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    Carefree Highways

    Here’s a connect-the-dots challenge, tapping what’s left of your road-trip driving fever from Labor Day weekend. Pull up Google Maps, pick two towns on opposite edges of the continental United States, and see if you can discover the longest driving trip. The only rules: you must start and end with U.S. cities, and your answer must be the blue line (not the grey line alternatives).

    My first guess on Google Maps (above) is effectively the longest drive between the borders of Mexico and Canada.  San Ysidro in California wouldn’t exist if not for the busy border crossing just to the south.  Van Buren in Maine wouldn’t exist if not for a small group of Nova Scotia citizens exiled from Canada in 1785.  As you can see, my southwest to northeast traverse gets me 3,291 miles of driving and takes more than two days (including a wealth of bathroom stops).  In the process, I pass through ten U.S. states and three Canadian provinces.  Label this trip a long-distance segue from “Ole!” to “Eh?”

    My second guess chooses a sun-starved soul north of Seattle, seeking some beach time in the Florida Keys (though someone named Irma would object right about now).  Our friend finishes his oyster stew in tiny Blaine, WA; points his car to the southeast, and arrives in Key West, FL two-and-a-half days later, just in time for a twilight margarita with Jimmy Buffett.  His drive also passes through ten states (like my first guess) but lasts 3,559 miles.  If our friend finished in Miami he’d drive the same distance as my first guess, but Highway 1 – further south through the Florida Keys – buys him a 160-mile tiebreaker.

    A recent Wall Street Journal article asserts we Americans are endlessly romanced by the allure of the open road (a “four-wheeled traipse” if you will), and the Labor Day holiday conveniently marks the end of the summer travel season.  Thus, you get a lot of drivers on the first weekend in September – 600,000 in Colorado alone, or 11% of the state’s population.  That translates to over 3.5 million road-trippers across the entire United States.  Traffic jam, anyone?

                      

    In the prehistoric times of street-corner pay phones and folding road maps (read: 1970’s), the American Automobile Association (AAA) offered a service called “Triptik”.  Go to an AAA office, tell ’em where you want to go, and they’d hand you a step-by-step book of maps “prepared expressly for you”.  My parents gave me a Triptik – and all the station wagon gas I needed – as a high-school graduation present.  My buddy and I created a Western States round-trip starting in Los Angeles, driving as far north as Montana, as far east as South Dakota, and returning through the Southwestern states.  Our aim was to hit as many national parks as possible.  We spent a few nights in motels (on our own dime), but most nights in sleeping bags in the back of the station wagon.  No agenda, no worries – just a couple of teenagers making a ton of memories on the open road.

    On the topic of road trips, I owe a nod to America’s beloved “Main Street” – U.S. Route 66.  Though nowhere close to the longest road trip in the U.S., Route 66 is certainly the most renowned.  Built in 1926, the “Mother Road” ran from Chicago to the Pacific Ocean west of Los Angeles – fully 2,448 miles.  Early 1900’s migration to the Western U.S. owes some of its success to 66, and all those road-trippers “got their kicks” at the hundreds of restaurants and motels born along the highway.  It wasn’t until 1985 – sixty years later – the last remnants of Route 66 were replaced by newer segments of the U.S. Interstate Highway System.

    Now then; time to solve the Google Maps challenge (with a twist).  The winner of the point-to-point American road trip is some nearby version of my second guess above: Washington to Florida.  However, for my money I’d much prefer the drive from Oregon to Massachusetts (above).  The twist?  You can do it all on one ridiculously long highway!  U.S. Route 20 – “The Big Daddy” – starts in little Newport, Oregon (pop. 10,000) and ends in Boston (pop. 673,000).  You’ll cover 12 states and 3,154 miles before you hit the checkered flag.  It’ll take you almost two days without stopping, but please stop.  Along the way you’ll find the Idaho Potato Museum, Yellowstone National Park, “Carhenge” (a Stonehenge homage made entirely of autos!), Iowa’s Field of Dreams, Hall of Fame’s for RV’s/motor-homes, rock & roll, and baseball; and most importantly, the Jell-O Gallery Museum, your one-stop-shop + tribute to the jiggly dessert.  C’mon, how you gonna top that road trip (with a dollop of whipped cream?)

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Any Way You Slice It

    Labor Day is right around the corner, but I call your attention to a couple of tastier holidays this time of year. Last Thursday was Peach Pie Day and a month henceforth will be Strawberry Cream Pie Day.  October will usher in Pumpkin Pie Day, as well as Boston Cream Pie Day.  In November, we’ll celebrate Bavarian Cream Pie Day.  Next May we’ll celebrate Apple Pie Day (and that one should be designated an American holiday).

