Only we could travel to
It was a long drive north.
We never should have stayed Sunday night in
Naturally, we stopped at “South of the Border.”
This Camelot of kitsch, this den of decadence, this amalgam
of Andy Warhol nightmares, this Pollack pastiche of poor taste, remains a
highlight of all trips on route 95.
Sadly, they have changed most of the many signs that line the highway
200 miles in either direction, because of their racial intolerance. No longer do they have signs in bad Mexican
accents with double entendre humor. “Get
your beeeg hotdog at Pedro’s.” The
hotdogs are still there:
We browsed the shops and got ice cream, but there is
something about South of the Border that clouds the mind and makes one do odd
things.
Remembering the last time we went to
I was impossible not to have a personal reaction to these
memorials. World War II was a necessary
war of liberation against evil nations whose Corporate executives had too much
power, Fascist nations controlled by a handful of leaders behind power-hungry,
arrogant dictators. But what about the
other wars? What good ever came from the
Korean War or
We continued walking along the mall to the Washington
Monument, right across from the back yard of the White House, where right now
it looks as if they’re preparing for war with Iran, as if Iraq wasn’t a big
enough debacle. It is no wonder that
everywhere we go, we find good, average American people who hate George Bush
and everything his administration has stood for.
If only the president would visit the beautiful Franklin
Delano Roosevelt Memorial and read the many phrases displayed there:
or “Those who see to establish systems of government based
on the regimentation of all human beings by a handful of individual rules, call
this a new order. It is not new and it
is not order.” Even “We have nothing to
fear but fear itself.” Everything here
relates to the president debacle of an administration. The anti-fascist remarks are obvious. Try looking up the definition of “fascism”
sometime. It basically means a country
which is controlled by the heads of a few major corporations. As to the quotation about fear—well, look at
those stupid terrorist alert colors—all that did was create fear among the
people of America. Visit the monument,
George. Try learning something about
serving the needs of the people, instead of the bosses.
Freddy had something to add to the FDR monument, when it
came to breadlines:
We continued our walk across the mall, past the
We did get to go to the
Have you ever seen such wide urinals? They were big enough for two guys to share
one, if things got crowded, or if they were gay. Maybe it was a good way to keep warm on a
cold day.
Monday Morning, June 18th,
I can’t sleep. I
haven’t worked on this webpage for over a week.
I’ve been taking notes, but maybe I’ve been suffering from writer’s
block or something. Then, again, it
could be something else. Maybe something
happened that I’d hesitated to write about, been less than completely
forthright with you, until today.
“It’s okay, Dad,” said Freddy, as he held his beloved. “She’s been sick all day, so it’s probably
mostly just water.”
Thank you,
Freddy. What a kind and thoughtful thing
to say. And what consolation it gave me
as I pulled off my “I Love
I guess
Freddy was right; it had been mostly water.
It wasn’t a major problem, not like the time, many years ago after another
trip to
Billy had been only a baby, probably not quite two
years old. We had just crossed the
Gothel’s Bridge onto
Compared to that day,
Well, now that that’s out of the way, the story can
continue:
Remembering another time we had parked in
We were standing in front of the
I would have been
cavalier and told Freddy to wait with them, but I was afraid that I couldn’t
make it because of my bad knee, which was already hurting. Freddy couldn’t go himself because he didn’t
know the area well enough to be able to find the car.
So off we went, each quick step agonizingly painful,
as the parking lot seemed further and further away the more we walked. I tried to cut the walk short by cutting
across south of the mall, by the Holocaust Museum, but feared going too far
south might make us miss the car altogether.
Another Dad might have been able to use a time like this to bond with
his son, but the pains shooting along my right knee limited my
conversation. Finally, we came to a
large, grassy field.
“It should be just on the other side of this field,” I
said, hopefully. Then I looked to my
right. We were at the
“No, it must be the next grassy field.”
“On the other side of that bay?” asked Freddy, seeing the
“It has to be past that.”
We continued on, both with the same thought: Wouldn’t it feel great to jump into that
water? This heat is unbearable. Do you think we’d get arrested if we climbed
that fence and jumped in?
I don’t know how many hours it took us before we found
the right field to cut across, but eventually it came in sight. We could see the car in the distance and
guess what—there was an empty space in front of it, so we wouldn’t have any
trouble pulling out. (Pulling into the
space had taken many maneuvers with two people on either side directing me into
the space.)
When we were about halfway across the field, we saw another
car trying to park in front of us. It
had about six inches to spare on either side, while the driver tried to
maneuver the vehicle. Freddy had an
idea. “Use the emergency button on your
key!”
