Check Out New Postings at "A Flaneur in Washington, DC"

 http://flaneurinwashington.blogspot.com/2012/04/along-c-canal-in-georgetowntoday-i-met.html

http://flaneurinwashington.blogspot.com/2012/04/mcmillan-park.html

Nearer, My God, To Thee

Today marks the centennial of the sinking of RMS Titanic. On its maiden voyage with over 2,200 passengers and crew, it departed Southampton, England, on April 10, and after briefs stops in Cherbourg, France and Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, it set off across the North Atlantic to New York. At approximately 11:40pm on the evening of April 14, it struck an iceberg off the Grand Banks, some 400 miles southeast of Newfoundland. At 2:20am the following morning, the Titanic sank to its watery grave and over 1,500 souls - the rich and the famous as well as the poor and unknown - perished with her.

A lot is being said and written about this lamentable tragedy and I am not going to rehash it all here. Just a few months ago, however, during a visit to Halifax, Nova Scotia, I was introduced to a chapter of the Titanic saga about which I was wholly unfamiliar. Today I want to share this with you. I was going to write and post this story from Halifax, but I decided it would be more appropriate to share it as we mark the centennial of this greatest maritime disaster in history.

I am reminded of that touching scene in James Cameron’s 1997 film, which was borrowed from its 1958 predecessor, “A Night to Remember,” when the ship’s string ensemble led by Wallace Hartley, having played through the early morning hours as Titanic began to slowly slip below the waves, chose to play one final song - “Nearer, My God, to Thee” - instead of saving themselves. The strains of this lovely hymn play as the audience watches various passengers, realizing their fate, prepare for their deaths while others frantically race about the deck as the icy waters of the North Atlantic wash over them and RMS Titanic passes from the British registry. The playing of this hymn is one of the more popular legends originating with the sinking of Titanic. Some choose to believe it. Others don’t, claiming that the ensemble played “Autumn,” or an Archibald Joyce waltz. I am among the former, probably because I have always loved this hymn and it captures so well the victims’ final hours.

Soon, there was nothing left of the great ship and its passengers and crew other than a few life boats carrying the 705 survivors, some surface detritus, and the frozen corpses of those who were unable to find space in a lifeboat. Less than two hours later, RMS Carpathia, bound from New York to Mediterranean ports, arrived at the site of the sinking, took the survivors aboard, and transported them to their final destination in New York. The dead were left where they died.

Two days after the sinking, and once The White Star Line had finally admitted the full extent of the disaster, it dispatched the first of four Canadian-flagged vessels, three of them from Halifax and one from St Johns, Newfoundland, to recover the bodies. The cable ship CS Mackay-Benett was the first to arrive on site, on April 20, and over the course of the next five days it recovered 306 bodies, 116 of which were, after an appropriate religious service, buried at sea because there were not enough coffins and embalming fluid on board. It returned to Halifax with 190 bodies after being relieved on April 26 by the cable ship CS Minia. Over the next eight days it recovered an additional 17 bodies, two of which were buried at sea. CGS Montmagny departed Halifax on May 6 and returned with three bodies having buried one at sea. SS Algerine sailed from St. Johns on May 16 and located a single body before the recovery was suspended a month after the sinking, having located only 328 bodies of the approximately 1500 people who died. The sea took the rest of them.

The 209 bodies brought to Halifax were unloaded on the harbor waterfront. Those bodies still wrapped in canvas shrouds for the journey, were place in coffins stacked on the wharf, and the grim cargo was transported to a temporary morgue at the former site of the Mayflower Curling Club, on Agricola Street (now a downtown parking facility), the only building large and cold enough to accommodate the bodies. There undertakers from all over Nova Scotia prepared the bodies for burial. Families claimed 59 of the identified bodies. Three local cemeteries are now the final resting places of the remaining 150 bodies recovered and brought to Halifax. They were buried here between May 3 and June 12, 1912 after funerals were conducted in churches throughout the city.

On a cold morning back in early January, as an icy rain fell, I visited the Fairview Lawn Cemetery in Halifax’s North end. Here, on a wooded hillside, is a plot where 121 victims of the April 14-15, 1912 sinking of RMS Titanic are interred under rows of gray memorial stones paid for by the White Star Line. Many of the victims have never been identified, and perhaps the best known of these graves is that of “The Unknown Child.” Only in the past decade has forensic testing made it possible to identify the child as an English boy who perished with his entire family. Even during the winter this singular grave is surrounded by flowers, stuffed animals and various toys. There are an additional 29 Titanic victims buried at the Mount Olivet Cemetery, and others at the Baron de Hirsch Jewish cemetery adjacent to Fairview Lawn Cemetery.

Wallace Hartley and the other members of the eight-piece string ensemble went to their deaths the night they played as Titanic sunk beneath them. Hartley’s body, along with that of his fellow violinist, John “Jock” Law Hume, was recovered by the crew of the Mackay-Bennett, Hartley’s violin case still strapped to his back. His body was eventually returned to Britain for a hero’s funeral at which his favorite hymn escorted him to his grave. I found Hume’s grave at Fairview Lawn Cemetery, in Halifax, far from his home in Dumfries, Scotland.

This morning, at 2:20am ship's time – 0547 GMT or 12:47am EDT – a minister on board the MS Balmoral, a luxury cruise ship which sailed to the site of the sinking this past week to commemorate the Titanic centennial, lead prayers while floral wreaths were cast into the sea and a shipboard band, regardless of the veracity of the legend, played the hymn one more time.

Though like the wanderer, the sun goes down,
Darkness be over me, my rest a stone,
Yet in my dreams I’d be nearer, my God, to Thee.

100+ Hits Each Day!

This is more than I could have ever hoped for. I had no idea what I was going to do when I launched this site on a whim back in late 2008. What a rewarding experience it has become! I enjoy sharing my random notes with you, and I appreciate all the positive feedback I continue to receive. Please share your comments . . . I always enjoy hearing from you!

I have several new postings going up in the coming days, weeks and months. I hope you will continue to visit this site and share your thoughts and comments with me. I am always interested in any suggestion how I might improve this blogspot and make it more reader friendly.

