of departure, we left before Sheryl Crowe and Ozzy Osbourne. We’d been part of what some estimated to be a quarter-million kindred spirits.
* * *
We toured the Capitol several days later, a visit arranged by our local Congressmen Mike Thompson. Joining a half-dozen other Californians, we walked the long underground tunnels linking the House building and the Capitol, climbing up marble stairs worn uneven by the tread of two centuries of public servants. There were throngs touring the buildings and other than a visiting delegation from China, we seemed to be the only tourists in business dress. When we went into an amphitheater to watch a film, a young blonde from Davis in frayed jeans who’d complained earlier at having to leave her backpack in the Congressman’s office, put her sneaker-clad feet on the back of the seat in front of her.
The rotunda was awe-inspiring, the dome inducing the same crick in the neck as the Sistine Chapel. We’d heard much about the rivalry between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson while touring Monticello, so chuckled when our guide pointed out a detail of an enormous painting of the Declaration of Independence signers, which depicted Jefferson’s right boot planted firmly on the foot of a scowling Adams.
We saw the life-size statues depicting people chosen by each state to represent its history; California’s were Junipero Serra and … Ronald Reagan. We sat in the somewhat cramped seats in the gallery of the House chambers, empty as congressmen were off on a pre-election visit to constituents.
Then we replenished our energy before going to gawk at the White House with Obama burgers (bacon, onion marmalade, Roquefort and horseradish mayo) at Good Stuff Eatery, a nearby burger joint both the president and first lady have visited.
We’d been staying with Karen in her Alexandria condo with its tangerine and saffron-colored walls, mementos of travel from Paris to Marrakech and Shih Tzu tag-team Gromit and Wallace. Our few days there were, of course, not enough.
* * *
Now we’re returning to Victoria, where our Virginia stay began, on the farm of our California friends Brenda and Ed. Happy’s been put out to pasture for nearly a week between the big hickory tree and the charming 1800s-era farmhouse. We’ve had a lovely stay here as well, touring Jefferson’s beautiful home at Monticello, which reflected both his intellectual curiosity (a 16,000 volume library he later sold to the government) and exquisite taste (first-growth Bordeaux purchased only in bottle so the wine couldn’t be adulterated). We explored Monticello’s expansive garden that included such oddities as yard-long Guinea beans, and even tasted some local wine at nearby wineries.
But we’re into November and it’s time to head west.
Pictures, some of them funny signs, at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEastVADC?authkey=Gv1sRgCOfl_YisxqrpiwE&feat=directlink

Another Time, Another Place

Leaving Maine, we hit the turnpike and quickly passed through a patchwork quilt of states – New Hampshire, Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania – steeped in history. Each little town in Pennsylvania seemed to have at least one historical marker commemorating a visit by George Washington, a battle or other momentous event. We couldn’t help but be struck by just how young the West is, when towns in this part of the country date back to the early 1700s.
In Massachusetts, we spent a morning at Old Sturbridge Village, a living re-enactment of life in the 1830s, when the industrialized age had begun and New Englanders no longer had to fabricate necessities, instead purchasing factory-made items like cookware and tools.
Wood smoke wafted through the village, and the morning stillness was broken only by the clip-clopping of horses’ hooves and the clucking of chickens as we entered old houses and outbuildings to watch demonstrations of spinning, baking and forging. A young man used a pole to reach apples at the top of the 100-year-old trees in a sun-dappled orchard, where they were collected by an ox-drawn cart and hauled to the cider press.
We even received some impromptu lessons in livestock. Chatting with the affable driver of a horse-drawn coach, I noticed the team looked nearly identical to the horses pulling visitors in wagons through Acadia Park. "Are they Belgians?” I asked. “Yes,” he beamed, “the best horses for this kind of work.” Everyone knows Clydesdales from the commercials, he went on to say, adding that they’re not the brightest steeds in the barn.“They’re only good for plowing and pulling beer wagons. They don’t have the intelligence, heart and stamina of Belgians.”
It was he, it turned out, who had sold the horses to the Maine operator. As he launched into a story of pulling a circus wagon in Milwaukee, putting Vicks Vapor Rub in the horses’ nostrils so they wouldn’t bolt at the scent of lions and tigers, it was clear he could talk horses all day, so we wished him well and moved on.
