And We're Off5:12 a.m. Sis wakes up, practically in tears about it not quite being morning, "it takes took long!" Bud, hearing the disturbance and seeing Mama in his room, asks if it was morning yet. No. "What are you doing in here?" Indeed. And so we decided, with everyone awake, we might as well get up and at 'em. We were out of the house before 6 a.m., with the kids still in their pajamas for the fun of it.
Through CT, into NY, across the lovely Tappan Zee spanning the Hudson River, eventually into NJ, where we stopped for a break at a Starbucks somewhere. Starbucks is like the new McDonald's for roadtrips--always open, readily available, clean restrooms, nibbles for sale. We did some stretching and got back on the road, seeing many lovely parts of the Garden State.
Breakfast found us at Bob Evans, with biscuits and gravy and pancakes. And bottles of dressing and BBQ sauce for Ma, Gong, and Goo! The kids liked the bendy straws best. I was appalled at the points value of an egg white omelet, unfortunately after the fact. C'est la vie. Et via.
East Texas, PA
Why is there always funky weather in Pennsylvania? When we moved from Chicago in April 2001, it was hot in the valleys and snowed on us in the mountains, changing weather repeatedly as we crossed the state. Today there was fog in the hills, lovely gentle fog in the rolling spring-green hills. And ridges and ridges of mountains. Except for that--the mountains and fog--it reminded me, in spirit, of Texas: farms, hunters, Germans, smokehouses with game processing. Except none of the barns in Texas have those colorful, symbolic circles which I saw both painted on and hanging from old and new barns and houses alike. We even stopped at a place, Dietrich's Meats, that was just a Yankee version, though a little more modest, of Praesek's. As I was buying jam and hex symbols, I just couldn't confess to being a vegetarian to those nice old Pennsylvania Dutch women who were pressing me with salami and jerky and such, right next to a fully-smoked, eyeless hog's head--so I sent Gin in to eat samples! We also stopped at the Cabela's in Hamburg--and it was Texas-sized! The largest of all the Cabela's and I'd say it was as big as the mall near where I grew up. Gigantic! You can tell these PA people are serious hunters.
Gettysburg
A stone's throw from the Mason-Dixon line, this tiny little farming community is of course renown for three days in July in 1863. Several friends judiciously questioned our intent to take preschoolers to the site of the turning point of the Civil War--how were we going to explain the battle? the war? slavery? death? It's hardly Sesame Street here (that park is in a different part of PA and on our itinerary for our next visit to the state). We do it as we do most things, partly by the seat of our pants, partly after much strategizing, and all with lots of honesty and short answers. Which meant we talked a lot about our Blue family (NY and CT, well, these days anyway) and our Gray family (TX and LA, actual Confederates those), tried on the chains and talked about slavery as one of the main causes of the war, looked at the medical kit but avoided any image of dead soldiers, focusing instead on the daily life and experiences of soldiers--from reveille and other bugle calls (what a neat interactive computer program that was!) to flag signals (another great interactive program about the 1s and 2s code for words), from tents to uniforms, games like chess and dominoes to muskets and the heavy loads soldiers carried. Bud sketched a lot; Sis took several pictures. Both wanted to get out to the battlefield, more than half expecting to see an actual battle.
We had lunch in the Saloon, which we learned was based on real Refreshment Saloons in Philly which distributed more than 1 million meals to deployed Union soldiers shipping south. We read about hard tack and messmates and the non-tomato origins of ketchup and how to fake cream for coffee with egg whites--there were table tents that kept us busy while we waited for our food. Typical fare except for the amazingly wonderful peanut soup, with whole peanuts in it, softened slightly by the cooking, perhaps some red pepper, just a really wonderful soup. The hardtack served with it? Well, not so much.
Then with battlefield maps in hand, we finally headed out to see the fields. We weren't going to do much at first, heading to the Pennsylvania monument as one of the most impressive. Sis and Bud climbed the monument with Mama, while I waited safely and happily below. Bud drew the fields and split rail fences and cannons (real, actual cannons from the Civil War marking the actual artillery lines), while Sis took photographs . . . of the dandelions! See, our dandelions are still yellow. No puffy, blowable heads yet. So this was quite a treat for her. And became an obsession. More on that later. But I was moved by the battlefield and curious about the rest of it and so we did the whole auto tour--through town past the house where the only civilian (Jennie Wade) was killed while baking bread, past old buildings some with visible bullet holes (other advertising all manner of tacky Gettysburg stuff), past Meade's headquarters in a little white house, past the monument to the Army of Northern Virginia with the statue of Lee. This is where I really felt the weight of the place, standing where Pickett's charge would have raced across the field, doomed. And there was Bud so innocently wanting to draw pictures. On past Little Round Top with its glorious view if not horrifying because of its tactical position as high ground for artillery, past literally thousands of monuments including the wolfhound a the base of the Irish cross and other memorials in the form of statues of soldiers looking very much like the ones that crouched behind trees and rocks, past all sorts of places that mean little to me because I've never really studied the battle--the Copse of Trees, the Angle, Cemetery Ridge, the Wheatfield. Sure, we didn't find a minie ball or even look, but you knew without seeing where the Gettysburg Address took place, without seeing the cemetery, what had transpired here. Even on such a gorgeous spring day. With Sis blowing dandelions, as sweet as could be.
A final stop at the Visitor's Center for souvenirs--the requisite blue and gray kepies and some plastic soldiers (from both sides!), some books (a very heavy one, plus some t-shirts, soon heading to Houston, though Pop, you really need to come see this for yourself)--and we were off.
On the Road Again . . .
The kids couldn't believe we had more driving to do, that we weren't there already. Geography means little to them. But we put some videos in the portable DVDs and they zoned out for the last leg of our trip, perking up a bit when we could finally say we were almost there. And, even though we arrived at our hotel 13 hours after we left home, we only hit traffic in the last 5 minutes. We couldn't have asked for a better traveling day.
A Taste of Lebanon
The kids played with their Blue and Gray soldiers, recreating the Civil War on the carpet while Mama called in dinner and I tried to organize our stuff. They didn't think much of the dinner we got, "Silk Road" food, as we call anything Mediterranean/Middle Eastern, but they were too tired and keyed up, at the exact same time, to care. Mama and I loved all the mezze, inhaling hummus, fassolia (this tomato-garlic-onion stewed gigante beans!!! One of the best things I've ever eaten), swhawarma, potato kibbe, seared haloumi (cheese) with pears and figs, falafel, and zucchini fritters, with orange blossom water-flavored syrup over halawet el jeben and kanafe (both also with sweet cheese).
Exhausted, Sis fell sound asleep, in her "day" pants, bum way up in the air as she perched on the edge of her sleeping bag. She was positioned to watch Food Network because, as she noted forlornly, there was no "kid tv" on that late. Bud was wired but fell instantly asleep when the lights were out. And Mama and I weren't too far behind.