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Digging Dandelions

The dandelions are coming up fast and furious in these early ddays of spring. One day nothing is there to suggest their imminent arrival. The next day the lawn is covered with small, yellow flowers. Lots of them! Everywhere!

I am sitting here at the kitchen counter watching my next door neighbor down on his hands and knees carefully trying to dig out each plant in turn and I am reminded that digging dandelions was one of my regular chores each spring. Whenever they appeared on our lawn I was sent forth with a plastic bucket, a garden trowel and an old kitchen knife with directions to dig them out and to make sure I got the entire root. At the time it seemed like a lot of hard work for my weekly allowance. A senseless act since dandelions are virtually impossible to eradicate. If you dig them, you must get the entire root or else they will quickly return; and you have to get them before the yellow flower turns into its familiar white seed-head which can happen while your head is turned. There is an old superstition - if you blow all of the seeds off the dandelion in one breath, your wish will be granted. Well, only if you wish for more dandelions in your yard tomorrow.

Back in the day dandelions were, for me, a source of lucre. In addition to earning my allowance digging then out of our yard, I also attempted to find a more commercial use for them. As a kid I picked them from the lawns surrounding our apartment in Cincinnati, gathered them into bouquets secured by a rubber band, and went door to door through the complex selling them for a nickel each. As I recall, my mom and my second grade teacher, who lived next door, were only too happy to purchase one. Other neighbors were not similarly impressed with my entrepreneurial spirit, frowning as I offered these lovely bouquets for sale. I even had a door or two slammed in my face. One man’s flower is still another man’s weed.

Cats, Democrats, and Miscellaneous Facts

The third time was a charm. Recently I finally accomplished a quest begun almost two years ago - a visit to Poplar Island, in the Chesapeake Bay just a short distance off the Bay Hundred section of the Tilghman peninsula on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. I have been reading about Poplar Island since I first fell in love with this region upon moving to Maryland in 1976. Regulars readers of this blog are already familiar with my strong affinity for islands of any size, and Poplar Island fits the bill. There is something about an island, especially one so close to the mainland, that calls to me. So I have long dreamed of exploring Poplar Island at my first opportunity. I have been patient; I knew I would get out there one of these days. There was only one problem. The island was quickly disappearing, the victim of water and wind erosion. At one time the island covered nearly 1500 acres, yet by the mid 1970s its land mass had been reduced to a collection of small islets measuring 3-5 acres. If I waited too long, Poplar Island would disappear altogether and there would be nothing left to explore. As luck would have, the island has not disappeared and is now rising anew from the waters of Chesapeake Bay. So, after two aborted attempts to visit the island, the third attempt went off without a hitch.

For such a small island, it has a long and fascinating history. The Spanish may have discovered the island in the late 16th century, and John Smith is known to have been in these waters in the early years of the 17th century. The island was surveyed in 1627 by William Clairborne, of nearby Kent Island (the first permanent English settlement in what is now Maryland), and christened Popeley’s Island in honor of Lieutenant Richard Popeley, one of Clairborne’s associates who had come with several men from Elizabeth Citie, Virginia to help defend the early settlement. Clairborne also named a nearby island, later known as Sharp’s Island, after himself. There is evidence that a herd of pigs called the island home in 1632, and these two islands were the first to be cleared and planted in 1634, the same year Lord Baltimore and the founders of the Maryland colony sailed up the Chesapeake Bay.

Ownership of Popeley Island later passed to Richard Thompson who developed an extensive plantation raising corn, tobacco and other crops, as well as livestock. In the summer of 1637, Thompson returned from a trading expedition only to find wife, children and servants massacred by the local Nanticoke indians. Thompson abandoned the island and established a plantation on Kent Island where he remained for the rest of his life. By the mid 17th century a new plantation was established on the island by Thomas Hawkins thereby severing the last connection with Clairborne. It was also around this time that the island came to be known as Poplar Island.

We don’t know much more about the island’s history until the early 19th century when it served as a British base during the Chesapeake campaign in the War of 1812 while the Royal Navy was conducting naval operations farther up the Bay and around Baltimore in 1813-1814. The British found a protected harbor and food for their sailors and troops. By 1815 they had withdrawn from the Eastern Shore although naval squadrons continued to operate throughout the Bay.

Already in the mid 19th century Poplar Island was suffering from serious erosion and was actually three separate islands - Poplar, Cobbler’s Neck and Coaches Neck - although still known collectively as Poplar Island, or the Poplar Islands. It was around 1840 that ownership of the islands passed to the grandson of Charles Carroll, the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence who died at age 95 in 1832. Learning that there was a demand for black cat fur in China, the younger Carroll established a fur farm on the island, importing hundreds of cats and contracting with local waterman to supply them with fish. There are very few reliable details about this endeavor, but the legend has it that one winter the Bay froze over and the waterman could not supply the necessary fish to feed the cats. So they struck out across the ice and dispersed throughout the surrounding farms and plantations.

In the 1880s, the Poplar Islands had a population numbering 70-100 people. A small community known as Valliant, named after one of the local families, included a post office, a school (which also served as a church), a general store, and a sawmill (which may have led to the erosion of the islands through the cutting down of the island’s trees). The islanders continued to fish and grow crops which were sold on the mainland, yet by the early years of the 20th century the population had dwindled as families moved to the mainland and the school was finally closed in 1918. Although still privately owned, what remained of the islands was left to Mother Nature and the elements.

New life came to the islands in the 1920s and early 1930s. Bootleggers used the islands during Prohibition, and in 1929 they attracted a group of prominent Democrats from Washington who were looking for privacy and solitude to escape the rigors of the nation’s capital. Coaches retained its present owner while the Democrats purchased Poplar Island and Cobbler’s Neck, which was subsequently renamed Jefferson Island by the Maryland legislature in honor of the first President to break with the Federalist traditions of his predecessors. It was here they constructed a lodge - the very exclusive and males only Jefferson Islands Club founded in January 1931 - which became a favorite wartime getaway for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Vice President John Nance Gardner, members of the FDR cabinet, and other political leaders and industrialists of the day. Here they enjoyed the privacy they sought while taking part in local fishing and hunting opportunities. The club’s glory days were numbered, however, and the main lodge burned down in March 1946. Only the chimney and the front porch, including the concrete ramp constructed to accommodate FDR’s wheelchair remained, and the Democrats left for good.