That damned thing never worked right. I was always chewing my nails and never had
enough nail left to work it. This time,
it did work. The horn started beeping.
The guy must have thought he had hit my car. He jumped out of his and walked around to the
back. We could see his bewilderment as
he tried to figure out what he had done to my car and then worried if the
police were going to accuse him of trying to steal it. It might have been funny if Freddy and I
weren’t so exhausted. Finally, we got
within shouting range.
“If you’ll just wait a minute, I’ll give you all the space
in the world to park your car,” I shouted.
I’m not sure if the man spoke English, but he was only too
happy to let us take our beeping car out of his way.
Our car was unticketed.
Obviously, the police don’t enforce that law at this time of the
year. We drove off to get the girls, but
naturally it took awhile, especially after I took a wrong turn and we ended up
looking at a giant statue of a man half covered in the earth, looking something
like Ozymandias in the famous Keats’ poem.
We later took the girls to see this:
After lunch, we found a place to park on the mall, so we
could continue our visit. Freddy said
the Capitol was a great place to see, so we headed there.
Over Freddy’s left shoulder were armed
guards on the stairs behind us. The
Capitol was close, too, and those guys with assault rifles were there ready to
blow away anyone who got too close.
We came back a second day and saw the
FDR memorial, which I already talked about, then walked to the Jefferson
Memorial, and also saw the George W Bush Memorial:
I did get a chance to see the
Of course, like everyone else who visits
The next day, after taking another wrong turn and heading
south instead of north, then stopping three times before we found a gas station
which could fit into, we drove to
Our only problem in
Bad things have been happening in Wal-Marts. More and more of them have signs that say “No
overnight RV parking.” Campers just
can’t depend on them the way we used to.
Our next stop was a campground in New Jersey, from where we
could drive into the city, see the Statue of Liberty, which I have never really
visited, and then meet my friend Jason in Manhattan. At first, the campground seemed pretty nice,
although it was really very wet. It had
a nice lake and I couldn’t wait to jump in the canoe for a paddle.
Soon, though, we heard the yelling and fighting from a
group of people I called the “F__K you Family.”
These savages were arguing and fighting for two days, and their
vocabulary was very limited, mostly to the word I used to name them. It was sad indeed to hear
My canoe trip was fun, though. I found a basketball, a volleyball, and a red
game ball, which had apparently blown away from previous guests swimming at the
lake.
Hoping to avoid driving in
The first stop was
I don’t think real immigrants cheered as much as the people
on that boat when we cruised in front of the statue. They just went wild! They don’t allow you to go into the statue
anymore. We just got as far as the base. Naturally, security was very tight. One rather conservative Park Ranger talked
about patriotism and noble governmental ideals.
I looked over towards Diane who had her teacher face on and was shaking
her head, clearing sending the message that this was no place for patriotic
Liberalism and if I opened my mouth, I’d be sleeping in the driver’s seat for
the rest of the summer.
Later on, we met a more honest Ranger who informed us that
a western senator had passed away. He
couldn’t remember the name. “Was he one
of ours or one of theirs?” I asked, knowing how small the democratic majority
was in the Senate. “I’m not supposed to
say this,” he said, “You know who signs my checks, but I’m pretty sure it was
one of theirs.”
Praise Jesus, I
thought. Another one of his followers
have been called to His bosom with Jerry Falwell.
Here are the kids and Diane at the Statue of Liberty
with a rather strange person next to them:
We had a beautiful view of the
But when we got back to the campground, another disaster
was waiting for us. We had a wifi
hotspot, so Diane checked our bank account.
“We’re overdrawn! And none of it
was ours!”
After several phone calls, eventually at the pay phone
because Diane’s phone had crapped out after a fifteen minute wait for service,
we learned what had happened. Some
S.O.B. had gotten Diane’s account number over the Internet and had charged
about $400 worth of computer equipment!
We had to rush to the nearest Bank of America in the morning and sign an
affidavit so the Bank could take care of the charges. We got there and were told we had to wait 4
hours for the fax to arrive. We decided
to drive to
And off we went to
Oh my God, I guess I forgot how to drive in
For those of you who don’t know him, Jason was a student of
mine at
Jay showed us around midtown for a few hours. I especially enjoyed it when he pointed out
the headquarters of those bad guys in The
DaVinci Code. Diane’s favorite part
was getting her first
When it came to leaving the city, I figured out the easiest
way to do it. I tossed Jason the keys
and asked him to drive. He explained how
to drive in the city and showed us the necessary skills a
But the best part of the day, I think, was having dinner
with Jason and his beautiful wife, Becky, at an Irish pub around the corner
from their apartment in Woodside, Queens.