Later, watching an ox walk round and round the cider press grinding apples, we learned that it was bovines who’d been the real “workhorses” of the time. Horses were a luxury, costing the farmer more in feed and care. Cows were kept for breeding and milk, but male calves usually ended up on the dinner table, the volunteer told us. But if the farmer needed a new team, the steers were neutered and trained virtually from birth until they could work and respond to voice commands.
“This guy knows about 20 words,” bragged his young handler, pulling back on the beast’s fearsome-looking horns to capture his best camera angle.
Lancaster, PA is the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and it was there we headed next. Arriving on a late Sunday afternoon, we saw families dressed in Sunday best, walking or riding in buggies from church service. We learned that the gray wagons belonged to Amish and the black to Mennonites, although we couldn’t tell the adherents of each sect by their dress. Many children and several women used adult-size scooters for transport, pushing along with one foot. The Amish don’t ride bicycles, apparently considering them among the modern conveniences they eschew.
The next day we toured the countryside, passing through towns like Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse, both settled in the early 1700s. Residents spoke German among themselves, and English with an incongruous Irish-sounding lilt to visitors, all of whom are considered “English.” With sunny smiles and sweet dispositions, the Amish strike visitors as supremely content with their lives, despite the hoards of curious tourists who constantly sneak photos.
It was wash day, and laundry fluttered from lines like Tibetan prayer flags, the Amish ingeniously using utility poles for laundry lines, although not for electricity. We bought shoo-fly pie and homemade root beer and stopped at another farm for beautiful organic brown eggs, $1.25 a dozen on the honor system. We felt slightly uncomfortable following the sign’s directions and opening the door to the house, where we found the eggs in a cooler, but a calico cat seemed to be the only one home. We put our money in the box and headed out, finding the simple exchange oddly gratifying.
Writing this tonight without electricity atop Loft Mountain in Shenandoah National Park, where swirling fog obscures all but the nearest trees, the sense of being in a different time as well as place persists.
Next, a meet-up with friends and visit to the nation’s Capitol.
For photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast8NewEngland?authkey=Gv1sRgCIquvvG9sriv1AE&feat=directlink

The Maine Course

I suppose I could grow tired of lobster. It’s possible I could grow blasé over the brilliant display of fall color, the picture postcard towns with charming clapboard houses and downtowns both vibrant and historic, the gorgeous organic produce that outshines anything I’ve managed to grow in California. Maybe after a while I’d take for granted the sense of community in the small towns, the outdoor activities like free sailing and rowing for locals and the cultural opportunities that seem so plentiful. But I don’t think so.
Maine is wonderful. The people we’ve encountered are extraordinarily friendly. The air is clean, the scenery is beautiful and every town qualifies for “Tree City USA.” The coast goes on forever and real estate is affordable.
At this point the invariable response is: “but, the WINTERS!” Well, if you’re lucky enough to be retired you can always leave. Or you can stock up on winter apparel at the L.L. Bean outlet, make sure the house is well winterized and watch the ponds turn into ice rinks. Just muddle through it. Our friend Lisa, who lived in Hawaii and California much of her life, does.
We spent a weekend at her late-1800s house in Belfast, actually two houses joined together with a hip-roofed shed incorporating rough-hewn beams. It’s a buttercup yellow work in progress, a do-it-yourself project that’s turning out beautifully. She played local tour guide, driving us on scenic backroads, taking us to a rocky beach where we watched dogs Fritz and Moose frolic while we hunted sea glass and picked wild apples. And of course we went to the local lobster pound, where her friend Biff joined us for an alfresco feast on Penobscot Bay. It was a great weekend and renewal of a friendship going back nearly 35 years.
We began our Maine sojourn in a campground near Bar Harbor, where two visiting cruise ships brought over 5,000 passengers to town. Grand water-view homes give a sense of the beauty that drew the original vacationers to the area a century ago, while large inns dominate much of the waterfront view today.