The two islands were purchased by the club’s former caretaker and his wife, who moved their family from Wickwire, Maryland to the islands in 1948 and built a hunting and fishing operation - the Poplar Island Lodge - on the ruins of the old clubhouse on Jefferson Island. The islands continued to erode. Poplar Island measured approximately 200 acres of trees and marsh while Jefferson Island was around 40 acres and Coaches was 90 acres. The natural harbor formed by the three islands, known locally as “The Pot,” was frequently an anchorage for the large skipjack fleet still operating over the nearby oyster beds (more on this in an upcoming post). This rebirth was short-lived when the lodge closed in 1953 and the owners returned to the mainland.

The islands passed through several owners in the following decades but remained uninhabited as the Bay’s waters continued to wash them away. By the early 1990s only Coaches remained; the other two had dwindled to four remnant islands with a total area of 3-4 acres. They could very well have disappeared forever, the fate of other Bay islands, had it not been for a rather creative effort by the State of Maryland, the Maryland Port Authority, and the United States Army Corps of Engineers to find a productive - in fact a constructive - use for the silt and mud dredged annually from the shipping channel leading to and from Baltimore. For years such dredging material was disposed of at nearby Hart-Miller Island or subtlety dumped in open water around the Bay. Perhaps with Hart-Miller island reaching capacity and simple dumping being an ineffective manner of disposal, the disappearing Polar Island might offer a new possibility?

This is why I finally traveled to Poplar Island. It was a cool and misty morning as I arrived at Knapps Narrows, separating Tilghman Island from the mainland, to board the Terrapin, the utility boat operated by the Maryland Environmental Services which is overseeing the restoration of Poplar Island. Established back in the 1970s, MES is now an independent and not-for-profit state agency responsible for managing Maryland’s numerous land, water, and air resources projects, including the use and management of dredge material as a natural resource. The trip from Tilghman Island took about twenty minutes, passing close to Coaches and Jefferson islands, before we stepped ashore at the Paul S. Sarbanes (in honor of the former US Senator from Maryland) Ecosystem Restoration Project on Poplar Island. Jefferson Island, which still has a scattering of buildings among the trees, and the wooded Coaches Island, are privately owned and not part of the project although they are certainly benefiting from the protection from further erosion offered by Poplar Island.

The restoration of the island began in 1998 when rip-rap dikes were constructed, much like the edge of a jigsaw puzzle, following the original shoreline. After that, a number of additional dikes were erected separating the island into individuals sections, or “cells” - the pieces of the puzzle which also incorporate the last vestiges of the remnant islands - which are now receiving the dredge material. This is collected in large clamshell scoops during the annual dredging season between November and March when traffic and other activities in the shipping channels are at a minimum, and then loaded on barges for the roughly forty mile trip down the Bay to the island. Once it arrives in slurry form, it is piped to one of the cells to a prescribed depth and allowed to dry, what is known as “crust management.” Channels and creeks are also developed to permit the Bay’s water to enter the cells at high tide to create low marshland while the high marsh is planted with grasses to create new wildlife and bird habitat, including diamondback terrapins as well as ospreys, herons, terns, and many other bird species. Old Christmas trees have also been collected and scattered around the island to provide protected nesting areas. Eventually almost 20 million cubic yards of dredge material will be shipped to the island by 2029 when the restoration of the island will be completed; although much work will still be needed before the habitats are finished in 2039.

I returned to Tilghman Island with a good feeling about government and the private sector working together to protect rather than rape our environment. The restoration of Poplar Island is a success story and one can only hope that the lessons learned here will be put to good use in the future. Many of Chesapeake Bay’s islands are quickly disappearing and there is a chance that they, too, can be saved, and with them the endangered wildlife, bird and fish and shellfish habitats they afford.

Spring Has Spring!

We are a few days into spring and this is one of the warmest in memory. Sally Ann spent this past Monday down on the Tidal Basin with friends and enjoyed the cherry blossoms at their peak. With all the warm weather we have been having, the National Park Service had to keep updating when the peak would arrive. Your government in action; it hit the nail right on the head (too bad the rest of the government doesn't work that way)! I spent that same afternoon in a meeting on a 12th floor outdoor terrace on Pennsylvania Avenue and was able to take in the entire vista, from the Jefferson Memorial and the Tidal Basin all the way to the Kennedy Center and Georgetown beyond, with the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial and the White House (just a couple blocks away) in between. Days like this remind me why I love living in the Washington area.

This past week we had days when the temperature reached into the mid 80s! . . . in March!! Just this past Friday we spent a leisurely evening with some of our oldest and closest friends in a backyard on Capitol Hill enjoying good food and drink and trying to remember when we had a spring like this one. We just hope it is not a harbinger of a terribly hot summer. Sally Ann and I are not too worried as we will be heading to the lake in Maine in late June and will stay there until the beginning of October.

The flowers are all up, the grass is green and growing (we have already mowed the yard), and the trees are leafing out more every day. Soon I will be sitting in the ballpark watching a preseason game between my Boston Red Sox and the Washington Nationals (I like living near Washington but I'm still a citizen of the Red Sox Nation) as well as an early season game between the Nats and the Cincinnati Red (OK, I will pull for the Nats in that one). Spring training will be over and the Boys of Summer will be back in town.

So Spring has definitely sprung. Wherever you happen to live, here's wishing you a delightful seasonal rebirth. Let's hope it is here to stay.

A Joyful Noise!

61 years ago today this quiet edifice - Holy Cross Hospital - on Chicago's South Side came alive with the cries of a bouncing baby boy. And he is still raising a joyful noise.

