The Crack in the Bell

I drive back down South Street, through the heart of Philly’s Black neighborhood Remember the song from the 1950s that went “Where do all the hippies meet, South Street, South Street”? This was the street they were singing about. As I head east towards Front Street and the Delaware river, South Street turns into a semi-bohemian “entertainment district.” My tourist map has it marked in orange, and the legend indicates that this means “shopping.” It’s looks to me like a Greenwich Village knockoff. There are more tattoo and piercing places than I ever could have imagined. Trendy bars, too. One, called “The Tatooed Mother,” is decorated outside with ersatz freak-show posters and one called “GURU” looks like a cross between a Zen Monastery and the Starship Enterprise.

Philadelphia has done a good job not only of hanging on its trolly cars and ethnic neighborhoods, but of preserving the beautiful colonial houses near the waterfront. The neighborhood reminds me of Boston’s Back Bay, but with straight streets rather than winding ones. I know that during some of the worst excesses of the 1960s and 1970s Philadelphia had a strict ordinance that allowed no building taller than the top of William Penn’s hat (his image adorns City Hall). Real estate interests quashed that regulation. Thank God most architects had started to come to their senses by the 1980s and were making buildings that people actually liked and could use.

I’m sure these brick townhouses are enclaves inhabited only by the City’s wealthiest, but I’m happy that wise counsel, citizen activism or some trick of economics kept them intact. They could easily have been torn down for high rise apartments. I notice a cluster of children, and see that they are gathered around a man in colonial garb carrying a lantern, so the city, or perhaps the National Park Service, appreciates the historic neighborhood and makes good use of it.

Philadelphia also has an excellent public-transit system that still provides trolley service to the outlying neighborhoods. It appears well-maintained and well used, but it’s crippled by an unfortunate acronym: SEPTA. I’m stunned that there isn’t a single marketing person in City government who can figure this out.

After I finish teaching my second day, I’ve got a few hours to kill before the evening’s flight to Vermont. I grab a nice noodle dinner at a Burmese place, and still have time enough to walk around downtown.

The Liberty Bell lives in an angular bunker of tinted green glass, marble, and steel. It looks like the offspring of a marriage between a high-school cafeteria an an expensive coffee table. It does offer the ability to see the bell from outside, which is convenient for drive-by tourism.

The building is closed of course (the curse of the business traveller), but here is a taped commentary available outside the structure. I see a group of Chinese people huddled around a console on the eastern wall of the building, and hear the rise and fall of Mandarin from the speakers. I walk to the west side of the building and discover another console. It has large black buttons, each labeled with a language. The commentary is available in fourteen languages. I’d like to hear it, but German is currently playing. Maybe I’ve seen too many World War II movies, but a person speaking German over a loudspeaker does not evoke images of freedom to me. “ACTUNG! Das is Der Liberty Bell,” I imagined him saying. Several anglophones, myself included, approach the console and bang on the “English” button, but the controls do not include “stop” so we listen to Herr Liberty for a few minutes before the English commentary begins.

The German dialog didn’t do it for me, but evoking images of freedom is something the big bell has been doing for a long time. At first it hung in nearby Independence Hall, where it rang out for all sorts of civic occasions. Its placement in the bulding where the Declaration of Independence was signed marked the beginning of its fame.

It didn’t really become a symbol of liberty until 1824. According to the narrator, abolitionists used it as a symbol in the early part of the last century.

There have been a lot of myths and a lot of hype surrounding the bell. Many say that the bell rang on July 4 1776. Not true. In 1876, the Centennial year, it first became a significant tourist attraction, and it toured around the country on its own flatbed train car.

The crack in the liberty bell seems to be particularly interesting to people. It’s an ordinary crack and though there are scores of myths about it, it probably happened from ordinary handling, and was made worse by a day of ringing to celebrate George Washington’s birthday. It’s a powerful image — the ringing symbol of liberty fragile and nearly broken. I could imagine its appeal to the abolitionists. They also must have appreciated the inscription on the bell, from the book of Leviticus: “Proclaim liberty throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof. I learned to say this in Hebrew when I was a lad, but I’ve forgotten it. In its original context the quote was about the Jubilee, or Sabbath year. Every seventh year observant Jews were supposed to free their slaves

A few blocks away, the park service has rehabilitated the block of buildings that belonged to Benjamin Franklin. It sits on its own amid run down shops and hideous glass and brick cubes. There seem to be an inordinate amount of nail care stores nearby. Of course, as a business traveller, I’m permitted to visit only attractions that have closed, so I saw only the exterior. I think they got a little too Disney with the rehab. The idea of having a real US Post office in the very place where BF was postmaster is a brilliant, but the sign handing out front “Rooms to Let, Enquire Within, B. Franklin” is a little too precious for my tastes. I did, however, appreciate the signboard hung out for the newspaper published by Franklin’s grandson. It was called “Aurora.” Another worshipper. I wonder if Henry David knew about this paper.

Air Baths With Ben

It’s an remarkably stress-free trip down to Philadelphia. Philly is one of the few places with direct flights from Burlington. There’s a 6AM flight that gets me there in plenty of time to get a rental car and drive to my client. It does require me to wake up at 4:30, but this is no hardship to me. I’m a morning person. As my old buddy Henry David Thoreau said “I have been as sincere a worshipper of Aurora as the Greeks.”

Despite my religious convictions, it’s nearly impossible for me to greet the dawn in summertime in Vermont; there’s broad daylight at 4:30. But it’s cool as I pull out of driveway, and there’s a subtle touch of pink in the eastern sky. I think of Thoreau’s words “…The morning, which is the most memorable season of the day, is the awakening hour. Then there is least somnolence in us; and for an hour, at least, some part of us awakes which slumbers all the rest of the day and night…All poets and heroes, like Memnon,are the children of Aurora, and emit their music at sunrise…It matters not what the clocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when I am awake and there is a dawn in me. “

Of course, Henry didn’t have to fly coach, but the flight isn’t too crowded and I get some reading and preparation done in the air. Yep, there’s still a bit of dawn in me. I’d emit some music, too but that’s been provided for me — my rental car has a CD player again. I drive from the airport to the hospital where I’m teaching with Paul Simon singing about the Mamma Pajama. Traffic is light. As I pull off the highway I admire some of Philadelphia’s miles and miles of old neighborhoods. I see run-down yet homey-looking bars, gigantic Catholic churches, trolley tracks in the street, and ethnic stores. Near the hospital it’s mostly two and three-story brick buildings with stoops, and I note “POLKA Polsky Delikatesy” and the “Lithuanian Music Hall.”