But the rest of Mount Desert Island is lovely. We walked the carriage roads and the path rimming Jordan Pond in Acadia Park, enjoying a lunch of seafood chowder, popovers and a glass of local pear wine. We bought and cooked lobsters from a pound we’d visited five years ago, using our camp stove outdoors and a pot loaned by the proprietor, no deposit required.
One night we bought the $29.95 cooked dinner for two from the lobster man across the road from our campground: two lobsters, two peekytoe crabs, two ears of corn and a stick of butter – and free delivery – for the price of two St. Helena burgers. Another night it was sweet dayboat scallops right from the bay. It’s easy to be locavores in Maine.
We took the mail boat from Northeast Harbor to Cranberry Island, sharing the ride with locals like Carl Brooks, whose family has owned land on the island for 250 years. A chatty Ted Kennedy lookalike, Carl told us what it was like to live on the 39-resident island, showing us the little shed on the dock where UPS deliveries are made, along with the post office, a former fish cooler. “We never had a zip code and it drove Homeland Security crazy after 9/11,” he said. “We had to put names on the roads.”
We walked the island’s main road and followed a path through a boggy forest to a beach, where we added stray lobster floats and other flotsam to a driftwood totem. The land was donated for public use and the path built by volunteers, said Phil, a volunteer who opened the island’s history museum for us.
Heading back to the dock, we passed Carl’s Victorian house and he waved. “I should have offered you a ride to the far end of the island,’ he said, pointing to his golf cart. We hopped on, and he gave us the royal tour, including a bumpy ride up a dirt road to an exclusive club frequented by Vanderbilts and Rockefellers, where a gun-toting local once chased away a snooping journalist from the Wall Street Journal.
A little café/general store, subsidized by a wealthy summer resident, supplies basic needs for residents at remarkably fair prices, even in the summer when the population swells by tenfold. But everything else, from furniture to firewood, arrives by boat. We shared the ride back with a group of construction workers who drank beer on the stern deck, while the boat’s captain passed out dog biscuits to traveling canines up front. When we stopped at the next island, the boat picked up a young woman with two couches on the dock, the construction workers cheerfully helping to load the furniture onboard.
The rest of our stay was a visual feast of foggy lighthouses and salty harbors, crimson-flecked forests and pumpkin-head scarecrows celebrating fall’s bounty. We ate more lobster and haddock than I could ever imagine and discovered whoopie pies. We went through our first Nor’easter and saw a rare blue lobster. We kept extending our stay by “just one more day.” Finally, it was time to move on.
For photos: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast7Maine?authkey=Gv1sRgCN-ymcer9o-BkQE&feat=directlink.

Northern Exposure

Then, we were in France. The autumn foliage and abundance of water didn’t change, but the stop signs all said ARRET and the shopkeepers “bonjour.” We spent a drizzly day in Quebec, stretching out a three-course lunch of confit du canard and a bottle of Beaujolais to enjoy the mirrored Parisian ambiance of the tony restaurant and avoid going back out into the chill rain. The next day we took the ferry from Levis to the city, sharing the ride with some of the 60,000 Quebecois – couples, kids and dogs – all outfitted in blue “Nordiques” T-shirts off to a Sunday afternoon rally. The hockey-crazed Quebecois lost their team to Colorado in 1995 and think it’s time they had a team of their own again.
We walked the cobbled streets of la Ville Basse, ogled enormous cruise ships in town for fall foliage tours, had lunch in an outdoor café and bought local foie gras, cheese and maple syrup at the public market on the water. And we discovered the guilty Quebec pleasure of poutine: crisp French fries topped with cheese curds and brown gravy, better than it sounds.
We even checked out RVs at a dealership near the campground. “Ah, you speak French,” smiled the salesman, who was also an innkeeper. “Most of the Americans visiting here speak French – or try to. They’re travelers. Not the Canadians from Toronto and Ontario. Not a word, not even ‘bonjour.’”
New Brunswick was all about the Bay of Fundy, whose remarkable tides left fishing boats and beaches high and dry in the afternoon and awash the next morning. We hiked bluffside trails with tumbling streams and frequent waterfalls and walked beaches where the tides had receded 300 feet, exposing rock-anchored strands of kelp six feet long which would be underwater the next day.