I have mixed feelings about this personal benchmark, but I take comfort in my many friends and loving family. It has been a good life so far, and I look forward to many more years in your good company.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

In keeping with the spirit of the day, I would like to share a poem I wrote forty years ago.


http://ruesansregret.blogspot.com/2012/03/parick-hart.html

Everything But the Oink

Dateline: Keysers Ridge, Maryland
A steady rain was falling when I arose this morning around 5:30am outside Columbus, Ohio. A quick cup of coffee and I was on the road before 7am and drove through the rain until Cambridge, in eastern Ohio. Near Zanesville I was treated to a beautiful sunrise sandwiched between the rolling hills and the slate gray overcast at the leading edge of the bad weather. When the rain stopped, I pulled off the highway for some more coffee, and by the time I resumed my trip the rain had caught up with me and continued as a steady drizzle until I drove out of it as I crossed the Ohio River at Wheeling, West Virginia.

From Wheeling I retraced my route through the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania on US Route 40 - the National Road - which I am now following all the way to its eastern terminus, in Cumberland, Maryland, where construction on this first US federal highway began in 1811. I have stopped here in Keysers Ridge, in far western corner of Maryland, for a late breakfast. I know I am getting close to home when I can find scrapple on the menu.

I never heard of scrapple until I moved to Maryland in 1976, but I have come to enjoy it as much, if not more, than those here in the Mid-Atlantic states, some of whom have been raised on it all their lives. You might not share my taste for it, if you knew what it is and how it is made, but I can assure you it tastes better than it sounds. Scrapple is simple enough - a mixture of pork offal - scraps and trimmings . . . "everything but the oink" - combined with flour or cornmeal (I prefer the latter) and formed into a grayish loaf and refrigerated. Sliced thin or thick, it is fried in just a little bacon grease until the outside is a golden brown while the insides remain soft and juicy. It is frequently served with eggs as a breakfast meat in lieu of bacon or sausage, but I prefer it by itself, drizzled with some local Maryland maple syrup. It doesn't get much better than this.

Well fed, gassed up and in no particular hurry, I will continue east on the National Road through Grantsville, Frostburg, to Cumberland. I should be home in late afternoon, hopefully before the Washington rush hour begins in earnest. Fourteen days on the road and 3200 miles clicked off on the odometer. I never tire of a good road trip.

Going Home

Dateline: Richmond, Indiana
Today my travels have taken me across the Midwest, from Madison, Wisconsin to my day's final destination on the near east side of Columbus, Ohio, where I plan to spend a day of R&R visiting with my sister and her family. It will give me an opportunity to take a breather for a day before I drive the last leg of my trip home to Maryland.

This morning, before departing Madison where I spent the night, I drove around the city and Maple Bluff, the forested enclave on the western shore of Lake Mendota which I called home in the mid-1960s. I drove by our old house on Harbort Drive, on the edge of Burrows Park in the Fuller Woods neighborhood of Maple Bluff. Nearby is Tenney Park where I ice-skated on the lagoon during the winter (there is still some thin ice on it today) and where I fished on the nearby breakwater and at the locks serving the canal that allows boats to transit from Mendota to Lake Monona. I retraced the the streets I covered on my bicycle when I delivered The Capital Times, and I passed by the houses where my friends use to live and the local country club where I caddied and shagged golf balls one summer. It all looks the same.

I stopped and walked around the nearby junior high school where I completed my freshman year of high school (9th grade was still considered middle school back then). Originally a joint elementary school/junior high school named after Roger Sherman, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the latter retains its original name while the elementary school is now known as the Malcolm Shabazz City High School, in honor of the man we have come to know as Malcolm X and created as "a harassment-free/anti discriminatory learning environment where all people, regardless of previous academic performance, family background, social-economic status, beliefs, abilities, appearance, race, gender identity, gender expression, or sexual orientation are respected." I was attending this school when Malcolm was assassinated in February 1965. Time changes things.

I stood on the athletic field where I ran cross-country back then, and where I watched Siri, my first real girlfriend, captain the cheerleading squad. Last night I learned that Siri passed away in the summer of 2010 at age 59. I knew her a long time ago, but I guess you never forget your first love. While in Madison I also made a meager attempt to determine whether other old friends were in the area. I only found one - my best friend during 9th grade. Ike and I rode our bikes together and hung out at the lake when the weather was nice. He also caddied with me that one summer. After I moved away we lost touch with one another, but I later learned that he had dropped out of school a year after I left, and a few years later ended up on the FBI's list of most wanted fugitives after he and his brother blew up a building on the University of Wisconsin campus in 1970. He was on the lam for several years until he was apprehended in Toronto and extradited back to the United States where he served several years in federal prison. Released, he returned home to Madison where he drove a taxi and owned a delicatessen near campus. He died of lung cancer a couple months before Siri passed away in the summer of 2010.

Leaving Madison, I drove east toward Milwaukee, jumping off the interstate at Lake Mills to make a quick swing past the school where I attended kindergarten and first grade, as well as the hulking Queen Anne-style apartment house on Mulberry Street, and the smaller duplex on Milton Street, where we lived in the late 1950s. They are exactly as I remember them and a flood of memories came back to me.

I also drove through the many familiar haunts along the western edge of Milwaukee, which I considered my home base when I was attending college in Florida. My family moved to this area right after I graduated from high school, and this is where I returned during the holidays and on summer breaks. I passed by our house in Brookfield, and walked through the old nearby cemetery where many of the original settlers to this area - mostly Irish immigrant farmers from County Sligo, are buried. It was during a walk in this cemetery in the spring of 1973 that I asked Sally Ann to marry me. How romantic is that?

Turning south at Milwaukee, I drove down to Chicago on a route I could almost drive blind-folded back in the early 1970s when I often made the trek south to visit high school friends. I swung through suburban Park Ridge, where I graduated from Maine Township High School in 1969 (check out my posting from October 2009 where I discuss my return for my 40th high school reunion: http://www.lookingtowardportugal.blogspot.com/2009/10/you-can-go-home-again-sort-of.html ). I also passed through the neighborhood off Division Street at Humboldt Park, on the near North Side, and the West Englewood section on the city's South Side (not far from President Obama's old neighborhood) where my parents lived when I was just a small tyke. I don't get back to Chicago nearly enough. It really is a wonderful city and I am proud to call it my hometown. I have lived many places, but Chicago is where I come from.