I check in to my hotel after teaching my class. It’s a Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. The extra “e” after “crown” is there, I suppose, to connote a measure of classiness, and the place does boast a lovely 48″ towel. But my nanobottle of shampoo is unaccompanied by conditioner. The shower cap and shoe mitt are pleasantly reassuring.

Vestigal “e” or no, there is something wrong with the room. When I arrived I noticed a mild but foul smell — insecticide, perhaps. Then, walking barefoot, I noticed that the floor was damp. Near the desk in my room the floor was downright wet. I began to wonder if some horrible accident– perhaps murder or suicide — had happened here and this was the attempt to clean it up. The odor disturbs me, but I soon grow used to it. Once I’ve unpacked, it will take more than a mere corpse to get me to change rooms.

Because I flew directly here and taught a class this morning my two spare dress shirts are hopelessly wrinkled, so I decide to iron. Here, dear reader, I must make a confession. When I said “barefoot” in the last paragraph I was understating…or maybe overstating. When I arrive at a hotel I often like to throw off my clothes. Like Benjamin Franklin, buried near here, I believe that the human body benefits from the regular practice of what he called an “air bath.” This can be risky, though, when one is handling a steam iron. I feel it’s worth it. Some people bungie jump, I iron naked.

After ironing, I open the drapes. I’m on the 12th floor, and my room looks directly out across the street at a chrome and glass office building. I quickly close the drapes and put on some clothes. I pull up a chair, and for a while take sadistic pleasure in watching the workaholics in their offices.

I drive to a yuppy restaurant near the University of Pennyslvania. After a softshell crab dinner at an outdoor table, I decide to test the limits of my geographical memory. I lived in this part of Philadelphia with my brother, then a student, for a few months in 1971. Sure enough, I can still find my way around 28 years later. Many of the buildings have been replaced, and the African-American neighborhood near my brother’s old apartment appears to be mostly Pakistani (judging by the groceries selling Halal meats and the women in Saris and head covers)

Emperors of Chocolate

I was led to read Joel Glenn Brenner’s book “The Emperors of Chocolate” by a question from my friend Tony. “You’re the kind of person who would know the answer to this. What do the letters M&M stand for on M&Ms?” Finding the answer led me to read a business history filled with quirky characters and fascinating tales.

The book is mostly about a thirty year battle between Hershey and Mars and fittingly, it opens with a war story. The Gulf War, you see, was won by Mars. Hershey got all the publicity with its “Desert Bar,” but lost most of the defense contracts. They went to the company that makes Snickers and M&Ms. Brenner devotes several chapters to this, and makes a good story of it.

Mars, by the way, sounds like a spooky place to work. It was founded by Frank Mars, together with his son Forrest. They built the company up and made a pile of money. But Forrest didn’t care about money. He was an empire builder, and after his father’s death and a fierce takeover battle he wrested complete control of the company. Mars purged his father’s hires, and reshaped the company to his liking. In Brenner’s words:

“Soon after the [victorious takeover] meeting, Forrest ripped out the executive dining room, fired the French chef, tore down the office walls, stripped the oak paneling and sold the art collection, the rugs, the stained glass and the corporate helicopter. He then increased salaries 30 percent, replaced fixed annual compensation with incentive pay and handed each associate a time card. “

Mars is now a huge multinational corporation (they make Pet brand pet foods and Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice, too). Forrest Mars sounds like everyone’s idea of the boss from hell. I got the feeling that Mr. Dithers in Blondie may have been loosely based on him.

Mars is still family owned, and is still a very unusual place. John Mars and Forrest Mars Junior, the sons of Forrest Mars, still punch in at a time clock. Brenner claims that they weren’t allowed to eat M&Ms as children…Forrest said he needed them all to sell. There are no private offices, no perquisites of power, no personal secretaries. Writing memos is against corporate policy. The company demands total dedication (for example, their executives might be asked to take part in a tasting session for their Kal Kan dog food line). The Mars brothers, however, pay about triple what their competitors pay.

I often skip the author’s note at the beginning of a book, but this one is a must read. In it, Brenner talks about how hard it was to do simple research on the chocolate industry. The secrecy surrounding Hersheys and Mars is hard to believe, though not unjustified. Spying on rival techniques and technology is an ancient candy-business tradition. Brenner even digs up a quote from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” about chocolate spies.

Oh, by the way, Mars has its own intelligence division, which sounds in some ways more effective than the CIA, neighbor to the Mars corporate headquarters in McLean, Virginia. In fact, the CIA did some work for the Mars company, probably illegally. It was entitled “Soviet Exports and Imports with Selected Commodities, 1970-79” and was commissioned by CIA Director William Casey, a personal friend of Forrest Mars. The Selected commodities were cocoa beans, cocoa butter, and cocoa liquor.

Milton Hershey, perennial failure until he began a caramel business, even more fascinating than Forrest Mars. He was a dreamer and an idealist, and built Hershey, Pennsylvania as an utopian community. He constructed the city around a vast and beautiful park and provided a trolley network, a giant swimming pool, a Junior College and an elegant marble theater. Workers got generous insurance benefits and retirement plans. The company provided electricity, sewage, and phone service, shoveled the snow and managed the system that removed the sewage. Steam pipes carrying surplus heat from the chocolate factory warmed the municipal buildings.

At one point during the construction of his Chocolatopia he saw contractors building rows of identical houses for the chocolate workers. He screamed “This is the kind of houses they built for slaves!” and ordered them torn down and rebuilt on more individualistic plans.