Rocky spits reached like bony fingers into inlets strewn with islands, some large enough for a house and dock. The bay was never far from sight, serving as a backdrop to white clapboard houses with mountains of firewood in the front yard and lines of drying laundry in the back. Apple trees heavy with fruit grew along the roads, some planted by wildlife, others by humans. We picked fruit from 150-year-old trees at abandoned homesteads, making cinnamon-scented applesauce for the road. Travel in the north during October is truly an apple fest.
Five time zones and worlds away from California, Nova Scotia evokes the Scotland for which it’s named, all craggy bluffs and weather-worn villages and winds off the sea that knock the feet out from under you. Fishing boats bob at anchor in rocky harbors both picturesque and treacherous.
On a windswept bluff outside Peggy’s Cove, we stopped at the memorial to Swissair flight 111, which plunged into the frigid waters offshore in 1998, killing 229 onboard. The simple granite boulder remembering all those lives lost somewhere out there in that indigo sea was incredibly moving.
The weather grew colder and blustery on Cape Breton island, with moments of bright sunshine punctuating pelting rain to form rainbows that disappeared into deep offshore waters. Here was the full power of the north Atlantic, with biting winds and roiling whitecaps, especially at the end of the dirt road on the northern tip of the island, where chowder houses were already shuttered for the winter and we truly felt at the end of the earth. Thickly wooded inland valleys untouched by humans are home to bears and moose, and we walked a trail in Cape Breton Highlands park through an enchanted forest of towering sugar maples, some of them 350 years old.
The island has a distinctly split personality between Scots and French. Some settlements celebrate their heritage with Celtic song and dance and consonant-heavy names like Whycocomagh, while other French-speaking towns mark the homeland of the Acadians, the French settlers originally deported during British rule in the 1700s. Some of the outcasts made their way back to settle these inhospitable shores and make a living from sea and land, while others left for Louisiana, to become the forebears of today’s Cajuns.
Back at iconic Peggy’s Cove, we talked with Roger, a gentle soul with snow-white hair who’d been born in the tiny village and lived his life among its 50 inhabitants. “I fished for herring and mackerel for 40 years,” he said, “but the catch is down to a fraction of what it used to be.” He glanced out the window of his nautical artifacts shop as a huge tour bus roared by. “I used to go up on that hill as a boy and it was covered in wildflowers. A photographer from New York once took pictures of my sister and I picking wildflowers.” He indicated a granite hill topped with a large inn and parking lot filled with cars and busses, even on a rainy October day. The architecture was tasteful enough, but it had forever changed the view toward the lighthouse.
We talked like three old codgers of a changing world, changing climate and changing populations – down for fish and way up for humans -- while waves lapped against the pilings of the old fishing shack. Finally, we made our way to leave before the next downpour. “Give me a hug,” said Roger. And we did.
. . . . .
For pictures, follow this link:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast6Canada?authkey=Gv1sRgCLH2uqfc5dP9-gE&feat=directlink

More than Manhattan

The property had been in the family for 96 years, the farmer told us as he opened the door to the chicken coop. Lured up the driveway by a sign promising fresh eggs, we inhaled the fresh country air and quietude. Across the road, dairy cattle grazed in a rolling meadow bracketed by a forest in autumn-dappled hues of gold and orange. Awakened from their midday slumber, the hens muttered softly and skittered to the far side of the coop as he filled a carton with eggs in shades of toffee and the blue-green of Aracaunas.
“I lived in Wyoming for a while, ” he said. “Everyone knew I was from New York and when I told them Cheyenne was too much of a city for me, they looked at me like I was nuts.”
Say “New York” to most of us, and we think Big Apple. But sitting here in a maple forest in the Adirondacks, with rain pattering on the roof and fat-cheeked chipmunks scampering on the ground, we’ve learned there’s much more to the Empire State than Manhattan.
We spent two days in Allegany State Park, getting lost on the backroads of the rolling Amish country. Spotting road apples in both lanes, we knew we were in the right place, but it took a while before the first horse-drawn buggy came down the road at a lively clip. Visitors are told repeatedly not to photograph the Amish, which made for a day of furtive shutter-clicking from behind the bug-splattered windshield of the moving truck.