And now I have driven across Indiana to Richmond, hard on the border with Ohio. My family lived here for a year when I was in high school and before we returned to the Chicago area. It was just a short blip on the radar screen of my personal history, but I have fond memories of the time I spent here and the people I came to know. So I have taken a short detour to look at our old house and the my high school. The town has not really changed all that much and I take some comfort in this.

I still have roughly one hundred miles to go before I reach my sister's place outside of Columbus. The sun is setting over the route I have traveled and the many places I have visited today . . . the many places I have called home over the years. I have miles to go before I sleep and I guess it is time to hit the road.

Some Kind of Minnesota Heaven

Dateline: Alexandria, Minnesota
Here I am in Lake Wobegon Country, in central Minnesota about 100 miles northwest of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, the state capital. I left Grand Forks, North Dakota this morning and drove south across the flat, snowy, wind-swept landscape to Fargo before turning southeast and crossing the Red River of the North for the last time on my long journey homeward. The unbroken prairie quickly gave way to rolling hills and rich, black earth farmland and pastures and I lost count of the bison herds I passed. It is going to be hard to leave all this behind.

Before I do, however, it would be a crime not to search out a friendly fish-on-the-wall restaurant that serves a nice, succulent walleye fillet. I fished for them regularly when I was a young boy growing up here in the upper Midwest, but it has been several years - not since I visited a similar establishment in the Sand Hills of northern Nebraska a few year ago - that I have tasted a good piece of walleye. What better place than central Minnesota? The walleye is the state fish both here and in South Dakota, and more walleye are eaten in Minnesota than in any other state in the union..

I found just such an establishment in the small town of Alexandria, Minnesota where there seems to be more lakes than dry land. I knew I was in the right place as soon as I walked through the door and found several curling snapshots of smiling people holding very large fish, most of them walleye. And sure enough, there are several fish, including a record-setting walleye caught in nearby Lake Darling last Fourth of July, mounted on the wall. I figured I did not have to ask whether it is on the menu. And there it is . . . offered as one of the Lenten specials.

My server is a typical lass one would expect to find in this region - blonde, attractive, corn-fed and presumably strong if one is to believe Garrison Keillor - and after bringing me a locally-brewed beer in a wide-mouth Ball jar, we were soon sharing some fishing tales in which walleye figured rather prominently. I enjoyed my beer and it was not long before a sizzling walleye fillet topped off with lemon slices and fresh cilantro was placed in front of me! I am in some kind of heaven!

It is just a shame I do not have room for some of the local homemade bread pudding for dessert. It looks good but I really can't eat another bite. Besides, I still have several miles to drive today and I must keep my wits about me.

A Visit to Whitey's Wonderbar

Dateline: East Grand Forks, Minnesota
During my week here in Grand Forks, North Dakota I have had an opportunity to do a little poking around, and this exploration has led me across the Red River of the North to the smaller neighboring town of East Grand Forks, Minnesota (population 8600). You can throw a fairly good size rock across the river here, yet there is a different feel when you cross the short bridge linking the town with neighboring Grand Forks. Both of these communities were virtually destroyed during a major flood in the spring of 1997. The river runs north, and an early spring that year in the Dakotas and Minnesota sent a rush of snow melt toward Canada where the river was still clogged with ice. These communities have rebuilt and a new system of flood walls, levees and dikes line both sides of the river to prevent future flooding. One of the wonders of survival in East Grand Forks is Whitey’s Wonderbar, which was first constructed near the river in 1925, and became the home of the original stainless steel horseshoe bar, the first ever constructed in the United States.

I stopped in this afternoon when there were very few people around and bellied up to the horseshoe bar and enjoyed a 24 ounce Bud Lite draft for $2.50 while the bartender shared with me a little history of the place. Apparently East Grand Forks was a wide open town back in the early 1920. North Dakota was dry, but Minnesota was not and so the town was home to a number of taverns and casinos where local farmers and lumbermen came “for fun and frolic.” East Grand Forks and Moorhead, across the river from Fargo eighty miles south of here, and other border towns thrived on the nightlife they could offer. Dozens of nightclubs and restaurants lined DeMers Avenue and made East Grand Forks famous throughout the Great Plains as "Little Chicago."

In 1925 a young fellow named Edwin "Whitey" Larson, not yet 20 years old, opened the Coney Island Lunch Room a couple blocks off the DeMers strip. It featured bootleg alcohol, unrestricted slot machines and other types of gambling, and Coney Island hot dogs. Chicago gangsters, including Al Capone, are alleged to have frequented Whitey’s back in the day. Even Clark Gable stopped by, or so the local legend goes. A few years later Whitey moved his establishment to the former home of the Duluth Brewing Company, on the DeMers strip, and built his now famous horseshoe bar in 1930. The tavern was later featured in the Saturday Evening Post and Time Magazine. In 1942 a fire damaged the building, but it was soon reopened as Whitey's Café and Lounge, with a new facade and with a more legitimate clientele. A wise move since gambling was outlawed in 1947, and the local authorities began to clean up the town. Most of the bars closed down yet Whitey's managed to survive the winds of change that blew across the prairie in the latter half of the 20th century. It was a landmark restaurant in the 1970s featuring three bars and a nightclub.

Whitey's had been in business in the same location in downtown East Grand Forks from 1933 to April 1997, when flood waters inundated the building in which it was located. After the flood, the owners salvaged what they could from the 1933 building, including the horseshoe bar and some other Art Deco furnishings, and everything was stored off site until a new building could be found. There was some talk it would move across the river to Grand Forks when the original building was torn down to make way for the new flood wall on the Minnesota side of the Red River. Once the flood barrier had been constructed, however, a building just east of the original building in East Grand Forks became available and Whitey's reopened in September, 1998. The following year the new building was extended westward towards the river with an entrance on the new boardwalk.

