Travel Archives

October 15, 2012

It’s Looking Like Fall

When you live in Florida, you forget what changing seasons look like. In fact, you divide the world into two classifications: hot and hotter. Today’s ride from Cullman, Alabama to Cape Girardeau reminded me of how pretty this time of year can be. I ran across the first really striking trees around Huntsville.

By the time I got north of Nashville, the colors were starting to get pretty enough that I decided to risk death by shooting some windshield pictures. Now, before you take me to task for not concentrating on my driving, these aren’t carefully composed photos where I hold the viewfinder up to my eye and wait for just the right composition. I stick the camera up in front of me and hold the button down, glancing at the LCD screen on the back every few frames to see if I’m pointing anywhere close to the right direction. It’s gangbanger-style photos where you spray and pray.

Still a lot of green left

My eye was drawn to the farm coming up on the right, the clouds and the patches of sunlight on the road. I clicked off eight frames. The first one was the best. That’s frequently the case. I might shoot multiple frames of a subject to bracket the exposure or to make sure the picture is sharp, but it’s almost the first shot that has the best composition. That helped form my philosophy of “shoot it when you see it.” The longer you fool around, the better the chance that the magic is going to leak out.

Clouds look menacing

By the time I got off I-24 at the Cadiz exit, the clouds were beginning to take on an Armageddon appearance. Despite their menacing look, I covered about 350 miles Sunday with just a handful of sprinkles.

90-degree approach

I published a photo of the Ohio River bridge at Cairo from the eastbound side last trip. I hit the infamous 90-degree approach to the bridge from the westbound side this time at about dark-thirty.

Tuesday Preview Show

Here’s the last plug for my preview show at the Altenburg Museum on Tuesday night at 6:30. I have to cut my presentation down for the formal show later in the month, so I’m looking for folks to tell me what works and what can be jettisoned. I’ll be talking about stories I’ve covered interesting folks I’ve met and what it’s like to have a job where you work a mere 300 seconds a year.

Last leg photo gallery

Here are a few more windshield grab shots from the last leg of my ride to Cape. Click on any photo to make it larger, then click on the left or right side of the image to move through the gallery.

October 14, 2012

Two Egg and Pssssssssss-BANG!

About 25 years ago, I did a story about Grand Ridge, a small school system in Florida’s Panhandle that was trying a new reading program. I met the Hollister family and grew to really like them. Charles and Annie had two children – Hobie, who was Son Matt’s age, and Heather, who was a year or two older. I made it a point to stop in on them when we passed through on vacation or when I had an assignment in the area.

But, that’s not the reason for this post.

Two Egg general store

Eleven miles up Hwy 69 from Grand Ridge is Two Egg. You can’t get that close to a place with a name like Two Egg without stopping in. A quarter of a century ago, there was a small general store that sold me a couple of souvenir T-shirts to take back to the kids.

I thought it would be fun to pick up a couple of shirts for Grandsons Malcolm and Graham this trip. A few houses and the city limit signs are about all that’s left of Two Egg. There was no sign of the general store.

Holiday Ranch Motel

I was going to take a picture of one of the three worst motels I had ever stayed in, but it, too, was gone. I’ve stayed in some real dives over the years, but that didn’t bother me much because I usually didn’t spend much time in the rooms.

When I pulled into Grand Ridge for my assignment, I was pleased to see the Holiday Ranch Motel about five minutes from the school where I’d be working. It was the old-fashioned tourist court kind of place and one that had seen much better days. The manager took me to one of the stand-alone rooms and warned me that the door had a tendency to stick. “You have to play with it, but it’ll open.

The weather had turned cold, so I was happy to see that the room had a gas heater against one wall.

Psssssssssssss

After I had snuggled up under the covers, I heard a Psssssssssssssssss sound. That was the gas heater filling the room with natural gas. Just about the time I was wondering if I was going to be gassed to death, there was a loud BANG!!!! as the gas ignited, sending a huge gout of fire out into the room.

Maybe I should check to see just how hard it WAS to get out of that room. “Stick” was an understatement. Visions of bad thriller movies and Alfred Hitchcock kept filling my mind.

All night long, “Psssssssssssss BANG! Flame!” “Psssssssssssss BANG! Flame!” “Psssssssssssss BANG! Flame!”

Several options were possible

The Pssssssssssssss could continue until the room filled with gas and extinguished all life in the room except for the cockroaches.
The Pssssssssssssss could fill the room with gas and the whole-shebang could go up in a flash of light and thunder.
Some combination of the above.

The next morning I checked out and moved to a motel that wasn’t quite as close, but was out of the blast zone of the Holiday Ranch Motel. (I’m pretty sure that was the name of it. The first name was definitely “Holiday,” but I’m positive the second word wasn’t “Inn.”)

Travel update

I’m staying in the same Comfort Suites in Cullman, Ala.,that Mother and I took refuge in on our last road trip. Joy Pannell, the same woman who told us where to go in case of a tornado that night, was working the desk tonight. Nice room, reasonable price, friendly service. I’ll make it a point to stay here whenever I pass through.

October 12, 2012

Getting on the Road

I was getting ready to unplug cables and start packing pieces parts to get on the road tomorrow. I had just about decided not to post anything when I remembered this photo from one of Mother’s scrapbooks.

I hope this isn’t going to happen to me.

Missouri 1919?

The tag number on the front and back are the same, so it’s the same car. I’m assuming the 19 mean 1919.

Isn’t it amazing how human beings will stare at broken mechanical devices in the hope that they will become magically cured. It’s sort of like the way men look at their cars after a fender-bender.

September 11, 2012November 12, 2016

Our Pearl Harbor

It was our generation’s Pearl Harbor. I wasn’t going to write about it because everybody else in the world is going to do “where I was stories.” To get THAT out of the way, I was in Cape. Mother said something about a building on fire in New York. I looked at the TV and thought, just like I had when I first saw the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City in flames on April 19, 1995, that it was a gas explosion. Soon, in both cases, we discovered a darker reason for the flames: terrorism.

The scramble to get home

I called Wife Lila in West Palm Beach and we shared our fears.

I hurried to a Cape gas station to fill up for a quick trip back to Florida. I wasn’t sure if gas was going to be available – or how much it was going to cost – for the return.

On the way south, I drove under an overpass near Nashville that had a massive American Flag hanging from it. I’ve never seen so many flags flying. I also noticed that drivers were more polite – they’d give you a wave to let you know it was OK to pull out and you’d acknowledge it in kind.

Where was the shared sacrifice?

Of course, that only lasted for a short while. Instead of experiencing the shared sacrifices of World War II, we were told to go shopping. Instead of cutting back on energy consumption, we demonstrated our patriotism by hanging “Support our Troops” magnetic ribbons on the back of gas-guzzling SUVs. Instead of drafting a cross-section of American society, putting everybody at risk, we had a volunteer army that meant it was unlikely that you had any literal skin in the game. Politicians like Rudy Giuliani whose sentences, according to Joe Biden, consist of “a noun, a verb, and 9/11” wrapped themselves in the flag and rushed us into two wars for dubious reasons.

Osama Bin Laden, for the price of 19 airline tickets, managed to cripple our economy and made us give up freedoms and privacy. Mission accomplished.

Flags still thrill me

Still, as I travel across this great land, I’m still thrilled to see our Flag flying. These were taken at the North County Park, Overbey Farms outside Murray, Ky., the Jackson City Hall and a florist in Gastonia, NC. These are AMERICAN flags. They don’t belong to politicians and political parties and they should be used to unite, not divide us.