    These pie-eyed celebration days come and go with little more than crumbs for fanfare, but any attention to pie is a good thing in my book.  Whether sweet or savory, fruit or cream, single or double-crust, bite-size (“cutie pies”?) or multiple-serving-size; you can never have too many fingers in pie.

    Pie is literally a part of my DNA.  My grandmother used to make delicious Cornish pasties, those hearty beef stew pocket-pies favored by generations of coal miners, each containing an entire meal within their flaky golden-brown crust.  My mother raised my brothers and I on the fruit pies her own mother taught her to make.  My favorites were cherry, peach, and mince; piping hot and a la mode (or in the case of mince, “a la hard sauce”).  I can still picture my mother adorning her creations with strips of dough – elegant top-crust latticework too pretty to consume.  She made it look easy as pie.

    They say the signature of a great pie is its crust – ironic because history says pie crust was never meant to be eaten.  With the advent of flour in ancient Roman times, pie crust served a practical purpose: to contain and preserve the food within, especially for a soldier or sailor or some other kind of several-days traveler.  It wasn’t until bakers turned their attention to the crust when “real pie” was born.  Can you imagine the first time someone tasted a savory buttery crust, melded with hot fruit filling, cooled by the freshness of vanilla ice cream?  The whole is clearly greater than the sum of its parts.

       Royer’s Round Top Cafe, Texas

    Any Texans reading this post will likely direct me to the Hill Country in the southeast, to little Marble Falls or tiny Round Top.  Both towns boast of serving “the best pies in the Lone Star State”, be that the Blue Bonnet Cafe in the former or Royer’s Cafe in the latter.  Blue Bonnet has a “Pie Happy Hour” and a regionally-renowned German Chocolate Pie.  (My favorite cake as a pie?  Sounds like a slice of heaven.)  Royer’s has something called a “Texas Trash Pie” (pretzels, graham crackers and coconut) and I can get one with a few clicks of my mouse.  Don’t tempt me.

    No nod to pie would be complete without saluting Hostess Fruit Pies and Kellogg’s Pop Tarts – staples of the American childhood.  Hostess enticed you with those colorful wrappers and the promise of “real fruit filling” (though my favorite was actually the chocolate).  No matter the flavor, you consumed a brick’s worth of glazed sugar, chewy crust, and gooey fruit filling.  It’s a wonder we didn’t sink to the bottom of our swimming pools and bathtubs.

        

    Kellogg’s Pop Tarts were svelte by comparison; a deck of large playing cards.  My mother favored the non-frosted fruit variety to keep our pantry “healthy”, but she snuck the brown-sugar cinnamon tarts into the basket too.  I ate hundreds of those.  Someone needs to invent a brown-sugar cinnamon pie.

    Any Hollywood-types reading this post would remind me the ultimate pie movie is “Waitress” (now a Broadway musical), or “Michael”, where in one glorious scene Andie McDowell surveys a table’s worth of pie and gleefully sings, “Pie, pie, me-oh-my, I love pie!”

    Thanks to a new local restaurant, I don’t have to travel to Texas to find amazing pie.  3.14 Sweet & Savory Pi Bar is as inclusive as it sounds.  Choose from a dozen or more “Pot Pi’s” for your entree (my favorite is the Irish-stew-inspired “Guinness Sakes”); then sprint to dessert by choosing from over twenty temptations (hello “Blueberry Fields Forever” Pi).

    For the record, cake gets its share of celebrations as well.  Last Wednesday was “Sponge Cake Day” and November 26th is “National Cake Day”.  For me, those days will come and go like any other.  Those who celebrate cake should eat some humble pie and admit which dessert deserves the higher praise.  But hey, no time to debate; a chicken pot pie is in the oven and calling my name.

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    American Tune-Up

    Each of the fifty United States is represented by more than just a flag. America’s state symbols include animals, birds, trees, flowers, and songs. As a kid growing up in California I memorized these items, and years later I’ve still got them.  The “Golden State” has the Grizzly Bear, the Valley Quail, the Redwood, the Poppy, and “I Love You, California”.  Imagine my interest then, when Brooklyn Magazine took an updated stab at the state songs, publishing “The Musical Map of the United States”.

    Image courtesy of Brooklyn Magazine, October 2016

    Brooklyn Mag’s map is more than meets the eye (see here).  It’s not a collection of easy ditties you and I might come up with: Beach Boys for CA, John Denver for CO, Frank Sinatra for NY.  Instead, it’s a broad spectrum of lesser-known tunes, attached to the states by writers who chose them.  Read their stories and listen to their song choices.  It’s like 50+ blogs in one, plus a playlist if you want to shift the whole shebang to your smartphone.