Whitey's eventually changed hands, the new owners quickly defaulted and the restaurant closed in February 2011. After being closed for nearly nine months, and sold at auction that May, the new owners of Whitey's Wonderbar reopened in October 2011 with the hope of taking the iconic establishment in a new direction. They have added a separate evening dining area off the original bar area and facing the boardwalk patio and the Red River. As a result, the entire establishment has been given an incredible facelift and almost everything has been replaced and upgraded except for the famous horseshoe bar. New walls were erected and given a fresh coat of paint in addition to other more modern touches. East Grand Forks, which has seen some rough times since the 1997 flood, is happy to see this piece of the city's history kept alive and thriving. And so am I!

I sit here and try to imagine what the place must have looked like back in its heyday when this was still a rough and ready frontier area. My waitress has just pulled another tall draft and a delicious looking meat and cheese plate which will be my light dinner this evening. It would be nice to walk along the boardwalk while there is still some daylight, but the temperature is hovering near 20F and there is a stiff wind blowing down from Manitoba, only a few miles north of here. I am happy to stay right where I am.

Legendary

Dateline: Grand Forks, North Dakota
"Legendary" . . . that is what the "welcome to" signs declare when you cross the border. A North Dakota pundit once declared that there is nothing to see in North Dakota, and nothing to keep you from seeing it. There is some truth in this, yet there is far more to North Dakota than first meets the eye.

I have been calling Grand Forks home for almost a week. It has a population hovering around 56,000 (including the personnel at the nearby Air Force base and the student body of the University of North Dakota) and is the third largest city in the state after Fargo, almost 80 miles to the south, and Bismarck, the state capital. Still, looking out over the landscape surrounding Grand Forks, especially at this time of year, one can look east and almost see yesterday, and turning west, tomorrow is just barely over the horizon. Still, I like Grand Forks. It is a town where one can easily feel at home.

I am presently serving as the visiting spring fellow at the University of North Dakota's Center for Human Rights and Genocide Studies. There have been several days of speeches, radio and television interviews, and classroom visits in conjunction with a visiting exhibit from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on the subject of persecution of Germany's homosexual community during the Nazi regime, 1933-1945. It has been both a fascinating and rewarding experience for me and I am sad to say that I will be leaving in a couple of days for my return trip home to Maryland. Everyone has made me feel at home here and I hate to leave.

During my visit I have had an opportunity to reacquaint myself with an area I first visited briefly in the summer of 1970. I do not remember much of what I saw back then, and so this visit comes as a revelation. I was also in North Dakota in the spring of 2007, traveling the same route I took across the state on my first trip so many years ago, but I did not make it up to this area. Despite my busy schedule and the winter weather that still grips the area, I have done a little exploring here and beyond the Red River of the North, in Minnesota. My visit here has been far too short; North Dakota has a lot to offer, and I look forward to returning again soon. There is much of the legend that still needs to be told.

White Out!!

Dateline: Rogers, Minnesota
When I set out on this trip two days ago I was still hoping I would make it all the way to Grand Forks, North Dakota with the weather on my side. It is a gamble this time of year, but I remained the eternal optimist. There were a few patches of snow in the shady spots as I traveled across the higher elevations of western Maryland and southwestern Pennsylvania, but by the time I reached Wheeling, West Virginia, and all across Ohio and Indiana, I saw no hints of winter other than the brown farmland of America's heartland.

Such would be the case yesterday until I reached the northern suburbs of Chicago, in northeastern Illinois, in the late afternoon when I began to see more frequent patches of snow along the road and across the urban sprawl that is enveloping more and more of the once pleasantly rural landscape between Chicago and Milwaukee. The skies grew overcast and by the time I crossed into Wisconsin near Kenosha there were flurries in the air. A few miles later I began to see thin bands of snow swept across the road by the wind that was increasing the farther north I drove. When I turned west at Milwaukee for the final miles of the day that would take me to my night's rest in Madison, the snow had stopped, but the ground was white and the rivers and lakes I was passing were now iced over. It is still winter in the upper Midwest.

This morning I had to brush a light accumulation of snow off my car and scrape the ice off my windows before I started out on the longest leg of my trip - from Madison, Wisconsin to Grand Forks, North Dakota. It would be a long day under the best of conditions. Northern Wisconsin and the Arrowhead of Minnesota were in the throes of a major blizzard , and the farther north I drove, the more snow I saw on the ground. The ceiling continued to drop as did the temperature. But the roads were clear and I pressed ahead.

The snow began to fall as I took the northern by-pass around the Twin Cities. It was light at first and blew off the road, but the storm grew in intensity and by the time I began to head north from Minneapolis toward St. Cloud the snowfall turned horizontal and quickly accumulated on the road obscuring the lane marking. To make matters worse, the trucks were throwing up slush which would temporarily blind me. It was time to get off the road!

I pulled off at a truck stop to top off my tank just to be safe and to get a big mug of black coffee to steel my nerves. By now there were white out conditions! I chanced upon a Minnesota state trooper at the truck stop and I inquired how the roads were farther north. His response was less than promising - multiple accidents and partial road closings with several more inches of snow and blizzard conditions expected before the storm passed. If I didn't have to be on the road, it would be best that I stay put. I have traveled through storms like this and it is no picnic to be sure. I took his advice to heart. My day on the road had ended.

I have found haven in a local inn and I am waiting out the storm with a warm room, a cold beer, and a good book. Tomorrow is another day.

40,000 Hits As of Today!!

Five thousand hits in the past two months alone. Thanks to all of my loyal readers and to those who have just tuned in.

Ain't That America?

Dateline: Madison, Wisconsin
Another early start to the day and I departed the eastern suburbs of Columbus, Ohio at dawn and drove west on Interstate 70 through downtown and across rural eastern Ohio, passing Springfield and Dayton, the birthplace of American aviation where Orville and Wilbur lived and worked their entire lives. It was another day of good weather as I set my sights, first for the broad expanses of central and northwestern Indiana, with the hope that I could make it through downtown Chicago before the evening rush hour began.