We passed picturesque farms with chickens in the yard, pigs and cows in the field and laundry snapping in the breeze on a clothesline – always white bedding and blue or black clothing. Men, particularly young bachelors, drove open wagons, while long-skirted women and children rode in covered buggies. We’d stop at vegetable stands or farms selling products and young women would flee indoors at our approach. I later deduced it was probably because we’d caught them outdoors with uncovered heads, as they always returned to greet us with smiles and bonnets on their heads.
We bought fresh-baked bread, cucumbers for a dime and more eggs, so large we couldn’t shut the carton, for 75 cents a dozen. The Amish we met were smiling and friendly and had the most gorgeous rosy-cheek complexions I’d ever seen – even the men, whose beards covered only the perimeter of their faces. Their lives appeared to be what much of the contemporary world seeks – healthy and peaceful and centered on family and community. I thought I wouldn’t mind trying the Amish life for a while. I could give up technology and tend the garden instead, but I’m not sure about the bonnet and long skirts.
The Finger Lakes were equally beautiful. We stayed in Watkins Glen State Park near a tumbling stream and hiked the dramatic gorge carved by eons of water. We visited charming towns, tasted local wine and bought cherry tomatoes for 25 cents a pint from the roadside stands nearly every home gardener sets up on the road.
We picked Concord grapes for snacks, and visited a U-Pick orchard on opening day of harvest, walking the rows with families pulling wagons heaped with kids and apples. We left with modest-sized bags of crisp-tart Northern Spies and juicy Jonagolds for 55 cents a pound, ignoring the old-timers' adage of “Spies for pies,” and eating them fresh off the tree instead.
Here was a place one could eat organic for little money indeed. Gardens were lush, trees bent heavy with fruit and fields colorful with purple autumn asters and goldenrod. Streams cut through hardwood forests at every turn, making us think ruefully of our water restrictions back home.
As we reached the higher elevations of the Adirondacks, conifers replaced some of the colorful deciduous trees and lakes dotted the landscape – there are 2,500 lakes in the protected Adirondacks forest and each little town has at least one. Here are the state’s highest peaks, rounded by glaciers and covered with balsam-scented forests in a wilderness area three times the size of Yellowstone.
Next time I meet someone from New York, I'll ask "which part?"
Photos at: http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast5NY?authkey=Gv1sRgCMT_-f3a6f7yEg&feat=directlink

Beer, Brats and the Street Where I Lived

Big-shouldered Chicago was a charmer, with drop-dead architecture, great food and people who walked up to you every time you stopped to look at a street sign to ask if you needed help. We fantasized living in one of the stunning condos on the Chicago River – maybe a converted warehouse loft – as we drifted along on an architectural history cruise.
We stayed with friend and former St. Helenan Gabby, enjoying catching up, some birthday bubbly and a dinner that showed she learned a thing or two during the years she spent with Julia Child Lincoln (fluffy, white) and Lily (short-hair, black) provided feline yin and yang. We walked the Loop, delighting in blue skies and balmy temperatures, rode the El and took pictures in Millennium Park to the lively mariachi strains of a free Latin music festival underway. The El into the city was itself a delight, not underground and claustrophobic like the Paris Metro, but running on elevated tracks, offering glimpses of weathered brick buildings, tree-lined streets and the occasional voyeuristic view into someone’s window.
And we ate: standing in line at 10:30 a.m. for Hot Doug’s, the “Sausage Superstore and Encased Meat Emporium.” After 45 minutes in line we were well-versed in the menu of specialty brats and eagerly ordered duck fat fries and the Sauternes duck and foie gras dog topped with chunks of foie gras, truffle aioli, foie gras mousse and fleur de sel. Be still my heart! Was ever a breakfast better? No wonder Doug’s a cult favorite, with Tony Bourdain among its fans. We ate outside where the throngs of eager customers couldn’t hear our moans of delight.
Hot tropical colors and shaken-at-the-table margaritas set the stage for brunch at the Rick Bayless paean to Mexico, Frontera Grill, where I had a tasty torta de elote, combining sweet yellow corn and the exotic black corn fungus. We hadn’t begun to see the Windy City, but it was time to move on and we left to retrace our path back to Milwaukee under gray skies and light rain.