I was fascinated by Brenner’s story of Hershey’s heroic battle to get milk to mix with chocolate. It reminded me of the mythic descriptions of Edison’s all-nighters trying to perfect the incandescent bulb that inspired me in my childhood.

An even more amazing story is the Hershey Industrial School. This was set up for poor, orphaned boys (it’s now co-ed). The children lived on farms in the surrounding countryside that Hershey built for this purpose, supervised by house parents. They all had to work on the farm and work hard, but they were given an excellent education, good role models and supervision, a rather lavish wardrobe and generous allowances.

Shortly after his wife died, with no public announcement, Hershey left all his money and all his shares in the company to his orphanage, spent his waning years living in two humble rooms in the Hershey Hotel, and died essentially a poor man. The Hershey school is still the principal shareholder in the chocolate company.

Reading Brenner’s description of the taste of Hershey’s chocolate made me curious. “The American public’s love for Hershey’s chocolate baffles European connoisseurs, who say Hershey’s chocolate is offensive, if not downright inedible. Known in the industry as ‘barnyard’ or ‘cheesy’ chocolate, Hershey’s unique, fermented flavor has never sold in Europe, despite attempts by the company to market it there.” She even quotes a European myth, which has gained a lot of popularity, that Milton Hershey was a cheapskate who developed the product to use up a load of spoiled milk. I’ve never liked Hershey’s milk chocolate, but, then I’ve never liked milk. I left my hotel and sought out a convenience store (surprising hard to find in the downtown area of a large American city — I was in Philadelphia), and proceeded to buy, for comparison purposes, a Hershey Bar, a Toblerone, and several Mars products.

This proves Brenner wrong on one count — “As any candy manufacture can tell you,” she says, “no one ever plans to buy a Snickers or a Clark bar. It just happens.” In fact, reading this book I managed to purchased a package of M&Ms, a Hershey bar, a Mars bar, a Reese’s cup and a Milky Way bar. That’s in addition to the above-mentioned research trip. Some of these products I hadn’t purchased in years, but the quest for knowledge called, and I answered.

There were only two things about the book that bugged me. Brenner is a brilliant reporter, a good story teller and a better writer than me, but her business writing roots are sometimes painfully evident. Sometimes accounting data seems to get in the way of the narrative. I think she also falls flat when she tries a little too hard to be poetic. As when she says about M&M’s:

“What is it about M&Ms? The sugar-coated pellets aglow in the colors of childhood. The edible white Ms that appear magically stamped, centered and perfect. The sumptuous treasure of milk chocolate hidden inside each and every one…”

Makes me want to say “shut up and pass them to me.”

Oh, the other name on M&Ms? R. Bruce Murrie, the son of the president of the Hershey company. The companies were less viciously competitive in those days and, in a clever move by Forrest Mars, Murrie was brought in to the Mars company. Though he was supposed to be second in command, and even got his initial on each M&M, he was really there for the connection to his father. It worked. His presence ensured that Hershey supplied chocolate for M&Ms through World War II rationing. After years of doing nearly no productive work and enduring torrents of abuse from Forrest Mars, Murray finally confronted Mars in 1949. The result was a raging brawl, Mars ordering Murrie out of the M&M plant, and Murrie’s resignation. But his initial is still on the candy.

The Soft Tofu House will Always Exert for Enjoying my Dinner Appreciate!

My Class was cut short today (a one-on-one session with a radiologist was cancelled because he forgot to show up), so I had a few hours to myself. I walked across town on 34th street from the Hospital where I’m working to the ferry to New Jersey. The hospital is on 1st avenue, just south of the United Nations, and the ferry terminal is directly across town, so I got to take one of the nicest walks in the city. The Empire State building is still a wonder and a thing of beauty, and it’s fun to pass Macy’s and notice that it still advertises “The Biggest Store in the World” (Take that, Wal-Mart!). Even the Jacob Javits center, an ugly little glass box sprawling along the river is interesting, if not attractive, to look at. I’d describe it as an armadillo made out of black Legos, or maybe a pile of Darth Vader’s sugar cubes. The ferry terminal on the New York side is surrounded by lots of demolition and construction and the ruins of the old terminals where cruise ships would sail for Europe. I can remember coming here in the 1960s, the last days of the great Transatlantic cruise ships. My brother helped pay for his Polaroid camera by sneaking on to the departing ships and selling instant photos of passengers.

As the ferry headed for New Jersey in a refreshing drizzle, I got a nice view of midtown Manhattan and of the aircraft carrier Intrepid, now a floating museum with quite a collection of vintage warplanes on its decks.

One bad thing about staying with mom is that she likes to watch TV. She is watching a TV show called “Friends” right now, and I’m catching bits of it as a write. I’m told it’s quite a popular show, though I haven’t ever seen it. It appears to be a lighthearted comedy starring a bunch of attractive young people who talk about sex a lot but don’t actually do much copulating.

The next night, I took my mother to a Korean/Japanese restaurant a few blocks from where we lived when I was a pre-schooler. It’s called the Restaurant So Kong Do, translated as “Soft Tofu Restaurant.” Its logo is two children in kimonos playing Taiko-style drums. It’s an unassuming place, but lots of fancy cars are parked outside. The interior is comfortable, sort of psuedo-rustic Japanese with cedar beams and black-on-white block prints in Japanese characters on the wall. I find myself wondering what the text says.

Many families, from newborns to ancient ones are sitting and eating, most of them in the semi-enclosed booths at the perimeter. Mom and I are the only Caucasian faces and apparently the only English speakers. It’s not an entirely comfortable experience, especially since none of the wait staff speaks English, but mom is daring, and I’m a sucker for any exotic dining experience.

We’re served glasses of iced barley tea; a subtle and refreshing change from water. The menu is very short. It lists four variations on soft tofu soup: soft tofu soup with seafood, soft tofu soup with mushrooms, soft tofu soup with beef, and soft tofu soup with pork. Almost as an afterthought, the menu lists beef ribs at the bottom.