I crossed into Indiana at Richmond, where my family lived briefly when I was in high school. I stopped for gas and took a quick drive around town and was surprised just how little it has changed in 45 years. Then again, nothing seems to change quickly out here. That is what I like about the Midwest. As I drove west toward Indianapolis, which has, perhaps in spite of itself, grown into a major metropolitan area which even hosted the most recent Super Bowl, I could not seem to shake lyrics penned by native son, John Mellencamp:

Ah but ain't that America for you and me
Ain't that America somethin' to see baby

I didn't notice any little pink houses as I drove deeper into Indiana, but I think I know what Mellencamp was talking about when he wrote this song. It doesn't get much more heartland America than this. On this trip I have gone in search of an America I remember from growing up here in the Midwest. I am finding it in every direction I look.

I breezed through Chicago under sunny skies which turned overcast the farther north I drove. I ran into some light snow as I passed around Milwaukee and arrive here in Madison as night fell and the temperature began to drop. After two days of pleasant driving, I am afraid I am in for a rough patch tomorrow.

Into the Heartland

Dateline: Columbus, Ohio
What a pleasant day to be on the road! I left home in suburban Maryland around 6:30am this morning and was able to get around Washington, DC before the rush hour and the insufferable Beltway traffic could slow me down. The dawn was breaking and today's weather report all the way to my day's destination - Columbus, Ohio - was in my favor. The traffic thinned and I passed Frederick, Hagerstown, and Cumberland and continued out into the mountains of western Maryland (such a diverse landscape for such a small state) and across the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania below Pittsburg. The day rushed by quickly, and after an enjoyable lunch on the outskirts of Wheeling, West Virginia, I was crossing the Ohio River for the last 100 miles to Columbus. It feels good to be back in the Midwest where I spent most of my life before I headed off to college.

Setting Off for the Northern Edge

In just a few days I am setting off on a long road trip that will take me from my home here in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC to North Dakota and the the eastern fringe of the Great Plains. My trip will take me across the northern tier of Maryland and up through the Laurel Highlands of southwestern Pennsylvania before I cross the northern panhandle of West Virginia and the Ohio River at Wheeling. Then it is off across central Ohio and Indiana as far as Indianapolis before turning north and west toward Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison and on to the Twin Cities and the Mississippi River. The last leg of the trip will take me across central Minnesota to Fargo, and eventually north to Grand Forks, on the Red River of the North just 75 miles below the Canadian border and 120 miles south of Winnipeg.

Although I have been to the Midwest many times in recent years, and in western North Dakota five years ago, I have not been to the northeastern part of the state in over forty years. In 1970 a good friend from Milwaukee and I set out from that city on a road trip that would take us on the same route I will follow through Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota.

So I am looking forward to this new adventure. I know it is a gamble with the weather this time of year. I'll just hope for the best. I will be checking in periodically with reports from the road.

Just Around the Corner to the Light of Day

I have just returned home from a quick day trip from Washington, DC to New York City and back. Knowing I would have to be up and ready to go by 5am this morning in order to catch my bus to Manhattan at 6:15am, it was difficult for me to sleep. Add to this the fact that I had a report to finish and e-mail to New York before my arrival. This said, I was up and at the train station in plenty of time for my departure.

I settled into my seat and lightly snoozed for the short trip up to Baltimore. There we would pick up additional passengers before continuing non-stop express to Mid-Town Manhattan where we were scheduled to arrive around 10:45am. It was still dark as my bus pulled into Baltimore, but the sun began to peak over Fort McHenry and the harbor as we slipped out of the city on our way to points northeast. I snoozed some more as we cruised the Maryland and Delaware turnpikes to Wilmington, and I awoke for good as we crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge into the great state of New Jersey.

From there it was a beeline up the Jersey Turnpike to the Big Apple, passing through the forests and marshes of South Jersey, the bedroom suburbs of Philadelphia and the western edge of the Pine Barrens, passing Trenton and finally into the outskirts of New York City. Soon the skyscrapers on the lower end of Manhattan came into view, the superstructure of One World Trade Center, under construction on the site where the twin towers stood until the morning of September 11, 2001, now rising over the skyline. At Weehauken the bus descended into the Lincoln Tunnel only to emerge a few minutes later in the shadowy morning canyons of Manhattan where it delivered its passengers to Penn Station at Madison Square Garden.

I spent a delightful day on the Upper East Side and before I knew it I was on a subway back to Penn Station to catch the bus to Washington. Still, I had time to duck into the Blarney Rock Pub, certainly one of my favorite Irish bars in New York (and there are so many to choose from), and enjoy a corned beef on rye and a couple pints of Harp before it was time to board the bus waiting outside the front door. Everybody is friendly at the Blarney Rock -- excited, perhaps, that the Giants are going to the Super Bowl -- and the bartender asked me more than once if I was enjoying my sandwich. I was! When I inquired where I might find the head, I asked him to watch my beer while I was gone . . . a request he fulfilled most graciously. I found my stool reserved when I returned. You gotta love a place like this.

The Manhattan skyline was twinkling as the bus emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and climbed the Weehauken palisades to the Jersey Turnpike and the long trip home. The driver turned the lights down and I curled up in my seat and watched the city at night eventually give way to the long string of headlights heading to where I just came from. I closed my eyes, plugged in my ear buds, and listened to some Springsteen tunes until I drifted off somewhere near Bruce's old stomping grounds at Freehold. I stirred as the bus was disgorging it passengers in Baltimore. Another hour and I would be back in Washington and just around the corner to the light of a new day.

Up West and Downward?

Dateline: Sturbridge, Massachusetts
This visit to Halifax has been too short and today we began our long return trip to Maryland. We got a very early start, departing the Lord Nelson Hotel around 4:30am Atlantic Standard Time (3:30am EST) and drove through the nearly empty streets of Halifax on our way out to the 102 for the first leg of our trip. The headlights of some early commuters greeted us as we passed by the Stansfield International Airport, one of the day’s first arrivals passing over us. The lights of Halifax slowly disappeared behind us.

We crossed the 45th Parallel for the first time today at Stewiacke where we stopped at a Tim Horton’s around 5:30am for a bag of donuts and I welcomed a very large cup of steaming hot black coffee. The ground was snow-covered - the first real snow we have seen on this trip - and the parking lot was crunchy with black ice as a few flurries of snow ticked through the morning darkness.