With Happy ensconced at the Wisconsin state fairground not far from downtown, we headed into the city. Steep church spires pierced the moisture-heavy skies between modern high-rises and buildings seemingly plucked from the banks of the Rhine. So this was my hometown? The half-timbered architecture evoked der Vaterland, but I missed the hoppy smell of brewing beer, gone along with many of Milwaukee’s breweries.
But the residents still drink beer the way Napa Valley drinks wine. “Cheers”style neighborhood taverns offer two-for-one specials during Packers’ games, free beer on ladies’ night and Friday fish fries. We even spotted a rolling pedal-powered tavern in the historic Third Ward, its occupants hoisting steins of suds as they negotiated the streets, The darkened, beery interior of Klinger’s East triggered childhood memories of family visits to similar spots like the Elbow Room, where my Uncle Ralph served up cocktails to my parents and Cokes with cherries to my sister and me.
Living in the suburbs as a child, I remembered little of the city, so a drive along the lakefront and its solid European style mansions was a revelation. Nowhere else had we seen such a concentration of breathtaking houses mile after mile after mile, their backs to the vast Great Lake, their fronts often buffered from view by a forest of maples and beech.
Away from the lakefront we visited the Pabst mansion, the last of Milwaukee’s grand 19th-century mansions, the rest leveled over the years to build student housing for nearby Marquette University.
We hit the foodie high spots of town, wriggling into the tight wooden ‘50s era booths at Jake’s for the best corned beef since Katz’s in New York. Kopp’s Kustard (two flavors daily, served from the machine’s it’s made in) was silky and rich beyond Italy’s best gelato. Karl Ratzch’s sauerbraten, Black Forest veal and spaetzle did not disappoint, especially when accompanied by the Teutonic décor and a bottle of crisp Mosel. And we made a pilgrimage to Usinger’s, the mecca for encased meat-eaters, to stock up on their smoked pork chops, brats and other legendary products.
But the thrill of our stay was a drive to Wauwatosa, to visit 2471 N. 91st Street, the house where I lived from kindergarten through junior year in high school. I braced myself for the inevitable changes – a run-down neighborhood of barren sidewalks, the big street trees we knew having been planted long before Dutch elm disease came to town.
The streets were still tree-lined, although now mostly with maples, and the houses well-kept. I recognized our old house without seeing the address and we parked across the street. It looked better than ever! A huge addition in back was hidden from the street, making the house and the entire neighborhood, appear little changed. There, at the top left, was the window to the bedroom where, captive in my bunk bed with a miserable case of chicken pox, I read my horse books and sketched rearing stallions. There was the driveway where, one balmy summer evening, my friend Bobbie waited on her bike while I struggled to finish the awful stuffed bell pepper my mother had made for dinner.
It was here I collected marbles and trading cards, learned to ride a bike and roller skate, dodged snowballs from that mean kid from down the street as I walked home from school and smoked cigarettes with girlfriends in the upstairs bathroom.
I rang the bell and a pretty young blond woman appeared at the door. “I grew up in this house,” I began. “We lived here from 1951 to 1960 ands this is the first time I’ve been back.” Knowing it was very nervy, I asked if there was any chance we could look inside. She hesitated, muttering something about people who do this to “come inside and rob you.”
“I know it’s a huge imposition…” I continued. “We were the first family to live here.” She opened the door. The front hallway, staircase and living room with fireplace were the same, the carpeting we’d had replaced with hardwood floors. The dining room led not to a screened porch, but to an expansive new addition which included a large modern kitchen. But the milk chute was still there by the back door, now nailed shut. And the knotty pine paneled basement rec room was little changed, now as then a place for kids to play, with a grownup bar for adults.
Her young sons would be going to the same school down the street my sister and I attended, said Katie. The street had block parties and was full of young families. In fact, she continued, 91st was considered the best street in town. They loved the house and wanted to stay there forever.
Sometimes you can go home again.
Here are photos:
http://picasaweb.google.com/happytwo.mcwilliams/TripEast4ChicagoMilwaukee?authkey=Gv1sRgCLXM-uDdup2oZA&feat=directlink