We watch our neighbors to see what we’re going to be served. Each diner gets the soup, served in a sizzling-hot cast-iron pot, along with a raw egg. Each table gets a ceramic cauldron of rice and several tiny plates spicy Korean pickled vegetables. I recognize Kim-Chee, the Korean national dish. It consists of Napa Cabbage pickled in brine with lots of garlic and hot chili peppers. It’s an acquired taste, but I’ve acquired it. There’s also Daikon radish and bean sprouts, all pickled and all spicy. Some diners order the ribs on the side. These ribs are completely different from the ribs I know — they are sliced on the bias, yielding foot-long strips of beef studded with ring-like bones. I wonder how we can possibly eat them with chopsticks.

After we order, we discreetly watch a group of Yuppie-looking men at the next table for guidance. There seems to be a sort of ritual to eating this dish. The raw egg goes into the soup, where it’s cooked gently in the sizzling hot broth. The spicy pickles can be mixed in or eaten separately. The ribs are served with a large pair of scissors, enabling the diner to slice off single chopstick-size pieces. The ceramic pot of rice turns out to be glutinous rice. baked and crusted inside its dish. It’s scooped into a serving bowl and cold water is poured into cooking pot to make an insipid but soothing scorched-rice broth, which people seem to be eating as dessert.

I’m a little surprised and quite proud of how adventurous Mom is being. I only hope that when I’m an octogenarian I’ll be that way. I know she doesn’t quite share my enthusiasm for strange exotic food, but she loves an adventure, and is enjoying this almost as much as me. She plays kitchy-koo with the adorable infant in the next booth, and (in sign language) advises ice to the parents of a very upset toddler who attempted to eat the pickles. When she sees the limited menu choice she comments “Well, at least you know they can’t mess up your order” and, as I scissor away at the ribs she notes “I remember when I had to cut your meat.” She even gamely tries using the chopsticks for a while.

There is a gold-painted dome on each table that looks like exactly like an old-fashioned pre-digital home thermostat. The only difference is that instead of “Honeywell,” it has several words in Korean or Japanese. I speculate on what it might be, and spy on my neighbors to see if they do anything with it. Mom bets it’s to summon a waiter, and sure enough we notice the young yupsters pressing it moments before the waitress arrives to refresh their pickle assortment.

The check arrives. It’s entirely in Korean (or it is Japanese?) except the total, so there’s no way to check the math, but it’s stunningly cheap — less than a deli lunch for one in New York. The accountants will be happy. As we leave, I notice the signs posted on the front door. Underneath a tangle of Japanese characters the English reads “Starting June we will be open 24 hours. We will always exert for enjoying your dinner appreciate.” It’s been a great meal and a minor adventure, and I couldn’t ask for better company. This meal ranks as my finest expense-account dining experience to date.

Home with mom at little Korea on the Hudson

I catch an early morning puddle jumper to LaGuardia. It’s noisy and claustrophobic but gets me to New York in time for my class, avoiding more nights away from my daughter than are absolutely necessary. After class, I flag a taxi that takes me through some pretty ugly traffic to New Jersey.

For my two trips to New York, I’ve decided to stay with my mother rather than in a hotel. I’m saving the client hundreds of dollars in hotel bills, in trade for which I’ll take mom to some nice dinners. The company expense account rules allow this. Besides, I’ll sleep better at her house than in a hotel. I’m convinced that the subliminal smell of powerful disinfectants is what keeps me from sleeping decently in hotels.

I take mom to a nice meal at a pretentious but really rather mediocre Italian restaurant. As we eat, I worry that she’s battling years of instinct that direct her towards the lowest-priced item on the menu.

You have to understand something about my mother. She grew up in the depression and then had to raise three children at a time when my father wasn’t making much money. We didn’t think we were poor, but as an adult looking back I realize how tight money was and what a constant source of stress for Mom when I was a child. My brother claims to recall my parents serving meat to the children and eating only starches and vegetables themselves.

Sometimes mom’s runaway frugality is exasperating for my brothers and me. We tease her about her coupon collection, and as kids we used to joke that when friends came for dinner they always knew what they’d get — it was posted prominently on the windows of the supermarket. My brother Robert called her up once and said “Mom, I have great news!” “What?” she answered, perhaps expecting another grandchild. “The depression is over!” said Robert. By spending just about nothing on herself, mom manages to regularly contribute money towards the grandchildren’s college funds while living on Social Security. She’s been the best mother that I could imagine, and I love her dearly, so when she drives me crazy arguing over the validity of a nickel coupon with the girl at the checkout I try to remember that the pennies she pinched enabled me and my two brothers to graduate from college and buy homes. In fact, those pennies put us in a position where we won’t have to scrimp they way she always did.

The next morning I had a taxi waiting to take me into the city, but traffic on the George Washington Bridge was horrific. The cab driver was not looking forward to a two-hour traffic jam, so he talked me into taking the ferry service from Weehauken, NJ, a few miles south of my mom’s home of Fort Lee. My brother had used the ferry on his last trip to New York, and had recommended it, so I gave it a try.

The towns of Edgewater and Weehauken have changed dramatically since my childhood. Edgewater was a town of factories and warehouses owned by shady guys with mafia connections. Weehauken was the butt of jokes. Jokes that the rest of America made about New Jersey, New Jersey people made about Weehauken. Now both towns are full of construction: wildly expensive luxury townhouses and condos. There are some fancy restaurants there, and the usual suspects like Starbucks and Barnes and Noble have reared their internally-illuminated heads. The narrow strip of riverfront at the foot of the Palisades awaits only some parks to make it a wonderful place to live if you’re somewhere between well-off and filthy rich.

Now that the Hudson is less polluted the riverfront is pleasant place, and the view of Manhattan (a well known author whose name escapes me called it “skyscraper national park”) and the George Washington Bridge rivals many scenes of natural beauty, especially at night.

The ferry terminal is parklike, with boxed flowers and plantings around the parking lot and tent-like awnings leading to the terminal, which itself appears to be an out-of-service ferry. The ferry ride is fun, pretty, and refreshing. I was in New York as soon as I boarded. I could tell because I was apparently the only one who did not have a cell phone attached to my ear. The ferry ride was such a pleasure that I found myself thinking that, after 29 years of sneering at and deriding Fort Lee, I could imagine living there.