Soon enough we were passing around Truro where we turned generally east on the Trans Canada Highway. And as we did, we began to climb into the snowy passage through the largely uninhabited Cobequid Hills running across the isthmus of Nova Scotia between the Minas Basin of the Bay of Fundy and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The plows had not been out yet and the snow was quickly accumulating on the road surface. This is a lonely stretch of road until you finally chance upon the toll booth where we were told that the weather would clear once we descended the western slope. And it did just that.

Michael broke into a quiet rendition of “Snowbird” as we passed by Springhill, hometown of Canadian songstress Ann Murray as well as the Ann Murray Centre and a hockey arena named in honor of her parents. She’s still big up there! It was not long before the twinkling red lights of the massive Radio Canada International transmitter array near Sackville, New Brunswick came into view and we crossed the Missaguash River, passing out of Nova Scotia and taking one more step closer to home.

The sky began to lighten into a slate gray overcast around 8am when we jumped off the Trans Canada, which continued west to Frederickton, and turned southwest on Highway 1 through the Kennebecasis River valley toward St. John. The sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon when we stopped at the Bluebird Café near Sussex. The place seemed to be popular with truckers and we enjoyed a decent breakfast of eggs, bacon and coffee.

The rest of our trip through New Brunswick was uneventful as we passed through St. Johns and continued down along the northern edge of the Bay of Fundy. We did not stop today being that we traveled this route back in August when the weather was warmer and sunnier. We reached the border at Saint Stephen shortly before 11am expecting the usual long wait to clear US customs. Instead, there were only a few cars ahead of us and the wait was short. The Customs and Border Protection agent inspecting my passport commented on my Chicago birthplace and asked if I was a Bears fan. I told him I favored the Packers only to discover that he, too, hailed from the Windy City. He winked and said something about deportation proceedings before waving us into Maine. The St. Croix River is narrow here yet we still gained an hour as we entered the Eastern Standard time zone.

We returned across Maine on Route 9 - the Airline Highway - to Bangor, crossing the 45th Parallel for a second time. There was snow in the air as we continued south on Interstate 95, but the ground was bare and many of the ponds and rivers are still remarkably free of ice for this time of year. Shortly before 3pm we arrived in New Gloucester - my wife and I live here during the summer months - but it was still too early to call it a day despite our departure from Halifax in the wee hours of the morning. We stopped at Cole Farms, one of our favorite local haunts, where we enjoyed a quick late lunch, and when we departed around 4pm, we were treated to a gorgeous sunset.

Darkness fell as we drove southward across Maine, coastal New Hampshire and around Boston. A light snow fell without accumulating. It has been a very long day since Halifax and we have stopped for the night here in Sturbridge. A quiet dinner and it is time for bed. Tomorrow will be another early morning as we strike out for home.

Thanks to Michael G. Stewart for sharing his photograph of today's sunset.

Along the Edge of Nova Scotia

Dateline: Halifax, Nova Scotia
What a difference a day makes. As promised, yesterday’s rain and wind were gone when I awoke this morning, replaced with overcast skies and temperatures above freezing. You can’t ask for much better than that this time of year in Nova Scotia. We were on the road by 8am, and after a quick stop at an Irving station on Quinpool Road to get a mug of coffee, we were on Highway 3 and heading southwest along the coast in the general direction of Lunenburg.

Once you reach the Head of St. Margarets Bay and the cut-off to Peggy’s Cove and the Aspotogan Peninsula, there is not much to look at but pine trees and an occasional glimpse of water. So Michael and I settled back and listened to a Radio Canada French-language broadcast of a rather eclectic collection of music and tried to visualize what the DJs must look like (“dark hair and eyes with pouty lips” . . . “long blond hair with green eyes, large round glasses and a turtle neck sweater” . . . and other descriptions I can’t remember now).

An hour or so later we arrived at Mahone Bay, a former boat-building community at the head of the Lunenburg Peninsula and now an upscale yachting and tourist center. It is probably best known for the “Three Sisters” - three prominent and picturesque churches (Anglican, Lutheran, and United) situated along the harbor’s edge. We stopped in at Eli’s Expresso, on Main Street, for breakfast and sat in a small back room where we warmed ourselves by the fire. While we ate we chatted with Eli, who is originally from Montréal, while he fed the fire. We were later joined by a rather beguiling woman in a tight, black leather dress who, interestingly enough, resembled one of the DJs we conjured on our morning drive. There is a story here; we just have not figured it out. Same goes for the big chair on the edge of town.

After breakfast we continued a few miles down the road to Lunenburg which is approximately 120 kilometers southwest of Halifax. Along with the provincial capital, Lunenburg is one of the earliest British colonial settlements in Nova Scotia, dating back to the mid-18th century. And it has a rich history connected with the consolidation of British hegemony over Atlantic Canada. Lunenburg was raided and plundered by American privateers on July 1, 1782, during the American Revolution, and turning the tables, the town was home to many privateers who attacked American shipping during the War of 1812. Throughout its history, Lunenburg has been a shipbuilding center perhaps best known for the schooner Bluenose which is depicted on the Canadian dime. Today the town is a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, and small as it is (its permanent population is less than 3,000), it is very easy to walk around. Despite some unpleasantness a couple hundred years ago, the local folks now seem very friendly toward Americans.

And Norwegians. When Nazi Germany invaded Norway in 1940, Norway had over 1,000 merchantmen at sea which were ordered to go to Allied ports for safety. Several of these ended up in Canadian ports, including Halifax, where they were converted for military use. Later that autumn all Norwegian merchant sailors in Nova Scotia not needed for wartime duties were transferred to a curling rink in Lunenburg where they were housed until “Camp Norway” was opened in November 1940. The camp eventually served as a Royal Norwegian Navy training depot until August 1944. There are monuments in the town park and at the site of the camp to the brave Norwegian sailors who lived and trained in exile hoping to one day liberate their homeland.

Before driving back to Halifax we stopped on the edge of town for a nice lunch at the Knot Pub. Bratwurst washed down with a couple tankards of ale. We were back in the city just as the city’s lights began to blink on.