    Here’s a sampling of the Map’s creativity.  The writers chose Kenny Knight’s “America” for Colorado, a “dusty, country rock gem” with lyrics befitting its patriotic title (even if the song itself twangs along modestly).  For California, the writers needed two songs – Joni Mitchell’s “California”, and Dr. Dre’s “The Next Episode”.  The former artist is Canadian; the latter raised in the gangland streets of Compton near Los Angeles.  You’ll find Mitchell’s folk music as appropriate as Dre’s rap for such a diverse state.

    As I studied the Map, I realized each of us possesses our own musical geography, accumulating map dots as we move through life.  My own map began on the 8-track player of my father’s Cadillac in the 1960’s, crooning along with Perry Como as he claimed, “the bluest skies you’ve ever seen (are) in Seattle”.  By the 1970’s, I’d moved on to a hard-earned collection of 45-rpm records (“singles”), focusing on Top 40 bubble-gum one-hit wonders like Paper Lace’s “The Night Chicago Died” and Terry Jack’s “Seasons in the Sun”.  Also in the 70’s – courtesy of my brother’s extensive LP collection (and a stereo capable of a sonic boom) – I mapped to all kinds of rock, including Emerson Lake, & Palmer, The Eagles, Elton John, and Linda Ronstadt.

    By the 1980’s, I’d graduated to cassette tapes and the easy-listening music of John Denver, Olivia Newton-John, and Barry Manilow (to which some would say, two steps forward three steps back).  Later in the ’80’s, I embraced compact discs with a budding affection for country music (Alabama), continuing to this day (Thomas Rhett).

    Throw in a handful of downloads from my kids (Katy Perry, Meghan Trainor), sprinkle the whole mess with classical symphonies and concertos – a carryover from childhood piano lessons – and you have my musical map.  I’ll bet yours is wildly different.

    Even the world of sports has a musical map, as Steve Rushin wrote in an excellent piece in this week’s Sports Illustrated (“Cheer and Trebling”).  You can’t hear the whistling of “Sweet Georgia Brown” without thinking Harlem Globetrotters, just as you can’t make it through baseball’s seventh inning without singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”.  You won’t leave Yankee Stadium without Sinatra’s “New York, New York”, just as you won’t hear John Williams’ spectacular “Fanfare” without thinking Olympic Games.  Moments of silence at sporting events are literally reserved for the dearly departed.  Otherwise it’s all marching bands, pipe organs, and loudspeaker instrumentals.

    My now-home state Colorado has a set of symbols like California.  The “Centennial State” has the Bighorn Sheep, the Lark Bunting, the Blue Spruce, the Columbine, and John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High”.  But the song could just as easily be Katharine Lee Bates’ “America the Beautiful”, inspired by the Rocky Mountain peak I can see as I type.  The song could also be Kenny Knight’s “America”.

    You listen.  You choose.  There are no right or wrong answers here.  Remember, even Google Maps gives you several options as you navigate your way.

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    Patriot State

    Back when my wife and I lived on the West Coast, we had a neighbor who planted a “victory garden” in their front yard.  The houses on our block were small and close together, so the postage-stamp spaces in front allowed for modest landscaping at best.  There we were, nineteen neatly-mowed little lawns and one wildly out-of-control victory garden.  One of these things was not like the others.

    Thankfully, victory gardens carry more significance than the presence of hippies next-door (who knows what was in that garden).  Victory gardens were originally planted during World War I to reduce pressure on the public food supply.  The gardens were also considered a morale booster for citizens supporting the war effort back home.  In that context, it’s nice to see an occasional victory garden around my neighborhood today.

    Three days ago – the second Monday in August – the United States celebrated Victory Day, commemorating Japan’s surrender to the Allies at the end of World War II.  On second thought I shouldn’t say “United States”, because forty-nine of fifty states ignore V-Day altogether.  The only state still recognizing Victory Day?  Small but steadfast Rhode Island.  Since 1975, when Arkansas dropped its “World War II Memorial Day”, Rhode Island stands alone.

    “The Ocean State” has good reason to continue its jubilant celebrations.  92,000 of its residents served in WWII alone (more than 1 in 10), and almost 2,200 were killed.  Rhode Island is the smallest U.S. state in size and the eighth-least populated, yet the proportion of participants in “The Good War” was far higher than most other states.  Perhaps that’s because Rhode Island hosted several armed encampments.  Perhaps that’s because of patriotism born from the first of the thirteen colonies to declare independence.

    Victory Day was originally labelled V-J Day or “Victory over Japan Day”.  President Truman declared the holiday shortly after the atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The original V-J Day was September 2nd, 1945 (marking the formal end date of WWII), but revised to August 14th to recognize the actual day of Japanese surrender.  V-J Day came shortly after V-E Day (“Victory in Europe” Day), signifying Nazi Germany’s formal surrender to the Allies the previous May.