Jason told us exactly how to find the Brooklyn Queens
Expressway from his house. Naturally, we
missed the turn, had to make a u-turn, gave the finger, just like Jason taught
us, to several beeping angry drivers, and tried again. Both Jason and Becky stood there pointing to
the entrance to the BQE and we had no more problems getting back to New Jersey,
taking a route I had driven hundreds of times when I was going to college in
Trenton and visiting my girlfriend in Mineola (not unlike James Cagney in The Roaring Twenties.)
The next morning, we called the Bank of America and found
that the four hour fax had not been sent in twenty-four hours. We decided we’d have to have Meagan Regan,
the young lady at the bank who was helping us, forward the fax to someplace
near
I tried to avoid traffic by taking I-287 in
I decided we needed gas, so I pulled into a Freeway Service
Area. The sign said, “Car left, trucks
and RV’s right,” so I pulled to the right.
“Where is the gas?” I kept asking, as we drove through the parking area.
“There it is,” said Diane, looking behind us.
“Great,” I said, as we pulled back on the Thruway. “The next gas station is 35 miles away. It’s a good thing I have a big tank.”
We made it to the next service area, which had the same
sign. “Screw you, sign,” I thought, as I
turned left, and saw a blue sign which said “service area.” The other sign must have been for
parking. I drove through and go my gas.
The gentleman running the service area was very
helpful. He offered to turn on the gas
and let me pay after I had filled the tank.
What’s helpful about
that, you ask?
Many gas cards charge you $50.00 before you fill the tank, then return the difference. Now, $50.00 is often not enough to fill a
tank because of these ridiculous gas prices.
My camper takes about 80 gallons.
Usually that means filling the card four times. Most gas stations don’t have clips on the
handles, so that means I have to stand here holding the pump handle through
four separate fillups. This can be very
annoying.
It had been many years since I had seen my Aunt
Eileen. She had come down to Florida to
visit my parents before they passed away and I will never forget her joy of
life and sense of humor, as she held up a cookie and said, “There goes diet
#368.” We had a wonderful time seeing
her, her granddaughter, Wendy, and my cousin, Janice, who is married to a fine
man named Mike.
We stayed at a campground about 30 miles south of
The weekend was spent visiting Aunt Eileen, talking about
the family, most of whom are long gone now, and also seeing Janice and her
family at a camping area where they have a place on a beautiful lake. We did get to a Bank of America and finally
have the affidavit taken care of, and while we were there, I bought
Our next stop was
I did come up with a good way to handle grey water. Grey water is the waste from the sink and
shower, and it tends to fill up rather quickly, compared to the black water
which hardly fills up at all (Thank goodness.)
You might recall that last summer, I solved a similar problem by
carrying buckets of grey and black water to the public toilets at a
We visited some of the neighboring towns. Glenn’s Falls didn’t have much except a
much-needed Laundromat, a food store, and an Ace hardware, all of which came in
quite handy. The food store was quite
interesting. It was called Heremans,
Herefords, something like that. There
were very few Wal-mart Supercenters in
Lake George had a lot of interesting shops, but, like
The most memorable thing, for me at least, in
“Oh look,” I said, smiling, “it’s a parrot.”
Freddy corrected me, “It’s a Macaw,” but before I could
correct myself, the gentleman corrected me, in a tone of voice that suggested I
had insulted His damned bird, like I had suggested a Palestinian was a Jew.
His tone of voice was so unbelievable, that I just assumed
I had misunderstood the gentleman, and I called the Macaw by name. He made a screeching noise, which I jokingly
suggested sounded like “Shut Up.”
I meant it as a bit of self-deprecating humor, but the man
went into a tirade that his freaking bird would never say “shut up” because it
was rude and listed the polite words it did say and ended his incredibly
unfriendly speech with “have a nice day” which was said in the tone of voice
which sounded like “f__k you.”
He walked out without ordering any lunch while we all sat
there, stunned. That’s how this asshole
responds to a friendly attempt at conversation?
Sir, if you are reading this, let me say, “You are an asshole.”
Diane said I was right not to have called him an asshole to
his face, although he certainly was an asshole.
It might have led to an altercation and I was too mature for such an
altercation.
Okay, she might be right, but, oh that guy was an
asshole. I know a lot of cats who would
love to meet his freaking damned bird.