Fort Lee itself has changed a lot, too. When I was very young, it was a middle and working class Italian town with a sprinkling of Irish and Jewish people. It had a reputation as being a good town for Mafioso to live, and several of my classmates in High School had parents who got called before grand juries while I was in college in the 1970s. One of these parents (Tom “Tommy Ryan” Eboli) was gunned down in a dramatic Greenwich Village shooting.

Starting in the 1960s and continuing through the 70s and 80 a maniacal real-estate boom brought dozens of upscale high-rise apartments to the town. Fort Lee became largely Jewish and upper-middle class. I remember returning from college in the 1970s to find one or two more of these megaliths. It reminded me of a giant emerging fingers-first from the New Jersey soil. Later, the town turned Japanese as the American branches of many Japanese corporations moved executives in for two or three-year spells in the United States. A cab driver in Fort Lee claimed that the Japanese corporados liked the town because so many of them were racist. They felt secure, he said, because Fort Lee’s mafia dons would keep people of color out of town. This, of course, is itself a racist statement, but there may have been a grain of truth to it.

At any rate, the Japanese stores and restaurants that sprang up in Fort Lee ended up drawing a large population of Korean immigrants, and in the 1980s and 1990s Fort Lee became a largely Korean town. My high-school English teacher tells me that my old high school has become a sort of magnet school for overachieving Korean music students, and boasts the best high-school orchestra in New Jersey (with nary a Caucasian face on stage).

If my cab driver was right about racism playing a role in the Japanese settling of Fort Lee, it’s a sweet irony that the Koreans, target of so much racism in Japan, have taken over the town. I also appreciate God’s sense of humor in filling Fort Lee with so many people whose surname is “Lee.”

Captive of the Historical Society

I saw an advertisement in the local paper today for a lecture. It read “Cruising the County. Francis Pike will take you through a slide tour of some of Boone County’s historical sites. Tuesday – Boone County Historical society.” This sounded like it might be fun — I know nothing of Central Missouri, and this has to be less boring than watching TV or hanging out in the Holiday Inne bar.

I drive to the Historical Society. I’m surprised to discover a very large and quite beautiful building. The one attribute I wouldn’t ascribe to the building, though, is “historic.” It’s a tasteful but contemporary structure with high beams and lots of class. I later learn that it was built ten years ago. I think of the small-town museums in New England and begin to wonder how a small town like this can afford such a building. It did have a musty smell, testimony to either a leaky roof or cellar and a limited capital budget, and it seemed to be staffed solely by the youngish woman who greeted me at the door. She was kind enough to turn on the lights of the museum and let me prowl the exhibits. It wasn’t quite New York’s Museum of Natural History, but there were some remarkable antiques, all tastefully displayed with descriptive information scattered around. The exhibits included some scary old medical equipment and a complete reconstructed dentist office with one of the very first dental x-ray machines.

One of the most fascinating pieces in the museum was the piano of “Blind Boone,” a blind black, pianist who, despite handicaps and prejudice became a well-known and wealthy performer of classical music in and around Missouri. It was a spectacular piano, inlaid with rare woods, and intricately carved. I never found out if Blind Boone was named after the county, after Daniel Boone, or after someone else. I did learn that Daniel Boone never lived here in Boone County. The county was named in his honor nonetheless.

“Are you here for the airshow?” asked the young woman. She seemed surprised to find out that I was not only not here for the airshow but didn’t know about it. Apparently Columbia is home to the nations largest airshow, and it was taking place on the coming weekend.

The staff member and I stood out in stark contrast with the six other slide-show attendees, all of whom had to be at least in their 80s (I later learned that Francis Pike was well into his 90s). There were cookies, bags of popcorn, and punch but I declined. I had just tried to polish off a copious fajita platter at a local Mexican restaurant. It was a super restaurant (who would have thought to find great Mexican food in Missouri!), but my attempt was unsuccessful and I feared that if I so much as nibbled or sipped anything my shirt buttons would pop.

As the lights dimmed and the slide show began, I began to get what my daughter refers to as “an uh-oh feeling in my tummy.” One of the things that I like about travelling is searching for the local and the authentic, but I began to think I might have gone too far in my quest. This must how it feels to a traveller to the Middle East who is served a platter of rice crowned by a camel’s eye.

My fears were well grounded. These people knew the history and geography of Boone County better than I knew my sock drawer. Mr. Pike would say something like “Who here has seen the Gravel Pike toll bridge?” and the other six would raise their hand and murmur approvingly. The young woman would advance to the slide, which showed what looked to me like any one of thousands of old steel bridges. If there was something special about the bridge, they all knew about it and weren’t going to repeat it for the only stranger in the room. Mr. Pike would then mention an extremely obscure fact about the site to surprise or titillate the jaded group. “…Mrs. Nifong would always be notified when her husband passed the gate so she could put the biscuits in the oven…” This went on in a similar vein, as Pike talked of places like Boone’s Lick Road, the Huntsdale Tobacco Barn and the Easley Insulation Tunnel. The octogenarian crowd would murmur knowingly and occasionally raise their hand to fill in some details about a particular bridge or abandoned railroad right-of way. I felt a little bit like the rookie in the joke about the prison where all the inmates had memorized a joke book and needed only to refer to the jokes by number (punch line: “well, some people just don’t know how to tell a joke.”)

After the slide show I chatted briefly with some of the elders, admiring the new building and expressing surprise at having a brand-new building for a historical society. The gentleman talking to me expressed regret at all the now-destroyed historic structures that might have housed the society: “I guess we’re slash and burn pioneer types out here” he said. I was handed some photocopies of Mr. Pike’s newspaper column and urged to take some popcorn home. “Otherwise I’ll have to feed it to the goat.” I walked slowly to my car, closed the door, and let out a sigh of relief at having escaped an uncomfortable situation.