    Victory Day became infinitely more famous when Life Magazine published Albert Eisenstaedt’s photo of an anonymous sailor and nurse celebrating the moment of Japanese surrender in downtown New York City.  Today a massive statue of the “Unconditional Surrender” (more affectionately referred to as the “Kissing Sailor”) can be seen in San Diego’s downtown waterfront, adjacent to the USS Midway aircraft carrier.

    Thirty-six countries besides the United States celebrate some form or another of a Victory Day.  Why not our other forty-nine states?  Are we (as in the recent events in Charlottesville) determined to erase the nice/not-so-nice history defining the freedoms Americans enjoy today?  Victory Day recognizes the triumph of good over evil, not the Confederate brand of freedom.  Note a critical detail as well: Japan struck first, in its late-1941 assault on Hawaii’s Pearl Harbor.  America was not the aggressor.

    Maybe someday I’ll get to Rhode Island so I can a) witness the celebration of Victory Day, and b) thank the residents for keeping a most important moment in U.S. history alive.  In the meantime I’ll count on George Bailey every Christmas to remind me, immortalized in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life”.  George was deaf in one ear so he couldn’t serve in WWII alongside his brother Harry.  Instead he stayed on the home front, running “paper drives… scrap drives… rubber drives.”  And, “… like everybody else on V-E Day, he wept and prayed… on V-J Day, he wept and prayed.”

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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    Color of Courage

    I am a civilian living in a “military town”, considering the number of Army and Air Force bases in and around Colorado Springs.  The contemporary Air Force Academy campus (USAFA) to the west is the dead giveaway, but the Army’s Fort Carson to the south is larger in terms of acreage and personnel.  Fort Carson is also the largest employer of any kind in this part of the state.  Then there’s Peterson Air Force Base to the east (co-located with our municipal airport), Schriever Air Force Base to the slightly-further east, and Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station hiding in the foothills to the west (which may or may not have missiles pointed towards North Korea).

    All this presence-of-the-defense in Colorado Springs prompts the question whenever I purchase: “military or civilian?”.  You get a deserved discount if you are the former.  I am the latter so I pay full price.  Safe to say I will also never be awarded the Purple Heart.

    This past Monday (August 7th) was “Purple Heart Day” – on the list of U.S. Holidays and Observances – honoring the date the award was created in 1782.  The Purple Heart was not given between 1783 and 1931 – the span of time between the Revolutionary War and World War I – so it has “only” been awarded a total of 86 years since the days of George Washington.  That still amounts to countless acts of valor (over 1.8 million by some estimates).

    I have the utmost respect for the men and women in uniform, so I am awed by those who receive the Purple Heart.  “Those” includes my father-in-law, who served and was injured in the Korean War back in the early 1950’s.  “Those” include various notables, including Kurt Vonnegut, Pat Tillman, Rod Serling, and Norman Schwarzkopf.  “Those” include Curry T. Haynes, who died less than a month ago.  Haynes served in the Army in the Vietnam War and received a total of ten Purple Hearts for the injuries he suffered.  That’s more decorations than any other recipient.

    Ponder for a moment: Over a million Purple Hearts were awarded during WWI alone.  Another 350,000 were awarded during the Vietnam War.  All in defense of freedom.

    Because decorations were not always documented (Purple Hearts were often awarded on the spot; even attached to the hospital beds of recipients), there is no accurate total.  Instead, the Military Order of the Purple Heart commemorated a network of roads, highways, and bridges in the states of Purple Heart recipients.  Whenever you see a sign like the one above, be reminded of the high (and frequent) price paid for your freedom.

    Between 1942 and 1997, civilians serving in the armed forces were eligible to receive the Purple Heart.  Nine firefighters in the Honolulu Fire Department were decorated during the attack on Pearl Harbor.  After 1997, Congress passed legislation limiting awards to men and women in uniform.  Civilians now receive the Defense of Freedom Medal for similar sacrifices.

        Sergeant Reckless photo – by Andrew Geer

    Animals are also eligible for the Purple Heart.  The most impressive: the decorated war horse Reckless, a thoroughbred mix rescued from the race track and trained by members of the Marine Corps.  Reckless served in the Korean War, frequently carrying supplies and ammunition to the front line.  Remarkably, Reckless memorized her routes so she could deliver unattended.  During one battle, she made 51 trips in a single day between supply depot and front line.  Reckless was wounded twice and thus received two Purple Hearts.  She was promoted to the rank of sergeant shortly after the war ended.  A plaque and photo of Reckless can be seen at the Marine Corp base Camp Pendleton in California.

    As I began with, I’m a civilian living in a military town.  I am surrounded by my Colorado peers who serve or have served in the armed forces.  I may not be one of them, but at least I can tip my hat on the streets, especially to those who wear the Purple Heart.

    Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.

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