After lunch, I went down to the public restrooms by the
beach, but didn’t use the facilities because the bathroom was filled with
several teenaged boys who were getting their jollies lighting toilet paper on
fire and throwing it at each other. Come
to think of it, there were a number of assholes in
We also stopped at
When we got back to the camper after doing the laundry in
Our next cat show was in
How bad can a city suck?
I mean a really sucky one. I mean
no place, no where can compare to
At least from an RV.
Picture this: you’re driving a 36 foot motor home and
pulling a car on a dolly, so you total maybe 46 feet long, maybe 50, surrounded
by narrow streets, one-way streets and absolutely nothing bigger than a small
SUV. There is no place to stop at the
Cat show, which is surrounded by parking lots, none of which can handle a
vehicle anywhere near the length of mine.
(I later found a small loading bay on a one-way street behind the Oncenter,
where the cat show was held, but we couldn’t back into it because of the
tow-dolly.)
After searching for street parking in areas where most
people would be nervous walking a Doberman, we decided to head back on the
interstate, where we had seen a sign for “fairgrounds.” Most state fairgrounds have camping
facilities, although they are not always inexpensive. We followed the signs and I parked in one of
four empty lots across from the fairgrounds in western
“Sorry.” He
said. “You can’t stay here. This is only for people attending the fair.”
I looked around at the sixty parking places in this lot
alone and the water fixtures, which were on, and the electric boxes, which were
on.
“Working at the Oncenter Cat show doesn’t qualify.”
“But we’re happy to pay to park here. The lot is empty.”
“Sorry. This is not
a public facility.”
The State
Fairgrounds????
The man who worked for the fairgrounds, which, by the way, you
suck, you goddamned cheesy fairgrounds suggested we drive up the road aways to
a RV repair place who might know where there’s a campground. I took the car while Freddy and
“The nearest camping area is 45 miles away.”
This is something I had known when planning this trip. I had called the Oncenter from
“There is a
The kind lady gave us instructions on how to get to
Wal-mart. We had to drive across her
lawn because some Syracuse Schmuck who sucked had stopped his sucky SU sucking
V across the front of the sucking driveway.
Then we went back to the fairgrounds where we had not yet been ticketed
by the sucky Syracuse cops, drove the car back on the dolly, tied down the
front tire straps, connected the safety chains, and drove even further west to
Wal-Mart on Genesee Ave, where, after traveling on a narrow, windy sucky road,
we were greeted with big red signs that said “No Overnight Parking of Trucks or
RV’s. Violators will be towed.
Was this sucking walmart (no longer capitalized, you
bastards) on our list of walmarts that suck and don’t allow overnight
parking? No. You suck,
We had no choice. We
decided to leave the RV in the parking area and make two trips in the car
(about 25 minutes one way to the Oncenter.)
I still don’t understand how this happened, but we were somehow holding
the map upside down, so we turned left on
Diane took care of setting up, while I went back for more
stuff. While I was gone, she met a kind
lady who told her that was another walmart in
The directions sucked.
Are you surprised?
First he told us to go down “That rode there.” I proceeded to drive several miles south on
Okay, back to the right road, where we were supposed to go
up the I-81 ramp towards I-690, but not to get on 690, but on 695 instead. All we could do was head up 690, which turned
out to be the right road, coincidentally.
Next, we were supposed to go about three exits east and make a left on
When we got to the Thruway, we decided to turn around and
try the other direction. We asked a
woman on the side of the road.
“Sorry. I’m from
We asked a gentleman in a car. “Sorry, I’m from
Next, a car stopped and asked us directions. “Didn’t you see the license plate on my car,”
I said, “We’re from
Finally, a couple leaving a movie theatre told us the
walmart was on Bridge Road and showed us how to get there, where there were
five trucks parked in the corner near a duck pond that had the whole area
covered with green shit. I didn’t see a
camper in the lot, but we had to take a chance.
Meanwhile, back in the camper on the other side of town,
The walmart was right near I-690. Following the directions from the woman at
the RV repair shop, we drove back to the west side of Sucky Syracuse and
rehooked the car and the canoe and had dinner (Crystal felt like a bride whose
first dinner had been ruined by a husband who had been out bowling too long.) Before we left, I made one last try with the
walmart manager, telling him I had heard that some walmarts with no parking
signs allowed RVs to park there if their owners asked nicely. I asked nicely. He said it was a question of the police who
simply did not allow it. I thanked the
manager, all the while thinking, you suck and the police suck too, then I drove back north to I-690, after making a
wrong turn in a development full of dead ends where I thought we’d never
survive, but, praise Jesus, we found an elementary school with a large circular
drive for school buses and were able to turn around.