Back at the Holiday Inne I ordered some local bourbon and read the reprints of Mr. Pike’s column, entitled “Whatever Happened To…” (tip from a professional educator — the more senses you can involve, the better you can remember). The articles were exactly the kind of thing I was looking for when I decided to attend the lecture, and I was fascinated by the stories. The Insulation Tunnel, by the way, was a mine for an unusual kind of rock that could be spun into fiber for insulation. This went on for years until somebody went and invented fiberglass. The Mrs. Nifong of the bridge and biscuit tale was the husband of Doctor Frank Nifong, a successful surgeon and teacher at the University. He later became a prominent philanthropist, and the Historical Society building is located near his former home, off Nifong Road. On weekends the society conducts tours of his house.

I was wondering why a city as big as Columbia would have developed in such a landlocked location. Kansas City is over 100 miles to the east, St. Louis over 100 miles to the west. The Missouri River (on which both cities are situated) makes a big bend about a hundred miles south. The young woman from the Boone County Historical society told me that Columbia was founded and settled by savvy business types who serviced the main wagon train road between St. Louis and Kansas city — an overland route must have cut trip upriver significantly. That wagon line, descended from an old Indian trail, would eventually evolve into Interstate 70, along which I drove to catch my plane in St. Louis.

It’s still a major road for commerce. I was amazed at the number and size of tractor-trailer trucks that hugged the right-hand lane as I cruise-controlled it to the Airport. Some of these were big double and triple rigs — rubber-wheeled trains, really. The countryside was gently rolling — not Kansas flat, but not Vermont mountainous. It was very densely wooded, and the sky was much bigger and bluer than Vermont’s. The big sky was filled with cute little puffy clouds rather than the towering cumulus I’m used to seeing in New England. It would have been a lovely drive had billboards not hideously wounded the landscape.

Coffee with the Queen of Darkness

I am driving Route 70 from St. Louis to Columbia, Missouri. As far as I can tell the landscape of Central Missouri is largely characterized by darkness, punctuated by gargantuan truck stops. I stop at one of these miniature cities for a cup of decaf, and marvel at the acres of diesel pumps, banks of showers, restaurants, medical facilities (“DOT approved checkups!”), hotels, and shopping centers. One even has a country-western bar attached to it. I have read that some host full-time houses of prostitution, though I saw no evidence of this. The place is brightly lit to the point of pain, which I suppose must be a respite from the dim cocoon of a diesel cab and the hypnotic centerline. It’s a city for sure, one with a gritty working-class feel to it, but one where the clock has gone topsy-turvy and night is often busier than day. Driving on, I arrive at the hotel very late and sleep poorly. Perhaps the decaf wasn’t.

After teaching the next day, in search of barbecued ribs, I head West instead of East on highway 70. Some 15 miles from town I meet up again with the Missouri, home from its big loop southward. It is really wide here, and quite beautiful. The river makes a little loop to the north, and the inside of the loop is completely flooded. The river and floodplain are silver, the foliage a spectacular spring shade of green that’s enhanced by the rich red of the sunset.

Downtown Columbus seems prosperous, urbane yet small-townish, not entirely drained of its life by the mega malls that ring the city. Like Burlington it’s very much a college town and is remarkably peaceful after school is out for the year. As in Burlington there are accretions of evil 1960s modernization on top of beautiful historic structures though many of the structures have been well-maintained or preserved. Overall the town looks a little less trendy, less prosperous, and somehow less loved than Burlington.

Near my hotel (Holiday Inne, Lower Middle on the Aminzade scale, 46″ towel, shampoo/conditioner combo), are the usual biztravel restaurant suspects: the Outback Steak House, Olive Garden, Pizzeria Uno and so on. Since I avoid these like typhoid-infested water, I’m pleased that the town has some interesting ethnic choices — mostly Chinese but a few decent-looking Indian and Thai places. There is even a Japanese restaurant, Osaka, though I wonder who but a homesick native of Nippon would dare order Sushi so far from the ocean.

I dine at the Buckingham Smoke House. Though it violates one of my rib joint rules (the chairs all match), the fact that it’s in what appears to be a converted A&W rootbeer stand makes it a promising candidate. In fact, the ribs are outstanding. They have managed to smoke them exactly the way I wish all ribs were smoked. There is not a trace of fat on them and they have a crispy crust and a deep, smoky flavor. For the first time in my life I regret having purchased a half-rack. Only the sauce — too sweet and not spicy enough — prevents this from being the Platonic ideal of a rib-eating experience, the dinner that would resolve my long search and allow me to return to vegetarianism.

I’m very proud of my ability to intuit urban geography. I can find, without a map or directory, the kinds of stores and restaurants I like. This requires a glance at a map, a few minutes walking or driving around a city, and what Robert Heinlein called “grokking.” My instincts and a few signboards tell me that a lot of bohemian businesses are on Sixth street, so I turn down there the next morning and sure enough find an espresso joint almost immediately.

At first it looks like a real gem — the walls are decorated with beautiful Middle-Eastern water pipes and Arabic calligraphy, the pastry counter has pistachio halvah, the clientele looks seedy but well-educated, and the newspaper rack has the New York Times. But I soon learn that I’ve made a terrible mistake. The first hint is the chalkboard over the checkout counter, which I assumed would list pastries or specials or perhaps coffees or teas. I discover that it lists rules. In case you’re ever in Columbus, let me give you the rules of the Osama’s Coffee Zone:
1) We ID Tobacco Sales
2) Refills available same visit only
3) Restrooms for Customers Only
4) Only local checks will be accepted

I order coffee and a muffin, and I’m shocked by the irritable, unfriendly tone of the bitter 30ish woman who gets my muffin. She asks if I want it warmed. I say “no.” She explains that the muffin is refrigerator-cold. I say “Okay, then yes.” The woman has remarkable powers of communication. In this short interchange she somehow manages to let me know that the muffin is going to be lousy, that I’m an idiot, that she hates her job, and that it’s mostly because of fools like me who constantly irritate her with ill-informed and annoying requests.

The beautiful brass, glass, and wooden hookah pipes have their own little notice “Pipes are on exhibit only. Not for sale.” One wall has, every six feet, a small plastic “thank you for not smoking” plaque. The newspaper rack warns that the papers are for sale, not for reading. The coffee-creaming station reminds us that “all children must be supervised by their parents at all times.” The hallway to the bathroom reiterates rule #3 “Restroom for customers only.”

I down my coffee and swallow the muffin quickly, before I can be accused of violating a rule. The coffee is bitter to me, less from a poor quality bean or bad roasting than from the attention it’s received from the Queen of Darkness behind the counter and her creepy Jordanian boss, the mad notifier. As I hop in my car and drive away, though, I discover that my urban intuition hasn’t failed — several doors down there is a coffee house that looks far more friendly and roasts the beans on premises.

Two tunes are running through my mind as I sit in the Philadelphia Airport waiting for my flight to St. Louis. The first is a line from Bob Dylan’s”Mr. Tambourine Man,” “My weariness amazes me.” I had always thought the line to be poetic nonsense, but today I understand it perfectly. I’m truly amazed at how weary I feel. I can’t seem to understand my lethargy today — I usually am energized by travel, particularly from travel to a new place. Maybe it’s the complimentary cocktail in my blood, or the turmoil at home. Perhaps it’s the fact that I arrive in St. Louis at night, and must drive for several hours to the small college town of Columbia, where I’m teaching early tomorrow morning.

The other tune is from the folk song “Shenandoah,” the line “..away, I’m bound away, across the wide Missouri.” Though I’m not near the Shenandoah river, I’m flying to the Missouri, and the beautiful Native American name Shenandoah has a lot to do with flight. It means “Daughter of the Sky,” and was the name they gave an airship built here in Philadelphia in the 20s. The Shenandoah was a true American Zeppelin, based on designs taken from a downed WWI German behemoth. In 1923, it made its first cross-country trip from Lakehurst New Jersey to Lambert Field in St. Louis (my destination today). After a few years of service it crashed spectacularly in bad weather.

What little else I know about St. Louis comes from the wonderful recent book “Undaunted Courage” by Stephen E. Ambrose. It was from there that Merriwether Lewis set out with his corps of explorers to cross the unknown lands to the Pacific and it was there that Lewis spent his last years as a bureaucrat, administering the newly-purchased Louisiana territory — pretty much everything west of the Mississippi not held by Spain. Napoleon sold it at a bargain price, losing hope in his American colonies after Haitian slaves revolted and won their independence.

When I read “Undaunted Courage”, I found myself wishing I could have been with those explorers. President Jefferson charged Lewis and Clark to seek out new worlds and new civilizations and boldly going where no man had gone before — a real-life “Star Trek.” In fact the journey was more remarkable than anything our best science-fiction writers have dreamt up. Jefferson genuinely hoped that they would discover living mastodons in the American West. He asked them to study the theology of the newly-met nations, and when they contacted people who had never seen white men, to try to resolve the issue of whether Syphilis came from the old world or new. They had no idea what the Rocky mountains were like, and expected something like the Alleghenies. What Lewis, Clark, and his group saw would challenge George Lucas’s crew.

After this mind-blowing experience, Lewis’s years as administrator of the Missouri territory must have been a let-down, and he was never really happy again. In the end he descended into depression and killed himself.

The flight to St. Louis is on a narrow, cramped jet, on which I’m served “Cheddar and Sour Cream flavored Pretzels,” the most disgusting thing I’ve ever willingly put in my mouth. I arrive after dark in a now-familiar tired and crabby mood and pick up my rental car. Luckily there is nobody upon whom I can take out my wrath, and I settle into the two-hour drive from St. Louis to Columbia. My route runs along Interstate 70, upstream along the Missouri river that Lewis and Clark rode North and West to seek those new worlds.

I cross the wide Missouri. It’s still plenty wide, but is now limned by brightly-lit billboards for the many casinos floating on its banks. The rental car has a CD player, and I’ve brought a few of my favorite disks. I listen to Donovan as I hurtle West in the dark. The music brings back vivid memories from thirty years ago and I settle into a nostalgic fugue, letting the songs evoke my teenage years. Through a small miracle in the music I somehow relive the joy and pain and longing of a 15-year-old boy in the flush of early love. I’m almost in tears from the music and the memories.

I noticed something at the Airport in Burlington, Vermont as I waited for a plane to Philadelphia, connecting to Missouri. The waiting area at one of the gates is directly across from the security checkpoint, and you can watch people as they pass through the metal detector. From time to time a passenger would set off the alarm. The security guard, a paunchy gray fellow in his late 50s or 60s would respond. If it was a male passenger, he would usually have them back up behind the portal, empty their pockets into the basket provided, and try again. If it was a young, attractive female passenger, he would pull out his hand-held metal detector, a device that looks like a cattle prod, have her stand with her arms akimbo, and use run the device along her body. It would shriek at any metallic mass.

I felt both scandalized and just amused, and not a little confused about how to respond. It wasn’t obvious or grotesque enough for me to report the guy, but any red-blooded heterosexual male could figure out what was happening . Some of my readers will think me an insensitive lout, but I’ll leave it to a more committed feminist than me to turn the guy in.

Now I’m perched in the food court at Philadelphia airport in a place that allows me to sit behind my laptop and people-watch. I was upgraded to first class on the Burlington to Philadelphia leg, and that means I’m slightly intoxicated from free gin. It’s a wonderful seat. All the traffic to or from Terminal B passes here, and it’s a delight and a wonder to watch these travelers. There seems to be a story in every face, posture, and stack of luggage that troops past, and I find myself imagining their origin, destination, troubles, and joys.

Family of four, little girl pulling the large rolling cart. Well-heeled and very tan couple in designer clothes, he with a garment bag. Grim but not unattractive grey-haired woman (my age) with a leather backpack and raincoat over her forearm. Giggling team of three black women, their burger King cups swinging as they laughed through the area. Young woman of staggering beauty in a white dress. Worried-looking middle age fellow in khakis and out-of-style shirt. Man in tweed jacket focussing all his attention on the ATM machine. Tow-headed toddler with pacifier and what must be grandpa, both looking a little shell-shocked. Three generations of women in identical jeans, wearing very different tops, sharing a long loping stride. Plenty of weary-looking men like me. Tall, striking, thin yuppie couple all in black with a child of 10 or so dressed all in bright blue. Droopy-pants kid with skateboard and bright orange t-shirts.