One dilemma remained: Should I take a chance on finding a
We parked next to the trucks. No RVs had shown up. Three police officers were doing something
that looked like an arrest of a dog in the parking lot. We waited for them to tell us we couldn’t
park over night, but they didn’t and here we are.
Now Freddy and
I sent my feelings about
A lot of the problems we had were my fault. The people at the cat show were nice folks
and the show itself wasn’t bad. We made
a few dollars and Freddy and
But there is no doubt at all that the Syracuse Fairgrounds
suck!
Our next stop was
Both Diane and I had visited that Falls many years ago, but
neither of us had been on “The Maid of the Mist,” the boat that takes you to
the base of the Falls. What a
thrill! I think we’ll all remember that
ride as long as we live.
We had a great time, although I wish we would have had
enough money to visit all the Wax Museums.
I’ve never seen a town with so many.
There was a Rock and Roll Wax Museum, a
We had been told that we would need passports to get into
“Why are you coming into
There were two answers to that:
1.
This is one of
the biggest tourist destinations in the world.
Why hell do you think we’re crossing the
2.
Why would I want
to see the Falls from the American side?
Have you seen what a miserable slum the American side of the city has
become? (Actually, I settled on, “We
want to stay a few hours to see the Falls.”
These guards seemed to have no sense of humor—not the slightest, and it
was the same all three times we crossed over the border!
They seemed obsessed over guns, and wouldn’t let go. “You do own a guy, do you not?”
I had to think for a minute. I don’t know if my official Red Ryder BB with
a compass in the stock and this thing for telling time actually qualified as a
gun. I thought of that Leon Uris novel I
had read as a kid about marines: “This is my rifle; this is my gun . . .” Oh,
wait, there was that old small gauge shotgun my father had bought thirty years
ago.
“Yes, I have a small shotgun-”
“Where is it? Is it
in your trunk?”
“No, it’s at home, in
“Are you sure?” This
is were the guard threatened to have me arrested if I was carrying a weapon.
“Yes.”
“Yes you have a gun in your trunk?”
“No. Yes, I have a
gun at home. In
“What is your relationship to the young lady?
We passed the guard the paperwork. She perused it thoroughly, probably just long
enough to run our licenses through her computer. “Okay.
You can go,” said the guard, abruptly.”
It was the same all three times. Do Canadians hate Americans now? Canadian
Bacon was just a movie. Not once did
we hear, “Welcome to
Wait. That wasn’t
exactly true. On the second day, we took
a ride to
So does that mean universal health care in
On the way home, after a quick meal at a Canadian
MacDonalds, which had a little maple leaf in the center of the arches, we got
to see the falls at night from the Canadian side. (Not wishing to pay another $12.00 to park
for a half hour or so, Freddy dropped us off to take pictures, drove around,
then picked us up at a light and we did the same for them.) We got some nice pictures of the Falls. Freddy took this one, of course:
We went back again the next night to see the falls from the
American side. All in all, we had a
really good time, although I think
We stayed at a nice park called Four Mile Creek, on the
Friday, June 22, 2007:
We just finished setting up for the Cat Show here in
The Walgreen’s girl just about broke her brassiere laughing
a the pitiful sight of me standing there, wifeless, holding two of the ugliest
green shirts on God’s green earth.
Thinking we were waiting twenty minutes for her prescription, I asked
the girl at the register to watch my shirts, so nobody else would buy them. She started laughing, too, but she was too
old to bust her brassiere. She probably
busted her Depends or something like that.
Diane finally showed up.
I have no idea where she was.
Anyway, that’s not what I started to write about. I am sitting here at a wooden table with the
computer playing one of my favorite old westerns, I am sitting here at a wooden
table with the computer playing one of my favorite old westerns, Gunfight at the O.K. Coral, while I’m
cooking a pair of delicious pork chops.
Cars are roaring by at the Interstate on my right; a few people in golf
carts are driving by; the air is just slightly chilly, enough to encourage a
sneeze now and then. It’s like being a
kid again, sitting in a drive in movies, maybe with the top down. Alan Ladd’s voice was the best on those car
speakers, but Kirk Douglas’ voice was pretty good, too. A cool breeze just blew by, and brought with
it such a wave of nostalgia—the first time I saw this movie was at a drive in
movie theatre, probably the Flanders Drive-In where we used to go in the summer
and my Mom and Dad were younger than I am now.
Is there any wonder why we’re heading west? I was raised on cowboy movies in the
drive-in. If you look in my baby book,
you’ll see listed under “first outing” the Babylon Drive-In. How I wish my mother had recorded the title
of the movie we saw in 1945, when I was six weeks old!