I am, I supose, something of a voyeur. I wonder if I’m any better than the security guard at Burlington.. I think not — I’m fascinated not just by the attractive young women but by the stories in every face. On the other hand, my gaze lingers a few microseconds on the more, uh, interesting forms that pass. Perhaps I’m just hiding behind my observation and my writing the way he hides behind his uniform and badge.

I’m not just a terrible voyeur. I’m also an eavesdropper, or whatever the aural equivalant of “voyeur” is. On the plane here, gin in hand, I closed my eyes and listened intently to the conversation in the seat behind me. One passenger, a very distinguished-looking man of African descent, was flying back from the UVM graduation ceremony, where he had been a commencement speaker — several passengers, obviously parents returning home from their children’s graduation, complimented him on the speech as they headed to the coach compartment. His seatmate was a businessman from Plattsburgh (across the lake from Burlington). He appeared to have to the brains of a box of rocks, but was genial and kind. Mr. Commencement was clearly a man of great intelligence and erudition — he had received the Presidential freedom award, America’s highest civilian honor.

The mention of that award was what what caught my ear as I slouched in a gin-muddled drowse my wide first-class seat, but as the plane rose the conversation plummetted from those lofty heights. It drifted briefly past the subject of Bill Clinton, whom Mr. Commencement clearly respected, and for whom Mr. Businessman tried to dredge up some faint praise. After some awkward moments the discussion drifted to air travel, and settled down to an excruciatingly detailed dialog about airlines, terminals, and gates: probably the only topic the two men had in common. The plane landed and, as we shuffled out I mooched pieces of the Sunday New York Times from a relieved-looking Mr. Commencement.

Tornados, Pot Likker, Midnight Drives

In the morning, I lose my TV bet with myself. Turning on the local news. I’m surprised to hear the weather report — a cheerful young woman says “tornados” and then calmly turns things over to the traffic reporter. I am amazed at her sangfroid, until I learn that twisters are not at all uncommon in Georgia. This must be the far eastern end of Tornado Alley.

There’s just a mild rain as we leave the hotel, but darkness soon descends, punctuated by flashes of lightning. My students seem remarkably calm, considering that this is the same storm system that just killed 41 people in Oklahoma and left a scene that remniscent of nuclear holocaust. It’s actually very pretty in a scary way, and we delay class to watch. The rain turns impossibly heavy, then changes to hail. The news later reports hail the size of golfballs, but from our perch on the 4th floor of an office complex I would estimate “baseballs” or perhaps “canteloupes.”

As the hail continues to fall, we realize that standing by the ceiling-to-floor windows in our training room may not be wise, so we move to the central hallway. This is the South, and I am struck with the terrifying thought that I might be stuck in an office basement with several hundred Pentecostals and Baptists, all praying and singing to Jesus as the storm rages outside. I joke to a student “…at least you’ll die knowing how to use our software.” My gospel-music fears are for naught, though. The storm soon passes and I teach my class as usual.

Shoe mitt or no, my hotel does offer a complimentary cocktail hour. I drink one Margarita and am sloshed. Sober Jeff and tipsy Russell take to pumping the concierge for strange and interesting restaurants and turn up Cuban and South African places. Jeff is the new trainer-in-training, and he is everything I would want in a business travel companion — he’s funny, appreciates my jokes, and loves looking for strange and exotic restaurants that we can visit on our expense account. More importantly, his idea of entertainment doesn’t involve binge drinking or strip bars. Nonetheless, one of the things I really like about business travel is its solitary nature. It’s lonely at times, but I genuinely enjoy my company, and many of the things I like to do, like reading and writing these journals, are solitary pursuits.

The office complex where I’m teaching has a restaurant space. Last time I was at this site, it was occupied by an Arby’s chain restaurant. Jeff and I, having gotten over the collard burps, are delighted to find out that it’s now occupied by an authentic southern/soul food place with the standard “meat and two” or “meat and three” menu.

We enjoy two lunches there. The place seems to be run by authentic locals — southern black people who know the drill — collards, gooey-sweet yams, fresh cornbread and ice tea sweeter than Coca-Cola. On my second day there, I try to show off my knowledge of local cuisine. I have learned that Southern corn bread is best enjoyed after being dipped in the cooking liquid from the collards, known as “pot likker.” I ask the black guy dishing out my collards for some pot likker. He answers “What the hell is that?.” I explain, and he in turn explains that he’s from New York. I sheepishly mention that I’m from New Jersey, and turn to the other people in line for support. None will admit they know what “pot likker” is. Perhaps they’re all Yankees, too. Tail between my legs (but Styrofoam cup of pot likker on my tray), I retire to my seat.

The storm system that brutalized Oklahoma and provided excitement in Atlanta is now delaying flights to the northeast. We arrive at the airport at 3:30 for our 4:40 flight, and don’t take off until after 7:00 I worry about missing our connection in Boston, because I need to wake up early the next morning, pick up my 4-year-old daughter and drive back to Boston for a wedding.

A travelling companion can really make stressful times like this easier. We have dinner and a few beers near the gate and read all the newspapers we’ve collected. We arrive in time for the last Boston to Vermont flight, and discover that it’s been cancelled. Jeff proves to be a lifesaver, not only helping me drive back to Vermont in a rental car, but letting me have a brief snooze and providing a great book on tape for our listening pleasure as we drive.

I arrive in Burlington at 2:00 AM and get into my car, only to discover that the airport parking lot attendant isn’t in his booth. A wooden gate prevents me from leaving the parking lot. I flash my lights, honk and wait a while. Then drive to the entrance of the parking lot, leave my car, walk around the gate, and push the “Enter” button. No dice. It must have some kind of a sensor in the pavement. In the end, angry and very tired, I return to the exit, mutter profanities, and force the wooden gate up high enough for my little Honda to squeeze by. Heading home to bed, I thank my stars that I wasn’t driving a minivan.